Let's say ....there was new regional location this year.

Let's say....they hold warm up tournaments for the local players.

Let's also say.. for participating in a warm up tournament you were entitled to get into the upcoming regional whether or not you missed the registration deadline.

Whether or not it sells out.

If you go to a warm up tournament for locals only....you get guaranteed into the regional.

Is this....a good idea ?

As long as the warm up tournaments are not restricted to local only.

Under the OP system, the rules are very explicit about how they have to be open to all who are not on the suspension list, or are legally banned from the venue .

Part of the Regulations.

I don't think so. Regionals are suppose to be about a large area, not just the local scene. And with a limited number of Regionals and restrictions on where they can be hosted, "my " Regionals is a two hour drive for me in another state. There are a lot of players who will never have a Regionals locally.

I honestly don't see why someone's proximity to a Regionals should give them some sort of exception from registering.

Depends, if FFG give money so you can book a venue and have enough TO on hand, why not . Otherwsie 100 people sign up and 150 people turn up for event, then what happen?

They're "Regionals" - they're tournaments targeted at players in the region, not local players specifically. The closest regional for me is 1 hour away.

There's a registration? Wha? When's the deadline?

9 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

Under the OP system, the rules are very explicit about how they have to be open to all who are not on the suspension list, or are legally banned from the venue .

And yet completely unclear on what someone must do to get suspended or banned.

Knowingly and intentionally cheating on camera certainly doesn't qualify.

Perhaps murder?

Just now, Sekac said:

And yet completely unclear on what someone must do to get suspended or banned.

Knowingly and intentionally cheating on camera certainly doesn't qualify.

Perhaps murder?

Actually, the procedure to follow is specifically stated in the suspension process on the website.

In the hinted at instance, the procedure wasn't followed.

So of course the result was different than prescribed.

Why don’t people just register before the deadline? Most local players get a heads up about regional registration ahead of others anyways.

Putting aside any rules/regulations that stores must follow for tournaments, the problem with this is that sometimes the closest regional is hours away. That would make it very hard for someone to attend "warm up" tournaments as well. Thus, I don't think this is a good idea.

If you were proposing this for store championships, I would probably have a different view.

This is actually happening in my area.

First....who defines "local"?

There isn't another regional for hours and state lines in any direction. If I live 30 minutes away from the store holding a regional am I not " local"?

When news got out that this location got the event instead of the usual one, everyone I talked to was let's just say .... skeptical...of their ability to get it right.

Immediately doing this sort of favoritism for the " local" scene is a great start towards shredding the appearance of being impartial.

This may be a minor thing,maybe I'm mountaining a molehill.but it seems....shady?

7 minutes ago, Velvetelvis said:

This is actually happening in my area.

First....who defines "local"?

There isn't another regional for hours and state lines in any direction. If I live 30 minutes away from the store holding a regional am I not " local"?

When news got out that this location got the event instead of the usual one, everyone I talked to was let's just say .... skeptical...of their ability to get it right.

Immediately doing this sort of favoritism for the " local" scene is a great start towards shredding the appearance of being impartial.

This may be a minor thing,maybe I'm mountaining a molehill.but it seems....shady?

Oh thank goodness you weren't posting in support of this. Your OP was very objective, kudos.

As someone who has to drive 2 hours to the only Regional less than 8 hours away I would contact FFG about the preferential treatment of the venue.

2 hours ago, Celestial Lizards said:

There's a registration? Wha? When's the deadline?

It depends on the regional. If there is registration, it is determined by the store hosting the event.

Most regionals will not hit full capacity, but some will. There was one that sold out very quickly due to high interest, Chicago maybe?

49 minutes ago, Velvetelvis said:

This is actually happening in my area.

First....who defines "local"?

There isn't another regional for hours and state lines in any direction. If I live 30 minutes away from the store holding a regional am I not " local"?

When news got out that this location got the event instead of the usual one, everyone I talked to was let's just say .... skeptical...of their ability to get it right.

Immediately doing this sort of favoritism for the " local" scene is a great start towards shredding the appearance of being impartial.

This may be a minor thing,maybe I'm mountaining a molehill.but it seems....shady?

Definitely shady. Some areas just don't have a local regional. Closest one to me is 3 hrs away in another state, even though my local scene is full of high-placing competitive players. For some reason they just didn't give us one this year. Giving preferential treatment to players "local" to the regional is kind of disgusting.

It definitely sounds like poor form to me. They had to have told FFG how many people they can host when they applied, right? Suddenly registration will start and they have less spot because they guaranteed spots to other people? Or are registrations open right now and they are just going to bump people off the list to make room for locals? Either way, that store doesn't sound like one that should be hosting a Regional.

I don't have a Regional within 3 hours drive of me but if I had one super-close that was doing things legit and Registration filled up before I could get in, I would be upset and bummed. The store didn't do anything wrong though. I'd be upset and bummed at my inability to register in time. If I care about going to an event, I do what I can to learn information about that event. So if it filled up or the last day came and went and I hadn't gone in to take care of it? That's on me.

If the store wants to show they support the local players and some locals don't make it into the tournament, there are other things they can do that don't involve showing favoritism to the local players and keeping out-of-towners out.

Meh, I'm not going to call them out or anything. It doesn't require a big ole' hullabaloo.

It struck me as..." Huh,that sounds uncool in general."

I'm not personally invested in the matter.i signed up and paid on time like the common folk.

I just hope this isn't indicative of how oh....maybe ...judge rulings may also skew towards these locals.

The Nashville regional coming up probably could have used something like this. They didn’t announce when tickets were available, after cutting the number of spots that they have listed on the FFG page.

Maybe 10 locals got in before tickets sold out in less than 3 hours.

We've seen this occur at nearby-ish Store Championships, where the date and time wasn't even announced if you weren't a regular player that was at that store on a weekly basis. I support traveling and meeting people in other areas, but I hate the idea of locals being unable to participate if they want to. It's a tough problem, because there are only so many places that can host anybody willing to attend.

18 minutes ago, nikk whyte said:

The Nashville regional coming up probably could have used something like this. They didn’t announce when tickets were available, after cutting the number of spots that they have listed on the FFG page.

Maybe 10 locals got in before tickets sold out in less than 3 hours.

As long as we're throwing that out there, Nashville's registration launched silently, on the host store's usual game night. My guess is that it was communicated verbally, with a promise to let the players go home and register before it would be announced. But the public got there first because the locals were playing that night.

How about not giving regionals to stores that cap at 50, and ignore stores that can realistically have unlimited space.

1 minute ago, comawhite said:

stores that can realistically have unlimited space.

That...doesn't sound realistic.

Just now, Sekac said:

That...doesn't sound realistic.

The store i'm talking about could probably fit close to 1000 ppl without batting an eye, now tables and mats could be a problem, but we have access to all the space

1 minute ago, comawhite said:

The store i'm talking about could probably fit close to 1000 ppl without batting an eye, now tables and mats could be a problem, but we have access to all the space

No I get you, I was just being silly.

I don't think FFG has much of a location scouting branch of the organized play department as they have the location SNAFUs every tournament season. For instance, the Endor Open in Seattle last year was shoved into 2 small side rooms of Comicon, severely limiting the number of players, and drastically increasing the cost for a ticket.

The kicker was it was held about 50 feet from the door and up one escalator from the doors of the convention center. They didn't have anyone checking for Comic-Con badges between the tournament and the door!

1 hour ago, Sekac said:

That...doesn't sound realistic.

Why? Any decent TO should be able to get bigger locations as needed. Budget increases as player increase. Renting a place for 100 players might cost a little over $1000 a day, but at the same time you should be getting $1000 a day and make some extra on the catering.

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Why? Any decent TO should be able to get bigger locations as needed. Budget increases as player increase. Renting a place for 100 players might cost a little over $1000 a day, but at the same time you should be getting $1000 a day and make some extra on the catering.

I envy the fact that you live in a location where you can just make that happen.

Just now, Drasnighta said:

I envy the fact that you live in a location where you can just make that happen.

So basically anything not too far out in the woods?
Heck, I am originally from a small 12,000 people village and there we could have such a location free of charge without much problems as long as we make our schedule long enough in advance. Club member benefits and some connections to the local school, combining two halls, overall ~2000m² floor space + a nice little bar for refreshments and snacks. No idea if having so many sports halls is special, never would have thought so. We still prefered to host events (LAN-Parties) in a youth hostel instead, because that allowed us to offer cheap rooms and closer to the city with better internet wi-fi, etc and had still a sufficient room for about ~100 party guests. Funny enough this was another free of charge thing, the hostel was happy enough about a few extra guest, some PR and to do a favor to a friend.
In big cities it should be even easier, with many actual event halls and event space avaible for rent, so you don't need any connections at all. (Though connections still help to get space cheap or for free)

Money and work required might be an issue, but it is hard to imagine that actually acquiring enough space itself would be a big problem.