EX Series - Pokémon Day Throwback
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Organized by Limitless Retro
EX Series (RS–PK) format

To celebrate Pokémon Day and the long history of the Pokémon TCG, we will be hosting a unique second tournament right after our Standard format Special. The format for this tournament will be the EX Series, also known as RS-PK. These iconic cards were printed between 2003 and 2007 and are some of the most popular among many long time players!

The format consists of all EX era sets, from Ruby & Sapphire until Power Keepers, as well as POP Series 1 until 5, and all Nintendo Black Star Promos. You can find an excellent introduction to the format, written by 3-time World Champion Jason Klaczynski, here. His blog also contains a lot of decklists you can try! Additionally, there are some youtube channels that cover decks from this format, e.g. Jay's Advice.

The tournament will be played through TCG ONE, a free and automated online simulator for old cards and formats that are not available on PTCGO. It's interface can take a little time getting used to but it's nonetheless a quick and easy way to enjoy the TCG's early days! If you haven't ever played on there before you can look at some tutorials, for example this video.

Rules

You have to submit a decklist before the start of the tournament and use the same 60 cards for all rounds. To get a text version of your decklist for submission use the export option in the tcgone deck manager.
Decklists will be hidden during the Swiss rounds, and then published before the start of top cut.

Spectators have to be allowed for all tournament matches! You may spectate any of the ongoing matches, but it is not allowed to make comments in the game chat that could influence either player's ingame decisions.

Structure

Depending on attendance, we will play between 4 and 6 best-of-one Swiss rounds, followed by a single-elimination best-of-three top 4 cut. Since there is no way to manually choose the starting player, the coin flip will decide who goes first for all three games of a top cut match.

Rounds will start as soon as all matches of the prior round are completed. Please pay attention to your dashboard to get notified whenever a new round goes up! Since tcgone games have a built-in timer, there will be no overall round timer, but if you don't show up for a round for more than 5 minutes after it started your opponent will be given the match win.

If you finish a round early you might want to take a look at some of the other ongoing matches, as mentioned before you can start spectating any of them at any time!

General

  • Like all of our events, this tournament is completely free to enter.
  • If you haven't played tournaments on this website before, take a look at the help pages.
  • To confirm your attendance, you must check in to the tournament on your dashboard. Check-in will open 1 hour before the start of the tournament.
  • If at any point you don't want to continue playing in the tournament, please use the Drop button on your dashboard!

Note: This tournament is not part of the Limitless Online Series.

Prizes

The winner of this tournament will receive either 25€ in Cardmarket (Europe) or 30$ in TCGplayer (North America + International) credit. Second place will receive 15€ / 20$!

To receive your prize, please message me directly on discord (link1111#3218 - join our Discord server in case you can't).

Tournament Structure

Swiss Rounds
5 Swiss Rounds - BO1
untimed rounds
no round check-in
4 players advance to the next phase
Top Cut
2 Single Elimination Rounds - BO3
untimed rounds
no round check-in
Wins are worth 1 match point, ties 0