This is one of the things we are going to try doing at the Emerald City Convention this year. I've asked everyone who play is our Hobby League to donate any common and uncommon cards they have laying around. We are going to make those into 30 card "starter" decks and we will use them for individual demo's of the game at the convention. Once the demo is finished, the person can keep the deck. With any luck they will enjoy the game enough to want to go buy a few packs. We will also have a list of venues that support VS in the Seattle/Tacoma area. And it helps us clean our rooms of common debris! Yea!!!

That is a great idea. Also add venues that have hobby leagues and where/when it is played. It's hard to pass around at tournies though as the venue will not permit this most of the times.

One thing we used to do back when we played magic was have a commons draft.

Each person would build 5 "packs" of commons out of their own commons.

You would place them face down and randomly pick who go which "packs" (to avoid people stacking their own)

You would then draft them as you would any other draft and play.

After you are done you can randomly place them in stacks of 15 again and play again.

Each person could put in a dollar or so and winner wins a pack or 2 depending on how many people play. (Or can keep all the commons if you dont want to put up cards or both)

Its kind of fun because you can make silly "packs" or whatever. Never have so many Kurd Apes seen so much play in all my life.

Plus it is easy to have the newer people learn to play as they are doing similar to what the starters try and do by having them play less complicated and less powerful cards until they get it.

Generally the people that put the commons in have so many of the cards they build the packs with, a new player can easily get a common "deck" donated by the end of the night.

Anything like this that puts everyone on a similar level tends to help.

Plus some of your more well known cheracters with bad abilitys can tend to draw in more of a crowd due to people "knowing that guy" on the card.

We have taken our commons and uncommons to our local stores and build decks for new players in the past. Very fun, nice way to meet new players, and like a crack dealer... that first taste is free!

But counter to all this, we have what i see as a real ;roblem with the games promotion on an organizational level.

You can indeed have any yahoo become a TO and host events. In my play gorup there are at least 5 of us who can. But many events need a storefront address for sanctioning. This is fine AS LONG AS your local store is willing to work with you. If they aren't, you are kinda stuck. We have local stores who want to see what is in it for them, and will only run an event if it is administered by the owner or one of the store employees.

Now not only is the individual whoose name is in the computer often not present, they don't particularly know the rules are help with the running at all anyway. But those of us who WOULD run the event, DO know the rules, etc... don't get credit for being a TO or judge for any events.

Add to this Hobby League. We KNOW stores buy the kits... and go right to eBay with the cards. How can UDE stop this? SHOULD UDE stop this? Well, yes and yes. Our local store has an entirely differrent issue... if they can't get 100% of the kit sold, they feel like they have lost money by buying the kit... even if it is $5... and refuse to buy again.

As someone who took the TO, Judge and Player Management tests... i still can't order/host/run a Hobby League. Maybe rotate it across multiple local stores... but no. Unless you are an established business, you can't get the Hobby league in the first place.

The support structure should exist to support the community, and no real cost to the stores. And for those areas where there is limited store availability, if a responsible individual wants to take the reigns, they shoudl not be discouraged from supporting the game. We are not there right now.

Ever heard of friday night magic? Ever seen the free Clix given away at the monthly tourneys... provided free by Whiz Kids to the stores? Even Pirates! has free ships for organized play. Why is UDE missing the ball on this?

We have a mentality where only paid stores or PTOs can host events... and they want to profit off of it. We have gone through hell in the past locally. With 14 to 20 active players weekly... we still don't see PCQs in our town, or anywhere within 300 minles. They are few and very far between. We have ZERO Hobby League support, even though 8 of us guranteed woudl pay for the extra spots if need be to cover our stores expenses on the kit.

So what can we do to support the game? Well, we do quite a bit. But the actual support structure for the community it pretty lacking form the Corporate and Local Store Owner and PTO side of things in many areas... and the forged agreements of territory for TOs, and the kits being a monetary expenditure... and the lack of accountability allowing stores to sell the cards online... etc... all of this does not help.

What would I do to change this?

1) Make Hobby League kits more accesible... preferably free to the stores.

2) Track their usage, and accept returns on kits not utilized by at least 50%.

3) Allow individuals to take the responsibility to host events, without having to be a brick and mortar store, or being a for profit tournament organizer.

4) Assign PCQs by player records in the Mantis database. If a city has X amount of players (Active players), they get Y amount of PCQs a year... and offer incentived to stores and TOs to MAKE this happen.

Just some thoughts.......

Wow. That was fast. Didn't somebody just ask for a Demo Team program or something? Zap.

I saw a guy at work today with the instruction book for one of the Magic sets (Guildpact I think it was?) and talked briefly about VS. He seemed interested in looking at the card art since that's why he played Magic and I directed him to the Cardlist right at the top of our site.

Now if we could just get the STL area off life support for VS (we wouldn't have PCQ's if it wasn't for so many people playing Yugi.) We get 10 or so for each PCQ format while Iowa, Indy, and Chicago get over 40 players in each format.

Hmm... Ok.. A couple things... I might take the TO test just for the hell of it... Because I've been wanting to be in or have a VS. tourney since the beginning... And since there's only one comic book store that holds tournaments of any kind and it's about 45 minutes away and he won't hold VS. tournaments no matter how much I ask him. And more people I know play VS. where I live (all of 5... whee) Do you think like a Toys R Us or something would hold it? My dad works at the bastard wal-mart too... if that could possibly work... I dunno... I'm just moving into desperation mode trying to find a tournament to play at... Alrighty... Thanks..

P.S.
If you were to become a T.O. could you play in the tournaments you organize

P.P.S.
Damn. I'm not 18 yet... So I have to wait to apply to be a TO.. One more year... *sigh*