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One way that GW can force its products down your throat in regard to the recent Chapterhouse lawsuit results would be to start sponsoring tournaments again and enforce a GW model only policy. During the time when they were running many tournaments this policy certainly had an impact on me, and from what I could tell many other people as well.

However, now that many years have passed with GW not being an active tournament sponsor, especially in NA, and there are tournaments large and small all over the place that do not enforce a GW only policy, I wonder if the time has past for GW to be able to do this?

Do you think GW could influence the sale of models if they started up tournament sponsorship again or do you think that horse has long departed from the barn?

As much as I hated the WAAC players you'd find at the 'ard boyz tourny, I miss it, it did bring people together to play, and you usually would run into a few people outside your usual gaming group to play against, it was a chance to face new challenges.

Do I think its too late? No, around here at least there is no organized tourny scene to take the place of it, GW could just restart ard boyz and I think it would at least increase sales of the new uber units they are trying to sell.

Nah, it's never too late for that sort of thing. Tournament players just want to play in tournaments, making them "official" is just icing on the cake for most folks.

I don't think GW corporate is interested in running tournaments.

 Breotan wrote:
I don't think GW corporate is interested in running tournaments.

Or endorsing, encouraging, or recognizing them in any way shape or form.

Now if GW gets sold on the other hand...

Is it too late? In short the answer is no, its never too late for GW-PLC to throw money to competent TO's trying to run a good event that benefits "the hobby"

That said, a better question may be, with the current policies in place how could they/would they?

Its the current policy to not support these events because they themselves cannot quantify a ROI, nor can they assert any control mechanisms on how "The Hobby" should be played/judged/scored etc...

I could see too many barriers to having a Games Workshop prize support for your event?

100% painted.
100% of the models must be GW models or artful green stuff conversions.
We must be the only sponsor.
etc...
etc...

Granted, this is just speculation on my part.

Quick history lesson:

Ed Spettigue (Previous head honcho of GW NA before he left due to health reasons) had a great thing going in NA before he left, 400$ in prize support, some in terrain support, some of that could even be used in forgeworld.

The only thing you had to prove was you ran previous events and were consistent. Essentially justify/pull in the numbers you wanted for your event.

Could you picture the GW of now doing that without restrictions? I cannot, at least until someone cleans house upstairs and starts listening everyone, not just the numbers and the 12-16 demographic.

 Breotan wrote:
I don't think GW corporate is interested in running tournaments.

Well the question is a hypothetical one, so what GW is interested in doing at the moment is not relevant. The question is about what players would do, not what GW is doing.

I play tourney's for fun, so i wouldn't join one, but it is a great way to push "the Hobby" and create sales.

Not too late.

I don't recall any wide-scale desire in the community to use 3rd party bits and certainly very little desire to use full, 3rd party kits when GW still had tourneys, as it would bar your participation in official tournaments.

If GW want to get back into tournaments they just need to set up a team to start running them and give them a decent budget. It would probably take a year or to restart the programme, owing to the need to develop plans, make bookings and publicise the events.

I'm not sure whether they would do it to force people to use GW only, as a continuation of the CHS legal matters; You'll find that that is a point of view only held by the company on paper and is enforced about as much as 'don't copy casette music' used to be back in the day. I've played in events where the 'best painted army' held completely non-GW models, armies where almost every miniature had conversion with 3rd party bits, and even seen an army with Maxmini heads and other parts in display cabinets - and that's in Warhammer World..!

They only make an issue out of it (and the only time I have seen it brought to the fore) is when you get someone with a belligerent attitude about their non-GW bits, and where they force the GW staff to react by bringing it to their attention.

I suppose you might be able to cut out the Mantic Corporation Imperial Guard armies or something similar, but having a 100% official component army would be nigh on impossible to enforce, and you would cause one hell of a stink with arguments (on the basis of proving) if you were to try..

And it also strikes me as incredibly cynical, and completely the wrong reason for getting involved in tournaments again? Surely those should be for the furthering of their wargaming hobby, and for fostering a sense of community, not for cracking down on fan's creativity to enforce a point of view only held by the upper management and legal team..

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If GW want to get back into tournaments they just need to set up a team to start running them and give them a decent budget. It would probably take a year or to restart the programme, owing to the need to develop plans, make bookings and publicise the events.

But that cost money. they need to "Hire" more people to run this thing. Something that they are a bit short of as late "chuckles". They are not going back to the tournaments. They are still (I believe) trying to reduce their employee base.

Another question might be; do you really need GW back in tournaments? Do you want heavily restricted regulations about what models you can use?

 Adam LongWalker wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If GW want to get back into tournaments they just need to set up a team to start running them and give them a decent budget. It would probably take a year or to restart the programme, owing to the need to develop plans, make bookings and publicise the events.

But that cost money. they need to "Hire" more people to run this thing. Something that they are a bit short of as late "chuckles". They are not going back to the tournaments. They are still (I believe) trying to reduce their employee base.

Yes I think that was the reason the tournaments have gone.. nothing to do with the game being suited tournaments, the focus for designers or otherwise - it was just another way to reduce overheads beyond making a good chunk of the store staff redundant.

And the fact that the people in charge of GW now are not gamers. I saw first hand the "i don't care" attitude from the person replacing Ed Spettigue. They don't do it themselves, and don't care at all about gamers. Just your money.

Until people who actually care at all (about the games, the models, retailers and players) replace the accountants and hr people that are in charge, you won't see anything sane coming out of GW.

GW should stay out of any tournament. It would only do harm. Tournaments work just fine without GW and I don't want a company that repeatedly alienates their customers and said that they do not care for balance. They don't even playtest their rules before releasing! I don't want people with such a mindset anywhere near a competitive environment.

Also you need a universal set of rules for tournaments, and I can't really see GW ever tidying up all the grey areas and house rules that people implement to bridge the gaps.

 Sigvatr wrote:
GW should stay out of any tournament. It would only do harm. Tournaments work just fine without GW and I don't want a company that repeatedly alienates their customers and said that they do not care for balance.

Yes, but imagine if GW did create a rules forum where gamers could go for real-time gamedev interaction, see FAQ and errata on a 'living document', and there actually was a cohesive tournament rules set (and it was nothing more than a cleaned up GW rulebook).

Now throw in an 'official' GW tournament kit and some modest prize support and the GW tournament scene would be back and better than ever.

I think a stripped down, more flowing tournament rules edition of 6th would be a great thing, I also think it would be a good seller as you could also use it for pick up games in stores, for a faster and more easy to follow game.

I'm not sure we'll get it, as I think Alessio was the ex-tournament player and the strong focus on that style, hence the rapid play style of 5th, with him gone, we're seeing more of JJ's old narrative/cinematic complexity and wackiness, some of which I really like and some of which I loath and most of which I think could have been made optional.

I can't actually believe that they stopped it.

Spend 50k a year on tourney support, and I guarantee they would see twice that at least in added sales.

Its madness I tells ya!

Its never too late though, they could start again, they just won't under the present administration.

I haven't played in a GT or GT like environment since 2008; but at the time I remember really not liking the current iteration of rules.
The 50% GW parts for conversion was pretty normal but the scratch build calls on the part of the judges were asinine.

Beyond that the tournament scene has become independant and GW said in thier own words that Games Days are for us to engage in our favorite hobby: buying GW merchandise. As long as that is thier attitude they need to stay out of tournaments.

Why do we need GW to run tournaments? From my understanding there are plenty of good independent ones out there already.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Why do we need GW to run tournaments? From my understanding there are plenty of good independent ones out there already.

On which you can essentially play with an entirely 3rd party/scratch built army.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Why do we need GW to run tournaments? From my understanding there are plenty of good independent ones out there already.

I think JWhex was postulating about the idea of GW using it as a way to force everyone to buy completely official minis, rather than them necessarily being a better thing for the gamers involved.

The broader point being it's not remarkably important to the players whether or not GW tries to resurrect its tournament presence (unless this somehow results in further deterioration in rules clarity/consistency), it's more important to GW that they have a format to keep the HHHobby exclusive to GW.

xxvaderxx wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Why do we need GW to run tournaments? From my understanding there are plenty of good independent ones out there already.

On which you can essentially play with an entirely 3rd party/scratch built army.

And this is a problem?

I get that GW could use it to possibly "force" players to use 1st party minis, but I think events like NOVA, Adepticon, and Feast of Blades are established enough that they would remain the main draw to tourney players.

I mean, if I was looking at tournaments to go to, an official GW one would be at the bottom of the list. The way they treat their rules would not make me confident about how well the tournament would be run.

What would GW really gain from putting down money to sponsor tournaments?

I mean, the kind of people who show up to tournaments are ALREADY spending a lot of money on GW stuff. You're probably not going to get them to spend all that much more by throwing them a tournament. It sounds like it would all be a net loss for the company.

What they want is to spend money to get NEW people into the game, wherein they will spend a ton of cash in the future. Once again, a tournament is pretty much the worst possible way to do this, as new players aren't going to have the skills or models to be able to seriously play games on the one hand, and being around a bunch of testosterone-fuelled hyper-competitive types is likely only going to leave a bad impression on new players by association.

It would be unhelpful, possibly harmful, and cost GW money for the privilege. I can't see why this would be in their best interest.

I agree with you in a sense, by in that case why not start a range of tournaments designed to get new players into playing the game? They could have some very limited type of 'tale of x gamers' where new gamers log in to a special website and log their purchases, can get feedback from both GW and other appointed 'moderators' (unpaid help) on their board about all aspects of gaming and modelling - after a certain number of months there could be some kind of regional event, perhaps a couple for each country, with limited prize support and painting workshops etc.

An alternative might be to take more of a kind of narrative event of the kind that the Tempus Fugitives run here in the UK - the results and objectives are not targeted at an individual level of success, and instead there is a really cool background/narrative to their events. Speaking to one of the guys who runs the events, they were intended not to be attractive to hardcore tournament players (who went to the first event they ran, but then none after). Having attended these events, you get very, very little of the boring maxed out lists, but they always have great attendance so their must be a market for that kind of thing.

These are just a couple of ideas off the top of my head - I don't think GW would necessarily have to run another Ard'boyz (like Ailaros says, that wouldn't most likely endear the game to new players) but there are lots of other ways they could engage with the community and take a more active role. At present it's becoming another area where other manufacturers (pretty much all of them) are building up ground on GW with their support of community and events.

 Ailaros wrote:

It would be unhelpful, possibly harmful, and cost GW money for the privilege. I can't see why this would be in their best interest.

You just described GWs business practices.

 Ailaros wrote:
Once again, a tournament is pretty much the worst possible way to do this, as new players aren't going to have the skills or models to be able to seriously play games on the one hand, and being around a bunch of testosterone-fuelled hyper-competitive types is likely only going to leave a bad impression on new players by association.

Except that:

1) Having official tournaments helps build the community and gives new customers a goal to work towards. Just look at how Friday Night Magic has worked for MTG, it's a relatively casual event and participating it is an easily attainable goal for new players. And since it's consistent event it helps avoid the problem of a new customer playing a random game or two with a friend and then dropping out of the hobby because there's nothing going on.

2) Some people like competition. A competitive player who just found the game would see that competitive official events exist and be happy that they have a hyper-competitive tournament to look forward to once they finish buying their army. Again, just look at MTG, where the existence of the pro tour (with tens of thousands of dollars in cash prizes at each event) gets people to spend a lot of time and money on the game because they want to be part of it.