Not many of you know me but I'm part of the Detroit meta with Casey and Mallesh and I've played in almost every event since Westeros. I wanted to post this because I felt the lack of prize support for the top 16/8/4 at worlds was an example of FFG;s lack of committment to the actual players.

For those of you who just enjoy reading the books and like to travel for the possibliity of winning a fake plastic sword after 12-15 hours of play, more power to you. This post is for those of you who understand that after a long grueling tournament, maybe something more should have been awarded to the top 16 players. For example, Casey was 4th place and he got a handshake and a dime-sized pin that said A Game of Thrones on it. I'm not asking for the world but more effort on the part of FFG for original prize support would be appreciated.

I have some ideas that I think the other serious or long-time players would actually want to take home with them. Sleeves, tokens, deck boxes, alternate artwork for the restricted cards, original card art signed by the artist, the latest chapter pack or product that has not yet been released, play mats, or even a trophy maybe; just some game-related prize support. From what I've seen and heard from FFG, they're making money hand-over-fist and bringing in some more original prize support wouldn't hurt. I mean, $5 off your next purchase at Subway would have been a more useful prize than a tiny pin. BTW Gregg, you're overall champ in our hearts!

On a different subject, the Detroit meta is building up again and becoming more active in the gaming community. We're planning a big tournament in the fairly near future; more details to come. Prepare yourselves for the war of the metas tournament and the tourney of the Golden Company!

would this happen to be Luigi?

ya

Missed you at gencon Mickey. What happend

I heard the WH:I worlds 2nd place got a LotR uncut sheet...

AGoT is a great game and appears to have a fast and growing community in the last months. Sites like agotcards.org and cardgamedb.com definitely help a lot to get people involved and I think FFG has to risk more to support the growth of players and to create a stable community. In my opinion, we need more events and tournaments (Hosted by FFG or in cooperation with FFG), better prizes, better logistics (Core Set sold out for several months? seriously?) and better marketing.

lalchant said:

~How generous. ;-)

I agree that the prize support seems to be not the best from what you write. Maybe they shoudl ask Thorondor how things are done. I mean at the Stahleck tournament and the Austrian championship we always had a good prize support. Artist signed cards, art prints of recent cards, sometimes board games, the official FFG prize support stuff and even original artworks for the winners. Not to mention that last year the winner of Stahleck got an authentic artwork from artists who where at the castle. Thank you to Tiziano and Franz Miklis ( i didn´t recall the third artist since he was i think only doing Warcraft related artwork).

And of course the stuff mentioned is not the world, but agot related prize support with some unique and not so easy to obtain prizes. Thank you to Thorondor for his efforts to offer some really good prize support. It´s surely not impossible for a gaming company to e.g. invite an artist for GenCon. At Essen game fair it´s indeed very common to have artist signing their works and drawing artworks and they are usually invited by gaming companies.

Does Luigi = Louie/Lui?

If so, hiya. We played a match against each other during Joust, and bumped into each other again at the drunk draft (I'm the Rum and Coke guy).

I couldn't agree more about FFG's prize support. I thought the FFG employees running the AGoT and W:I tournaments did a stellar job of running the events. I was, however, frankly embarrassed for them that FFG provided them with such a sorry collection of prizes to hand out after each tournament.

Keep us posted regarding your plans for upcoming tourneys. ; )

Papa

Raise the entry fee and pay out cash to top finishers!!!

lalchant said:

Wait, that was fake?

I also remember you, I hope you can make to Days of Ice and Fire again in Nov.

lalchant said:

You definitely didn't miss me bro, saw you both days, met up with you Casey and Mallesh (we went out and smoked and got stupid photos with the troll) before the melee and then saw you again on the Joust day...

Yeah, it's a cool pin, but I was pretty surprised the top 4 in each event didn't get something else. Maybe some free product from FFG's store, or a unique house card or deck box that said 2011 Game of Thrones Finalist or something.

On the other hand, the house cards that all joust participants received (or will receive, once FFG prints up more of those) look pretty awesome. I'm definitely looking forward to receiving my copy in the mail.

Lol ah yea.

Ill be there in Nov

What do you all think about extended art for the restricted cards?

lalchant said:

Good idea. FFG already did such a thing in the past when they released the ITE introduction 2 player starters. And these packs were very wanted at that time. AI art seems for me to be agood way to keep up the idea of a LCG and have some nice price support for tournaments.

Why just the restricted cards though?

Staple cards,everyone uses them.

I have to agree with the original poster. I am very disappointed with Fantasy Flights prize support. I didn't finish anywhere near top 16, but it would have been nice to get something more than 3 double sided promo cards. Ive played tons of card games in the past, and pretty much everyone of those game makers had fantastic prize support. Example - Lord of the Rings TCG/CCG world 2005. Pretty much every player walked away with at least 5 promo foils, packs, pins and a variety of other goodies, or anytime a set for any of those games would get released they would send a prize kit with foils for everyone.

I mean, it cost $8 I think to play in A Game of Thrones Worlds @ GenCon. I paid $80 for the badge, + hotel & travel. The tournament was a grueling 6 hours, and all they gave us is 3 promo cards??? FOR A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP?

If they don't have a redemption program anymore, and they aren't giving out anything fun, why even bother going to a world championship?

-Mike

This seems like the sort of thing that could actually be fixed by FFG management, but not by complaining on the forums. (how often does complaining on the forums actually produce any desired result at all?)

My suggestion in this instance would be for those of you who've actually won or placed at these tournaments to voice your opinions at the tournaments. It seems like it's something that could reasonably be complained about to actual FFG staff without sounding like a jerk about it. You all are familiar with the FFG staff. They show you guys in videos and pictures when you win, and use those videos and pictures to promote their game (well, on their own website, anyway, but still...), and apparently give crap prizes to those who've won. Not only would giving away some actual prizes worth competing for be good for the players, it would be good for those promotional videos.

If they're going to call their tournament the "Worlds" tournament, maybe they should give prizes that weren't just scooped out of a drawer of extra promotional materials back at the FFG office. Send the tourney winners to Days of Ice and Fire and pay for their hotel room or something. Would that be too difficult? A full set of resin house cards. Framed, signed card artwork. Anything that actually shows some sort of interest in promoting the competition and the game. Getting by on players thinking the competition is its own reward just makes them look cheap. We understand that FFG is not a massive company with money to throw around-- as big and well-organized as they appear at Gen Con, it's important to put this in perspective-- they are a small niche company serving a small niche market. Nonetheless, they should believe in synergy like any other corporation. Give their players something to play for, and that will interest more players. Well, that and a slick TV show on HBO...

Sluggonics said:

I really don't think that is true anymore. I think they had the biggest presence at GenCon (except for MTG). Also, they keep getting bigger and are going to have LOTS of money to 'throw away' considering they have the Star Wars license now, and the Game of Thrones license has got to be worth a nice chunk of change now with all the exposure...

I have to agree. Back in 2002 when the company had barely any presence and didn't seem to be printing money at GenCon I could see it.

But they are one of the top 4-5 companies at the Con now. Wizards, Mayfair, maybe YGO...other than that FFG had easily the most presence.

~But, maybe that is because all they spend is $$ on 3 promo cards per player

I agree with the original post...the prize support was lousy. Even if FFG is tight on money, it was a poor decision. After all, GenCon isn't really about making money; this is a marketing event. So if a bunch of people leave the tourney feeling like FFG took the "cheap" way out (and I think there was a similar sentiment with the Regionals Kits), it actually hurts the company's marketing efforts. (In fact, I am still weighing the pros/cons of next year's regionals kits...and trying to figure out whether it would be better to just source our own stuff.) I think it's much better for FFG to lose an extra few hundred dollars on the two championships than to go cheap and look out of touch with the players (something I think some members of the community occasionally feel when there are unpopular FAQs, etc.).

But a bit more prize support shouldn't be that expensive anyway. Let's assume FFG decided to give out leather deck boxes to the top person of each house...that's 12 houses (6 per event). Assuming the costs of a single deck box runs $40-50 (including design, staff time, custom creation, etc.), that's around $500 for what I think most people would agree would be very good prize support. This is a pretty high estimate...the smart thing to do would be for FFG to order *a bunch* of deck boxes that say "Champion" or something and hand them out for the next 2 years. An even cheaper option would be to hand out the Ice and Fire cardboard boxes or generic playmats to the top 8 in each event...those can't be more than $15 each.

rings said:

They probably spent all their budget on securing that much space in the exhibitor's hall. Their booth was so large this year, you could tell people to meet you there and then spend 15 minutes trying to figure out where in the FFG area they were actually standing.