You'll always be welcome at my table. We'll save you a starting area.

Of course, that means you'll have to be seen with me... which may not be a good thing.

Im curious... what rules changed about qualifiying?

Karl, the only problem with being seen with you is it makes most of us look even fatter!
Of course, it does make our hair look better!

I have always felt Karl keeps his PMS in check for the most part. Sorry he unleashed it on you, it normally is saved for Wizkids.

I have to say that I thought it was greeting all the players that came by the booth (I was one of the heroclix demo guys) and getting to really see the fanbase for this game. Everyone was friendly, and I genuinely enjoyed speaking to everyone. I think the reaction towards everything was very positive.

I gave one out. Dude rolled 2 crit misses in a row. If that wasn't bad enough, his opponent had Cosmic Spidy.

I would say this is a great idea if players get to do it as well. I met a lot of folk and I'm trying to remember real names to Realms names. I suck with names.

Well two years ago a ton of us did. I think almost every person I talked to had their realms name written on their badge. I'm going to for sure next year.

I think by "king of the hill" you mean "battle royales," because the only other time WK did KOTH at GenCon was in 2008 and there was no sitting around between matches (we only ran 2 hills that year instead of 4 and we had so many sign ups there was no waiting).

As for the time spent in-between rounds waiting, I'd be curious howl ong ago we're really talking about. With the exception of the 200+ events we ran the year Justice League and Halo both pre-released, the between-round time has typically been at what I would think is an acceptable level (10-15 minutes between time is called from one round and time starts for the next round). Granted, that level may not be great to the player needing to use the facilities, but the era of 30 minute waits between rounds has long since passed (and I take pride in that as we've never had an average time between rounds be longer than 20 minutes since I started writing software to handle it - though I will again point out my own failings with those 2 very high capacity events, something I have coded a better solution for at this point).

Well, I only made it for two days of GenCon and, as an all-around gamer, I didn't have the spare time to be in any of the big Heroclix events, what with hall-crawling and demos and all. But I did go down to the CMG and CCG area after the hall closed to hang out and things looked like they were going pretty smoothly.

The only thing I'd add would be a "trading pit" for those folks vainly wandering around looking to swap SRs, LEs, and such. There were a couple of people trying to do that, but most people only brought their team for that day. More than once I heard, "I REALLY need that piece, but I didn't bring anything to trade." Bummer.

It was in the exhibit hall that WizKids actually had problems, though. They just didn't take the right steps to sell themselves or their products effectively. I'm not trying to rag on WKN, but as a 20-GenCon vet (and at least 5 of those working as a consultant to exhibitors), I can make some informed suggestions:

- More demo spaces at the booth. Don't just sell to your current customers. Get a lot of the small circular tables, slap an AW Classic starter on it, and run a rigged-to-be-short, ten-minute demo for anyone who looks even vaguely interested. Cycle through as many potential new players as you can. Don't run the 90-minute demos some booths do.

- Participate in the Cheese Weasel exhibit hall scavenger hunt. Make anyone who wants the punch on their card do the aforementioned ten-minute demo. These people want to give you their attention for a brief period, so be nice to them and get them going ASAP.

- Have a free give-away for anyone who does the demo. A bin of commons from Modern Age sets will send people home with at least one figure... and maybe they'll want more.

- Have a free give-away for anyone who walks past the booth. Even if it is just a candy bowl, many people browsing the exhibit hall will at least stop and talk to you for that lollipop. My preference is the booths that give away individually wrapped Lifesaver mints. It's a candy, and a public service!

- Have a raffle for free starters, but to be eligible you have to do the demo... and give us your email address (you need not be present to win). Give away X per day and get more new people trying the game. With their friends. Who might also like it. And buy it.

- Have a "Buy something, get this" promo item. Maps work really well for this. I know someone who bought 5 boosters, one at a time, to get lots of the double-sided castle / carnival map. He didn't even need the boosters, he just wanted a map for each of his friends. This also works on new players, too. Maybe they don't need to buy a starter just yet, if they can buy one booster, get a map, and download the rules off the internet.

- Have a prize wheel, limit one per con attendee. Every space should be a winner, even if it's just a two-dollar off coupon (limit one per purchase) for something at the booth. I don't even play WoW and I stopped by to spin their wheel just in case I got something I could ebay.

- Put a freebie in the GenCon goody bag and / or a coupon in the booklet. Heck, a flyer saying, "come to our booth, present this coupon, and spin the wheel of prizes" WORKS.

- In short, push, push, push to new customers. You don't HAVE to have new product on sale, because your current product is new to some people anyway. Go get them!

Okay, let's say that Alice and Bob are doing the Cheese Weasel hall scavenger hunt. They are required to come to the WizKids booth in order to fill out their card. For showing up at the booth, they each get a breath mint. It's Saturday afternoon, so they probably needed them. Now, in order to get their Cheese Weasel cards punched, they each need to do the demo. The booth worker stands them at opposite sides of a table and runs them through a ten-minute, really quick look at the game. For which they each get a pull from the bin of SI figures. Alice gets Spider-Man and Bob chooses Punisher.

While they're at it, they register for the drawing for a free starter, forking over their email addresses. They also both have their "spin the wheel" coupon. Alice wins a FCBD War Machine and Bob gets a 2-dollar-off coupon. Well, as long as he has that, he might as well buy something... He chooses a HoT booster, and gets a free reversible map with it. Hey, they practically have enought to play, right there! That's enough to get Alice to purchase a Brave and the Bold booster (she likes the Harley / Ivy art) and get a second map.

They've done the demo, received free figures (and mints!), spun the wheel, registered for the drawing, made two separate purchases (so they each got a map), and had a great time at the booth. Now they're going to tell all their friends at GenCon to go to the WizKids booth. That way, at next week's gaming day, they can all try to play clix together. Oh, and maybe one of them will win a free starter! Hurray!

Yes, this means a larger booth. Yes, you'd need more volunteers. Yes it is somewhat more expensive to have a setup like this, in the short term. But if you have a good product (and you do) this stuff really does work. Every year, I marvel at the booths who do this, and at those who don't. I totally get why WKN didn't have it in them this year, but I hope they can rock the house the way they deserve to next year.

I also would like to add in,

Bring back the golden ticket for qualifying! I forget what it does, but I liked competeing for it back in 2008.

Maybe have regional qualifying that puts you into saturday's tournament automatically

But that would make thursday and Friday qualifiers for Saturday, then Saturday a qualifier for Sunday.

So it's like this:

Thursday, sealed
Friday floor
Saturday constructed
Sunday constructed

Region placers/ champs (let's say there's 12) start on Saturday and are drawn into a seeding spot. ( spots 1-12)

Then from there take the next 116 best from the first day and put them into a constructed

Then do however many rounds and take the top 15 or 31 (whichever you prefer) and put them into the last day with former WC at top.

Reason for 32 in the last day, is so you can have round one be a one loss elimination round for the bottom 24 (give top 8 a bye) and then from there run it. Normal.

That way there's more entry fee on the last day.

This is a rough mock up, I run wrestling tournaments in the winter so I have an idea of how things work, I'll write it out more and come back with more details later

yeah had i known about the raffle thing i would've waited a day. and i guess the only ones who got a ticket for thurs. guanteed booster were those that made it into the pre-release event. not a great deal for those who couldn't get into that event. i got nadda for supporting the company and buying my Dr. Manhattan, where was my bonus?

I'll have to go dig up my notes, but the 2-3 months above doesn't ring accurate for me. As I recall, when the WoS delay was announced (turning the Release event into a PRE-release event) we had less than half of the seats for the event sold. And I'm pretty sure that announcement was sooner than 2 months ago.

I don't know that having one day of "no HeroClix events" is the best way to go. And a championship event has typically meant that you were coming to play in 2-3 days of events, depending on what you pre-qualified for. And the goal has been to always have some other event as a stand-alone side event that is not the championship events. We had one failure on that this year due to misentering the information into the GenCon system (the Watchmen event was originally planned to be Saturday, but we entered it incorrectly)

As for the length of the events, I'd love to hear ideas of a quicker way to play. Heroclix takes 45-50 minutes to play or it's a rushed game. If you've got 128 people, then you need at least 5 rounds just to get to a "top 4", unless you want to start letting points be the overriding factor. But that leads to scenarios where people go undefeated but still lose. Personally, I find that idea repugnant. But I welcome other opinions on the matter.

Again, I'll need to check my original postings, but in my mind, they never changed. Up to 4 undefeated players is what I remember saying and it's certainly what was always meant. It did not mean that there would necessarily be 4 players. Only that we would run enough rounds so that there would be 4 or less undefeated players and they would all qualify for Worlds.

Between this and the previous sentence, it should become clear to people my personal philosophy of tournament organization. I'm a very big believer in the WIN over the POINTS. The points are useful for placing and position and seating but it SHOULD NOT influence who WINS. Folks who have discussed this with me before have heard me say "If you have not lose a match, you should not lose the tournament." I accept that there are other perspectives on this and am happy to discuss (here, another thread, PM offline, etc.)

And other folks on here are saying we should start earlier.

I wanted to respond to this since I was at the Booth all weekend. The goal, as stated to me by Justin, was not sales but rather engaging the public through Demos and positive interactions.

Our demo tables were rarely (and I cannot emphasize how rarely) unoccupied by gamers learning new games demo'ed by our crack squad of volunteers and WK employees.

As a WK demo "veteran", I have to say that I was very pleased with the interactions we had, the conversations we shared, and the demos we gave.

Again, it was very rare for a Demo'er to have more than a few minutes between demo's or talking with the public.

I'm sorry you don't share the same opinion, but I think the booth did rather well given the goal(s) we set out with for this year.

So not true. I didn't know I was going until 3 weeks beforehand, I got signed up for both of the WoS sealeds just fine (one was a little close, with 10 spots/128 free, the other was 27/64 I think).