ANUCON2011 Sponsor Change

[MrMoo]

It has come to my attention that Black Cultist has placed in their newsletter a comment regarding the fact that we have chosen to go elsewhere for prize support for ANUCON2011 this coming September:

From the Black Cultist newsletter:

"ANUCON has been confirmed for the 24th & 25th of September, the players pack can be found HERE. We won’t be there this year as they have elected to go elsewhere for their prize support, possibly because I objected to them using a good chunk of the entry fees to fund their club rather then provide prize support to the players, or maybe just because they got a better deal."

Although we don't normally talk about all the work behind the scenes for ANUWGS tournaments including ANUCON, I (tournament organiser for ANUCON2011) feels that it is necessary to respond to Black Cultist's comments so that members and attendees of ANUCON have a clear picture of why I have made the decision to go with an alternative sponsor this year.

We run ANUCON as a friendly and fun tournament to benefit players that attend the tournament. As we are based in Canberra, we naturally get a lot of local attendees as well as a few devoted souls who drive in from further away.

Therefore, when a sponsor for ANUCON is selected, we look for the following things:
1) Local presence - we'd like them to be locally available for Canberran gamers
2) Past patronage - members have previously had good experiences with the store
3) Best sponsorship deal at the time - they provide the best deal for prize support

This year, as usual, we approached two stores for sponsorship: Black Cultist and Mind Games Canberra. Although they're both local stores with great service, the club must select the one which provides the best deal. If we could go with both, we would, but obviously that's not possible.

I have been in contact with Brad (the new owner of Black Cultist as of early this year) regarding both prize support and some issues he had with the way we run the tournament, and there have been some heated discussions between club executive and ex-executive members about his comments. However, when selecting the sponsor for ANUCON2011, the deciding factor for prize support was the value the club got out of the sponsor.

In the past for ANUWGS tournaments, the club purchases prizes from the sponsor at an additional discount.

Black Cultist has traditionally provided a better deal ever since the business was established. Each year, we also ask Mind Games Canberra. Although they have always responded, they have never been able to provide a better deal than Black Cultist.

This year, however, Mind Games Canberra has unexpectedly offered a large discount for prizes for ANUCON2011. Therefore, based on this, I have chosen Mind Games Canberra to sponsor ANUCON2011, as this has the greatest benefits for the tournament attendees. The ANU Wargaming Society is a non-profit student club (in addition, none of the members or executive are paid) which is run purely for the benefit of Canberra wargamers. The income from ANUWGS tournaments, including ANUCON2011, funds the club for a whole year, and all of it goes to providing free gaming nights, terrain, and the one open wargaming social event we run - the Christmas AGM.

TL;DR:
We resent the implication that there are any vindictive reasons for not choosing Black Cultist as the sponsor for ANUCON2011. We were simply offered a better deal by Mind Games Canberra.

If anyone would like more details, please contact me:
[e-mail]
0422265826

On the plus side, the value of the prizes we're giving out are amazing this year. Also, we know the winners will enjoy them

[Black Cultist]

Did you consider approaching Black Cultist as the existing Long Time sponsor of the Event to see if they could match the offer

[Aeon]

I just want to say I wish that the club had decided to go with Black Cultist.

Mind Games does not support the local scene anywhere near as much as Good Games/Black Cultist (BC does a great discount and Good Games holds local tournaments, what does Mind Games do?)

Mind Games apparantly sponsers the club but refuses to give out the 10% discount it says it applies to club members (ie when I ran ANU 40K a few years back; while they allowed me to put flyers up in there store they would not do any discount no matter how slight on terrain making materials I was purchasing to use at the tournament.)

While the prize discount may have been substantial; I still think that considerations other than the price of prize support should have been taken.

[MrMoo]

There are a few reasons why I did not approach Black Cultist asking if they could match the offer provided by Mind Games Canberra, but I will not go into details as they pertain to the way both businesses operate.

As described above however, the reasons were not because of any discussions or the issues that Black Cultist rasied in our original sponsorship discussion.

In regard to local support - it is our view that Mind Game's 20% discount roughly comparative with Good Games and Black Cultist (the latter is 25%, but it's a web store only). Also, one of the reasons Mind Games does not run warhammer events is because they consistently point people to the ANUWGS for warhammer gaming (and other tabletop gaming) purposes.

Regarding the 10% club discount reportedly offered by Mind Games - there have been longstanding issues regarding this, which we usually mention at the AGM each year. In summary however, the requirements that Mind Games has in order to get the 10% club discount have been unable to be met under our current membership arrangements.

I personally believe all of them - Mind Games, Good Games, and Black Cultist - offer good deals for gamers in Canberra, so it's a bit of a shame we have to pick one to support us. Since they're all good, it comes down to the best offer (which leads to the best prizes for players).