Next Destinies Prerelease: February 5th, 11AM

I am exceedingly pleased to announce that Edinburgh Pokémon League will be holding a sanctioned prerelease event for the next set of the Pokémon TCG, Next Destinies, on February 5th at Cameron Toll food court. Gordon from the Cumbernauld Pokémon League will be running the event, and I will be assisting him in doing so. Gordon has many years of experience running the Cumbernauld League, and has very kindly offered to run this event for us.

What do I need to know?

There is an entry fee of £20 for the prerelease event. For that fee you get eight Next Destinies booster packs, a huge reduction when compared to retail cost. Registration opens at 11AM, and closes at 11:30, so be sure to arrive before then, as if you are later than 11:30 you may not be able to participate! You will then be walked through the process of opening six  boosters and building your deck - no trading of cards is allowed until the tournament is complete. Energy for decks will be loaned to the participants by Gordon. After a set time to construct decks, players participate in a judged and ranked tournament. Since the results are recorded by Pokémon Organized Play on the Pokémon website, participants should be sure to register their POP ID if they haven't done so yet! Also, it might be sensible to bring card covers, to ensure that the new cards you are playing with aren't damaged during the tournament. The length of the event really depends on how quick the rounds are finished, so it may end earlier or later than usual League play. After the tournament, players will receive two additional booster packs, for a total of eight.

If you're a League member, but do not wish to participate in the event, that's fine! Standard League play is also allowed during the tournament for those who would rather not be in the event, and you will gain points as usual.


It's entirely possible that I'm missing some salient information here - I have never attended a prerelease event before, so if you have questions that I have not addressed I would be happy to address them.

If you or your child is planning to attend the event, it would be very helpful to have email confirmation of this just to prepare accurately for numbers of attendees!


I'm really looking forward to this event, and I hope many of you are keen to attend!

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!