Here's the news article I posted on PokémonWorld so you can get a better idea of how good it was :)
----
Manchester Tournament Recap
Yesterday, PokémonWorld's first officially sponsored tournament took place, also supported by our friends at
PokéCharms and
GamerBase. It was a long day, with sign ups starting as early as 9:30am, and the final battles happening at around 4pm! Some players were even waiting outside the HMV store (where GamerBase is located) before it opened, eager to compete, while other entrants had travelled from the likes of London and Edinburgh in order to have a shot at winning. All in all, it was a very successful day. We had roughly 50 entrants take part, and with the GamerBase staff realising how much potential there is for Pokémon, and how much of a community the game can gather, they're fully in support of more tournaments taking place in the future. This will get bigger and bigger, so expect more tournaments in this location and possibly in other GamerBase stores around the UK!
Our set-up included four Wii consoles, three 47" televisions, and one HD projector providing a 13ft screen for matches to be viewed on. Retr0range, King of Lucario, Havak, and Gamerbases Natalie were in charge of one console each and recording the result of that they watched. We also had a tournament bracket projected on the wall for competitors and spectators to view, and a PA system with microphone to play music and make announcements. Once it got to roughly 11:30am, we called in the players and were almost ready for the tournament to begin after a quick run-down of rules and tournament process.
There were some shock results as early as Round One, with one of the tournament favourites Noveria (Nick Stones) losing in a hax-filled battle and VGC 2010 2nd place Kinneas (Dale Jacob) losing to some unorthodox tactics. PokémonWorld members that made it through the first round included AeolianFlame, skaraflame, MadMan, Pokawaii, and Pikachimba (as well as a few others if I'm not mistaken). Smogon's Akiratron and Toothache progressed, as well as PokéCharm's Doctor Oak and Balakia. All of the above winner's made it a round further into the top 16, bar PokéCharm's Admin Doctor Oak who admitted to making some foolish decisions which ultimately cost him.
The round of 16 saw Toothache, MadMan, and Pokawaii leave us, giving us our top 8 players, each of whom would receive some kind of prize for making it so far. It had been a gruelling day and making it this far was a real achievement. The winner's from this round included Akiratron, Pikachimba, skaraflame, and Balakai. Due to how the winner's placed, this is how 5th to 8th place looked:
8th - Victor
7th - Elliotstreet
6th - Ammir
5th - AeolianFlame
Each of these competitors received a Pokémon TCG Booster Pack and a Pokéball with a Pokémon figure inside. You can view our semi-finals and finals video's below, and these are the prizes that our winners took away with them:
4th - skaraflame - £10 HMV Voucher & Pokéball
3rd - Pikachimba - £20 HMV Voucher & Pokéball
2nd - Balakai - Runner-Up Certificate, Pokémon HeartGold DS game & Pokéball
1st - Akiratron - Champion Certificate, Pokémon HeartGold DS game, £20 HMV Voucher & Pokéball
You can view GamerBases coverage of the event
here which includes Highlights, the Tournament Bracket, and Photos.
Videos
Semi Final 1
Semi Final 2 (part 1) -
(part 2)
Final
You can see a video of the prizes being given out to the top four players
here. Jonathan Marie (Akiratron) even gave us an impressive victory dance!
Huge credit to GamerBase for the high quality images! As well as allowing us to host this event and the masses of help with the organisation. We really cannot thank them enough, they helped us put on a great show and we'll be forever grateful. However, we'll definitely make sure to help them organise more in the future and bring the Pokémon community even more together!
