Pokémon Team Challenge Playoff Information

Player Document

Now that Qualifiers have ended, we are very excited to start the next phase of the Play! Pokémon Team Challenge, the Playoff phase.

The first playoff round will take place the weekend of January 14th – 15th 2023. The store and nominated organisers will receive the pairings via email; players will be able to view them here. 

There are a couple of things you should know before your first Playoff, so please read this article carefully and email us any questions at customersupport@tournamentcenter.gg

• Scheduling

• Stores will typically be given pairings for each playoff round on the Wednesday before the actual event.

1. 1. • Up until the round of 64, the playoff rounds will be played on one of the two stores’ Discord servers; this means the team from the other store will need to join there (they are free to leave after the playoff round is done). Starting with the top 32, you’ll join a Discord server provided by tournamentcenter.

• Team Composition

1. • Each store delegates three of their team members as Players and one as Captain for each playoff round.
   • These assignments do not need to be the same ones for every playoff round – in fact, we encourage teams to rotate roles as it promotes diversity and an opportunity for everyone to play.
   • If a player in the team is unavailable, the store can play that playoff round with just three Players and no Captain.
   • If two players in the team are unavailable, the store can still play that playoff round, but all of the missing player’s matches will be automatically lost.
   • The Team Challenge—Season 4 playoffs will be run in the Pokémon TCG Online. If you are participating in the Team Challenge please do not migrate your Pokémon TCG Online collection to Pokémon TCG Live. Those who choose to do so will no longer be able to participate in Team Challenge – Season 4 and their team will be at risk of disqualification.

• Team assignments need to be communicated with your opposing team before playoff round 1 starts. We do not expect this to raise any issues, but if you cannot agree with the opposing team who announces their players/captain first, toss a coin to determine this.

• Playoff Matches

1. 1. • The three Players will each be playing a best of three (BO3) match against each of the other team’s Players until a total of 5 matches have been won by one store’s team.
      • Captains (and other Players) are allowed to help the Players with game choices. This is an exception to the general rule about outside assistance during play and is being done in the spirit of encouraging team play. Players can privately share their screen and have a voice chat open for this purpose.
        1. This can be done through any medium the players decide, though if you are looking for an idea on how to manage this, we suggest that each team have private text and voice channels set up on their home discord visible to only the team’s four players and the store’s TO. 
      • Once a team gathers 5 wins, they have won the entire match. They can choose to continue any outstanding matchups if they desire – it’s fun to play, after all! – but this is not required.
      • To clarify: every Player from one team needs to play against every Player from the other team. That makes a total of 9 matches. Each match is played as BO3. The team that wins the majority of the matches will win the playoff round. You reach that majority as soon as you win 5 out of these 9 matches.

• For a visual example of how each playoff match should look, please see the table in Appendix A.

• The order of these matches do not matter and can simply be communicated to the players via discord chat or a link to a spreadsheet on Google Drive. The RK9 platform is not needed to generate pairings, a store’s TO can do this by hand, just ensure that there are 9 unique match-ups in each 3 v 3 match.

1. 1. • Players should use the TCGO in-game clock for their individual games within a match. No other round time limit is applied to individual matches or the round as a whole. 
      • The player who goes first during Games 2 and 3 of each match will be decided by the loser of the previous game. This choice should be communicated to the other player via discord. The player who “wins” the coin flip should ensure that choice of the losing player is applied to the game.

• Decklists

1. 1. • There will be a single tournament on RK9 that will host decklists for the entire playoffs. All players will see this tournament in their Player Dashboard. Players will submit their deck list to this tournament as normal. Players will view links to their opponents’ deck lists via Live Roster as normal. Stores/organisers will not have access to this tournament. For this tournament, tournamentcenter is acting as the organiser.
      • That tournament will have open and uneditable decklists from Friday 6am UTC until Monday 5:59am UTC and editable and hidden decklists from Monday 6am UTC until Friday 5:59am UTC.
      • Players need to submit their decklists by the deadline via RK9. They can edit their lists from Monday 6am UTC until Friday 5:59am UTC each week. This means players can use different lists for different playoff rounds.
      • Players who do not submit a decklist by 5:59am UTC Friday each week will be defaulted in playing the decklist they played in the previous round without penalty. Players are reminded to SAVE AND SUBMIT decklists every time they change their decklist during the editable window each week.
      • Please note, when playoffs begin all players are ineligible to compete in playoff matches until an initial decklist is submitted. Players who do not submit by Friday 5:59am prior to their first playoff match, will not be able to compete in the match, should their team advance to the next round, they will be able to submit their initial decklists when they become editable and hidden on Monday 6am UTC.
        1. If a team has only two players with a submitted decklist, that team starts the playoff round with three match losses for missing a player. 
        2. If a team has fewer than two players with a submitted deck list, the team loses the entire playoff round due to missing players and is eliminated from playoffs.
      • TCGO has an option to share decklists with your opponent at the end of the match. We encourage both stores in any playoff match to have all their players use this, for easy decklist verification. However, we are not mandating the use of this, and while players should not have a reason to refuse enabling the option, there are no penalties for not having the option enabled. 
        1. Players who see a discrepancy between played cards and the decklist should screenshot the discrepancy and/or invite the organisers to an active screen share to see the discrepancy, immediately.
        2. Tournament Organizers should refer to the Tournament Rules Handbook to resolve any deck/decklist discrepancy.
        3. All Deck Error penalties are applied to the game the error was discovered in.

• Practical Info

1. 1. • Pairings will be posted on tournamentcenter.gg/playoffs for convenience.
      • After stores have been sent the pairings email, all players will be sent an email letting them know that pairings have gone out to stores. This way players can reach out to us if something is overlooked and we can follow up.

• Pairings Info

1. 1. • The playoffs are played as a single elimination bracket; as soon as a store team loses against another store team, they are eliminated from the playoffs.
      • In the first playoff round, a number of stores will receive a bye, so that from the second playoff round onwards the bracket is complete (making the number of remaining stores a power of 2).
      • Up until Top 32, pairings will pitch stores from the same georegion against each other as much as possible, in order to make scheduling and communication easier. This means pairings are not entirely random, but they will be random inside each georegion. Each playoff round may have a few cross-georegion pairings as participating stores aren’t perfectly distributed among georegions.
      • From Top 32 onwards, pairings will be completely randomised.

• Prizing

1. • We have awesome playmats for players who make it to Top 256 and Top 32.

• The Top 64 Teams will also receive a Goodie Bag thanks to our amazing sponsors from Ultra Pro! (May differ region to region)
• Teams that make it to Top 8 will receive additional prizing in the form of booster displays.
• We will ship the playmats to the store after Playoffs are finalised. The shipments may take place in waves.

• Other Questions

1. • If you have any questions, please email us at customersupport@tournamentcenter.biz 

Appendix A- Playoff Pairings Guide

Every player (excluding the captain) on Team 1 plays every player on Team 2. This will create nine unique matches.  For simplicity, we are calling each group of three matches that are played concurrently a “set”, the results within each “set” does not matter- it is the overall match count that matters. When one team wins 5 matches the Playoff Round is over.

*Each set of three matches are played concurrently with each other, 

teams may agree to play each match individually if they so desire.

A small five minute break between each set of matches is reasonable

if either team needs it.

Appendix B- Schedule

Weekly

• Wednesday- Pairings Sent to Tournament Organizers
• Friday 5:59am UTC- Deck List Editing Window Closes- Lists Become Public  
• Friday through Sunday- Playoff Round is played
• Monday 12:00pm UTC- Results due to Tournament Center
• Monday 12:00pm UTC- Deck List Editing Window Opens- Lists Become Private

Overall Playoffs Schedule

• Top 1024 – 14/15 January
• Top 512 – 28/29 January
• Top 256 – 4/5 February
• Top 128 – 11/12 February
• Top 64 – 25/26 February
• Top 32 – 4/5 March
• Top 16 – 11/12 March
• Top 8 – 18/19 March
• Top 4 – TBD
• Final – TBD

Appendix C- Default Match Time Calculations 

For Top 4 and Finals

• In the Top 4 and Finals matches may be played one at a time instead of three at a time. As such the Top 4 and Finals could each take 9+ hours should every game be necessary. As such players can expect each of these rounds to be an entire day’s commitment. The exact start time will be communicated shortly after the conclusion of the Top 8.