Team Updates: Team Rocket's Hideout and Never Lucky Fam Join The Battle

✎ Tate Whitesell / @twhitesell42

Update: As a clarification, PokéStats is using "team" to refer to a testing group or close association of players, and not necessarily implying that every "team" has a financial partnership with a store or other company. Neither Team Rocket's Hideout nor NLF currently has such a financial partnership. -TW

As part of our ongoing effort to keep readers informed of developments in the world of competitive Pokémon TCG teams, PokéStats brings you some relevant updates from this past weekend. One highly-regarded North American team is shutting down, but many of its former members have found a home at an exciting new team and article site. On the other side of the world, some of the Oceania region's top players have formed a new team in an attempt to solidify that often-overlooked region's reputation on the international stage.

"Sad" news first: the Top Cut Comics competitive team announced on August that it was officially disbanding. At the time of the announcement, the TCC roster was comprised of Justin Bokhari, Zach Bokhari, Justin Kulas, Will Jenkins, Charlie Lockyer, and Emery Taylor. TCC finished the 2018-19 season ranked third globally in Limitless's team rating system.

Now, four of those players--Justin Bokhari, Kulas, Jenkins, and Taylor--have joined a new article site under the direction of two-time Regional Champion Alex Wilson. The site, Team Rocket's Hideout, is based on a new model of paywall content for the community: rather than paying for a subscription to gain access to all articles for a set period of time, readers can simply pay for individual articles.

(The disbanding of TCC and the foundation of Team Rocket's Hideout are not correlated; Charlie Lockyer told PokéStats "it was just coincidental that they [were announced] on the same day.")

The Team Rocket's Hideout competitive team currently consists of:

• Justin Bokhari
• Isaiah Bradner
• Alex Espinosa
• Cody Graham
• Will Jenkins
• Justin Kulas
• Mike Morton Jr. 
• Darin O'Meara
• Adam Reinhardt
• Emery Taylor
• Brent Tonisson
• Alex Wilson

Judge/TO and Virbank City moderator Will Post will also serve as a writer for the site. Team Rocket's Hideout can be found on Twitter @team_rocket_TCG. 

Across the ocean, another new team has emerged: Never Lucky Fam, or NLF. The team features some of the Oceania region's top-performing players, with the current lineup as follows:

• James Cox
• Ying Hao Tou
• Christian Hasbani
• Jeremy Lim (PokéStats Oceania Correspondent)
• Jack Millar
• Corey Munro
• Naomi Murn

Jimmy Chen will serve as NLF's general manager. 

Team Updates: ARG Europe Disbands; Nerd Rage Roster Grows; Taylor to TCC

✎ Tate Whitesell / @twhitesell42

As the countdown to the 2019 World Championships continues, several competitive Pokémon TCG teams have been making changes over the past few days.

Back on July 14th, Jimmy Pendarvis made the surprising announcement that he was parting ways with Dead Draw Gaming. Pendarvis won four Regionals during the 2018-19 season and was an important part of DDG's dominance at North American tournaments throughout the season.

Now, the past two days have brought a flurry of changes, with a promising recently-announced team announcing its disbandment, and a handful of successful younger Masters players joining a new team.

Today, ARG Europe announced they will no longer be continuing as a team. ARG Europe was announced in May 2019 as a sister team to the successful North American ARG roster, and featured some of the best and most recognizable players in Europe, including Joe Bernard, Mees Brenninkmeijer, Bert Wolters, and others. (You can read PokéStats's article on the original announcement here.) The team posted this message on their Facebook page earlier in the day:

Dear Pokemon community.
Today, we have some unfortunate news. Due to internal issues, lack of communication and general misunderstandings, we have decided we no longer wish to support the ARG project.
This choice has not come about lightly with days of talks amongst ourselves, we decided this would be the best thing for us moving forward.
We would like to thank the community for their constant support, as always we wouldn't be able to do what we do without you.
We would also like to wish Jim [McMahon] and the rest of Alter Reality Games the best of luck with Argent Saga and their future projects, we appreciate the opportunity.
Please, stay tuned to our social medias as we progress forward.
Thank you.

We expect these talented players to find new teams to compete on before long, and PokéStats will update if and when that happens.

As if to say "with every ending comes a new beginning," only a day before the ARG Europe announcement, a previously little-known North American team announced a new roster for this coming season. The Nerd Rage Gaming lineup features:

• Michael Catron
• Jonathan Croxton
• Ben Cryer
• Alec Geissler
• Wes Hollenberg
• Isaac Milaski
• Arlo Neel
• Alex Schemanske
• Evan Smith

Only Geissler was a previous member of the team, having joined in December 2018. Five other players who were on the team last season, including the three founding members from 2017, are no longer on the team. Every member of the new roster except for Smith had at least one Day 2 appearance at a Regional in the 2018-19 season. Croxton had a trio of Top 8 appearances (all with Shock Lock), Milaski had one Top 8, Catron had a Top 4, and Schemanske had a Top 8, a 2nd, and a Special Event win. 

Emery Taylor has become a fan-favorite
player after his 2019 NAIC finals
appearance. 

The Nerd Rage announcement comes shortly after Top Cut Comics' announcement on the 19th that Hollenberg and Schemanske would be leaving their roster. While both of those two are strong players, Top Cut Comics made a move to make up for their loss by today announcing the addition of 2019 NAIC finalist Emery Taylor. The Top Cut Comics team now consists of Taylor, Justin Bokhari, Zachary Bokhari, Will Jenkins, Justin Kulas, and Charlie Lockyer. Taylor tweeted that he was "pleased" to be joining the team and to "be playing with this amazing group of guys."


Our friends at Limitless have updated the team rosters in their database to reflect all of these changes, so you can continue to follow your favorite teams' and players' results with ease during Worlds and the beginning of the 2019-20 season. 

Team DDG Acquires Azul Garcia Griego

13 December 2018 - Team Dead Draw Gaming, the current first-place team in Limitless TCG's 2018-19 season rankings, has acquired multiple-time Regional Champion, 2017-18 LAIC finalist, and 2017-18 top NA CP earner Azul Garcia Griego.

Team DDG has taken the competitive Pokémon TCG scene by storm this season, winning all five Regionals and SPEs on North American soil so far as well as the 2018-19 LAIC. Their roster features stars such as 2018 Philadelphia Regional Champion Caleb Gedemer, 2018 Portland and Virginia Regional Champion Jimmy Pendarvis, and 2018 Memphis Regional and 2018-19 LAIC Champion Daniel Altavilla, among many others. DDG signed up-and-coming player Carter Musgrove this past Tuesday and added Griego today to bring their current roster size to 19 players.

Griego, who streams on Twitch at AzulGG and can be found on Twitter @Azul_GG, last played for CCG Castle, before becoming a free agent on February 16 of this year after CCG disbanded. He finished the 2017-18 season with the most CP of any North American player and second in the world, behind only Tord Reklev. In addition to winning that season's San Jose Regionals, he infamously lost in the 2017-18 LAIC finals to Dyego Rathje, who was disqualified from a later tournament for cheating.

With this acquisition, Team DDG now boasts 5 of the top 25 players in the Limitless one-year global rankings, 9 of the top 25 players in the Limitless one-year NA rankings, and 7 of the Top 16 players on Pokémon's official US & Canada CP leaderboard.

At this weekend's Anaheim Regionals, all eyes will be on Team DDG--especially with this big new roster addition--to see if they can be stopped from winning a North American major event title for the first time this season. 

Competitive Team Roster Moves: March 2018

Several competitive Pokémon TCG teams announced additions or cuts to their player rosters this month.

Some1sPC added Brazilian player Nathàlia Fernandes. One of the best female players in the world, Fernandes is the first woman and first non-US player to play for Some1sPC. Fernandes has won two Regionals, made the finals at two others (plus an additional four Top 8 appearances), and has twice made Top 64 at the World Championships.

Team Top Cut Comics lost Brandon Salazar (the 2014 US National Champion), but added Wesley Hollenberg. Salazar currently registers only 10 ratings points in the Limitless database, with his last notable finish being at Fort Wayne Regionals at the beginning of this season (17th place). Hollenberg currently sits at 40 Limitless points, with a Regional Top 8 and Origins SPE Top 8 in the last two seasons; his five finishes listed in Limitless each came with different archetypes.

Top Cut Comics has quietly built an impressive roster in recent months with additions such as Alex Schemanske and Isaiah Williams.

Belgian esports team Sector One, which has competitors in LoL, CS:GO, Hearthstone, G1Z1, and Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, added its first Pokémon TCG player: Sen Caubergh of Belgium. Caubergh Top 8'd Worlds in 2016, won that season's Belgian National Championship, and currently holds 24 Limitless points. (This season he took 2nd place at Leipzig Regionals.)