Tits for Tournaments: The Fall of Tourament Attendance?

Since the release of 6th edition and more importantly the Eldar codex, many online folks have noticed a drop in tournament attendance. As someone who lives in California I have found it all a bit odd, sure I have seen people leave Warhammer 40k, but that is customary with new editions or big changes. All I saw is the West Coast putting on bigger and better events, so this got me thinking, what were all these Mid Westerns and East Coasters talking about? I chalked it up to bias coming from the Internet tough guys crying about losing interest. It wasn’t until seeing attendance numbers coming in from events that I took it seriously. If you take the championship tournament events from 2014, looking at NovaOpen, Feasts of Blades, and WargamesCon you see some hefty drop offs from earlier years. Now with Adepticon opening up registration we can see a possible canary in the coalmine, as of 12-10-2014 they still have 60 spots open for the Warhammer 40K Championship. This is an event that usually has a wait list within a week of going live.

So, how can the West Coast with the Las Vegas Open sell out their Championship event with the same number of player slots, but Adepticon looks headed for a drop off? Well, there is a lot of explanations to why, but I think it comes down to two main reasons. The first one is and most important is NovaOpen, Feasts of Blades, and Adepticon still have larger total growth year after year. All these conventions are running loads of other events, with Adepticon having dozens of alternative 40k events. This is pulling players who would normally play in the Championships away. Add in Games Workshop attempts to curtail competitive play and competitive player apathy, it becomes obvious the results.

Still this doesn’t answer why the West Coast seems immune to tournament fatigue?

It is two-fold, first off thanks to Frontline Gaming, Ordo Fanaticus, the Independent Characters and game stores like Gamer’s Haven, Endgame, Guardian Games, and Great Escape Games for cultivating the competitive scene, it is a unified front of players and game shop owners who work together to keep folks interested in Warhammer 40k on all levels of the hobby. It is also important that folks realized 5th edition wasn’t going to come back and quickly left the hobby instead of lingering like zombie outside your door. This isn’t to say the Midwest or East Coast don’t have events that are growing, but it is the active forces behind those events keeping player engagement high. It just seems like the West Coast isn’t fighting on what tournament system to use and that gets to my second point. I see many tournament organizers fighting the game itself and thus depressing their numbers primarily because their own passion for the game has waned. It is almost like they want to prove GW has messed up the rules by self-flagellating their own events in the process, if this isn’t shooting yourself in the foot I don’t know what is.

As an example, Adepticon released a highly controversial draft rules for the Championship, now it was obvious they wanted player feedback and would make adjustments, but for those not looking deeply enough, the perception was Adepticon was just going to let all broken shit in the tournament. This makes it easy for players on the fence to choose another event to play at Adepticon instead, similar NovaOpen with their complex mission system, which rewarded only the most devote competitive player at the cost of the average one.

Overall, like I said, the big events are still growing just in different places, but to say competitive 40k is dying is a complete misnomer, it just changing and rewards events and groups who choose to work within the rules system because their passion goes beyond if they win at games or not. What is dying is the 5th edition competitive jocks who have either moved on or only ever saw the game as a math equation to figure out. Frankly, this is the best thing to happen to the game in a long time, for all we ever hear now is echos of douche from the 40k past, with their leverage in the community gone, those who are left are those competitive players who not only love to win, but love the hobby just as much.