Pursuit of Play, volume 5: Oddities

Last season for every tournament we went to, I kicked off the newsletter with what I called “Introduction to a Third Tier City” because Pokemon regional tournaments never happen in the cities you first think of when you hear a country mentioned (Stockholm being the exception that proves the rule). I haven’t been doing them this year, because so far all of the tournaments have been a return to a city that we visited last year. And while that’s true of Stuttgart as well, I have to revisit my assessment from last year. So without further ado…

Oh - but first - this is Pursuit of Play, a year on the European Pokemon circuit. Previous installments are here.

(Re)Introduction to a Third Tier City

Stuttgart last year was rough - my least favorite location of all the tournaments we played, but I also knew our experience had been artificially limited. While we were supposed to take a train there, the day before the tournament the German rail workers union went on strike. We scrambled for a last minute flight, found a special “Christmas flight”, and thus our whole experience of Stuttgart was:

The airport was across the street from our hotel, which in turn was across the street from the convention center, which was where the Pokemon tournament happened. In one way, this is all extremely convenient. Just one teeny tiny little thing though: the 1 km2 in which we were contained was 30 minutes outside of the city by train.

And that turned out to be a problem when it came to finding food for gluten free children because there was nothing else out there.

This year, I crossed my fingers that there’d be no rail strikes and booked the same train route out there with one notable change: we stayed right in the city center and took the 30 minute train back and forth for both days of competition.

The effect of this decision was that we arrived Friday afternoon, put down our bags, and went to visit the big Christmas market that dominates the city center during this time of year. We rode a large Ferris wheel in front of a beautiful neoclassical building, bought some “handcrafted” Christmas ornaments, and meandered around covering more distance in the first hour than in the whole of our weekend in Stuttgart last year. We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant with an extensive selection of gluten free pizzas, pastas, and even desserts.

Sure, the train ride back and forth to the venue required us to wake up a little earlier than normal, but guess what - my kids already wake up that early on tournament days, so they did not feel inconvenienced in the least^[1]. And while I came up completely empty handed in my search for currywurst in Stuttgart last year, this year I ate it every single day.

Last year I accused Stuttgart’s automotive industry of making it too car-centric, and while I still think it’s one of the more car-centric European cities, I spent 3 days there and didn’t set foot in a car once. Any city where a person can easily navigate by foot, bicycle, or public transit and not feel inhibited is good enough in my book.

Or, as Tommy put it, “I think we may have underestimated Stuttgart.”

The Pokemon Update

I had the Stuttgart tournament circled on my calendar because it brought with it a new set of cards, and there were 2 of them in particular that I thought would improve my deck significantly: Amped Ampitheater & Gravity Mountain. If you want the full pedantic rundown of why, head on down to the section Ch-ch-ch-changes where I break it down in detail^[2].

The verdict: a very qualified success. I finished the tournament with 1 win, 3 losses, and 3 draws. It’s the first time I stuck around through 7 rounds and my 6 points equal my previous best finish at Dortmund, but 3 of my points there came from an opponent no-showing one round.

Going beyond the numbers, though, this new version of my deck was competitive in every round I played. If 2 coin flips had gone differently in my first 2 rounds, I could have been 1-0-1 instead of 0-2-0^[3]. Playing 7 rounds that were all very competitive and then dropping because the kids were done for the day is about as good as it gets. At least for now…

The kids had almost a mirror image version of the Gdansk tournament: Nate came up just short of qualifying for Day 2, finishing the first day with a record of 3 wins, 4 losses & playing the same deck^[4]. Tommy, on the other hand, after missing Day 2 in Gdansk decided to switch to a different deck entirely. Out went Raging Bolt, and in came The Wall.

It’s…a lot to explain…but the gist of it is this: all of the Pokemon in that deck prevent attacks. So Tommy’s deck, when it’s working, just totally screws up the opponent’s game plan. And that’s what it did. The deck had been built specifically to defang one of the current best decks in format, the Charizard ex, but Tommy didnt run into a single one on the way to a record of 5 wins and 2 losses. Day 2 started with another win, leaving them with one last “win & in” matchup. Victory would mean making the top 8 and playing in the quarterfinal. Defeat would mean, you know, not that.

And for the first time in the tournament, Tommy matched up against a Charizard ex deck.

But also, Tommy matched up against the champion of the Lille Regional and his spicy version of the deck. And the battle was hard fought, but ultimately Tommy was unable to pull out the victory.

Still, they finished in 19th place - good for another 125 points. At this point last year, Tommy had secured their World Championship invite and Nate was knocking on the door. This year, because invitations are based on ranking not points, we can’t know for sure that the invite is in the bag - but it looks promising, with Tommy currently ranked 46th in the European Senior division^[5], and Nate ranked 31st in the European Junior division^[6].

A few notes from competition…

• In the middle of my round 2 match, my opponent said to me, “I have to ask you something when we’re done.” I incorrectly assumed it was something about my deck. Instead, after our match concluded with him winning on a coin flip, he asked me, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Ryan Reynolds?”^[7]. And then the followup, “Can we take a selfie together?” And so we did, but the whole time I was thinking, “Yeah, I really don’t see it.”

• In round 6, I had the moment I had been playing for the whole tournament - maybe even the whole season: the elusive 6 prize turn. I got my Amped Ampitheater in play early against a Miraidon deck that only plays Basics, attacked 3 times, and then I used the Gravity Mountain to bump it, winning the game immediately. My opponent was duly impressed and had seen it coming but felt powerless to stop it.
• My first round of the day came down to a coin flip on the last turn in regulation time. If I won the coin flip, I won the game and secured a draw. If I lost, then my opponent won the game and the match. I lost the coin flip, and my opponent went on to stay undefeated for the rest of the day - even appearing as the featured match on the official tournament stream in Round 5.

Reflections on Play

Just a quick one this month: when a person sits down at the table to play a match in a Pokemon tournament, they are committing to a period of sustained deep focus. I thought about this especially watching one of our friend’s playing a particularly intense match that lasted well over an hour. People seem to fret a lot about kids lacking an ability to focus or concentrate, and it’s not a false concern; the developing brain is no match for the engagement algorithm^[8]…but Pokemon doesn’t have an exclusive claim as a thing that people - and young people especially - will choose to do with a sustained, singular focus and will forsake looking at their screens to engage in deeply. So, yes, there is a truth about software design and our distractible brains that shouldn’t be downplayed, but the kids are alright: when they find something they really care about, they are willing & able to give it the focus it deserves. Sometimes, the problem is that they don’t care about the things that others want them to care about…and often they haven’t been given a good reason why they should care.

BTW, I learned this back in the day when I was a middle school assistant principal and would hear some of the teachers complain about a certain student that he was unmotivated, didn’t have a work ethic, etc…and I knew that they had never seen that kid play football, because on the football field he was determined, gritty as all get out, and absolutely fearless. Given something that he cared about and where he knew he could feel successful, he showed up completely differently from an environment where he had struggled and his poor performance had been stigmatized.

I think you should read: The Maniac

I felt a little guilty when I started reading The Maniac because I felt like I should have been reading something that had more relevance for this here newsletter I’ve been publishing.

Because why would I book about John von Neumann have anything to say about games, just because among his many achievements he - you know - helped create the field of game theory?

But actually, from a Pursuit of Play perspective, it’s the third part of the book - which is structured as a triptych, each about a man driven to madness by a harsh recognition of scientific rationalism - that felt the most relevant. That final section recounts the matchup between international Go champion Lee Sedol and DeepMind’s AlphaGo model. It is the story of a world that von Neumann created, whether intentionally or not.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

As a game, Pokemon is dynamic - new sets of cards are introduced over the course of the year and old cards are rotated out once a year, so the game is always changing.

So, then, 3 important changes to note for this tournament:

• The Surging Sparks series of cards is now in play.
• The threshold to qualify for day 2 of the tournaments has been reduced. In the first 3 tournaments of this season, players with more than 2 losses, or no losses but more than 3 draws were eliminated. Starting in this tournament, a player with 2 losses and 1 draw or no losses and 4 draws still advance to day 2. The tl;dr - this means more people get to play more Pokemon, so I support it.
• I changed my uniform. I don’t actually have an official uniform, but I like keeping my decision-making simple on the day of the tournament, so I’ve been rocking a pair of jeans and my officially licensed Routine Chaos sweatshirt. For this tournament, I switched it up and went with my Ohko Chaos hoodie and a pair of trousers with weird utility pockets.

On the point of new cards coming into play, I have been salivating in anticipation of this change because of 2 new Stadium which requires a little bit of explanation: a Stadium is a card that, when played, affects the game equally for both players and remains in play until it is replaced by another Stadium card^[9]. Each Stadium affects the game in a different way. Some of them introduce an optional ability, some create an impediment, some create an enhancement.

The 2 new Stadia that I was really excited about are:

• Amped Ampitheater. Yes, I know that the card says Lively Stadium, but the translation of the Japanese version was Amped Ampitheater, which is such a better name that I’m just going to keep calling it that. Amped Ampitheater does something quite simple: it gives Basic Pokemon 30 more hit points before they are knocked out. This does 2 things for me, 1 of which I mostly don’t care about & 1 of which I very much do. The meh effect is that it makes my own Basic Pokemon a little bit harder to knock out. This is not without its merits, but it’s not why I play the card. The really fun effect combines with my main form of attack^[10], which reduces any Pokemon in play down to only 30hp remaining. The move for me, then, is to put down the Amped Ampitheater before I start attacking against a deck that is built around Basic Pokemon. Once I do that, any Basic Pokemon that I’ve attacked will be knocked out if the Stadium is removed from play.

• Gravity Mountain: This Stadium is kind of the opposite of Amped Ampitheater. It reduces the HP of Stage 2 Pokemon in play by 30. So I want to put it down after I’ve attacked some Stage 2 Pokemon because they’ll only have 30 HP left, and this will then knock them out. I also use it against Basic decks to remove the Amped Ampitheater. Sometimes, you get decks that run a combination of Basics + Stage 2…and in that case, if I’ve attacked some Basics and some Stage 2s, then bumping the Amped Ampitheater for the Gravity Mountain knocks them all out.

What this means in brief is that I can often take 4, 5, or 6 points^[11] in a single turn…sometimes without even attacking.

So I run 2 copies of each Stadium, because it would be tragic if I didn’t have access to 1 because it was in my prize cards.

BTW, if you’re really keen to see how this plays, I have a video play through in this month’s edition of Nerd Notes.

Proud Parent Note

The weekend started with us standing on a train platform early Friday morning. Tommy had recognized another Pokemon player standing on the same platform - Brent Tonisson, currently the #2 ranked Master in the world - and had gone over to talk with him…and I just kind of hung back and watched the two of them connect & converse more or less as equals. Tommy told me later that they talk with Brent every time they run into him^[12] and that they’ve become pretty friendly. Obviously a lot of the credit for that goes to a guy like Brent who could just choose to not engage but instead is gregarious and enthusiastic.

And over the course of the weekend, I saw similar moments happen again and again - Tommy having established themself as someone with real expertise and appreciation that holds some esteem within the Pokemon community. They converse openly and easily with all kinds of people at these tournaments, kids & adults, serious players & spectators all. They held their own in negotiating with the vendors. They made trades with other collectors that were win/win for everyone.

It is in large part because Tommy started secondary school this year that I feel like I’m starting to see them as less of a child and more of someone who is becoming an adult, and I really like and enjoy that person I see them becoming^[13].

We were supposed to take January off from competition because a) I was supposed to be away for a work trip the week of the Birmingham Regional Championship, and b) I was not feeling excited about going to non-London England in January.

1 of those 2 things changed, so we’ll have another installment of Pursuit of Play in January. Between now and then, look at for some year-end reflections.