Tourneys: Does Your Prize Support Suck?

Pimpcron explains why it is a tough thing for TO’s to tackle.

Greetings, readers. Your ever-loving, blue-eyed Pimpcron is here this week. And my wargaming convention Shorehammer is NEXT WEEK! Oh snap! We’re gonna change lives, warm hearts, and save souls.

Well, it should be no surprise that prize support and things like that have been on my mind quite a bit. Especially in the last 8 months while planning what CNN is calling The World’s Best Warhammer Convention.

Or at least that’s probably what they’d call it.

If they knew about it.

Shut up.

Point being, prize support is kind of a tricky thing whether you’re organizing a store-based event, or an amazing convention so dope that regular life pales in comparison. (That one is mine)

At Shorehammer, even Elves smile.

It’s Not One-Size-Fits-All

I’ve heard that some events buy random boxes of stuff like a vehicle kit, a flyer kit, and some model kits. And whether or not you play that army, that’s the prize you get. That just doesn’t sit well with me. Let’s put on our thinkin’ caps for a second: Prizes are meant to entice people to want to win. And value is in the eye of the beholder. So if I know I’m going to get some random box of stuff I potentially can’t use, I probably wouldn’t pay money to play. Disclaimer: Door prizes are a different animal in my opinion. If you literally just got it by luck of the draw and put forth no effort, then you have to take what you can get. But if I’m paying to play a tournament, I want the prizes to apply to me and everyone else.

“How can you possibly choose prizes that anybody would want Pimpcron?!” I imagine you saying in a really panicky, whiny voice. You just peed a little, I’m trying to act like I didn’t notice.

Okay, thinking caps back on. I should have warned you not to put them away. A lot of stores offer store credit for their events and that is awesome! It’s just as a good as a gift card and you get exactly what you want. But it may not be a solution if you are hosting a private event like a convention or something that isn’t store-supported.

Some events give out strictly terrain kits or gaming mats, which is a good idea but some people may not have a home board to garnish with the new found terrain. So that one’s a 50-50 chance, but not a bad idea at all. I haven’t met anyone yet who wouldn’t like one of those mats.

Hobby paraphernalia is a great idea too. Glue, clippers, razor knives, brushes, paint pots of your choice, and maybe even primer are all awesome prizes. Maybe not the most exciting ones, but at least they apply to everyone and will get used.

Imperial Knights are a surprisingly good idea for a prize as long as everybody agrees on it ahead of time. We did a tournament with that as the grand prize because none of us had a Knight and we all wanted one. That was fun. All of the Armies of Imperium can use them as well as Chaos. So that covers more than half of the playable races. And I won! No I didn’t. I apologize for misleading you.

One of my favorite prizes if your budget can handle it, is army transports. Nearly everyone needs and/or uses them and they are a really nice prize. If we’re being honest, no matter how many transports you have, you’ll never have enough.

Another idea that I have always liked is trophies. It may sound juvenile, but there is something nice about being awarded a prize that you can sit on a shelf and say, “I was a winner once.” And trophies are a universal prize that anybody would like, generally speaking. I’m sure there’s someone out there saying that they hate trophies. And they would be wrong. They secretly love trophies, they just aren’t in touch with themselves enough to know it. Go meditate and find your spirit animal; he’ll tell you.

“Trust me Dave, you love trophies.”

Also, Spread The Love, Man

My friend recently went to one of the BIG wargaming events in the past year. I won’t say which one to protect the offenders. But he was really disappointed that the 1^st place winner walked away with like $600 worth of prizes and stuff. While the 2^nd and 3^rd place guys got almost nothing. What the heck man?

I understand that you want your winner to get the most. Like, duh. But why should it be winner-takes-all? This is the other thing that really doesn’t sit well with me. As a TO, I try to spread the prizes as much as possible. You probably know just as well as I do that the different between the top three places in a tournament probably came down to luck. These three people obviously knew what they were doing with their armies. They obviously made good lists. So why should the guy who happened to get 1^st place get everything?

Being that my convention is a friendly, laid-back event. So here’s the prizes we will be giving out: Each tournament has a super-awesome award/trophy for the 1^st place. 1^st place for our Highlander Tournament gets a really nice genuine-leather heavy weight championship belt with the Shorehammer logo on it, etc. The Age of Sigmar Bigbattle winner gets a real-sized warhammer engraved with a plaque explaining everything. The Nutcrusher Tournament get the most epic trophy I’ve ever seen which perfectly represents how extreme that tournament is (you literally take whatever you want list-wise while you play every mission at one time).

The 3 painting competition categories each have a 1^st place trophy that is classy.

We also have 2^nd place trophies for each of the 3 tournaments. And 3^rd place of each one gets an -upper level prize from our prize pool. Then we have free games to play such as our Gorka Morka Drag Racing, Hive City Clash, and Dark Eldar Death Match Arena that require no signing up to play and you win prizes. They are running all weekend on the hour.

And if that wasn’t enough, Frontline Gaming and Table War donated 2 awesome mats for us to give away as random drawings! Literally, two lucky people who attend will just walk away with game mats!

And depending on how many prizes we have left at the end, I plan on just randomly giving out the rest with drawings! I’m sorry this became such a plug for my convention, it wasn’t actually my intention. I just wanted to illustrate how I am doing it.

What neat things have you given or received for tournaments? How do you think prizes should be awarded at events?

Author: Scott W.

Guest Columnist