I'll stop you right there. 30 cards doesn't work! you can't play a real game with just that. 30 card starters have been used in the past, and we've seen where that's gotten us. that said, change the "30" to "60" and I think you're onto something.

Well the three packs are included with the intention of adding them to your 30-card precon toward making a 60-card deck. The reason that I think 30 cards would be better on UDE's end is that it makes it so

(a) they don't have to include quite as many different cards in the deck, which encourages pack purchases

and

(b) it helps introduce new players to deckbuilding right out of the gate.

I agree that 30 cards and nothing else is a poor product, but I like the "small deck + packs = 60" idea that WoW started.

Erick, I had a long response for you. I'm going to start practicing what I preach instead. I'm sorry for how I almost responded to you.

Instead, allow this response to take it's place:

How do you wish to define "Big Event"? I personally consider an event that a large number of players are willing to travel cross country to attend to be a Big Event.

I do not consider an event that is largely a regional event to be a large event. The prizing isn't in place for the Megaweekends to generate the kind of turnouts that a $10k drew attendance from in many cases.

I'm also not willing to discount 10ks just because PCs were attached. I also didn't discount the PCQs where players got top 8 just because they showed up. $10ks as a whole have been better attended than Megaweekends and have been much less well attended than the average PC. With the PC being the biggest event (prior to worlds) and 10ks having fewer people than that, and Megaweekends having fewer people than that, and PCQs having fewer people than that, I think it is very fair to compare a Megaweekend to a somewhat over-glorified $10k.

That is not to say that the events are not fun and awesomely executed and worth the effort to attend, but they are not Big events in my eyes. I have a different perspective than you do, perhaps.

I welcome you to post what you feel defines a Big Event.

As for the discussion on Pre-Con decks, I strongly feel that smaller case assortments including Legendary Characters, designed with lower cost "text-less" versions of popular characters would offer new players a reason to play and existing players a reason to buy the new product in at least some cases.

UDE has made a 2 cost Captain America, Spiderman, Professor X, Black Bolt and a bunch of other Fan Favorites. Punisher, Daredevil, Nightcrawler, Black Cat. DEsigning LEgendary decks that use the supporting cast of a character as well as a couple of exclusive versions of characters, ie a RARE and a Common, but both only available in the starters, product can be moved and fans have something to look forward to in their booster packs as well, as they find better versions of their favorite characters in the boosters.

Captain America cost 1, for instance could be totally text-less, no range, and only be a 2/1 for 1, depicting WWII Cap with "Triangle" shield.

My guess is that many parents could utilize a slightly simpler version of many characters to teach their children the game. The ability to do this using the popular characters that the game is currently focusing more heavily on can also be used to hold the attentions and imaginations even longer for those younger ones and help to build a better gaming community for the future, instead of just flash in the pan gaming that we are seeing all around us.

An $8 30-card starter deck is a great idea.

Vs R&D is pretty great. They could build a starter deck that does the following:

a) Features a popular character and their worst villain
b) Re-prints a couple staple cards that we all love
c) Adds value to long-time players (varied foils, great generic PTs)
d) Makes two playable 60-card decks when you buy two - your 2-of's make sense as 4-ofs, etc.

If you make it 120 cards I think it might interfere with either the value added or the price of the product. I got into VS because I saw a Spidey starter that wasn't selling for 9$ and thought, "Why not try it?"

A $30 package like Hellboy doesn't have the same appeal to the kind of people we can attract, like I was before I began. Great as that set was.

Starter/Pre-cons don't make money. It's just the truth, they probably lost a lot of money on starters and even the Giant Sized Galactus thing.

tchalla... do us a favor and look up all the numbers at 10ks (even with the PCs attached) and tell me how many were all that much more than 150 players.

At this point in time... be thankful you have MegaWeekends... other than Worlds and GenCon Indy... those ARE our big tournaments.

(and last time I checked... almost 50% of the players at MWLA were not from SoCal... Florida, Washington, Texas, Colorado... etc etc etc)

Really? I never heard of such a thing. They make some money, just not enough of an income to make more then one every year or so. Unless you got proof, you are only making assumptions, and that is not helpful at all.

I just realized I asked tchalla to do math... so from what I found... here it is:

WW Phil 5/23/04 188
Origins OH 6/26/04 247
CC SD 7/24/04 144
Chicago 8/14/04 75
PC Indy 8/21/04 162
DragonCon ATL 9/4/04 86
WW Texas 11/6/04 100
PC LA Marvel 12/4/04 125
PC LA DC 12/4/04 46
NJ 1/15/05 213
Las Vegas 2/5/05 125
Columbus 2/12/05 196
MegaCon FL 2/26/05 139
WW LA 3/19/05 134
Chicago 4/2/05 147
Seatte 4/16/05 81
Mexico City 5/7/05 84
Detroit 5/14/05 140
PC NY 5/28/05 209
Phil 6/4/05 129
Heroes Con NC 6/25/05 97
Origins OH 7/2/5 124
CC SD 7/16/05 156
WW Chicago 8/6/05 171
PC Indy 8/20/05 155
Canada 8/27/05 82
DragonCon ATL 9/3/05 99
Clermont, FL 10/15/05 155
WW Texas 11/5/05 100
PC LA 11/19/05 232
SanFran 2/4/06 129
WW LA 3/18/06 127
PC ATL 3/25/06 228
Texas 4/1/06 79
Minnesota 4/15/06 100
PC SF 6/3/06 205
Ontario 6/10/06 96
Charlotte 7/1/06 163
Boston 7/15/06 102
PC Indy 8/12/06
NY 9/9/06 166
Denver 10/7/06 47
Columbus 10/14/06 138
PC Indy 11/18/06 150
Florida 12/9/06 81
PC Indy 8/18/07 145

Average 135.4888889

That's counting the PCs... there doesn't seem to be a count for PC Amsterdam and there is one PC Indy missing but even if those came in at 200... it wouldn't bring the average up to 150.

So... facts don't lie.

Erick, your numbers have proven that the average turnout for a 10k was less than the turnout of the two MegaWeekends we have had so far. You were right and I was wrong. The Megaweekends are big events.

I don't recall saying that Megaweekends were not something to be thankful for. I think I specifically said they were fun and well worth the effort to attend one.

Good job, Erick! You proved me wrong! Excellent work, sir. You used numbers and facts to assemble a great post detailing how my incorrect assertions were misleading to people unsure of how grand an event a Megaweekend was.

I especially liked the part where you took the time to look up all of the pertinant data and do the math and everything. Sheer brilliance! People don't congratulate each other for hard work done well any more. Nice work!

I'm feeling this should be in blue... hehe.

Regardless... this just illustrates that sometimes perception is not the same as reality. I knew that my estimation of 10k attendance was close because I actually had to do some of this analysis pre and post MegaWeekend. I also judged or TO'ed a few of the SoCal ones so I knew the numbers were not huge. I am actually surprised by how low the average is even when counting PC 10ks which usually have a higher attendance.

People tend do this with VS quite a bit:

1. Perception: UDE doesn't ship Hobby League kits when ordered
Reality: The store owner didn't actually order them and just told the players that UDE did not ship them.

2. Perception: UDE shortprinted MVL and DCL on purpose.
Reality: They printed to distributor forecasts and did not overprint like previous sets in order to not lose money.

3. Perception: The 10ks were very popular and very well attended.
Reality: Depends. Many PTOs didn't break even on costs because turnout was lower than expected (for a comparison, YGO Regionals for just product as prizing gets higher average numbers than VS 10ks... at least in SoCal. Shonen Jumps blow ANY VS high level event out of the universe).

Am I the only person who sees those kind of player turnouts even at PCs (and especially at PCQs in the last 2 years) doesn't warrant cash events for VS? This is why I think we should be pretty happy that UDE is giving us the kind of prizing we are getting at Worlds. Sure... it's no 10k or PC... but let's get real here... even what they are currently providing is pretty generous considering that VS sales are a very small fraction of what YGO and WoW bring in.

So back on topic... knowing that... if you needed to budget for VS correctly... what would you do for the last half of 2008 (and "kill the game" is not an option)?

Nothing in blue, you'll note.

I was wrong and you had evidence to prove it. Great work.

See, I'm on this new kick where I'm going to BE the man I want my son to learn to be. You were right, I was wrong. The world is gonna keep on spinning. Maybe I'll learn from this to state my points better. Maybe I'll learn to just not get involved if it isn't important. Neither makes a difference and definitely not enough of a difference to argue on the internet about it :)

Ok, here's my idea for the precons:
It's 60 cards, no more than 2-3 of a card. It'll be made up of cards from the main set (let's say MUN for this analogy, considering the unlikelihood of something like this coming out next week), as well as other modern age sets for the company perhaps (finishing move, combat veteran, shrink etc.). You could have a precon for lets say 5 of the themes of the set, that uses 3 rares each. There's only one deck per precon. There will be a point to buy the packs because the better characters and plots/etc. can be obtained to improve the precon one has.
No need to mesh weird teams together (sinister Syndicate/Spider-Friends? wtf?).
No need to buy more than one product to be able to play a legal game.
It's all one person needs.
Has a theme, helpful for introducing theme to new players,
which follows to make it easier for players to crack packs and add to their decks.
Themes can include legends, team themes, or even the occasional team-up theme (worlds finest, perhaps).

So yeah, that's my vision of a starter I'd like to see.

Would it really be easier to teach new players when there are already tons of people who already know how to play? I know in my area there is no hobby league, but most stores sell packs. This leads me to believe there are other players in my area that I just can't find.

I want to ude create a "Vs Player Finder". An online search database filled with people who voluntarily submit their email address and location. Type in a zip code and a list of players in that area is displayed. This could also be used as a marketing list, helping ude reach their core base.

There are many areas that simply don't have a hobby league. VS players need a means of finding one another to start them.

The WoW card game has that, because I used it before. I thought UDE had a generic version, but I don't recall where I found it.