Yup, being at home with the kid is letting my mind do crazy things. Lets say you win lotto/powerball/or are independently Bill Gates and love X-Wing. You want to put on the best/most fun/whatever tournament you can, and you have a cool million bucks to do it.

Mine would be using the million to draw the major event TO's into a tournament where they play (or 128 of 'em), and all the world champs are the judges. I'd pay all their airfare and hotel (and you know it would probably be in Vegas) and a good stipend for the weekend for each attendee. Schwag would be ridiculously awesome, like carbon fiber templates for everyone with gold plated etching, etc. The trophy would have to be shipped home I'm sure. I'd get the Mynocks and Krayts to do the streaming commentary on the first and last tables, but not tell them which game they are commenting on (buy all the gear for them to convince them to come). The final round would be boxing style: Judges mark down for good moves, excellent flying, best strategy, list building expertise, and the winner would be declared by judge decision. Untimed of course. And naturally to throw a HUGE monkey wrench in the whole ordeal I'd make it 100 points with all faction restrictions removed, or have that be the day 2 tourney just for the silliness of it.

What does your dream tournament look like?

It sounds like you went more than a million dollars over your budget. ;-)

Id have everyone wearing gold plated diapers, and cowbell everywhere! You know what a million dollar tourney needs? More cowbell

Stripper poles and black jack, no in fact forget the black jack.

A tournament pretty much like worlds only with full tournaments for Hangar Bay, Escalation, Epic, and Standard X-Wing, a campaign event, and official streaming support for the top tables in all events.

Add in prize support for each of the events, as well as for great paint jobs or unique and thematic squad lists, and make the admission fee really low and sell food/drink at cost. It'd probably have to be a 2 or 3 day event to fit all of the events so I'd cover lodging for each TO and travel costs for any former world or system open winner or runner up. Could probably swing that for $1m

16 minutes ago, piznit said:

Id have everyone wearing gold plated diapers, and cowbell everywhere! You know what a million dollar tourney needs? More cowbell

And bacon ?. Mmmmmm bacon ?.

In before this devolves into a criticism of FFG...

Five grand on the hall, tables and water for the entrants*.
Nine hundred and ninety five thousand on a free bar, food and giant pandas AND BACON .

Cheers
Baaa

*Water is for those entrants who are anti-social.

49 minutes ago, mdl0114 said:

A tournament pretty much like worlds only with full tournaments for Hangar Bay, Escalation, Epic, and Standard X-Wing, a campaign event, and official streaming support for the top tables in all events.

Add in prize support for each of the evenst, as well as for great paint jobs or unique and thematic squad lists, and make the admission fee really low and sell food/drink at cost. It'd probably have to be a 2 or 3 day event to fit all of the events so I'd cover lodging for each TO and travel costs for any former world or system open winner or runner up. Could probably swing that for $1m

Consider yourself chastised for taking the great opportunity that has been presented for you to be childish and being so **** sensible.

Cheers
Baaa

This isn't the whole million, but I'd have special target locks made for prizes. They would be made out of metal, gold for first, silver for second, bronze top 4, aling with a bunch of other types available for other achievements. Stuff like steel, cobalt, titanium, and copper for getting wins. Throw in a few target locks made of tungsten for special achievments. Think how awesome it would be to toss out a tungsten target lock and feel the table shake.

Mandalorian Open.

Winner gets £1m.

Losers get executed.

No risk no reward. ?

Why not dream big? Make it a Billion dollar budget. Play-ins get all the fancy swag. Final four get tickets on Space-X or whatever Branson is calling his space plane, and the finals are actually played in space.

Bonus points for whoever makes the best "pew pew" sounds.

Small scale tournament, maybe 64 people. The arena looks like the Death star hanger bay. Rebel players dressed as rebel pilots, Imperial players as Tie pilots or officers if they've got any large ships, Fringe players get to choose what to wear as long as it's thematic.

Build a 1/270 scale ISD. I run all the guns on it. Allies deploy TIEs from my hangar bays. Foes attempt to blow up the ISD. We play in an empty warehouse.

Waiters walk around with amuse bouches all day. And wine and beer. Winners drink 25 year old whisky.

And the only toilet seats are in the bathrooms. Where they belong.

It looks like a regular tournament. Except at the end I get a million dollars for running it.

Million bucks? We x-wing in the west wing now, boys!

I'd have it at elstree studios in England.

James Earl Jones and mark hammil doing commentary on the stream.

I'd put George Lucas wearing a jar jar Binks hat in a dunk tank outside.

Participation prize is a cameo in a crowd scene for episode 9

Top 16 gets a star wars coloring book

Finalist wins one of my old shoelaces and a ice cube.

4 hours ago, Biophysical said:

This isn't the whole million, but I'd have special target locks made for prizes. They would be made out of metal, gold for first, silver for second, bronze top 4, aling with a bunch of other types available for other achievements. Stuff like steel, cobalt, titanium, and copper for getting wins. Throw in a few target locks made of tungsten for special achievments. Think how awesome it would be to toss out a tungsten target lock and feel the table shake.

^^ This

+ this:

+ this:

+ this:

50 minutes ago, wurms said:

^^ This

+ this:

+ this:

+ this:

That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

Holograms. Lots and lots of holograms. Players key in moves with dials and the ships move themselves!

I'd throw a big all-expenses-paid three day weekend bash at the new Star Wars Theme Park in Disneyland for all the folks in the community who contribute their valuable time for free: the podcasters (shout out to S&V Podcast and its patreons , thanks for paying for listjuggler's hosting fees guys!), the league organizers, charity organizers, the TOs, and the software developers (list builders, Vassal authors, results aggregators, etc).

At said bash we'd do a team draft and drinks on Friday night, capped off with charity exhibition match between Heaver and ... uh ... Kelvan? :-) On Saturday we'd play the team tournament using the drafts from the previous night, and then a rager of a party on Saturday night. On Sunday we'd do casual/experimental stuff like Hunger Games , Mario Cart , and a state of the union live podcast/vidcast, followed by a nice meal somewhere.

Finally Monday, take everyone to the theme park to get their Star Wars on, and then fly everyone back that night or Tuesday morning, depending on their preferences.

Make it a bonafide world tournament: Free travel and accommodation to nationals champs, and all previous worlds champs winners. Every table is streamed (Not least for judging capabilities given the prizes at stake), and a coverage team that makes sure that we're tracking the most interesting/promising lineups on a couple dedicated match streams. With the streams, see if you can't get sponsorship and/or at least televising on some cable channel or the like, because why the heck not?

The website has the full details of everyones' lists - submitted ahead of time but only revealed on the day - and prize support with real prestige items - I like Biophysical's idea of target-locks-as-medals, with simple aluminium ones for various awards. Heck, they could even be anodized for different achievements.

It's run as a two day event, if it can at all be swung - swiss the first day, top cut the second, and a consolation-style-game for those that don't make the cut and want to keep playing.

Rest of the money is spent on making the venue as swish as possible, with proper seating, tables, and air conditioning available, along with free water on every table, and a dedicated admin staff to help keep things running smoothly between rounds for pairing, announcements, and general inquiries on the day. This leaves the judges to actually judge, and makes /their/ life all the easier. Yeah, that last bit is important.

5 minutes ago, sozin said:

At said bash we'd do a team draft and drinks on Friday night, capped off with charity exhibition match between Heaver and ... uh ... Kelvan? :-)

I don't know pheaver's constitution, but my guess is that you could make the game a lot closer if both players pre-gamed a 6-pack of Natural Light.

Me, and a bunch of promotional models I have paid to push Star Wars spaceships around. Maybe have some kickass bands playing.

Oh, and I guess a couple guys to set up and run a live stream.

Me in a 1-1 scale XG-1 prop built to last... and otherwise a regular tournament

Gunboat Libre!