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Hey all,

This might be a bit whiny, but I really wish there was a bigger tournament in my area for either 40k or Fantasy (preferably fantasy, but I'll take what I can get) every year I get one Ard Boyz if I'm lucky and other than that nothing but quite 6 man tournaments with the same people. I would be willing to drive a couple hours for a bigger tourney, but there never seems to be one around here in the area of Southeastern Idaho... I have yet to hear of any in my area. Just wondering if there is anyone out there or if I'm all alone in this area with my same group of opponents cycling through.

You might want to consider traveling to larger events, like GT's, Nova, WargamingCon, Feast of Blades....just to name a few.

or you could try organising your own. This is how many a tourney has started. My advice is start small and scale up in stages. My first tourney was12 people, I reckon I could get 50 or so now if I really tried.

troy_tempest wrote:or you could try organising your own. This is how many a tourney has started. My advice is start small and scale up in stages. My first tourney was12 people, I reckon I could get 50 or so now if I really tried.

How does that address his problem?

He wants to play in more/larger tournements not run them.

Even then if running a large tournement himself actually allowed him both the time and avoided player "outrage" to play in its well as run he would have to compete with a smal local tournement scene already in place.

I'm sharing my knowledge with the aim of helping someone. What they do with the knowledge is up to them!

troy_tempest wrote:I'm sharing my knowledge with the aim of helping someone. What they do with the knowledge is up to them!

When were you planning on starting? So far I don't see anything resembling knowledge in you first post, it really seemed like you didn't even read the original post.

That's why I asked you a direct question. The question still stands. How does that address his problem? Either I'm missing something or you are.

dripwelquest wrote:

troy_tempest wrote:I'm sharing my knowledge with the aim of helping someone. What they do with the knowledge is up to them!

When were you planning on starting? So far I don't see anything resembling knowledge in you first post, it really seemed like you didn't even read the original post.

That's why I asked you a direct question. The question still stands. How does that address his problem? Either I'm missing something or you are.

Your post is needlessly rude, and in violation of rule #1 on Dakka. You may not feel he is contributing to the thread and to the OP's original point, but you certainly aren't since your post is specifically attacking another poster. Organizing his own tournament is another way to build the local community, the more tournaments that start being run, the more people will see them as a regular fixture and start to attend. In a hobby community I was part of years ago we did this by having "club/group" tournaments every month, the winner ran the next tournament. We had more tournaments and they were regular/able to be counted on, so more people began to attend. We started with 5-6 guys, and after a year or two were at ~15, which was all our space allowed.

Barring that suggestion, if the OP has no inkling to get involved in running/organizing tournaments, you've got a couple options:
-Find or start a club and try to get more players to join/involved
-Find out why, if there are more players locally then the 5-6 you mentioned, they aren't attending the tournaments, and then address this and change your format. For some folks it can be the cost of entry, the points level, the perceived notion of what a tournament/that tournament is, the missions, etc.
-Travel to larger events:

NOVA -> Washington DC
Adepticon -> Chicago, Illinois
Feast of Blades -> Denver, CO
Midwest Massacre -> Lee's Summit, MO
Bugeater GT -> Omaha, NB
The Dark Star GT - > Minneapolis, Minnesota

That's just a list of the Midwest GT's that popped to my head, there is also one in Arizona or NM (or both if I remember right) and a couple in California. Get a couple bud's and roadtrip it!

Gromgor, if you post your general location people might be able to help you find some good events a lot easier

Target wrote:

dripwelquest wrote:

troy_tempest wrote:I'm sharing my knowledge with the aim of helping someone. What they do with the knowledge is up to them!

When were you planning on starting? So far I don't see anything resembling knowledge in you first post, it really seemed like you didn't even read the original post.

That's why I asked you a direct question. The question still stands. How does that address his problem? Either I'm missing something or you are.

Your post is needlessly rude, and in violation of rule #1 on Dakka. You may not feel he is contributing to the thread and to the OP's original point, but you certainly aren't since your post is specifically attacking another poster. Organizing his own tournament is another way to build the local community, the more tournaments that start being run, the more people will see them as a regular fixture and start to attend. In a hobby community I was part of years ago we did this by having "club/group" tournaments every month, the winner ran the next tournament. We had more tournaments and they were regular/able to be counted on, so more people began to attend. We started with 5-6 guys, and after a year or two were at ~15, which was all our space allowed.

Strange, I wouldn't call you post anymore or less rude then mine. You have opionion about how I posted and you stated it. I had one about his and I stated it. The rest of you post was helpful and informative, the complete oposite of the one I commented on, which was how I described it. No person was attacked by me just the content.

How did you maintain intrest in the monthly tournement. Does the person running it in your area fully partisapate, that is, can they win or are they relegated to filling up numbers to make things even?

Where I was running them they became a chore for people, eventually it came to myself and one other person to alternate running it, then just me. Eventually I gave up and started travelling to tournements. We had people that wanted to play not organize, even I was worn down after running my 10th 12 person tournement, I just couldn't be bothered.

It really depends on how seriously you take the hobby. For me personally, organizing 1 tourney a year is a big deal and I couldn’t really do it more often than that. Only doing one a year means I can spend a long time thinking about how to structure it, make terrain, and strike a good balance between competitiveness and having a good time (so that people want to come back next year). It also means quite a lot of anticipation, as its one of the few tourneys run in our area. I can see that a monthly tournament would lose a lot of these things.

I think the sense of anticipation and seeing a tourney as an ‘event’ rather than as something to be repeated ad nauseam is part of the reason people go to tournaments.

I think if I were in the position that you sound like you were in dripwelquest, where you take on the role of organiser on a 12-times a year basis, its no wonder you couldn’t be bothered. Unless you make money out of these things (unlikely) it has to be a labour of love. It is a hobby after all.

In respect of the relevance of this to the OP – I saw in his post a situation I had experienced (‘where’s the tourneys?’) until I started running my tourney. Now I go to 2 tourneys a year instead of 1. How is this not addressing the OP?

All of the other (constructive posts) have had a point, traveling to events is great fun. I look forward to going to Adepticon and WargamesCon every year. If you're willing to fly the country offers some great events that for the most part have already been listed.

I can tell you that there are 3 qualifier stores in Idaho that feed the Invitational tournament, I have listed them below for ease, I have no idea which one/s are easy for you to attend. If you don't like qualifying for the invitational there are many other 40k and misc events at the convention itself.

Strategy and Games
Phone: 208-762-7764
200 W. Hanley space 1503
Coeur D'Alene, ID 83814

All About games:
208-343-5653
7009 Overland Rd
Boise ID 83709

A street games
Phone: 208-542-2824
489 Park Ave
Idaho Falls, ID


That said, if finances and time allow look into what events peak your interest and head out to one or two! Best of luck.

Thanks to everyone, these posts have been very helpful. Unfortunately travel outside of 2-4 hours of drive time would be difficult for me more than once every few moons. I do however enjoy the idea of starting a yearly tournament at my flgs. I did know that A Street Games offered Ard Boyz qualifiers, and thank you Duke for going the extra mile and finding those addresses and locations for me, very courteous of you! Is there a website where you can find a list of such places?

Maybe to shift gears a little now: Troy and Target, with your tournament organizations, did you provide prize support, or how did you begin drawing in players for the event? I live in a very rural part of Idaho and it's a little difficult to network when players are scattered from hell to breakfast. I like the idea of maybe doing a story-line campaign kind of tournament where the players are fighting to win something as far as that goes, as well as writing up an article detailing the major players who scored in the top percentile of the games. The only major way to draw people, though, is to offer prize support it seems to me, and I'm just curious about that.

(Moderators, I don't know if I should start a new thread for this new direction or if keeping it in this one is sufficient, feel free to correct me if I am in need of correction)

Thank you so much for your advice, and please feel free to share more words of wisdom for a fledgling TO in training.

Gromgor wrote:Thanks to everyone, these posts have been very helpful. Unfortunately travel outside of 2-4 hours of drive time would be difficult for me more than once every few moons. I do however enjoy the idea of starting a yearly tournament at my flgs. I did know that A Street Games offered Ard Boyz qualifiers, and thank you Duke for going the extra mile and finding those addresses and locations for me, very courteous of you! Is there a website where you can find a list of such places?

Maybe to shift gears a little now: Troy and Target, with your tournament organizations, did you provide prize support, or how did you begin drawing in players for the event? I live in a very rural part of Idaho and it's a little difficult to network when players are scattered from hell to breakfast. I like the idea of maybe doing a story-line campaign kind of tournament where the players are fighting to win something as far as that goes, as well as writing up an article detailing the major players who scored in the top percentile of the games. The only major way to draw people, though, is to offer prize support it seems to me, and I'm just curious about that.

(Moderators, I don't know if I should start a new thread for this new direction or if keeping it in this one is sufficient, feel free to correct me if I am in need of correction)

Thank you so much for your advice, and please feel free to share more words of wisdom for a fledgling TO in training.

Our main method of offering prize support was always the entry fees, a lot of times stores will be willing to contribute a bit as well as it helps them build up the player base (and with it, customer base) for their store. We typically stuck to 5-15 dollar entry fees, with the majority being $10 events. Another way to get the store to "go for it" is to have the entry fee filter through them, you run it, use their space, and they get all the entry fees and re issue the same amount as store credit. So 10 players, 10 dollars each, 100 dollars goes to the store, and the store gives out a total of $100 in credit. The store gets a "sale" this way, and you get a tournament. Some times they'll be willing to contribute a bit, but they may not at first, so don't be surprised if that's the case.

I'd also recommend not just doing 1 prize, it's usually best to do a "won the tournament prize" and a painting prize, this helps attract folks that feel they have no chance at winning a "competitive" event and enjoy the hobby side more.

Gromgor – this is a bit of a brain dump but I couldn’t manage to be brief so here goes…

re: prize support this is an interesting one, and very dependent on the nature of event you want to create. Again I will give you my perspective but do be aware I come at the game from a rather amateur and fluff-base perspective, one that might not fit your local meta.

The first year I ran my tourney I had only 10 participants. There were no cash, vouchers or models as prizes. One of my friends covered an inquisitor-scale model of a space marine with gold paint and attached it to a base – this trophy is what we played for (most of my modest profits from the event went to paying for this!).

The folks attended for several reasons. Partly because mine was the only game in town (if you build it they will come), partly because I sold it as something a bit different (no named ICs), partly because of the cool venue which had purple walls and lots of natural light, partly because I made it clear that children and spouses/partners were welcome to attend. This runs contrary to a lot of pre-concieved ideas about gaming and (I think) was a breath of fresh air.

Now in terms of drawing players (the hardest part!), this is where forums and social networking can become such an amazing tool. It sounds like your best bet for year 1 is to identify a core of players you already know and have them as year 1 draft. This is for several reasons – 1. you want reliable people who will pay and turn up (although you should plan for a 10% drop out rate) 2. you want to minimise the potential for unknown wrecking-ball personalities to spoil your new tourney (this gets harder as the tourney scales and you can’t discriminate as much) 3. These folks that attend year 1 will talk about the events online afterwards, maybe write batreps and probably tell their friends.

If you haven’t already I would recommend setting up a farce book group for your local gamers. After year 1 you can publicise your fb group on other forums, bringing in some new blood. Simply posting the batreps, or giving a run-down of how year 1 went online may be enough to coax a few more players out.

Celebrating the successes is important not only for a sense of accomplishment on your part, but also in generating a bit of momentum which is important if you want to sustain it year on year. The other thing I did was set up a flickr account and get people to upload their photos – a great way to demonstrate how good your event is!

Now after year 1 you have several choices. In years 2 and 3 I ran 22-man and 18-man tourneys respectively. I found 22 a bit hard to manage partly because we were spread over 2 rooms and partly because it became more like a typical WAAC tournament. I made a conscious decision in year 3 to downscale and be more selective about who got invites. Interestingly, feedback I got after year 3 suggested that people were very happy about this (when I ran a poll about increasing to 30 people for year 4 – everyone said “no thanks!”). I also increased the ticket cost in year 3 in order to give prize support in the form of GW vouchers. £20 for last place, 10 for best ‘in character’ moment, 10 for most gentlemanly opponent (last 2 were by a popular vote). The winner simply got kudos – and their name on the trophy.

But this is the rub- if you want to eventually run a big event-say 30-50 people – you have to throw the doors open and be prepared to let people in. This thread demonstrates what can happen in that case – different personalities can create a very different atmosphere. So you have to choose what niche you want your event to fill, and plan to suit your own personal vision.

I’ve skimmed over several things – like event hire, which can be a pain – but I feel this covers the core aspects of running a tourney.

Hope it helps. I’m a little jealous as running a tourney was really one of the first things I have done off my own back, and it felt really empowering (I’d love to experience that from scratch again). My advice is enjoy it – and do it your way!

Target wrote:

Gromgor wrote:... thank you Duke for going the extra mile and finding those addresses and locations for me, very courteous of you! Is there a website where you can find a list of such places?...

list of feast of blades locations: http://www.feastofblades.com/p/locations-qualifiers-and-con.html

I hope this helps.

Duke

Thank you all so much for your input, I've contacted my flgs and have told them my ideas, they are very interested and we are looking to do the first annual event that's ever happened in my area, looks like we've got the ball rolling, thanks so much for the ideas and efforts! If anyone has further ideas or advice, I'd love to hear about them.