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Pokemon Trading Card Game Online (PTCGO) Open
Okay, so where to start. What is a PTCGO Open?
So, in normal times outside of the global pandemic that we are having at the moment, we would get together monthly or quarterly and have Pokemon events with real-life cardboard. And in the absence of this, we decided that we’d be filling a void by starting to run these online open tournaments.
The idea is to have as many South Africans to be included as possible. Making these tournaments completely inclusive, and opening them to all ages and categories. It makes the player pool larger, and it gives people more game time, a little bit more fun for everyone. Just kind of ties everything together with the lack of being able to play physically.
Themed tournament
With it being a Chilling Reign open, we focused on the new release, which is Chilling Reign and going forward we’ll be trying to do one of these every release with Solorpop and Unplug YourselReign
Player turn-out
With the player base, the player base was quite a mix, we saw a lot of old faces returning with the winner being somebody who has participated in one of the previous events. There were some new players within the Top 8, which was always nice to see.
Overall, I think the player attendance was about spot on the previous event, we were looking at about just over 30 players who attended. Which is in the South African standpoint, we speaking about having a local event, 30 players is medium to high.
I think the fact that a new set was just released does contribute to how many people attend. It also builds the hype, which is why it’s done that way.
The tournament meta-game
Decks that appeared on the day, strangely enough, there were a lot of new decks that were dropped. Pretty much, I think 6 out of the Top 8 decks Were all brand new decks that were released within Chilling Reign, or while the main cards were from Chilling Reign itself, which was quite interesting to see.
Throughout the day, there was a good solid mix of decks. Like I said, the most popular deck was a deck that came out of Chilling Reign, which generally does follow the trend of Pokemon tournaments in the past.
Just as a side note, if we look at the World Championships, for the last three World Championships, the winning deck is generally containing a card that was released or centred around a card that was just released before World Championships. So generally speaking, the power creeps in Pokemon, the latest cards tend to always do the best.
Just shy of half of the Top 8 were all brand new decks and the top two decks were new decks that just dropped from Chilling Reign.
How did the event go?
I felt the event went really well. I think that overall, being able to stream the games live and do live commentary, there were a lot of exciting matchups that appeared on stream, and it’s always nice to see some rogue and random decks doing well in the tournament as well.
Just having a look overall, even between the players during the tournament there are open chat rooms where guys can speak to each other in the text. And then there’s also tableside talking where guys can chat with each other. This is run on a Discord platform.
The overall camaraderie of the tournament just seems like everybody’s there to have a good time. It doesn’t feel like a regular tournament, it doesn’t feel like an in-person tournament because it doesn’t have that. That level of stress attached to it. Everybody’s just there to have a good time and it really shows especially even including some of our younger players.
I think our youngest player in this tournament was 10 years old, which would define him as a junior outside of this online tournament. He was playing with people way older than him and standing his ground really well. I think the youngsters did very well in this tournament and it was nice to see the youngsters come out and show everybody that they are also in it to win it.
Want to play in the next PTCGO?
So yeah, for the next event obviously, I do substantial advertising on my Facebook page, as well as my YouTube channel. And they are pretty much like videos leading up to the event is just a build-up of event hype and telling people how to get tickets.
Generally, the tickets are found on my website as well on my website where guys can purchase a ticket. It’s absolutely free, open to anyone in South Africa to compete.
Chilling Reign PTCGO Open LIVE | Pokemon Card Tournament
Chilling Reign PTCGO Open TOP CUT LIVE | Pokemon Card Tournament
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