While I'm sure what your saying is correct for you and yours. I would like to point out that team building is a very important skill. Assuming they aren't copying the online hotness/or broken stuff, or like you say play the same team over and over.

Being good at heroclix is a combination of Team Building/planning, real time strategy, and luck. And every player has a different combination of those attributes.

I have known many players better at team building than playing or vice versa. But I wouldn't belittle anyone for playing overpowered/amazing teams if those teams were at least arguably original, or played in an original way. It seems like you're casting Team Building aside as a crutch for the weak. It is not.

However I LOVE that you just talked it out with your boy, and if you guys are happy, I am happy. So well done, and good for you.

I agree completely, Team building is a skill. But if your team building consists of just finding the meanest stuff and playing that over and over again, I think you've missed the mark.

Best way to go I feel would be

1. Creative scenarios
2. Highlander Rule for Non-Generic pieces
3. Ban Watch list mechanics or Enforce their new rulings.

You could always set expectations in advance. Tell players "next week is GenCon Level. Bring your competitive teams" and then the flip side "Next week is fun teams, no competitive". Then you're not singling anyone out, people know ahead of time to up the game or stay home.

Vary the builds. Allow some things some nights but not other nights. use SurveyMonkey to set up an anonymous poll to see what players want.

We definitely have a few rules lawyers and I've asked a couple of them to try and tone it down some. We also have a large number of hypercompetitive players, but we also have a fairly large group of players at our venue as well. We have some min/maxers and some purely casual players who show up on Saturdays and some who only play on Thursday nights.

I think we're lucky that we have such a large and diverse group of players, but I can also see where it makes it difficult or frustrating sometimes. I'm prone to getting angry when playing so I can also end up in "that guy" category sometimes, but it's something I try and work on. I also try and convey the issues some players have to the min/max guys, but some of them just don't get it.

My venue does fellowship, not sure how those points are counted though.

Funny enough, the last 2 times my wife came to play, she was in a roll-off for fellowship. she won both times :-D

I truly like the venue. It is where I started playing Heroclix. A lot of great people play there, so I'm really lucky to be apart of this venue.

Superheerowing, I hope your situation with venue gets better. Good luck.

Well I just spoke to my player, and he agreed that he will tone it down with the "Rules Lawyering" and do what's best for the group. As it stands, I'll speak with my players about instituting a highlander rule if they determine this will be better overall for our group going forward.

Thank you all for your contributions, I've now reconsidered how to do prize support at my venue, and how to reach as many players as possible with fun and interesting scenarios. If anyone else has any recommendations,feel free to PM me.

Thanks again to everyone that contributed to this thread, and for everyone here at HCrealms for helping a new judge out. :D

We have about 18-20 at our monthly tournament and had the same issue. So for AvX we are going to run two small tournaments. One will be a fun total comic inspired theme and the other we are calling the dirtbag tables (anything goes). Everyone gets the spirit of the fun tables and I don't think I will have any issues with dirtbag teams trying to play over there. Each seperate one will get one LE for the first place winner and we will still have a fellowship for the third one. Everyone seems pretty stoked about this and is really looking forward to it.

These would get me in the door faster than you can say "shablagoo!"

500 Points of Monsters/Legion of Monsters would probably make me say "You know what? I'd rather stay home and knit." Even without the GenCon-level stuff.

Know what I mean?