The intro…
Hello there and welcome to this week’s blog!
This is going to be a bit of a weird one this week as, well, to be honest, I’ve had a bit of a weird week myself!
There’s no other way to say this really but I’ve not managed to get a game in since last week’s blog. It’s a bit of a contrast from last week where I’d played 5 games in 10 days, clearly, but it’s just a bit of unfortunate scheduling in my life at the moment.
Work commitments conspired to prevent me from getting an in person game in last week and scheduling my online game has been tricky with time differences and availability and at the moment is set to be played in the evening that I’m planning to publish this. Which is unfortunate.
Now, off the back of a weird week (again), I’d LOVE to tell you that next week will be a bit more back to normal. Unfortunately that’s not quite going to be the case. While I’m not 100% sure exactly what it’ll mean yet (I know that’s cryptic, I’ll circle back to it.
The reason I won’t be writing a post for next week is that this coming weekend I’m going to be in London at a VERY fancy hotel (The Landmark, Marylebone) attending a VERY fancy event – The Mariposa Ball.
**TRIGGER WARNING**
I am about to talk about baby loss. I understand this may be uncomfortable for some and may trigger unexpected or unwelcome responses in others. I know it’s not what you might have been expecting from an X-Wing blog so please feel free to bypass this part. I won’t be offended!
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I make a point of not bringing this up all too often but since there’s an event ‘interfering’ in my X-Wing time, I feel like it’s worth a mention today.
13 years ago, my wife and experience a tragic series of events. Early in 2012 Jody suffered a missed miscarriage while expecting our third child. This resulted in hospitalisation and surgery and of course, we lost the baby. This was a difficult time for us both but a few months later we were delighted to find that we were expecting again.
That summer my father passed away after a long illness (10 months after we lost my father-in-law in similar circumstances) and in between his passing and the funeral, Jody started to miscarry again.
This time was much more serious and what followed was over 2 months of visits to hospital 2 or 3 times a week to check hormone levels before an eventual surgery in which we not only lost our baby but, on the strong advice of the most experienced surgeon in the region, we also lost the possibility of having any more children.
What followed was tough physically as she recovered from surgery but recovering emotionally was SO much harder. In the months that followed we discovered a newly established charity who supported people going through exactly what we were in – Saying Goodbye.
After attending one of the remembrance services that they hold, we soon got involved with fundraising and eventually in the services too. Being able to be there and help those who were in the midst of what we’d gone through not only meant that we were in a somewhat unique position of being able to show empathy, having been there ourselves, but it also meant that even in that horrible, awful situation, we could turn something of it for good. To help people know that they aren’t alone, that it’s ok to talk about it and that there is hope and healing.
So, this weekend is a part of how we serve this cause. On Friday Jody and I will travel to London and spend 6 or 7 hours packing goodie bags with items donated to the charity by various companies. On Saturday we will start prep for the event at about 9am and work right the way through (and I mean properly, full on, doing things the ENTIRE time) until the event is over and everything is packed up, normally about 3am. Quite the work day!
The event itself is always amazing, and raises a significant amount of money which then goes to funding the work of the charity – running remembrance services, putting support information into hospitals, campaigning for policy change.
If you have read this far then, sincerely, thank you. I pray that you, dear reader, haven’t experienced this in your life but if you have and you’d like to talk about it or find out more then PLEASE reach out to me somehow and I’ll get in touch. The feeling that still sticks with me all these years later is how alone we felt, like we were the only people in the world going through it and that is, very sadly, very far from the truth. It only feels this way because people don’t talk about it. It’s uncomfortable and messy and many people would rather avoid it. Which I totally get. But if you’d like to chat then don’t be afraid to reply or comment or DM me. I will gladly listen.
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All of that feels like a VERY long way to say – I won’t have time to write a blog for next week (even though I’ll likely have at least one game to talk about!). That said, I *may* have something else that I can do as there is someone who has a guest post in the process of being written! Exciting times!
Getting fully back to X-Wing, there’s a few events that need talking about!
First up, there’s a tournament being hosted by the happiest Sith Taker, Mr Liam Baker at Board in Brum! I can tell you that he’s got an XWA Wave 0 kit for prizes and that it will be a very excellent day of pew pew! You can check out the Facebook event page here if you’re interested in going!
Next up, well, let’s transition to the next section first…
The main bit…
In the absence of games or things to talk about, I figure I might as well talk about what’s taking up a not-insignificant amount of my time at the moment – the X-Wing Alliance!
In case you’re not aware, I am the Organised Play Prize Lead in the XWA meaning that I’m responsible for putting together prize kits to make available for people to buy and run their events with.
Over the past few weeks I, and the team of very talented people I have working with me, have been working hard on finalising details on the recently announced Squad Championship kits.
As mentioned in the PR release a few weeks ago, we’ve designed the kits for 16 players but also with the option of adding 8 player expansions to that the kits can be tailored to suit the needs of events without limiting tournament organisers (for those who might get attendance on the higher end) and also keeping the kit affordable (so a TO doesn’t have to budget buying a big kit for a smaller event).
I have been asked many questions by people about the kits and while I would LOVE to be able to answer comprehensively, I’m making sure that we have as much finalised information as possible before making any of it public. It’s impossible to take it back once it’s gone out so I’m going to make sure it’s right.
The two most common questions I get are:
1 – what’s in the kit?
2 – what’s it going to cost?
Valid questions, of course!
Contents of the kit have been decided but I’m waiting for orders to be placed and confirmed before revealing anything in case of any last second changes we need to make. What I can say is that the kits will include multiple participation items, something specifically for the winner and will be made up of cards as well as acrylic and metal items. Once orders are placed we will be releasing some spoilers although whether that’s as an article with full info or a trickle of information a bit at a time is yet to be decided!
The price is also a tricky one. As a TO myself I know that budgeting for events and settling on ticket prices is a tricky balance to strike. I wrote a post a few weeks ago where I expanded on the challenges that TO’s face and that a number of these challenges are aided by people simply committing to the event and getting their ticket early. One of the principles I am very firm on is that the cost per player needs to be realistic. If the kit costs a fortune then either the TO won’t buy a kit in the first place or they buy it, realise how expensive it is and then have to charge a small fortune for event tickets in order to make the money back.
I look at this in cost per player terms rather than a total kit cost because it’s also very important to me that the spread of prizes is fair. Blowing the majority of the budget on the winner while everyone else gets very little is something that has never sat well with me. Of course, in order to have some sort of order we have to provide our kits with a fixed number of items but we hope that the structure we’re using helps to prevent TOs ending up with loads of leftovers and not recouping the money they spent on the kit.
The other factor in cost is the shipping. All of our kits are shipped out of Hong Kong and while we now have a rough guide of shipping costs following the wave 0 kits, it’s difficult to know exact values until we actually have all the components in our hands which is still, at this point, a few weeks away.
I guess the answer for both questions is – we can tell you soon. Not soon enough, I guess but as soon as we’re able. I PROMISE that we are at least as excited to release these details are you are to know them!
I would also say that if you are considering ordering a kit, please put your expression of interest in as early as you can. We aren’t a big multinational company with a logistics network, we’re a bunch of eager volunteers doing our best and fitting it around a day job. The more notice we have to get you a kit, the better chance we have to get it to you in time!
If you would like to register for a Squad Championship kit then check out this Google doc for info (which will be updated as it becomes available) and for the link to the form.
Speaking of Squad Championship events, this feels like a good time to mention the one we have coming up in Newport at Exile Squadron! We’ll be holding it at the as-yet not opened new DragonVault Games store in Newport as Mark Hall has been in and made some new contacts. Tickets are £12.50 and we WILL have one of the Squad Champ kits above and that WILL include a bye for a bigger event such as the Welsh Open!
Check out the Facebook event page here for details and to book your ticket. As I said earlier (and in that other post!), getting your ticket early helps us FAR MORE than you can even imagine it does! If you’re planning to come, don’t just click ‘interested’ or ‘attending’ on the event, buy the ticket!
Sticking with the theme of spoilers (well, lack of them so far I guess…), there was an announcement made last week with more of the new Standard Loadout cards that have been made!
This one was covering some Resistance pilots and while I’d definitely encourage you to check out the announcement and see full details, I think it’s worth mentioning one pilot in particular:
This card has drawn possibly the strongest reaction of any revealed so far with a pilot ability so simple on paper. Not everyone has been happy about it but for me, it is a very interesting design space to dip into and, more than anything else, considering the theme of the card and the lore of the pilot, it does actually make sense. I mean, he can’t keep up with Tallisan Lintra’s A-Wing then what sort of a wing man can he be?
With Adepticon coming up this month we’re not too far away from the sunset of AMG’s involvement and the full sunrise of the XWA. Exciting times are coming!
The conclusion…
So, we’ve had spoilers of XWA content, LACK of spoilers on OP kit content and some people’s parties spoiled with a very emotionally charged detour in the intro.
Quite the journey this week!
Doing the OP Prize work for XWA has definitely been more involved than I’d anticipated when I first took it on but I wouldn’t change it for anything. Seeing posts of people’s events being run with the wave 0 kits has been amazing and the feedback on the quality and quantity of stuff has been very encouraging.
As we expand into kits with more than just cardboard I know we’re likely to hit some more bumps in the road but I honestly CANNOT wait until events are being regularly run and the prizes are out in the wild.
I want to thank everyone who has enquired about kits of any kind. To date we’ve had 106 people make contact requesting 150 kits. We’ve fulfilled exactly 100 of those so far with another 20 or so heading out soon.
For the Squad Championship kits we’ve had over 60 enquiries so far which, given that people don’t know how much they’ll cost or what’s in them yet, is a bit bonkers!
That’s all from me for this week. Sorry it’s not been the standard fare (for those who enjoy that sort of thing!) but I will be attempting to return to normal in the next few weeks!
For now, thanks for reading this far and I’ll see you next time!
The outro…
Thank you so much for visiting my blog, I hope you’ve enjoyed it! If you’d like to support me in continuing my X-Wing blogging adventure there are a few ways you can do that.
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