Getting Tired of Tournaments? Here's a Different Type of Event

     For the past few months my local game store (Mythic Game in Elmira, NY) has been running a tournament series that has had slowly declining attendance. I think it’s a common problem that a lot of stores have had since the tail end of 5^th edition. While the first few tournaments had over a dozen entrants (good for a new store), attendance at recent events has dwindled. 

     As an occasional TO, I’m always looking for new ideas to get people into events. I think the problem in our area is that there are a lot of players, but only a few really like the tournament experience. We have a lot of casual players and hobbyists, but what kind of event can draw them all in? 

     A good friend told me about an event series they were running for their local Warmachine group, and I decided to modify it slightly for a Warhammer Fantasy & 40K event series. Dan down at Mythic will be running it over the next few months. In short, we’ve come up with a raffle based system that rewards attendance, painting, and playing games. Check out how the system breaks down below the fold:

     This is a 4-month Warhammer Fantasy & 40K event series. Entry into each event is $10, and throughout the day you’ll get chances to win a number of raffle tickets. Each event will all start at noon, and make sure to check out the Mythic calendar for exact dates. Bring a few lists between 1500 - 2000 points. Here are the conditions to get a raffle ticket:

1 - Showing up
2 – Having a fully painted force
3 – Playing a game (up to 3 games for 3 tickets)
4 – Meeting in game challenges (both players can accomplish these and aren’t tied to a win)

     That gives you 8 tickets max/event. As you can see, the more tickets you earn, the better your odds for prizes. Dan will pick four tickets for prizes for each monthly event.

     There’s an additional incentive for people to come back. For each event you go to, you’ll get a separate raffle entry. This is cumulative (the first event you’ll get 1 ticket, the second you get 2, the third you’ll get 3 and so on up to 10 tickets in total). At the end of a 4 month series, we will have a drawing for a Gargantuan model or Battle force. With the new edition of Apocalypse hitting the shelves, it’s a good time for this event.

So there’s a couple things to note:

1 - I think there are quite a few players sitting on the sidelines that don’t want to play in a tourney style event. There’s even a few that don’t want to play because they don’t think they know the rules that well. This fixes that by not being that competitive. It turns it into more of a relaxed environment. If you’re not clear on the rules, that’s okay. Let’s turn it into a learning environment.

2 - It gets stuff painted. It incentiveses the hobby side of the game that we all love. Hell, bring your stuff and paint at the event.

3 - The in game challenges make “winning” a game more achievable. If the goal for getting a raffle ticket is just to kill your opponent’s most expensive unit, or to destroy all their fast attack, you can still lose the game while scoring in the raffle.

     I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks. So far, the last few months have been light on Warhammer but here’s my calendar for the next month or so:

June 22^nd – Mythic Warhammer Event 1 (we should come up with a cool name)

June 29^th – Parkhammer

July 6^th - Mythic Warhammer Event 2

July 12^th-14^th – Buckeye battles

     4 weekends of warhammer & family neglect. I’m pretty sure that I won’t be making it out to Ohio for Buckeye (we have a family vacation planned and everyone wants to leave on the 14^th), but there’s a slight chance.

     Let me know what you think about this type of event. While I do like tournaments (and for those that want to, we can still have a tourney like seeding system), I think any event that has a large group of people attending is gonna be cool.

-Crispy