2017 Blue Ridge Regional Wrap Up

The Fincastle Pokemon Gym took a well-deserved break following the Blue Ridge Regional Championships before diving into the task of sorting and putting away materials (which we did not complete until the end of last week).  Following that, we did some data collecting from the event that we’d like to share with everyone.  The Regional Championships exceeded our expectations and went as smoothly as any event that we’ve ever attended (more so than many).  We know that those results would not have been possible without the strong response from players, fans and staff.  We hope that all who attended were as satisfied with the weekend as we were.  Now, we sit and wait and hope that we are awarded another Regional next year, a decision that is beyond our control.  Should we be so lucky, we are already thinking of ways to improve upon and expand what we did this year.  Only time will tell.

Gym’s First General Takes 4th Place at Blue Ridge Regional

One of the first ideas that came to Gym Leader Joel upon learning in July of 2016 that we would host and organize Roanoke’s first-ever Regional Championships event was to develop a program to prepare trainers from our leagues for the tournament.  Joel outlined the details for Hee-Haw’s Generals, the Fincastle Pokemon Gym’s juniors team, shortly after and waited for the response.  And waited, and waited… and waited.  The service that the Gym is offering is the same that many pay-to-view deck sites offer, for a fee of course, with one big difference.  Our service does not cost a dime.  We have several promising TCG prospects that are perhaps a bit young (5 & 6) for a day-long tournament.  However, we did get a video game trainer who wanted to give the Regionals a whirl.  While we feared that our first taker jumped in the game a little too late to properly prepare for the event, Gym Leaders Dean, Noah and Joel scrambled to help him gather a team together and then put the rest in his hands.  Ridge R, now known to us as “The First General”, showed what a quick study he is.  Ridge stepped up, practiced with his team and at the Blue Ridge Regional Video Game Championship, claimed 4^th place, falling one match short of potentially winning the whole thing.

Blue Ridge Regional Championships – Battle Fiesta & Side Events

The next aspect of the Blue Ridge Regional Championships that we are going to look at is the planned TCG and VGC Side Events.  Side events have been a staple of the Regional Championship format since we at the Fincastle Pokemon Gym have been playing the game.  Typical “sides” have been 8-person, single elimination pods in formats ranging from Standard to Expanded to Theme Deck contests.  In more recent Regionals, Day 2 (usually Sunday) has included a League Challenge.  While these are great additions to the main events at these weekends, we are looking for (and have found) some great ways to expand those options and, in the process, bring you the 1^st event of its kind on the east coast (maybe USA…, 1^st that we’ve heard of anyway).  The Battle Fiesta events are exciting new events for us to try out.  We’ve read some amazing articles from American and European players that have been lucky enough to travel to Japan to compete in the real thing.  Their tournament reports make for some fascinating reading.  On both Saturday and Sunday, we will hold Japanese-style Battle Fiesta contests.  Let us break down some details on all of these events.

Video Game Tourney Sunday 9/21!

Yay, we have a computer again…. (can you hear the excitement in Gym Leader Joel’s voice?).  In case you can’t tell, Joel is a real lover of technology… kind of in the same way that most people love skunks.  We at the Gym are a little disturbed at how easily the loss of an electronic device (i.e. our laptop) can completely cripple one’s ability to carry out day-to-day tasks.  That being said, our new computer (supposed to be “in-store” on the next day from the time of order) has arrived (now 6 days after the order date).  The timing of this computer crash was bad for us at the Gym, as this Sunday’s video game tournament was to be our 1st Premier VG event.  Gym Leader Marthe is frantically working to get “TOM” (the pokemon program used to manage and record tournaments) up and running on our new laptop.  Once some vital data is transferred from our old hard drive, we’ll be good to go. However, that will not happen by this Sunday.  Fear not… the tournament will still take place.