April 22, 2024 • 46 mins
Join me and Jacob as we discuss the new grant tournament structure that atomic mass games is using to replace the worlds tournament structure. Is it going to work let us know in the comments
Broadcasted live on Twitch -- Watch live at https://www.twitch.tv/colorlessmoon65
Broadcasted live on Twitch -- Watch live at https://www.twitch.tv/colorlessmoon65
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Atomic Max Games just dropped a bombshellon us. Oh yeah, there is
so much going on and so muchthat could go wrong with this that we
just have to talk about it.We have some other plans for this week,
some fun plans, talking about stuffthat we actually liked, and then
this dropped on the Legion, theArmada, the Shatter Point, the Star
(00:23):
Wars universe, anything associated with AtomicMass Games had a bombshell dropped on it,
and so I wanted to say abombshell. It was a freaking nuke.
Yeah, I mean, and wehave to talk about it. Of
course, we're talking about the GrandTournament announcement for Atomic Mass Games. The
(00:44):
advised if you're listening to this afterit's over. This is a live show
happening every Saturday at ten am Denvertime, which is Central Mountain not Central
Mountain time, Mountain time for theUnited States. I'm your host, Isaiah,
I'm dragon Master Jake, and thisis locked flut. Let let's get
into this. So, first ofall, let's talk about worlds. What
(01:07):
world the World's Tournament is, whichhas always been held at Adepticon, And
not only that, but uh,it's been held at Adepticon for years and
it's a major event. I meana lot of people showed up just this
last year. It last year,I think our Mada was the biggest it's
ever been. Yeah, so thisyear was the largest event Armada has ever
(01:30):
seen. And because of that,there is a whole lot of stuff going
on with it. This came outon April sixteenth. We're gonna read through
it. We're gonna cover it becausethis affects everybody in these communities and it
is a huge thing because this arethis world's event just ended and they're suddenly
(01:55):
changing everything that they did before.So we're just gonna read through it real
quick, and then we're going totalk about it because I want everybody to
know what this is, what's goingon, and more people need to be
covering this because this changes everything forthese communities in the next few years.
We're also going to be going overour thoughts on what they're setting up.
(02:16):
Yeah, so what they're kind ofthat maybe the idea behind it. Try
to create a silver lining if wecan so. Uh. For the last
two years, a number of playersfrom around the world have gathered at Adeptacon
to compete in the culmination of theworld's tournament circuit. There's just some background.
While this event has always proven tobe an exciting moment for those lucky
few players who qualify, it wasbecoming clear that the format was constricting,
(02:39):
rather than expanding the opportunities for thegrowing player base around the globe to engage
in high tournament play, high levelcompetitive play, high tournament play. Right,
that's it, that's world. Wegather at Adeptacon, we play the
games. I was there this year. I had a blast this year.
There was a lot of people thisyear, didn't Wasn't there what over two
(03:00):
hundred competitors? Oh? Well,over we had what was it like one
hundred tables or something, and thensector fleet and everything that went into it.
It was a huge event. Okay. The intensive amount of resources required
to effectively run and expand the WorldCircuit year after year was immense. It
accounted for the majority of our globalorganized play budget. Additionally, to preserve
(03:23):
and promote its competitive integrity required extremelyhigh levels of oversight and event requirements.
This, by its very nature,meant that the number of regions capable of
running a regional tournament were limited.We consistently saw that player communities, especially
in developing areas or those areas withsimple lower population were being excluded from the
(03:44):
chance to engage in what World's Tournamentcircuit offered. Okay, they're wanting to
bring it. Allow more people intothe community, is what they're trying to
do. Yeah, and then thenext section is very much about this.
This. Hey, these little countriesare not able to compete with us,
and so because of this, wearen't getting nearly a change in the competitive
(04:09):
level play. So countries which hadthe luxury of being able to host a
regional saw the benefits not just withinthe player community, but as part of
the player experience and the community asa whole. The engagement in the local
store a club play was higher,engagement in the hobby and painting was higher,
The excitement anticipation around the games washigher. So essentially, if you
were in a region where your communitywas active and running tournaments, you had
(04:33):
more people engaging in the community.What a surprise, What a surprise that
when you put effort, when theregional regions put effort into the game,
we see the community grow. Yeah. Equipped with this understanding, we begin
looking at the World Circuit and howit was working to achieve our core goal
of growing and supporting these games acrossthe world. After significant amount of discussion
(04:57):
both internal and with our global partnerswho serve local communities, they led us
to see that the resources being expendedour worlds were creating an exclusionary environment rather
than an inclusionary one. The costof sending one player to worlds was nearly
equal to the cost of providing eventsupport to a standalone thirty two convention.
What event I mean when it comesto because this is a worldwide organization where
(05:19):
you have people coming in from allover the world. If they're giving the
super the Super the super invited inviteto people in you know, Germany,
the UK, that in those kindsof areas, it's going to be expensive
to bring people here. I canunderstand that point. And then the super
(05:42):
worlds that are hearing the US,it's fairly cheap to send somebody there.
Yeah, yeah, a couple ofthousands send somebody to worlds. Honestly,
they are right about the cost,Like, hey, for the cost of
sending one person to two worlds witha super invite, And I think they're
more focusing on the other countries becauseto bring them here to the US.
(06:05):
Yeah, it's expensive yeah to providesupport that allowed all region and communities a
core component of game growth, weneed to exact a paradigm shift in how
we were supporting high level play.Working closely with as MODI as Global Organized
Play Team, we laid out astrategy, one that would better utilize our
valuable resources and provide more opportunities toall, while maintaining what we saw as
(06:27):
the most valuable part of the worldsystem, the player experience found at regional
level events. Grand tournaments represent thetop level organized play. They provide those
players who wish the opportunity to testtheir skills against the white swath of other
players from there and other regions whowish to travel the circuit. The winner
of each Grand tournament is marked asa player of exceptionary exceptional skill, having
(06:48):
overcome a diverse field of opponents.Unlike worlds, each Grand tournament stands as
its own unique experience. By doingso, this allows us to greatly increase
the number of Grand tournaments over thethat can be held, and most importantly,
the standalone nature of grand tournaments meansthat we can dynamically adjust requirements for
a region to be able to hostone consistent with the reality of the community
(07:12):
in that region. This means thatregions so that with smaller overall populations or
more limited resources are no longer excludedfrom being able to host their own exciting,
high level events. Additionally, theability to increase the number of events
we can support means larger regions whichhave only been able to hold a single
regionals event in a year now theopportunity to potentially hold multiple Grand tournaments.
(07:35):
This means that regions like Australia orthe UK can better service their communities geographically,
opening the opportunity for players to engagein these events who might have otherwise
found themselves unable to prove to previouslydue to conflicts with timing and travel costs.
Will Each Grand tournament will provide thebase, same baseline experience no matter
where in the world it is held. We're also excited for the potential of
(07:58):
the system to allow the growth expansionof convention level play in each region.
MG will be working in partnership withthis Moodier and our various regional partners to
culminate this cultivate this program, beingable to better focus on the unique needs
of each event in a way thatbrings maximum value to the community. That's
a lot of PR speak. That'sa lot of PR speak about, Hey,
(08:20):
you know, the cost is great, We would much rather do a
bunch of smaller events, and wewant to favor the communities who maybe aren't
able to do these big events andgive them an opportunity to still reap the
rewards of these regional style events andmaybe build their communities that way. But
the thing is is having the regionhaving Worlds is really beneficial because then you
(08:43):
can have you get to have peoplecompete against people across the world. It
is the top of the top,cream of the crop playing. Everybody who
went is a champion of their owntournament in their region. They won their
local event, they won a largerevent, and now they're going. Now
(09:03):
this sounds like a good idea.Hey, a bunch of smaller, smaller
convention events around the area. Youcreate an entire circuit of regional premiere events.
Also similar to like, we wentto LVO and that was a great
experience. It was a much smallerevent Worlds than Worlds, but it was
(09:24):
still a great event. I honestlythink that LVO will become a Grand Tournament.
Oh yeah, most likely it willand it's gonna be I mean,
it might grow a little bit,but they they had room to grow there
at the venue, but they're gonnarun out of space really quickly. Yeah,
(09:46):
So let's talk about what this isbecause this is a lot of PR
speak and they kind of I thinkthey did something a little bit dirty.
They put this note here this yearthat's like here rests link. It'll get
you over to our information on GT'sor Grand tournaments and what they are.
So what they are, you know, the games that are supported. Unlike
(10:09):
previous World System, grand tournaments donot feed into larger events, so gts
no longer feed into a bigger World'sevent. There's nothing bigger than a GT
now, I mean, I honestlythink that's a mistake. They really should
have these Grand tournaments. So youhave to compete at your smaller local stores
to get an invite to the Grandtournaments. It's a great way to set
(10:31):
it up. You get to theGrand Tournament, then you when you win
there, you get an invite toWorlds. You can have different ways of
providing invites. You can do awardsfor I mean, LBO had awards on
the paint. Let's take a.Let's take a different approach here. Let's
(10:52):
look at another system that's similar tohere but is effective that we've seen as
effective, the pro tour circuit fromMagic the Gathering. Okay, you start
with your pptqs Preliminary pro Tour qualifiers. Okay, Yeah, those ppt qs
feed into ptqs. Uh or werethey rtq's Preliminary pro Tour quality. Yeah?
(11:16):
Ptqs they feed into pro Tour qualifiersand those are Regional pro Tour qualifiers.
So you win PTQ pptqs, yougo into an RTQ Regional Tour qualifier,
and then once you get through that, top eight from the PTQ go
to pro Tour. But there's there'sa thing with that. These events are
(11:41):
not large enough, are not aslarge as Magic. That is true,
Like I said, it's going tobe the small local events in their shops
that's going to send them over toyour grand tours grand terms. So that's
what I'm thinking is these like smallerstore championships top eight should feed into a
regional gt Yeah, and then onceyou compete there, because you're not gonna
(12:05):
send one person from every tournament,no, to set it up where you're
and even to have it where youcan have top three go to Worlds,
but you can also throw in otherqualifiers. I mean there some people do
amazing jobs on job, on theirpaint jobs. Yeah, and they get
awards for their paint jobs and theirand what they can do, you can
(12:26):
give send them to worlds for that. There's so much you can do here
and change, change the nature ofworlds so much by and not get rid
of it. So it's also goingto reduce your cost because you're not gonna
send too over two hundred people theworlds. Yeah. So let's look at
our I'm just pulling it up.Now, let's look at the So you've
(12:50):
got the tournament structure for these Ijust pulled up the tournament rules because that
matters because they they essentially change changethe tournament rules to allow for this.
So I don't know if it talksabout our modern regulations. Here, here's
the rules that are here. Theyare okay, So to qualify as a
(13:11):
GT. This is what ticked meoff. Let me preface this announcement was
made on April sixteenth, okay,April sixteenth. Each year, MG determines
the total number of Grand Tournament tournamentsavailable based on its budget from this poolittal
assign a certain number GT's per globalregion, and even qualifying may apply through
(13:35):
our online application to be considered.Applications must be submitted for twenty twenty four
and twenty twenty five by May firstof twenty twenty four. This announcement came
out on April sixteenth. Yeah,give, they gave what two weeks you
have to every everybody that wants tohave a GT now has two weeks to
(13:58):
regis you put it out on suchshort notice. Honestly, this next year
for tournaments, they're gonna have barelyany there. Nobody's gonna sign up.
You're gonna have these major events andthat's it. Yeah, because these people
need to have a date of whenthey're gonna do it. They they need
Essentially, they're saying, you needto plan your tournament in two weeks so
(14:20):
that you can submit it to us. Because here's the application. I mean
they made. They made the applicationsomewhat actually easier than there. It's pretty
easy compared to some of the applicationsthat I've seen, but it's still I
mean, you get two weeks andyou have to find your uh, your
venue, your as well as yourjudges, not judges refs right, Yeah,
(14:48):
judges. They're judges. So letme look at this because so you
know, you must have a whetherit's being sponsored by retailer, what region
it's in the city or country.Do you already have a venue? It
leaves some room for it. Butyou have to have two judges for a
GT and you have to have themwhen you register. Yeah. So the
(15:11):
only places that are at least forthis next year that are going to have
an event is probably gonna be likethe areas like the Las Vegas Open or
the what was it, the Houston, Texas Open. Those ones they have
they've had it established that they have, Yeah, they have people that they
can call on to be judges.Yeah, easily, So this next year
(15:33):
they're gonna those are gonna be prettymuch the regional events is the people who
have had it established for years.Yeah. So it must be held at
a public venue, so any storeor anything like that. It must be
open to the public. I understandthat it must have thirty two players,
which is a premier level event,which is what these are event. The
event must be able to provide terrainand tables. Of course, you must
(15:54):
be able to run your event essentially, and then you need one sixteen person
judge and then you need to allof the rules exactly. But to give
people two weeks notice for this isridiculous. Yeah, you have two weeks
to plan, plan your entire yourentire regions gts you want to have.
(16:14):
You're you're saying, we want toopen this up to more to more of
the community. For the next yearor two, you're gonna close it off
to most of your community. Yeah, you've just shut off so much by
giving such late notice on this.You needed a month minimum. Yeah,
and to I mean, we havea lot of stores here in Utah that
(16:36):
they do small events, which isgreat, but and then we have a
couple large events that would want todo this. We have you know,
Salt Lake Games Convention. We haveuh yeah, we the Salt Lake Games
Convention does host a big tournament.And so it's like cool those event organizers
behind the Salt Lake Games Convention.One needed to see this within two weeks.
(17:00):
Yeah, read it. Not onlyread it, click the link to
the other side and see that applicationsmust be submitted. Yeah, and now
at this point they have what tendays? Yep, you have ten eleven
technically, if you even submitted onthe first, you now have eleven days.
This was released on a Tuesday.It's just one of those things that
(17:23):
they they really screwed up this andthis is for both really, this is
for this is until May of twentytwenty five. You are shooting the community
in the foot by not giving yourtoos the time to organize all their events,
because do you honestly think your yoursmall your small regional tournament organizers are
(17:45):
preparing your events a year in advance. Yeah, let's you let me let
me discuss a little bit about Utahbecause you know, we the clear Field.
We have the like normal, likelike struct tournament structure that we run
where for the qualifiers and everything,and then have our little ternment's that just
kind of pop up, you knowhow stores Like you know, I think
I think the favorite thing is we'retalking to Jacob, not this Jacob,
(18:08):
the Jacob Thompson are our tournament toohere in Utah, and we're like,
by the way, May fourth ison a Saturday, and he's like,
we're doing a tournament. We're like, can we do sector fleet? Right?
But it's like, you do notplan these events in the future,
because you cannot guarantee that you're goingto be able to get a venue on
(18:30):
a date unless you secure that venueahead of time or you own the venue,
right, And I mean Utah hasa wide variety of venues. Yeah,
Dodgo games, Demolition and wasted that'sjust it. Those are the small
venues that I don't think you couldget thirty two. That's just in sulk.
Yeah, you could get in.It's supposed to be between thirty two
(18:52):
to sixty four, right yeah,no, yeah, thirty two is the
minimum. Yeah, so I mean, yes, you could get thirty two
in demolition games, but you're notgonna get sixty. No. And to
have a facility that can get tosixty is is difficult. Yeah, you
have to plan so far ahead.I mean that's the thing. Like LVO
(19:15):
was not just for these four games, for what five games I think at
US, Yeah, these five games, I mean they had Warhammer everything.
When you do events like that,it works out pretty well. You can
you can get a massive event andyou can plan those. You do plan
like year a year out. Yeah. I do understand those major like convention
(19:37):
level events you plan out year out. But come on, you say you
want to like encourage this regional playand then you completely won shut down the
shut down the store. Uh storechampionship, Yeah, circuit they what they
like? I said, they shouldhave had it where these store championships are
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what gets you in to the Grandtournaments. Storre championships should feed into the
GT. Yes, store championships topeight feed into the GT. And I
mean the one that's always really roughis or top four top four feet into
the GT. They're also getting ridof Worlds altogether, which is sad,
I might you will not have aworld champion. You're gonna turn Adeptacon into
(20:22):
a GT. Oh yeah, weknow that for a fact. That's why
I went out for Worlds. Iwent to see the top tier play.
I went to play in the biggestevent Armada has ever seen. And why
am I going next year? They'regonna see massive reduction in that they will
not They'll be to the point wherethey won't need the large venue that they
(20:44):
get. Yeah, they won't needas large of a venue. They won't
be able to run as many events. I mean sure, I think Adepticon
can run multiple events. You know, they can still be like we're having
our GT and everyone's like, butyeah, why am I going for a
g You know, you're going tohave fun, You're going for the sector
fleet, You're going for the announcements, you're going for the convention as well.
You're no longer going because I ama world I qualified for Worlds,
(21:07):
I am competing in something bigger.Yeah. Like I said, I honestly
think they needed it to feed intoworlds. They needed these gts to feed
into worlds because for them to setit up where it feeds into worlds,
they're significantly reducing their cost as wellas you Still, I mean, Worlds
is the only place that most ofpeople in the US are going to play
(21:32):
against somebody in from another country.So what I think is, again,
what GT. They need to establishtwo things. One with these gts,
they need to establish open gts andinvitational gts. Yeah, open gts are
your public ones LVO, that kindof thing where you're like, yeah,
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but they still need to have adepticonlike our World's Tournament. Even if they
just have to call it the World'sGrand Tournament, they have to call it
a grand tournament. Still say itis by invitation only. Yeah, it
is an invitational and you can setit where the amount of players is like
sixty. Yeah, you set themax players. Sure, and that's the
thing. You're like, okay,yeah, this is an invitational, and
(22:15):
they're worried about the cost. Soeliminate that, eliminate the If you want
to eliminate super invites, eliminate superinvites. Be like okay, yeah,
no, we cannot afford to sendyou all to Worlds and pay for all
of your travel and tickets and everything. For our premier level event winners,
it's the GT winner. If theGT tournament organizers want to do a super
(22:40):
ticket, that is on them.Yeah, then it's the GT that has
to pay for the The GT ison the hook for the ticket. Yeah,
they're the ones that's gonna pay forit. It cuts your cost down
as well as by reducing the amountof players that are going to be going
too Worlds, it's gonna significantly reducethe amount of players. You're going to
(23:03):
open up the community more in thoseregions because they're going to go, Okay,
let's go compete it or in ourstores to get into the regionals.
Let's see if we can fight ourway to the war to Worlds. Yeah.
You you no longer if you removethe store play structure and made it
so that everybody who goes to Worldshas to rip and claw their way to
(23:27):
victory in an RT, you're liketop four, top four from from a
major regional RT go to Worlds.Our World's tournament will be thirty two players
or sixty four I'd say sixty four. Max max it out for your for
what they're yeah saying, because theysaid you can. It starts at thirty
(23:47):
two and it can go up tolike sixty seven or sixty four four or
something like that. Yeah, maxit out that way. I mean you're
so technically there's no cap on it. A GT can have any number of
players. They just need a judgefor every sixteen people. Yeah, but
I mean to the most reasonable issixty four. For a large tournament like
a World's tournament, you're gonna wantsixty four. That way, they have
(24:11):
to fully fight each other. Imean, that's just how it should be
set up. Yeah. And that'sthe thing is this. This completely removes
top level play. They're saying,we want to foster top level play in
the in regional events. Cool,your regional metas are now locked in as
(24:32):
your meta. You want to You'regonna have to travel the GT circuit if
you want regional like if you wantto get a diverse if you want to
play against a diverse meta, youhave to travel. Because you talk about
regional metas. Okay, some regionalmetas have an abundance of Honagers. So
you're seeing to double honagers anywhere everywhere, and everyone's like, okay, so
(24:52):
you're either playing double Honager or you'replaying counterplay against double Honager. Other events
are going well, we have abunch of players that play a bunch of
different things. So like our localcommunity has, our Utah community I think
has like three or four Separatists playerstotal. You'll never play against the separatists,
Yeah, I mean, I meanwe went to well, we went
(25:17):
to LVO. Let me preface thisbefore before the Utah community immediately eviscerates me
for my lack of knowledge on howmany people play Separatists. I'm taking this
information based on what I've seen atthe last few tournaments that I've played in.
I played up in Clearfield, Iplayed in the Utah Open and taking
around the community. There was oneSeparatist in Clearfield at that Store Championship,
(25:41):
which is a bigger store. It'swhere they hold a lot of the Armada
events. And then I think therewas two separatists in the in the Utah
Open, I make the fourth separatist. And like I said, when we
went to LVO, how many Separatistsplayed at LVO, like four? Yeah,
(26:03):
there was barely. I mean,yes, Armada did not have a
large footprint at LVO. But that'sa different issue because that's yeah, that's
gonna be changed probably next year.I mean yeah, because the thing about
LVO is they they didn't plan forArmada to be happening there at all until
the community went we want this,and then they had Then they had more
(26:23):
numbers than the year before the max. Yeah, and so like I said,
next year, more than likely nextyear they're gonna expand Armada. They're
gonna expand some of these games thatdid really well, because why why not.
I mean we had uh LVO Legionactually didn't use I think what six
(26:44):
of their tables. Yeah, theyjust sat empty the entire time. That's
the thing is the different games.We're talking a lot about Armodic because that's
the games we've been playing at thislike competitive level and we've been enjoying at
this higher competitive level. We usedto play Legion. I mean Legions rules
went really bad, but yeah,I hated that story change. I set
(27:06):
down Legion, I picked up Armadaand started playing others. Besides the point,
but overall, the idea of thegrand tournaments was a good idea.
We foster this cool one. Howmuch of this cost is on how many
of these grand tournaments are actually goingto be run by Atomic Mass Games and
(27:26):
how many are being run by thetournament organizers because they're like, the budget,
what what do you actually have todo for a grand tournament? Yeah?
What what does the budget actually haveto do for a grand tournament?
Sure, you've got to print offthe price support cards, that kind of
thing. Unfortunately, I don't thinkthere's Their budget isn't the issue entirely because
(27:48):
they would have more budget if theyreleased more ships for Armada. Sorry,
I'm salty about that. And thething is is, uh, we were
looking at it. A lot ofthe Star Wars specific games, they don't
have a major growing player base.Yeah, they're seeing some growth, but
(28:10):
the issue is as the games arebecoming more and more complicated, with more
and more like unit diversity and moreand more rule changes. I mean,
Legion is currently, as far asI can remember, Legion is losing their
players. Don't think I don't thinkso I need a double check. I
haven't checked the world stuff. TheWorld's just they had their own issues at
Worlds. We're not going to discussit here, but they had their own
(28:32):
issue at Worlds with their player base. But the more and more units you
release, and with the players,and with the rule changes and everything like
that, I mean, this lastrule change, they lost a lot of
players. Because Yeah, so let'stake what I've said when I picked up
Legion, it's it's Warhammer but budgetfriendly. Yeah it no longer is it?
No longer is Before with Legion youcould pick up the Corset and a
(28:55):
couple other units and your army wouldbe perfect. You'd have your me and
you'd go. Most of your stuffcould come out of the cord box.
Now you're like or you'd pick upa bunch of side pieces like short troopers
and everything. Build your army thatway. Now, now what do we
have stormtroopers? Short troopers, shorttroopers now like Range, dark troopers.
There's so many different units that anew player is going to it's not even
(29:19):
including the vehicles. I mean,you've got Speeders, Tontans, what is
it, Speeders, Tontans, Barks. The competitive level lists are also becoming
more and more stale. Yeah,I mean Triple Barks has been around forever
now Quadruple Bars and they're all runningthe and those players all run the same
(29:45):
same thing. They all just wantto play bombing, run and that,
and that's just it is Legion.They had at they have a balancing issue.
There is a huge balancing issue withLegion that does not exist with Armada.
I don't know enough about shatter Pointto say if there's a balancing issue
with shatter Point neither do I knowanything about x Wings x Wing. It's
(30:07):
not x Wing Assault, No,that's a different company. Yeah, and
you're talking about Imperial Assault. XWing has its own issues where there was
that jump from first edition to secondedition that really lost a lot of people.
And that's where a lot of peoplehave been liking Armada because it's it's
yes, they don't have a lotof ships, but it stayed it's stayed
(30:32):
balanced. Well. No, Armadahas a ton of ships. The difference
is the ships are well balanced againsteach other, and you do not feel
like you need every ship. Theproblem is is try and find a Venitor.
Go ahead, go to the store, try and find it. The
issue has been the since AMG tookover, Armada has not been able to
get product. Yeah, I mean, uh, the the second hand sales
(30:56):
on a Venitor is almost two hundreddollars. You need Venitors, especially after
they release them for the Empire,because now you need a Venitor for the
Republic because the Republic and the Separatistshave their own issue where they don't have
enough ships. You have the forthe Republic, you have the ships other
than what's in the starter set isthe Pelta and the Venitor. Yeah.
(31:18):
For the Separatists it's the Recusant andthe Recusant and the Providence. And the
thing is you're looking at it ifwhen you look at the ships and then
the print and play stuff, I'mnot counting the prints and play stuff.
Yeah, I mean if the iftheir issue is painting, then that's gonna
(31:38):
be. That's simple. I mean, I'm trying to think the game that's
about that's coming out in August.Hero Escape. They did an amazing job
by going okay, yeah, we'lloffer the fully painted ones. But we're
gonna also offer the unpainted and makeit cheaper. Yeah, that is a
(31:59):
brilliant way to do it. Lowersmanufacturing costs, it helps get the product
out for people to play. Whatyou do is you make you don't you
do batches of painted essentially, youdo releases of painted ships. You go,
okay, so these dates will release, it will put it out there,
and if we get enough orders,then we'll release. We'll send the
(32:21):
people who ordered painted ships, andthen you send the unpainted ships to be
the ones that are sold in stores. And if you wanted to, you
could You could even set it upwhere I mean there's a lot of people
that as far as painting their ships, they just paint some lines on it,
which okay, it's great. Youcan also set it up where your
(32:45):
Grand tournaments one of the awards forprize support painting a specific painted figure that
is distinct for the events, andthat would be up to the t O
and not necessarily those specific qualifying events. But you know, you know,
(33:07):
you win GT, you get atwenty twenty four painted venit. Yeah,
and it's just something that is uniquefor that year, and it's like,
yeah, so you just paint unlimitednumber of these that are included in the
cost of running the event. It'snot that big because the price support honestly
(33:28):
at these events is limited. LikeLVO and at Worlds, I was I
was very much to see the worldstuff in the cards stuff, the fact
that they only did cards. LVOdid something really cool where the best faction
got like a little a little pictureplaque. Yeah, of their faction,
you know, best in faction.But overall, I'm like, there's so
(33:52):
much that you could do that youguys are not doing. And that's just
Armada. What about Legion, Yeah, I'm I mean Legion, they don't
Legion does not sell painted minifigures.You have to paint those, which,
okay, that's great. That's nevernever been an issue with Peter. My
(34:15):
biggest thing is they don't even needto paint them. Do you know what
they can do for the winners?Guess what you do the what you do
at Adepticon in the Worlds where yougive out you a give out that or
was it given out? No,it was it good out, it was
sold or it was given us Pridesupport this the Unique that Year unit,
(34:36):
like the custom Base, so likethe Operative Loop that we have the Commander
loop that we have that they soldin twenty twenty or gave them to the
stores. Do that for the GTS. That's the reward, that is the
win for the GT. Is thatunit or you can also take and set
it up. A lot of playershave custom dials and stuff like that that
they in Armada. Yeah, youprint special dials. You print that kind
(35:00):
of thing to be like, theseare your rewards because effective, they're not
hard to manufacture, they're easy,and it's something that is unique for that
year and it's something that it's iteventually becomes a collector's item. Yeah,
Armada does its dice, which arenot enough. I think that the inclusion
of hey, we are doing specialdials, We're doing special attachments, special
(35:24):
versions of the ship, special stands. Yeah, anything like that you could
do. There's so many things thatthey can do to make the premiere events
feel like premiere events these GTS,and it wouldn't be a budget issue.
Honestly, overall, I think thisis a dumbest. I actually don't think
I would say it's a dumb decisionexcept for it's a good concept. I
(35:46):
do not trust AMG to execute it. Properly. Yeah, they've made a
series of mistakes lately that has thatpeople have started losing interest in the commune
unity, which is you don't wantto do that. I mean, well,
this is supposed to be an interestin the community. It Let's take
(36:07):
Armada. We're doing Armada for example, because that is the game that I've
been playing. Armada's community has somuch engagement. The Armada community is so
close knit and so so and it'sbeen growing. Yeah, and it has
been growing. But AMG is notsupporting that growth with unit releases, with
(36:27):
with keeping things manufactured on the shelves. And I get it, you don't
want to you know, hey,we but you hey, we don't want
a bunch of units that nobody usessitting on the shelf. But you should
see wait a second, the secondarymarket is selling a Venitor for as much
as a Superstar Destroyer or let's seehere. I mean, we also look
(36:51):
at Legion because that's another area thatwe've played. They put they've put a
lot of time and money into uhnew units and stuff like that, but
they haven't taken the time to gothrough get feedback from the community, to
get to see what why is competitiveplay becomes stagnant on the same units in
(37:14):
the same form. Why is awith all the new units, with all
the new releases, with all ofit, Why is a list that came
out before the Clone Wars still oneof the most competitively viable lists. Yeah,
something is not working. They needto play test with the community to
(37:37):
figure it out. And that Imean, yes, you can play test
within your own company, and it'sa great way to do small form testing,
but to see how the competitive fieldis going to see it, you
need to talk to them. Youneed to get build a community of play
(37:57):
testers. Build build a community ofplay testers. Do different events where you're
like, hey, yeah, no, we're playtesting this unit. Go.
So let's take hero Escape for example, again, because I think Renegade's doing
something really good with heroes. Yeah. So a couple of weeks ago,
hero Escape put out Hey we're lookingfor playtesters. Yeah, it was a
(38:19):
form you filled out. Hey,after every battle, you'll need every match
you play with the playtesting materials,you'll need to fill out a battle report.
Tell us about your previous experience withthe game, tell us about your
war game experience. Overall. Canyou dedicate three to five hours a week
to play this game, to testthis material. It's like you're reaching out
to your community to get the playtesting done. Well, it's like,
(38:40):
do you know who the best peopleto reach out for this play testing are?
And I'm not just saying this becauseI create the content content creators.
Yeah, and not only yeah,and not only that, but you can
send them the new stuff that's comingout and say, hey, this is
what we're planning on release scene,play tested. I want to know how
(39:02):
you're gonna play it and how thecompetitors are gonna play it. Set up
a video for it. We willlet you release that video when we come
out with the Yeah, it's like, yeah, a video. This is
when? Are you send it out? A couple of months before? You're
like, here's this stuff? Doyou want? Can you spend a couple
of hours a week play testing?Is send us what you think, test
different ways to play, come backto us, tell us how it went,
(39:28):
and then we can release it.That avoids something like the Anakin Skywalker
situation as well as they can alsotake in do you remember what happened when
Anakin first got released as an admiralfor Armada? I do not. He
was busted flat busted. So histhing was whenever you whenever you perform an
(39:50):
attack, you can perform perform asalvo attack as well. Now, the
issue was there were some rules like, by the way, not only can
you attack then salvo, you cansalvo then salvo. So there was there
was a loophole in the rules thatallowed you to pretty much continuously attack for
(40:12):
as almost as much as you want, as long as you had the salvo
token. And it's like okay one, yeah, no, that's broken.
And if you have a ton ofships, yeah no, you're salvoing the
fact that every ship gets two counterattacks against the ship that is attacking it.
He was flatbuster, and the communitypicked up on it and they had
to completely rewrite the card in twoweeks. Yeah, and now Anakin is
practically useless, which I mean thatcould be an over adjustment order. They
(40:38):
went over adjustment, you know,if they just clarified you know, Anakin
can only perform on salve attack orit's only the ship that Anakin's on that
can perform extra salvo attacks and everyoneelse just or there's what Anakin can be.
You know, after you perform anattack, after you perform a non
salvo attack, you may perform asalvo attack. Okay, yeah, after
(41:04):
this ship sorry, after this shipperforms a non salvo attack, it may
perform a salvo attack. Now you'renot double salvoing. Yeah, it may
spend a salvotoken to do that.Other ships or ships. You ships,
ships, friendly ships, when theyperform a salvo attack, may add one
(41:24):
blue dice to their attack pool.Not broken worth thirty five points your salvo
attacks. Getting extra die pelta isso much better. But they went so
hard with it and not play testingyour stuff causes your erratas to be so
overdone because you're like, this willbe fun, and then it completely breaks
(41:47):
a super balanced game exactly. Andthe way that I see is it when
you bring your community into it andtell them, hey, we want to
play test with We want to playtest with her community. And not only
like with Legion where you have topaint your minifigures. You can tell them,
(42:08):
hey, send us some of thesome of the stuff that you painted
the we'll send you the new thisthe new units. Paint them, send
it to us. We want touse your your models as advertisement. As
advertising. You can do painting.There's so much you can do when you
involve the community. And that's thebig thing that Atomic Mass is doing is
(42:29):
they're they're that community engagement they're tryingto gather. I I don't feel like
these Grand Tournament stuff is enough.We're going over on time. So we
need to uh wrap this up becausewe could go into the problems that Atomic
Mask games, because a ton ofproblems have cropped up with Atomic Mask Games.
This is just another nail there wherethey're going, we're doing away with
(42:52):
worlds and it's they're missing it.The they have a way that they could
set things up really well if theyhave the right people. I mean,
the next two years for these it'sgonna be crucial. These well that's just
it. These next two years,they're gonna these large events like LVO and
(43:17):
stuff and these major open they willnot be sanctioned GTS. Well, that's
just it. LVO will definitely becomeout. Yeah, it'll be a Sang
two. It's gonna be these theselarge these large events that used to be
the opens are gonna become the GTS. And that's what it's gonna be for
the next two years. Yeah,we need something like you need something to
(43:42):
feed into because who's the cream ofthe crop. Like, you'll have your
you'll have your community heads that arelike, yeah, this is the best
player in our community's he wins theGT and it's like we have some people
that come from out of town.Sometimes they win, but we're like,
who's the cream of the crop?Who is our top eight? And what
are they playing? And not onlythat, but if you have the same
region over it's gonna be if it'sthe same same area over and over again,
(44:07):
it's going to be to the pointwhere you're gonna have one person who
won that region six times, it'sgoing to create the same issue. The
top level play is gonna get stale, but in different ways. Yeah,
But I mean I think that havingthe regionals is a good idea, But
(44:27):
I do think they need to keepworlds. This is going to matter so
much on execution. Yes, thisis a al right idea, it's a
risky idea and their execution of itneeds to be flawless and more than likely
we'll have to come back to thisafter we see the outcome of it,
(44:47):
just to see what we're gonna haveto coover this a year later and be
like this is how it went yep, and then be like be like we
were wrong. Everybody did register intime, we got it right, or
we got to come back and gonobody registered in time. There was next
to no gts. Yep, wehave to come back because again this is
gonna be the execution has to beright. But like Isaiah saying, we're
(45:13):
out of time and yep. Soif you want to hear more about this,
or you know you're you just wantto listen to watch us play some
games. We're gonna be setting up. We're gonna be playing some Zelda as
we always do, and feel freeto check out our YouTube channel and subscribe
if you want. We no no, no no no no no no no
no no. If they want there, they are forty five minutes into this
(45:37):
episode. If they want to hearus beg for a subscription, they will
be sorely disappointed, of course.But like I said, if they came
to hear me beg for it,it will not happen. Subscribe if you
want, but I am not beggingfor I'm meaning on YouTube either way,
(45:57):
I am not begging for it.But check out our other stuff. We've
got a ton of other stuff tooffer. I'm not beyond that. All
right, I've been your host,Asiah. I'm dragging Master Jake. We're lugging out
Atomic Max Games just dropped a bombshellon us. Oh yeah, there is
so much going on and so muchthat could go wrong with this that we
just have to talk about it.We have some other plans for this week,
some fun plans, talking about stuffthat we actually liked, and then
this dropped on the Legion, theArmada, the Shatter Point, the Star
(00:23):
Wars universe, anything associated with AtomicMass Games had a bombshell dropped on it,
and so I wanted to say abombshell. It was a freaking nuke.
Yeah, I mean, and wehave to talk about it. Of
course, we're talking about the GrandTournament announcement for Atomic Mass Games. The
(00:44):
advised if you're listening to this afterit's over. This is a live show
happening every Saturday at ten am Denvertime, which is Central Mountain not Central
Mountain time, Mountain time for theUnited States. I'm your host, Isaiah,
I'm dragon Master Jake, and thisis locked flut. Let let's get
into this. So, first ofall, let's talk about worlds. What
(01:07):
world the World's Tournament is, whichhas always been held at Adepticon, And
not only that, but uh,it's been held at Adepticon for years and
it's a major event. I meana lot of people showed up just this
last year. It last year,I think our Mada was the biggest it's
ever been. Yeah, so thisyear was the largest event Armada has ever
(01:30):
seen. And because of that,there is a whole lot of stuff going
on with it. This came outon April sixteenth. We're gonna read through
it. We're gonna cover it becausethis affects everybody in these communities and it
is a huge thing because this arethis world's event just ended and they're suddenly
(01:55):
changing everything that they did before.So we're just gonna read through it real
quick, and then we're going totalk about it because I want everybody to
know what this is, what's goingon, and more people need to be
covering this because this changes everything forthese communities in the next few years.
We're also going to be going overour thoughts on what they're setting up.
(02:16):
Yeah, so what they're kind ofthat maybe the idea behind it. Try
to create a silver lining if wecan so. Uh. For the last
two years, a number of playersfrom around the world have gathered at Adeptacon
to compete in the culmination of theworld's tournament circuit. There's just some background.
While this event has always proven tobe an exciting moment for those lucky
few players who qualify, it wasbecoming clear that the format was constricting,
(02:39):
rather than expanding the opportunities for thegrowing player base around the globe to engage
in high tournament play, high levelcompetitive play, high tournament play. Right,
that's it, that's world. Wegather at Adeptacon, we play the
games. I was there this year. I had a blast this year.
There was a lot of people thisyear, didn't Wasn't there what over two
(03:00):
hundred competitors? Oh? Well,over we had what was it like one
hundred tables or something, and thensector fleet and everything that went into it.
It was a huge event. Okay. The intensive amount of resources required
to effectively run and expand the WorldCircuit year after year was immense. It
accounted for the majority of our globalorganized play budget. Additionally, to preserve
(03:23):
and promote its competitive integrity required extremelyhigh levels of oversight and event requirements.
This, by its very nature,meant that the number of regions capable of
running a regional tournament were limited.We consistently saw that player communities, especially
in developing areas or those areas withsimple lower population were being excluded from the
(03:44):
chance to engage in what World's Tournamentcircuit offered. Okay, they're wanting to
bring it. Allow more people intothe community, is what they're trying to
do. Yeah, and then thenext section is very much about this.
This. Hey, these little countriesare not able to compete with us,
and so because of this, wearen't getting nearly a change in the competitive
(04:09):
level play. So countries which hadthe luxury of being able to host a
regional saw the benefits not just withinthe player community, but as part of
the player experience and the community asa whole. The engagement in the local
store a club play was higher,engagement in the hobby and painting was higher,
The excitement anticipation around the games washigher. So essentially, if you
were in a region where your communitywas active and running tournaments, you had
(04:33):
more people engaging in the community.What a surprise, What a surprise that
when you put effort, when theregional regions put effort into the game,
we see the community grow. Yeah. Equipped with this understanding, we begin
looking at the World Circuit and howit was working to achieve our core goal
of growing and supporting these games acrossthe world. After significant amount of discussion
(04:57):
both internal and with our global partnerswho serve local communities, they led us
to see that the resources being expendedour worlds were creating an exclusionary environment rather
than an inclusionary one. The costof sending one player to worlds was nearly
equal to the cost of providing eventsupport to a standalone thirty two convention.
What event I mean when it comesto because this is a worldwide organization where
(05:19):
you have people coming in from allover the world. If they're giving the
super the Super the super invited inviteto people in you know, Germany,
the UK, that in those kindsof areas, it's going to be expensive
to bring people here. I canunderstand that point. And then the super
(05:42):
worlds that are hearing the US,it's fairly cheap to send somebody there.
Yeah, yeah, a couple ofthousands send somebody to worlds. Honestly,
they are right about the cost,Like, hey, for the cost of
sending one person to two worlds witha super invite, And I think they're
more focusing on the other countries becauseto bring them here to the US.
(06:05):
Yeah, it's expensive yeah to providesupport that allowed all region and communities a
core component of game growth, weneed to exact a paradigm shift in how
we were supporting high level play.Working closely with as MODI as Global Organized
Play Team, we laid out astrategy, one that would better utilize our
valuable resources and provide more opportunities toall, while maintaining what we saw as
(06:27):
the most valuable part of the worldsystem, the player experience found at regional
level events. Grand tournaments represent thetop level organized play. They provide those
players who wish the opportunity to testtheir skills against the white swath of other
players from there and other regions whowish to travel the circuit. The winner
of each Grand tournament is marked asa player of exceptionary exceptional skill, having
(06:48):
overcome a diverse field of opponents.Unlike worlds, each Grand tournament stands as
its own unique experience. By doingso, this allows us to greatly increase
the number of Grand tournaments over thethat can be held, and most importantly,
the standalone nature of grand tournaments meansthat we can dynamically adjust requirements for
a region to be able to hostone consistent with the reality of the community
(07:12):
in that region. This means thatregions so that with smaller overall populations or
more limited resources are no longer excludedfrom being able to host their own exciting,
high level events. Additionally, theability to increase the number of events
we can support means larger regions whichhave only been able to hold a single
regionals event in a year now theopportunity to potentially hold multiple Grand tournaments.
(07:35):
This means that regions like Australia orthe UK can better service their communities geographically,
opening the opportunity for players to engagein these events who might have otherwise
found themselves unable to prove to previouslydue to conflicts with timing and travel costs.
Will Each Grand tournament will provide thebase, same baseline experience no matter
where in the world it is held. We're also excited for the potential of
(07:58):
the system to allow the growth expansionof convention level play in each region.
MG will be working in partnership withthis Moodier and our various regional partners to
culminate this cultivate this program, beingable to better focus on the unique needs
of each event in a way thatbrings maximum value to the community. That's
a lot of PR speak. That'sa lot of PR speak about, Hey,
(08:20):
you know, the cost is great, We would much rather do a
bunch of smaller events, and wewant to favor the communities who maybe aren't
able to do these big events andgive them an opportunity to still reap the
rewards of these regional style events andmaybe build their communities that way. But
the thing is is having the regionhaving Worlds is really beneficial because then you
(08:43):
can have you get to have peoplecompete against people across the world. It
is the top of the top,cream of the crop playing. Everybody who
went is a champion of their owntournament in their region. They won their
local event, they won a largerevent, and now they're going. Now
(09:03):
this sounds like a good idea.Hey, a bunch of smaller, smaller
convention events around the area. Youcreate an entire circuit of regional premiere events.
Also similar to like, we wentto LVO and that was a great
experience. It was a much smallerevent Worlds than Worlds, but it was
(09:24):
still a great event. I honestlythink that LVO will become a Grand Tournament.
Oh yeah, most likely it willand it's gonna be I mean,
it might grow a little bit,but they they had room to grow there
at the venue, but they're gonnarun out of space really quickly. Yeah,
(09:46):
So let's talk about what this isbecause this is a lot of PR
speak and they kind of I thinkthey did something a little bit dirty.
They put this note here this yearthat's like here rests link. It'll get
you over to our information on GT'sor Grand tournaments and what they are.
So what they are, you know, the games that are supported. Unlike
(10:09):
previous World System, grand tournaments donot feed into larger events, so gts
no longer feed into a bigger World'sevent. There's nothing bigger than a GT
now, I mean, I honestlythink that's a mistake. They really should
have these Grand tournaments. So youhave to compete at your smaller local stores
to get an invite to the Grandtournaments. It's a great way to set
(10:31):
it up. You get to theGrand Tournament, then you when you win
there, you get an invite toWorlds. You can have different ways of
providing invites. You can do awardsfor I mean, LBO had awards on
the paint. Let's take a.Let's take a different approach here. Let's
(10:52):
look at another system that's similar tohere but is effective that we've seen as
effective, the pro tour circuit fromMagic the Gathering. Okay, you start
with your pptqs Preliminary pro Tour qualifiers. Okay, Yeah, those ppt qs
feed into ptqs. Uh or werethey rtq's Preliminary pro Tour quality. Yeah?
(11:16):
Ptqs they feed into pro Tour qualifiersand those are Regional pro Tour qualifiers.
So you win PTQ pptqs, yougo into an RTQ Regional Tour qualifier,
and then once you get through that, top eight from the PTQ go
to pro Tour. But there's there'sa thing with that. These events are
(11:41):
not large enough, are not aslarge as Magic. That is true,
Like I said, it's going tobe the small local events in their shops
that's going to send them over toyour grand tours grand terms. So that's
what I'm thinking is these like smallerstore championships top eight should feed into a
regional gt Yeah, and then onceyou compete there, because you're not gonna
(12:05):
send one person from every tournament,no, to set it up where you're
and even to have it where youcan have top three go to Worlds,
but you can also throw in otherqualifiers. I mean there some people do
amazing jobs on job, on theirpaint jobs. Yeah, and they get
awards for their paint jobs and theirand what they can do, you can
(12:26):
give send them to worlds for that. There's so much you can do here
and change, change the nature ofworlds so much by and not get rid
of it. So it's also goingto reduce your cost because you're not gonna
send too over two hundred people theworlds. Yeah. So let's look at
our I'm just pulling it up.Now, let's look at the So you've
(12:50):
got the tournament structure for these Ijust pulled up the tournament rules because that
matters because they they essentially change changethe tournament rules to allow for this.
So I don't know if it talksabout our modern regulations. Here, here's
the rules that are here. Theyare okay, So to qualify as a
(13:11):
GT. This is what ticked meoff. Let me preface this announcement was
made on April sixteenth, okay,April sixteenth. Each year, MG determines
the total number of Grand Tournament tournamentsavailable based on its budget from this poolittal
assign a certain number GT's per globalregion, and even qualifying may apply through
(13:35):
our online application to be considered.Applications must be submitted for twenty twenty four
and twenty twenty five by May firstof twenty twenty four. This announcement came
out on April sixteenth. Yeah,give, they gave what two weeks you
have to every everybody that wants tohave a GT now has two weeks to
(13:58):
regis you put it out on suchshort notice. Honestly, this next year
for tournaments, they're gonna have barelyany there. Nobody's gonna sign up.
You're gonna have these major events andthat's it. Yeah, because these people
need to have a date of whenthey're gonna do it. They they need
Essentially, they're saying, you needto plan your tournament in two weeks so
(14:20):
that you can submit it to us. Because here's the application. I mean
they made. They made the applicationsomewhat actually easier than there. It's pretty
easy compared to some of the applicationsthat I've seen, but it's still I
mean, you get two weeks andyou have to find your uh, your
venue, your as well as yourjudges, not judges refs right, Yeah,
(14:48):
judges. They're judges. So letme look at this because so you
know, you must have a whetherit's being sponsored by retailer, what region
it's in the city or country.Do you already have a venue? It
leaves some room for it. Butyou have to have two judges for a
GT and you have to have themwhen you register. Yeah. So the
(15:11):
only places that are at least forthis next year that are going to have
an event is probably gonna be likethe areas like the Las Vegas Open or
the what was it, the Houston, Texas Open. Those ones they have
they've had it established that they have, Yeah, they have people that they
can call on to be judges.Yeah, easily, So this next year
(15:33):
they're gonna those are gonna be prettymuch the regional events is the people who
have had it established for years.Yeah. So it must be held at
a public venue, so any storeor anything like that. It must be
open to the public. I understandthat it must have thirty two players,
which is a premier level event,which is what these are event. The
event must be able to provide terrainand tables. Of course, you must
(15:54):
be able to run your event essentially, and then you need one sixteen person
judge and then you need to allof the rules exactly. But to give
people two weeks notice for this isridiculous. Yeah, you have two weeks
to plan, plan your entire yourentire regions gts you want to have.
(16:14):
You're you're saying, we want toopen this up to more to more of
the community. For the next yearor two, you're gonna close it off
to most of your community. Yeah, you've just shut off so much by
giving such late notice on this.You needed a month minimum. Yeah,
and to I mean, we havea lot of stores here in Utah that
(16:36):
they do small events, which isgreat, but and then we have a
couple large events that would want todo this. We have you know,
Salt Lake Games Convention. We haveuh yeah, we the Salt Lake Games
Convention does host a big tournament.And so it's like cool those event organizers
behind the Salt Lake Games Convention.One needed to see this within two weeks.
(17:00):
Yeah, read it. Not onlyread it, click the link to
the other side and see that applicationsmust be submitted. Yeah, and now
at this point they have what tendays? Yep, you have ten eleven
technically, if you even submitted onthe first, you now have eleven days.
This was released on a Tuesday.It's just one of those things that
(17:23):
they they really screwed up this andthis is for both really, this is
for this is until May of twentytwenty five. You are shooting the community
in the foot by not giving yourtoos the time to organize all their events,
because do you honestly think your yoursmall your small regional tournament organizers are
(17:45):
preparing your events a year in advance. Yeah, let's you let me let
me discuss a little bit about Utahbecause you know, we the clear Field.
We have the like normal, likelike struct tournament structure that we run
where for the qualifiers and everything,and then have our little ternment's that just
kind of pop up, you knowhow stores Like you know, I think
I think the favorite thing is we'retalking to Jacob, not this Jacob,
(18:08):
the Jacob Thompson are our tournament toohere in Utah, and we're like,
by the way, May fourth ison a Saturday, and he's like,
we're doing a tournament. We're like, can we do sector fleet? Right?
But it's like, you do notplan these events in the future,
because you cannot guarantee that you're goingto be able to get a venue on
(18:30):
a date unless you secure that venueahead of time or you own the venue,
right, And I mean Utah hasa wide variety of venues. Yeah,
Dodgo games, Demolition and wasted that'sjust it. Those are the small
venues that I don't think you couldget thirty two. That's just in sulk.
Yeah, you could get in.It's supposed to be between thirty two
(18:52):
to sixty four, right yeah,no, yeah, thirty two is the
minimum. Yeah, so I mean, yes, you could get thirty two
in demolition games, but you're notgonna get sixty. No. And to
have a facility that can get tosixty is is difficult. Yeah, you
have to plan so far ahead.I mean that's the thing. Like LVO
(19:15):
was not just for these four games, for what five games I think at
US, Yeah, these five games, I mean they had Warhammer everything.
When you do events like that,it works out pretty well. You can
you can get a massive event andyou can plan those. You do plan
like year a year out. Yeah. I do understand those major like convention
(19:37):
level events you plan out year out. But come on, you say you
want to like encourage this regional playand then you completely won shut down the
shut down the store. Uh storechampionship, Yeah, circuit they what they
like? I said, they shouldhave had it where these store championships are
(19:59):
what gets you in to the Grandtournaments. Storre championships should feed into the
GT. Yes, store championships topeight feed into the GT. And I
mean the one that's always really roughis or top four top four feet into
the GT. They're also getting ridof Worlds altogether, which is sad,
I might you will not have aworld champion. You're gonna turn Adeptacon into
(20:22):
a GT. Oh yeah, weknow that for a fact. That's why
I went out for Worlds. Iwent to see the top tier play.
I went to play in the biggestevent Armada has ever seen. And why
am I going next year? They'regonna see massive reduction in that they will
not They'll be to the point wherethey won't need the large venue that they
(20:44):
get. Yeah, they won't needas large of a venue. They won't
be able to run as many events. I mean sure, I think Adepticon
can run multiple events. You know, they can still be like we're having
our GT and everyone's like, butyeah, why am I going for a
g You know, you're going tohave fun, You're going for the sector
fleet, You're going for the announcements, you're going for the convention as well.
You're no longer going because I ama world I qualified for Worlds,
(21:07):
I am competing in something bigger.Yeah. Like I said, I honestly
think they needed it to feed intoworlds. They needed these gts to feed
into worlds because for them to setit up where it feeds into worlds,
they're significantly reducing their cost as wellas you Still, I mean, Worlds
is the only place that most ofpeople in the US are going to play
(21:32):
against somebody in from another country.So what I think is, again,
what GT. They need to establishtwo things. One with these gts,
they need to establish open gts andinvitational gts. Yeah, open gts are
your public ones LVO, that kindof thing where you're like, yeah,
(21:52):
but they still need to have adepticonlike our World's Tournament. Even if they
just have to call it the World'sGrand Tournament, they have to call it
a grand tournament. Still say itis by invitation only. Yeah, it
is an invitational and you can setit where the amount of players is like
sixty. Yeah, you set themax players. Sure, and that's the
thing. You're like, okay,yeah, this is an invitational, and
(22:15):
they're worried about the cost. Soeliminate that, eliminate the If you want
to eliminate super invites, eliminate superinvites. Be like okay, yeah,
no, we cannot afford to sendyou all to Worlds and pay for all
of your travel and tickets and everything. For our premier level event winners,
it's the GT winner. If theGT tournament organizers want to do a super
(22:40):
ticket, that is on them.Yeah, then it's the GT that has
to pay for the The GT ison the hook for the ticket. Yeah,
they're the ones that's gonna pay forit. It cuts your cost down
as well as by reducing the amountof players that are going to be going
too Worlds, it's gonna significantly reducethe amount of players. You're going to
(23:03):
open up the community more in thoseregions because they're going to go, Okay,
let's go compete it or in ourstores to get into the regionals.
Let's see if we can fight ourway to the war to Worlds. Yeah.
You you no longer if you removethe store play structure and made it
so that everybody who goes to Worldshas to rip and claw their way to
(23:27):
victory in an RT, you're liketop four, top four from from a
major regional RT go to Worlds.Our World's tournament will be thirty two players
or sixty four I'd say sixty four. Max max it out for your for
what they're yeah saying, because theysaid you can. It starts at thirty
(23:47):
two and it can go up tolike sixty seven or sixty four four or
something like that. Yeah, maxit out that way. I mean you're
so technically there's no cap on it. A GT can have any number of
players. They just need a judgefor every sixteen people. Yeah, but
I mean to the most reasonable issixty four. For a large tournament like
a World's tournament, you're gonna wantsixty four. That way, they have
(24:11):
to fully fight each other. Imean, that's just how it should be
set up. Yeah. And that'sthe thing is this. This completely removes
top level play. They're saying,we want to foster top level play in
the in regional events. Cool,your regional metas are now locked in as
(24:32):
your meta. You want to You'regonna have to travel the GT circuit if
you want regional like if you wantto get a diverse if you want to
play against a diverse meta, youhave to travel. Because you talk about
regional metas. Okay, some regionalmetas have an abundance of Honagers. So
you're seeing to double honagers anywhere everywhere, and everyone's like, okay, so
(24:52):
you're either playing double Honager or you'replaying counterplay against double Honager. Other events
are going well, we have abunch of players that play a bunch of
different things. So like our localcommunity has, our Utah community I think
has like three or four Separatists playerstotal. You'll never play against the separatists,
Yeah, I mean, I meanwe went to well, we went
(25:17):
to LVO. Let me preface thisbefore before the Utah community immediately eviscerates me
for my lack of knowledge on howmany people play Separatists. I'm taking this
information based on what I've seen atthe last few tournaments that I've played in.
I played up in Clearfield, Iplayed in the Utah Open and taking
around the community. There was oneSeparatist in Clearfield at that Store Championship,
(25:41):
which is a bigger store. It'swhere they hold a lot of the Armada
events. And then I think therewas two separatists in the in the Utah
Open, I make the fourth separatist. And like I said, when we
went to LVO, how many Separatistsplayed at LVO, like four? Yeah,
(26:03):
there was barely. I mean,yes, Armada did not have a
large footprint at LVO. But that'sa different issue because that's yeah, that's
gonna be changed probably next year.I mean yeah, because the thing about
LVO is they they didn't plan forArmada to be happening there at all until
the community went we want this,and then they had Then they had more
(26:23):
numbers than the year before the max. Yeah, and so like I said,
next year, more than likely nextyear they're gonna expand Armada. They're
gonna expand some of these games thatdid really well, because why why not.
I mean we had uh LVO Legionactually didn't use I think what six
(26:44):
of their tables. Yeah, theyjust sat empty the entire time. That's
the thing is the different games.We're talking a lot about Armodic because that's
the games we've been playing at thislike competitive level and we've been enjoying at
this higher competitive level. We usedto play Legion. I mean Legions rules
went really bad, but yeah,I hated that story change. I set
(27:06):
down Legion, I picked up Armadaand started playing others. Besides the point,
but overall, the idea of thegrand tournaments was a good idea.
We foster this cool one. Howmuch of this cost is on how many
of these grand tournaments are actually goingto be run by Atomic Mass Games and
(27:26):
how many are being run by thetournament organizers because they're like, the budget,
what what do you actually have todo for a grand tournament? Yeah?
What what does the budget actually haveto do for a grand tournament?
Sure, you've got to print offthe price support cards, that kind of
thing. Unfortunately, I don't thinkthere's Their budget isn't the issue entirely because
(27:48):
they would have more budget if theyreleased more ships for Armada. Sorry,
I'm salty about that. And thething is is, uh, we were
looking at it. A lot ofthe Star Wars specific games, they don't
have a major growing player base.Yeah, they're seeing some growth, but
(28:10):
the issue is as the games arebecoming more and more complicated, with more
and more like unit diversity and moreand more rule changes. I mean,
Legion is currently, as far asI can remember, Legion is losing their
players. Don't think I don't thinkso I need a double check. I
haven't checked the world stuff. TheWorld's just they had their own issues at
Worlds. We're not going to discussit here, but they had their own
(28:32):
issue at Worlds with their player base. But the more and more units you
release, and with the players,and with the rule changes and everything like
that, I mean, this lastrule change, they lost a lot of
players. Because Yeah, so let'stake what I've said when I picked up
Legion, it's it's Warhammer but budgetfriendly. Yeah it no longer is it?
No longer is Before with Legion youcould pick up the Corset and a
(28:55):
couple other units and your army wouldbe perfect. You'd have your me and
you'd go. Most of your stuffcould come out of the cord box.
Now you're like or you'd pick upa bunch of side pieces like short troopers
and everything. Build your army thatway. Now, now what do we
have stormtroopers? Short troopers, shorttroopers now like Range, dark troopers.
There's so many different units that anew player is going to it's not even
(29:19):
including the vehicles. I mean,you've got Speeders, Tontans, what is
it, Speeders, Tontans, Barks. The competitive level lists are also becoming
more and more stale. Yeah,I mean Triple Barks has been around forever
now Quadruple Bars and they're all runningthe and those players all run the same
(29:45):
same thing. They all just wantto play bombing, run and that,
and that's just it is Legion.They had at they have a balancing issue.
There is a huge balancing issue withLegion that does not exist with Armada.
I don't know enough about shatter Pointto say if there's a balancing issue
with shatter Point neither do I knowanything about x Wings x Wing. It's
(30:07):
not x Wing Assault, No,that's a different company. Yeah, and
you're talking about Imperial Assault. XWing has its own issues where there was
that jump from first edition to secondedition that really lost a lot of people.
And that's where a lot of peoplehave been liking Armada because it's it's
yes, they don't have a lotof ships, but it stayed it's stayed
(30:32):
balanced. Well. No, Armadahas a ton of ships. The difference
is the ships are well balanced againsteach other, and you do not feel
like you need every ship. Theproblem is is try and find a Venitor.
Go ahead, go to the store, try and find it. The
issue has been the since AMG tookover, Armada has not been able to
get product. Yeah, I mean, uh, the the second hand sales
(30:56):
on a Venitor is almost two hundreddollars. You need Venitors, especially after
they release them for the Empire,because now you need a Venitor for the
Republic because the Republic and the Separatistshave their own issue where they don't have
enough ships. You have the forthe Republic, you have the ships other
than what's in the starter set isthe Pelta and the Venitor. Yeah.
(31:18):
For the Separatists it's the Recusant andthe Recusant and the Providence. And the
thing is you're looking at it ifwhen you look at the ships and then
the print and play stuff, I'mnot counting the prints and play stuff.
Yeah, I mean if the iftheir issue is painting, then that's gonna
(31:38):
be. That's simple. I mean, I'm trying to think the game that's
about that's coming out in August.Hero Escape. They did an amazing job
by going okay, yeah, we'lloffer the fully painted ones. But we're
gonna also offer the unpainted and makeit cheaper. Yeah, that is a
(31:59):
brilliant way to do it. Lowersmanufacturing costs, it helps get the product
out for people to play. Whatyou do is you make you don't you
do batches of painted essentially, youdo releases of painted ships. You go,
okay, so these dates will release, it will put it out there,
and if we get enough orders,then we'll release. We'll send the
(32:21):
people who ordered painted ships, andthen you send the unpainted ships to be
the ones that are sold in stores. And if you wanted to, you
could You could even set it upwhere I mean there's a lot of people
that as far as painting their ships, they just paint some lines on it,
which okay, it's great. Youcan also set it up where your
(32:45):
Grand tournaments one of the awards forprize support painting a specific painted figure that
is distinct for the events, andthat would be up to the t O
and not necessarily those specific qualifying events. But you know, you know,
(33:07):
you win GT, you get atwenty twenty four painted venit. Yeah,
and it's just something that is uniquefor that year, and it's like,
yeah, so you just paint unlimitednumber of these that are included in the
cost of running the event. It'snot that big because the price support honestly
(33:28):
at these events is limited. LikeLVO and at Worlds, I was I
was very much to see the worldstuff in the cards stuff, the fact
that they only did cards. LVOdid something really cool where the best faction
got like a little a little pictureplaque. Yeah, of their faction,
you know, best in faction.But overall, I'm like, there's so
(33:52):
much that you could do that youguys are not doing. And that's just
Armada. What about Legion, Yeah, I'm I mean Legion, they don't
Legion does not sell painted minifigures.You have to paint those, which,
okay, that's great. That's nevernever been an issue with Peter. My
(34:15):
biggest thing is they don't even needto paint them. Do you know what
they can do for the winners?Guess what you do the what you do
at Adepticon in the Worlds where yougive out you a give out that or
was it given out? No,it was it good out, it was
sold or it was given us Pridesupport this the Unique that Year unit,
(34:36):
like the custom Base, so likethe Operative Loop that we have the Commander
loop that we have that they soldin twenty twenty or gave them to the
stores. Do that for the GTS. That's the reward, that is the
win for the GT. Is thatunit or you can also take and set
it up. A lot of playershave custom dials and stuff like that that
they in Armada. Yeah, youprint special dials. You print that kind
(35:00):
of thing to be like, theseare your rewards because effective, they're not
hard to manufacture, they're easy,and it's something that is unique for that
year and it's something that it's iteventually becomes a collector's item. Yeah,
Armada does its dice, which arenot enough. I think that the inclusion
of hey, we are doing specialdials, We're doing special attachments, special
(35:24):
versions of the ship, special stands. Yeah, anything like that you could
do. There's so many things thatthey can do to make the premiere events
feel like premiere events these GTS,and it wouldn't be a budget issue.
Honestly, overall, I think thisis a dumbest. I actually don't think
I would say it's a dumb decisionexcept for it's a good concept. I
(35:46):
do not trust AMG to execute it. Properly. Yeah, they've made a
series of mistakes lately that has thatpeople have started losing interest in the commune
unity, which is you don't wantto do that. I mean, well,
this is supposed to be an interestin the community. It Let's take
(36:07):
Armada. We're doing Armada for example, because that is the game that I've
been playing. Armada's community has somuch engagement. The Armada community is so
close knit and so so and it'sbeen growing. Yeah, and it has
been growing. But AMG is notsupporting that growth with unit releases, with
(36:27):
with keeping things manufactured on the shelves. And I get it, you don't
want to you know, hey,we but you hey, we don't want
a bunch of units that nobody usessitting on the shelf. But you should
see wait a second, the secondarymarket is selling a Venitor for as much
as a Superstar Destroyer or let's seehere. I mean, we also look
(36:51):
at Legion because that's another area thatwe've played. They put they've put a
lot of time and money into uhnew units and stuff like that, but
they haven't taken the time to gothrough get feedback from the community, to
get to see what why is competitiveplay becomes stagnant on the same units in
(37:14):
the same form. Why is awith all the new units, with all
the new releases, with all ofit, Why is a list that came
out before the Clone Wars still oneof the most competitively viable lists. Yeah,
something is not working. They needto play test with the community to
(37:37):
figure it out. And that Imean, yes, you can play test
within your own company, and it'sa great way to do small form testing,
but to see how the competitive fieldis going to see it, you
need to talk to them. Youneed to get build a community of play
(37:57):
testers. Build build a community ofplay testers. Do different events where you're
like, hey, yeah, no, we're playtesting this unit. Go.
So let's take hero Escape for example, again, because I think Renegade's doing
something really good with heroes. Yeah. So a couple of weeks ago,
hero Escape put out Hey we're lookingfor playtesters. Yeah, it was a
(38:19):
form you filled out. Hey,after every battle, you'll need every match
you play with the playtesting materials,you'll need to fill out a battle report.
Tell us about your previous experience withthe game, tell us about your
war game experience. Overall. Canyou dedicate three to five hours a week
to play this game, to testthis material. It's like you're reaching out
to your community to get the playtesting done. Well, it's like,
(38:40):
do you know who the best peopleto reach out for this play testing are?
And I'm not just saying this becauseI create the content content creators.
Yeah, and not only yeah,and not only that, but you can
send them the new stuff that's comingout and say, hey, this is
what we're planning on release scene,play tested. I want to know how
(39:02):
you're gonna play it and how thecompetitors are gonna play it. Set up
a video for it. We willlet you release that video when we come
out with the Yeah, it's like, yeah, a video. This is
when? Are you send it out? A couple of months before? You're
like, here's this stuff? Doyou want? Can you spend a couple
of hours a week play testing?Is send us what you think, test
different ways to play, come backto us, tell us how it went,
(39:28):
and then we can release it.That avoids something like the Anakin Skywalker
situation as well as they can alsotake in do you remember what happened when
Anakin first got released as an admiralfor Armada? I do not. He
was busted flat busted. So histhing was whenever you whenever you perform an
(39:50):
attack, you can perform perform asalvo attack as well. Now, the
issue was there were some rules like, by the way, not only can
you attack then salvo, you cansalvo then salvo. So there was there
was a loophole in the rules thatallowed you to pretty much continuously attack for
(40:12):
as almost as much as you want, as long as you had the salvo
token. And it's like okay one, yeah, no, that's broken.
And if you have a ton ofships, yeah no, you're salvoing the
fact that every ship gets two counterattacks against the ship that is attacking it.
He was flatbuster, and the communitypicked up on it and they had
to completely rewrite the card in twoweeks. Yeah, and now Anakin is
practically useless, which I mean thatcould be an over adjustment order. They
(40:38):
went over adjustment, you know,if they just clarified you know, Anakin
can only perform on salve attack orit's only the ship that Anakin's on that
can perform extra salvo attacks and everyoneelse just or there's what Anakin can be.
You know, after you perform anattack, after you perform a non
salvo attack, you may perform asalvo attack. Okay, yeah, after
(41:04):
this ship sorry, after this shipperforms a non salvo attack, it may
perform a salvo attack. Now you'renot double salvoing. Yeah, it may
spend a salvotoken to do that.Other ships or ships. You ships,
ships, friendly ships, when theyperform a salvo attack, may add one
(41:24):
blue dice to their attack pool.Not broken worth thirty five points your salvo
attacks. Getting extra die pelta isso much better. But they went so
hard with it and not play testingyour stuff causes your erratas to be so
overdone because you're like, this willbe fun, and then it completely breaks
(41:47):
a super balanced game exactly. Andthe way that I see is it when
you bring your community into it andtell them, hey, we want to
play test with We want to playtest with her community. And not only
like with Legion where you have topaint your minifigures. You can tell them,
(42:08):
hey, send us some of thesome of the stuff that you painted
the we'll send you the new thisthe new units. Paint them, send
it to us. We want touse your your models as advertisement. As
advertising. You can do painting.There's so much you can do when you
involve the community. And that's thebig thing that Atomic Mass is doing is
(42:29):
they're they're that community engagement they're tryingto gather. I I don't feel like
these Grand Tournament stuff is enough.We're going over on time. So we
need to uh wrap this up becausewe could go into the problems that Atomic
Mask games, because a ton ofproblems have cropped up with Atomic Mask Games.
This is just another nail there wherethey're going, we're doing away with
(42:52):
worlds and it's they're missing it.The they have a way that they could
set things up really well if theyhave the right people. I mean,
the next two years for these it'sgonna be crucial. These well that's just
it. These next two years,they're gonna these large events like LVO and
(43:17):
stuff and these major open they willnot be sanctioned GTS. Well, that's
just it. LVO will definitely becomeout. Yeah, it'll be a Sang
two. It's gonna be these theselarge these large events that used to be
the opens are gonna become the GTS. And that's what it's gonna be for
the next two years. Yeah,we need something like you need something to
(43:42):
feed into because who's the cream ofthe crop. Like, you'll have your
you'll have your community heads that arelike, yeah, this is the best
player in our community's he wins theGT and it's like we have some people
that come from out of town.Sometimes they win, but we're like,
who's the cream of the crop?Who is our top eight? And what
are they playing? And not onlythat, but if you have the same
region over it's gonna be if it'sthe same same area over and over again,
(44:07):
it's going to be to the pointwhere you're gonna have one person who
won that region six times, it'sgoing to create the same issue. The
top level play is gonna get stale, but in different ways. Yeah,
But I mean I think that havingthe regionals is a good idea, But
(44:27):
I do think they need to keepworlds. This is going to matter so
much on execution. Yes, thisis a al right idea, it's a
risky idea and their execution of itneeds to be flawless and more than likely
we'll have to come back to thisafter we see the outcome of it,
(44:47):
just to see what we're gonna haveto coover this a year later and be
like this is how it went yep, and then be like be like we
were wrong. Everybody did register intime, we got it right, or
we got to come back and gonobody registered in time. There was next
to no gts. Yep, wehave to come back because again this is
gonna be the execution has to beright. But like Isaiah saying, we're
(45:13):
out of time and yep. Soif you want to hear more about this,
or you know you're you just wantto listen to watch us play some
games. We're gonna be setting up. We're gonna be playing some Zelda as
we always do, and feel freeto check out our YouTube channel and subscribe
if you want. We no no, no no no no no no no
no no. If they want there, they are forty five minutes into this
(45:37):
episode. If they want to hearus beg for a subscription, they will
be sorely disappointed, of course.But like I said, if they came
to hear me beg for it,it will not happen. Subscribe if you
want, but I am not beggingfor I'm meaning on YouTube either way,
(45:57):
I am not begging for it.But check out our other stuff. We've
got a ton of other stuff tooffer. I'm not beyond that. All
right, I've been your host,Asiah. I'm dragging Master Jake. We're lugging out
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