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With this article, I will be sharing my experiences from the recently held Stockholm Regional Championship 2025 from March 22nd to March 23rd.
You may be wondering, "Frost, what is a Regional Championship?". The official Pokémon website describes them as the first step for competitive players on their way to compete and win the annual Pokémon World Championships (colloquially known as Worlds). Players from all over the world and across different ages compete in Regional Championships to earn points based on their rankings to eventually get an invite to Worlds for their respective games (TCG, VGC, and GO), or even immediately earn one by winning the whole event! I managed to meet a few competitive players from both TCG and VGC.
What was I doing in Stockholm Regionals as a Pocket enthusiast? Spectate, of course! I could not miss the opportunity to attend an event (my first one) like this. I got to meet and interact with a lot of cool players, fans, and even vendors who shared their love for this franchise. As a spectator, I didn't want to just sit in the center of the hall and watch streams the whole day (I could have done that from my house if I wanted to). Luckily for me, there were "scheduled events," which were small fun tourneys for various games such as TCG, VGC, and wait... TCG Pocket?
Pokémon TCG Pocket officially supported at a Regional!
That's right, I was one of the people who signed up for a Pocket side event at this Pokemon Regional. How did I find out about it? I heard the announcement for it 10 minutes before the registration closed. There were plans to do one on Day 1, but I wanted to give my wallet some rest after buying a Shrouded Fable booster bundle, and when I asked the staff the next day about what happened on Day 1, they said that only one person signed up; hence, it never happened.
I had to walk to a QR code on a board, scan it, pay for the event, and run to the other end of the hall to find the table where the matches took place. The advertising must improve for future iterations, in my opinion. It was present on the Fanfinity website as well, but it was buried amongst a huge amount of VGC and TCG events. I made it on time and met three other cool Pocket players. We had a staff member come over and explain to us the rules of the tournament (it ended up being more of a league, but I'll come to that later) while also being filmed for small b-rolls for their streams.
Rules of the Tournament
To begin with, this decklist form for the Pokémon TCG Pocket - Double Deck Event below pretty much explains the rules, but I will try to summarize and provide my own opinions on them to see how they can be improved.
We (four people, including myself) had a Best-of-3 (Bo3) Swiss Round Tournament. We never played any 'finals'; all of us finished with a 2-1 record. One of the people at the event said that the format reminded them of the Conquest format in the actual TCG.
What is the Conquest format?
Each person brought two decks of their choosing and played three games against opponents with a twist: they had to win a game with both decks to win the match. This was enabled by preventing people from using the deck they won their first game in their remaining games. The way I see it, this prevents overpowered decks from being spammed constantly, as we see commonly occurring in online Bo3 tournaments (I know it's the norm, but still!)
No shared Pokémon between the two decks
The “Your Double” rule is interesting: it stops people from just submitting variants of one archetype in two separate decklists by forcing players to play two different species of Pokémon (Pokémon ex being treated separately). However, for Pokémon that behave like tech cards (like Mew ex, Druddigon, Manaphy, etc.), this rule restricts their usage to just a singular deck. This ensures that players play decks of different natures and adds intrigue while competing.
Trainer cards aren't written in the decklists
An aspect this format does not touch at all is Trainer cards: they're not affected by the "no common cards in both decklists" rule. I think it works because restricting the use of Trainer cards just makes things messy for deckbuilding, considering that staples like Professor's Research and Poké ball exist, unless there are complete bans of certain trainers. Did Misty's bike ever get fixed?
Specifying Expansions
Certain Pokémon have appeared throughout multiple expansions (e.g., Carnivine, since it's present in the image). We were not asked to specify which expansion our Pokémon came from. It could be worth considering for future events or maybe not to add more mystery. I'll leave that up to the Big Pikachu themselves!
Exchanging decklists with your opponent
Before starting our matches, we exchanged our deck lists, just like how VGC players have to exchange their teamsheets before their matches. The decks I brought were just the ones I had the most experience playing with at the time.
Final Thoughts and Hopes
The tournament was awesome despite the small turnout. I got to meet cool people, appear on stream, and enjoy my time there. I hope the conquest format gets implemented into more online tourneys since it's fun and creative.
I also hope that more events for Pocket are hosted at future events. The game has a lot of potential to get away from its "TCG-Lite" tag and create a life of its own in the competitive scene. It still has a long way to go in my opinion but I feel very optimistic about higher turnouts for the future.
That's all from me for now! Till next time.