DOWN
My Gripe with the Opens =txt= ... Brak02 ... 03.20-16:20
Once again, Star Trek players get the shaft in the Decipher care package. The new opens setting is total moot. There are no States, no Provincials no tournaments to qualify LOCAL players for Decipher Con. Players can win more than one Open, meaning someone else doesn't get their bye. It's a total free-for-all.

And the cost, that's my big thing! $300 to run one lousy tournament? (But wait, you can run a LotR one and a FREE STCCG tournament!) Then Decipher (or DMA, or whatever) has the gull to recommend stores to charge $15 a head? That means each tournament will have to have at least 20 players for the store to break even. Has it ever occured to Decipher that some areas don't have a large player collective? Hence, some places can't afford to hold one of these opens. (Hold on! Decipher will send TWO display boxes to be given out!) Whoop-de-doo. The last thing we need are old boxes of sets. And we know they won't give out new stuff when they can still make money off them. Most likely we'll get Reflections and Starter Deck 2s. So let's see, assuming we get booster boxes, that's 60 packs, divident amongst 20+ players, meaning each player gets at most 3 packs. The last thing we need are 5 dollar packs from old sets filled with lousy cards we don't need anymore.

Supposedly, Decipher is allowing 120 of these tournaments, each for $300 to them, meaning they get $36,000 from them, assuming they run them all (or $72,000 if you count the LotR ones too). But who is getting the $5,000 "premiere" tournaments? Not Star Trek, no, of course not. LotR is. Nevermind that Decipher would be long gone if it weren't for the SWCCG and STCCG (which was it's first brainchild, btw) players' loyalty to the company after countless years. But how are we rewarded? We're not. We don't get World Cups, we don't get foiled card from new sets sent to tournaments. We don't get league kits. We get nothing, nada, zip - oh, except for $15 tournaments with a chance of getting into day 2 of DCon. (And Day 1 of DCon so better not be Warp Speed or Sealed.) We don't even get lousy T-Shirts anymore!

It's really nice to see how Decipher cares so much about it's players. We feel really good. It's nice to see people leave a game after playing for over five years because Decipher has decided to [drill] us over for a new player group. I myself will not be playing in any of these opens, it's just another idea to make money (which of course, Decipher does as a company) while killing off its player base (which is bad, incase you didn't know; Marketing, jot that down). I just feel sick right now. Sick.


- Chris "Brak" O'Connell
Connecticut, USA Tournament Director
brak@kedanya.org

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