TO(REP): Putting on a largeish tournament - 32 players

By Jyico, in X-Wing Battle Reports

Not quite a batrep... but I wrote an article for the Back to Dials podcast about my experience running the 2015 Colorado Store Wars. Here's the full article if you want to read all of it (its lengthy!), it includes a bunch of links and pictures:

http://www.backtodials.com/tos-report-colorado-store-wars-2015-by-jon-conley/

This was not your standard 100 point tournament with 5 rounds, it was 3 different formats throughout 5 rounds, and all were done with "team" in mind. You can check out the facebook page for the tournament here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/122335728121254/

And here's the last part for discussion, Things I have learned:

  1. Accept help. Seriously. I took on EVERYTHING, to make absolute sure it worked perfectly. I didn’t need to do this. I will be accepting help for sure next time! The last week before this event I was an anxious wreck, in both work and home. I’m so thankful that there were a handful of people willing to setup, and especially tear down the event as I was very late to my xmas party.
  2. Making sure that players knew the formats, rules, etc, at least 2 months out was a huge key to the success of this event. If you’re going to put on an event like this, get everything straight well beforehand, and make SURE the players know what they’re getting into so they can plan! Contact all relevant parties, get it as far ahead of time as you can because if something goes wrong it won’t cancel the event, you can recover.
  3. Really, REALLY brainstorm ideas to make things fun (or make the event yours). Achievement prizes were one-off repaints of ships that no one has seen before. To be honest, I’m not sure the players noted the differences in the ships because I repackaged them in their original packaging. Make it special! The wooden coins are imprinted as “2015 Store Wars by AQ”. I went well out of my way to make sure AQ’s team stuff was… team stuff that has also not been seen before (custom range rulers in 3 different colors of acrylic, all glued together). I’m not even sure anyone cared about the Winter kit stuff that they got, not near as much as the coins and experience. It wasn’t an “official” FFG tournament, just one I did to shake things up and focus on fun in the game. And IT WORKED!!! Whatever your event, put some serious thought into making it yours, and make it special if you can. Give players an experience they won’t get elsewhere and they’ll greatly appreciate it!
  4. If you’re above 16 players, have 2 TO’s. I’m glad Jacob was there to help me out when I needed it. He fielded more TO duties than I saw for sure. Not to mention being able to roam around and get pictures is good for your event!
  5. Plan time accordingly. Give yourself an hour or so of makeup time throughout the day. I made sure people were placing obstacles before I started the clock, which I probably didn’t have to do. I made sure they had 30 minutes for lunch, time to ask questions, get beer, etc. I’m sure that’s why the event went over by 2.5 hours. 15 minutes is probably the right amount of time between rounds, but definitely NOT when changing formats throughout the day. Also, don’t do more than 2 formats. Listbuilding is a nightmare!
  6. You can’t thank your help or sponsors enough. Yes, Jacob sold some core sets, acrylic sets, and the prize ships were “sold” to the tournament at cost. And the tokens were mixed in there. But he closed his store for an entire Saturday to do this tournament. I had a board/plaque created for the winners with all sponsors of the event on it, and I made sure the Back to Dials announcers properly announced sponsors, etc. The last part of this is… the sponsors did the time, so please buy stuff from them. I didn’t have any worries about the brewery, but these things don’t get done on the goodness of people’s hearts. They have to financially make sense!
  7. A final note on the prizes again – I originally asked for help with the repaints, but in the end decided to push my own limits on repaints and modifications to make them special to this event. I will probably be doing this again in the future, and welcomed the chance to give someone something they can’t get anywhere else. Check the pictures and you’ll see what I mean. While the players were probably okay with just getting the achievement ships, I had people calling me out to run something like this again, and soon! I think the “original” prizes had something to do with this.