Tournament report sucks, skip down for real content
Decklist:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1534030#paper
Round 1 vs Joe Andrees on Titanshift (0-2, 0-1)
Both games dropped a Thalia on turn 2 but I just can't engage with his land combo and die. Game 2 he also has Anger which is rough.
Round 2 vs Joe M on Jund (0-2, 0-2)
I used to think I was favored, but those Goyf beats hit hard very quickly. I didn't even see the Scavenging Oozes or Kalitas to beat me up - just discard, Bobs, Lilis, Goyfs, and BBEs.
Round 3 bye, dropped and left
Thoughts:
- Wow that was a bad performance
- I thought that MWE was decent vs GBx, but I just don't have great answers to Tarmogoyf beats. I played an extra game vs Joe after round 2 and lost that one handily as well.
- For my next event, I'm going back to ol' Mardu Pyromancer - free spoiler for anyone who actually reads this crap. The list I was running at the end of PPTQ season 2018: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1327820#paper
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Two Kings Gaming (the second closest? now closest? store to me) is closing, which I learned about from a little thread on reddit. I then shared the thread to the BNYMTG group and saw some more salient comments there (imo). Don't really feel like putting this out there on those social media platforms, so instead I'm
putting some thoughts here about the Buffalo MTG scene and some stores
in particular.
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/b3510f/i_found_out_today_that_my_lgs_is_going_out_of/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/BNYMTG/permalink/1988017014629463/
Buffalo's Magic scene is super crazy, in that it has a ton of stores for the population. This is a lot due to the sprawl of the area, since although I have like 12 stores within 30 minutes of me... they're almost all 30 minutes from me.
During each of my handful of experiences visiting Two Kings, I came away with a bad taste in my mouth each time. In my opinion, these are some of the issues that hinted at their eventual demise:
- No trading allowed in the store. Allegedly some kid got scammed years ago and their mother threw a fit so that was the end of that. But I'm pretty sure the store moved from a different location and they had the same practice there... I 100% completely understand not allowing players to buy/sell cards in store, which leads me to the next point..
- Their inventory was meh. Not the worst in the area, but definitely not a draw to the store. Now one time, I dropped by and asked to browse one of their binders, organized by set. My request was denied, on the basis of store policy because somebody simply walked away with one, once upon a time. What makes the this ridiculous as a policy to me is that the employee and I were the only ones in the store. Here was a possible way for me to actually buy something, but since I didn't know exactly what I wanted, they basically told me to get fucked.
- When I went for FNM there some weeks ago, I somehow went to turns every round. Admittedly it was my first time playing Grishoalbrand, but I'm pretty sure they were running 40 minute rounds if not even shorter.
- Payout in packs instead of store credit - and not even at a good rate (I think 1.5/player). Pack payout attracts casual players, and really turns off enfranchised players ... which is pretty much every modern player.
- No planeswalker points awarded for the FNM seriously wtf you basically told me time was worthless even though you were printing out match slips for A CASUAL FNM
- Located in a dead/dying mall. Eastern Hills is this absolute behemoth on approximately a square mile of land - just endless asphalt surrounding a crappy mall which a lot of the big box department stores have already bailed on. Also, they chose to move about half a mile from the local MTG superstore (which dominated the FNM scene for a long time), which brings me to:
Dave and Adam's. I've played the most Magic here out of any store, honestly. Their FNM prize structure was LITERALLY INSANE (YES THESE CAPS ARE ACTUALLY NECESSARY), but never increased their presence beyond FNM nor grew their community.
Regarding their interactions with local stores (i.e. FNM policy since they only ran FNMs prereleases and PPTQs), Dave and Adam's definitely forced a race to the bottom regarding FNMs. I don't consider it a shitty business tactic, but rather a very ... how to describe it ... an
extremely aggressive strategy. I still don't understand how/if they ever came out in the black, but it seems that management eventually looked at the books and said this can't keep going on. In the now distant past, their events were supremely generous, but more recently (before being full canceled) they've erred on the stingy side.
Why I think they failed:
- Prize structure. Just losing money. Originally (in my expereience), FNMs were free, plus they were handing out free pizza and raffling prizes. You could go even/infinite without ever winning a single game. Then even after they ended free FNMs, to go infinite a player only needed to average like a 36% win rate. But a lot of players were turned off by the price increase from $0 to $5, which could have been handled with better optics.
- Poor singles inventory. Pretty much everything in the store had been picked through. Anything good that they acquired got sold online or at GPs because their "warehouse division" operated separately from the store division. This pairs with the first part - the prize structure gets a ton of people in the door, but you can't expect everyone to be throw money at sealed product because your singles inventory is lackluster.
- Huge overhead on FNMs - many thousands of square footage and ~5 staff, kept open for several hours. Gotta say, I can't imagine how Magic/Yugioh can make nearly as much cash as their other product, sports merchandise, for which fans will happily fork over a hundred bucks per transaction.
- Community: because the prize structure was so mercenary, people just came in from all over the area for that prize money. But on every other day of the week, they hung out somewhere else because D&A didn't run any other events. There was no loyalty, and no way to support the store if they wanted to!
