tSn.TCG - Competitive Pokemon TCG Team

By Elijah Douresseau   A new TCG/VG season is here, as we saw very established lists from the last 4 to 8 months dominate the Worlds show floor. Electing to play with what has proven to be far from obsolete seems to have emboldened players to stick to the top-tier deck lists that have gotten countless hours of playtime and have adapted to specific key matchups.    I’m excited about the new season. There are plenty of decks to make and try out, and the oldies at this point – Mew, Lost Box, Arceus variants - have stronger opportunities to hang around because the support from new sets allows them to maintain their viability in a meta where a lot of decks can be visible – even if only momentarily.    I attended a Challenge this weekend that had a healthy turnout to it. A good thirty players, from junior and master divisions, duked it out for their chance at 15 CP and sufficient Obsidian Flames prizing. Of course, since this was a premier event, the third...

The man that needs little to no introduction, let me introduce you to Victor. If you ever play or meet Victor for the first time you might think he's nervous and quiet but really he's calm, cool, and collected. As you are sitting there thinking you got an easy win, Victor is calculating every strat possible from the number of cards in his hand. While a monster in his own right, Victor has taken home several locals and also dabs in Gym Leader Challenge.  Victor has been a regular at Odyssey Games where tSn.Pokemon practice at. It wasn't until recently he was interested in joining Team SKYNITE. With his track record, why wouldn't we accept him. He's familiar with the game and he knows the team as well as other players from the local scene. From Southern California, Victor set foot in the game recently much like the other players we know (Be it, returning post-covid or new to the game all together). Victor has what it takes to help Team SKYNITe reach the big league. So...

BY ELIJAH DOURESSEAU     Another Pokémon season is coming to a close. Worlds is not super far away (hope the grinders trying to make it into this summer’s main event do!), which also means standard rotation is fairly close. It technically is next month.   Most players feel rotation in one way or another. A lot of us are looking forward to a fresher meta scene. Some of us are anxious about losing key staples for most decks.   This rotation cycle feels big. It’ll be the first rotation since the Pandemic. I don’t have to tell most of you that the last three years have felt like seven. For anyone going to Portland Regionals, like myself, the rotation will also occur right before we face off in May. For a player of my caliber, who loves to play the spice and the rogue stuff more than anything, I’m excited to make decks from a new pool of standard cards.   Most who go to Regionals consider themselves competitive, in one way or another, so an eve...

THE DAY OF THAT BIG TOURNEY: WHAT I DO FOR PREP – Elijah Douresseau Today is the day. You’ve practiced and practiced, and though you are aiming for the top spot in whatever high-stakes tournament is kicking off in a few hours, you are loose and prepared to play at your best, no matter the outcome. You're thinking clearly, strategizing effectively, and are minimally fouling with misplays. You, Trainer, are ready to compete.     But how else do you get ready for the big tournament? How crucial are the 24 hours before, along with the few hours leading up to round one on the day of? As promised, I’ll outline some of my rituals for bigger events and hopefully, you get some encouragement for creating a functional system for yourself.    Some immediately might scoff at these introductory paragraphs and think, “It’s just a game!” But the competitive and semi-competitive community sees the Pokémon TCG as something more. That classic opening sequence for the 9...

 First of all, we like to thank TPCi for still letting us order pre-releases for non-sanctioned tournaments because it was popping last week! With 18 players out of our 20 slot, it was pretty much a full house with awesome deck building and seeing crazy strategies. After the tournament after everyone got their packs, we didn't see a lot of Gengars but we did see a lot of Mews being pulled. Can't wait to see what Fusion Strike will bring to the table once it goes legal next week in the rotation! Depending on how time consuming being a Pokemon Professor is during the revival of Pokemon OP, some of the ideas that we might run for OPC Season 3 (If we end up doing it again) is having an open leaderboard and anyone placing top cut will pay a tournament fee to enter the OPC Cup. This will keep the format casually competitive as a player is not forced to pay early in the season to keep their points rather than play whenever they can and if  they get points they get points. It's sti...

  Season 1 has just finished! But I won't announce the winner just yet; But I will let you know our Top 3 Leaderboards! (Will not match with OL Leaderboards due to some players dropping) 1. Chi 2. Iman 3. Greg Aside from the top 3; the other 5 players on the leaderboard up to the 8th invited spot will play-in the play-offs which we will record every game of! So throughout the month of September is mostly Pre-Season games and warming up before we start Season 2 and we will now host a Win-A-Box Tournament once a month so now our "League" will get even larger. Season 2 will feature the same format but now we a lot of people interested for the next season so we will now can have multiple boxes for awards and prizes! Anyways; I know this post is very short and it's been awhile but stay tuned for our Season 1 Play-Offs VODS! (Day 1 is currently on YT but I will link it alongside the actual Play-Off Post!)

  Our biggest event with the largest playerbase to date! With 22 players we watched loads of different decks compete for double circuit points as well as their shot to be on our Youtube commentary for the set. LA Pokemon is blowing up and I like to thanks everyone who comes out to play and support our store at Odyssey Games. Evolving Skies pre-release is around the corner and I'm hoping that would be our legit largest tournament to date. Pokemon OP should be lifting up soon (fingers cross) so we can start doing League stuff and getting cool Pokemon promos to our store for our regular players (and welcoming new players!) Shoutouts to Ryan for winning his first event especially since he top cut just a few weeks ago! He will be moving soon and he was an OG from Game Empire before they changed to Odyssey Games. He will be missed by our store but we're lucky to have him come back and bring along old friends. 22 for last week and 26 total unique players! Anyways come watch our commen...

  Our 3rd Event for OPC is our biggest yet with newer players joining the circuit and returning players for our casual as well. We have seen a lot of decks come play today especially a family who all ran Inteleon VMAX and competed together like a Gym. Our usual players would then play other meta decks ranging from Rapid Strike Urshifu to some of the craziest decks such as Blissy. A "Royal Roader" first time player, Chi, who registered for the circuit came clutch with first place beating out favorite, Jake (Who also went 4-1) Jake dominated the early rounds with this deck Our 5 round swiss was crazy with a 2 way tie breaker for 4th place but we all know Top 3 is where you want to be. Circuit points have been updated and we are glad to be able to follow and play with such good Pokemon players. I'm not very good at writing game analysis so I'm just reporting how awesome our Sundays are;  Stay tune for more stuff! We also started Digimon but that can be for another day; T...

  Top 4: Jake, Ryan, Kai, and Johann Our biggest Sunday tournament yet with 12 players featuring a couple of players from the previous store joined the fray. We had more kids joined so we had a "proxy" friendly tournament and we also ran out of booster packs so we played for store credit. We saw all sorts of decks ranging from Eternatus to Shadow Rider to the good ol Mad Party. It was a fun time today. 4 round swiss to a 3 way tie breaker. We got big plans for the Odyssey Circuit so I'm hoping more people join so we can have more prizes. Custom playmats and trophies will be on their way and Pokemon OP should be around in a couple months to let us know if they are going to start back up. We need them promos! Jake's deck that went 4-0; Shadow Rider Jake came out pretty strong again today. Going 4-0 while last week going 3-1; Statistically showing that he's a strong player that every one should be afraid of with a 7-1 record in the last 2 tournaments. RNG is on Jake...

  Introducing our new Pokemon Circuit. We had a League-style in mind but we decided with player's feedback that we decided to run a circuit. Similar to the DPC (Dota Pro Circuit). Players will play through 8 tournaments to earn Circuit Points (CP) and the top performing players will be invited to the Finals, a double elimination format for much bigger prizes. Season 1 has just started on July 4th, 2021 with 7 players in the mix (Article write-up soon!), so let's do a quick run-down Season 1 will consists of 8 tournaments with various formats most of them will be Standard but we will act upon Player's feedback to do an Expanded tournament and a theme deck format. Players will pay a one time fee (per season) of $25 and this will entitle them to a player bonus which includes $10 store credit that players can use to pay for future tournaments or use it in-store. This also enables you to compete and earn various prizes. (Players will be able to pay later but will lose the player...