ITT: journeyman gamers are somehow bad for a competitive game that's continuing to grow and expand.

But I see X-Wing as a game whose market is probably mostly casual sales and mostly casual play that just happens to have a competitive scene, rather than as a game based upon being competitive.

Prize support is designed for an event with at least some competitive nuance to it. You can divide the competitors from the casuals if you really want to, but once a player enters that arena, there are only competitors. Going to a tournament and declaring "this isn't fair, I'm just a casual!" is a little silly, regardless of the respective efforts made in reaching the venue.

To what degree stricter competition ends up being a boon for the game is entirely up to FFG. Without support the game may lapse; more organization and the competitive scene might blossom into something approximating the early DCI years. Either way, the phenomenon being discussed in this thread will hardly be a contributing factor if X-Wing goes the way of the dodo. I would go so far as to say that it can only be a net positive, considering the potential for a more professional climate irrespective of what casual gamers are doing.

Good players should be awarded for good play. Sadly in a competitive environment there are players who enjoy winning more than the thrill of playing. I'm all for traveling to other LGS to see new people and try new meta, but there is a large percentage of players who go to win, not socialize. They look down on newer players and if you're not playing the popular net lists, then you just aren't worthy of their attention. They want to take the top spots, not for the prizes they don't need but to feed an ego.

Having been gaming for 20 years, some of it in a very competitive CCG environment, this is more the norm than a rare instance.

They want to take the top spots, not for the prizes they don't need but to feed an ego.

You should've known by now that winning at X-Wing = winning at life.

They want to take the top spots, not for the prizes they don't need but to feed an ego.

You should've known by now that winning at X-Wing = winning at life.

Not just X-Wing. I remember playing the WotC Star Wars CCG tournie at GenCon and it was set up next to the big Pokemon tournament. You saw a bunch of kids playing 20-30 year old dudes. Five minutes at any world tournament you'll find dozens of ****** nozzles versus the good, fun players. I'm thinking this is who the OP was talking about.

I travel great distances to snipe prizes and exert my dominance as the Alpha-X-Wing player in a 500 mile radius. I want the locals to know that I am the endgame they will never be able to beat and that their entry fee belongs to me in the form of the local store's store credit that I won't spend until a new release comes out so I can come back months later and snipe the stock for that release from the locals too. I also enjoy seeing the disdain and crushed hopes and dreams of local players when my entourage comes with me to school them in their favorite Star Wars miniatures game. They need to know that there ain't no room for the weak in this meta. If you can't beat Decimator/Soontir or BBBBZ then maybe they should rethink their game to win their local prizes or just go play Attack Wing instead.

I took this with a grain of salt, and the sarcasm that I hope it's intended with, but I have seen too many people with this exact attitude that it turns me away, personally, from wanting to participate in Store Championships much anymore (at least at Madness. Sorry Hida ). To each their own, I guess.

And no, I do not have a problem with "prize-sniping", as defined by the OP. What I do have a problem with - and I do wish FFG regulated their events a bit better than they do to fix this exact problem, but hey, that's a whole 'nother thread - is the people that travel to 4 or 5 Championships in one or two days to "snipe" as many prizes as they can. These people - and I have met a few - admit as much, that they just want the prizes. I get that, and maybe if I were a better player and consistently won, or placed higher than I do, I'd have that exact attitude (if I'm completely honest), so I cannot judge too harshly, but it comes off as condescending, snarky, and disingenuous.

On the other hand, I have also played tournaments where the same guy wins - most of the time anyway - and he usually lets the others take prizes in his place instead. That kind of generosity I really do appreciate. And that's what keeps me coming back and playing these tournaments and championships. Because though a few bad apples do indeed spoil the bunch, the actions of a few speak louder than the apples, and I tend to look at it - and want to look at it - from a positive perspective.

My two cents after mixing my metaphors.

I live in an area with a lot of very strong players. We travel because it's fun to support the game and meet new guys. I've never been to a tourney where a guy kept the little prizes if they already had some of that prize. They will almost always pass them down to the next guy. The exception being the SC plaque. One of the guys here won three of those and kept them (rightly so, IMO).

I am having a deja vu. The very same discussion with the very same arguments took place on the German forum about two months ago. There were some sore players, who complained about 'prize sniping' and 'token tourists', but the majority was along this quote, which I find great and to the point:

There's really no room to be sensitive about competitive events. You pay. You play. You win or lose. Your level of enjoyment and fun in the event is decided by you, and from there you can decide whether you wish to continue in a competitive or tournament environment.

One of the things that people need to realize is that this competitive of attitude is spread throughout ALL forms of gaming, hell, even in school and the workplace, and we shouldn't expect X-Wing to be an exception. Yes, we have egos to feed, but we also have to realize that not everyone is going to be "fly casual" about a competition, especially when the incentives to win are already valued by the time and money spent preparing and traveling for that tournament. And if someone does blow into town and mop up the competition, you shouldn't cry about it and claim its hurting the player base and business of your LGS as an excuse for your local meta not being good at X-Wing.

I played MtG for 4 years. That kind of player base has a cesspool of douchebags and, as you call them, "prize snipers" who are cutthroat and vicious when it comes to the game. One of the dudes I played against at a PTQ (similar to a SC) wouldn't let me roll my own dice to determine who plays first because it wouldn't be consistent, to which my reply was "**** off" and a judge was called. Some other people are so calculated, the art on their basic land cards all match so that their opponent can't deduce what other cards they might have in their hand. I also saw older dudes shamelessly hounding 10-15 year olds over rules or plays at casual tournaments such as FNMs. These types of people are invested in the game competitively, rather than the people invested in the game casually. When these two types of players are forced to interact with each other at a tournament, it is usually the casual players who take it to heart and are left with a bitter taste in their mouth.

The most important thing to understand is that if you're not having fun with the game because of the way other people are playing the game, you need to check yourself and answer these questions:

Why am I not having fun?

Who is not making this game fun?

What can I do to make this game fun again?

Where can I go to have fun wight his game?

Rather than blaming out of towners for copping up prize support because they're roflstomping the local meta with their netdecks and elitism, maybe you should consider just not playing in these tournaments. That's what I did with Magic, I only play occasionally in FNMs now because after trying to be competitive for two years, the game lost its fun and novelty and I moved on to X-Wing, a game where I can have fun getting beat or being victorious regardless of who or what or where I play. But you also have to consider that by not playing in these tournaments, you're not showing your support for the store or the player base by being exclusive to casual gaming and xenophobic to out of towners looking to play.

I have to say, though, this thread has surprised me. X-Wing, in my experience, has the most mature and lax player base that I've ever seen. I've spectated Warmachine, 40k and other CCG events, and there are blatant assholes out there. I said it in a previous thread before, the SoCal player base s like a big, friendly family. Everyone is welcoming to other players and there hasn't been a serious case for "prize sniping" despite MANY of the players in our group went to almost all of the store championships in the region.

Prize sniping is this game, I don't think can exist.

I used to play Whiz Kids Mechwarrior. In that game, they would issue rare, "hero" pieces, different classes of heroes - some super rare, and some more common. You couldn't buy them in a store. They were issued randomly in closed sealed boxes. One piece could win the game unless the opponent had a couple less that very rare pieces or had very lucky die rolls. One could basically buy a "I win" army on Ebay unless they were at some regional championship with the other people that went to Ebay. Many people played the game and never even bought a booster pack.

I went to a local small, small store tournament where - down the road were clusters of Amish farms - very remote. Some guy showed up, never there before. He had about $850 in miniatures based on current Ebay prices [probably smaller than Magic stuff even]- I never bought any of these pieces - but I would look because I was tempted because I would lose every match with regular pieces until I stumbled on a decent piece in a booster. Game was over in 2 rounds - that's all it took because the pieces were that good. Of course he won the tournament. He sniped an area with a small player base with less chances of a mega dough-rolling Ebay purchaser that could even hurt his game play. He wins a rare piece and then offers to sell it to us. His army was perfect, so his game prizes go to Ebay.

And that is one of the [many] reasons no one plays Mechwarrior anymore. But in X-Wing, all the pieces are "open source." You don't have to win a lottery buying booster packs to get a good piece.

If a secondary market was all it took to kill a game, Magic would have died long ago.

We're still trying to get the X-Wing scene going at my LGS. I would love to be able to tell people I'm trying to get interested in the game, "We have some good players that will regularly play a fun game and help you experiment with different list. Also when we have tournaments we get players from all over."

I can't be bothered to read 7 pages about something as silly as this but the fact that people actually worry about someone they deem an "outsider" taking all their "local" prizes makes me sad.

Personally, I don't see prize sniping to be a big issue at least not where I live.

One possible fix is for local stores to require preregistration and to have a player cap. Most FLGS have a certain capacity anyways. Preregistration helps FLGS make sure they can fill that capacity and also helps local players get first dibs on tournament spots. So, if a FLGS has a tournament with a cap of 16 players and the local scene has 12 people, then assuming all 12 attend the tournament, that leaves only 4 spots for out of towners.

I also think that X-Wing should institute a rating system like ELO, but that's a different matter altogether.

Do victims of prize sniping tell stories afterwards?

"We don't know who he was. He rode in one morning, tied up his horse at the gaming parlor without sayin' a word. There was something dark about him, he was dangerous and we knew it. Worst of all, he knew we knew it.

He entered the tournament, just cleaned up the joint. Yep, competitive kinda guy - Falcon list, turrets, the works. He laid into us locals pretty hard, just whooped us somethin' fierce. Yessiree, we were outmatched from the prelims to the final match. Took the top prize, he did. Us local boys could only stand together, ashamed at our poor outing against this feller and too scared to say anything.

He packed up, put on his hat, and walked right out with his prize. He mounted up but before riding outta town he turned back to us and uttered only one thing. 'I'll be back next year,' he said then rode out towards the sunset."

Do victims of prize sniping tell stories afterwards?

"We don't know who he was. He rode in one morning, tied up his horse at the gaming parlor without sayin' a word. There was something dark about him, he was dangerous and we knew it. Worst of all, he knew we knew it.

He entered the tournament, just cleaned up the joint. Yep, competitive kinda guy - Falcon list, turrets, the works. He laid into us locals pretty hard, just whooped us somethin' fierce. Yessiree, we were outmatched from the prelims to the final match. Took the top prize, he did. Us local boys could only stand together, ashamed at our poor outing against this feller and too scared to say anything.

He packed up, put on his hat, and walked right out with his prize. He mounted up but before riding outta town he turned back to us and uttered only one thing. 'I'll be back next year,' he said then rode out towards the sunset."

That's really LOL. Interesting story!

Do victims of prize sniping tell stories afterwards?

"We don't know who he was. He rode in one morning, tied up his horse at the gaming parlor without sayin' a word. There was something dark about him, he was dangerous and we knew it. Worst of all, he knew we knew it.

He entered the tournament, just cleaned up the joint. Yep, competitive kinda guy - Falcon list, turrets, the works. He laid into us locals pretty hard, just whooped us somethin' fierce. Yessiree, we were outmatched from the prelims to the final match. Took the top prize, he did. Us local boys could only stand together, ashamed at our poor outing against this feller and too scared to say anything.

He packed up, put on his hat, and walked right out with his prize. He mounted up but before riding outta town he turned back to us and uttered only one thing. 'I'll be back next year,' he said then rode out towards the sunset."

Having a story told about me like that is a big reason I play this game. Even though I fell on my face right after the cut to top 8 in my last attempt of the season (I was already pre-registered for it when I won mine), I'll savor for a long while that I walked in and went 5-0 in Swiss with 3 Interceptors, 84 points from a perfect day. And yes, I was dangerous, and yes, I knew that everyone knew it. But I forgot to wear a hat.... blast it all!

Partially kidding, partially feeling guilty about having driven 200 miles to win a SC the week prior to that.

I have driven 3 hours for a tournament myself, and not in America but in Europe, the reason however was not prize sniping but because i wanted to play a tournament at all in some time. There are simply hardly any tournaments in my vicinity, or they are so small that there is no real competition in them.

i made 2nd and on my way there i seem to have beaten, without knowing, one or two of the local cracks, one of which immediately left the tournament, saying that he only came there to win, which would be now impossible. He also showed very poor sportsmanship during the match already (just one example i had a FCS on a ship for instance and i asked if he could put the TL on the ships so i would not have to reach over the whole table. We had done this multiple times over the course of the match already, but now i was in a firm lead. Next turn of course no TL was on the ships and he made it look like a missed opportunity) Fact is that he was really pissed that i was beating him in fromt of his whole entourage.

I find it ridiculous that there are people like that who think they have a right to take all the prizes because they think they are the best players around...

I am not the worst player, but i would never go to a tournament in the firm belief that i was guaranteed a top spot, and i would actually be happy if a good player or two would come to our extremely small tournaments sonetimes, even if they would beat me!

I once prize sniped. I went down from my big city to this little town with my über list (3x TIE Bombers + 2x Academy TIEs) and reaped the pewter medal from those poor yokels. Then, a friend of mine from my city did the same thing with the same small town.

Regrettably, they got better and one of their aces came up to one of our store championships and took first.

I think we should have stopped him from doing so. After all, smaller towns have no business taking the prizes away from big cities. It's just ... unnatural.

Let's not misconstrue the OP's point because he mentioned that it included going to sparsely populated areas. That wasn't the point, and you likely know it. I'm more willing to accept the premise to the extent that I don't believe we can act like it totally has no issues, so I am biased, but let's not throw up strawmen so we can knock them down.

I can't be bothered to read 7 pages about something as silly as this but the fact that people actually worry about someone they deem an "outsider" taking all their "local" prizes makes me sad.

That said, Sanchez articulates what I was getting at.

The store championship seems to imply that it's for a local community, but it's gone beyond that. Thankfully, there's plenty of seasonal kits for those local communities to spice up their games. That's what you organize your communities around, if you don't have anything else.

Coming from a group that attended almost every store championship within 2 hours from us, I have to say this (and the fb thread) were the first time I've heard of prize sniping in this game.

Over the course of the SC season we have been unwanted at several store BY THE OWNER but never by the player base. We have met new players and the community as a whole feels stronger after our traveling season. Bottom line is that store championships have to be announced and people who want to travel and play are going to do it. If you don't want that, probably should stick to the seasonal kits.

The Lost Valley

Once, there were some gamers who became trapped in a hidden valley that was filled with jungles and mighty Dinosaurs. It was a Lost World. These gamers soon became trapped and had to live in this enclosed world. Being gamers, they soon learned to ride the dinosaurs and then to battle each other for honor and respect. Dinosaurs were bred for this and All over the Lost Valley you could see many different kinds of dinosaurs fighting each other. Dinosaurs with horns or tails or wings. They had claws and fangs and were all of different colors. People would love to attend these matches just to see what dinosaurs others would bring, as well as try to win in the Circle of Honor.

Eventually, this Lost World was discovered by two groups of people. One was a motorcycle gang (Phantoms) and the other was a military militia (YT's). They wanted to participate in the games. Soon, all the dinosaurs were dead, with the exception of the alligator (Tie Swarms). The jungles were destroyed. All matches were between motorcycles, alligators, or guys with RPGs. Many of the gamers adopted the weapons of the new comers. The new comers laughed and said "You should thank us for showing you modern weapons." Other gamers missed the savage nobility, thrill, and pageantry of the dino fights and crept back into the wild to look for any dinos that might be left.

The arena belongs to the bikers, military, and alligators.

I guess I missed the rule that says only people who live within a certain radius of a given store may win. Citation please?

The mingling of players and playstyles is only good for the game. If you are mad that you (or your local buddies) didn't win your local SC, maybe you should ask your FLGS why they allowed out-of-towners to compete.

Some of these store tournaments have really good last prizes.

My first tourney I tried really hard and came second last. I beat last place. He spread his 3 imps across the board and flew them one at a time at my 4 rebel ships. Boom, boom boom, game over. He won his choice of a large base ship!

The next few tourneys, there he was, coming last and walking away with great prizes.

The last tourney I saw him there was no last place prize. He made top 8.

We have a motto when we see him now.

The only way to defeat the "Spoon Shark" is to lose.

I am detecting some of the old Fluff vs Cheese argument coming out in this thread.

Every miniatures game has this balance and while personally I prefer the fluff, in an event where there is a prize (for winning and not the most fluffy fleet) you can't complain if you get owned. XWMG is very low on player built fluff and very high on competition, that's the game like it or not, if you don't like that then this isn't the game you are looking for.

Having said that Statistically, the higher the sample size on a standard (Gaussian) distribution the more chance of extremes. Cities have (as a massive generalization) more players so will get more chance of a very good player naturally add in the fact that finding a good mix of other players will be easier (massive generalization again) that will move the entire distribution up higher. Of course we haven't discussed the guy that drives three hours and gets pwned, but I would suggest that a smaller number of those players would bother getting beated down with the hicks in the sticks when he can get his tie advance build slapped around in his home city, he/she isn't looking for a challenge, when the best people in the city will be, you also don't complain about him because only one person wins a tournament and the three mates he had in the car to save on fuel you instantly forget.

Having said that no need to be an idiot about it

Paul Heaver in every store championship ?

That would be a great thing really

We get that opportunity more often that not in our area. Our area has a healthy competitive spirit though, and welcome so called 'outsiders'