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Most GTs are dozens upon dozens of really cool people socializing, playing warhammer, drinking beer (or soda or water), getting food together after meeting each other over games and conversations, checking out cool armies, and generally having a great time.

At all GTs, one person wins something. In the case of most of those people, they don't even care what they won. Elitist stat-padders are by definition the minority. "That guy" is more commonly the local RTT winning "big fish in a small pond," who rarely chooses to leave that pond for broader seas.

The stuff you wrote does not reflect reality. I can understand coming to those sorts of conclusions based upon a series of predispositions and preconceived notions, and you are generally part of a very large crowd of people who do not have experience with GTs, yet still spout the same broad thesis implying they are an ego-stroke-fest among some sort of small elitist group of hyper competitors.

Your cake is a lie. It's costing you a potentially fun time. Alternately, it's costing a bunch of really fun people who go to GTs and win a few, lose a few, and have a lot of fun the questionable pleasure of your company. No idea.

Also, most of the people who go to GTs are people who like to Build, Paint, Play. I can tell you from interactions with thousands of 40k players, that most of them live and die by that ... and attend GTs to practice and share in that very activity and hobby.

Keep in mind also that comments like "I run a club, I keep a store open, and I oversee people every weekend playing this game instead of just once a year" further exemplifies the [understandable, truly] ignorance with which you've come to your conclusions. Most of us who run major events (or even attend them) do all of those things ourselves, to greater or lesser extents.

The imagined state of a TO being a guy looking to stroke his ego amongst an elitist group of hyper competitors that he only sees once a year at the one event he runs, and who does nothing else throughout the rest of the year, screams "I have no idea what I'm talking about."

That said, I'm not particularly hurt by this. You are. We'll go right on hosting dozens of events of varying size annually, socializing and gaming with hundreds of fellow hobbyists, raising thousands of buckaroos for good charitable causes through the events that we run, and watching tons of gamers have a fantastic time traveling to local, regional, national, and international GTs and events. That you are not part of them through willful ignorance (and I don't mean that harshly ... I just mean that you are lacking real knowledge or experience on your subject matter, by proof of your own words, and you are willfully committed to maintaining that lack of knowledge, also by your own words) is really no skin off anyone's back. GTs are open play experiences - anyone can show up and play. If someone doesn't want to, that's cool also.

PS/Edit - I've literally almost NEVER seen a GT attendee say something like: "THOSE LOCAL ONLY PLAYERS WHO WON'T ATTEND GT'S ARE SUCH donkey-caves! THEY RUIN THE HOBBY FOR PEOPLE!" I have seen a lot of people who refuse to attend GTs say things like "IT'S JUST A BUNCH OF ELITIST PRICKS LOOKING TO PAD THEIR STATS!"

It doesn't take much to guess at which of those two groups most often comes off as actually elitist.

Fenris, for myself, I will try to answer a few of your questions:

Yes, a GT is a more complicated, larger scale RTT. However, some of the things you're reacting to ("weekend with 'the stars'" for example) are not my experience of going to either a GT or RTT.

Usually, I'm going with local friends, or meeting up with friends from abroad- not necessarily famous ones. I've gotten to meet legoburner (the man behind the curtain of Dakka, who does all the coding, etc) at 3 different conventions, and it's been awesome!

Big events are also an opportunity for me to build and paint a new army for the goal of using it at that event. Sometimes they also offer unique events/settings/rules, like the AdeptiCon team tourney that I've participated in a few times. It really is, for me, about having a good time and getting together with friends.

Obviously, my local friends I can see anytime but it's still fun to build towards and go to a big event together, and it gives me an opportunity to see friends that don't live nearby, too.

So, I think you are reacting to a certain idea of what these events are, and while that stereotype might apply to some people/events, it certainly doesn't apply to all, or even most!

Hope this helps show where I'm coming from, at least . I think you're getting a little far afield on some things here, though, since it sounds like you might not ever want to attend an event, which doesn't really contribute to their increased or decreased attendance. Your say does matter, of course, just like everyone's here! But, I think some of the things you're saying are more an impression than a reality (although impressions matter, of course- the impression that 7th edition is a nightmare to work through and play, and that you'll face super heavies every game or the like, is a major deterrent to people attending certain tournies, even if that impression isn't always reality).

See, now, I will tell you this:

These last two posts here did a better job of dispelling my dispositions against GTs than anything anyone has said to me on the subject, so far. Both very well said, and neither was dismissive.

The thing is, I want to support this game. I love it enough that I devoted six years of my life to bring it to other people. And when guys like me have these impressions, wrong though they may be...it may as well be true for all I've heard it contradicted. I appreciate that my ignorance is acknowledged here, albeit in a respectful way. I am ignorant, there is no way around that fact -- but the question I pose is why I (and others like me) prefer to avoid the whole thing. It's more esoteric than mechanics or promotion...it's a vibe. It makes us small-time guys feel like we just plain don't belong, or aren't wanted, or some combination of the two.

What was done here with these two posts, on a bigger scale, will change a lot of minds. I know I will be referencing both of these a lot when trying to show the pros and cons as they have done a good job of illuminating the blind spots in my own experiences and focusing on more positive aspects.

What sticks most is that, yes, impressions matter -- even though mine are likely wrong, they are also common for one reason or another. I don't want to never go to a GT, I want GTs to innovate and reach a new plateau and shed this bad rep and make these antiquated ideological vibes a thing of the past. The guys like me are as guilty of old prejudices as anyone (though, admittedly, the earlier post still basically has a passage with "GTs are awesome and I am part of this awesome and you aren't" -- but it is for the sake of illustrating your point, and not malicious or egotistical as I read it).

I am exalting both of these posts. Thank you both for helping me to understand. If more people addressed these kinds of esoteric vibes this way, perhaps the prejudice among people in my style of play would be less. I know it has lessened it for me.

Hey Fenris,

Why is spending money on a "vacation" to have a 40K weekend with the "stars" a bad thing? For example - at AdeptiCon, the European Team Championships and other events, I get to meet up with a lot of friends I have the opportunity to see maybe a couple of times per year. Everyone comes from a lot of different places and I truly value their friendship. They include hardcore and mid level tournament players, general hobbyists, top tier painters, other event organizers and more. I value the time I spend organizing a "Grand" convention, playing a competitive/fun game, drinking, eating, discussing tactics, checking out cool models/displays and the list goes on and on. We each can get out of it what you choose.

Regarding sigs - not everyone who is a coordinator or attendee of events requires sigs with stats. I'll raise my hand in the category of no stats in a signature. I just don't care. Yet I still will work to play a competitive game and help with many others to organize a "Grand" event where the ultimate goal is to have a ton of fun for all types of hobbyists from all ends of the spectrum. This is where there might be some misrepresentation per your comments on underlying motives. I along with many others have no desire to do this work just to have a spot light on us. A lot of us perform this labor of love just so people can have fun. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ultimately - If you choose not to have a good time, you won't. However, there is so much to be had at several of these events, you would be hard pressed not to have fun.

EDIT: MVBrandt and RiTides beat me to the punch.....

What a thread! Is there diminishing tournament attendance? That's a good question to ask. Do people actually keep track of attendance at anything other than the big events? I didn't attend NOVA in a long time but I'm local and from what I gather the GT itself has stable attendance, but they've also expanded into the narrative tournament which I understand is growing in number...I could be wrong...again I'm not really in the tournament scene much anymore.

Personally I could never see myself entering a GT ever again because of the time commitment involved. I find it hard to justify spending an entire 12+hours throwing dice. So attendance may be less about the mission, the game, the players, GW, or "elitists" and more about life. here's an interesting question too:

Is the average age of tournament goers increasing over time? Are 40k players getting older? or is there a steady stream of young players to keep this hobby going?

I dont know about you all but now there are so many tournaments all over the place that I am able to attend more tournaments than I ever have before and I think its awesome.

I think now its more about the fact that people have plenty of local options instead of just having a few in a year.

Mike did a better, more diplomatic job of replying above. But I'll add some of the post I was working on before he posted.

In my experience people go to GTs for a several reasons:

1. to get in games of 40k. Lots of people can't get in as many games of 40k as they would like in their normal schedules. Going to a GT allows them to pack in a bunch of games in a relatively short time period. I can get a game a week normally. A GT gets me 5 or more in two days.

2. to play armies and people they don't usually play. I got to play against sisters of battle once at a GT. Not been able to play them since.

3. to see beautifully painted and converted armies. And play against them. My first game at my first GT was against the army in this thread: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/309260.page. Another stand out army from that event was Mike Strange's techo nids. At the time my local group was a couple of basement gamers with lots of unpainted stuff and horrible proxies (CDs as drop pods, chaos marines as tau drones, terminators as crisis suits etc etc)

4. to see friends they made at other events.

And that's it.

On a local level I remember back in fifth edition you'd see well over 20 players at an RTT while now you rarely see over a dozen.

 Fenris Frost wrote:
Open my eyes to what? What real 40k is like? How the big boys play? Enlighten me, man. Because as far as I know, a GT is the same thing as an RTT except with more rounds (and more self-aggrandizing organizer hoopla).

It is the epitome of everything wrong with this game that I need to somehow blow a grand on a 40k vacation weekend with "the stars" before my opinion counts. I run a club, I keep a store open, and I oversee people every weekend playing this game instead of just one a year. What makes me not qualified to explain why those people prefer to come play at my place every week and avoid GTs and RTTs like the plague?

If you want to know why people AREN'T going, guys like me are the experts on that...not you lot with the stats in your sigs. That's all I'm getting at.

GTs survive on the underlying communal mentality. Mechanically, they are nothing but a more complicated, larger scale RTT (that more people have messed with, format-wise).

I'll still take a stab at this and what he meant by "open your eyes". In a friendlier sense, you're basically doing all in your power to espouse the evils of something, why it's not for you, and why you go out of your way to convince people in your club that GTs and even RTTs are awful - but you've got no firsthand experience yourself. It'd be similar to telling people about how restaurants are terrible, stuck up places, and they should never eat a meal that isn't at home - having never been to a restaurant yourself.

I've been (and continue to be) on both sides of this - I frequently attend "competitive" events such as RTTs and GTs, and also have for years (15?) played in small clubs, where plenty of the members wanted nothing to do with GTs and RTTs, which was fine. But going out of your way to criticize the other side of the coin is nothing more than something you yourself had an issue with in your earlier post:

At heart a tournament is some guys telling everyone else how to play. No one wants that. It's part of why we all hate each other

You're literally doing exactly that, without even having given tournaments and organized play a fair shake.

Mechanically you're right - GTs are nothing more than scaled up RTTs, and to go one further, RTTs are nothing more than organized casual play. But the point you're missing is why you would want to attend a GT, you said:

It is the epitome of everything wrong with this game that I need to somehow blow a grand on a 40k vacation weekend with "the stars" before my opinion counts.

Validation is not why you attend a GT. Exposing yourself to a larger 40k community, and to players from different regions than those that attend your local store, is why you play. You'll meet some great people, see some new armies, come up with new modelling ideas, see awesome and clever combos and tricks you hadn't thought of, etc. But mostly, they're about meeting new people and the social aspect.

I run a club, I keep a store open, and I oversee people every weekend playing this game instead of just one a year. What makes me not qualified to explain why those people prefer to come play at my place every week and avoid GTs and RTTs like the plague?

Don't make it into a "I'm just as good as you guys!" competition - there's no reason to measure amongst a bunch of like-minded people that just want to get down on their free time with toys. I'm sure you do awesome stuff for the hobby - but in arguing against organized play, and telling people who have never been to GTs and RTTs they should never go because they're evil, you're only hurting the hobby community and limiting those players to playing just within their immediate region.

 Arschbombe wrote:
Mike did a better, more diplomatic job of replying above. But I'll add some of the post I was working on before he posted.

In my experience people go to GTs for a several reasons:

1. to get in games of 40k. Lots of people can't get in as many games of 40k as they would like in their normal schedules. Going to a GT allows them to pack in a bunch of games in a relatively short time period. I can get a game a week normally. A GT gets me 5 or more in two days.

2. to play armies and people they don't usually play. I got to play against sisters of battle once at a GT. Not been able to play them since.

3. to see beautifully painted and converted armies. And play against them. My first game at my first GT was against the army in this thread: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/309260.page. Another stand out army from that event was Mike Strange's techo nids. At the time my local group was a couple of basement gamers with lots of unpainted stuff and horrible proxies (CDs as drop pods, chaos marines as tau drones, terminators as crisis suits etc etc)

4. to see friends they made at other events.

And that's it.

Your views on GTs are exactly mine! I go so I get five to seven great games with similarly-minded people who field fully-painted armies. My first GT was playing Fantasy at Nova in 2011. I was nervous as hell and intimidated. Needless to say, competitively, I got massacred almost every game. However, community and camaraderie were clearly more important than winning. It was that experience that led me to attend Adepticon (Fantasy/40k), Nova (40k), and Wargamescon (40k) over the last couple of years.

At these GTs I have never felt the need to be more competitive like doing a "training regimen" or anything like that. I have continued to build and paint the armies I like. I practice a bit so I know the rules and, as such, I always have a great time at GTs.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
On a local level I remember back in fifth edition you'd see well over 20 players at an RTT while now you rarely see over a dozen.

Thing is I also remember there being like 3-5 in a year in my state/area.

Now I know at least 3-4 stores in commute distance that have a monthly event.


Edit - commenting on below.

That is exactly my point, there is no shortage of events now. It stopped being you HAVE to go to this event or you wont get a chance to for X months. Now you can pick and choose, while that might drive attendence down at any given event overall I think it is a good thing

I am lucky where I live in Florida you can almost go to an RTT any weekend if you're willing to drive up to an hour.

 Fenris Frost wrote:


If you want to know why people AREN'T going, guys like me are the experts on that...not you lot with the stats in your sigs. That's all I'm getting at.

If you'd been reading the thread, GT's aren't asking why people aren't going, they're too busy selling out in terms of tickets. Clearly the big GT's aren't missing you if they're selling out. If you're content with your local group, why crap on events you have no intention of attending? I get a bit frustrated with the regional nature of what 40k has become but I try and keep that to a low key hostility at worst.



I'm not attending big GT's because I still prefer 5th ed style old school 1 v 1 codex style of play, the game I wanna play isn't really represented yet. When I hear about feast going to 1500, all of a sudden I have hope for the direction gt's or "the game" is going. When I hear more and more rumblings about highlander, I get excited.

Thekbob hit the nail on the head though, any angst or strife in the game/community lays squarely at the feet games workshop and the bloated mess they've dropped at our doorstep. Every event is different. I'm tired of the casual v competitive stuff and all the crap about social contracts. When I hear about what people bring, I don't judge the individual, I judge the format or rules that allow for it. When I hear about a 3 tides and a knight formation being a legal list, it's funny and depressing in equal measure, but that doesn't mean I think badly of the individual playing it, I just don't think I'd want to play against that. I know why mvbrant doesn't wanna crap all over maelstrom missions, simply put that's not a game he wants to play and I share that sentiment. I do know that less restriction will see dumber and dumber stuff on the board, where as something like highlander, as goatboy has pointed out, will actually see a return to real freakin armies on the board instead of just a mish mash of crap. Remember when one army battled another army in white dwarf? That was swell.

If the tournament scene in your area is that bleak, have you guys ever thought of organizing tournaments of your own? Someone has to put in the work. If other area TOs have given up, maybe someone else needs to step up.

The problem with so many threads of this nature is that they start with an anecdotal account:

 Master Shake wrote:
Since I've been attending 40k GT's for the last 5 years, I've noticed a steady decline in attendance.

And then they follow it up with a conclusion that cannot actually be substantiated in any way, shape or form:

A lot of people seem to want to chalk this to the edition changes, but I think that's simply not the case.

I think the problem lies within most of the top players. They forget about the primary purpose of the game. They make it their sole objective to crush there opponents without regard for having fun or sportsmanship.

We as individuals often believe that our own experiences are indicative of the entire world, when we have no data to back that up. Does nobody play Apocalypse games in your area? Then Apocalypse must not be played by anyone anywhere, and be a huge financial failure for GW, etc, etc, etc.

As Reece and Mike Brandt have pointed out, attendance is not necessarily down for 40K tournaments in general, so the basic premise of this entire conversation might be completely moot. In specific communities, sure that may be the case, but the reasons for that decline would also depend on a variety of factors that can be entirely dependent on that local area.

Assuming attendance is down in your local area, the only way to actually get any kind of meaningful data is to poll as many people as possible. However, this is very tricky as you're usually only able to poll people who are actually attending the event, and not the people who are interested in attending but are not attending for one reason or another. Trying to poll online similarly only gets you data from people that are on your mailing list or on your forums, etc…so again there is no sure way to know whether you're actually getting data back from the group you're trying to reach.

Therefore, IMHO, the best way forward is to kind of abandon the concept of a single format tournament comprised of hundreds of players, and instead go for a multitude of different smaller tournaments each catering towards a different style of play within the umbrella of the one big event. Then based on how attendance goes for each particular event, over the years you can start adjusting how many spots are available in each event as needed. Of course, running multiple tournaments is even more work for the tournament organizers, and often involves having additional staff on hand to run each one…but that's kind of just the pill that has to be swallowed in this day and age, I think.

If you're just looking to run local RTT style tournaments, then again I think the key is to mix it up. So one month you may run one format of tournament, but then the next month you run a different format, and so on. If people just don't show up to one particular format, then you know it needs to be modified or nixed altogether.

The reality is, even if you knew with 100% certainty that attendance was down and with 100% certainty what the primary reason was for that, you'd *still* struggle to implement a solution that would make the majority of players happy…that's just the nature of the beast. So providing multiple different formats (as many of the bigger events are now doing) is the closest you can come to trying to please as many people as possible.

@ Fenris: Since I'm a seeing is believing guy, if you can swing up to Da Boyz GT in NY in November, I'll cover your entrance fee. It's easily my favorite event of the year and if a weekend there doesn't convince you that a GT is about more than just being hyper competitive, nothing will.

I feel like most of what Fenris is bringing up is a perception based upon the horrible management GW has of the game. No other game is as divisive as 40k, in my experience, because it's a hot mess that just gets left to bake in the sun day in and day out. The hottest of street trash, IMO.

And even that being said, a well nurtured community with something cool like one source limited (exceptions being made for hilariously stunted armies like Inquisition or Sisters of Battle) gaming, like the good edition of 40k, and even highlander, could persuade me back to the game. That's assuming I'd get around the start-up costs and the rules cost, but that's another issue entirely.

That said, GTs are great and the folks at it are great. I know, in the future, I plan on attending them for other games.

I've seen "highlander" mentioned a few times... forgive my ignorance, could someone explain what this is (or link me to a description, etc)?

 RiTides wrote:
I've seen "highlander" mentioned a few times... forgive my ignorance, could someone explain what this is (or link me to a description, etc)?

Where you are allowed one and only one of a unit entry is allowed except basic troops (which may or may not be enforced for troops depending on the tournament). So a legal necrons list could only take one anni barge, one ghost ark, one CCB, and one night scythe and then fill out the rest instead of 2x CCB, 3x Anni Barge, and the rest Scythes/Ghost Arks.

It means no unit spam, essentially. It sounds like a good plan for most books, but really crappy books like the new GK, Inquisition, Sisters of Battle, etc. are all extremely limited to unplayable in said format.

I really don't know why people even attend competitive 40K anymore. The results are pretty much determined in the list creation phase before any dice are rolled . Tactics plays a very small part in the game anymore, and I am talking real tactics, not loophole easter egg stuff like congo lines and deploying vehicles sideways to you can pivot to gain inches. You can fix a lot of problems with two things. Bring back unit number limitation (old skool 0-1 stuff, highlander seems a good start) and get rid of the allies matrix. If you play Eldar, play Eldar....not some Frankenstein with 4 factions represented (primary, allies, formation, dataslate). You get the point.

 quickfuze wrote:
I really don't know why people even attend competitive 40K anymore. The results are pretty much determined in the list creation phase before any dice are rolled . Tactics plays a very small part in the game anymore, and I am talking real tactics, not loophole easter egg stuff like congo lines and deploying vehicles sideways to you can pivot to gain inches. You can fix a lot of problems with two things. Bring back unit number limitation (old skool 0-1 stuff, highlander seems a good start) and get rid of the allies matrix. If you play Eldar, play Eldar....not some Frankenstein with 4 factions represented (primary, allies, formation, dataslate). You get the point.

Well, Im going to my first one this month as a Tyranid player to play against harder lists than I normally could in my local area and to enjoy the hobby in a new setting. I get to see other peoples cool toys and they get to see mine, and I hope to be best tyranid at most with no concept of winning the tournament involved. Not everyone goes to cheese their vehicle movement or create patchwork armies.

As a former 5 tourney a year player, the new edition killed the game for me and atleast 10 other members of my gaming group, the hogs of war. We used to go to all the big tourneys, now we are all split up playing different games. 6th Ed was borderline unplayable.

 Iechine wrote:

 quickfuze wrote:
I really don't know why people even attend competitive 40K anymore. The results are pretty much determined in the list creation phase before any dice are rolled . Tactics plays a very small part in the game anymore, and I am talking real tactics, not loophole easter egg stuff like congo lines and deploying vehicles sideways to you can pivot to gain inches. You can fix a lot of problems with two things. Bring back unit number limitation (old skool 0-1 stuff, highlander seems a good start) and get rid of the allies matrix. If you play Eldar, play Eldar....not some Frankenstein with 4 factions represented (primary, allies, formation, dataslate). You get the point.

Well, Im going to my first one this month as a Tyranid player to play against harder lists than I normally could in my local area and to enjoy the hobby in a new setting. I get to see other peoples cool toys and they get to see mine, and I hope to be best tyranid at most with no concept of winning the tournament involved. Not everyone goes to cheese their vehicle movement or create patchwork armies.

I applaud you for that...I play vanilla marines and Iron Warriors. So I generally get my arse whooped but have a blast meeting new people. That said though if you take a trip to the top 8 players going into the final round you invariably find yourself saying the same thing; "Oh look Eldar.." or "yup another netlist" or "seriously? another one?" (the same list ran in like 5 of the top 8 spots or something). It is possible to have a blast at any tourney with your favorite list....if your concept of having a blast doesn't involve winning. If you want to win you will undoubtedly be hamstringed into playing one of a few absurd interacting list combos that exist. The problem with the allies matrix is it destroys any of what little was left of internal balance within codexes. You no longer are penalized in one aspect of the army for benefits in others. You just simply only play the hyper efficient units from each codex. A perfect example of this is the wave serpent and how people buy it. The Wave serpent is a dedicated transport. The idea being that you buy it to move your guardians around...but in actuality people simply are paying a 5-man troop tax to get access to the wave serpent. It should be the other way around....

 quickfuze wrote:
The problem with the allies matrix is it destroys any of what little was left of internal balance within codexes. You no longer are penalized in one aspect of the army for benefits in others. You just simply only play the hyper efficient units from each codex. A perfect example of this is the wave serpent and how people buy it. The Wave serpent is a dedicated transport. The idea being that you buy it to move your guardians around...but in actuality people simply are paying a 5-man troop tax to get access to the wave serpent. It should be the other way around....

I agree completely. And I think that's only exacerbated the hate on less than awesome units (in terms of their efficacy for points) and cranked the whining up to 10 on units that are really good/broken good.

I think that's what is exciting about the highlander format, you'll see good units, just not spammed to oblivion, you might also see some stuff that rarely gets to hit the table due to their ok but not great status.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheKbob wrote:
It means no unit spam, essentially. It sounds like a good plan for most books, but really crappy books like the new GK, Inquisition, Sisters of Battle, etc. are all extremely limited to unplayable in said format.

It doesn't sound perfect for all books, but I gotta say the simplicity of the format really sells it.

I read a lot of "next to we live the GTs are sold out".
I must add that this is not in Europe mainland then.

Because here they are not sold out anymore.
And recently they are even cancelled alltogether as a part of slimming down GW.
One local GW shop in Germany and hobbyists in the Netherlands are planning to take it up again, but it will be sponsored by GW at most, not organised by GW anymore.

But also other, smaller, 40k tournaments, have less attendance.

The X-Wing tournaments are doing better nowadays,
I even joined a few, nice game.

But i am MUCH more of a wargamer and love building, converting and painting.
So i find it a bit of a downer that tournaments are less interesting (balanced) and attended less.

I'll chime in that local tournaments in the Cleveland area have seen a sharp decline in both numbers of events, and attendance at the events that do occur. Some of that has to do with FLGS changes, some is likely just cyclical, and at least a big chunk is based on the new editions. I know that latter simply because my whole gaming group shifted from 40k to other games about two years ago.

Still though, I think some of the GT players raised a good point: for a working adult, 3-5 weekends a year of seeing old friends, playing painted armies on good terrain, and enjoying a genuine challenge are far preferable to spending a Saturday a month in an FLGS playing a random mix of painted/unpainted armies run by everybody from complete newbs to local tough guys.

I can drive six hours to Adepticon, and see a couple dozen people that I know, some of whom are actually happy to see me... People tend to be friendly and looking to meet new folks. OTOH, I can drive one hour south to Akron, not know a single person, and when I try to engage, I'm given the cold shoulder as an outsider. So, even though it costs more, it's a lot more rewarding to do a GT than a local RTT. Also, for people with families, it's paradoxically easier to set aside a weekend months in advance than to take a saturday on a weeks notice.

MVBrandt wrote:


That said, I'm not particularly hurt by this. You are. I'll go right on hosting dozens of events of varying size annually, socializing and gaming with hundreds of fellow hobbyists, raising thousands of buckaroos for good charitable causes through the events that I run, and watching tons of gamers have a fantastic time traveling to local, regional, national, and international GTs and events.

Jeez, Mike, at least have the respect for your unpaid volunteers to recognize the hard work they do to make the events and fund-raising successful. You didn't do this by yourself. Don't confuse the achievements of others as yours alone.

TimW wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:


That said, I'm not particularly hurt by this. You are. I'll go right on hosting dozens of events of varying size annually, socializing and gaming with hundreds of fellow hobbyists, raising thousands of buckaroos for good charitable causes through the events that I run, and watching tons of gamers have a fantastic time traveling to local, regional, national, and international GTs and events.

Jeez, Mike, at least have the respect for your unpaid volunteers to recognize the hard work they do to make the events and fund-raising successful. You didn't do this by yourself. Don't confuse the achievements of others as yours alone.

I shall edit it to "we" to address your concern, Timothy Williamson! That said, I really don't need your lecture, buddy. A lot of people sweat blood, money, and tears putting on a good show for folks, and those same people do a lot (including more money, blood, and tears) thanking the volunteers who actually make it happen. I would appreciate you trolling the places I've thanked my volunteers just as hard, and giving me props there, if your sole purpose for living is invading threads and derailing them with nitpicks fueled by ridiculosity.

It needed to be said, buddy.

TimW wrote:
It needed to be said, buddy.

Did it? Did it really?