We in the Utah/Idaho metas have teamed up with a few CO people to form the Rocky Mountain Circuit of the ANRPC. Nothing is final yet, but we are posting here so we can have a good place to discuss this new branch of the ANRPC.
In our chat, we’ve discussed a few things:
We will likely have the finals (and perhaps the last-chance qualifier) online. This can help avoid having to travel to a central location, because no location would be central or fair.
We probably want around 8-11 qualifiers, as that’s what Spags said was a good number. Two in Utah, two in Idaho, up to four in Colorado, and that leaves room for if anyone in Montana or Wyoming who sees this and wants to participate.
We need to come up with prizes. I’ve got my custom Lego alt-arts that I’ve done before, but if anyone has any better ideas I’m all for hearing 'em.
Also, when is this going to happen? After regionals, I assume, but we’ll need to nail down specific dates once we get the stores picked out.
Summertime/GNK season would probably be the best time to make this happen. Store champ season here is nuts and everyone gets in a whirl once World’s comes around. I can see a start time as early as March or April, honestly.
Our circuits originally started as a counter to FFG not sending the Gencon winners to Worlds. Since they do that now, that issue is moot. My circuit this year still did that. We collected $75 from each qualifier, from the store, and used that to fund the finals pool. I paid cash to top 3, and gave prizes to all at the finals tourney. I ended up donating a lot personally, which was fine. One of the qualifiers I ran was at a geek bar, which allowed me to keep all of the door. I pushed that into the finals.
If you forgo the cash, you’ll have to come up with some other prize support. We had the top 3 at each qualifier be eligible for the final tourney, with an alternate available from each. The finals was a Swiss tourney with a T4 double elim cut. I am looking into some ANRPC prizes for 2017, which I can sell to TOs for ANRPC events.
I would suggest a down time in the FFG cycle to run a circuit. It will give stores an excuse to run an ANR event, and for players to attend one. I would say post-Regionals is a good time, which will prob. be June-September.
Since we were planning on doing this after regionals, the current tentative plan is to do a series of tournaments between August and October, with a tentative final October 21. Details will come eventually.