I'm the Flesh and Blood tournament organizer at my LGS. I was used to a winner's heavy prizing structure where the local stores. The same guys winning the most prizing week after week. People got sick of that fast and retaining new players became nearly impossible. At my LGS we run the same flat fee, two pack structure that you do and it has been a tremendous boon. The winners of the armory still get the cold foil, but we distribute the foil promos evenly. I'm not personally convinced by pack per win, but I'm considering one additional gem pack for the armory winner, which may be untenable based on allocation. So we shall see.
Also, I personally despise the gem pack thing. I think they were FINALLY getting armory kits right, despite the loss of the second play mat. Gem packs to me are deeply disappointing.
@@Andres9562 I think we are just disappointed by the GEM packs since we as a community hyped them up so much and LSS did not intervene to temper our expectations.
@andres9562 Why do you despise the GEM packs? The only Con I see with them is the winner might not get the best card because it's a pack. It's a TCG and most people in a TCG like opening packs. Plus it means new players who just went 0-X can actually walk away with a nice card.
I will definitely be taking this suggestion to one of our local shops that seems to struggle. Up until about 1.5 months ago, we paid a $5 entry fee for the armory and the ONLY prizing given was what was supplied by LSS. We asked about everyone receiving a pack for the $5 entry and were told that "LSS is the one that said to charge a $5 entry fee." After the shop owner realized that all other stores in the area were either not changing entry (thus only giving away LSS provided materials) OR charging $5 and providing a pack to everyone in addition to LSS provided materials, they finally got on board with a pack per person at the end of the armory.
Interesting statement by them regarding the "LSS told them" - as we all know that's not true, so that is unfortunate. I'm still not sure how well the pack-per-win will ultimately be received; but I have to try something different. Let me know how it goes up there also!
I really feel the gem packs will help. I prefer casual armories because they are a vehicle for on-ramping new players and I'll be honest. I played a guy once who didn't even have a full deck. I mean he had 60 cards but it was not what you would consider complete and I ran over him. Mercilessly by turn one... I I helped him out with stuff. I even gave him advice while we were playing how to block better, but if you're just trouncing new players, they're not going to stay
Armories are like any form of entertainment. I expect I have to pay for it. The price may be negotiable for what feels good or not, but I would always expect some form of paying to play
The two stores I go to, one has a $0 entry fee, only prizing is the armoury promo's and the other is $10 entre, pack per win +1. both stores give the CF to the winner, no one has ever had an issue with it. going forward with the GEM packs, both stores will be giving the GEM packs to everyone at the end of the event. overall, I think the gem packs will have a pretty positive effect on inclusivity.
I agree with you on the fact that they're giving enough that people who show up leave with one and to be honest I would prefer that. I really prefer armories to actually be casual play. The most fun I have is when I'm bullshitting with the other player. Not worried about whether I'm going to take the win and get into a level of prizing for stuff. I just want to screw around and play for fun
The best side game I ever played was PT Baltimore. There was a sealed side event and the last guy I played just said hey. Do you want to split the prize and just play and we spent the next 20 minutes. Bantering as we played and it was in stark contrast to my previous opponent with whom I won and he basically stormed off mad
Thank you for addressing this. I really like your solution. I’m thinking at the end of our season, we will split the remaining packs up between each of our players
I'm betting that you won't have extras. Obviously each community is different but these things are going to draw participants like we've never seen - which is awesome!
I agree with your take. I was initially kind of bummed by the GEM packs because with the thought of using them for performance based prizing means the already enfranchised players are walking away with 3-4 packs when I think they are intended more to draw people in and give EVERYONE a chance at cracking that power card. Of course, this is sort of assuming they print good and desired cards in the gem packs like CnC, e-strike, tunic, etc. which they may not.
Walking away with a gem pack and a pack per win sounds fine to me. To be fair I also don't rely on packs for my cards. If there are cards from the set I want I get them. Any I pull from packs are great and it's pretty cool to pull a CF or something rare and have everyone all get excited plus I get some trade fodder which is always nice. I'm curious if there is a plan for when the gem packs run out. Will we still be at a pack per win? Go back to 2 packs per entry? Something else people smarter than me can think of? Ideally once the distribution settles out it shouldn't be an issue but it's something to think about, or at least address for the first couple months.
If your store runs out there won't be a refill of GEM packs until the next season, which for the first pack is 2 months. It's up to your store to figure that out.
There isn't a hard plan other than showing 'the data' to LSS that we ran dry. I don't believe that using historical data and then allocating to that was the correct play here; but I do get the desire to not have these things 'laying on the street'. Any store that sees an increase in attendance (due to the hype around these packs) will run out unless they are gating the packs behind performance.
I think, and really hope, GEM packs should be for participation and not ‘rewards’. Currently, my LGS does; everyone gets one pack and a RF (we typically have less players than you do) & the rest of the packs ‘bought’ from the entry fee are put in the pool and divided among the top 3. Imagine we’ll do something similar with the GEM packs… Hopefully we’ll have enough GEM packs to run like this!!
I very much agree. I know that stores are allowed to do it basically any way they choose, and it's allowed, so fair enough. But it just doesn't feel right to gatekeep these, given that the armory prizing structure is changing for a reason.
My store current does a $5 entry fee and store credit for those who do well with the winner getting the most. I have no idea how they will do GEM packs because they have no idea how many they are getting. I am a bit worried they will only get a carton of 50 which will not be enough to support our play group that varies from 6-13 players (normally its 8-9 players every night).
I think 50 packs per box is such a weird number. It works out to 6 packs per armory. Our store averages 8-10 players per event, so I’m genuinely curious to see how many boxes we get. We’re really not high enough to get 2, but we’re definitely over the quantity 1 box provides.
It can be inclusive and competitive at the same time. I mean having prize packs does incentivize people to show up winning but at the same time having some floor of prizing would be nice. And I think that having prize packs for the high and at least just gem packs for the low would incentivize people to play
Making people stay through round 2 seems fine. The GEM pack is participation prize, if you show up and just get your GEM pack and leave you didn't participate, so should you receive a pack? Back in Texas when MTG was doing their FNM promos (not sure if they still do or not) they would give them out randomly at the beginning of round 3.
I wish more stores here would stay open the extra 15-30 minutes it usually takes when tournaments go past 10pm. None of my LGS in Dallas ever closed at 10 on days of events, and more often than not people would purchase more stuff at the end of the event as a thank you for staying open. Since you stayed open for us, we are going to spend extra money and make it worth your time also. 4 Rounds is solid though. I hate it when events only run 3 rounds. It honestly feels like a waste of time and money.
@@DrScrambles Its difficult, you may see it as simply staying open an extra 15-30minutes, but depending on the location that could be breaching contracts with the property holder, it could represent overtime if they're short staffed, it could represent the owner/workers from getting home in time to eat dinner with their loved ones etc etc. Its better to schedule events to end at a reasonable time rather then to allow events to unpredictably extend past operating hours.
@@helioscomis3732 Oh I completely understand the logistics of it, I've managed retail businesses for over 10 years. In my experience, most the playerbase being adults working fulltime jobs or at least part time jobs have also have a basic understand of how it works. That's why they want to spend more money to thank the shop for taking the risk to stay open. I've only heard of one LGS having to be closed by a certain time, and honestly that's just bad location in my opinion. I've had multiple LGS run events starting at midnight and those were the nights they made the most money.
I 100% agree that GEM packs should be given out to everybody and stores locking them behind performance will lose their playerbase, but I also agree that we can't just ignore performance based prizing. I did stop attending a store that ignored performance based prizing due to it feeling like "Structured free play". I already play a ton of FAB outside of the weekly and do feel something when I win the cold foil or packs or whatever. And now that GEM packs are revealed and they turned out to be basically reskinned armory prizing without any performance based winnings I don't think I'll feel good being the 4/5-0 player, getting one pack and opening nothing I wanted while the 0-4 player gets the same prize but opens a CF or marvel. Now I am the player that people got tired of me winning all the time, but when that happened the TO asked if I minded giving the cold foil to the second place person or having it raffle and asked me to not win for a few weeks. I did it; it didn't feel good for me since I was essentially being punished for playing well, and me winning armories essentially lets me have Flesh and Blood pay for itself (I wasn't playing a meta deck). I know this may sting for some people to hear, but you can't cast away the dedicated players the win a lot from your community since this is *the* competitive game on the market. That is the allure and pull of Flesh and Blood over other TCGs. I agree that stores need to find a middle ground, pure participation will grow stale after the initial hype has died down and there are many in the community who enjoy performance based prizing.
I just want to add I'm not salty when the 0-3 player pulls something cool from their pack, it's happened before and I've been excited for them. It's the fact we both "won" the same amount of packs.
Yeah this is very tough for new players. I am somewhat of a meritocracy-leaning person. I also think smashing people with $50 decks with a $1500 deck feels super bad. I think managing expectations and implementing alternative formats is the real fix. Competition is one of the only objective ways to judge things nowadays. You have 0 life and I have 10 life. I win. I think merging Blitz and Commoner into something like Clash and supporting a tuned down version as a real entry point for new players is the way to grow the game and build people, sustainably, into a cc armory.
Even though I'm the opposite of you - I'm a very casual player - I agree with you. I have an armory win rate of about 1/4 of the games I play. However, I've stopped going to armories at one store that is highly competitive. I kept going for a while because I won a playmat once in a while, but I slowly dropped out. Luckily, a new store opened near me and I'm playing again in a very casual scene. OK, that's me. My real point is that there seems to be two types of players - people who get to play games outside of armories who become good players, and those (like me) who want to play casually to get better and only play at armories. How do you get both types to attend the same event? If the really good players stopped attending, that would be bad too. Who would I learn from?
@@JohnSmith-ul2ce I also don't enjoy smashing new players, I or the TO make it so GEM doesn't pair new players into the comp. established players round 1. We did start rotating formats every week, so CC only happens once a month and it's helped grow the scene. Another store in the area is the competitive CC store and attracts a smaller but more dedicated crowd, if anybody in the area wants serious practice they show up there. It's a good middle ground for me.
@@HaoticSystem I think rotating formats is a good way, my store rotates through every format and we only play CC once a month and for the most part everybody has liked it. It also gives people an excuse to dive into their bulk to make a commoner deck and an UPF deck. Also, only the cold foil goes to the winner otherwise everybody gets something, plus their entry pack.
By the same token you can't force engagement. I mean realistically if people want to come in and be competitive in a non-competitive environment that's on them as individuals. And even with what you're saying, I feel that you're attempting to use prizing or glean away. Forward that encourages a specific mode of gameplay
Clash, or some tuned down blitz/cc format with enough character flavor to make it interesting, but enough power and price tone down to make it approachable for it to be a skill and experience based competition, would solve many of these problems. They need to put in the time to fix this entry-level armory problem. I don’t think blitz is it and I think commoner is not exciting enough.
@@DiceCommando I get it. You are talking incentives for competing/showing up and growing the community. Some want to show up and win to earn bonuses, some want something for showing up and to have fun. I guess I am saying a mix of format rotation (new, supported, formats even) plus prizing/incentive structure could work wonders.
Im hoping to start a Casual Fab day for our newer players while keeping our CC day on Sat and Imma try to convince some of the older players to try out Clash becuz it seems like a great place to start for a newer player. I also wanna whip up a Clash deck and just have fun.l
I think GEM Packs are some shameless - and rightfully so - homework copying from SWU. Anyone who got one of the participation packs in SWU knows how great a feeling that was and a great incentive to try out the game. I think that once LSS is a little more trigger happy w/ what they're willing to print in GEM packs it'll be the best thing they could've ever done for the game (give us CNCs, EStrikes, etc. - create the pipeline of "I bought an AD and by attending armouries long enough I could save up for and/or occasionally pull the staples I needed to upgrade it" - I say this as someone with RFs of every staple so I only stand to lose money from a policy like that and still believe it's the correct route.) I'm one of the ones who sort of spearheads the playgroup in my region and we pretty quickly all agreed that participation GEM Packs w/ an additional one to the top finisher or top few finishers was the obviously best approach.
I'm the Flesh and Blood tournament organizer at my LGS. I was used to a winner's heavy prizing structure where the local stores. The same guys winning the most prizing week after week. People got sick of that fast and retaining new players became nearly impossible.
At my LGS we run the same flat fee, two pack structure that you do and it has been a tremendous boon. The winners of the armory still get the cold foil, but we distribute the foil promos evenly.
I'm not personally convinced by pack per win, but I'm considering one additional gem pack for the armory winner, which may be untenable based on allocation. So we shall see.
Also, I personally despise the gem pack thing. I think they were FINALLY getting armory kits right, despite the loss of the second play mat. Gem packs to me are deeply disappointing.
@@Andres9562 I think we are just disappointed by the GEM packs since we as a community hyped them up so much and LSS did not intervene to temper our expectations.
@andres9562 Why do you despise the GEM packs?
The only Con I see with them is the winner might not get the best card because it's a pack. It's a TCG and most people in a TCG like opening packs. Plus it means new players who just went 0-X can actually walk away with a nice card.
I will definitely be taking this suggestion to one of our local shops that seems to struggle. Up until about 1.5 months ago, we paid a $5 entry fee for the armory and the ONLY prizing given was what was supplied by LSS. We asked about everyone receiving a pack for the $5 entry and were told that "LSS is the one that said to charge a $5 entry fee." After the shop owner realized that all other stores in the area were either not changing entry (thus only giving away LSS provided materials) OR charging $5 and providing a pack to everyone in addition to LSS provided materials, they finally got on board with a pack per person at the end of the armory.
Interesting statement by them regarding the "LSS told them" - as we all know that's not true, so that is unfortunate.
I'm still not sure how well the pack-per-win will ultimately be received; but I have to try something different. Let me know how it goes up there also!
I really feel the gem packs will help. I prefer casual armories because they are a vehicle for on-ramping new players and I'll be honest. I played a guy once who didn't even have a full deck. I mean he had 60 cards but it was not what you would consider complete and I ran over him. Mercilessly by turn one... I I helped him out with stuff. I even gave him advice while we were playing how to block better, but if you're just trouncing new players, they're not going to stay
I appreciate your data-led ED explanations. If I've never said that to you before. I really appreciate your use of data to corroborate your findings
Mistveil also hurt our community. We had an enigma mastermind who would finish games 40-0 and those players he smashed never came back.
Armories are like any form of entertainment. I expect I have to pay for it. The price may be negotiable for what feels good or not, but I would always expect some form of paying to play
The two stores I go to, one has a $0 entry fee, only prizing is the armoury promo's and the other is $10 entre, pack per win +1. both stores give the CF to the winner, no one has ever had an issue with it.
going forward with the GEM packs, both stores will be giving the GEM packs to everyone at the end of the event. overall, I think the gem packs will have a pretty positive effect on inclusivity.
I agree with you on the fact that they're giving enough that people who show up leave with one and to be honest I would prefer that. I really prefer armories to actually be casual play. The most fun I have is when I'm bullshitting with the other player. Not worried about whether I'm going to take the win and get into a level of prizing for stuff. I just want to screw around and play for fun
The best side game I ever played was PT Baltimore. There was a sealed side event and the last guy I played just said hey. Do you want to split the prize and just play and we spent the next 20 minutes. Bantering as we played and it was in stark contrast to my previous opponent with whom I won and he basically stormed off mad
Thank you for addressing this. I really like your solution. I’m thinking at the end of our season, we will split the remaining packs up between each of our players
I'm betting that you won't have extras. Obviously each community is different but these things are going to draw participants like we've never seen - which is awesome!
I agree with your take. I was initially kind of bummed by the GEM packs because with the thought of using them for performance based prizing means the already enfranchised players are walking away with 3-4 packs when I think they are intended more to draw people in and give EVERYONE a chance at cracking that power card.
Of course, this is sort of assuming they print good and desired cards in the gem packs like CnC, e-strike, tunic, etc. which they may not.
I agree. If GEM packs get folks to come out - but those folks don't leave with them? It undermines what I believe to be the idea behind them.
Walking away with a gem pack and a pack per win sounds fine to me. To be fair I also don't rely on packs for my cards. If there are cards from the set I want I get them. Any I pull from packs are great and it's pretty cool to pull a CF or something rare and have everyone all get excited plus I get some trade fodder which is always nice.
I'm curious if there is a plan for when the gem packs run out. Will we still be at a pack per win? Go back to 2 packs per entry? Something else people smarter than me can think of? Ideally once the distribution settles out it shouldn't be an issue but it's something to think about, or at least address for the first couple months.
If your store runs out there won't be a refill of GEM packs until the next season, which for the first pack is 2 months. It's up to your store to figure that out.
There isn't a hard plan other than showing 'the data' to LSS that we ran dry. I don't believe that using historical data and then allocating to that was the correct play here; but I do get the desire to not have these things 'laying on the street'.
Any store that sees an increase in attendance (due to the hype around these packs) will run out unless they are gating the packs behind performance.
I think, and really hope, GEM packs should be for participation and not ‘rewards’.
Currently, my LGS does; everyone gets one pack and a RF (we typically have less players than you do) & the rest of the packs ‘bought’ from the entry fee are put in the pool and divided among the top 3. Imagine we’ll do something similar with the GEM packs…
Hopefully we’ll have enough GEM packs to run like this!!
I very much agree. I know that stores are allowed to do it basically any way they choose, and it's allowed, so fair enough. But it just doesn't feel right to gatekeep these, given that the armory prizing structure is changing for a reason.
My store current does a $5 entry fee and store credit for those who do well with the winner getting the most.
I have no idea how they will do GEM packs because they have no idea how many they are getting. I am a bit worried they will only get a carton of 50 which will not be enough to support our play group that varies from 6-13 players (normally its 8-9 players every night).
I think 50 packs per box is such a weird number. It works out to 6 packs per armory. Our store averages 8-10 players per event, so I’m genuinely curious to see how many boxes we get. We’re really not high enough to get 2, but we’re definitely over the quantity 1 box provides.
You can just ask your store owner. My LGS which averages 10 people a week got 2 cartons
I would guess 2 boxes for the 2-month period, but your store should already know.
@@Lootaful my local store averages 10 per week and gets 1 carton :(
It can be inclusive and competitive at the same time. I mean having prize packs does incentivize people to show up winning but at the same time having some floor of prizing would be nice. And I think that having prize packs for the high and at least just gem packs for the low would incentivize people to play
Making people stay through round 2 seems fine. The GEM pack is participation prize, if you show up and just get your GEM pack and leave you didn't participate, so should you receive a pack? Back in Texas when MTG was doing their FNM promos (not sure if they still do or not) they would give them out randomly at the beginning of round 3.
I wish more stores here would stay open the extra 15-30 minutes it usually takes when tournaments go past 10pm. None of my LGS in Dallas ever closed at 10 on days of events, and more often than not people would purchase more stuff at the end of the event as a thank you for staying open. Since you stayed open for us, we are going to spend extra money and make it worth your time also. 4 Rounds is solid though. I hate it when events only run 3 rounds. It honestly feels like a waste of time and money.
@@DrScrambles Its difficult, you may see it as simply staying open an extra 15-30minutes, but depending on the location that could be breaching contracts with the property holder, it could represent overtime if they're short staffed, it could represent the owner/workers from getting home in time to eat dinner with their loved ones etc etc. Its better to schedule events to end at a reasonable time rather then to allow events to unpredictably extend past operating hours.
@@helioscomis3732 Oh I completely understand the logistics of it, I've managed retail businesses for over 10 years. In my experience, most the playerbase being adults working fulltime jobs or at least part time jobs have also have a basic understand of how it works. That's why they want to spend more money to thank the shop for taking the risk to stay open. I've only heard of one LGS having to be closed by a certain time, and honestly that's just bad location in my opinion. I've had multiple LGS run events starting at midnight and those were the nights they made the most money.
I 100% agree that GEM packs should be given out to everybody and stores locking them behind performance will lose their playerbase, but I also agree that we can't just ignore performance based prizing. I did stop attending a store that ignored performance based prizing due to it feeling like "Structured free play". I already play a ton of FAB outside of the weekly and do feel something when I win the cold foil or packs or whatever. And now that GEM packs are revealed and they turned out to be basically reskinned armory prizing without any performance based winnings I don't think I'll feel good being the 4/5-0 player, getting one pack and opening nothing I wanted while the 0-4 player gets the same prize but opens a CF or marvel.
Now I am the player that people got tired of me winning all the time, but when that happened the TO asked if I minded giving the cold foil to the second place person or having it raffle and asked me to not win for a few weeks. I did it; it didn't feel good for me since I was essentially being punished for playing well, and me winning armories essentially lets me have Flesh and Blood pay for itself (I wasn't playing a meta deck). I know this may sting for some people to hear, but you can't cast away the dedicated players the win a lot from your community since this is *the* competitive game on the market. That is the allure and pull of Flesh and Blood over other TCGs.
I agree that stores need to find a middle ground, pure participation will grow stale after the initial hype has died down and there are many in the community who enjoy performance based prizing.
I just want to add I'm not salty when the 0-3 player pulls something cool from their pack, it's happened before and I've been excited for them. It's the fact we both "won" the same amount of packs.
Yeah this is very tough for new players. I am somewhat of a meritocracy-leaning person. I also think smashing people with $50 decks with a $1500 deck feels super bad. I think managing expectations and implementing alternative formats is the real fix. Competition is one of the only objective ways to judge things nowadays. You have 0 life and I have 10 life. I win. I think merging Blitz and Commoner into something like Clash and supporting a tuned down version as a real entry point for new players is the way to grow the game and build people, sustainably, into a cc armory.
Even though I'm the opposite of you - I'm a very casual player - I agree with you. I have an armory win rate of about 1/4 of the games I play. However, I've stopped going to armories at one store that is highly competitive. I kept going for a while because I won a playmat once in a while, but I slowly dropped out. Luckily, a new store opened near me and I'm playing again in a very casual scene. OK, that's me. My real point is that there seems to be two types of players - people who get to play games outside of armories who become good players, and those (like me) who want to play casually to get better and only play at armories. How do you get both types to attend the same event? If the really good players stopped attending, that would be bad too. Who would I learn from?
@@JohnSmith-ul2ce I also don't enjoy smashing new players, I or the TO make it so GEM doesn't pair new players into the comp. established players round 1. We did start rotating formats every week, so CC only happens once a month and it's helped grow the scene. Another store in the area is the competitive CC store and attracts a smaller but more dedicated crowd, if anybody in the area wants serious practice they show up there. It's a good middle ground for me.
@@HaoticSystem I think rotating formats is a good way, my store rotates through every format and we only play CC once a month and for the most part everybody has liked it. It also gives people an excuse to dive into their bulk to make a commoner deck and an UPF deck. Also, only the cold foil goes to the winner otherwise everybody gets something, plus their entry pack.
By the same token you can't force engagement. I mean realistically if people want to come in and be competitive in a non-competitive environment that's on them as individuals. And even with what you're saying, I feel that you're attempting to use prizing or glean away. Forward that encourages a specific mode of gameplay
Clash, or some tuned down blitz/cc format with enough character flavor to make it interesting, but enough power and price tone down to make it approachable for it to be a skill and experience based competition, would solve many of these problems. They need to put in the time to fix this entry-level armory problem. I don’t think blitz is it and I think commoner is not exciting enough.
I think maybe we're talking different things this morning - I'm not talking about 'format' in terms of CC, Blitz, etc.
@@DiceCommando I get it. You are talking incentives for competing/showing up and growing the community. Some want to show up and win to earn bonuses, some want something for showing up and to have fun. I guess I am saying a mix of format rotation (new, supported, formats even) plus prizing/incentive structure could work wonders.
Im hoping to start a Casual Fab day for our newer players while keeping our CC day on Sat and Imma try to convince some of the older players to try out Clash becuz it seems like a great place to start for a newer player. I also wanna whip up a Clash deck and just have fun.l
I think GEM Packs are some shameless - and rightfully so - homework copying from SWU. Anyone who got one of the participation packs in SWU knows how great a feeling that was and a great incentive to try out the game. I think that once LSS is a little more trigger happy w/ what they're willing to print in GEM packs it'll be the best thing they could've ever done for the game (give us CNCs, EStrikes, etc. - create the pipeline of "I bought an AD and by attending armouries long enough I could save up for and/or occasionally pull the staples I needed to upgrade it" - I say this as someone with RFs of every staple so I only stand to lose money from a policy like that and still believe it's the correct route.)
I'm one of the ones who sort of spearheads the playgroup in my region and we pretty quickly all agreed that participation GEM Packs w/ an additional one to the top finisher or top few finishers was the obviously best approach.
Other games do them as well; it seems totally fair to take on a 'best practice' approach. Excited for these, sounds like y'all are as well!