Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne shares his experience with his Magic 2014 prerelease event.
 
Starting off, I would like to thank those that read last week's column and took the time to respond to it.  Both took some time out of their schedule to type out some thoughts and send them in to ICv2 which I appreciate.
 
Writing this column midway through our Magic 2014 pre-release weekend, which has proven the lowest attended pre-release in years.  I don't know if that is due to the fact that it is a core set, that it is the middle of summer, that 30% of my customer base has left for three months, that we passed on running a midnight release, or that we didn't do as good a job ginning up excitement for this set, but attendance for the Saturday's tournaments has run less than half what we saw for Magic 2013.  Other stores have reported similar light turnouts, with one saying they barely seated eight people for their first event (in fairness, other stores have reported doing very good numbers but nowhere near a block pre-release).
 
I did like the change in the Achievement Cards, wherein players actually got something for completing each color's list of achievement, as completing a set of achievements earned a redemption code allowing the player to put that Planeswalker on their page on the Wizards of the Coast's Website.
 
Still though, some of the achievements were out of the player's control, such as "Play in a 2-headed Giant event at the Magic 2014 prerelease."  What happens if you play at a store that opts not to run a 2-Headed Giant event (Like ours.  We tried 2-headed Giant once at a pre-release and could not scare up enough participants to make four teams.  Even the guy who asked us to run one didn't show up).  This means none of our players had the opportunity to get the Ajani badge, while playing in a tournament with low turnout means no completion of "Call the Hunt" (play in a tournament with at least 25 players) so no Garruk badge.
 
Also, a couple of the achievements require a player to win a round, which can prove problematic should the player crack a weak set of packs.  Yes, I know the players can keep the cards and complete the achievements during the Magic 2014 league.  However, in all honesty, how many of our Magic players will remember to hang onto the card until the Magic 2014 league?  Still, I like the idea of rewards for performing actions during a tournament, so we entered each player who completed a set of achievements in a drawing for packs of Modern Masters (courtesy of ACD Distribution), which the players did enjoy getting (not surprisingly).
 
Still, WOTC handles its prereleases for Magic far better than any other company in the industry does for any store-based event.  They have a strong fan base for each release, get the materials for the prerelease to us far enough ahead of the event so stores can promote it, and provide us with top-notch support and relatively easy to use tournament software for the event.  Any other company in the industry wanting to run a successful prerelease should look at WOTC's events to see how to do it.
 
Oh, and Brotherwsie Games sent us a copy of Boss Monster, which I hope to comment on next week.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.