Canadian Nationals: What the hell is happening?

So this information is out there: it’s happening at the Anime Revolution convention in Vancouver Canada, which takes place on August 14th-16th. It is apparently being run by Lion Rampant Imports.

However, beyond this information, there’s nothing. What day(s) or time is unknown. The tournament is less than a month out, with people needing to buy plane tickets etc, and no one knows a thing. We don’t know if there is a cap on people able to attend, we don’t know when to attend aside from a nebulous 3-day span, and last we heard they didn’t even have a TO set up yet. We’ve been emailing both Lion Rampant as well as FFG to try and get some information on what should be a fairly prestigious tournament, but have received no info at all regarding it. There’s several of us here in the PDX area who really were looking forward to attending, but the number of us planning on going are dropping daily due to the absolute dearth of information.

Does anyone out there know anything else? This seems like kind of a shit show. It’s crappy to see the game’s competitive scene treated with such a lack of respect by the organizers.

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You do mean ‘the game’s FFG OP competitive scene’, right?

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Details posted here:
http://lionrampantimports.com/product.htm?Product=PROFFGNATWEST&Source=Search

64 players, 6 rounds of Swiss…

2 of my Regionals exceeded that. smfh

All two of ours did too ;p. I’ve been to four regionals over two years, 68 people was the smallest one so far.

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wow. only 64 seats available for a nationals??

i guess to be fair, last year’s canadian nationals in toronto drew only 60 players.

Of course this has to be posted the very same day that I make a thread about a lack of information =P Oh well, at least they got the info out so we can start actual planning!

I’m only in it for the Anime.

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You and @nobody.

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I thought we were 68 last year in TO for nats?

Yeah, I already know too much about this ordeal, I really wish the best for this. I really can’t comment on this though. I’m on a razor thin edge of not attending anymore, and I was all gung ho to go when it was first announced.

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Is it the size of the country that’s the problem over there? Makes it expensive to travel over to the west coast?
We got about 170 for UK Nationals; heck, even the side event on day two drew more than 64 (71 if I remember correctly).

I think the event handlers just don’t want to throw a long tournament. At 65 players another round is required, so cutting it at 64 makes the tourney take less long.

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Yep. For those of us in southern Ontario / Quebec (where about 50% of Canada’s population lives) it’d cost $800+ to fly to Vancouver on the opposite coast to play. So it’s prohibitively expensive for most of us. Going to Worlds is actually going to be cheaper than going to Nationals would be.

@lopert according to my nerdy tournament records we were 60 last year, but I thought we played 7 rounds? Hmm.

Yeah, size is the issue. I live in the northern central part of the U.S., and was willing to drive to it in Toronto, which is still 10+ hours away. Flying to Vancouver? Not worth the cost, esp. considering it’s at an anime con (see: I’m married, and don’t need the temptation).

Once again, the prize of getting Nationals is just icing for the distributors, instead of a treat for the fans. This is really the worst abuse of it. At least at Gencon and in the UK, they generally have space for most who want to play.

I think it’s cool they’re rewarding the west coast, as a different group of players get to experience it. However, it’s a poor Nationals. At least Gencon gives attendees something else they’d want to experience, for the most part. Not sure most ANR players cross heavily into the section of the Venn diagram that would attend an anime con.

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Yeah maybe I’m thinking we were above 60 due to the day 1 - 7 round swiss, followed by day 2 - top 16.