Ideas for Gen Con 2017.

[bigfatchef]

Gen con is an exhibition. They had ever since been invdnted for helping companies or products to grow famous and sell well. It is their purpose.

If you take that environment and add those negative points that make a “worldcup“ difficult there (timetable, qualificationrounds, 1000 distractions...) you find your goal. You want a fun tournament with a very low entry and cool and unique prices.
Coming from sportsclimbing, we have our best results concerning amount and happiness of competitors when there is a lottery or sideranking (for best newbie or whatever) so that everybody could eventually win something.

If you want to have more people play the game, you have to get many people to try it (in a short time since the could get distracted away). In that short time you have to find a way to get the players hooked. Give them totally awsome themed books that are fun to play. Show whats possible.

As the tournament progresses all players should have a personal interest in how it went on (for example by putting them in makro-teams by training school. So they hope “team dark scool“ wind over “team nature“). Maybe connect small prices to this.

And the finals should be fighted with applause and action and entertainment. Think of it as a movie showdown.

All this can be down with very little money.

[farkas1]

I'm sold and totally agree.  Like the idea of pre built books.  I think demo for new players and a walking them through the basic 4 books from the original would be a good idea and have them play with semi skilled and helpful tournament players.  If want this game to grow we need to be introducing this too as many people at gen con as possible.  Not just making it about experienced players only.  I think there is other venues that could facilitate this better for high level tournament play.  And by no means am I saying it still does not have to have the epic skill level that it sounds like it already has.  Just make it more attracting to new players.  I think this post says it really well.

Gen con is an exhibition. They had ever since been invdnted for helping companies or products to grow famous and sell well. It is their purpose.

If you take that environment and add those negative points that make a “worldcup“ difficult there (timetable, qualificationrounds, 1000 distractions...) you find your goal. You want a fun tournament with a very low entry and cool and unique prices.
Coming from sportsclimbing, we have our best results concerning amount and happiness of competitors when there is a lottery or sideranking (for best newbie or whatever) so that everybody could eventually win something.

If you want to have more people play the game, you have to get many people to try it (in a short time since the could get distracted away). In that short time you have to find a way to get the players hooked. Give them totally awsome themed books that are fun to play. Show whats possible.

As the tournament progresses all players should have a personal interest in how it went on (for example by putting them in makro-teams by training school. So they hope “team dark scool“ wind over “team nature“). Maybe connect small prices to this.

And the finals should be fighted with applause and action and entertainment. Think of it as a movie showdown.

All this can be down with very little money.

[ab235g]

So, I agree with alot of the stuff that is being said in this thread. I however don't think that the amount of time hours/days is an issue. I know that myself and the rest of the playgroup from Saint Louis went to Gen Con specifically for Mage wars. We took 5 of the 12 seats this year and all of us would not be opposed to multiple arena tournaments or multiple days.
We would however be bothered if it went to an invitational type tournament as the Saint louis area only has 1 ambassador (myself). So I would need to Judge and therefore could not join and I do not think any of us could make it to pre-qualifiers too far outside our area.

[ringkichard]

That's reasonable. I have to say, though, that one reason for an invitational would be that we have two apparently contradictory issues: a desire to increase the number of people in the tournament, and the incredible cost of actually doing so at Gencon. An invitational system that was working correctly would probably give very heavy weight to the fact that you're the ambassador from Saint Louis, the city that took 5 of the 12 seats this year.

[silverclawgrizzly]

Invitational just isn't going to happen. It's impractical from a number of angles so I don't think we need worry about that. I'm liking the idea about the prize support though.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Gen con is an exhibition. They had ever since been invdnted for helping companies or products to grow famous and sell well. It is their purpose.

If you take that environment and add those negative points that make a “worldcup“ difficult there (timetable, qualificationrounds, 1000 distractions...) you find your goal. You want a fun tournament with a very low entry and cool and unique prices.
Coming from sportsclimbing, we have our best results concerning amount and happiness of competitors when there is a lottery or sideranking (for best newbie or whatever) so that everybody could eventually win something.

If you want to have more people play the game, you have to get many people to try it (in a short time since the could get distracted away). In that short time you have to find a way to get the players hooked. Give them totally awsome themed books that are fun to play. Show whats possible.

As the tournament progresses all players should have a personal interest in how it went on (for example by putting them in makro-teams by training school. So they hope “team dark scool“ wind over “team nature“). Maybe connect small prices to this.

And the finals should be fighted with applause and action and entertainment. Think of it as a movie showdown.

All this can be down with very little money.

I totally agree. Gen Con is definitely far from being an optimal setting for a competitive Mage Wars event. I would recommend completely overhauling the structure of the event. Instead of a Mage Wars tournament, make it a Mage Wars carnival. I would recommend having tables divided into three "stations". One for Standard Arena, one for Arena Domination, and one for Academy. (Apprentice games would be played in the Standard Arena station or at the main exhibit booth). Players would be able to bring their own custom spellbooks or use premade ones available on site. Prizes would be awarded for things like "most formats played", "most domination games won", "most exciting game", "most skilled newbie", "most improved player", "most games won (regardless of format)", and even a prize just for participating. All the games would basically be exhibition games, although there would be judges at each station to answer any rules questions or disputes between players, and the results of each game would get recorded on a score-card/unlocked achievements-card for each player.

I think this would also successfully address all four of your goals for the event Silverclaw, despite technically not being a *tournament* per se.

[Mr. Green]

A lot of companies work around the time commitment by scheduling preliminaries Thursday to Saturday and the finals on Sunday.  This let's people with other interests still participate and means people that have been eliminated can move on to other things without disrupting the tournament. Really keen players can sign up for all 3 days and others might only be able to fit in one round. You could have 4 rounds of 8 ( with a morning and evening in saturday) with top 2 each round advancing to a single elimination on Sunday.

[Kelanen]

A high level tournament and getting more players into the game are too completely different events, run different ways, and targeting different players.

I'm unlikely to be at GenCon this year anyway, but certainly I'd consider travelling to GenCon just for the first, and wouldn't bother with the second even if I was there. You probably want events catering to both crowds, and design them very differently.

[Sailor Vulcan]

A high level tournament and getting more players into the game are too completely different events, run different ways, and targeting different players.

I'm unlikely to be at GenCon this year anyway, but certainly I'd consider travelling to GenCon just for the first, and wouldn't bother with the second even if I was there. You probably want events catering to both crowds, and design them very differently.

I guess that must be why they stopped having official tournaments at origins. :/


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[silverclawgrizzly]

Pretty much just going with a straight bog standard tournament set up. Preliminaries on Friday and Finals Saturday. We'll work on making it more appealing and run it as smoothly as possible.

[Werekingdom]

This maybe be a terrible idea, or it could work great.

What about setting up laptops with Octgn, then have then use it.
Most could install Octgn and build a deck, then bring a flash drive if they don't have a laptop.If they can't, you can set a laptop aside just to build a deck, then use a flashdrive to transfer the deck to a open laptop.

Pro:
-Speed: Playing on Octgn seems to save between 25-33% time.
-Table space:  A laptop takes a lot less table space.
-Moving Tables:  Instead of having to move to a new table for each game, you can just login and play against your opponent. You could make general accounts that you can just upload your deck from a flash drive, if you did not bring your own laptop or you don't have a Octgn account.
-Larger number of players: you can enlarge the tournament, if you can find a way so each player only plays between 4-5 games.
-Possibility of opening up tournament to people in Europe.

Con:
-Can't see your opponent: Seeing you opponent usually gives a lot of clues to what he/she is thinking.
-Laptops: Bring that maybe old laptops + setup is going to be a pain.
-Electronics: There will ALWAYS be a problem!
-Stupid People: 10% of people are idiots!

[silverclawgrizzly]

Con: It's the Gen Con tournament not an OCTGN tournament. We could just hold an online tournnament without having to drive to Indiana. 

[Werekingdom]

Con: It's the Gen Con tournament not an OCTGN tournament. We could just hold an online tournnament without having to drive to Indiana. 

I agree, it is a gen con tournament not an OCTGN tournament.

The reason I proposed this because I always wanted to go, but I live near the pacific. So I'm been scheming of ways to play against the guys at gen con.

[silverclawgrizzly]

Fair and valid point

[Sailor Vulcan]

Con: It's the Gen Con tournament not an OCTGN tournament. We could just hold an online tournnament without having to drive to Indiana. 

I agree, it is a gen con tournament not an OCTGN tournament.

The reason I proposed this because I always wanted to go, but I live near the pacific. So I'm been scheming of ways to play against the guys at gen con.

^^This. Honestly I think the best solution to this is to use video chat and play Academy instead of Arena. Or just use video chat to talk to people there without playing any games with them. After all, if you could play in person without playing in person then it wouldn't be in person because hologram technology just isn't there yet. And nobody goes to a convention to play tapletop games on an online platform. If it's not face to face it's not happening.


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