On the subject of reserves, if you missed out on getting a ticket and would still like to go please let me know. There's every chance people will have to drop out nearer the time and in those situations I'll need some people in reserve to fill the gaps. If the usual happens and I end with an odd number at the last minute it'll mean one of the reserves gets to play for free!
Anyway, all that aside the best news for you guys is that with so many people coming the prize pot is going to be huge. Remember I don't make a penny from these events so for the £15 ticket price, £8 goes to the venue for the food etc and the remaining £7 goes into the prize pot. £7 x 40 tickets is obviously £280. The current prize structure means that £80 of that goes on the tournament and painting prizes leaving me £200 to spend on raffle and spot prizes. I don't know about you but I thought the raffle prizes were pretty good last time so having double the cash has got to be great right?
So there'll be a raffle at the end and spot prizes throughout but I'm also keen to hear any other ideas for how to spend the £200. I considered door prizes but these end up being something small and short of a commemorative dice there isn't much scope. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.
Right, better get back to painting my Dark Angels now in the hope of getting them finished in time.
It's an insane and great turn out this time Alex and shows that your hard work is paying off. Looking forward to it already!
ReplyDeleteThanks mate. Glad the Weemen got in there before they all went.
DeleteI've too much on at work this time and I'd love to have used my Mortis Contemptor to down Venerable's flyers but I'm glad 6thDegree and Lord Halfpenny will be representing the blog again. That's a 100% record for us.
DeleteAnd Alex, cheers for organising again, sea willing, i'll be at the next... with some 5 transfers? hee hee ;)
amazing. this tends to be what happens to tournaments i think, suddenly they get a name for themselves and things take off.
ReplyDeletei wil get the money for my ticket to you asap mate, probably on payday this month. will that be ok?
No problem mate. Once again I'm glad you can make it.
DeleteMoar spot prizes!
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe a giant killer prize if anyone beats Humphris:P
Congratulations on selling out!
ReplyDeleteHow come there are people on the main list who are unpaid, and yet there are now people on the reserves list?
Surely places should go to people who are fully paid up first?
I take your point but I've always run it on a system where people reserve their spot then pay when they can. A lot of them are waiting for pay day.
DeleteI understand that it's frustrating if you want a ticket but can't get one yet you can see ppl who haven't paid. I'm considering whether or not to move into the bigger room at the venue but it seems a shame if its only for a handful of ppl.
Please also bear in mind that this is new territory for me. Blog Wars has never been this popular before!
@James.
DeleteSome of us have bills to pay, and have to wait till pay day as the event was only announced 2 weeks ago.
I agree with Adam, if it was £40-£50 as per some of the GW tournies I'd be sympathetic, but £15 is really not a lot of money! There are some whole teams which haven't paid at all! (Sons of Sanguinius, looking at you)
DeleteHow many extra people would you need to make the bigger room a valid prospect?
Please can we try and avoid turning this into a debate about how people should spend their money. I'm not going to force people to pay up if they don't feel they can afford it at the moment. You don't know what other demands they have on their money and neither do I. It's none of our business.
DeleteIt's not really a case of how many more people I'd need. It doesn't cost me any more to go into the other room but frankly the atmosphere isn't the same. I've never had as many people wanting to come so I need to have a discussion with the venue and then I'll work things out from there. This isn't the only thing I do with my life so please bear with me. Please also remember I do all this solo so have some patience.
This isn't a big, competitive tournament. Nor am I trying to make more money by packing people in. As I've already said everything goes into the prizes anyway.
I've run four of these events now and this is by far and away the most popular. All of the people who haven't paid have been to previous events and I know they're good for the money. It started as a community event so I'm not going to jeopardise that by debt collecting. I've always allowed people to reserve spots and pay when they can and I can't see a compelling reason to change it. You may disagree.
As I've said, I can understand it's frustating if you (or one of your friends) can't get a ticket because they've sold out. If this were a GW tournament you would've paid up front but you'd also be competing for a crappy certificate and little else. As it is it's a relatively small, independent event. I put up a list of names so people can see who's coming out of the regulars so they can hope to settle old scores. I don't list names so we can start a witch hunt to get money from people. If I'd just put a counter of how many tickets were left there wouldn't be an issue.
Please leave me to sort out who has and hasn't paid and try to keep things civil.
These points are all fair enough, I confess not to have attended before so I don't quite understand the process. I've not attended a community style event before, and I agree that for the reasons outlined above, your decisions are sound.
DeleteIt may be something worth considering for future tournaments however! One thing other tournaments do is sell the tickets through the venues web store - this might reduce your organisational overhead? But then again, the relevant venue may want paying for this or something (although I am skeptical)
I'm still amazed that you're organising a 40 person event by yourself - It must be a serious amount of work just for 1 person, especially with this event selling out so quickly!
Also the big long list of players with their blogs listed next to them is just peer-pressuring me into starting my own blog!
I know other tournaments run a similar system for reserving/paying because I'm going to one that does on Sunday.
DeleteI've taken off all of the labels saying paid or not paid and I'll keep track of this separately. The reason I put it on there is so that if you have paid and it says you haven't you can make sure I received payment. Nevermind.
I can sell them through the webstore. I don't think they charge because at the end of the day they're maximising the number of people who can come and hence how much they take from the bar/shop. However, I have little or no control over who comes then. Not that I stop anyone coming, but I'm trying to grow this tournament by word of mouth. For this reason I don't advertise on forums (although I do usually put it on Unseen Lerker). When I go to tournaments I mention it to opponents and other people hear about it through reading this blog or through friends. This is how I've done it for the last four and it's worked fine. I have no idea why it's so popular this time frankly!
If the event was designed as a ranked, competitive tournament with me wanting as many players as possible to make maximum profit then I would do things differently. Since it isnt, I won't be changing much about how I do things.
It's a lot of work organising the tournament and, considering I usually play in it as well, it's worse on the day! It does get easier every time as I already have some of the infrastructure set up e.g. scorecards, certificate templates, spreadsheet for results. It also, hopefully, gets better every time but you'd have to ask the veterans about that.
I'd encourage anyone to start a blog. It really helps you develop your tactics, painting and understanding of the game. I think the name of the tournament puts people off because they think they need a blog to play but I don't want to lose the identity of the event.