I have two local stores in my area. One has held various tournaments and has prize support. Yet the turn outs haven't been that great. Another store in town seems like they just rather not be hassled by doing tournaments and sells their prize / promo items on ebay. I feel prize kits getting ebayed does hurt the turn outs a little. Look at any store championship. Limited prizes drew out plenty.

A business needs to make money. I get it. Is fantasy flight ok with stores selling their kits online? I see a lot of prize kits especially for imperial assault online going for 80+ dollars and individual items like acrylics and cards fetching a fairly good penny. I don't think FFG makes these kits with the intention of them just being sold. I'm sure they would charge the stores more money if that was the case.

I've been looking on the forums and I've found nothing of this being an issue with anyone. Just wondering if I'm alone in feeling the players who support the game are getting hosed when a store sells the tournament prizes. The store that does sell the prizes has what I call a Magic Mentality. Their main focus seems to buy sell trade in magic cards. The players seem to only care about the value of what they pull rather then playing the game. This store only stays open late 1 night a week to support magic. 2 nights if its some big event.

you could ask the store. Maybe they held an even and no one showd up, it has happened. You can send an email to FFG and bring it to their attention.

It comes up from time to time in the X-wing thread. My understanding is that FFG finds out they will no longer sell kits to that store. This is of course hear say.

It's fairly easy to get hold of an OP kit for any game because stores don't have to run the tournament themselves, or have it held at the store, or report the results to FFG.

That changes when it comes to store championships and regionals, when one of those kits gets ebayed ffg will know which store it came from and take action.

What I don't understand is why anyone would bother buying prizes. I mean, I wouldn't mind an Imperial Assault Dice bag if I got the chance to acquire one, but the medals and cards and such I don;t understand the motivation to buy something that people generally have to win, other than to attempt to look better at the game than you necessarily are. Which just seems a little...sad.

What I don't understand is why anyone would bother buying prizes. I mean, I wouldn't mind an Imperial Assault Dice bag if I got the chance to acquire one, but the medals and cards and such I don;t understand the motivation to buy something that people generally have to win, other than to attempt to look better at the game than you necessarily are. Which just seems a little...sad.

It's simply collecting. A lot of people do it.

I'm certainly looking to pick up all the promo cards with alternate artwork that come out, but purely for completionist reasons not to "look good at the game". If I can get them by taking part in a tournament at my FLGS, great. If I can't, eBay it is... I don't see the harm in that.

I'd draw the line at trophies, though. That's not a promotional item, it's an actual prize, and I would never buy one of those. But that's just me; plenty of collectors don't recognise a difference (think about all those medal collectors who never, for example, actually fought in World War II) and I wouldn't condemn them for it.

As for people selling... well, if an FLGS put on a tournament and only three people turned up, who can blame them for putting all the spares on eBay? I presume these tournament kits aren't free so they probably want to recoup their costs (probably make a profit actually). Buying the kit through trade sales, only to sell the whole thing on eBay... yeah, that's not cool, that's not what it's for. But selling individual cards that weren't given out in the tournament? Don't see a problem there.

Collecting is good and all but ebaying prize kits is almost a crime act if done by the stores. They are given the stuff in order to promote the game - yet they do the opposite by creating expensive collectible items which tend to scare off some customers.

I think these stores who sell the prize kits have gotten use to just selling them on ebay. These are probable stores who don't even hold store tournaments. But this will hurt the honest stores who don't sell prize kits. And when a game is in its early stages like IA I feel it hurts it even more. Hope FFG gets on this.

Why should customers be "scared off" by things on eBay?

I bought a Luke Skywalker alternate art card for £10 from eBay. Most new players won't even be aware that it exists. All new players can just use the standard one that comes in the box. Why on earth should anyone be scared away from playing the game by my collectors' instincts and poor financial self-control? Don't be silly.

The kit not being intended for eBay but intended instead for tournaments, alright, fair enough. But again - suppose they run an IA tournament, get 17 cards to give away and only 10 people enter. Is it really "almost a crime act" to make use of the remaining seven? I can see that flogging the entire kit wholesale is crossing a line, but otherwise, so what?

Not everyone as the time to dedicate to the tournaments and so would miss out on alternative arts and other nice things for their IA collection, so I believe KITs should be made available to all.

I dont have any time to go to them either I bought my KIT off eBay from a place in the US.

I have added the Luke and Trooper cards to my decks and hung the medal up on wall as a kool SW collectible, the counters have been added to the other counters and I use the pouches as additional storage for dice and counters.

I can't speak for this game or FFG but I have a game club at work (lucky, right!) and since many companies require an official brick and mortar game store to order prize kits I've looked into things like this in the past for other games for running events, since I think it would be fun to have prize support (and would add to the already big geek decorating factor of our cubicles). For instance, I once reused medals I won at a Warmachine tournament for a tournie for new players, just to be able to give them something cool.

Anyway, I definitely understand (and agree with) the concept of earning vs. buying medals/coins/etc. but I'm just throwing this out there to show there are some legit cases for people looking for things like this. I haven't checked FFG's policy on requiring a store vs. being a club yet so it may not apply here, but it has come up for me in the past. I'm sure it will come up soon, though, as we've already played Imperial Assault at the club a few times and a few more people already want to learn, so it's catching on quick!