Community? Pshaw!

When Games Workshop posted the US tournament schedule I was worried. The Baltimore, Chicago, and Vegas GT's weren't there. I thought it was oversight. GW wouldn't be so stupid as to remove those tournaments without making announcements. People plan ahead for those things. They schedule around them. A lot of people start figuring their army for the next GT before the current one is finished.

I have a tendency to underestimate the stupidity of people.

That said, I can accept GW foisting off community events on the community. It frees them up to ignore veterans and focus on hooking the young and stupid. What bothers me is that they haven't standardized a set of requirements for the abominations that they are calling Grand Tournaments.

Living in the Midwest I feel especially hosed. Adpeticon is great. It is, without a doubt, better than the Chicago GT was. Especially after they split Games Day and the tournament and still charged $125 bucks. That's a lot to shell out to not get any type of convention. But I can't make it to Adepticon. I would have made it to the GT. Except they don't have one. I'm not going to something that doesn't require a painted army. I can do that for free at any of the local hobby shops. To the guys running the Big Waaggh in Memphis, and everyone else running a circuit tournament, grow a damn spine and make people paint their models.

Tournaments are veteran events. I know quite a few veterans who don't love to paint but always painted their tournament armies. I also know a lot of veterans who didn't like to paint and wouldn't. The nice thing about the GT and anything that requires painting is I don't have to worry about playing them.

I don't have all my stuff painted. Actually, that's an understatement. I don't have 98% of my stuff painted. That's mostly because my previous situation allowed me to buy willy-nilly and I had a serious case of new army syndrome for two years. I have time now and I'm catching up. That said, I never felt that the requirement to have a painted army for a tournament was especially onerous. It also motivated me to sit down and focus on getting at least ONE army done.

There are other problems with GW right now. Has anyone visited their community blog? It's been almost two months since they updated it. I think things have occurred in those 2 months with the hobby and events in general. I could be wrong. Or maybe they just don't feel like communicating right now. Or maybe they're half-assing it like they do a great many things.

Also, does anyone else miss the summer campaigns? I always looked forward to those. Until five years ago, I lived in Northern Michigan and finding games was well beyond challenging. The summer campaigns were a reason for people to dust their models off. People could compete with everyone in the hobby, not just their circle, or their shop, or the person who lived seventy miles a way and might or might not be able to scrape the time together for a casual game, but had a reason to compete if their were "global" implications.

In the past nine months I've seen GW shift from leaning heavily towards encouraging new players while trying to nurture a veteran community, to focusing entirely on new players while telling veterans and the player community to go find your own sandbox to play in. That seems shortsighted to me. Collecting toy soldiers really isn't that fun without people to play against. If GW consistently alienates the veterans and the established community eventually there won't be the people needed to encourage others to play, to show them how, to show that the game is fun and enjoyable. At that point it won't matter how many new players they recruit. They'll buy a few models, play a few games, and then wander away to the next new shiny.

The models and the game are what get people started. The community is what keeps them playing for years to come.