Blog

Ry Schueller

Welcome back, heroes and allies! As much of our time is spent interfacing with hobby stores and volunteers, I want to touch on what we do to keep your calendar and local community full of Cryptozoic events and promotions.

Enjoy the summer weather, and a few WoW TCG matches.

Premier Events

I touched briefly on the special events we make available to hobby stores in my blog entry last week. The goal is to have local events that players can look forward to playing in throughout the year with as little travel as possible.

Premier events should feel special, and that’s one reason we’ve done things differently this year by introducing programs like Draft Rally and Nationals.  The timing and location of these events also helps your local store. Because our fans often travel to more than one event to get the most out of these programs, our store owners and volunteers get to interact with a greater number of players from their area. And you get to meet more players!

All stores need to in order to be considered for these events is upload sanctioned tournaments—so we can see where our players and communities are—and give you a place to play. We encourage our Tournament Organizers to sanction events in advance. Tournament Organizers and judges who are good about advertising when and where players can play at their location often see regular growth in their community.

"How many cards do you currently have in your hand?"

When and Where Can I Play?

Everything ranging from our most casual Battleground groups to our large regional events are advertised on our Where to Play page. The purpose of this page is two-fold; sure we want to make it easy for our fans to find places to purchase product locally, but ultimately we want to make it easy for fans of our games to be able to find new players in their local area.

It’s easy to play at home with your friends (i.e. people you already know), however it’s pretty powerful when someone walks into a hobby store and sees people having an awesome time playing the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. We make a majority of our Premier events hobby store exclusives with this in mind so we can make hobby stores a destination for their local community and turn new players into returning players.

"Hey guys, whatcha playing?"

Make Your Local Store a Destination

I cannot make a big enough deal about hobby stores and our volunteers. The most successful playgroups make their local store a destination for players through running consistent events. They run different formats for their events to keep things fresh and players excited about playing new card combinations and decks. They provide information for their Premier events, as well as their local Battlegrounds so players know when to play and where players are meeting. If people can’t make plans to attend your event it’s really difficult for them to show up when you want them to.

Here is a flyer that one of our playgroup uses to advertise their upcoming tournaments locally.

Cryptozoic Entertainment is very committed to the idea of “fans first,” and we want to support our players wherever they play our games. We also want to give back to the gaming community, and provide support to the places that work hard to give you a consistent place to go play. If you haven’t done so lately, check out our Tournament pages and see if there’s something new in your area to check out and say hi to a new player in your area.