Well, now that I have met you I did learn that your house is run by a 7-year old girl, so yeah, I guess I would have to side on the doubtful side.

Play the team and if you win, give the prize away. That should shut them up!

We've seen some groan-worthy teams, and are not shy about ribbing people for them. Still, if you're giving the prize away, I can't imagine people would be too put off by it.

It's okay to play a devastating team once in a while. And sometimes it's good to play some of the nastier figures in the game. It'll ease your natural curiosity to play a beast and see how good they really are.

And if you play them and win the tournament, turn around and give the prize to one of the players that doesn't win the LEs often. It'll show the other players that you are a graceful champion.

So the other venue that I've griped about before on here is now going to start charging a $1 entry fee into their tournaments. Their website calls it an "after hours fee." I will be completely dumbfounded if their attendance stays so high. Their next tournament you don't even get to build a team, you show up and the owner will give you a team he makes for you. I still can't believe they only go off of the most points and not W/L then victory points, especially when not everyone plays the same number of matches and you pretty much just play who you want.

I'm honestly amazed my venue has never charges an entry fee. We don't even play in a gaming store, we play in the restaurant next door, often while they're closed. When they're open I guess we make up the space we take in purchases, but when they're closed they have to leave the lights on and trust everyone not to get into anything and it's free. I kind of understand entry fees, especially if they're small and the venue would otherwise be losing money.

If they ran tournaments how they are suppose to be ran, then I could understand, but all they have right now is barely organized chaos. And just because you win the tournament, it doesn't mean you'll get an LE either (I know from personal experience). Personally I think the store is just struggling to stay open and the owner (who also plays in and runs the tournament) is looking for a way to get some extra revenue.

Its 6$ at one venue I go to and 10$? at another venue I go to.

But the money goes towards boosters for prizes.

A dollar doesn't seem bad to me, but that the own gives you a team thing seems weird...

But if you need to pay to play in a tournament, wouldn't you want the tournament to actually be a tournament instead of a contest to see who can have the owner's favor and get an LE?

I'd be alright with playing one game with an assigned team, if for no other reason than it might force me to try new powers/combos out.

So it's like a gladiator fight?

The "being handed a team" thing would be interesting for me for a week or two, as long as the teams handed out were relatively balanced. I view the $1 as a moot point as it doesn't effect me much. (SLVR, I win for using MOOT in a post first after GenCon. Amazed it took so long. Sorry guys, it was a common refrain at GenCon among our group.)

If all the teams were balanced, relatively speaking, this would be fun. If I opened a team of okay figures and my opponent opened a ThingTron I may be a little pissed having to pay for the priviledge of getting my brains beaten in.

That said, while the maximum point thing does solve the issue of slow playing a round, it isn't a fair "tournament". That is my biggest issue with it.

At this particular venue, it isn't uncommon to see nearly every other person using Metron. Every time I've been there, approximately 50% of the crowd used Metron. 85% of them used Metron, Nightcrawler, WL Sinestro, or GSX Phoenix. In the last 3 months, they've had 1 tournament that wasn't a 300 points Golden Age (they don't even know what Golden Age is, they call it standard) build. I've offered to help the owner organize their tournaments to get some kind of structure, but never got a response. I think he believes I'm trying to compete against his venue, but I just want the game to do well regardless of who's venue is hosting it.

As of two weeks ago, this is how we do it now too. Our buy-in is $5 and everyone goes home with a little something.