Another point of view into Spanish TCG community

Hi everyone!

As yoy may know, The Deck Out goes global: Spain got a controversial welcome from the Spanish players, so here's another point of view into the Spanish TCG community.

This will only a be a small correction, which I wanted to make, so we all get a complete picture of the Spanish TCG community. I hope you enjoy!

This is a direct quote from the e-mail I recieved.

We're right now talking about the article in our forums, and we all seem to agree that your sourcers should have contacted other spanish players to check the status of the game outside Madrid. It seems that their points of view weren't that different enough haha.

I'll try to follow the order of the article to check the mistakes (I am sorry if it's too long, but there are many incorrections i'd like to point carefully :P)

In a general, and in our opinion, the article focuses too much in Madrid and too little in other cities. It is true that Madrid has a big important community, and they look more for competitive game than any other. But in Barcelona we've been promoting tournaments since 2008 (long before Madrid) and other cities had a little but intense community of players hidden since even long before. What I mean is that, as a feather is not a bird, Madrid is not Spain.

First of all, there are many competitive decks, which we try to play and enjoy either using or playing against them. Maybe we can't afford to get more valuable cards because our country is right now in a big financial crisis and full-arts can cost 25 euros in stores.

About the atmosphere

The athmosphere gets tense when two well-known players (former winners or runner-ups of previous tournaments) are matched in a game, and we really enjoy the tension of the big final, surrounding both players to see how the game ends.

About Competitive playing and tournament organizing

Maybe the part where there's more controversy. English cards are prefered because some of the "best" expansions weren't released in Spain. I.E, Undaunted and Vileplume-lock. But our national distributor Asmodee and Pokémon USA had tried to change this since B&W, and right now we're just three months "late" from USA releases (next release will be Next Destinies in May 9th).

For many years the game was undervalued here, because the first national distributor also had Magic the Gathering, and they tried to focuse more in this game. In 2007, as said in the article, Panini came and started the distribution, but it was so irregular and chaotic: 5-cards booster packs at 2,5 euros during the DP era. Of course, that's because of Pokémon USA, not Panini. But the national distributor also had its fault, as they threated the game as a stickers (Panini had never distributed card games). But they never missprinted cards, translation errors had been there since day 1 (Pokémon USA translate themselves the cards, not the national distributor), and even today Spanish's Rocky Helmet can only be attached to Basic Pokémon haha. With HGSS Asmodee took the distribution, but they only have rights of distribution and we have a real lack of promotion because Pokémon USA keeps that right.

There's a point of controversy on the article, when refers to how other cities play TCG, and that's the point of the majority of complains. The article points that Barcelona and Canary Island have very few tournaments a month, which is true right now in Canary Island. But in Barcelona we're helding a tournament almost once a week, sometimes having a week of refresh because most of our players are young and cannot afford to pay so much.

The other controversal point is that, as the article says, in Barcelona we only play Spanish cards, which is totally wrong. We've always allowed English cards, and even some Japanese cards. It's true that most people (including myself) prefer Spanish cards because of collector's facts, but we have no problem having English cards in our decks if required. And in Barcelona we're not lagging behind the current format. As far as I know (I organise the tournaments in the city), since February the format is HGSS-on, including Next Destinies. We try to adapt to Spanish releases to prevent people to ignor one expansion because "the next is better" (something that happened with the release of Spanish EP in october and English NV the same month).

Speaking about the national online communities, I'll try to be as neutral as possible, as I am the webmaster of Cartas Pokémon. In 2008 there was no Spanish website which talked exclusively about Pokémon TCG (there was, but wasn't updated since 2002), and CartasPokémon.es was the first one to appear and try to unite people from all around the country to create a strong community. In our webpage, we have news about Spanish TCG tournaments, articles, releases (both USA and Spain), etc... That's why we thought the part mentioning our website was getting underrated for what's really it's meaning to the community. Sure there can be people who don't like or way of doing, but this don't change the facts.

In conclusion , the main problem about the Spanish Pokémon TCG Community is that we are not united as we should be, and your sourcers' opinions are prove of it. It seems there are people who tries to disrespect the work of others to prove theirs is better (and sadly, that's like a national game in Spain)

About the comments, it seems somebody who is resentful with us is trying to disrespect the work of everybody internationally. I would like to apologize on behalf the Spanish TCG Community for this people who don't represent at all our community. I hope you can delete those anonymous messages insulting us in Spanish and English, because it could affect our, now very affected "thanks" to UK Pokémon VG Champion Rubén, international image and The Deck Out's public image.

Thanks you so much for your attention, and hope we can do a better article :D Hope we still get in contact for future collaborations regarding the Pokémon TCG world.

Esa's Note: That's about it. I think it's good that the Spanish are interested in correcting the parts that were wrong in the first part. I also hope that other players will be as active as Spanish players, if they find something wrong in their country's entry. I don't want to be spreading wrong or completely biased information.


Thanks for reading!