Back in early October, my FLGS was set to hold a Massing at Sullust event on Saturday, October 3rd. As it turns out, I was getting married that same weekend and there was no way I could attend. (no matter which day of the weekend it was on).

The event was announced in September, pretty much just a few days after FFG had announced it on the website. We were on track to have about 6 +/- people at the event. With just 3 days to go, it was announced that the TO (also an FLGS employee and Armada player) had an emergency family situation on October 3rd and could not run the event. The FLGS had 2 choices:

1. Designate a community member to oversee the event and work with another store employee to handle prizing/results.

or

2. move the event to Sunday, October 4th with the original TO.

They chose number 2. In doing so, nearly everyone could no longer attend OR were not aware the event had been moved. in the end, ONE player showed up. Along with the TO, they played ONE game and paid extra to split the entire prize pack. Its also worth mentioning that the lone player that showed is not even a genuine member of our community. He lives very far away and comes to our major X-wing/Armada events to prize snipe. In fact, by the time he showed up at our event on October 4th, he had already been to TWO other massing at sullust events and won prizes.

Our community is a little butt-hurt about it. actually a lot butt-hurt. Even though I had no chance of attending, I genuinely wanted the event to happen for MY community. I wanted my friends to have a shot at those prizes. Instead, they were split between a long distance prize sniper and the TO. Its my belief that the TO insisted he run the event, since he stood to get at least 1 prize. (maybe more based on his performance)

There was also a 3rd option the store could have done. They could have not held the massing at sullust event and kept the prizes to be given out to our Armada league which wraps up in 3 weeks. Either way, we feel moving the event with such short notice to players was a horrible decision. Its as if the event never really took place since we don't really get to see the new ships in anyone hands except the TO.

Do we have any right to be upset? As a community we havent really done/said anything. The event is over, the prizing is done. so Are we being debbie downers about it?

** edit. The change of date was announced on October 2nd. 1 day before the originally planned date**

Sounds like a silent "F" in FLGS.

Did they announce the date move?

if they did, it seems pretty ok to me. Hugely disappointing for you of course, but they did nothing wrong from the scheduling point of view.

Paying to split the prize pack is a little hazier, but with only 2 players....probably no other option.

I'd actually have a bigger problem with your option 3. This pack isnt a league prize, not is it a prize just fro being in the local community. It's a tournament prize.

it was a bad decision by the FLGS for sure, but i'm not sure if it's "wrong" as such.

Yeah this smells fishy. They also could have changed the entire weekend of the event. Anytime you have to cancel something 3 days out, the re-schedules are typically a couple weeks out, to give everyone who originally wanted to participate time to readjust their schedules.

Definitely fishy, but not quite as bad as the Merlyn's Toys debacle in Prince Edward's Island.

I just checked Facebook to confirm the date change announcement. They announced the change of date on Friday, October 2nd. Not even the 3 days notice I claimed in my original post.

Then yeah, thats pretty bad. Thats close enough that to me it basically counts as "not announced" to all practical purposes.

So that does sound like a garbage LGS. My FLGS took the "TO" prize, i.e. the squadrons and broke open the pack and created a draft of choices using the squadron ships. of course 1-4 got the capital ships but 5-11 walked away with something cool too. The TO didnt take prizes at all.

I also hate prize snipers. One guy came to win a 2nd ISD and was going to see if he could ebay it for a jacked up price. I suspect he was lying about winning the first one since he got totally owned at our local MoS tournament.

Back to the topic... you have every right to be upset, as does your community. This event is meant to build community, not hide in the shadows to give just a few prerelease prizes. The fact that they didnt push it a weekend or attempt to get max attendance shows they're not interested in an armada community around your area. If that is your only LGS that makes me sad for you as well.

I had an equally shady experience with Massing at Sullust. Enough so that I have decided to never return to the store and to never play one of the players gain.

I would have everyone that had planned to attend and missed out due to the schedule change email the store owner/manager and FFG Sales about this. Option #1 was the only reasonable choice at that late notice. This is the first place I've seen the phrase "prize sniping" but I like it. It describes perfectly the practice of people going from store to store just for prizes. I don't mind if someone regularly plays at multiple stores in non-prize events, but in my opinion it's a sign of poor sportsmanship to only go to a store to take prizes away.

prize sniping happens in every game and is somewhat unavoidable.

stores giving away the TOs "cut" is kinda bull. FFG doesn't have a program in place for community drivers like other companies do where they are reimbursed for their time via product. If the store gave away the TO cut I would expect the TO to receive some kind of compensation. I would also contact FFG and report that store as that's just detrimental to the community if no one wants to run an event anymore.

Ouch with such a short notice like that it could create hardships on trying to attend. I will say though OP you have my vote to FFG to re-run the tournament with prizes for your gaming community.

prize sniping happens in every game and is somewhat unavoidable.

stores giving away the TOs "cut" is kinda bull. FFG doesn't have a program in place for community drivers like other companies do where they are reimbursed for their time via product. If the store gave away the TO cut I would expect the TO to receive some kind of compensation. I would also contact FFG and report that store as that's just detrimental to the community if no one wants to run an event anymore.

Sorry I have to call BS on this. The store gave away the TO prize becasue the TO didn't want the prize and wanted to run a better tournament. The TO is the store owner who has enough general knowledge to get a tournament running but he doesn't own the game. He wanted everyone to walk away with a prize, his prize was having people walk away with a favorable view of his store which giving away the squadrons did. I now know 11 people who are skipping the discounts on coolstuff and mini market to buy from his store b/c he is such a cool guy.

Unfortunately your game store cannot just use the Sullust prize support as a league prize support, nor can they simply have chosen to reschedule for a different weekend without FFG's explicit permission.

This sounds like a really unfortunate situation, but I don't see any other significant options that your store had if they felt like they couldn't hold it on Saturday.

prize sniping happens in every game and is somewhat unavoidable.

stores giving away the TOs "cut" is kinda bull. FFG doesn't have a program in place for community drivers like other companies do where they are reimbursed for their time via product. If the store gave away the TO cut I would expect the TO to receive some kind of compensation. I would also contact FFG and report that store as that's just detrimental to the community if no one wants to run an event anymore.

Sorry I have to call BS on this. The store gave away the TO prize becasue the TO didn't want the prize and wanted to run a better tournament. The TO is the store owner who has enough general knowledge to get a tournament running but he doesn't own the game. He wanted everyone to walk away with a prize, his prize was having people walk away with a favorable view of his store which giving away the squadrons did. I now know 11 people who are skipping the discounts on coolstuff and mini market to buy from his store b/c he is such a cool guy.

This doesn't sound like you are calling BS so much as you are explaining the situation, which is fine.

No need to get uppity, if Berger has incorrect information a simply correction should be fine, no need to "call BS" senen you are really just explaining the reality that he was unaware of.

I guess I'm a prize sniper then. Unfortunately there's no stores that hosted it locally so I had to drive to 3 stores for the weekend that were all over two and a half hours away.

I totally sold them to myself. ::eye roll::

I actually met a lot of cool people during the weekend. I would totally go back to all the stores for a weekend event, but clearly it's too far for casual play.

The store CANNOT give the prizes away NOR can they sell the kit like they did. There is a line in the booklet about a minimum number of players.

They SHOULD have emailed or called FFG and requested a reschedule. As someone who lives in Houston, a city bigger than the country of Israel, we had 5 MoS events, 2 of which were rescheduled due to FFG permission.

Also, prize sniping sucks if you live in a small town with only one or two stores. As it is in my case, I have no guilt about winning 2 of the Houston events and getting 3rd in another

This is my opinion on the matter:

For the FLGS, they should have used Option 1 unless they were unable to obtain someone to fill that role on such short notice. Otherwise, what they did was the best they could.

As for the "prize sniper", I think that whole outlook is stupid. Just because you and your group frequent a store, that should not discourage others from participating for fear of being labeled a "prize sniper". As said before, the prizes are not supposed to be for leagues (unless I guess they specifically purchase kits for that? I don't know all the rules around that with FFG and LGSs). I think getting hurt because no one in the group was able to attend and a guy who traveled to get there won the loot is pretty petty.

I agree. Outsiders winning in your store is fine...nothing wrong with "prize sniping". I used to travel all over for Warmachine tournaments. That's just the nature of competive play.

My local Sullust event was plagued by a bunch of no-shows. It ended up being 3 people, with the TO/Store owner stepping in as one of the 3 so that we could actually play a round robin.

I took first prize and bought 3rd prize off the 3rd place guy while the TO took second prize.

I'm not sure what he was supposed to do vis a vis the rules regarding the remaining items, but "paying more to split them" sounds like some serious bull. I know I offered the store owner to buy the remaining prizes at the end of the event and he said it wasn't allowed!

He decided to use the remaining prizes in a future tournament to encourage the growth of our local Armada community.

Please note that he is a huge Armada fan and I could virtually see him salivating at the possibility of owning the rest of the prizes, and he could also have sold them to me at a profit, but he did neither of those things because he has integrity.

The situation you describe sounds like a violation of the rules, if not in letter then in spirit and should be reported.

Actually keeping them for future events is also a violation of the rules, even though done for good intentions. It's not quite as black and white as "he split them so was wrong".

Prize Sniping huh? Man, I can't help but feel that is bad phrasing.

I feel you are disappointed that the event wasn't changed to a later date more accommodating to your 'local group'. Understandable. The attitude versus 'outsiders' could use an adjustment though.

Thinking back to the Sullust event attended, it seemed messed up. At our tournament, there were only four of us that we're in the tournament. That was great, because I knew I was walking away with something! However, there was no TO from the store so the four of us ran it ourselves. This raised another question of who would get the 5th prize, since no one from the store was running the event and it was being ran by the players. I figured one of the players would get the prize, but in the end the store kept the 5th prize. I thought it was weird that the store claimed a prize without running it!

Thinking back to the Sullust event attended, it seemed messed up. At our tournament, there were only four of us that we're in the tournament. That was great, because I knew I was walking away with something! However, there was no TO from the store so the four of us ran it ourselves. This raised another question of who would get the 5th prize, since no one from the store was running the event and it was being ran by the players. I figured one of the players would get the prize, but in the end the store kept the 5th prize. I thought it was weird that the store claimed a prize without running it!

I know my local store raffles off the TO ship for their Star Trek Attack Wing kits amoung the players who did not win 1st or 2nd (since those already get a ship). I think that would probably be the most ideal solution.

Thinking back to the Sullust event attended, it seemed messed up. At our tournament, there were only four of us that we're in the tournament. That was great, because I knew I was walking away with something! However, there was no TO from the store so the four of us ran it ourselves. This raised another question of who would get the 5th prize, since no one from the store was running the event and it was being ran by the players. I figured one of the players would get the prize, but in the end the store kept the 5th prize. I thought it was weird that the store claimed a prize without running it!

I know my local store raffles off the TO ship for their Star Trek Attack Wing kits amoung the players who did not win 1st or 2nd (since those already get a ship). I think that would probably be the most ideal solution.

I just thought it was messed up to just keep the prize and not do anything with it :/

That is pretty messed up. If it is deemed "prize support" it should be used as such. I have seen some stores take the TableTop Day promos and put them straight up on eBay instead of using them in-store like intended. To each their own, I guess.

Prize Sniping huh? Man, I can't help but feel that is bad phrasing.

I feel you are disappointed that the event wasn't changed to a later date more accommodating to your 'local group'. Understandable. The attitude versus 'outsiders' could use an adjustment though.

Being a player that currently travels to participate in big events I'll second that.