Hey all Austinites!

Just want to give you feedback on a very bad experience I had today at North Austin's Dragon's Lair. I sent the following email to the events manager after showing up to this location for a scheduled X-Wing Escalation Tournament. I also posted it to their FaceBook page and it was deleted after 90 minutes when some other gamers added their comments of similar circumstance. I wanted to share this so other gamers can avoid the same situation I ran into today:

Chris,

I must say I am very disappointed with Dragon's Lair. We spoke through email on Thursday about the Xwing escalation tournament for Saturday Jan 17th at 1:00 PM. Well I drove all the way up from Buda today to participate in that tournament. Your staff at the desk was not knowledgeable about any tournament. There were two players playing a game of Xwing that didn't know anything about a tournament. I waited in the shop until 1:15 and nothing. Staff I asked knew nothing.

I am disappointed that you assured me on Thursday there was a tournament and there wasn't. I am disappointed that your staff is not knowledgeable. I am disappointed that no one offered any assistance for a possible solution. I wasted my time and gas not to mention that I had cleared my schedule to play in a tournament I was assured was taking place.

This is not the first time issues have come up. I should have trusted my friend's warning about tournaments at your location.

Today, sir, you lost a customer and I will caution my friends about the unreliability of events at your location. Word of mouth travels and to treat customers that frequent your business in this manner is unacceptable.

Oh and for your information the scheduled tournament coordinator was at one of your competitors instead of running the tournament you told me was scheduled. Wow!

Paul

As I said this post was taken down from their Facebook page and the email ignored. No apology and no explanation. Players beware!

Lue.

Had come up from Killeen once...wasted my gas and money going to D.Lair for a tournament. Guy that runs the tournament was a no show. Who claims an event on a certain day and not even have an excuse not to show? Xwing is one of the hottest games being played right now. This store is trying to lose sales and customers.

I set aside my day to go up there and play. It's one thing when players don't show, but for an organizer to bail? Wtf...

I don't think I've ever seen a successful tournament ran there, let alone heard of one that actually happened...

I hope FFG isn't giving to many tourny kits to these thieves...

*Update*

So I looked on their Facebook page last night again after a few hours and the following was posted:

"Hey X-Wing Players! We wanted to profusely apologize for any inconvenience you might have suffered from coming to our tournaments which have not run. Unfortunately, our Tournament Organizers who run these events are not employees of the store. As such, it can be difficult at times to ensure that they will be here. This of course, is no excuse for making you feel unwelcome within our store. We will definitely be looking into restructuring how these events will be run in the future, as well as a better way of keeping track of our T.O.'s. Once again, we are extremely sorry for the incidents that have occurred. We will do our best to ensure that this will not happen again."

Had this been the first time, I would have accepted this apology and given them a second chance. But this is a constant issue with poor scheduling, unreliable service, and staff that are unaware of events in their own store. I for one am not returning. I still caution other players when considering traveling to attend events here. I hope that FFG takes this seriously and considers the bad image that connects their product at this location.

Lue.

So I am the organizer for the league play at Dragon's Lair right now. I spoke with one of the attendees on Friday concerning this very issue. One problem I have with Dragon's Lair is their calendar is out of date and little effort appears to be taken to keep it up to date.

However, going forward, I intend to fix that for them regarding X-Wing events. Today, I will contact their organizer about finally fixing their calendar (there are no events on Mondays and Wednesdays currently) and no tournaments are currently being run. I do believe they mean well, but they do not run the events at their store and since they do not persist in keeping the calendar straight, these sorts of things happen. I hate it and want to see it corrected.

I am getting together with Thomas (WTIIG league organizer) and we have some improvements for ATX-Wing coming that will improve the experience for everyone. I have learned that stores cannot be relied upon to host events here in town as they are either too small, too far away, or too disinterested to provide a good player experience. As a community, we will need to run these events ourselves.

I will be openly soliciting assistance in this realm. If you would like to help contribute to running events, please send me a message. I want to make Austin a great place for ATX-Wing players but I cannot do it alone.

*Update 2*

I did receive an email that owned up to the mistake by the events coordinator at Dragon's Lair. I was offered 'tournament goodies" for my inconvenience of driving 30 miles to this location and no tournament to attend. While I appreciate the reply to the email by the Dragons Lair staff, I find the offer a bit unsettling. Should not these "goodies" be used for actual tournaments? Would it be fair for me to walk away with said goodies instead of them being used for what they are intended? How could I fairly respond to inquiries by other players about where I got an alternate card or tokens? It just does not sit well with me. No, I think i will avoid any patronage at this store.

S1n,

While I appreciate your attention for the local ATX-wing players, I will not return to this location. I find that as a local player-based organization of Austin Xwing players, you should look for other venues to hold the league and any tournaments. There are many other game shops in town and we, as a local player group, should look to give other shops opportunities and business. By their actions, Dragons Lair has proven that they do not care about X-Wing players. Why would you want to continue to bring business to their location. No sir, as a player group we should boycott Dragons Lair. Leave it to the Warhammer and Magic players. It is apparent that is who they want cater to.

To all Austinite X-Wing players,

We should boycott this store and find smaller local shops and partner with those owners. Dragons Lair is not the only shop in town.

Lue.

I'm going to assume this is your standard magic the gathering/ teenage anime ccg game store that gives no $#%@! about FFG. There's far too many of those around unfortunately. They occassionally try to get something going for some of these games because they order the product, probably not even understanding how the business model works of say an LCG compared to a FEED ME BOOSTER PACKS ccg, and then when they dont immediately sell 20 copies of a LCG pack, they stop touching FFG stuff altogether.

Bobbywhiskey,

Actually it is a huge store with plenty of long gaming tables for card games and a bunch of tabletop miniature game tables. The issue is that even though there was room for the tournament, there wasnt one as posted. What really got me is that their staff event organizer assured me that there would be one via email on the Thursday preceding the tourney. In my book, there was no reason to give out false information. If the tourney was a no-go the staff should have known. When asked the staff should have said something other than "we dont actually run the tournament".

I have really said all this above so I am not going to roll it over again. I just hope my Austin X-wing players ban together and avoid this location in the future.

Also important is that I hope FFG notices and at least provides Dragon's Lair with some sort of warning or sanction.

Lue.

I say take the goodies they were given for a tournament and play them out at another local store. They're giving out these sanctioned kits to non employees anyway to have non employees or people unaffiliated with the store run these events.

Xwing + business does not = dragons lair. I can count on one hand how many ships they keep in the store...and they don't care about the xwing players or if we play there or not. It's sad really. Such a big store. No one can even think large enough to keep a list of the events for the week/month near the front desk..that way when you call or show up,you don't get "duh...I don't know?" EVERY TIME.

The reason Dragon's Lair was chosen was 2 fold: space and location. They have plenty of space for us and the location is more accommodating for North Austinites.

I made this decision based on limited exposure to the Austin gaming scene. I appreciate everyone's feedback and will continuously evaluate the situation that best meets the needs of ATX-Wing.

In the meantime, please continue to attend ATX-Wing events. Give me a chance to build our community and I will work hard to earn and maintain your trust. When I list an event, you should expect that I will have matters covered and you will have fun.

Also, the Dragon's Lair employee reached out to me about this incident and he seems sincere in resolving this and fixing matters. I will send him and email when I get a chance ($DAYJOB demands attention).

So before everyone goes on a boycot rampage, give me an opportunity to create a great experience for our group.

Fly casual!

S1N,

You do run a solid event. However the issue is the location. If this had been a first time thing I would consider them sincere. However it's not. Tournaments at this location have been scheduled and then the organizers do not show or are at other stores! No, I think I will not head up to that location and I will recommend to all my fellow players to avoid that store.

Lue

I too have been caught up in these Dragon's Lair shenanigans. The staff is clueless about what events are taking place, and are completely apathetic towards those who are looking for answers about events. They just pass the buck on to the TO's. Which brings up a second point.

The "TO's" (the O should be removed from TO as there has been no organization). As the TO I know they get the same notifications (via email) from Meetup every week about the events. YOUR (TO) names are on there as running the events. If the TO's have no intention of running the event, or being there, then they should pull their names from the Meetup. At least take 10 seconds to write a comment about not running the tournament. ATX is talking about expanding or making a better experience for X-Wing in Austin, but seem to be part of the problem. If you are not going to run the tournament, if you are not going to show up, write a note or take it off the meetup. Simple fix. 8 people planned on showing up for the tournament at Dragon's Lair. Two "TO's" are listed as RSVP for the event, neither showed. That is not on Dragon's Lair. That falls squarely on the TO's.

X-Wing is one of the fastest growing games I have seen in a long time. I personally know about two dozen players in the Austin area. Yet issues like this stop the community from growing or getting better.

I will be more than wiling to run one off tournaments. I had to do it at dragon's lair when the TO's failed to show a couple of months back. My schedule however changes every month so I can't consistently run an organized event on the same weekend every month.

I hope nobody takes this criticism the wrong way. I don't mean to offend anyone. I just want this X-Wing community to get together and grow.

As of right now, Dragon's Lair has no Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday events and they have been removed from the Meetup page. For some reason, they still have not swapped the Attack Wing for X-Wing, but I am working to fix that.

Also, they are setting me as the primary point of contact for future X-Wing events at Dragon's Lair. As such, I have pointed out the various problems they have and will either see them corrected or consider alternatives.

Going forward, if anyone has any problems finding games, events, or other players in Austin, please send me a PM. I will make sure to get you what you need. I am not just a TO, I want to help organize and represent X-Wing players all over Austin.

For what it's worth, I drove down to Dragon's Lair for a tournament a few months ago and had no problems. There was a winter kit up for grabs, 6 people playing, and we had a fine time. It's not all doom and gloom.

s1n, have you heard word when Dragon's Lair is having their store championship?

For what it's worth, I drove down to Dragon's Lair for a tournament a few months ago and had no problems. There was a winter kit up for grabs, 6 people playing, and we had a fine time. It's not all doom and gloom.

s1n, have you heard word when Dragon's Lair is having their store championship?

They have not received the tournament kit yet. They cannot schedule an event until they receive it. I will be asking weekly and as soon as I find out, I will post updates so that everyone is aware.