The current pandemic has completely stopped competitive Pokemon TCG play in its tracks. In its place however, there are many online Pokemon TCG tournaments hosted on the Limitless platform. Unfortunately, none of these tournaments are held at timings that suit us players in Southeast Asia. Until now.
The Philippines Open is a free entry, brand new tournament series that’s hosted at 6:30 pm every Friday on Limitless. The tournament is organised by Kyle Vincent Imperial, who has been playing online tournaments on Limitless before starting the Philippines Open.
We speak to Kyle about his history with Pokemon and where did the idea for the Philippines Open come about.
1. Could you tell us about your history with Pokemon, and in the competitive Pokemon TCG scene?
I started with Pokemon like most of us from the video games. I think I started with Pokemon Gold and Silver. I started playing VGC competitively between 2014 to 2017. I stopped since there weren’t any events in the Philippines that was worth joining. I started the Pokemon TCG around July 2018 just before the start of the SUM onwards series.
Before the start of the online tournaments, I’ve only gotten a few top 4s in PCs and 1 top 8 in a League Cup. I was supposed to join the Manila SPE in April 2020 but Covid happened and that wasted 3 months of my preparation for that tournament. In online, I have had multiple top 16s, top 8s and top 4s in different tournaments such as Chill, Hegster, the Sunday Open and in the Atlas Championship Series. I have only 3 online victories in events and all of them are in the Atlas Championship Series. If I have to describe my entire 2020-2021 season, its just “Dread End for 270” as I mostly just played Eternatus for like 3 months.
2. What is current situation in Philippines for the Pokemon TCG with the COVID-19 pandemic situation?
The current situation of Pokemon TCG in the Philippines is similar to other countries. The hype for Pokemon cards has attracted plenty of collectors, while the competitive players didn’t really transfer from IRL events to online, especially as there wasn’t really a good reason to play online and spend money on PTCGO. However, I think the local online community is growing.
3. The Philippines Open is one of the only PTCGO tournaments to be time-friendly to the SEA region. How did the idea / concept for the Philippines Open come about? Was it difficult to organise this tournament and was it your first?
The idea of starting a time-friendly tournament for the SEA region was on the back of my head since the start of the year but I didn’t pull the trigger until recently because I was afraid that I couldn’t commit to having to organize a major tournament like this.
Honestly, I think the Philippines Open is just an exact replica of the early versions of the Sunday Open. When I started the Philippines Open, I knew I had to mould it from a successful tournament. I wanted it to be like the Sunday Open because Neil Pie is the only reason why I am still playing competitive Pokemon TCG as the Sunday Open was the primary reason why I continued playing the game.
The Philippines Open wasn’t my first tournament. I knew I had to learn the platform by experiencing it first-hand, so I had organised two qualifiers for a friendly between Philippines and Japan. Those two qualifiers went smoothly, so I ultimately decided to push through with the idea of the Philippines Open.
4. The first Open saw 91 players, and the second had 95 players. What were your expectations on the number of players that joined the Philippines Open tournaments? Did you expect to see a lot of Southeast Asian players (especially Malaysians and Thailand players) joining the tournament? What do you think about the Japanese domination?
When I started the Philippines Open, the only expectation I had was that Kash is finally joining an event that doesn’t require him to wake up at 5 am. I wasn’t really expecting 90 participants to join my event. I just wanted to have a good start and hopefully grow the event like the Chill Series or the Sunday Open. But I knew I needed help spreading the news about the event. Luckily for the first event, a lot of players on Twitter found out about the event happening and sharing it to their timeline so I guess that helped spread awareness.
I am grateful that people around the SEA countries are joining the Philippines Open since I believe that the SEA region deserves a shot like any other nation in the world. To be honest, I havent really noticed other players from the SEA region that competed in other events. The only notable people that I recognised were Kash, Kyoukaiten, and Wy Keen because they joined a lot of events that I also play in and they do well in a lot of events. But I am hopeful that maybe the Philippines Open can lead to the growth of players in the SEA region
I knew if I had to predict anything for our region, I knew that it can be a safe prediction that the Japanese will dominate the tournaments since they have a huge player base and they have a lot of good players such as Mayamatu, Koichi Kimura, and Shintaro Ito. But the SEA region can keep up with them.
5. What were the most unexpected decks that have done well so far in the Philippines Open?
There are two decks that just stood out for me.
One of the decks is Arukoto’s version of Mewtwo & Mew-GX. At first glance it was just like Arceus & Dialga & Palkia-GX / Zacian V, but when you really look at it the addition of Charizard-GX from Hidden Fates, Mega Lopunny & Jigglypuff-GX, Vileplume GX and so much more Pokemon-GX made the deck more versatile.
The second deck is SestoSento’s Altaria deck. I think we can say now that this Altaria deck has been performing well as SestoSento got a Top 4 finish with it in the GGtoor tournament this past weekend. But before the Philippines Open #2, I never saw an Altaria deck do so well in tournaments. I think people knew it had potential since it was a Stage-1 attacker but SestoSento brought the deck up into a new level.
6. Will we be seeing more Philippines Open tournaments in the long run?
I think only time can tell, I am currently applying for law school and when I finally receive an acceptance letter from any law schools I apply to then that will be a time when I will try to find my replacement. But for now I don’t know when will be the end of the Philippines Open.
The Southern Islands 