Ambassador Report - May 2001
Region: Ronara - West Texas
Ambassador: Matt Clouser
#1 What is a general state of the CCG industry in your area. What trends
are you seeing? What games are doing better/worse over the past month? How
is your Product Champion CCG doing compared to the other games lately? What
is your opinion of how things are going in general?
As I mentioned in an earlier message, our local gaming community got a real
shock a couple of weeks back when our primary area retailer, Hard Drive
Gaming Center, announced that they were going to be eliminating their open
gaming area and eliminating their "table" gaming (CCG, Role Playing,
Warhammer. etc) inventory. This, of course happened just one week before my
Voyager Special Event on 26 May. To make a very long, ugly, and messy story
short, Hard Drive found a new buyer and it looks like they will support us
for at least the immediate future.
Of course, as a result of all this turbulence, most of the local CCG players
involvement has taken a hit. Casual gaming is way down, although I still see
an occasional Magic Game, and I saw four kids playing Pokemon this last
Sunday. AD&D is also making a comeback - go figure. SW, YJ and JK are
effectively dead - we never even got Tatooine stock in town. I thought we
were going to have a B5 tournament this month, but the problems wth Hard
Drive cancelled that event.
Mainly due to my panic calling/nagging trying to salvage our Voyager Event,
Star Trek has had the biggest presence over the last couple of weeks (see
bragging below).
Specialties, the only other game store in town that carries CCG is watching
the situation carefully, and may support more games if Hard Drive folds. I
plan to set up a meeting with the store owner this next week or so to discuss
this possiblitly. The main drawback there is a lack of playing space.
#2 What have you been doing to promote your Product Champion CCG in the
past month. How many tournaments and were they successful? How many demos
did you schedule and show up for? Any new players brought on? Any new TD's
created? How is the mentoring of your TD's going? What types of retailer
visits have you done, and what were the results? Finally, how well did you
succeed in accomplishing your planned goals for this month? (see part three
below.)
I held a constructed deck tournament on Saturday, May 5th. I had a smaller
than hoped for turnout, but we did get 8 players, so we were sanctioned. Our
local Borg champion, Grant "Bleys of Borg" Woodring won using an unusual Borg
Sphere deck.
Our Voyager Special Event on the 26th was a great success - we had 18-20
folks show up, and there were several other folks who couldn't make it
because of high school graduations or the Memorial Day Holiday, so the
numbers could have been higher. We had two guys, Geoff Midler and Braxton
Thomasson, who drove in from Austin for the event. We even had five people
show up from the Enterprise-Tardis Connection (our local Science Fiction
Club). I've been after these folks to show up for over a year now, so I was
very pleased. I provided cakes, sodas, chips and salsa - so there was more
than enough food available. (BTW, you must provide salsa with chips in Texas
- it's a state law I think...). The box of boosters Decipher sent were a
great hit - Thanks again Decipher!!!
#3 What is your plan for what you intend to do over the upcoming month
to promote your Product Champion CCG. Any tournaments scheduled? Demos?
Retail visits? Are you going to be working with anybody in a mentoring
capacity? Any long-term plans that you will be advancing on during this
month?
My main goal this month is to do what I can to help stabilize the retailer
situtation here in town. My STCCG players, as well as the Magic and other
CCG'ers are still in a state of flux. On top of that, summer is a
traditionally slow time for CCG's, so it may be a tough 2-3 months.
Regardless, we're still looking to maintain our goal of a minimum of one
STCCG event a month.
Assuming we can work a location, we are looking to run at least on
constructed deck tournament - Mike Harrison will probably host this one for
his second sanctioned tournament. I may also run a sealed deck tournament
after Mike's tournament - may wind up being in July.
Matt Clouser
STCCG Ambassador, San Angelo, Texas
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From: MattClousr@aol.com
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Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 00:30:28 EDT
Subject: [Amb] May Report - San Angelo Texas
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