Tournament area at GenCon.
I spent a few minutes voicing my concerns over what was going on in the tournament area at GenCon. I won’t rehash the gory details… it’s been well documented. Justin “justified” the relative lack of staff as a cost issue.

Right: Custom Bystanders by The Le

The short of it is that WK paid the way (passes, hotel, etc) for the volunteers that worked there and he wasn’t willing to pay for more. Or, perhaps more accurately, he wasn’t willing to pay for “unknown” people and run the risk of those people underperforming on the job. (It’s worth noting that he’s very aware of the issues that drove the old WK down and he doesn’t want to repeat those mistakes).

This was something that I really struggled to understand. In the past, WK would put out the call for volunteers. Those volunteers would essentially pay their own way and receive a bit of swag for their trouble. This swag cost WK very little and if there was an issue, that envoy could simply be cut loose and not utilized again for future events. Other than a small group (in the past, the L5 envoys) WK did not pay the way of the volunteer. IMO, WK should go back to this way of handling volunteers as it worked. I tried to explain this to Justin, but I’m not sure I changed his mind.

Like I’ve said before, WK appears to be keeping a very tight clique of people who do everything for them rather than asking for help when needed and running the risk of something going afoul.

Sets and sellouts

We briefly talked a bit about the sets and sellouts. I brought up the point that the GL Fast Forces pack became very scarce, very fast. The short of it is that HeroClix is growing. The number of players that WK sees (based on some polling) going to each venue is on the rise. WK is doing what they can to increase set availability but it’s a tight rope that they walk on. You want to make enough to satisfy demand but you don’t want a lot of extra product sitting around after a few months.

He feels that it’s perfectly OK for product to sit on shelves for a few months. It makes it accessible to players who can’t get it right away or who come in after the set is released. But you don’t want to make so much that it’ll never be sold. That’s just a cost that nobody wants. It’s something that he’s very aware of and they are working on availability.