We're also interested in the full roll-out for the World of Warcraft program. Obviously you did some launch events, and there was another program that kicked off in December.

You're correct, in October we had our first release celebration event for the Heroes of Azeroth.  We had some beta hobby league kits to support December, January and February, those really just had promotional cards to give out as prize support.  Starting later this month, actually the 23rd to the 25th will be our first Marquee event for the WoW league.  The Warcraft hobby league is officially called the WoW TCG Battlegrounds, it's no longer Hobby League.

For that particular brand, I'll speak to you in hobby league terms.   The kits for March are going to include Marquee support for an event on the 23rd to 25th of March.  They will also include the normal weekly Battleground support for up to four weeks.

Prizes for the March Marquee Event include unique promo cards for the top eight finishers and for all participants, as well as exclusive Battlegrounds t-shirts for the winner and sportsmanship award.

Now for the April kits, we have Through the Dark Portal coming out, hitting the street on April 11th.  So when the next kit arrives, that will support Through the Dark Portal Release Celebration the weekend of the 13th through 15th, as well as have the four weeks of weekly Battlegrounds support.

So the WoW program is going to have the same type of structure, with weekly play and a Marquee Event layered on top?

Exactly.  The difference with WoW is that we don't have three unique Marquee Events.  We've got the Release Celebration and then the months in between, we're just hoping to support a large casual tournament which is the Marquee Event.

How many stores run your league program for Versus, and then how many are you expecting for the WoW program?

There's a little bit of fluctuation with the Versus system, because there's some brand favoritism between Marvel and DC, but on average, we support just over 250 stores for Versus System league.  We'll be happy if we can maintain that for the City Championships; it's been pretty stable for us for Versus system over the past 18 months.

For Warcraft, we're planning on roughly 500 locations, and that includes North America, Canada and Latin America.  Part of the package for the Marquee Events is some marketing and Web support that we'll do for all the stores that participate.  Each of these Marquee Event programs has a unique Web page on which we will post operating instructions for the events, pictures of all the prizes for the players when they visit the site, a list of all the participating locations so the players can easily find one or several locations near them.  Also there will be point of purchase material available for download on those program sites in advance of when those kits will arrive, so the stores can get a jump on getting the word out on when their Marquee Events are.

Are you talking about both programs or just WoW?

Both programs.  So for example, the City Champs for Versus will have its own separate page, as will the Versus system Release Celebration, as does the Warcraft Release Celebration.

Another thing to note is that we're trying really hard with these Marquee Events to empower hobby stores to sanction these events and make them all that more special.  So using our Mantis tournament software, if they run and upload any of these Marquee Events successfully, we will enter their store into a monthly drawing for a free booster display for that brand.

One last unique thing about the Versus City Champs event, and this is kind of a doozy, each of the City Championship winners may visit the City Champs Website and download a deck list form that they can submit to our R&D group.  Of all the winning deck lists that are supplied to us from sanctioned uploaded tournaments, our R&D group is going to go through and each of them is going to pick their favorite deck out of that group.  They're going to contact each of the deck builders and discuss with them what their intentions were, how they thought the deck would run, how they chose that deck, why they chose certain cards, then there will be a playoff amongst those eight R&D group members.  Whoever designed the deck for the winner of that eight man tournament will get their likeness put on a future Versus system card.

The Marquee Event for both WoW and Versus is very key for us. It's an add-on bonus, and we're really hoping to help stores drive traffic on a particular day in order to capture more casual players and new customers.  With Versus we've got the City Champs, the casual format, Spider-Man in May, and then we'll start cycling in Release Celebrations.  For Warcraft, we'll just have Release Celebrations, but we'll still have Marquee Events in those off months.  For City Champs, there's the unique contest.  All of the Marquee prizing versus the hobby league prizing will be different and exclusive for all brands.

For Part 1 of the interview, click here.