The_Celestial_Warrior wrote:
LoboStele wrote:
Well, there's something to be said for practicing against the guys at GenCon, vs. practicing against the guys at the LGS. For instance, at my LGS, there's only 1 other person who has made the Top 8 at GenCon at any point in time, and that's Lackey. Now, James Naegele has come close several times, but that still only gives me 2 top level players locally. And I play those guys SO much, that we read each others moves like books half the time. So it's no where near the same as playing high-level games against people you only see once a year.
So I for one have liked having the 'practice' tournament. It's no different than what most other major competitive games do throughout the weekend. Many of them have 'qualifier' rounds on Thursday/Friday before their Championship events on Saturday.
FWIW though, I did play fun squads in BOTH the Mystery Map and the 200 point Jedi Challenge this past year, haha.
Regionals then? Most of those, except in the West, had at least 2 top 8 finishers at them.
Which are 3 months prior, and again, tend to be largely local players who you always face. For instance, I didn't play at my own Regional here in Cincy, but we ended up having no top-level competitors from out of town come to our event. I only got a chance to practice against other top-level people at Regionals because I was able to travel to several others. Not everyone can do that.
I'm mostly being devil's advocate here. In the end, it doesn't matter much to me one way or the other. In the past, it used to be nice to have the 200 point tourney on Thursday or Friday in case a new set had released in between Regionals and GenCon, like Jedi Academy did in 2009. But for this year, it really probably won't matter, because the meta will have been set for nearly 8 months, twice as long as last year post-MOTF.
But I know that some people like those competitive events. So, that's why I was suggesting that the offer be made to allow people to do 3 out of the 5 events (or 6 or 7 events if you want) and submit those. The downside to that, is that it might encourage people to play really cut-throat stuff in otherwise 'fun' tournaments, because they think if they play a high-level squad, and all the other people are playing 'fun' squads, that they'll be able to get an easy 4-0. So in the end, it ends up turning ALL of the events into high competitive events.
Honestly, I'm not sure that the Jedi Challenge needs to necessarily even happen this year. The past couple years it's been cool to do because we could award full sets to the top finisher. Does Dean/Jim even have any complete sets left to give as prizes? Could we somehow offer a prize worthy enough to attract players to compete?