Aside from the Vegas outlier, what's been the average attendence for Grand Prixs this year in the USA? Needs to be that many playmats available.
It's that kind of flawed reasoning that resulted in the massive under-supply issue for the mats.
Modern Masters has been selling above MSRP since it's release, indicating a rather high demand for the product. Pair that with an GP using sealed MMA product that is arguably cheaper (per booster) than most store-run draft events? "Average attendance" goes right out the window. The fact that they couldn't even clear 50% of the attendees (and without an alternative swag option) indicates lack of preparation.
The TO and WOTC can spout as many excuses as they want, but that isn't stopping a lot of GP attendees from leaving with a bad experience of the event. It's not just the mats, either. The delayed convention area opening, the ridiculously bad communication from the TO to the players on-site, the understaffing, forcing players to wait literally hours outside in the Vegas heat, etc. It's a joke. Cascade Games should never have access to to GP again, and WOTC needs to take a hard look at their Quality Assurance protocol for what's essentially a gigantic marketing event for MtG.
It's that kind of flawed reasoning that resulted in the massive under-supply issue for the mats.
Modern Masters has been selling above MSRP since it's release, indicating a rather high demand for the product. Pair that with an GP using sealed MMA product that is arguably cheaper (per booster) than most store-run draft events? "Average attendance" goes right out the window. The fact that they couldn't even clear 50% of the attendees (and without an alternative swag option) indicates lack of preparation.
The TO and WOTC can spout as many excuses as they want, but that isn't stopping a lot of GP attendees from leaving with a bad experience of the event. It's not just the mats, either. The delayed convention area opening, the ridiculously bad communication from the TO to the players on-site, the understaffing, forcing players to wait literally hours outside in the Vegas heat, etc. It's a joke. Cascade Games should never have access to to GP again, and WOTC needs to take a hard look at their Quality Assurance protocol for what's essentially a gigantic marketing event for MtG.
This is kind of the reason why they made the decision to cap the event though.
I think you give the event organizers somewhat of a pass because of the size of the event. Few were predicting that 4500 people would be playing, with more turned down. That's why this was such big news when a week before the tournament it was starting to get close to the record for GPs (which at that point was in the mid 2000s). You figure maybe 3000K attendees is a reasonable prediction, and I think had they gotten 3000K, the tournament would've been doable.
The mat thing is a non-issue. It would've been nice had they been able to give everyone mats, but they ran out. I assume with mats, they have to order those well in advance, so you can't just go "well, we predict 30K attendees, lets make 35K mats just to be safe" because then you are just wasting money. It's not feasible to print enough mats to make sure everyone gets one.
The problem is the TO stated over and over that there would be no cutoff. That even if over 6k people showed up, it wouldn't be a problem. It wasn't until 3 days ago that he recanted that assertion and implemented the cap. Next time instead of getting all blustery and answering questions without thinking about them, maybe he will think a little beforehand and realize that for an event like that, it had to have a cap. Complete incompetency.
Yesterday, they only expected 2500 people to show up since thpically fridays are pretty dead. Over 5000 people showed up to do side events. My only complaints was they didn't have enough people doing check in and check in should have been done on computers to speed up he process. Everything else was well done with the number of people who showed up.
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It's that kind of flawed reasoning that resulted in the massive under-supply issue for the mats.
Modern Masters has been selling above MSRP since it's release, indicating a rather high demand for the product. Pair that with an GP using sealed MMA product that is arguably cheaper (per booster) than most store-run draft events? "Average attendance" goes right out the window. The fact that they couldn't even clear 50% of the attendees (and without an alternative swag option) indicates lack of preparation.
The TO and WOTC can spout as many excuses as they want, but that isn't stopping a lot of GP attendees from leaving with a bad experience of the event. It's not just the mats, either. The delayed convention area opening, the ridiculously bad communication from the TO to the players on-site, the understaffing, forcing players to wait literally hours outside in the Vegas heat, etc. It's a joke. Cascade Games should never have access to to GP again, and WOTC needs to take a hard look at their Quality Assurance protocol for what's essentially a gigantic marketing event for MtG.
dunno. but I loved your Secret System videos
This is kind of the reason why they made the decision to cap the event though.
I think you give the event organizers somewhat of a pass because of the size of the event. Few were predicting that 4500 people would be playing, with more turned down. That's why this was such big news when a week before the tournament it was starting to get close to the record for GPs (which at that point was in the mid 2000s). You figure maybe 3000K attendees is a reasonable prediction, and I think had they gotten 3000K, the tournament would've been doable.
The mat thing is a non-issue. It would've been nice had they been able to give everyone mats, but they ran out. I assume with mats, they have to order those well in advance, so you can't just go "well, we predict 30K attendees, lets make 35K mats just to be safe" because then you are just wasting money. It's not feasible to print enough mats to make sure everyone gets one.