I recently printed out mailing labels with the following message:

Join us at (insert your venue here) every Tuesday night for Mage Knight games, fun, demos, tournaments, and prizes. Call Rob at 123-4567 for more info.

My venue then placed one of these labels on EVERY MK product in the store.

Benefits for the venue were increased exposure for their store and a measure of anti-booster tampering to deter cherry-picking. Benefits for our group are increased exposure and therefore more members.

In the week since I've done this, I've taught 5 new players who showed up on the advertised evening and recieved several phone calls from other interested players.

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A second idea is to create a poster with pics of our players having a great time playing MK to place in the store. This too will have game club information and will highlight our "father/son" and "husband/wife" groups... as well as the others just like "you" who enjoy playing MK a few hours each week.

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This next idea was inspired by an article found in a White Dwarf magazine. I intend to start a Mage Knight Grudge League. A Plaque on the wall of the venue will have 15+ hooks in a pyramid shape with name tags of the players.

Players on lower tiers may challenge players on the tier above them by placing a "chit" on the name of the person they wish to challenge. If the lower player wins, their name tags are switched and the lower player advances up the pyramid.

If the upper player wins, he recieves the "challenge chit" which may be used to challenge someone on the tier above him.

If the player at the top of the pyramid collects 3 (or some other number) of chits by defeating the people who challenge him, he is the overall league winner*.

If the top players loses any matches, he falls to the bottom of the pyramid and must climb back up the ranks. This prevents the top two tiers from stagnating with the same players.

Original player placements will be decided by a tournament.

*Winners (the top player who collected 3 chits by being undefeated) can recieve Bragging Rights, perhaps their name engraved on a Hall of Fame Plaque located on the venue wall, or even prizes purchased with an entry fee charged at the tournament in which the pyramid placement was determined. When one person has collected 3 chits, the league can either start over or the League Winner can be given proper accolades and then recycled to the bottom of the pyramid to give others a turn at the top. ;)
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Last night I tried a new format. It would work great with sealed boosters, but I simply tossed 8-10 boosters worth of figs into a grocery bag.

Players were given 50 poker chips. Figures were pulled from the bag one at a time and players bid on the pieces. When all figures had been auctioned off, players built 200 point armies with the figures they had drafted and we played from there.

The poker draft part of the evening was as much fun or more than the playing.
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Does anyone have any other suggestions or perhaps thoughts on the ideas above regarding promoting activity in your local group?

Thanks
Rob

The poker Draft the same as Bshuggs Point Draft that we do at Cons. 9 out of 10 times we never even play. The fun is the bidding. It takes a long time to do but it is well worth it. At Gen Con we did it and got players from Worlds ot play. After watching us some other guys from Worlds got a group together and played. Highly suggested format for a group to play.

I like the labels too. One thing a person wants to know when they are looking at a game is there some place or people to play against. That along is enough to get people to play or atleast try the game

The labels are a great idea. I will have to try that at my venue. Did you have any concerns about giving out your phone number? That is the only part that bothers me, I might just do e-mail. I also like the pyramid challenge idea. Thanks.

I typically give out my number to other members of our group with no bad results thus far. If people abuse the privilege, then I will adjust accordingly ;)

I also collect email addresses of the people I teach MK. With these I've created an email mailing list to send out invites and promote upcoming events.

Great ideas! .... Someone want to send me the money to put them in to effect? :p

*sighs* I envy people with enough money to put up better advertisement than a simple black and white flier up.. And more so do I envy the people with enough players to actually make a special setup of ranking worth while..

I mean.. if I'm lucky I'll start having 10 people.. I am betting though on, at most maintaining 6.. And a 6 person tier would be very stagnate at my venue.. "Oh look, Mat's on top.. Oh look, someone chalanged him and lost.. oh look.. 2 more people did.. oh look, matts at the bottom.. look, matts on the top again.."I have one exceptional player, a couple of decent players, and a bunch of poor to so-so players. (the other 7 of the ten I 'may' get are all either new or just don't care much)

Well the label idea is great, but how do u place it...

Labels cost about 6 bucks for 50 or so I imagine and you just peel them off and stick them to the booster box is my guess.

I'm not sure of the cost of the labels. I had a box of 3000 in a file cabinet, so I printed off a few pages for the venue.

In the future, I may be able to convince the venue to print the labels as they need them.

I love formats like this because they encourage new players and players that don't have a fortune to spend on keeping their constructed armies up to date with all the latest hot competitive pieces.

It might also be interesting to try a slight variant on your poker draft. For each player, throw in 200 points worth of figures into your bag. Instead of revealing figures one at a time, let all the players see all the pieces that will be up for auction before hand. Give each player 200 poker chips/points to bid with. Finally, ignore the point values printed on the base and allow the players to play with whatever they have purchased with their 200 points.

Aside from the fun of bidding, I think this format would sort of be like taking MK point values off a fixed currency exchange rate and floating each figure on a free market to determine its point cost. Another benefit of this or similar formats is that every piece has the potential of being playable; there are no more undercosted or overcosted figures. Every figure is worth however many points players are willing to pay for it.

Good thread! Despite not playing anymore I still check out this site regularly and am glad to see a positive thread about building up the player base without ripping WK, the new 2.0 game, or other posters ideas.

This is a great Idea Isabee, Im going to use that with our DnD mini's group (MK what?). We only have a handful, yet cases are being sold every day at the local stores. Somebody is buying them. Just not coming in to play yet.

I might have to do the same for CAV and Warmachine. WM had more players tonight than MK, and D&DM sold more boosters tonight than did 1.0 and 2.0.

Isabee:

Excellent ideas sir. They are both effective and inexpensive, so virtually anyone can implement them right away. Hopefully other gamers will see this thread and act upon the free guidance. :)

Gamers:

I come to this website to learn about MK and NOT about other games. Why do comments about other game systems "appear out of thin air" so frequently? If I wanted to hear about D&D minis I would go to the appropriate website. The same can be said of all the other "products" mentioned. In short, I don't care one whit about what anyone's plans are with Monopoly, Acquire, Risk 2210, Stratego, Chess, Uno, Backgammon, New England, Settlers of Cataan, Rook, Hearts, Scrabble.............. ! I just wanted to clear that up.

Thanks for your time,

Mago-Azul

Hey uh mago...does the game "dirty minds" count????? LOL


I'm not helping at all am I?:rolleyes:

but you do drive a point. so about those smite figures.... ;)

keep the peace,
Gunmix

Gunmix:

Just so everyone is in the "know" on this one, I mistakenly believed general vale had crushing blow and moved a formation of ***whelp monks into base contact with him. (We were in a no surge environment due to Rain and Mud.) He was also equipped with some sword that increases the damage value by +1. Needless to say, He rolled a "12" and hit each of the monks for 6 points of damage. 18 MFing points with one action!*!*! Later he "smite-d" 2 figures for 5 damage apiece. Did I mention I also lost? But are you surprised after reading my little story?

And no, mentioning yet another game is NOT helping. ;)

Mago-Azul