You might not remember but I wrote a very critical of the regional held in MI last year. After quite a bit of thought, I decided to give this regional venue another shot. Time for me to eat my words as they stepped up their game and turned their venue into a great event.

The complaints that I had about the event last year were heard and fixed, the event was smooth and is 100% better than it was last season.

Doors opened at 0730, pairings were placed at about 0930. The start time was initially supposed to be at 0900, but with 120 people, I don't think I have ever seen a tournament that size get off the ground on time. Format was a little different than standard with round times being 90 minutes to include setup. This was a hard 90 minutes, with the judge calling dice down when the time went off (instead of finishing the round). I think this put some people on edge in the first round, but overall it seemed like 90 minutes was more than enough to get everyone set up and finished each game. The only thing that I would like to see them do differently next year is make sure everyone is aware (in the initial meeting) that when the 90 min timer goes off, you will not be able to finish the round.

Judging was better this time around. I don't know if this is because there are less confusing interactions in the game or if the judges were all around better. Probably both. Regardless, I didn't hear of any player having a bad game because of a judges call, which is good.

The event space in Wixom is awesome, there were plenty of space and tables that could handle all of the players with reasonable side table. Luckily there were enough mats that very few players were playing on a taped off space.

The food was great. They brought a cart in that people could go to all day between rounds (there was no lunch break). If you go i strongly suggest the mac and cheese.

Finally, even though this was a one day event (a long day to be sure) it felt reasonable. The TO kept all the event running smoothly, and there was only one time that the tables needed to be repaired. I dont know if this was the fault of the TO or players, regardless, they fixed it quickly. The cut started around 8pm, which for 4 matches was a much better time than last year.

I can say with certainty that for the 122 players that were at the event, this was a huge accomplishment. Everything I was upset with last year, they listened to and fixed, which really tells you a lot. I would expect next season for this store to smooth out the wrinkles they have and make this an even better place to play. I'll be going back, hope to see you there too.

While I disagreed with some of your complaints for their first one, it's hard to debate that this past weekend's event was top notch. From my recollection, the complaints (of a few) from the first event were:

1) Dirty bathrooms

2) Limited knowledge TOs

3) Lack of table space

Each of these issues were addressed by the store. 1) They opened up the women's bathroom as a unisex, and cleaned them multiple times throughout the day. As someone who likes to stop into the restroom before each round, I never saw them to be anything but clean.

2) In addition to the local store TO, they imported ParaGoombaSlayer to also be a TO. While PGS may have polarizing views and opinions, it's hard to argue that he doesn't know the game and the rules very well.

3) This was the only issue I had last time, which was resolved as the day went on. But this time they doubled up almost all of the tables to provide ~1ft of space in front of each player. It would have been a bit tight on the last tables if they had the full 130 that they established the cap (last week) at, but by only needing 5 tables on each of the last two rows (instead of 7), it left plenty of space to the side of each play area.

As you pointed out, EJ's hot dogs were great. This needs to become the standard operating procedure for these regionals. The only down side would be if you're someone who plays a TIE swarm, though I can't say that I saw any of those on the tables. I say that because the lack of dedicated lunch time means that you have to get some food at the end of one of your games, preferably one that you finished with lots of time remaining. The only thing I could say might be that you take a specific round (perhaps R3) and say that you're going to wait 20 min before posting the pairings again, perhaps with the plee to the gamers to let those who have a TIE swarm-esque list take priority at the food source during that time. It would really only result in like a 10min delay to the overall tourney, but it would prevent anyone from having to go all day without a food break. I don't know if this was actually an issue for anyone or not, but it seems like a simple solution that doesn't hurt anyone.

And any review of the event would be incomplete without mentioning the stream they accommodated. While the credit for the logistics of the stream (the secondary dice camera overlaid onto the main screen, commentation to keep the audience aware of what is going on, etc) belong to Phil who ran it, you have to give the store some credit for setting it up in the front of the store, separated from the gaming space in the rear. This really helped keep the ambient noise to a minimum.

Finally, just a comment on the timing and 1 day decision vs. 2 day decision. I strongly advocate for a 1 day event in all scenarios. I really don't like 2 day events. Starting the event at 9am made a 6 round, cut to top 16 possible to contain within 1 day. I've heard the arguments for early starts before, which primarily circle around folks not being able to drive in from a far distance that morning. As far as I can tell, a 9am start is still late enough for about a 3hr drive (based off of when I have to get up to go to work) - much more than that and I can't say that I'd be up for driving before the tourney anyways. The only thing worse than making sleeping arrangements for Saturday night and not making the cut, is making sleeping arrangements for Saturday night and getting eliminated first thing on Sunday. At least when it is a single day, you can just head home and say "well, I made the cut!" Meanwhile, with it being a 2 day event, one must have both days open, even though only ~10% of the participants actually need the second day. It seems like a much friendlier method to have it be a 1 day event, with 10% of them being dead to the world on Sunday instead of 90% of them erronomously planning for a 2 day event. And as to the rebuttal regarding side events on day 2 so that all may participate, until these become officially supported by FFG and have prizes worth winning, then I'll stick to my case that it's not worth it. I realize most of this is FFG's OP decision, but I figured that if they're reading any reviews of the venues they select, they might read an opinion on 1 day vs. 2 day.

Re: 90 minute rounds and hard time cap

I'll take the blame on the confusion on that one. It was something I meant to address more adequately at the front end and simply forgot to do so in my pre-tournament player meeting.

For those who weren't there, the 90 minute round comes from the idea of there being the requirement for 15 minutes of set up to go with 75 minute rounds. It really isn't logistically feasible to keep calling out different start times and not create confusion, so we opted to simply combine the two and go from there.

Since this creates, in most cases, an extra couple minutes of game time for most tables, we called it a hard end to the round - dice down, ships done moving. This is, again, done to keep the event moving. When we allowed for the one last turn back in the spring, we would see that last extra turn drag on as long as an extra thirty minutes. Players had a tendency to slow way down and overthink compared to their original time. With the volume of people we had, that simply isn't an option.

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Re: late start

If you're local, you'll understand - I-96 was jacked up, delaying a large number of our Canadian east side local players. We still had 20+ people walking in to check in as late as 9:20 through no fault of their own. The players were amazingly understanding of this, and I don't think it had much of a long term impact. We still got 6 rounds done in 10 hours, which was awesome.

Re: 90 minute rounds and hard time cap

I'll take the blame on the confusion on that one. It was something I meant to address more adequately at the front end and simply forgot to do so in my pre-tournament player meeting.

For those who weren't there, the 90 minute round comes from the idea of there being the requirement for 15 minutes of set up to go with 75 minute rounds. It really isn't logistically feasible to keep calling out different start times and not create confusion, so we opted to simply combine the two and go from there.

Since this creates, in most cases, an extra couple minutes of game time for most tables, we called it a hard end to the round - dice down, ships done moving. This is, again, done to keep the event moving. When we allowed for the one last turn back in the spring, we would see that last extra turn drag on as long as an extra thirty minutes. Players had a tendency to slow way down and overthink compared to their original time. With the volume of people we had, that simply isn't an option.

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Re: late start

If you're local, you'll understand - I-96 was jacked up, delaying a large number of our Canadian east side local players. We still had 20+ people walking in to check in as late as 9:20 through no fault of their own. The players were amazingly understanding of this, and I don't think it had much of a long term impact. We still got 6 rounds done in 10 hours, which was awesome.

Again, compared to my complaints last year, these are incredibly minor. Good work.