Besides the Quarterly kits, what prize support do you guys see offered in tournaments?

At the Atlanta Regional, in addition to FFG prizes, there were T-shirts for the top 64, and drawings each round- including a $5 store credit (I used for snacks), lanyards, and other goodies to be given away. The top 2 also got a Lightsaber Pizza Cutter and a few other items. Pretty good for $20.

At a recent Local tournament, there were choice of ships from wave 10 to the top 4, store credit, a Hoth mat, acrylic target lock tokens from Recreator Studios, and Star Wars vinyl shopping bags. Everybody got something and the entry fee was $10.

There is an upcoming tournament that will give $120 Cash to the winner and varying store credit to 2nd-8th finishers. Entry is $20.

I'm a little leery of the cash prize and bigger prizes in local tournaments, because it tends to draw out mostly Meta lists and players that are ultra competitive from neighboring states - but is likely OK if it doesn't become a constant thing. I really like the $5-10 monthly OP that is mostly local players with a variety of creative lists.

I've recommended to the shop I go to that it's a good idea to try to make sure everybody gets a little something to encourage the new players to come back. This might mean buying a batch of Palp or C3PO tokens that cost around $1 each and giving them out, but coming home with a new trinket is usually incentive to come the next time.

We recently had a $20 tournament where the top prize was an Epic ship and I heard one of the new guys complaining about paying $20 to get crushed by the more experienced players and not winning any games. I reached into my bag and gave him some extra alt art cards. I encouraged him to come back to the $5 monthly tournament where there would be less Meta lists and it would likely be more fun for him while he was learning.

I believe there is a balance between playing for fun and having competitive tournaments that can work and not turn the game into something that gets predictable and limits new players.

At the Coolstuff Games stores here in Central Florida they've started giving away painted ships as prizes from a local painter. Also store credit is given away at most tournaments, usually around 40 or 50 for first and then decreasing for the top 4 or 8. That's in addition to kits.

I don't want to see cash prizes. I know that tournament prizes can be sold for cash and that's on the winners if they want to, but cash prizes make the game a very different prospect, and with the best will in the world it doesn't have the mechanical rigor to support a cash-prize structure.

What I'd really like to see is USEFUL alt-arts. Not Red Ace, not Hera, but cards people actually *use* regularly. They did this with C-3PO and it was great, so why not some other commonly-used but difficult-to-access cards. Autothrusters, maybe...

All the stores in my area have a different take on it, with some changing it up with every other tournament it seems.

If a new wave is out, 1st-3rd usually get to pick one of the new ships for free. Sometimes the entry-fee is divided up into a pot of store credit among the top 3, with a bit set aside for last place. Other times its the normal kit awards, and sometimes it just getting to raid the box of old, leftover promo stuff.

Edit: One store did do an epic tournament with a Tantive as the prize, once.

One of the flgs does $5 tournaments just for kits and the other does $10 tournaments with kits + entry fee split back in store credit to the top 3. Both are good enough for me, especially since it's so cheap.

At one local FLGS, the usual TO has a huge stash of official swag to add to the pile of whatever is in the store kit. Usually, people get to pick one thing from the pile, in the order they finished, and then the big prizes (mats, ships, etc) get raffled off among everyone. It ensures that you don't have to win to have a shot at the cool stuff.

For Regionals (at another store), I know we each got an Emperor coin, that I only found again a week later in my stuff, and those that didn't get the Vader/Luke father day card could get one as well, but I don't think there were other things. I may be wrong as I was completely fried by the end of the 9th game and just wanted to head home. Seeing as I got all the swag except for the trophy, I didn't give it a second thought.

I like the approach of "everyone gets something." And I like that a lot of it is not based on rankings, it promotes a more casual atmosphere.

I'm 99.9% positive that the store you are talking about is Ready to Play, which has me scratching my head trying to figure out who you are, OP. I've got it narrowed down to a couple choices though.

I've only been to OP events and store tourneys that are not FFG official and I don't ever place that high, so I can't say I have too much preference regarding top prizes. I like that the OP events I go to don't get a huge amount of people and almost everyone is guaranteed to get something from an OP kit; seeing people talk about regular OP events in big cities where 100 people show up just has me like "Naw, I'm good with the events I've been attending." Sure, I like competing and just being around other X-Wing players and talking about X-Wing, but I also enjoy walking away with something. So for $5 entry, an alt-art upgrade card and an official promo token or two is good enough for me. Hopefully the "tractor beams reserved for top two" thing from the last kit doesn't become a trend, because I'll never be rewarded with an official promo token again if that is the case.

Money as a prize could go either way for me. At the moment, I own at least one of everything currently released. If a new wave came out and an event coincided with that, then great! Use the money to buy ships. Right now there isn't anything I really need right now though, so the first place prize at upcoming event in April of $120 isn't too terribly exciting to me. Don't get me wrong, I feel like an $120 extra in my pocket is better than an empty pocket. The hope from the store with money as a prize is more than likely that you will spend it in the store, and I can't think of anything I'd buy in there right now. Maybe some more dial upgrades and bases? Okay, I've got $100 left, what now? Money could be really handy when a big event like Nationals or Worlds is coming up. The event in April with $120 as first place prize lists it as travel money, which made me think that it was intended to be used to travel to Worlds. But by the time the event happens, sign-ups for Worlds will have long been over or filled. So maybe if a store tried to sign up for a seat at a large event, that could be a good prize. But then you run into stuff like the person can't afford to go, or can't take time off, or whatever. All of that might be rather tricky to implement at a small store.

I do like the idea of exclusive local or regional items though. I saw a sticker on someone's carrying case of a Palmetto tree with a Death Star over it and the text "That's no moon..." or something, resembling the SC state flag of a Palmetto tree with a crescent moon over it. I guess it was the logo or something of a group from upstate and they had items made up with that design on it. That seemed like a cool idea. The idea of getting tokens made to give away seems good too. Something real quick, cheap, and easy could be something like the Critical Hit reminder tokens that Curled Paw makes. I ordered some recently and they aren't located too far from here, so I received them quickly. They look nice and don't deviate a ton from the official tokens (which is what I look for in a third-party token, does it still look similar to the original design?). They are nice stand-ins for the official acrylic Crit tokens, because those cost way more than I care to spend on them, so I'll never own any of them. And if someone doesn't particularly like them, no one really uses them anyway! So they can just file them away in their storage solution and not worry about them down the line. So that does seem like a great idea for winning prizes or even just participation prizes. Maybe one of these third-party token makers could even do a small discount if you wanted to place a bulk order and have a ton made up to cover multiple future events (might be good publicity for them too, if they sent along a ton of business cards with storefront or etsy links on them and requested they be included with the items you were giving away)

I was thinking recently about prize support if I were to try to arrange a tournament. Our local group in Sumter was trying to get something going at the store in-town but the owner seems reluctant to order OP kits and has missed the deadline for Summer kits anyway I believe, so it had me thinking about what could be handed out if a tournament was ran there (we probably won't be able to get anything going at that store anyway though). I am currently in the process of ordering a really sweet plexiglass template set from MagicWorks in Italy; they did the amazing TIE artwork template set/tray that the guy from StayOnTheLeader has. So I was thinking about the logistics of having them custom make a prize for a hypothetical event. Something like that could be a really cool first place prize, especially if there was something local like I mentioned further up in my post that was added onto it custom, or the store or group name. Depending on the turnout, a $50~ item as the prize might be an easy thing to do. And even if it is a low turnout, giving something custom and unique to someone would be a pretty rewarding feeling. Or whenever I pull out my wooden tournament/template tray around someone who hasn't seen it, they always ask where I got it. I tell them where I got mine (Trollworks) and then mention that I know people who have nice ones from another company (Highbridge). Man, even my super-cheap token holder that I ordered on Etsy, which was just something they 3-D printed, gets a lot of comments and praise. So items that people could use to make their gaming easier (token holders, template holders, damage deck holders, whatever) might be gifts that would be appreciated.

I don't know, all of the above is just kind of rambling on my part. I believe it is all pretty coherent though. I might clean it up later but I essentially had a stream of thoughts regarding the topic title and just started hammering them out. I guess I think I like the idea of physical items that may or may not be custom or unique being given out over money, but I think money has its place as a prize at times too.

As a general rule, I like to see any additional prizes focused on extra participation prizes, or at least on players lower down than the top cut. The top players will already be getting extra goodies from the event kit, so I feel it's best to offer some extra prize support for a wider range of players to help grow interest.

11 hours ago, Jarval said:

As a general rule, I like to see any additional prizes focused on extra participation prizes, or at least on players lower down than the top cut. The top players will already be getting extra goodies from the event kit, so I feel it's best to offer some extra prize support for a wider range of players to help grow interest.

I completely agree with this. Our store frequently has the same 2 or 3 players at the top. Having something for lower players to fight over is always good.

Getting prize support out of my local stores is like trying to milk a rock. I've just quit trying. We get our store kit events about once a month and I go enjoy that.

More tokens!

I'm fine with top 2/3 getting a tokens in some sort of rotation (Per quarter maybe?).

Focus - Evade - Stress - Other

Repeat, changing the designs for each iteration.

Also, multi-faction upgrade cards as "Entry Prizes". As a Rebel player I was a little disappointed that the entry prize for the system open was an alt art Vader that I'll never use.

Expertise / BoShek / Autothrusters / Seismic Torpedoes?

Just make sure everyone can use it. We get a lot of new players locally and getting useful cards would encourage more tournament participation.

My local tournaments just gives store credit based on how many entrants. That said, since basically the same 2-3 people won every time, we've also switched to a lottery system. Basically you get one entry for entering and one entry for every game you win. You also get a free entry if it's your first time coming to one. Usually ends up with three people walking out with enough credit to buy a new ship.

Store credit is the main thing around here and usually a last place or randomly drawn door prize.

one thing I like is that local stores are doing 2 tractor beam tokens for each of the top 5 instead of 5 for the top two. After all who needs five tractor beam tokens?

We usually have a laserbrain prize for the person who ended up last. Gives everyone a chance to get something.

Our regional in Vancouver is probably one of the more expensive ones around, but this past event, everyone got lasercut movement template trays and dice trays and a lunch was also included. Made for more efficient movement in between rounds.

Our local stores usually give out prize kits and store credit, but a couple actually hold back the T.O. prizes from the current kits as well as older swag to use as prizes for a future tournament. Last year someone walked away with a set of the original target locks from way back when.