Yesterday was a long, exhausting, but awesome day!  JDubz and I took a road trip down to Philadelphia to participate in the Pokémon Video Game Championship Regional tournament.  I haven’t been to Philly since I was a kid, so I was also hoping to sneak in some sight-seeing while we were down there.

The registration for the Masters Division was set to start at 10 AM, so we woke up at the crack of dawn for our 2+ hour drive.  When we finally got to the convention center, I found my friends from the Pokémon DS NYC Meetup Group waiting in line to register, so we joined up with them.  They gave me a free t-shirt with the logo printed on it – the logo which I designed for them last year!  🙂

Once we were all registered, it became the waiting game.  We had to wait for the Junior and Senior Divisions to finish their tournaments before the Masters (aka old people lol) were able to compete.  We were supposed to start the Masters Division battles at noon, but once that time came around, there was an announcement that Masters wouldn’t be starting until 2pm.  While most people groaned and whined about all this waiting around, I was secretly happy – this meant I could squeeze in some tourism after all!

JDubz and I decided to head over to the Liberty Bell, which thankfully was less than 10 blocks away!  Here’s a picture of me with the bell, and you can see my Pokémon DS NYC shirt, as well as my new Ash Ketchum hat!

Nevermind that I look like a zombie.  The lighting in there was just awful b/c it was so backlit.  You’d think they’d make the lighting a little better in an alcove containing a national landmark that people come to photograph all the time.  Or you’d think they’d at least turn the bell so that the cracked side would face the windows, so people could take better photos from that side of the room.  Oh well lol!

We also walked past Independence Hall, which is some kind of landmark… Sorry, I didn’t go inside and I don’t know what it is offhand.  Maybe that’s where they wrote the Declaration of Independence?  I dunno soo… here’s a photo!  lol

We stopped by Dairy Queen on our walk back (we don’t have DQ’s in NY, so I was quite thrilled!) and by the time we arrived at the convention center, it was almost time to actually BATTLE!  The tournament was set up to have 7 rounds, with Swiss pairings.  This meant that even if you lost a match, it didn’t mean you were disqualified.  You could keep battling in each round, and only those with the best records overall would be given the prizes.  However, if you lose 3 battles or more… it was pretty much a sign that you weren’t going to win anything.

Here’s a look at the room where the battling took place.  There were over 250 participants in the Masters Division, so it was pretty impressive how smoothly everything went, despite the waiting.  They posted two groups of people, matched them up and we battled away!  I was surprised at how FEW legendary Pokémon were in my opponents’ teams.  In fact, the only legends I battled were Zapdos and Cresselia.

OK time for the cold truth.  If you followed my tweets from yesterday, then you already know my record.  Basically, I performed terribly!  I am pretty weak in doubles battles, and since I’d done a huge overhaul of my team at the last minute, I wasn’t totally secure with my move set.  (I should have just kept my original team!  Dang it!)  My record for the day was 1-3.  That one win?  It was a win by default – my opponent didn’t show up, so they gave me a win for that round.

However, that’s not what I was disappointed in, really.  I knew I wasn’t going to be the top Pokémon battler.  But they were supposed to give us all a Shiny Shelmet trading card just for participating… but they ran out.  Luckily, I whined about it to some lady who was working the event, and she gave me a sheet of Pokémon stickers!  YES FOR SWAG!!

Despite losing in an embarrassing fashion, having to wait around and not getting my shiny trading card, it was an awesome day.  I got to hang out with the Meetup group (we all wore the same shirt – it was so cute!), I got stickers, I picked up a card holder for my Kid Icarus AR cards, received over 65 StreetPass tags, we ate cheesesteaks after the tournament…  It was a great experience.  I only hope next year’s PVGC is a little closer to home – the drive home was over 3 hours and we were exhausted at the end of the day.

Did anyone else go to their regional tournament?  If you followed me on Twitter for updates on the tournament, how did I do?  What could I improve on?  I’m looking to improve my tweeting skills.  Should I have covered more general news about what everyone was doing?  Or did I do just fine?  Let me know, I’m curious!

So anyway… now I’m pretty much Black&White’d out, and I want to pick up one of the other games I’ve been neglecting.  Should I play SoulSilver, which I started last month?  Or what about Emerald, which I’m maybe half way through?  And let’s not forget about Kid Icarus and Harvest Moon, both games are awesome but I had to put them down to focus on Pokémon for this tournament.  Any suggestions on what I should play next?