I've heard rumors that people were turned away at some prereleases because the stores ran out of guild boxes. Or some stores made people sign up in advance because they knew they would run out, and if you weren't signed up you couldn't play. Anyone able to confirm this?
A LOT of stores in my area had pre signups for the prerelease due tol imited guild packs, and some events were run completely missing some of the guilds due to the fact that they ran out of that guild. Rakdos and golgari went first. I know people that just went to events to get the guild pack and leave, and a lot of them.got only golgari and went to 5 events each. Also, most of the stores I went to didn't have enough product for prize support for each event from the packs provided by wizards so they shifted over to store credit/random prizes donated by the store.
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Yes. Preregistration is a thing and if you wake up the morning of a prerelease and walking expecting a spot, you are only setting yourself up for disappointment. The same goes with waiting until a day or two before the event to sign up for a guild you _really_ want to play under.
My LGS turned away plenty of players wanting to sign up for the noon prerelease or if they only wanted to play one certain guild and called in days in advance, but the guild was full already.
I'm not sure what's the hoopla, the correct way to run the event was to have an even number of players playing all the guilds.
The store by me had to cancel its Sunday prerelease event because they ran out of guild boxes from their friday and saturday events. On friday there were around 80 people and on saturday around 50 people, so the store must have received around 130 guild boxes in total to support the entire weekend. They are an advanced level store, so I'm not sure if 130 guild boxes was the preset amount WotC sends to advanced level stores or if it's on a case by case basis.
But to answer the OP's question I did not hear of any stores that turned people away due to limited product. There was a preregistration that my LGS did to ensure people got their top picks for the friday event, and on saturday people walked in and chose their guilde without any issues.
It's interesting how there can be two extremes here. I know a couple places around town were completely full up before most of their events even started. However there was one tiny shop that I walked into 2pm on sunday to buy a storage box for organizing my cards and they were about to start their prerelease event, they had 4 people playing and plenty of every guild left over. I couldn't stay to play even though it would've been 2 rounds so I just entered and dropped so I could get the last guild pack I didn't have yet.
The Helvault event ran full at my LGS, I can only assume RTR did too.
I do know they kicked out anyone at the midnight prerelease that wasn't part of the prerelease itself (by kicked out I mean made them give up seats for players) due to the fact there was so little room.
They took pre-regs, you chose a guild, if you didn't pre-reg you got whatever was left.
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I know my store had over 145 people on the first day in the main event, and then had a side Sealed and side 2HG Sealed. By the end of the day, they still had several cases of all of the Guild Packs left, and the owner said he was pretty sure they'd be OK for the Sunday main event, but the side events might have had limits.
What was more worrisome is that he has over 230 boxes of RTR pre-sold and was told by WOTC that he would be getting 300 at release, but they just told him a few days ago they can only get him 160 boxes by release day. He's been asking preorderers if they're willing to wait a week for the second shipment, and is hooking them up with free promos or a free upgrade to Japanese boxes if they volunteer to wait.
Granted, my store is a special case because it's literally the only store for hundreds of miles that can get this stuff, so he has massive draw from what most would think would be a small audience, but I wonder if other areas will be seeing the same sort of shortages. Also, he's been keeping his per box price at the old price instead of raising it like most stores have for this set, so he's getting TONS of preorders just because his price is better than 99% of stores out there. I know everyone says their LGS is the best, but I'm not going to lie, my LGS and its owner are pretty awesome compared to other ones I've seen.
Store owner at the place I go ran out of stuff after 2 events. He had 4 scheduled. The guild boxes were a great idea, but limited the amount of events he normally runs.
Stores were allocated product based on a percentage increase from what their previous prereleases had pulled. They were given prize support for this many, and a slight excess of guild boxes to accommodate people's choices.
If a store sells out, or runs out of space, then that's what happens - however it's the responsibility of the store to make sure that they plan their product and events appropriately to keep their customers happy. Things like running no Sunday events can be managed by capping Saturday entries, and clear advance messaging on the need to preregister is the best way to make sure people can avoid disappointment with availability.
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Yeah, we had our biggest turn out in years for this prerelease (23 players) but we only had one box of packs for prizes, so the store had to give people packs from M13 and Innistrad block to make up the difference. It was awesome though, everyone enjoyed themselves.
Yeah, this isn't so uncommon, but people also need to remember that often times you'll have a sold out Saturday, and then you've got Sunday events with like 10 people sitting there. So lesson to be learned, go on Sunday if you're worried.
Our LGS had 95 people show up, a new record for the store(beating the 94 that showed up for the M13 PTQ a month or so ago). While everyone didn't get the guild they wanted, everyone who showed up got to play. Owner was selling off the extra guild packs.
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The store I played opened up shortly before M13 came out. Consequently, this was the first pre-release held there. The Store Owner decided he was going to do 30 max per day (Midnight Friday, Saturday Afternoon, Sunday Afternoon). However, its likely that he limited the number due to the size of the store. Can't hold too many people.
Midnight had 26 people (28 had signed up and 2 didn't show). Saturday and Sunday both had 10 (which were 9 of the same people). He still had plenty of guild packs left but I'm not sure how many he was sent in total. We went through 46 boxes. I'm going to estimate he had probably 60 to 70 total (so about 20 or 30 leftovers).
Our sunday prerelease we ran out of product and had to turn away several who were late to the party. In addition we didn't have enough prize support for the end of the event. This was a common trend with most stores with a decent regular crowd.
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They did pre-registration 4 hours before the event. The line was out the door and down the block a bit. All the Rakdos sold out in an hour. People were buying multiple entries, like buying 2 rakdos and 2 selsny because the hear Selesnya can beat Rakdos and wanted to limit it in the tournament. We had 80 people show on Sat so they added another event on Sunday, something that has never happened in that stores 10 years.
We had plenty of product going in to Sunday. I heard that there were about 180 people at the midnight pre-release.
I went Saturday at 1pm and the place was full. We had 6 rounds which took us until about 8pm to finish. They started the 8pm pre-release as we were leaving. There were two lines; one to hand our guild boxes and one to had out prize packs. The 8pm pre-release had much less people.
As I was leaving, I looked over the counter and there were still unopened boxes full of guild boxes.
Stores were allocated product based on a percentage increase from what their previous prereleases had pulled. They were given prize support for this many, and a slight excess of guild boxes to accommodate people's choices.
If a store sells out, or runs out of space, then that's what happens - however it's the responsibility of the store to make sure that they plan their product and events appropriately to keep their customers happy. Things like running no Sunday events can be managed by capping Saturday entries, and clear advance messaging on the need to preregister is the best way to make sure people can avoid disappointment with availability.
Actually, stores were given more guild packs then they were given prize support more (and it's the prerelease, so it's impossible for us to get extra RTR boxes), so if a store filled up and went through every guild pack they had for people playing in events, they would not have had enough RTR to have minimum 2 in the prize pool per player.
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The prereleases at my LGS were gigantic. 88 for the midnight and a lot for the saturday events. Went to a different store on sunday that said they were having trouble with EVERYONE wanting golgari in the 2HG department about half the people chose golgari or something ridiculous. I personally chose izzet every single event I played in sans one where I chose rakdos since izzet is so fun to play with.
People getting turned away isn't remotely surprising to me. The hype surrounding the set was so ridiculously high that wizards was actively promoting pre registering for prerelease events. The guild packs compounded the problem, as giving someone 6 normal ravnica packs puts them at a distinct disadvantage since they lack the bomb they give you in the guild packs regardless of guild (oh how I hated that you could use the promo card, I might have died to a carnival hellsteed too many times.)
Prize support was short here too. Wizards didn't do the math, when you give out 400 guild boxes but enough prize support for 150 people things will go wrong.
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Actually, stores were given more guild packs then they were given prize support more (and it's the prerelease, so it's impossible for us to get extra RTR boxes), so if a store filled up and went through every guild pack they had for people playing in events, they would not have had enough RTR to have minimum 2 in the prize pool per player.
Yup. Gigantic oversight on WotC's end here and one that was causing issues for a lot of stores.
Actually, stores were given more guild packs then they were given prize support more (and it's the prerelease, so it's impossible for us to get extra RTR boxes), so if a store filled up and went through every guild pack they had for people playing in events, they would not have had enough RTR to have minimum 2 in the prize pool per player.
This was indeed true. We got enough guild packs to run 75 for each of the 2 events we were running on Saturday, though we only had enough free table space for 54 people, which we maxxed out for the first event (worked out perfectly because we got EXACTLY 54 people.) Which, ironically came to 3 boxes of prize packs (54 x 2 = 108 = 3 booster boxes), which, given we got 1 case (6 boxes) of prize packs, would have worked out perfectly. Our second event we got 40 or so (both numbers were records for our store btw, especially the first number), so in the end it worked out fine, we didnt run out of any of the guildpacks for either event, there seemed to be a solid balance of what people wanted, though more overall demand for Golgari, Selesnia, and Azorius, and less demand for Izzet and Rakdos. We're probably going to do some rearranging for the next one, just in case, to plan on having more table space. For the shops which much larger capacities, yeah, thats good that you guys had such great turnouts, sheesh, but yeah, the prize packs didnt match up with the number of guild packs we were given. Hopefully wizards will fix the math for when Gatecrash comes out.
EDIT: On the selling of the leftovers, since we had some too, we were just planning to rip them open for the RTR packs to have for release day, and probably use the guild-specific packs for prizes or something like that. Once the release day is past, I imagine that shops can do whatever they want with the leftovers.
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I've heard rumors that people were turned away at some prereleases because the stores ran out of guild boxes. Or some stores made people sign up in advance because they knew they would run out, and if you weren't signed up you couldn't play. Anyone able to confirm this?
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My LGS turned away plenty of players wanting to sign up for the noon prerelease or if they only wanted to play one certain guild and called in days in advance, but the guild was full already.
I'm not sure what's the hoopla, the correct way to run the event was to have an even number of players playing all the guilds.
But to answer the OP's question I did not hear of any stores that turned people away due to limited product. There was a preregistration that my LGS did to ensure people got their top picks for the friday event, and on saturday people walked in and chose their guilde without any issues.
I do know they kicked out anyone at the midnight prerelease that wasn't part of the prerelease itself (by kicked out I mean made them give up seats for players) due to the fact there was so little room.
They took pre-regs, you chose a guild, if you didn't pre-reg you got whatever was left.
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What was more worrisome is that he has over 230 boxes of RTR pre-sold and was told by WOTC that he would be getting 300 at release, but they just told him a few days ago they can only get him 160 boxes by release day. He's been asking preorderers if they're willing to wait a week for the second shipment, and is hooking them up with free promos or a free upgrade to Japanese boxes if they volunteer to wait.
Granted, my store is a special case because it's literally the only store for hundreds of miles that can get this stuff, so he has massive draw from what most would think would be a small audience, but I wonder if other areas will be seeing the same sort of shortages. Also, he's been keeping his per box price at the old price instead of raising it like most stores have for this set, so he's getting TONS of preorders just because his price is better than 99% of stores out there. I know everyone says their LGS is the best, but I'm not going to lie, my LGS and its owner are pretty awesome compared to other ones I've seen.
If a store sells out, or runs out of space, then that's what happens - however it's the responsibility of the store to make sure that they plan their product and events appropriately to keep their customers happy. Things like running no Sunday events can be managed by capping Saturday entries, and clear advance messaging on the need to preregister is the best way to make sure people can avoid disappointment with availability.
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Midnight had 26 people (28 had signed up and 2 didn't show). Saturday and Sunday both had 10 (which were 9 of the same people). He still had plenty of guild packs left but I'm not sure how many he was sent in total. We went through 46 boxes. I'm going to estimate he had probably 60 to 70 total (so about 20 or 30 leftovers).
This is how it went at mine. Seemed fair.
But it turned out that after you were given a pack you were able to swap with anyone who was willing before the boxes were opened, so it worked out.
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I went Saturday at 1pm and the place was full. We had 6 rounds which took us until about 8pm to finish. They started the 8pm pre-release as we were leaving. There were two lines; one to hand our guild boxes and one to had out prize packs. The 8pm pre-release had much less people.
As I was leaving, I looked over the counter and there were still unopened boxes full of guild boxes.
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Actually, stores were given more guild packs then they were given prize support more (and it's the prerelease, so it's impossible for us to get extra RTR boxes), so if a store filled up and went through every guild pack they had for people playing in events, they would not have had enough RTR to have minimum 2 in the prize pool per player.
Wizards could put $100 bills in packs and people would complain about how they were folded.
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People getting turned away isn't remotely surprising to me. The hype surrounding the set was so ridiculously high that wizards was actively promoting pre registering for prerelease events. The guild packs compounded the problem, as giving someone 6 normal ravnica packs puts them at a distinct disadvantage since they lack the bomb they give you in the guild packs regardless of guild (oh how I hated that you could use the promo card, I might have died to a carnival hellsteed too many times.)
Prize support was short here too. Wizards didn't do the math, when you give out 400 guild boxes but enough prize support for 150 people things will go wrong.
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Yup. Gigantic oversight on WotC's end here and one that was causing issues for a lot of stores.
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This was indeed true. We got enough guild packs to run 75 for each of the 2 events we were running on Saturday, though we only had enough free table space for 54 people, which we maxxed out for the first event (worked out perfectly because we got EXACTLY 54 people.) Which, ironically came to 3 boxes of prize packs (54 x 2 = 108 = 3 booster boxes), which, given we got 1 case (6 boxes) of prize packs, would have worked out perfectly. Our second event we got 40 or so (both numbers were records for our store btw, especially the first number), so in the end it worked out fine, we didnt run out of any of the guildpacks for either event, there seemed to be a solid balance of what people wanted, though more overall demand for Golgari, Selesnia, and Azorius, and less demand for Izzet and Rakdos. We're probably going to do some rearranging for the next one, just in case, to plan on having more table space. For the shops which much larger capacities, yeah, thats good that you guys had such great turnouts, sheesh, but yeah, the prize packs didnt match up with the number of guild packs we were given. Hopefully wizards will fix the math for when Gatecrash comes out.
EDIT: On the selling of the leftovers, since we had some too, we were just planning to rip them open for the RTR packs to have for release day, and probably use the guild-specific packs for prizes or something like that. Once the release day is past, I imagine that shops can do whatever they want with the leftovers.