Why Are Tournaments So Important?

By Gizmological, in Warhammer: Invasion The Card Game

Since the release of the core set there have been complaints about the balance of winning decks amongst factions. Orc rush was declared early on to be the best deck. As FFG released more battle packs and sets this seemed to continue to be more or less true: Destruction rush decks, when constructed with the intent to be the best deck possible and when built using the maximum number of cards allowable and using every product available, are generally able to be beat most of the decks most of the time.

The common reactions to this deck type seem to be: assumption that designers made a mistake by creating certain cards, declaration that certain cards need to be banned or created to hinder the rush deck or improve the other archetypes, general whining and complaining, assertion that the rush deck type isn't really as dominant as some claim it to be.

I've been wondering since the release of this game why the idea of tournaments and tournament style deck building and play is so important to the players. This game is not supported by FFG in a manner typical of collectible card games, but the player base seems to insist on treating it as though it were. There is (basically) no prize support for this game. Winning a tournament is (essentially) worth only bragging rights, and that's only if your win is deemed legitimate. If you didn't face the right decks during the event, or if your opponent's decks weren't 'optimally' built or piloted, expect to have your win labeled lucky (or worse).

I don't believe that this game should be played primarily at the tournament level. I think instead it should be seen as a casual game with occasional opportunities to play against new opponents. Any problems in deck balance can be addressed by simply banning or otherwise discouraging the use of certain cards, which can be done by players within their playgroup. They do not imply faults in the game design as this game must be designed with players in mind who may only buy one copy of each release (or less). In order to make an aggressive strategy effective in those conditions they need stronger cards more frequently than control decks.

The majority of complaints about this game (except the differences in card sizes) seem be things that can be controlled by players. in effect, you are making yourselves upset and asking FFG to fix it for you. If you are interested in playing the game at the tournament level, and winning is important to you, then you should be willing to play whichever deck is most effective. Since the current deck is considered to be easy to build and play, and since you have easy and equal access to all of the cards, you have no excuses for not doing so. If you would like to play in a tournament but are not concerned with winning, you can play any number of different decks and as long as you can enjoy playing against the same decks round after round you should have a good time. If you are not interested in playing in a tournament then congratulations (!) none of this matters to you; keep enjoying the game.

The so called 'flaws' in the LCG system are not flaws at all. The only flaw is the current trend in thinking about this game. This game is not a ccg. This game will never be a ccg. It is a board game. Enjoy yourselves.

I think banning cards will just lead to bad things down the line.

If you ban the top 5 ork rush cards (not including skaven) it would remove rush orks. Unless they then used ork/skaven, in which case they'd be beaten by de/skaven and chaos/skaven. So youd then remove skaven. At which point orks wouldnt compete with other 5 decks

Its much better to be on equal terms with opponents. so people with 3x everything compete with others with 3x etherything and people with 1x etherything compete with others with 1x everything. Unless of course you dont actually have any problems atm.

Great points! My thoughts exactly! Glad to know there are similarly minded people around here.

Well I started Invasion mainly because I didn't have the money which MtG tournament playing would've needed, Invasion was the answer to my problems: pay and get all the cards (and very cheaply when compared to MtG). I see no point why the game shouldn't be well constructed even if it's not built for tournaments (Summoner Wars is splendid example, cheers for that !). I myself have not so much against the current rush over-poweredness but it seems that FFG is even encompassing it with the 50min time limit in the tournaments.

So I myself, perhaps insanely, took Invasion as the replacement of MtG as I loved the concept of living card game ( and respects for that FFG ^^).

I hope FFG manages to keep Invasion also casual if you like, but I myself, love the tournament aspect, the tuning of decks, the anxiety when you draw your first hand.... perhaps one day I'll make my dream come true and get myself place in somekind of national competition ;) - FFG, do your best and perhaps one day Invasion will become the new king of card games.

- Because I can hope

You might be happy that it is a casual game, but there are a lot of us that want more prize support and more tournaments. I know if it does not change that the four of us that play are going to be done with the game. It is a good game, but it is not good enough to just play casually. There are to amny much better games to spend my time and money on if there is no local support.

If a game is to hold the interest of competitive players, it has to be balanced for competitive play. Appealing to casual players is easy, they get just as much out of a well balanced game as a broken one, so there really isn't any point in trying to appeal to them.

Unifiedshoe,

I think that your opinion is one likely held by many. The people most likely to post on the forums are the more competitive players and it is likely that more of that opinion is seen because they are more vocal.

I was happy to see a post like this. I may not agree with you personally, but I feel like you are coming from a valid place with your views.

I agree with Vit T.

I have about 20 oppenents, yet I am the only one the posts here. They mostly love the game and see little baalnce issues with them. Yet few of them are buying 3x of the sets and the ones that are, well they show restraint in there deck building.

This is a game that can adapt very well to the desires of the players as well. A couple I know like to play there own version of draft. They build a deck that can be drafted from. Another pair like to buy just one of each battle pack, and toss all the cards into 6 big race decks, and play pure race will all the cards good and bad. They do not play the skaven and randomly deal the neutrals.

These players also experience no balance issues with the game.

A simaler issue exists in warhammer. The tourny scene is very vocal about balance problems in the game, and reading warhammer sites would have you think the game is totaly "broken"' "unbalanced" and no fun because of it. And each new army book brings a new unit of factor that re startes these disscusions.

I was very involved with the compeditive warhammer community, yet as a tradesmen, I am in different peoples homes every day, and I saw warhammer stuff all over the place among players I never met or heard of, that just play an army or two vs a friend or two, have a blast playing and are unconcerned about balance issue.

I still say its best for the game, and its in the designers best interest, to make a game as balanced as is possible and yet still have lots of fun varity, but the tournemtn player in almost all cases, is a small minority of the player of the game, and few hard core posters realize that, they think cause they love top level play, so does everyone else!

In the warhammer table top world, it seams to be a "given" that most players are either part of a group or club, and/or attend tournements, yet the facts, and the sales figures prove that the "competitive" players are a far-far minority.

I would get blasted on a warhammer forum for saying this, but I know it to be true, but less then 5% of players could be classified as competive torunement players. The proof?

Where I live, a handfull of warhammer events in the city draw 20-50 people a few times a year, mostly the same players from event to event. On the outside there MIGHT be over 100 that have even gone to an event. YET the region supports not one, not two, but FOUR gamesworkshop stores, all in high rent malls, AS WELL as a few dozen in depend stores supporting the product. And with a few exceptions these stores stay in buiz year in and out.

Getting off topic a bit, but my point is that for every poster you see here, there is untold number of "Dad, can I get this game, it looks cool" early teenager that plays at school or in a basement with his friends.

I just ignore these comments that talk about meta. MTG, Yugioh, Pokemon, WoW TCG. They all have this. Meta is basically when a person well known to the community creates an amazing deck.

They go to a large tourney and win with it. However, because they share deck ideas with friends that are also going to these tourneys and whom they play online or discuss strategies and findings with, they usually come to a conclusion that only a few deck types will work. Sometimes the decks get posted early and others, that are lazy or feel these elites can't possibly be wrong, end up bringing a deck clone to the tourney.

I used to be in this camp. I would constantly test decks that seemed to work locally, but then the night before, just settled on bringing a clone of the deck that the majority of my competition was. We would all end up with the same decks and at that point it was no different than me taking the same fighter as my opponent in a game like Street Fighter. It all came down to skill and timing of the draws, but with a dash of randomness thrown in.

I quit doing this during the WoW TCG when Matt and co. would win nationals easily, but not with the same decks other nations where using to win their nationals. When it came to Worlds, the decks that we were not used to seeing (but were popular in the player's nation) would nearly wipe the floor with us.

Wizards and Upperdeck are very US centric. They have different sites for different nations though just like Games Workshop. So, each Nation was separated and everyone focuses only what is happening nationally. It stinks though, that when it came to Worlds, these elities would all settle on the same decks popular in other countries.

Why do we do this? Because there is a lot of money up for grabs and we can't risk being wrong. So instead, we put faith in our draws and hope to be more skilled than the competition.

FFG is different though, because their board games are world wide and they only have one site for all of us to share. So, if you take my above observations, now you can see how with the effect of deck cloning, rather than proving, the top 8 decks are now centralized into one ideal. I bet people that never use these forums and play local tourneys have the answers for a good Order deck. Maybe they even find Skaven laughable. Unfortunately I cannot prove this, but there is always that ONE deck that finds its way into top 8 without anyone else ever thinking of the concept of that deck. And I bet that it is no different with this game.

My trainer for Magic back in the day told me. "The only thing separating your great deck from the others out there is money". Meaning only those with money and the time to make these showings get the spot light. There are people just as good out there that could win world tourneys, but they may not have the luxury of being able to participate in them or on this site to gain the attention they deserve.


cerebralcortex said:

You might be happy that it is a casual game, but there are a lot of us that want more prize support and more tournaments. I know if it does not change that the four of us that play are going to be done with the game. It is a good game, but it is not good enough to just play casually. There are to amny much better games to spend my time and money on if there is no local support.

I'm curious, did you start playing this game when it first launched, or later? Just that FFG were very clear about prize support from the get-go. They stated quite clearly that W:I would follow their LCG format and have no prize support at all - no promos etc like you see with M:TG. The extent of their OP programme would be the leagues they offered, and the choice of cards to be printed in future would be the prize for the winner. If you're expect changes, I don't think they're coming I'm afraid.

Well, they probably didn't say no prize support at all... The prize packages for Regional events in LCG are all pretty sweet looking, and there's some good stuff in the league kits as well. The catch is that it's just game related loot. It's not prize money. FFG has been very adamant about not giving out cash prizes and I don't blame them. It's takes a very large player base to support that kind of thing or you wind up like the Spoils. I'm not sure that I agree with them about promo cards, but oh well, I doubt I'll ever convince them on that point.

Kennon said:

Well, they probably didn't say no prize support at all... The prize packages for Regional events in LCG are all pretty sweet looking, and there's some good stuff in the league kits as well. The catch is that it's just game related loot. It's not prize money. FFG has been very adamant about not giving out cash prizes and I don't blame them. It's takes a very large player base to support that kind of thing or you wind up like the Spoils. I'm not sure that I agree with them about promo cards, but oh well, I doubt I'll ever convince them on that point.

Sorry, I was refering specifically to promotional cards, which they did say would never turn up in an LCG - it's part of the design of the game, what with it's casual-styling and sale format (ie; all the cards are available to purchased with no randomness) As much as I like promo cards, it just doesn't fit in with an LCG format - CCG yeah for sure, but not an LCG.

I tried to convince Nate to convince Christian that rather than promo's prize support for major events should include an early release card, some major card that would be released at the end of the cycle... but even that was determined to be against the spirit of the LCG, which I understand and even mostly agree with.

This game will be as competitive as the players make it. Right now there is huge amounts of group think going on by the competitive players... that doesn't mean they are wrong, but a lot of people here are not challenging any of the notions that were developed in other games, nor are they challenging the statements of other competitive players much. Thankfully not every here is doing that. We have some top-notch competitive players who are pushing the envelope and creating the trends others are parroting, even when that believed truism they are disproving is one they helped craft.

As to why tournaments are important, it gives the game a visible presence in shops and cons and that translates to money. It also helps create a state, national, and international scene/community which helps provide a visible means of accomplishment for certain types of people, as well as creating a very intense development situation where players are struggling to create killer decks and abuse the system which helps guide development down certain paths to help balance the game, because if it is possible to break it will be tournament players who are most likely to discover it, if for no other reason than they tend to play far more games than a casual player over a short period of time.

What a lot of them don't realize though is this game is not all fo rthem. They do represent a very small minority of players, and FFG is right to keep in mind how the game plays in all of its incarnations and not just on the tournament scene. This is the reason why you get cards which are not super tournament worthy cards getting printed, because some people like to play with units or supports etc. that represent something to themselves more than the stats... I think back to the days of Doom, and while the BFG was definitely one of the best weapons available, there were fans who would try to beat the entire game just using the chain saw, because it was fun to them (and I suspect because they had a love for Army of Darkness, but that is just a pet theory of mine).

Unifiedshoe said:

I've been wondering since the release of this game why the idea of tournaments and tournament style deck building and play is so important to the players. This game is not supported by FFG in a manner typical of collectible card games, but the player base seems to insist on treating it as though it were.

In a nutshell...old habits die hard. We have been trained by WotC/DCI to think this way; as tournament level play is a huge part of the marketing strategy for Magic. Many of us grow tired of the scene and seek to play other games as a means of escape. So naturally we find another game to play and, because casual play is just way out of our comfort zone, we attempt to turn our new game in to the very scene we attempted to escape from.

We should all send the folks at Fantasy Flight a cake every year to celebrate the day they moved to the LCG format. They took a huge risk by going against the grain and saying "enough is enough" in regard to collectible card games. Eventually the playerbase will catch on and realize that if you want a cutthroat competitive tournament scene...there's already a game for that. But if you want to play a game that has the best elements of a CCG without the all the stress and drama then the LCG format is the place to be.

A large tournament scene is important even to those who do not play in tournaments.

Firstly, tournament level players typically find the holes that testers or casual players miss. This leads to better constructed cards for balance.

Secondly, tournaments draw interest. If players see that there is actually a following for a game, they are more likely to play/invest. I have purchased a lot of cards for this game, and although it is incredibly fun, I somewhat regret it because nobody else in my area is willing to invest in the product. I refuse to support the 3 other people I have taught to play the game. They just really don't want to invest because there is not a large enough following. I know it's circular, but people typically don't want to be the first.

Third is support, indirectly. Tournament players want to keep as up to date as possible, and typically try to find every minute advantage they can. This means they are more likely to buy the 3x of everything that has singles in it. It also means they will buy everything rather than just buying specific battlepacks that best support pet decks. Both of those things are more money for FFG and in turn a greatly reduced chance the game will die. Casual players may decide to just stop buying product because they are happy with what they have.

I have heard some try to compare this to a board game rather than a CCG. I think that it is about equally far off either way. Board games you buy once and are done forever usually. The LCG still involves a once a month investment and sometimes its not so minimal. CCG's are typically a lot more expensive, but the nature of it being Collectible means that you can get your money back from the cards if you know how to read the market. The last time I sold my M:tG collection was for $1,400 and that is probably less than what I had in it. I don't think I could sell my W:I collection. Who would buy it if there is nothing to be gained?

My point ultimately is that a competative tournament scene keeps the game alive. Even as a casual player of W:I, one should not want the game to die.

Transitions take time. Whether it's the shifting of tectonic plates or the rise of the civil rights movement in America, major restructuring requires time and persistence. Unfortunately, there has become entrenched in hobby card gaming today a very definable culture. And that culture is to accommodate primarily the "competitve" player base, on both the production and retail levels, and to allow the "social" crowd to come along for the ride. The chief catalyst behind the institution of this culture in hobby gaming is the same one as in so many other arenas: profit. Indisputably, the largest amounts of money are made, by companies and players alike, in highly competitive events. I played semi-pro tennis years ago, and I can tell you that the tennis courts in private clubs and showcase facilities are built and maintained at a level that is in another stratosphere from municipal or recreational courts. Why? Because money tournaments are held at the private and showcase venues, not the local, social ones. American Idol tryouts are held in the most lavish venues possible and are fraught with stress and anxiety. Your local karaoke bar is mellow and reeks of beer and pee-pee. Why? Because of all of the digits in American Idol's revenue. Pro sports, televised poker, dog shows - it all comes down to catering to those who fill the treasure vaults. So where does that leave the card gamer who just digs the game?

Thankfully, FFG (and a handful of other game manufacturers), recognizes the fact that there is an underserved market in hobby gaming right now. Namely, the casual and social gamer. There shouldn't be any animosity between the tourney folk and the townsfolk; we just have to recognize that we're looking for different things from our games. <dbeman> made a great point: we, as card gamers, have been conditioned - probably without our realizing it - to act and think in certain ways and have certain expectations of what makes a good game scene. Social gamers need to take ownership of their game of choice (Warhammer: Invasion around these here parts cool.gif) and start to work towards shifting the culture. If you hate tournaments, demand that your local game shop runs the league instead. FFG has designed their leagues to reward deckbuilding diversity and creativity. If you're sick to death of Ratblitz decks, politely decline to play against them. I do. If you want to experiment with deck types and use cards that seem to never see the light of day or simply depict your favorite unit in the minis game, refuse to be bullied into "following suit" and doing what the next guy is doing. If a person is serious about this game - or any other - forging its own identity and serving a different community than other, more established games, then it's going to take time and persistence to make it happen. Because nothing's over until WE decide it is. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Heck no! And it ain't over now! 'Cause when the going gets tough...........................the tough get going! Who's with me? Let's go!!

Leagues serve the same purpose as a tournament, it is just a different format for the "tournament". It is all about some type of organized play that gives players the opportunity to win things. On that note, I think my argument works even if you substitute league in place of tournament.

A league will accomplish the same thing as a tournament in drawing interest, assuming there are enough players to pique peoples interest. A league would also still have those players that would want to make a different deck every week just for innovations sake and those people are more likely to buy 3 of everything.

So, the OP's question can be posited the same way substituting tournament with league. "Why are 'leagues' so important?" I think the more appropriate question would be why is organized play so important, and I think I answered that adequately.

Mmm, although I respect your viewpoint, I'm afraid you haven't answered the question at all, actually. In fact, your stance is based on an erroneous correlation. Leagues are as different from tournaments as t.v. series are from movies. The fact that t.v. shows and movies are both recordings of actors playing roles doesn't make them interchangeable.

  • A league is a series of generally 2-4 hour sessions wherein players work on achieving certain goals or checkpoints over a span of weeks or months, whereas tournaments are one-off events, sometimes taking up all or the better part of a day. If you read my post you'd also recognize that FFG has tailored their league objectives to reward deckbuilding diversity and winning games in a variety of different ways.
  • Leagues also create communities and long-term relationships amongst players, because the regular attendees will be from localized areas. Nobody's going to drive from Miami to Orlando for a weekly league, but they most certainly will for a tournament.
  • Additionally, leagues remove the "do or die" imperative that exists in tournaments. You can still be in the hunt and even score prizes in a league if you lose some games; lose even one in a tourney and you're immediately on thin ice, if not out of it altogether.
  • Leagues give players a regular routine and a belonging that tournaments could never provide.
  • Leagues allow for the players to pick their opponents; tourneys tell you who you're playing.
  • Tourneys almost always cost money; leagues almost never do.
  • Leagues more effectively raise game awareness and give a store repeat traffic and business; tourneys draw the locusts for a day and then they're gone.
  • Players can miss a league day but not miss out; with a tournament, if you've got work or class or kids or - shudder to think - church, sucks for your luck, dude.

And if you're referring to those little, podunk "tournaments" that some stores run every week, those aren't tournaments. At least, not in the most recognized sense of the word. Those are leagues modified to more closely resemble tournaments. Running mini-tournaments every week strips away ALL of their luster and significance.

There's plenty more, but, clearly, leagues and tournaments serve entirely different purposes for the manufacturers, the local shops, and the players themselves. And for the game design and fan base of Warhammer: Invasion, leagues are a better fit than tournaments by a very wide margin.

I've stayed out of the actual discussion of this thread until now because I was interested to see what people had to say.

Unfortunately, it seems like a majority of people reading and responding to my original post are missing the point entirely. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't state my ideas clearly enough or if people just don't get it, but to cover my bases I'm going to restate something as clearly as possible.

>>>> This is not a classic tournament supported ccg. <<<<

The point of stating this is to reframe the common perspective of the game. Since this is not a game this is supported by and based on tournament level play it is not necessary for it to be perfectly balanced, well playtested, etc. Flaws in game design are not going to ruin anyones day except for those who either refuse to ignore/avoid problem cards or those who want to play the game as if the world depended on it.

It's common to 'house rule' a board game to eliminate a problem (like removing x's or q's from scrabble). In that way, it's totally acceptible to just state that Warpstone Excavation is Order only. It doesn't matter if the company does it for you or not. It doesn't matter if I or anyone outside of your playgroup plays it that way. YOU can play it that way if you want to.

>>>> I am not saying that tournaments are bad. I am not saying I do not want FFG to create a viable tournament environment. <<<<

I play games because I want to play in tournaments. I actually don't play W:I very often simply because I'm not interested in playing a game that doesn't tempt me with competitive play. I was unable to attend the LCG weekend due to a wedding and there has been nothing interesting scheduled until Gencon. I think that sucks, but because of that I am not wasting time worrying over each battlepack to see if the game is 'balanced'. It doesn't matter to me at all if the game is balanced since I'm going to play the best deck (as I determine it). Since I want to be able to easily determine which deck to play I'd prefer it if it were obvious. The more testing I have to do before settling on something the worse off I will be. It doesn't even make since to me to test anything until all the bp's before Gencon are released since I won't have all the information and a new card could blowout all my previous work. After Gencon I won't play this game much until the next big event. Hopefully FFG can put something together before Gencon 2011.

Anyway, the point is that without money or something substantial on the line most technical issues of the game don't matter. What matters is really stuff like which armies are getting added, etc. Play the game how you want and enjoy it until FFG tempts you to play it their way.

Wow! Yeah, you definitely didn't relate hardly any of that in your opening post. Certainly not all the ambivalence toward the game itself. When you title the thread 'Why Are Tournaments So Important?' it's a pretty safe bet that that's what we're going to talk about.

At least I have some backup on my stance that this game is ill fit for heavy tournament play, even if we're coming from different places on the subject.

I'm not ambivalent about the game. I love the game; I think it's great. I just don't get excited to play anything without a tournament structure attached.

The title of the thread was not meant to be read as this: Explain why tournaments are important.

It was meant as this: Why are people treating this game as though tournaments are acutally important?

That's why I spent time talking about how they are not important (no prize support, the company doesn't actually support them in a traditional manner, etc.). That idea is what leads into the next point about how people should stop worrying about what they see as flaws in the game (poor balance, etc.) because those things only manner in the context of a tournament structure that we don't have.

I disagree, I dont think big one off tournaments that 1% or less of people playing warhammer invasion can get too are important, but some local competition is always healthy. It is silly imo to say balance doesnt matter just because there arent official prize giving tournaments, if you played monopoly and the rulebook said the car always rolls 3 dice for movement would ignoring that be fine, just because its a casual game. Yes I agree that we can do our own modifications to sort out game imbalances but it is much better if any game imbalances are sorted out by ffg imo, they are the ones who know the most about the game afterall.

Without a kind of local competition, i.e leagues, mini tournaments, big tournaments whatever, the game gets relegated to casual gaming which is all fine and good, I enjoy it as a casual game, but when it is relegated to a game you play once in a while, why bother buying expansion packs when you could be buying stuff to supplement your main game. This would mean ffg gets no more cash, which would be a big problem seeing as card games do not run on a boardgame model. If its not warhammer invasion that dies from little to no competitive interest its your local group instead. It wont go completely away, but I imagine it would turn into a game you only play occasionally, rather than every week or 2. Now its not up to ffg to organize these local events its up to us the players.

Look at magic, it does have a lot of big tournaments strongly supported by the developers, but there are far more tournaments going on locally, most of which probably dont care about getting to the huge tournaments, or just arent good enough to do so.

Actually, it's been my experience as a Magic player since Unlimited that most players that go to FNM are interested in the PT or at the PTQ as a way of testing themselves, gaining bragging rights, etc. Most MTG players are incapable of winning any of the large events but that doesn't stop them from dreaming. Often these players will flock around their best local player (the term is barn) and they seem to be pretty happy just hanging in his vicinity.

Anyways, as this relates to W:I, and one of the other points that I was making in the OP: because there are not a lot of large events FFG is not sure to sell everyone 3x each BP. Since a large portion of their playerbase may be composed of folks using only 1x each 'rare' card, etc., they had to balance the archetypes as best they could at all levels of play.

Aggressive decks need more aggressive cards than control decks need control cards so in order to make aggressive decks work properly for people with 1x sets they have to make those aggro cards very good. If WAAGH were only a one of in decks it would be pretty balanced. As a 3 of it wrecks a lot of decks. Same can be said of Judgement of Verna (sp?). So, the balance issues that people have at 3x ea. card can be attributed to that, which is not a failing of design or playtest. There were a lot of posts when I originally started this thread that were complaining about game design and (im)balance.

Since those issues only really arise at the 3x level, and fewer players have 3x each card than those with 1-2, the problem is with 'hardcore' players and not necessarily the game.

Now then, with the new BP system giving 3x each card in one purchase FFG needs to step up it's game and tone down the power level in order to stop this problem from affecting everyone.

Because it's fun?

I don't care about prize support, or cash prizes. I play competitively because I like to win.

More specifically, I like to see the decisions I made that led to my victory, or the decisions that led to my defeat, so I can learn for the next time.

If I do this without taking certain cards into account, then my learning is flawed. Competitive play is important because it lets me see what these cards are.

I'd like to say first off all the responses here so far have been well thought out and written which, if nothing else gives me hope this game will continue to grow just from the strength of the current player base.

That being said I also think that a competitive tournament enviroment is important to game such a this. The main reason, for me, is if you are a casual player who is happy to grab the core set and every now and then buy a battle pack to play against your friends every other month or so more power to you. Some of my most fun times have been spent messing around with friends playing these types of games. However there is a large section of players who like to play these games to the best of their ability and with the best deck that they can put together from the current card pool. If FFG ignores these players they are doing themselves just as much a disservice as if they were to ignore the (possibly larger in terms of people but maybe not in terms of money spent) "casual" player base.

Having just come from our regionals today I can say that there were a lot of very competitive decks there but everyone I played against were what I call "good people" . No one was rude or tried anything underhanded (that I saw) and everyone was friendly and helpful. The importance of this social aspect of the game cannot be over emphasised. This is the reason people who are somewhat interested in the game will actually give it a try. Because the current players make it easy and/or fun to do so.

You may think I've wandered off the point here a bit (and I probably have! : p) but what I am really trying to say is I am more that happy for there to be people who dust off their warhammer cards every 2 months to have fun together or head to a league because they want to see what new cards have been printed recently as they have been busy. But i don't see how that in any way can detract from have a varied and viable competitive tournament scene. Nor can I really see how players like this can detract from the player who is on these forums every other day and who play tests against different decks weekly to gain a greater understanding of the game. In fact I actually think that if this card game continues to have both those types of player then we are actually better off and as long as FFG doesn't buy into the calls to ignore one in support of the other then we will all be able to continue to enjoy this game.

Bottom line: Would I like to see slightly more money value prize support for this game? Yes. Do I think that every card printed from here on in needs to be considered "tournament worthy" for the game to still function well and be fun? No.