Count me among the very excited.

FFG seems to be making a real effort here to give us what we want. Hopefully we can match their effort in trying to make this work for them, and us.

Times are tough, but in the end we're the ones who are going to make these events worth the effort to travel etc. IMHO, this is a very good step in the right direction.

"gimmie and F! gimmie another F! gimmie a G!" I sound like a fan boy.... ~Maybe I should go get lessons from mathlete on how to cheer!

This is very good news. As some of you have seen, the California Bay Area has already begun scheduling tournaments for the KublaCon Gaming Convention near San Francisco in May. As the historical home of the Western Regional Championship, hopefully FFG will accept our application to make it the site of the Regional once again!

Gotta get crackin' on that app!

Am I the only one excited by the prize support?

• A playmat for the winner of the tournament
• 4 Large 24”x36” uncut card sheets from a recent expansion print run
• 4 cloisonne pins that will serve as invitations to an exclusive invitational tournament at the FFG Event Center in Roseville, MN, Fall 2010.

OK, I guess the playmat is a bit cheesy, but I kinda like the idea...would probably make a nice enlarged mouse pad that I can throw on my desk and reminisce about the beating I gave Finite (that's a bait...let's see if he chimes in) when I'm supposed to be working. Seriously though, uncut card sheets sound AWESOME! (Or am I the only one who likes these?) And an invitational tournament sounds kind of neat...depending on details.

TO THE NYC META: We'll have to coordinate regional dates so that they're adequately spaced out enough to allow both metas to attend both (assuming applications for regionals in both places are approved...which they should be). I'm not sure if Finite, Letsgored, Stag, etc. have talked yet, but let's make sure we do before we submit these forms.

~ Don't forget about the boston meta... :-P

I'm not a fan of uncut card sheets...never saw the point. but the rest of the stuff is interesting.

Sounds pretty cool. I'm hoping there might be one we can organize down this way in Florida. Our store would have been awesome to host an event like this... Except while I was away for 3 months, pretty much the whole group down here has disappeared. Seriously, a couple people I can't even get a hold of via phone or email anymore... It's like they dropped off the planet.

So, while I would love to apply for one here in Sarasota... I'm just not sure the numbers will be there from our own group. I could count probably 6 people at best presently. Trying to rally enough support from any surrounding or hiding players by March 15th to submit the application is a bit short on notice I'm thinking.

Sigh. I really like the idea, but the timing sucks for our group I guess.

RJM said:

Yeah, that's the only thing I worry about in this situation. Since the onset of the LCG the only real "traveling" events we've seen were Iowa's "Risen from the Sea in October '08, Black Friday IV and V, and NYC's Kingsmoot last summer. None of them broke 20 players, and having a store charge more than $10 for an event risks driving away players. I'm definitely going to try to make multiple regionals depending on location, but it seems like it will be spendy at that price point.

Maester_LUke said:

Don't forget Gencon 2009, which did not break 25 players. With luck, FFG will have kept this in mind, although the prize support does seem to be thinking in terms of 16+.

Here's the question: is the lack of "travel" and low relative turnout a product of there being no OP program to speak of, or a product of the philosophical direction of the LCG model? If the former, simply having Regional competition may help address the "numbers game." If the later, individual Regionals are unlikely to pull from too far outside of local play groups regardless. Should be interesting to watch.

I'm going to go public and say that I will not be hosting a regionals at our store. With FFG having their big regionals weekend at the end of April, I don't realisitcally see many people traveling up here for two events, and especailly one where we'd have to charge at least $10 per player and still expect to lose money on the event. If the cost for the kit had been lower, then perhaps it would have been a possibility, but between their regionals, the cost of the kit, another GoT event later in the year at the events center AND Days of Ice and Fire, it just doesn't look like a smart move for us.

That being said, I am going to try and make their Tri-LCG-athon. I'm a very casual CoC player, but I do play both Thrones and Warhammer competitively, and if I can work my work schedules (both my real job and the store) I will try and make that event.

I totally missed that part about the LCG weekend at the Event Center until I went to the general "season" announcement for LCGs as a whole. I think it's kinda odd that they didn't make reference to that in the individual announcements by game.

It should be a good time, and I look forward to leading a cohort up from Iowa.

I live outside of a Philadelphia. I'm lucky enough to have 5 pretty decent games stores within driving distance. Not a single one has organized LCG play. They should be hosting LCG nights, don't break it up by game. Most people are into two games anyway and if they aren't, maybe they'll get interested in another. Helping stores run something like this for as cheaply as possible would be a great investment for FF.

@lyrae: funny you should mention that; there is an established DE/PA meta (including the very active Lars), but they've always said there's no solid place to host a regional in PA. if you DE/PA guys want to try to host one, coordinate dates with the NYC and DC metas so that we all can make it to everyone else's, or at least optimize turnout and chances that applications will get accepted in any case. i'll send out emails to the appropriate people shortly.

lyrae, are you up by abbington game store, blue bell, or media? thats about the only stores 'near' philly (read at least 25 minutes by car outside of the closest parts of the city) and still in PA that have some players playing LCG. Abington mainly plays CoC from what I know.

We play in Claymont @ Between Books (on Philadelphia Pike) on Tuesdays. there are about 9-12 of us from both PA and DE

Finite. of the stores i mention only one has a transport hub near it and that is abbington, which requires two trains just for me to get to. i'm not sure abotu blue bell, but most of them are small and have a lot of regulars that come in on weekends (tourney time for travel) we went over this a while ago. I'm not pulling **** out of my ass when i say it would be really tough to host a tourney in Philadelphia for travelers.

Maester_LUke said:

Yeah, annoucing all four events at the same time made this get lost in the shuffle. And as much as I would love to host Warhammer and Thrones, both of which we get players for, being this close to the Events Center pretty much makes this not an option for us. Hopefully we'll start seeing more support for the smaller, bi-weekly events so that the players have something to shoot for. Even though we're in our second winter league at present, I've been jolding off buy league kits in case we get something new for them. I love the new power tokens, but wish we had a choice besides Bara and Lanni. BUt now I'm digressing from the thread.

Anyway, I am going to try and make the LCG event at the Events Center, and suggest that anyone else who can attend should. This will be the northern regional, and should be a good time. I just hope I can get off that afternoon for the 3pm Joust event.

Maester_LUke said:

Yeah, I thought this was a bit short notice too. That said, I'm hoping that there will be NYC, DC, and possibly one other regionals event. Depending on timing, I plan to go to NYC and DC's for sure (assuming both metas host them), and hopefully to a third (Pennsylvannia guys?) if there is one. For me, this has more to do with the fact that these tourneys are a lot of fun and the fact that the LCG environment seems to be progressively more interesting (**varied, with less Lanni dominance**), than it has to do with prize support. That said, some of those prizes look really cool.

I haven't yet talked with any of the other NYC "regulars", but assuming there's interest, I'm going to try to find a date that I could run this and fill out an application. Given the turnout for Black Friday in November and that there's now another group of gamers (the Metro Wargamers in Brooklyn) who have a few members playing AGoT plus a few new AGoT players in the city who've appeared since BF, I think a turnout of 20+ is feasible if the DC/VA and DE/PA guys are willing to travel again and people's schedules are accomodating. One issue is cost: the cafe (in my opinion) has been a very good location for the past two joust tournaments in NYC, but to rent the space plus pay for the regional kit probably means an entry fee of ~$15 (and even that would come up short unless attendance is north of 20). A possible alternative is to try to get the space at the Compleat Strategist store (free), but it's not ideal for joust (tables are few and very large, intended to accomodate miniatures games I think), scheduling there can be inflexible b/c of existing game group priorities, and it's not as central to transportation hubs as the cafe is.

LetsGoRed said:

I play with a small group of guys in CT New Haven area (4 regulars, 1 other that will show eventually). I can only speak for myself and one other but the two of us would definitely travel to the city for a regional event. All 4 is a possibility as well. Depending on how large your normal meta is, 20+ players sounds doable.

LetsGoRed said:

If the choice is compleat strategist vs the cafe, I'd vote the cafe, even if it costs $20 a person for entry. That's been a great venue in the past. Honestly, the costs of travel/food pile up enough that an extra $5 a person isn't a deal breaker for me. Timing conflicts are more the issue though.

We will be applying for a regional here in Springfield, Missouri.

We have a fantastic store (Metagames), as well we have at least 10 or so regular players. It is a rare Saturday when we have less than 6. As well, several of us have extra room/beds in our places, so people can travel and crash for free.

Look forward to seeing some of you here.

Lars said:

Take it to Kinko's and bam, new cards.

ktom said:

I'm wondering what the impact of national/global economic recession has been.

dormouse said:

I would probably say marginal impact in compared the overall change in the game. I would say that the demand (amongst those that have any interest in traveling) is actually pretty inelastic. It would be really intriguing to see a data setting showing regional attendance over the years, especially broken down by distance travelled. Presumably most "local" meta players (save an odd outlier) live within 25 miles, and then from 50, 100, and 100+. Of course this also ignores the demographic differences in geographic distance between nearest metas when you move from NE to SW.

I LOVE uncut sheets

I have 5 of them framed at my place from Thrones and Overpower and I think they look gorgeous!

Maester_LUke said:

I just remembered I meant to respond to this. I think it'd be great if FFG posted a searchable spoiler on the AGoT minisite. It would certainly be in the spirit of the non-collectible nature of the LCG in my opinion. Mostly what I'd like is a searchable spoiler with user comments enabled. Whenever I have a rules question midgame, I find it much easier to pull the card up on tzumainn.com than to try to wade through the search results on the forums here.

DC will be applying to host a regional on Saturday, May 29th or Saturday, June 5th, depending on the availability of whatever space we end up finding.

And yeah, uncut sheets are very beautiful prizes indeed when framed really excited about those.