The Official Don's Magic and Sundry Sticker Contest

This contest is one I've been promising on Twitter to work the detail out on and finally announce for a while now, so it's about time I got on it.

So, here it is: The Official Don's Magic and Sundry Sticker Contest!

• Four times a year, right before the prerelease of a new set, I will draw one winner from the eligible pool of contestants who will win $20 in store credit to my store. [NOTE: accepting store credit requires that you establish an account at my store, but doing so is free.]
• To become eligible, you must submit to me (via Twitter to @TheSundry or email to TheSundry at gmail dot com) a photo of you in some way sporting one of my stickers at an official MTG event (could be a regular sanctioned event, an FNM, a launch party, a prerelease, a SCG Open event, etc).
• The sticker can be on your person (e.g. stuck to your shirt) or on something you are carrying prominently with you (your deck box, trade binder, box of tokens & dice, etc).
• The photo should include your face for ease of identification. There should also be some way of verifying the date & event (e.g. if you're at the prerelease for something, you could hold up your prerelease promo).
• The contest resets at every prerelease, so you must re-enter each time a new set rolls out if you want to stay in the drawing. [For reference, the next prerelease would be for Avacyn Restored and will be held Sat/Sun April 28/29 2012, so the drawing for the current cycle will be made on Friday, April 27]
• Photos become my property, and may be used in advertising campaigns or just for the fun of it on my blog (I probably won't do much with them, but I'm stating that now just in case).
• I reserve the right to reject photos for any reason (most likely because I  felt they were in some way inappropriate). If yours is rejected, however, I will let you know and give you a chance to submit another.

I reserve the right to modify/add/remove rules to this contest at any time should I see the need arise. [Example: I could easily see a secondary prize for most creative photo coming out of this if people decide to go that route with their pictures!]

If you are not sure what stickers I am talking about, you need to read this blog entry next.

As always, if there are any questions, Tweet to me, email me, or leave a comment here on the blog!

ADDENDUM: Now that I am running my own WPN events, I need to add the following rule:

• The official MTG event cannot be one of the ones I host myself. Kinda defeats the purpose of advertising my site for me when I'm doing that myself :-)

The Road to WPN (Part 3)

[This is part 3 in a series, and assumes that you've already read Part 1 and Part 2]

In my research, I discovered that WPN is set up in a tier system. In case you (like me) have never investigated this, you might want to check out the official WPN site that covers this stuff.  In essence, when you join WPN you start off at what they call the Gateway level. At this level you can run sanctioned events (D&D one as well as MTG, but I am only interested in the MTG ones), but the only "special" events you can run are the Launch Parties (sometimes called Release Events by folks like me who don't know all the official terms).

In order to run Prereleases and FNMs (the kinds of events I'd really like to hold), you need to work your way up from the Gateway level to what they call the Core level. To do this, an organizer needs to meet certain criteria within a 12-month period (this is copied straight from their site; I hope they don't mind!):

• Report a minimum of 4 events
• Have a minimum of 30 unique people playing in your reported events
• Run and report a single event with 12 players or more
• Maintain a delinquency rate of less than 20%
• Introduce 6 new players to WPN events

The first requirement I figure is not likely to be too difficult. I'd like to run some sanctioned event (right now I'm thinking a SOM/MBS/NPH sealed tournament) in mid to late June, and also run a Launch Party for Magic 2012 in July. If I can pull off even 1 per month for the next four months, I will have that covered (and if things go well, we may hold more than that).

The second requirement will depend on how well I/we get the word out about our events. We already have some plans in place for advertising:

• Pat will be having an advertisement subscription with a a local weekly newspaper, and has offered that he can tailor it to include word of the MTG event for a week or two beforehand
• I have my Twitter following (although few of them are local, I'm hoping those will show, and hopefully bring friends)
• I have contacts with a local gaming group (Games Club of Maryland) and hope to be able to spread word through their organization
• a Magic celebrity who happens to live locally has offered to show up for the first event at least and have his name used in conjunction [thanks, Adam!]

It may take more than 4 events to get the 30 unique people, but we'll see.

It is my hope that with enough touting and trumpeting we can reach objective 3 on our first event. The spectacle of having a sanctioned event in the area where there hasn't been one in years if ever should bring out a good group. Also, the above mentioned advertising will hopefully get word out and bring people out just to see what it's all about. If not the first, then hopefully the second (the M12 Launch Party) will bring in 12+ players.

Goal #4 should not be a problem at all. From what I understand as long as you get your results posted up within what seems like a very reasonable amount of time, there's no delinquency issue. The store will have WiFi, which means I ought to be able to post results right after the event is over (or even have them updating as the event progresses - I have not yet had my Wizards Event Reporter tutorial - that will be a tale for another day!).

Of all the goals, it's only really the last one that has me a bit nervous. I would need to find (or have show up) 6 people who have never attended a WPN event before. I believe this means no DCI card - not registered with the DCI at all. Most of the people who would come to these things, I think, will be folks who are old hats at these sorts of things. I'm pretty sure I can get my brother (who played MTG years ago) to come out to one and sign up. But what about the other 5? Maybe Pat (the store owner) can be taught MTG and sign up :-) I know that Laurel (the owner of Dream Wizards) routinely has new people show up at the regional prereleases, but those are gone now. Will those people instead start showing up at the smaller local prereleases and the like? But, of course, I can't run prereleases yet....Catch 22?

So, as you can see,  there's a bit more to it than simply signing up with the WPN and starting to run FNMs as I had initially thought.

The next step was to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Pat. When we briefly spoke on the phone, we tentatively agreed that I could come up to the store and meet with him in person. Through email and Twitter we arranged that the following Friday (this would now be May 6 for you chronic calendar-watchers) I would come up. Our meeting will be the beginning of Part 4...

[TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 4]

The Road to WPN (Part 2)

[This is part 2 in a series, and assumes that you've already read Part 1]

So, I wrote to Pat, owner of Novel Places:

"Hello, Pat:

My name is Don Wiggins. My wife has been following you on Twitter for a while, and has also recently signed up for your newsletter. When I was talking with her about how I would love to be able to do more with my own store, she mentioned you as being a local small business owner that may be interested.

I run a relatively small online business dealing in selling cards for the collectible card game called Magic: The Gathering (I don't know if you are at all familiar with it). Mostly what I sell is individual cards ("singles") from my website - I run the business out of our basement (we live in Germantown).

What I would love to do is start running a weekly Friday Night Magic series. This is an event that is officially sanctioned by the folks who created the game, and is a great way for folks who play to get together on a regular basis, have fun playing, and possible win prizes as well. Right now there are not many places in Montgomery County where FNMs are held. The closest I'm aware of is Dream Wizards, in Rockville - a good half-hour's drive from us if traffic isn't bad. I'd love to have another option for those of us in the northern end of the county (or even southern Frederick County).

The problem I face is, since I do not have a "brick and mortar" store, there's no way for me to get official sanctioning from the folks who do such thing. Without that, there's no access to the infrastructure that is set up to support these events.

So, my question to you is this: would you, possibly, have any interest in collaborating with me on this? I would be willing to do the leg-work involved in registering with the DCI, organizing and advertising the events, etc. What would be required on your end would be use of your store's name, and space for the group to gather on a Friday night (I imagine, at least at first, we'd be lucky to get 12-18 attendees - a well attended FNM at Dream Wizards is ~32, I believe).

"What's in it for me" would be, I imagine, a likely question at this point! :-) At the very least, there'd be increased traffic to your store (at least on Friday nights!). If you'd rather be more materially involved, you can purchase (& sell for profit) the booster packs of product that are used in certain types of FNM events (there are different types one can run - I can give you the gory details if you like!).

There are likely LOTS of questions that would need to be answered, so I certainly wouldn't expect a definitive answer from you at this point. Mostly what I'm wondering is whether or not this is something you would have even a slight interest in pursuing.

Thanks in advance for your reply. If you'd rather discuss the idea telephonically, feel free to call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX

Don"

[You will forgive me, I hope, for blotting out my phone number there!]

After several days, I had still not heard from Pat. I wasn't too terribly shocked by this, because I knew that he was busy getting the new store renovations done, and moving boxes of books and the hardware that comes with a bookstore (shelving & displays and the like). So, on a day that my MIL was watching my sons so I had a "day off", I decided to go up and see him in person at the store location.

I want to say that, in retrospect, I think this was a bad idea. Showing up cold in person, especially when you're expecting the person to be busy, is rather rude. I didn't think it through completely - but I was rescued from my own short-sightedness. Pat was not in that day! One of the folks working on the renovations was present, and the store building was open, so I took a peek in (I had been in several years earlier when the building had housed an Organic Grocery Store).

I decided the next day that it would be safer to give Pat a call on the phone number provided on his website. I got to speak with him in person briefly (as I said, he was busy!), but long enough to find out that he was, in fact, interested in a possible collaboration. I had positive contact!

So the next step was for me to throw myself full into research in what exactly is involved in signing up with the WPN. It was here that my dream of running FNMs (as described in my email to Pat) hit a little snag...

[TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3]

The Road to WPN (Part 1)

So I have been encouraged to chronicle my adventures in going from being simply an MTG online storekeep to becoming an organizer for Sanctioned MTG events. It is my hope that the stories will not just entertain, but also inform. Perhaps there are others out there contemplating becoming organizers, and maybe I can help on that journey, even if only in a small way.

My path to joining the Wizards Play Network (WPN) actually started a couple of years ago when I was approached by the owners of Beyond Comics, the local comic book shop that I frequent (it will be no surprise I am a geek, right?). They were interested in starting to run MTG events at their store, and were wondering if I would be interested in helping them run the events. My incentive, of course, would be having a good potential client base in the attendees (the comic shop sells recent MTG sealed product, but not singles, so we would not be competing).

I did some preliminary research on the subject, but before we could get anything in to place, disaster (in the form of faltering economy) took hold. They were unable to keep up with the rent in their large mall store space, and had to move across the street to a smaller strip-mall location. This smaller location did not allow any extra room for tournament-style events, so the plan was scrapped.

However, this planted the seed of the idea in my head that it would be a blast to run my own Launch Parties, Prereleases and FNMs. And I never really gave up on the idea in my head. While I have enjoyed attending events hosted by a (relatively) local gaming store (Dream Wizards - a lovely group of people!), it's a bit of a hike for me to get to them on any kind of regular basis.

Fast forward to earlier this year. I decided to broach the subject with the folks at Beyond Comics again. While I knew they couldn't hold events at their store, I also knew that many people organize events off-site. They wouldn't even have to be all that involved, as much as give me use of their name as contacts for purposes of WPN. For those unaware, WPN requires a brick-and-mortar store to be at least cursorily involved in these events. Since my store is an online-only one, I couldn't do this on my own. I needed to be attached to a b&m somehow.

Unfortunately they weren't really interested. If the event weren't at their store, what really would be the incentive for them? It wouldn't lead to increased foot traffic at their store, after all.

Then, a breakthrough occurred. My wife has been following the adventures of a local bookstore owner, Patrick, who had been renting space in a coffee shop, and was going to be setting up shop in his own space. This store, Novel Places, would be located all of 10 minutes away from our house! I couldn't resist the opportunity this presented, and I shot off an email to Patrick, introducing myself and giving him my proposal of a joint venture with his store to join the WPN.

[TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2]