GW’s 2009 tournament circuit- D.O.A.

Ok, this is my second rant this year so be forewarned, if you don’t want to read me gripe, piss and moan or are offended by crude language. Time to stop reading.

The best way for any business to piss off its customers is to let them build up expectations based on past performance and then change the end result of those expectations without informing the customer, all the while acting like nothing has changed. Doing so implies your customers are stupid, just as does trying to change the game after people have signed up to play . Both of these moves have killed countless a business as they violate the trust customers put in a business to do right by them. There are a shit load of current examples of this going on in our current economic environment, so you’d think any business not already in Chapter 11, would take heed. However recent events tell me Games Workshop never got the memo.

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This concerns the newly posted 2009 Grand Tournament schedule from Games Workshop. I played in 4 tournaments in 2008 all them of were professionally run, Only one of them- The Chicago GT -was run by Games Workshop and despite the negative attitude of many veteran gamers have about the GT, I personally had been following Dave Taylor’s ( GW rep and organizer of the GW circuit events in 2008) blog and was really looking forward to the event. In the end I wasn’t disappointed , I thought it was a very well run event and I did indeed have a great time. That being the case I was really looking forward to this upcoming tournament season, most especially since I have little to no painting to do leading up to an event. and I anything I did do was purely from an elective standpoint.

About two weeks ago I read that Dave Taylor was no longer with GW, I was very surprised at this given the positive vibe created by the Chicago GT, and the great things I heard about both Las Vegas and Baltimore. I’ve heard speculation that GW was upset with the Chicago turnout, and while yes it was low. There were a bunch of external issues effecting the draw, including living down the crappy reputation that was last years shitty GT at Games Day, a new 40K Edition just coming out and let’s not forgot the price of gas being at an all time high- which made traveling to an already expensive event, more expensive. Despite this, the event was big success for those who attended and GW earned a lot of good will and word of mouth for the next year.

When I read Dave Taylor was gone I was disappointed, then when I saw the 2009 circuit schedule posted. I about threw up.

No official GW sponsored tourneys- 10 events all independently run and co-sponsored by GW. Last year was 11 events total so it leaves little room for more than one or two GW run events to be posted later on. The delivers the clear message that they are deciding where to host the few or one official event they do run.

While that’s unbelievable to me in itself , its not by far the biggest pisser of the whole thing, as I spent time reading over the details of these Indy GT’s I was shocked to realize that there is no painting requirement for 7 of the 10 2009 circuit events!!! What the bloody hell is this??,

Holding major tournaments without a painting requirement is inexcusable. It amounts to nothing less than the wholesale rape of the hobby, to think that GW would sponsor this shit makes my skin crawl. Having 2 Indy GT’s with no painting requirement in this years circuit was bad enough but to bump it up to 7 for 2009!!, Seriously- it’s a kick in the balls for those of us who work hard to create good stuff and try to inspire other people to do likewise.

I know a bunch of guys that work for GW these days and one thing I know that gets pounded into their heads is how to relate with people in away to create long term hobbyists. Sponsoring bullshit tournaments ( and YES, I don’t care how “cool” the people running these events are, if they allow unpainted models in their tourney, the event shouldn't be considered for the circuit) is directly contradictory to this as well as counterproductive to health of the hobby and the business.

I know of course GW’s main goal is to sell as much plastic as possible and painting requirements exclude people who “might” buy more models, but isn’t that why they started Ard’ Boyz tourneys?? so power gamer doodz can bust out a new 3K of unpainted models every time a new army gets released . GW’s gets the big sales and these guys get their own tournament scene, right?. I do expect GW to support all its customers, including ones that don’t paint or hobby but opening up the normal /traditional circuit as a free or all, is not the way to do it. There is plenty of room for well organized tourneys without a painting requirements..I just expect the full experience at these bigger events, and dumbing down the painting just kills it for me.

I don’t quite yet get exactly what’s going on with this but this isn’t good, it does not bode well for future expectations of a tournament circuit. Does anyone whose spent years working on painting and converting their armies want to pay good money to enter a tournament just to get paired up with some guy, who glued his models together the week before and who can’t wait to drop grey plastic/ bare metal on the table and abuse the newest army book at your expense.?? Does GW think that’s ‘fun”?. Do they think its going to fly as soon as people start to notice?, do they think that no one is going to care?

The hobby and the games are irreparably tied and while you can argue for the health of the hobby sans game, you can’t argue the contrary as the rules just aren’t “that" good. The best thing about GW and its games are the people it turns into long term hobbyists and the big tourneys are the excuse for all these people to get together and bring their awesome creations to one location and throw down. To piss all over that 25 year legacy with this “models do not need to be painted, but must be fully assembled” bullshit is an outrage. Don’t poison the well for the people who give a shit about the hobby because times are tough and you don't think you can sell enough tickets.

I’d love to hear from the GW genius who decided that “Tourneys were not well enough attended to our liking so lets shit-can our own events and go support a bunch of indies with no painting requirements and see how it goes” Are you fucking kidding me? Way to take a hot steaming crap all over that brand loyalty you work so hard to build.

The old saying goes "When going gets tough, the tough get going" but what I am hearing is "When going gets tough, bend over and take it in the rear". Hey guys! how about trying to "fix" the problem before flushing your entire tourney schedule totally down the drain.??. Dave Taylor “was” fixing the problem as far as I could tell.

Then again I don’t know, maybe I am way off base and he was fired for damn good reason, maybe he’s a fucking serial killer, I don’t know the guy, I just know what I saw. I saw the bullshit that was Games Day/GT 2007 and I saw the difference this year. What I see here is GW cutting its own legs out from under them. The way I see it- the 2009 tourney scene just exploded on launch.

I won’t bother getting into all the inconsistencies between events with things like the lack of composition scoring, You can’t call it a “tournament circuit” without some kind of uniform standard, and right now the only standard I see is trying age old alchemical trick of trying to turn lead into gold…or what we Americans have gleefully rephrased into “You can’t polish a turd”- I guess on the bright side -I can cancel any plans I had to road trip to some other events this year. At least I have Adepticon.