First, on behalf of James, Jason, Lou, and the rest of the team who make Gen Con possible every year (including Eric Larson and his crew), I want to thank everyone who came out to our events, as well as all the volunteers who ran events, manned the table, or just hung around doing whatever needed doing. This is a huge production for a group our size, and everyone in the community plays a major role in getting it done. So thank you.

That said, attendance, especially for our marquee and competitive events, was down again this year. I don't have all the hard numbers, but the Championship shrunk from 23 last year to 12 this year, and the 200-point team tournament was run in teams of two instead of three so they could run three rounds. In both cases, there were factors involved that can't be controlled and won't necessarily occur again, such as conflicts with other events (at least one of the team tourney players had to miss due to advancing in another tournament, which happens) or real life issues that prevented people who would normally have played from attending the convention altogether. Even so, there were people at the convention, especially for the Championship, who chose not to play, bringing our numbers down even further. I don't want to call anyone out here or make anyone feel defensive, and I hope no one else responding to this thread will, either. We are all entitled to the Gen Con experience we want to have, and conflicts do happen. I only participated in the Champs and the Sealed, because most scenarios don't interest me, and the ones that did conflicted with other events. I also know that some people just don't enjoy the competitive game anymore or are more interested in other Star Wars games. And having 12 people still means that the Championships was better attended than most, if not all, of our Regionals this year, although that's a topic for a separate thread.

Still--the fact is, because of the attendance issues, we are now in a tough situation with Gen Con. While we might still be able to run most of our mass battles at the size and frequency we have in the past (assuming we can find volunteers), when it comes to planning time for next year, many things will have to be scaled back (again). In particular, because attendance at the Championships saw such a drastic drop this year, in all likelihood, we will only be able to request 12 spots next year, and we might not even get that. We certainly won't be able to plan on a top 8, more likely a top 4. When the issue of having "only" 24 spots this year was brought up after the event list posted, I mentioned that we needed people who planned to attend to preregister so that we could request more space if needed. We had a total of I think 11 people preregister, and one person bought a ticket onsite and played. So now this is what we get. Again, not accusing or calling anyone out--we appreciate everyone who bought a ticket and played. I just want everyone in our community to understand the reality of our situation now. When Derek is assigning space for groups and events, he's looking at year over year attendance. He doesn't want to have a lot of empty spaces at tables when other events could have filled that space. So he's not going to look kindly on our numbers from this year, and he's going to take them into account when assigning space for next year. With the decrease in projected attendance, it is also likely that we will need to scale back prize support in the future.

The Gen Con team is open to suggestions for improving attendance and interest in our events, and feel free to post them here if you have them. Maybe another day would be better for the Championship (but keep in mind that we don't know what other events will conflict from year to year, so that alone can't be a reason for moving it). But the purpose of this post is just to let the community know where we are with our events for next year, so there are no surprises, and so people understand that there may well come a point when our presence at Gen Con is limited to "fun," casual events and mass battles, with minimal or no competitive events. If that's okay with you, by all means, let us know. But if, like me, the opportunity to compete against the best players in the game from around the country is an integral part of your Gen Con experience, please know that, while the team is also committed to making that happen, we are in danger of not being able to continue with the current level of interest and support from the community. We need to talk about where we go from here.

Part of it (and the decline in play of the game in general) could be, I think, because the game relies almost entirely on word of mouth "advertising" (that is, building excitement or interest in the game), but there isn't really much word of mouth going on. It's Wednesday now and there is still hardly any information about what happened in the SWM events, just a couple of names of winners of like 4 events and short squad descriptions from the championships. I have no idea how Minis Madness or the team tournaments went or what even went on in "Surprise". I know that it's difficult to come back from something like GenCon and start writing up reports of what happened, but I think it would help a lot when it comes to enthusiasm for the event. This would probably help the health of the game in general, too, which I think is the core issue where GenCon participation is just a symptom.

I think TJ's point is also a good one. Obviously I didn't attend GenCon so I didn't have to worry about picking which events to attend or not attend, but if I did go I would just pick a few events and not others. They're probably cannibalizing each other somewhat; if there are 10 events and a group of 5 people each pick just 3 to participate in, you only get 1.5 players per event from that set of 5 players. If there were 5 events, they would probably still pick 3 each, and you'd get double the attendance per event.

1. Switch the Championship back to Saturday.
2. If you're at GenCon and not working running an event or judging, please play. A real pity when we see people around that have played plenty in the past yet cannot see their way clear to play with us. If you attend and don't play in the future, I couldn't care in the least about any future opinions of yours regarding SWM or its future. You might as well save your trip to our SW area as well.
3. Maybe there are a bit too many events apparently. Randy's Death Race had 4 of us playing with a draft of the excellent Universe set on the line...sad.
4. There is a need to connect with the casual gamer somehow we're missing. The league and SWM for beginners is a great success with many people that have never played. Getting them to play more in the future would be great, but I am at a loss to know if that's possible or how to do it if it is.
5. There are several people that just couldn't make it this year and that lowered the attendance as well.
6. Finally, I think the judges of events should play further increasing the attendance. At this time in the game, every player knows the game well and everyone is in close enough proximity to one another to make a rules call in a timely manner.
7. Offer a great prize for the winner. $100 would do. Everyone could put in like $5 extra and I think attendance would spike.

Big +1 to this. If you played in other SWM events but not the champs because it's not your thing, that's unfortunate but it's your right. If you were running other events (especially SWM events), you're excused. If you couldn't make it to GenCon because of real life, I get it. But if you come to GenCon and completely blow off SWM, then you don't deserve to have a say. People involved in the design process, even recent designers, didn't even bother. I don't think they should be designing anymore.

That aside - I think moving to Saturday would lose more than we gain.

Less events overall.

I love the combined event (round 1 tile wars, round 2 Epic, etc).

Royal rumble was never meant to be you seem a never meant to be event. If was a mistake by Ray like 5 years ago and it stuck. It can be 1 round in an abbreviated Jedi Challenge (4 rounds, each with a different format, all in one tournament.


There is serious talk from New Zealand attending next year. It would be pretty embarrassing if because of this year's piss poor attendance there wasn't room to compete next year.

Hey all--my first post in years! Anyway, I attended GenCon for the first time since 2011, and played in two events (one of the scenario missions on Saturday, and the sealed on Sunday). I was unable to make it to the convention until Thursday evening, so playing in the championships wasn't an option for me.

First of all, I really do want to thank everyone who ran everything. The two events I played were both a lot of fun, it was great to see people I hadn't seen in years, and in the Sealed especially I was super-impressed by the amount of work that went into crafting the pieces. I have several of the pieces I got in the draft sitting on the bookshelf next to my desk just because I like them so much.

I suspect that winnowing things down to fewer events is probably a good idea. I wish I had more good ideas, but I'm not as familiar with the ins and outs of how Gencon works. I'm obviously not a terribly frequent player at this point, and if I attend Gencon next year (up in the air--the later date is bad for me) I suspect 2 or maybe 3 events is how much SWM I would play. I get the sense I'm not alone in that, so maybe concentrating the attendance into a smaller batch of events makes some sense.

Regardless, though, it was nice to see everyone, and I hope it doesn't take me another five years to get back to the convention.

+1.

But an almost entirely WOTC squad (just had two 5 point Spaarti Troopers from the first v-set) made the final of GenCon. It's difficult to argue that power creep is the major issue.

I can remember the last time this became an issue, someone (not naming names but I do know the persons in question, said: "I didn't want to play super cheesey, but I really wanted to win." This person was in the upper eschelons of the Design group.

How exactly do you expect to win people over when that sort of mentality pervades the tournament community? What is the sense in making a team and competing when there are a handful of pieces (BAFH, Lothal, Bane, Critdu,) who utterly ruin the experience?

There are 5 of us in the Quad Cities who would love to be part of the community. 5/12 is a big percentage. We're well within driving distance of GenCon. But why should we bother showing up when we get cheesed out of having fun? Read the comments on the FB page. We aren't alone. The Legends guys are a key example. Our group used to be 10 strong but half of them quit because of the V-Set.

I've been fighting this fight for years. year after year, it's the same thing. Year after year, myself and those who feel the way I do are put down. Year after year, attendance rates drop. And you can't figure out why? That alone is proof that you hardly listen to the community.

You are ignoring all the other tournaments. I know there was one, I can't remember which but I think it was WI, that was dominated by Lothal. Before that it was Caedus. Before that it was Bane. Before that it was Snowtroopers. C'mon. I apologize for the aggression in my tone. That's not what I am trying to do, but I do get passionate about this. I just want someone to listen for once. If I didn't care about the game, I wouldn't be here talking to y'all, knowing full well that I am going to get upset and probably attacked.

Look, I've done this so many times. I know how this goes. I am going to rant, you are going to tell get me on a technicality, someone will ragequit Bloomilk. It's a formula. But just for once, listen to what I am saying without getting defensive. Look at the status of the game. Clearly something needs to change.

I am sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings or in any way offended someone. I know the V-Set people do hard work. I'm not questioning their dedication to the game. That's not my intention on commenting here. But something needs to change. Compromises have to be made in order to make this game more accessible. Y'all have had good luck with the beginner's stuff, and that's great. On my end, we've tried to get 3 or 4 new people into the game but the power pieces are so overwhelming that it turns people off almost immediately. Even some of our veterans can't handle them anymore. Curbing the power pieces is a great place so start. Looking at the game without the Tournament lens is a great place to start.

Defensive Stance, Hostage Shield, blanket LSD -- all those were great ideas that really helped. But a 45pt. Vader that can be reduced to 35? Really? You don't see a problem there? There has to be a balance, and so far it feels like the direction design has been doing is like a heavy pendulum, wildly swinging from Shooters to Melee and back.

That's my two cents.