League Session of January 8th

Sorry to be slightly delayed in posting the review of yesterday's session! There was an ever-increasing number of League members having VG matches, encouraged in no small way by our very talented trainer, Mark! The TCG play is, as ever, increasingly exciting and competitive. I also got to take advantage of Neil's recent acceptance of the position of League Leader as I met with Gordon concerning the upcoming Next Destinies pre-release - more about that in a soon-to-follow post!

Thanks particularly to Neil, who was a great help, and everyone that gave me some seriously entertaining matches! When the League carries on that long after end time, you know people were having fun! ;)

Upcoming Sets: Next Destinies

I'm going to be trying something a little bit different with this post, and have a look at an upcoming set of Pokémon cards - this time, the soon-to-be-released Next Destinies.

Next Destinies will be released on February 8th, and the release of this set will have huge effects on how the competitive Pokémon TCG is played. This is largely due to the release of the Pokémon-EX, which are incredibly powerful basic Pokémon that far outstrip the HP and damage output of any other cards in the format. The downside of a Pokémon-EX is that if it is knocked out, your opponent draws two prize cards rather than one, so these Pokémon might be a risky proposition. In particular,  Mewtwo-EX is currently dominating the competitive scene in Japan, and we can expect to see similar effects here post-release. But we also have Regigigas-EX, Kyurem-EX, Zekrom-EX, and Reshiram-EX confirmed for the set and they will certainly make their mark.

Next Destinies actually includes cards from two different Japanese sets, called Hail Blizzard and Psycho Drive. Because we don't have the full details of Next Destinies confirmed, we can't know precisely what cards will be included, but it looks like we may be getting all of them, including some cards such as Skyarrow Bridge and Prism Energy that will further increase the power and playability of Basic Pokémon, and by extension Pokémon-EX.

The good news is that I'm meeting with Gordon from Cumbernauld Pokémon League tomorrow about him organizing a prerelease event and tournament for Edinburgh Pokémon League before the 8th next month, so that will be an excellent opportunity to grab some of the newest cards at a very reasonable price, trade with other players, and potentially win some additional cards in a tournament. I'll give details and dates as soon as I have them!

So, if you have any questions or comments regarding Next Destinies or any other upcoming sets or cards, I will do my best to answer them in the comments here!

Facebook and Google+ pages

Just a heads-up to those that prefer to use social networking sites to get updates - the Edinburgh Pokémon League now has both Facebook and Google+ pages to which I will post various updates. The Facebook page is here, and the Google+ page is here. Please follow or Like if you wish!

I'll be posting more thoughts about current competitive decks and such this week if time is available. Also, if you have any rules or other questions, feel free to ask!

League Session of January 2nd

Today was an incredibly busy session, with a huge number of new decks and an absolute ton of video game play. I'm also fairly sure our numbers will continue to increase next week, with a lot of potential Masters players expressing interest to me recently. It would be brilliant if Edinburgh could muster a decent number of players for Regionals this year! We're all just getting into the game, but I think we have a lot of talent and enthusiasm between us, and could make a good showing.

It was also nice to have a new Masters player (another Scott!) join us for this session. I suspect he's going to be assembling killer decks in short order and giving us all a run for our money!

I hope you all have a good week, and will see you next Sunday!

That's "Professor John" to you!

I'm probably the only one that really cares, but I'm really happy to have finally passed the incredibly difficult exam required to become a part of the Pokémon Organized Play Professor Program - which means I am now qualified to judge tournaments and receive cool bonuses for participating as a judge or organizer for Leagues and events.

Well, I'm excited anyway! :D