San Juan is one of my favorite games ever. I have only played PR a few times, but I play SJ every chance I get -- which isn't often, because the few friends who know how to play are tired of being beaten at it by me.
BFF and I just got approval to start a competitive tabletop gaming league at the store. We're offering prizes starting at $10 store credit and increasing based on the number of partici#####. We're running two tournaments at a time, asynchronously (so you come and play three or six games, depending on whether you signed up for one or both tournies, any time that works for you and your assigned opponents during a six-week period.) There's a $3 entry fee, or $5 for both tournaments, which will allow for prize support with as few as four competitors. Our September/October games are Ticket to Ride (USA) and Carcassone, because we think those are so well-known they border on mainstream and will draw in a large crowd.
We're also demoing the tournament games at the beginning of the play period so that people who may not know how to play one or both games can try it out before signing up. We're trying to draw in people who already know a lot of games but want to meet new people to play them with, and also people who are looking to learn new and unusual games. They are distinct groups, but they work well together.
I am seriously considering running Puerto Rico and San Juan for the November/December tournament. My BFF and my boss both want to run a Settlers tourney, but I'm one of the four people on Earth who doesn't really care for Settlers much. Plus, it requires 3-person pods, and that's more difficult, logistically. Regardless, it mainly depends on if there are any important new releases out. One reason we chose TTR for September is to help promote the Asia expansion that came out last month.
We're also increasing our stock of the league games and offering a 25% discount off list price on them for the duration of the tournament. I think it will really drive sales. Magic: the Gathering is our bread and butter, but we have a huge amount of retail space devoted to tabletop gaming and Eurogaming is really becoming popular among twenty- and thirty-somethings right now. We need to move our stock, and the best way to do that is to create a community of store regulars who boardgame. We have that with MtG and, to a lesser extent, the Warhammer crowd, but there is very little cross-pollination from those groups. Whereas boardgamers (especially Gamers of a Certain Age) are more likely to play Warhammer, MtG, card games, and RPGs as well.
If this takes off, we may run three tournaments in Jan/Feb and start a junior league for kids 8 - 14. Or we may cut it down to one game at a time and cut the play period down to three weeks. It depends what kinds of feedback we get. But I am really excited about it (can you tell?) and welcome any suggestions you guys have.
I love all the ideas you are giving me and don't have time to reply to them individually right now, but I will print them out and take them to my BFF for further discussion. We are also considering starting a periodic event (Quarterly?) for local indie game developers to meet, share ideas, and play-test each others' games. This would be with an eye toward eventually carrying some copies of locally-produced, self-published games in the store, if I can sell my boss on the idea. (I think he'll be down if he feels like the copies will move; I'm 95% certain he would be willing to take them on a consignment basis.) So if you guys have any suggestions for that I'll take those as well.
Should we split this thread and put it up in the main forum area?
Author
Topic: It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye (Read 5217 times)