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@dr. Cheesesteak
Dude, your argument is so biased, it amazes me that you don't see it yourself. You're making huge gneralizations based on such a limited perspective. You can't possibly believe that what you have observed from your miopic perspective applies to everyone, everywhere. If you do, then I suppose their isn't much more to discuss.

My only advice is to go out into the wider world of gaming and see what it's all about. I think you will be pleasantly surprised how much more you will get from this little.hobby of ours if you do.

@hinge and madfjohn
I'm glad you guys came and had fun at the BAO! It's amazing what happens when you come and give something a try instead of just accepting preconceived notions unquestioningly, right =)

well, maybe next time you'll actually read (and comprehend) the entirety of a post before you make false assumptions and hasty conclusions.

...Aww hell, who am I kidding, I'm guilty of the same thing sometimes!

I think Mike and a few others really shined a light on how GW's support impacted the Tournament scene especially as they grew in size. GW's prize and terrain support made it alot easier for me to get the BFS GT expanded to a bigger event. Even thought $800 isnt a huge amount of money. It really helps getting Independants up and running or at the very least expanded in size. I can for one say that it was nice to be able to virtually build all new terrain for 40+ boards and replace all of the "club" terrain we used in prior tournaments. I also regret not being able to provide that extra $300 in vouchers to participants.

I appreciate GW's support and understand that with Ed's departure things will change so i want to thank them. However the lack of support does hurt independants getting started so i hope they have somthing planned for independant support in the future.


- ed
www.battleforsalvation.com

I just wanted to add my $.02. In business there are things called hurdle rates and required rates of return. These numbers are based on a CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) which is essentially discounted cash flow and cost of capital to the firm with a risk overlay. Though GW might generate revenue through tournaments we honestly have no idea about their cost of capital and it might not make ENOUGH to actually support. I have said no to many many projects that would make money simply because they do not make ENOUGH money.

Don't get me wrong, I would love GW to support Feast of Blades and all the other great tournaments/ events around the world/US but sometimes it just isn't worth the human and financial capital.

Mike made a comment about the added benefit of players attending events but lets be honest, in the grand scheme of things it isn't that much to their bottom line and the simple fact is that TO's are still going to run events with or without GW support.


So, the point is this. If TO's are still going to run events on their own would you rather generate a return from a $0.00 investment or a $300, $500, $1000 investment? GW is a publicly traded company, they can't just throw money away to get earnings they would already get for free... It's business, it isn't personal.


All that said I will miss the support, long live the INDEPENDENT CIRCUIT!

Chandler

Chandler,

I think you're right in one sense - events already going aren't going to suddenly stop, so the investment doesn't necessarily garner additional return.

That said, many of the new events would not exist at all if not for the investment GW made hosting the circuit in the first place. Many events, INCLUDING the NOVA, were in many ways 'sparked' by the initial GW creation and support of the circuit.

Therein lies the intangible I think is being overlooked. But as also said, the support was welcome while it lasted.

Duke wrote:I just wanted to add my $.02. In business there are things called hurdle rates and required rates of return. These numbers are based on a CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) which is essentially discounted cash flow and cost of capital to the firm with a risk overlay. Though GW might generate revenue through tournaments we honestly have no idea about their cost of capital and it might not make ENOUGH to actually support. I have said no to many many projects that would make money simply because they do not make ENOUGH money.

Don't get me wrong, I would love GW to support Feast of Blades and all the other great tournaments/ events around the world/US but sometimes it just isn't worth the human and financial capital.

Mike made a comment about the added benefit of players attending events but lets be honest, in the grand scheme of things it isn't that much to their bottom line and the simple fact is that TO's are still going to run events with or without GW support.


So, the point is this. If TO's are still going to run events on their own would you rather generate a return from a $0.00 investment or a $300, $500, $1000 investment? GW is a publicly traded company, they can't just throw money away to get earnings they would already get for free... It's business, it isn't personal.


All that said I will miss the support, long live the INDEPENDENT CIRCUIT!

Chandler

The problem with trying to justify the existence of the tournament circuit on exclusively economic terms is that the circuit brings intangible benefits to GW that can't be quantified in terms of rates of return (although I don't know staffing costs ... if we look at the material cost GW spends of $440 dollars, even if half the Bugeater GT field spent $10 on GW products, they'd have a gigantic return on the $440 invested). It's the same thing with teaching: people keep trying to evaluate success based on pure data, which is fundamentally impossible.

First, the circuit helped tournaments get started up. I know it helped my event get started. Many people have said that tournaments barely break even ... any assistant is critical, particularly in the first year. I make a substantial net gain on my tournament, but that's because my facilities are free in exchange for donating all the net gains to the debate program. So in my case any dollar provided by GW means more money going to the program.

Second, the profits gained from the circuit are inherently untrackable. Unless we all ask people to bring an itemized list of items purchased exclusively for the GT, they can never justify it on a spreadsheet because the value is simply unknown.

Third, the circuit demonstrated GW's involvement in the community while allowing for experimentation in tournament design and format. They are competing with an ever growing Warmahordes tournament scene, and the loss of the circuit will only slow GW down in that race. Now, this fact could prove irrelevant if GW comes out with a new system of tournaments but for now GW has nothing.

I was definitely appreciative of the support GW had for the Bugeater, and I understand that businesses decisions won't always go my way. But the thing that has me a little miffed was the terrible communication from GW. I give them a pass during the transition after Ed's departure, but I was told by GW that applications for the 12-13 circuit would be reviewed in February and notices sent out in early March. There was no mention that they'd consider scrapping the circuit. Then early March passed, and no update. No communication to me means our tournaments weren't valued by Games Workshop. Keeping people in the dark or giving questionable time tables smacks of disrespect.

Empchild wrote:Correct Hulk, I would share the email but after reading the underscore of it GW if not allowing any of the recipients to do so and at legal advice it seems best not to play with fire. This is not suprising as Ed was the forerunner for this and for me this is a huge crush and nail in the coffin with GW. Though personally I will continue to sell bits etc as that is my business I think honestly I for one will find something else to play.

Im curious how a company can send out an unsolicated letter and under pain of lawsuit can force the readers to prevent any disclosure of the contents...I didnt go to Harvard Law School, but Im nearly 100% sure you cant do that...

Im curious how a company can send out an unsolicated letter and under pain of lawsuit can force the readers to prevent any disclosure of the contents...I didnt go to Harvard Law School, but Im nearly 100% sure you cant do that...

Well its out there on the internets so it will be interesting to see if they do anything about it. The email is below.

The North American Games Workshop Business Support team along with our management team has spent an extensive amount of time reviewing the current tournament circuit and the best way to offer support to hobbyists interested in hosting events of their own.

As you are undoubtedly aware, there is a Games Workshop tournament circuit in which tournaments must apply and those chosen are offered support. After serious consideration, we will continue with the current 2012 circuit ending in May 2012 and host the culminating Throne of Skulls tournament this October. Going forward, in order to be more supportive of events of all types, especially those in our retail and trade outlet stores, we will discontinue the GW tournament circuit.

We would like to thank all the organiser's from the 2012 Circuit and we wish everyone the most success with their events in the future.

Regards,

Desiree Dorsey
Director of Business Support
Games Workshop

So the spin is they are moving the focus away from supporting any ole TO and instead helping out FLGS owners. Nothing to do with pulling away from supporting competitive events entirely.

People are silly. If GW were going to completely stop supporting tournament/competitive play, then why would they still facilitate tournaments in their own stores?

The LA Battle Bunker has had an ongoing tournament season with some trophies as prizes once a month for both Fantasy and 40k.

If anything, GW has the Soviet "iron curtain" strategy for public relations. We DON'T KNOW what GW's plans are for competitive/tournament play, only that they are canceling old policies/events and are going to be making way for something else. What this something else is, remains to be seen but to get into an argument about competitive play bad, hobby time all the way good, is a silly discussion...

Because...

That's...like... your...opinion man...

This seems like they are doing more to encourage the narrow views of the person who is afraid of running into tfg at a large event. Constricting the community to local events and removing interaction from the community as a whole.

My favorite thing about 40k or any game where events are held at a larger level is that I get to meet and talk to people who are as passionate about the hobby as I am. It's all well and good if you are a garage game player who plays a fluffy (or whatever type) army and you have a great amount of fun. I'm all about that as well and often play in my buddies garage and we come up with fun mini-games to pass the time. But what I really like is playing against people in the larger world and testing my skills against people I've never met before.

Sure, occasionally you run into tfg during a tourney. But you put your big boy pants on and do your best to win the match. If the player is cheating or abusing rules, then that's why there are judges. Call them over and get his ass tossed. There are measures in place to prevent you from having a crappy time.

While I love this game, the moves made by GW proper are really starting to get to me. It seems as if they are specifically trying to diminish the part of the game I like. Luckily there are people out there like Reece and Mike who are trying to bring us folks who like to play in tournaments in out of the cold. Thanks guys, I for one really appreciate it.

Chandler, I ran the numbers in an earlier. If you want to add a small discount to the cash flows you can, but I'd say it would actually have no effect or even a benefit, because the tournament goers are spending cash (cash inflow to GW) BEFORE the cash is spent on prize support (cash flow out).

The other major risk you run is your perception compared to PP. If consumers see one company really support events and the other completely ignore events, what do you think that does to PR? It's a pretty big negative hit on GW, all which can be fixed for less than a couple thousand dollars a year, assuming that there's no incremental spending by consumers (which we know is simply not the case).

To your last point, yes it's nice to generate a return from $0. However, the real exercise is to compare the INCREMENTAL return generated by spending the $1,000+. That analysis will tell you if it's worth spending the money on said initiative.

History is an important thing to remember and things go in cycles.

Games Workshop had an outrider program which it supported and those individuals ran events, mainly limited to stores in support of the one day RTT events and the Hall of Heros system. Staff and policies changed and the outrider program went away. Not surprising the vast majority of outriders I knew at the time ceased to run events and for a time we had a void.

When we started AdeptiCon 10 years ago, you had a handful of 40k events and at the time had more Indy WFB events due to the success of the Hillbilly GT. That was the case really for our first 5 or so years.. you had AdeptiCon, Astronomicon, and the Necro, I’m sure a few others.. that I am overlooking… but we didn’t have the shear amount of events we have today. At that time GW was regional and we had built a great relationship with the Midwest region working pretty closely with them prior to the consolidation of the business unit and then the development of the circuit.

Only recently, have we had an explosion of events but I think the reason for that are pretty clear. I am sure there other contributing factors. For one thing when AdeptiCon started the internet community was still pretty young. You didn’t have the sort of blog and podcast coverage available today. So the information is now widely available and folks don’t have to recreate the wheel or discover fire to setup and build an event.

But with the rise of the tourney circuit support you saw a significant uptick in events to the numbers we have today. Only time will tell if that trend continues.

Games Workshop is moving away for internal reasons from providing “product” for any and all event support is my understanding. The voucher program was only ever a stop gap in this process.

This is going to hurt us, starting with the Fantasy Slaughter, because we are small and most of the potential sponsors around here are strong in the (stow the racist remarks, thanks ~Manchu) side of the force. I wish I was as big a leech as Mondo Vega was (we always accurately reported our numbers and kept our estimates conservative) because we could have stocked up some stuff for future events. I already basically buy the trophies out of my own pocket and (when storage is figured in) basically run things near to even as it is.

This essentially means the end of ever requiring GW figures at our events, because if they are not going to support us, why bother? And those bunker events are not the same as an actual 2 day GT. Going in to the LA Battle Bunker and curb stomping some pubeless wonders with their battleforce armies is a far cry from refining a list over several months and testing it against a playerbase drawn from a large geography. Our event will continue to operate, with its 30-40 attendance mark each year, but I know a lot of othe small events are going to struggle massively, especially the startups.

My one real criticism here is that GW needs consistancy. They are the establishment because they are the oldest game in the market, so they need to start acting like it. A long tradition of GT circuts that span over a decade would do a lot more to strengthen their brand than scrapping everything and starting over every couple years. This is particularly hurting the Fantasy scene, which is struggling from the 8th transition and the long gap of no new armies after it came out. My guess is they think they can ride the Hobbit Horse into the ground for extra money for a few years.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ps- Trust Lenus when it comes to numbers. Its what he does for a living.

Would you care to eliminate the anti-Semitic remark from your post?

Milisim wrote:And last time I checked this was a TT Gaming forum and not english 101............ ......... ....... ....................... .......................................................... .................... ...................... ......................

Exactly. This is the tournament discussion forum, I have a hard time understanding why people who "never play in tournaments" are even bothering to comment here. Other than to troll the tournament players who actually care about the tournament scene of course.

The tournament circuit seems to be pretty healthy all on its own without support from GW. I completely agree with Lee, Reece, and the others who have made the point consistently, despite being trolled, that GW has made a fairly large PR blunder here. Supporting events was good for their PR as proven by Lee and others.

I will continue to play in GW events; 40k is now and always has been my game of choice. I enjoy WM from time to time but honestly I am not drawn to play it competitively. Why? Because I have no buy in to the fluff of WM. I have read the majority of the 40k books published by the BL including all but the most recent HH book (Know No Fear, I can't wait to read it...) and I am intensely interested in the goings on of the 41st, and 31st millenium. I dare anyone to tell me I only am interested in tournaments because I am a WAAC player with power lists. I have been accused of being such before but it has yet to stick

GW has made a mistake if they truly have no plans for supporting tournaments in the future. A deal breaking mistake? I doubt it, but a mistake none the less.

Phazael wrote:This is going to hurt us, starting with the Fantasy Slaughter, because we are small and most of the potential sponsors around here are strong in the Jew side of the force. I wish I was as big a leech as Mondo Vega was .

Unneccessary point made I guess. Although there are people of Jewish faith in my gaming group that this might worry...

Phazael wrote:This is going to hurt us, starting with the Fantasy Slaughter, because we are small and most of the potential sponsors around here are strong in the Jew side of the force. I wish I was as big a leech as Mondo Vega was .

I'm sorry Q, but...

If I were running GW, I'd announce a $10K+ tournament circuit in a heartbeat. I'd support the live streaming of top games as much as possible. I'd build a community around the aspiration of being a top player. I'd give people a reason to continue to play the game obsessively, to take their time away from MW3, from League of Legends, from PP.

It's a very simple formula. Who do you think buys more? The guy that plays occasionally with 4 friends in his basement? Or the guy that plays 3 times a week trying to prepare to win $10,000 at the national championships? I agree that there are more of the first guy and less of the second. However, the goal is to convert as many of the first guys to the second and that's what a major, well-supported tournament circuit does. Create and nurture the whales.

Look at League of Legends if you want to see a company that understands the value of a tournament circuit. Sure, they are on a much larger scale and offering more meaningful prizes, but the lessons are still very much the same.

Leenus wrote:If I were running GW, I'd announce a $10K+ tournament circuit in a heartbeat. I'd support the live streaming of top games as much as possible. I'd build a community around the aspiration of being a top player. I'd give people a reason to continue to play the game obsessively, to take their time away from MW3, from League of Legends, from PP.

It's a very simple formula. Who do you think buys more? The guy that plays occasionally with 4 friends in his basement? Or the guy that plays 3 times a week trying to prepare to win $10,000 at the national championships? I agree that there are more of the first guy and less of the second. However, the goal is to convert as many of the first guys to the second and that's what a major, well-supported tournament circuit does. Create and nurture the whales.

Look at League of Legends if you want to see a company that understands the value of a tournament circuit. Sure, they are on a much larger scale and offering more meaningful prizes, but the lessons are still very much the same.

I am sold, where do I sign up?

winterman wrote:

Im curious how a company can send out an unsolicated letter and under pain of lawsuit can force the readers to prevent any disclosure of the contents...I didnt go to Harvard Law School, but Im nearly 100% sure you cant do that...

Well its out there on the internets so it will be interesting to see if they do anything about it. The email is below.

The North American Games Workshop Business Support team along with our management team has spent an extensive amount of time reviewing the current tournament circuit and the best way to offer support to hobbyists interested in hosting events of their own.

As you are undoubtedly aware, there is a Games Workshop tournament circuit in which tournaments must apply and those chosen are offered support. After serious consideration, we will continue with the current 2012 circuit ending in May 2012 and host the culminating Throne of Skulls tournament this October. Going forward, in order to be more supportive of events of all types, especially those in our retail and trade outlet stores, we will discontinue the GW tournament circuit.

We would like to thank all the organiser's from the 2012 Circuit and we wish everyone the most success with their events in the future.

Regards,

Desiree Dorsey
Director of Business Support
Games Workshop

So the spin is they are moving the focus away from supporting any ole TO and instead helping out FLGS owners. Nothing to do with pulling away from supporting competitive events entirely.

I can't even get that woman to return my emails......Normally customer service from GW is top notch but she hasn't responded to my update requests regarding my online vouchers in weeks....

Oh and Q....I found it funny but most of my fellow jews are a little touchy on the subject

sharkticon wrote:

Phazael wrote:This is going to hurt us, starting with the Fantasy Slaughter, because we are small and most of the potential sponsors around here are strong in the Jew side of the force. I wish I was as big a leech as Mondo Vega was .

I'm sorry Q, but...

LOL holy butthurt. Ok, my bad, I just figured with all the fat jokes that get lobbed my direction that this crowd had more of a flexible sense of humor. I guess I should probably not bring my swastika themed empire army to a tournament (/drumfill).
Anyone offended by that, sorry, thats on me....


My original point remains, though. If GW won't support newer/smaller events, then why should anyone else? The bigger regional events (Nova, BAO, BoLS, Adepticon, ect) will be unaffected by this, of course, but the small fish who tow a tight line are going to get killed by this. Good luck starting ANYTHING in Southern Cali, where renting a bare dirt lot for a weekend runs you over a grand. And with the economy like it is, the small gaming stores are not going to kick anything in, especially with the way GW treats them in general.

For better or worse, this is essentially going to consolidate most things into a couple large regional events with established turnouts. Whether this is good for the hobby or not is debatable, but you can basically bet that none of these remaining events are going to have any incentive to encourage people to stick with GW products in their armies. From a PR standpoint, this could be a disaster for them if they lose the whole third party add on lawsuit thing they have going on, which has done little to endear them with their most active portion of the player base.

And yeah, I am going to call Mondo out. Just his publicly known shennanigans are enough to make me suprised that the Circut made it past year one, let alone the stuff he pulled that most people do not know about. Ask Doc Dragon, Blackmoor, or Hulksmash about him sometime, or just search the forums on it. He was a text book case of expoiting the system that Ed laid out at the start.

I'd second the Mondo bit. He was the perfect example of taking advantage of the system.

Hulksmash wrote:I can't even get that woman to return my emails......Normally customer service from GW is top notch but she hasn't responded to my update requests regarding my online vouchers in weeks....

My understanding is that she is essentially an administrator. She handles the payroll for GWUS, for example. I think she was put in place just to handle the last of the stuff after Ed's departure, while Tony (James) Bell from the LA bunker is going to go and run the actual Memphis Bunker. I have been trying to contact her to confirm that this years circut obligations would be honored, once Ed quit and all the voucher snafus started occuring, and I have yet to get a response from her. The people I know who know her basically indicate she was massively overworked before this extra stuff got dumped in her lap and that she is not someone who plays the game at all, so I am not completely shocked about that. Curiously, I got my vouchers from the Broadside almost instantly after the event, so I think she is just having trouble chewing through Ed's backlog. I still cashed out all my vouchers though, since god knows whats going to happen with that.

That's kinda crazy since the Broadside was actually after the Darkstar and the guy running the Darkstar forwarded me his email to her from the monday after the Broadside regarding our vouchers. Makes me sad a little but thanks for the heads up you anti-semite

I'm German. We hate all other people equally. I am offended that anyone would suggest otherwise!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yeah, to add further fuel to this:

Our painting judge, Carol, has run a paint and take thing at the strategicon conventions for years, now. In the past, she was able to get starter blisters from GW (the kind used to teach new kids at the stores or extra starter box ones) for this event, where she would prime them and teach people how to paint them. The last year or so, this event has gone on literally 30 feet away from either our events or the Broadside. Rewind to about a year ago and GW basically stopped supporting this (and its identical counterparts at other cons in the area), which boggles the mind because Carol is essentially doing what the GW staff do with new people, but for free. This is literally the entry point for new people in the hobby, completely removed from a GW store, and costs them a couple sprues they already basically give out all the time anyhow.

So, its not just the tournament thing being rolled up, its all aspects of community support outside the tight confines of their stores. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel this is probably more about their paranoid information control than the money.

Phazael wrote:
And yeah, I am going to call Mondo out. Just his publicly known shenanigans are enough to make me surprised that the Circuit made it past year one, let alone the stuff he pulled that most people do not know about. Ask Doc Dragon, Blackmoor, or Hulksmash about him sometime, or just search the forums on it. He was a text book case of exploiting the system that Ed laid out at the start.

Hey Y'all

Although I was front and center in the Mondo problem I will say that his dealings with GW are not the reason GW has stopped the Circuit.

IMHO there will be something new in a year or two. Ed ran a special event and now Ed is not in the picture (my best to Ed and his family) so GW made a business decision and will move on to something else.

Then 5-6 years from now we can all meet back here and rant about how bad it is for GW to stop that new idea they come up with.

Will this hurt some events? Yes
Can you get over it? Mostly yes

For my part with Celesticon last year we got about 2% of our prize support from GW. Endgames of Oakland was the big donator and intrun I tried to drive as much business to Endgames as possible.

This year we are looking at an increase of about 30-50% in the number of players and because of that I am out betting the bushes for more prize support and GW was never on my radar before any of this circuit stuff came out.

My real hope is that we all have fun at tournaments or if you don't do tournaments enjoy playing in your group, club, and local game store and enjoy a beer on me.

Doc

As a Warhammer Fantasy and 40k player for the last 14 years, this annoys me greatly. Oh well, I'm enjoying Warmachine and Hordes a lot and it is quite nice to know what models are coming out a few months in advance so I can save up for them as well as have a company that actually supports competitive play in some form. PP will continue getting my money for now and hopefully, one day, GW will wake up and realize what they are doing.

The North American Games Workshop Business Support team along with our management team has spent an extensive amount of time reviewing the current tournament circuit and the best way to offer support to hobbyists interested in hosting events of their own.

...Going forward, in order to be more supportive of events of all types, especially those in our retail and trade outlet stores, we will discontinue the GW tournament circuit....

Desiree Dorsey
Director of Business Support
Games Workshop

Quite supportive...

Leenus wrote:
It's a very simple formula. Who do you think buys more? The guy that plays occasionally with 4 friends in his basement? Or the guy that plays 3 times a week trying to prepare to win $10,000 at the national championships?

Honestly, the guy who plays with 4 friends in his basement.

Let me give you an example:

Here's a tournament gamer's idea of an army:
six razorbacks, three dreadnoughts, maybe 40 marines, maybe a specialty unit like thunderwolves or paladins.

Here's a basement gamer's idea of an army:
Three full companies of marines, including one drop-pod company (10 pods), one ground & pound company (8 rhinos, several other vehicles), one biker company (with 80 bikes), along with dreads and characters for each company.

The basement gamer has no practical limit to how many toys he buys. The tournament gamer may change armies more often, but they're smaller armies. The basement gamer cares about his apocalypse games... I watched an apoc. game for the 25th anniversary of 40k. One Tyranid player fielded (among numerous "smaller" models) three harridans, three hierophants, and one custom-built dominatrix. Six Forgeworld bio-titans, each one costing $400+.

What's more, the tournament gamer is more likely to sell an army when they switch to the latest flavour of the month. While this still results in new sales for GW, from the tournament gamer, it also results in lost sales to GW from whoever bought the army from him. Anytime someone buys an army from a friend instead of new-in-box, GW lost a sale. Basement gamers don't tend to sell one army to fund another, because more is better.

So, while I feel for the loss of the tournament circuit, and I certainly don't downplay that tournament gaming is a significant driver of sales - one that I also contribute to - to denigrate the impact of the basement gamers just shows that you don't understand the mentality of many basement gamers.

Milisim wrote:I don't see why people believe GW should be hosting events....

Most companies don't support their products after you make the initial sale.

?????

Really?

My car has a factory warranty for three years after the date I purchased it. As terrible as Windows is, I get free updates for it when they're available. Most electronics items have similar built in warranties: my cell phone, for example, died last year a couple of months after I got it; the cell company replaced it with a newer model for no cost.

To keep in the gaming industry, of the bigger companies, GW provides the least amount of product/customer support. WotC has a sponsored tournament system for MtG. Privateer Press supports a tournament system. Even the makers of Dark Age support a tournament system.

Honestly, with the exception of consumable goods like food, most companies in fact DO support their products after the sale. Most companies understand that this post-sale support is one of the simplest things they can do to ensure continued patronage by their customer base. There's an old saying that it costs ten times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing customer.

Redbeard wrote:

The North American Games Workshop Business Support team along with our management team has spent an extensive amount of time reviewing the current tournament circuit and the best way to offer support to hobbyists interested in hosting events of their own.

...Going forward, in order to be more supportive of events of all types, especially those in our retail and trade outlet stores, we will discontinue the GW tournament circuit....

Desiree Dorsey
Director of Business Support
Games Workshop

Quite supportive...

Leenus wrote:
It's a very simple formula. Who do you think buys more? The guy that plays occasionally with 4 friends in his basement? Or the guy that plays 3 times a week trying to prepare to win $10,000 at the national championships?

Honestly, the guy who plays with 4 friends in his basement.

Let me give you an example:

Here's a tournament gamer's idea of an army:
six razorbacks, three dreadnoughts, maybe 40 marines, maybe a specialty unit like thunderwolves or paladins.

Here's a basement gamer's idea of an army:
Three full companies of marines, including one drop-pod company (10 pods), one ground & pound company (8 rhinos, several other vehicles), one biker company (with 80 bikes), along with dreads and characters for each company.

The basement gamer has no practical limit to how many toys he buys. The tournament gamer may change armies more often, but they're smaller armies. The basement gamer cares about his apocalypse games... I watched an apoc. game for the 25th anniversary of 40k. One Tyranid player fielded (among numerous "smaller" models) three harridans, three hierophants, and one custom-built dominatrix. Six Forgeworld bio-titans, each one costing $400+.

What's more, the tournament gamer is more likely to sell an army when they switch to the latest flavour of the month. While this still results in new sales for GW, from the tournament gamer, it also results in lost sales to GW from whoever bought the army from him. Anytime someone buys an army from a friend instead of new-in-box, GW lost a sale. Basement gamers don't tend to sell one army to fund another, because more is better.

So, while I feel for the loss of the tournament circuit, and I certainly don't downplay that tournament gaming is a significant driver of sales - one that I also contribute to - to denigrate the impact of the basement gamers just shows that you don't understand the mentality of many basement gamers.

To be fair there were quite a few non-tournament players in here razzing us earlier in the thread.

You fail to account in your explanation of the superior economic impact of basement gamers that while they may create large sales in the long run for GW they don't create anywhere near the immediate sale spikes that tournament minded players do. While a tournament player may buy the exact 2k list he wants to run he will switch codices and whole armies more often. Creating new sales of entire armies more often for GW. Not to mention very few tournament players actually buy exactly 2k worth of an army and never buy another unit again, that just doesn't happen. My current tournament army is GK and I have about 2500 points, my SW who I played competitively for 2+ years number near 12k and prior to them I played Salamanders of which I had 6k. Lists and players naturally progress over the course of the competitive shelf life of a codex which means they must buy more GW products to keep their army at the cutting edge. I added 2 dreads and Bjorn to my SW and took out the TWC when Necrons came out. Small sales? Yes, but no less than the guy in his basement who has collected 40k points of Space Marines over the last 20 years. Tournament players have a quicker turn over rate and incentive to buy the new hotness compared to basement players. You only really analyzed one side of your argument fully.