We're upping the ante for hobby.  We are creating a series of programs for hobby stores through the existing Hobby League kit that we're calling Marquee Events.  In particular, coming up in March the Marquee Event is a City Championship.  What this means is that the new kits, starting with March, will still have weekly prize support, as the hobby league kits always have, to help support card trading card players who are going to go to their local game stores every weekend without fail.  We're also adding to the same kit, stand-alone support for one City Championship event.

A City Championship event?
It's loose terminology, there will be multiples per city, but we wanted to give a nice shiny brand name for the store owner.  In Chicago, to use an example, we might have five or six stores participate in the greater Chicago area, but within each region of the city, chances are we'll only have about one.

There's no locked in date for the event.  Stores can hold it any time between March 23rd and April 15th, to try and give them some breathing room to avoid overlap.

What are the prizes for the City Champions?
There is an exclusive City Championships playmat and promotional cards for the winner; promo cards for the top four, and a participation card for everyone that shows up.  And those are in addition to, and separate from, the weekly prizes that are also included in the kit--the normal hobby league kits.

What do you charge for your hobby league kits?
Including the city championship support, we're staying at $20 per kits.  All of the Marquee Events material will be added value.

All of the Marquee Events?
City Championships is one type of Marquee Event we're doing for the Versus brand.  The other Marquee Events in April, we will be doing what we call Random Punks, which will be like a lazy peon or peasant format where players play constructed decks, but can't use any rare cards, so it's just commons and uncommons.  It's much more casual; it allows players who haven't collected thousands of cards to play.  They don't have to worry about those tier one tournament winning decks, they can have more fun.

And the Marquee Events are just layered on top of the regular hobby league events?
Correct.

How does this relate to the Versus Premier Event program -- what are those?
The Premier Event programs are those programs run by Premiere tournament organizers.  Examples would be the $10,000 championships, or sneak previews.

So what's going on with those, any changes?
There have been some significant changes to our overall organized play plan.  Briefly, we are restructuring the focus of our support.  In the past we've had cards and prizes and cash purses and professional level events and qualifying level events.  We want to refocus a lot of our attention for this brand on the hobby stores.  We want to give them the tools to help them increase the traffic for this particular product, to try and attract new players and new customers and that's in part what the Marquee Events are going to try and do, to allow these casual players or some new customers one single event per month that they can plan on to try and attend, as opposed to the normal hobby league program, which to get full lasting benefit out of it, was more attuned to core players that were going to go to their store every single weekend without fail.

So the premiere tournament organizer events are getting scaled back in favor of the hobby store events?
Yes, in part.  We're not really taking much support away, we're really just shuffling it around.  For Versus system, it's a very core gamers game. And those gamers tend to require less marketing to go to their local hobby store or to visit the Web to find out what the schedule of events are.  We really want to focus a lot of our time and energy on the fringe customers that are familiar with the brand, familiar with Marvel or DC, maybe have heard of Versus, but haven't taken that step for whatever reason.  We want to make it a little bit easier for them to understand what our organized play structure is and will give them those marquee events that are just once a month that they can plan for.

Are any of these changes tied to specific releases?
Yes, we're doing a little bit of a stutter step for these next few months to catch up with our normal production schedule.  So let me give you a quick rundown of the next 3 months for Versus system:  from March 23rd to April 15th is the City Champs window.  Then from April 20th to May 14th is the window for Random Punks.  Then from that point until June, we're doing a Spider-Man themed kit to coincide with the Spider-Man 3 movie release.  Then starting in June is when we'll hit our regular schedule for Versus.  The World's Finest product comes out in the middle of June, and those kits will have a Release Celebration as their Marquee Events.  The following month will be another City Championship, that would be July, and then August will be another Random Punks or fun format, and that will be our typical three month cycle from a new product release until the next product release: Month one--Release Celebration, Month two--City Championships, Month three--casual fun.

How many players does each kit support?
Up to 25.

And they can buy multiple kits if they've got bigger events?
They can license up to two kits per direct account.

And this goes only direct, not through distributors?
That's correct.

For more information on Upper Deck's Versus organized play program, plus news on its new World of Warcraft program, click here for part 2 of our interview.