Has any thought come up regarding Tournament Prize support for the soft scores of X-Wing?

Right now you get a participation prize (a card), with specific loot for the top 4 or 8. Sometimes even a "Golden Spoon" award for last place (usually a $15 dollar small ship). This is essentially the top players (or the guys who had outstanding dice that day....seen it go both ways).

But I also see us missing out on the other aspects of the game.

A painting/conversion award. Their are some beautiful repaints out their that should be recognized. And maybe with S&V, FFG will create a generic Ugly card for use with any major conversion.

Sportsmanship (selected by your fellow players). We've all played against That Guy (either in X-Wing or some other game system). But then theirs The Other Guy. He can win with grace and lose with a smile. This ones a key aspect of any game or hobby. The Guy that gives you a great game and makes you want to play him all day, makes the hobby worthwhile.

Special awards for the first kill of an event. Rolling 5 natural Crits or Evades. Running a list with all generic ships.

Yes? No?

Prize pool has been an ongoing talk for quite some time. I don't expect to see anything new in the woodworks just yet. As far as local prizes feel free to bring your ideas to your TO and maybe you can work something out.

Has any thought come up regarding Tournament Prize support for the soft scores of X-Wing?

Right now you get a participation prize (a card), with specific loot for the top 4 or 8. Sometimes even a "Golden Spoon" award for last place (usually a $15 dollar small ship). This is essentially the top players (or the guys who had outstanding dice that day....seen it go both ways).

The promo card that's given as a participation prize is the prize for the everyman, as it were. All the other loot is designed to create some stakes for those that are playing. Additionally, I see a lot of stores usually take the entry fee and divide up into a payout in the form of store credit to the top players.

Obviously, this is all to encourage the hungry among us to swing for the fences get the competitive spirit going. We could argue whether that breeds more jerks or not, in the "win at all costs" mentality, but everyone has their own confirmation bias on that (including myself) so let's skip over it.

A painting/conversion award. Their are some beautiful repaints out their that should be recognized. And maybe with S&V, FFG will create a generic Ugly card for use with any major conversion.

You can imagine how this might get problematic going off the tournament document that disallows any modifications to the ships, bases, etc. I have seen all kind of conversions and repaints in my travels, and nobody has said anything about it, but I imagine this rule is in place to stop a player with less integrity than all of us pure souls on here from doing something tricky.

As a licensing thing, I'm sure that's also part of the deal. To officially recognize repaints and conversions would probably be at odds with their marketing strategy and/or licensing agreement.

Having said that, there's nothing stopping your local FLGS from doing exactly that. You're going to have to lobby the organizer and get them involved, and likely assume some of the responsibility in drafting up those guidelines. Just don't expect to see it going down at a Regional or any other premium event like GenCon where FFG themselves are organizing it.

Everything else you mentioned falls into this category. Your local store can do all of these things if they want to, but it's more work on their end, so step up and make it happen. As long as any of these other awards don't directly interfere with final standing in the tournament proper, you'll be fine. If you start putting sportsmanship, paintjobs, etc into it, a quality player will be turned away because now you've made it unfair to them when all they want to do is compete in the game, not the hobby.

Special awards for the first kill of an event. Rolling 5 natural Crits or Evades. Running a list with all generic ships.

I don't think we need to give out achievements for players' lists in the Wave 3 meta. You might as well have given half the players at Regionals last year a participation prize, since that was a dominant list to build.

TL;DR propose your ideas to your local store and see if you can build a better community with it without alienating the competitive players at the same time.

Coming for magic, where prize cuts off and there's rarely a thanks for playing award I'm really satisfied with FFGs participation cards.

Has any thought come up regarding Tournament Prize support for the soft scores of X-Wing?

Right now you get a participation prize (a card), with specific loot for the top 4 or 8. Sometimes even a "Golden Spoon" award for last place (usually a $15 dollar small ship). This is essentially the top players (or the guys who had outstanding dice that day....seen it go both ways).

But I also see us missing out on the other aspects of the game.

A painting/conversion award. Their are some beautiful repaints out their that should be recognized. And maybe with S&V, FFG will create a generic Ugly card for use with any major conversion.

Sportsmanship (selected by your fellow players). We've all played against That Guy (either in X-Wing or some other game system). But then theirs The Other Guy. He can win with grace and lose with a smile. This ones a key aspect of any game or hobby. The Guy that gives you a great game and makes you want to play him all day, makes the hobby worthwhile.

Special awards for the first kill of an event. Rolling 5 natural Crits or Evades. Running a list with all generic ships.

Yes? No?

I love this Idead and it should be expanded to other compedative areas like sports. We need best endzone dance prize and Best Dressed Coach award..................on second though just reward the top players.

Has any thought come up regarding Tournament Prize support for the soft scores of X-Wing?

Right now you get a participation prize (a card), with specific loot for the top 4 or 8. Sometimes even a "Golden Spoon" award for last place (usually a $15 dollar small ship). This is essentially the top players (or the guys who had outstanding dice that day....seen it go both ways).

But I also see us missing out on the other aspects of the game.

A painting/conversion award. Their are some beautiful repaints out their that should be recognized. And maybe with S&V, FFG will create a generic Ugly card for use with any major conversion.

Sportsmanship (selected by your fellow players). We've all played against That Guy (either in X-Wing or some other game system). But then theirs The Other Guy. He can win with grace and lose with a smile. This ones a key aspect of any game or hobby. The Guy that gives you a great game and makes you want to play him all day, makes the hobby worthwhile.

Special awards for the first kill of an event. Rolling 5 natural Crits or Evades. Running a list with all generic ships.

Yes? No?

From a TO and player perspective, I'm going to go with "No".

Right now the participation prizes and top X prizes with whatever else the store likes to throw in seems appropriate. I have played games where painting/sportsmanship are actually part of the overall score, which IMO is lame. While a store might award for those categories, I think that should remain at the TO's discretion and not required by FFG, especially if they are trying to create a truly competitive environment.

Also, from a TO's perspective, the more different things you give away for prizes, the more you have to keep track of and the more distracted from the actual tournament you become, which is definitely a bad thing. If you have to hand out sportsmanship sheets every round and then keep track of the scores/calculate it at the end of the tournament, there will be longer waits, which, in my experience, hurts more than extra prizes helps. Most players would rather have tournaments run smoothly/quickly (especially when a 6-7 round event can easily be most of the day as it is) than have you running around/delaying stuff because of all the fluff awards. I typically do the normal prizes + door prizes or something random (since you can easily randomly pick a squad list/name out of a stack while people are playing) and maybe expand the prize support so it covers top 16 or so depending on the size of the event, but do not expand the categories/etc. that I have to keep track of for this reason.

If you have a "WAAC" player who is making people's lives miserable, go active judging and sit with them at their table as much as possible. That way you can police them and ensure the other player is having a good time and not being bullied/cheated. Also, don't be afraid to disqualify (DQ) someone for sportsmanship. If you are getting multiple complaints/witness some egregious behavior, nothing sends a clearer message to the other players that it won't be tolerated than making a public example by DQ. Thankfully, I have never had to do this in X-Wing, but have been close at least once. Sadly, I have done this in other games, and was thanked for it. Players will not come back if they fear that "so-and-so" will be able to get away with anything, so don't let them!

Rewarding good sports is great, but I have found that those players are typically rewarded one way or another by their fellow players more than any TO can do. They typically make friends faster and just generally enjoy the game more long term. I have witnessed top 8 players give up some of their prizes to someone who was above and beyond the most fun/interesting to play against, which, since it came from another player, really spoke volumes about the person and I know they went home feeling like a million bucks even though they didn't win overall. Another example is that I have seen the "better" players coach/help a player who is fun to be around much more, and that typically means that person becomes more competitive faster than someone who is a jerk.