All I want to see is that the $5 I'm paying goes to good use. If I'm paying $5 to play, I want to at least walk out with 1 booster. Why should the less skilled players pay $5 just to support the better players for normal league play? During Tournaments is where skill should be rewarded. League should be used for bettering your deckbuilding and have less risk of losing your money for something that should be free to begin with.
It sounds like you guys are having a tournament every week, instead of league free play. That seems like a bit of overkill. I think once or twice a month is more than sufficient for this sort of thing.
When I was still playing TCGs competitively, a group of TOs in my area came to a consensus on how to charge for and prize events that was fair to the store, the top cut, and the rest of the players.
Every player pays $6.
Once the event begins, the TO buys as many boosters as possible from the store.
Once the last Swiss round is complete, every player that doesn't make the cut gets 1 booster.
The remaining boosters are divided among the top finishers, based on final standing.
Assuming 10 players and $3 per pack, you're looking at 20 packs. With a t4, the bottom 6 each get a pack and the t4 split the remaining 14 packs (6/4/2/2, for example). The more players you have, the bigger the prizes get. We used to pull 30 players. With a t8, we were splitting 38 packs in the finals.
The store owner loved seeing us, because he was guarnateed income on a slow night. If you didn't make the cut, you still got to play a few rounds and got a booster for your efforts. If you made the cut, you at least got your money back in the cost of boosters, possibly more. Everyone walked away happy.
I'd recommend suggesting that to your League Leader. I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to play in a tournament that didn't do prizing this way. :wink:
Years ago when i was a kid...
Shouldn't that be "Many, many, many years ago when I was a kid..."?