Organising the Play?

The intro-ish…

Hello and welcome to this week’s blog!

Now, is this an intro? Well, by definition I guess it is, yes since it’s at the start of the blog. Is it my normal intro?

Alas, another week went by without me getting a game (and ironic given the title this week!). Sad times. Especially so close to the Sith Taker Open.

Still, there’s some stuff I want to talk about so let’s go!

Patreon Update…

Yes, this is the LAST Tuesday of the quarter!

What’s the last reveal? Well, it’s that Legend tier Patrons will be receiving a 3D printed ship! Well, once I’ve got them all done, that is!

I had some nice feedback about the senator’s shuttles that shipped out last time which I picked because I felt that for one, it’s something interesting and different to proxy with on the table and secondly that it’s got potential for a role in some new scenario. Maybe. I know that scenarios where the two players don’t have the same objective to complete are unlikely to ever be introduced in tournament play but I think it could be fun to alternate between protecting and destroying a neutral ship that can’t shoot.

Anyway, continuing along that line, this quarter you’ll be getting the DX-9 Stormtrooper Transport!

If you’d like to get one of these or any of the other goodies I’ve already shared over previous weeks (like alt arts, templates, tokens, etc) AND get your name into the hat for a giveaway draw prize then you can sign up to be a Patreon supporter here.

Thanks to all my supporters, I’m looking forward to shipping you your stuff soon!

The main bit…

Alright, so as I said, no game this week. I feel like my list for STO is locked in and while I’ve got NO idea what to do on day 2 when I fail to make the cut, I’m open to ideas for AMG legal lists for the GT that’s running or for a 10 point doubles list in XWA points!

I’ll come back to that later on though.

For now, I have an announcement!

Following long deliberations and switching of venues AND of dates (several times!), we at Exile Squadron are delighted to announce…..

THE WELSH OPEN 2025 !

Tickets are now live for this 2 day premier level event on the 19th & 20th of July. We will be using the latest XWA points and as for prizes? Well, there’s going to be some very exciting announcements coming soon on that! But not yet!

We are very excited to be able to bring this event back again and we are hoping for a great turnout again as we ply everyone with great times and lots of prizes!

Now, on to the main part of the post this week. If you’ve clicked on the link then you’ll likely have already noticed what I’m going to talk about next and while it might feel like I’m making excuses, I do want to explain some things and really take the opportunity to maybe challenge my (and I guess, ‘our’ as the community) thinking.

The ticket is more expensive than last year.

Pretty shocking, right?

Now, I will caveat this increase by saying that last year, Firestorm offered us the option of including food on only day 1 of the event. This meant that anyone not coming to day 2 wasn’t paying for food they weren’t going to eat and helped us to keep the price roughly in line with the Sith Taker Open (and maybe other events).

This year they have said that they no longer offer this option and that events with food included must include the whole event.

Now, this was a debate between Mark and I for a little while. Firestorm’s price for included food has gone up since last year and while we’re not a fan of that in itself, we do get that prices of things in general have gone up and the price of included food is still cheaper than ordering from Firestorm’s café on the day.

In the end, given that Firestorm are very strict about food from outside being brought in (i.e. you can’t, which given that they sell food, is a reasonable stance to take) and that the nearby food options aren’t all that close (just over 10 minutes walk each way we’d say), we figured we have 2 options. Don’t include food (making the tickets cheaper) and extend the lunch break OR include food and keep the timings tight like before.

Given that many people enjoy spending time chatting and eating together and weighing up the risk of someone not getting back from McDonalds or KFC in time because the queues were bad, in the end we decided to include food.

Of course, the biggest factor we have to weigh up is how much we can spend on prizes. We’re not in this to make any money so all of our ‘cut’ from the ticket price goes towards prizes for the event. And clearly, the earlier we know how many people will come, the easier that is to plan for. Like, MUCH easier.

The change in price isn’t something we took lightly. I took to a very active X-Wing player group and asked for opinions. I got some great ones that I’ll share.

Some people said no food. This was my initial thought too but the hassle of getting people back on time is very real! I felt that a number of people would elect to stay anyway and including food then makes this cheaper for people overall. It does, of course, remove that choice though.

Someone then said this:

I do think in the x wing community we’ve been pretty spoilt by event prices, 2 days entertainment with food for 37 quid is a steal when compared to the rest of the world, just a lot more than players are used to.
With inflation and the way of everything I don’t think we could complain at anything around 20 quid a day tbh

Unfortunately you’re battling against traditional pricing structures in the community and what our head says is comparable.

Family day out now is comfortably 100 quid +, unfortunately stuff’s just expensive..

I guess this is a reality of the world we live in right now. Life is just more expensive than it used to be. Food, energy, you name it – things cost more than they did 10 or even 5 years ago. So why do we expect our tournaments to be the same as they were?

One of the points made by Firestorm in my communications with the store was that ‘most 2 day wargaming events are now in the region of £50-£65 so even at £37.50 you are significantly cheaper than average.’

On the face of it and with no context, that’s possibly a fair point. Then again, X-Wing takes up roughly half the space (per pair of players) than, say Warhammer 40k, AND doesn’t require the purchase, assembly, painting and storage of scenery. Relatively speaking, X-Wing is pretty low maintenance. Then again, it’s more high maintenance than card games which can be huge money spinners for stores.

X-Wing has always historically been cheaper to attend. That’s just the way it is. But does that mean it’s the way it must always be?

I guess that leads me to my main point – what do we want?

If we want to have large-scale events with lots of people and good prizes then we should recognise that it’s worth paying for. But more than that, I think that we perhaps need to change our attitude and the general culture of the X-Wing community towards events.

Since I started playing (and since the release of the game from what I can gather), X-Wing has displayed a real duality of personality. Before I get to it though, I’ll try and break down what I believe the player base looks like.

There’s a LOT of casual players. That’s great. In fact, I’m sure there are far more X-Wing players than we could ever image who own ships that have never set foot in a store except to pick up models (that’s ships, not people).

Then you have the real try-hards (and please don’t take this label as a negative, it’s just a description! No judgement!). The people who spend hours perfecting turn zero and debating the purpose of every component part of their list. They travel the country or even internationally to attend scores of events and do the very best that they can to finish as high up as possible.

Two very extreme types of people.

The truth is, that the bulk of people who play X-Wing sit somewhere in the middle of that bell curve. People who own a number of ships (but probably not all of them), who think about the game reasonably often and go to events as and when they’re able.

The biggest and most publicly known problem with X-Wing players is that we are notorious for leaving things late. We’ve held a number of events in Newport and no matter how early we get tickets available, around half of the total number that sell are bought in the last 7-10 days before the event. The ONLY exception I can think of is the Sith Taker Open (which is happening this coming weekend!). It’s 140 players this year, tickets sold out THE DAY OF RELEASE almost A YEAR AGO. This is not the norm.

But why not?Personally, I think that the very nature of that third group of people making up the bulk of X-Wing players is the explanation for this.

You have a small number of people (namely the try-hards) who think ‘an event? Amazing! I’ll get my ticket and book my travel/accommodation immediately!’

But I’d say that most people are more like ‘oh, there’s an event on in a few months. I’ll see how I feel/what I’m doing/whether I’m free closer to the time’.

Now, I can’t really have a massive go at anyone for this because I’m not exactly a prolific event attendee myself but as the organiser of events what I can tell you is that planning for post-AMG X-Wing feels different than before. It’s the unknown. It’s less certain.

This is a (mostly) direct quote from a well known X-Wing person (who I won’t name right now) which is basically the crux of what I’m getting at:

it feels expensive but as others have said, X-Wing has been spoilt by low ticket costs for a long time.
and for bigger (2-day) events, ticket cost is usually an afterthought once you factor in transport and accommodation.
it’s a shame because even £40 for 2 days of play is insanely good value, doubly so if it includes food.
we’re just conditioned to 2019 prices which were super cheap, and pre-crazy inflation

i was having a chat with {removed for privacy} about X-Wing at his events, and the bottom line is he can only host X-Wing when he has leftover space, because WarHammer players pay £60+ per ticket, buy their tickets early, typically drink more from the bar so his bar receipts are great. X-Wingers buy tickets at the last minute (or forget..), think £40 is expensive (WH occupies 1.5x the space of X-Wing), and apparently don’t hit the bar as hard. so commercially, it makes no sense for him to do X-Wing, unless Asmodee are giving him money or the space would be going empty anyway.

it’s a bigger challenge that we have to consider in the future as Asmodee kill X-Wing prize support and subsidies – can we get stores to want to host X-Wing when realistically they can make twice as much money hosting Pokémon or other minis games?

So the question we need to start asking ourselves is this – do we want tournaments? Because if so I really believe that we need to start changing the culture of our community to be a little more committed to them. We very often get good numbers – The Welsh Open has been over 50 players both years we’ve run it so far – but late ticket purchases mean that planning for prizes is difficult for TO’s. The risk of overspend on prizes used to belong to the stores. Now that it’s fallen to the community to provide organised play, with no official organised play packs to be ordered from a recognised publisher by a store, it’s almost certainly local TO’s, individuals within our community, who are picking up the risk and spending out on prizes with no real indication of whether the money will be recouped. How many times will a TO run events at a loss? Not many. Probably not more than once.

The conclusion…

So what is our new reality in a fast approaching post-AMG world?

There appear to be a good number of people who are more than happy enough with community points. I’m aware of some stats from Launchbay Next (though I can’t get hold of them right now) that indicate that the majority of lists being created are using XWA points. With further updates from AMG highly unlikely following Adepticon this year and only a handful of GT events left, it’s almost certain that the shift from AMG To XWA points will continue and many (most?) future events will be running with community points.

Local store tournaments are often used as a ‘loss leader’ with many game systems to bring players into the store in the hope that they will buy more product. X-Wing no longer has this benefit to reap and so higher ticket prices might just be the best (or only?) way to make it viable for stores to hold tournaments.

I’ve VERY aware that this post so far might feel a little bit doom and gloom. If that’s the case then let me assure you, that is NOT how I feel about X-Wing and it’s tournament scene.

We are, however, in somewhat of a holding pattern while we wait out the last of AMG’s influence on the game. Adepticon is under 2 months away and the X-Wing Alliance has plans in motion. Even the fact that XWA has roles for OP Lead, OP Prize Lead (my role) and OP TO Support should tell you that there’s things on the horizon, they’re just not quite in view.

But almost.

How successful any future organised play structure the XWA is will literally be up to us. Our presence at events is of course the main driver but also early purchase of tickets and shared enthusiasm for going to and talking about events will also have a significant impact.

So, what’s the TL;DR? Events are important for the future of X-Wing and as a community we should appreciate what we have and change our mindset when it comes to planning for them. Because if we don’t, we might lose them!

Sorry for the slightly off-beat post today but it’s been on mind of late and I needed to get it out!

Right, I’m off to pack my bags for the Sith Taker Open this weekend!

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