Wizards of the Coast’s Senior Kaijudo Brand Manager Kierin Chase talked to ICv2 about the expanding Kaijudo organized play program and recent developments in it. (Chase also talked to ICv2 exclusively, and with an exclusive image, about upcoming Kaijudo releases and the environment that’s driving sales, see "WotC's Kierin Chase on First 'Kaijudo' Sell-out").

What is going on with Organized Play?  The Master Challenges just started this month, right?
We started in May and they’ve been going for about a month.  We have another month left of them so we’re about halfway through.  The numbers have been exceeding all our expectations, which is just fantastic news for us. People are excited; they’ve been traveling to different locations.

We did something special for Clash of the Duelmasters, as kind of a surprise and delight for some of the people who have made it to the KMCs.  We sent [lead designer] Ryan Miller down to a location in Texas and a location in California where we revealed an oversized card coming up from Clash of the Duelmasters.

Down in Texas we revealed an Infernus oversized card; he’s a monarch that you see in Clash, he’s one of the key art pieces. And down in Bakersfield, CA we revealed Tritonus, who is the other key art. We videotaped it, put it on our Website, and the crowd went crazy. They were thrilled not only about us interacting directly with the public, but also being able to show them something exclusive at an event that was unexpected.  So that was really cool, and we’re looking to do more of that kind of surprise, be unexpected, do cool things for players.

Another thing we recently did for some retailers is that we sent out $20 pizza coupons to people who were running Kaijudo Duel Days, just as a ‘thank you’ and just to make the event a bit more special (and to feed everybody for a weekend).

How have the Duel Days been going?  What has the trend been like there?
We’ve been increasing not only in participants per location, but in the actual number of locations running KDDs.  So once again the numbers are increasing month over month, which we’re really excited about. Because of that, we’re actually shifting the program a little bit from sending out the promo cards every other month to sending out the promo cards once a month, and we’re really pleased to be able to do that shift.  The success that the stores have been finding has allowed us to do that increased support and activity.

The KMCs have been doing very well in terms of the activity and the response.  The prizes have gone over very well. We have obviously given out the bags, and we have pins and deckboxes.  We did something very special with lenticular-style 3D playmats for the top two players.  Those are going over very well because they’re so unique and so different when you see them in person.

This is all gearing up for the championship in August (see "'Kaijudo' OP Expanded").  We actually had a meeting on it today, talking about all the finer details, because we’re going to have the players who are competing it in to help develop and design cards for upcoming sets.  That’s something we’re really excited about.

Players that are competing in the championship?
Correct.  The people who are playing in the KMCs get invited to play in the championship that takes place in Seattle, in the beginning of August, and those 48 players are going to be able to help and work with R&D to be able to develop upcoming cards.  And of course we’re also looking at things like vanity cards, where they can actually get their names on cards and things like that.

The Set Premieres--the one held in late May was the second one?
This was the second of our Set Premieres.  We started doing Set Premieres with DragonStrike Infernus, Clash got the second one; this was a sealed booster pack event. We do five (it might have been six) booster packs and people were able to open them up, and play to earn exclusive promo cards that were only found in the set premiere.

How did the participation in the second Set Premiere at one compare to the first one?
Compared to DSI?  We had more participating stores.  We have not gotten the numbers back on players from the full reporting.  The early trend is increased compared to DSI, but that is just anecdotal; we’re expecting it to be higher than DSI.  Another cool thing about that is that we’re finally in the ratings and rankings system (the DCI ranking system), which means all players will be using DCI numbers and they’ll be getting rated and ranked.  The first publish of that is going to be June 12.  And that will be the first time players can see how they’re rated and how they’re ranked against others in the world.  And what’s cool is that means their activity in the Clash Set Premiere will count towards that, as well as all the KDDs, as well as all the games they participate in.

We’ve been accumulating them for the last month (it started at the beginning of May), but we need to wait a couple of weeks before we actually get enough data to have a really good publish date.  As I said, June 12 is the first time publish date, and then we will be updating it weekly.  Every Wednesday a new publish will go up with new ratings and rankings.