A brief foreword:
Sometime in November of 2016, I imagine, I was offered the opportunity to host PokeBeach's monthly TCG tournament. I have had plenty of hosting experience, having hosted or co-hosted several large games of Mafia on this site. It's something I have always enjoyed doing, so I agreed to host the next month's tournament. Interest back then was nothing like it is now - in that month, we had a cap of 64 players and didn't even fill it (one short).
Of course, this was before the prize increase happened in February 2017 that necessitated the player cap increase after February's tournament was more than 50% subscribers, and the cap has been at 96 ever since March of this year. Many people, including myself, want to see an increase to 128, but more people need to show up for us to consider it (if all the overflow players came back in the following month, there'd be a stronger argument for it, just saying).
It is now December 2017. With this tournament, I will have hosted PokeBeach's monthly tournaments for one year. Over the past twelve months, you, the players, have helped me take this project and polish it to a shine, and the end result is something to be proud of. Those few of you who took part in our tournaments back then can attest to that.
I don't know what the future holds. My plan is to consider hosting as long as I'm able and willing. How much longer that is still remains to be seen, but rest assured that when the time comes for me to pass the baton, my replacement will be just as fluent at running this well-oiled machine as I've become.
Thanks to PokeBeach staff for putting their faith in me, to all the players who have offered feedback and continued to make these tournaments a success, and (perhaps most of all) to SNES Rainbow Road for being the undisputed best Rainbow Road:
I mean, just
listen to that soundtrack. How can N64 even compete? I'm glad we can all agree that N64 was the worst one out of them all.
With that out of the way, it's time to begin:
December 2017 PTCGO Tournament Pairings
Round 1 ends Thursday, December 7, at 11:59 PM EST. Remember that if I do not have your list in hand by the end of this round, you will receive a loss for the round (if you won, your opponent will get the win if they submitted on time, otherwise you will both get a tie) and a warning. Get to work, everyone. Looking forward to
dropping like eight of you for disappearing during this round another smooth tournament.