Today’s article is in the Community Growth category as we discuss the value of prizes, types of prizes, prize awarding structure for your events, leagues, and game nights. It’s no secret that people love to win stuff and have an award or prize to show for a good day of competition. A major part of why the game was so popular in the early Shadespire days was the ubiquity of Glass Trophies and other prizes in Organized Play Kits that were distributed to many retailers worldwide. That said, those aren’t the only kinds of prizes, and winning the tournament isn’t the only thing that should qualify you for a prize! If you’d like to introduce some goodies into your local scene to help recruit and retain players, I’ll cover some of the options available to you below.

TYPES OF PRIZE

Organized Play Kit

OP Kits are still available to retailers with a GW license, and you should work with the store near you to get one in and make sue of it when possible. (For more on the topic, see Running A Local Tournament). An OP Kit comes with a glass trophy, deck boxes, promo cards, and occasionally acrylic tokens or other trinkets to hand out to people. Traditionally, the winner of a tournament or league would get the trophy, the top 4 would get the four deck boxes, the top several would get alternate art cards, and there is a Golden Daemon card for best painted as well as a best sportsman card.

These are tailor made for small tournaments but can be picked up by your store for any use – give a promo card to anybody who shows up on the Wednesday night throwdown, organize a two-month Rivals league and give the prizes out that way, the sky is the limit. You can also find these second hand (or probably first-hand) on eBay, and some of the older kits still have fun extras people might want.

Other glass trophy (or other winner’s prize)

If you don’t have or can’t find the Shadeglass trophies or an OP kit, you certainly can make a custom trophy of sorts. Some larger events or recurring tournaments have their own winner’s prize which in many cases takes the form of a custom glass trophy – several online services exist for custom engraving, and you can specify the name of the event and even a special symbol etched into some glass plaque though it can be a little pricey. One other thing that I have seen done is a big trophy that either is passed between winners or lives at a central location, and you make a new little plaque to stick on it for each subsequent winner. Below the artillery shell they use at the Bessborough Armoury in Vancouver BC at the Pride of the Fall event, and you can make something similar for yourself – tons of Fantasy Football leagues do this type of prize and there are hundreds of services out there.

Gift certificates

A caution about gift cards, or really any ‘Cash Prize’: these do tend to being out ‘harder’ competitive behaviors and theoretically could induce cheating in some people. You can prevent this to an extent by limiting the dollar amount or not having all the money go to one winner. That said, I have never personally had this issue running any events in my group. If you do a nominal amount to ‘buy in’, say $5-20, and split that pot among the top 3, you can buy store coupons with the money to help the store get a cut and make it less enticing to lie cheat and steal than a fistful of dollars might.

Warbands

I’ll admit I do this more than is maybe healthy, but I’ll often tell the winner of a category like Best Sportsman (and anybody who is at a shop for a first Underworlds event because I’m a chump) that I’ll buy them a product off the shelf. You have some of the same issues as a ‘cash prize’ but since they have to come away with a WHU product that’s in stock at that time people behave a little better in my experience. I restrict this to Underworlds stuff at my club because the goal is to promote this game in particular and not necessarily just give money by proxy to the winner. You can do this with a buy-in or just front the money yourself as the organizer if you have the resources to do it, and I have more than once convinced people to come back around for future games and get hooked on the system because they had ‘free stuff they had won’ to incentivize it.

Award certificates

One thing I have started doing is to print out custom free online certificates of achievement with customized writing. Make a little paper that says “Rain City Thunderworlds Summer Clash 2024” and “Best Painted” with a blank line to write in the winners’ name on the day of, and they’ll have something to take back with them and hang on their fridge or stick next to the warband on the shelf. It costs virtually nothing but is a tangible reminder of their success and can help people feel better recognized and like they really ‘won something’, even it’s its just printer paper. I make free ones here but you really have hundreds of options.

Custom swag

Depending on the theme of your event, the size of your group, and how much lead time you have, some people like to get creative with custom prizes beyond the above. Fancy activation tokens, custom dice, 3D printed token stand-ins or something else with some local flair can be a fun way to both commemorate the event and thank people for traveling from far away. Above you can see some custom tokens made by Vanja for our local group, and others have 3D printed similar things for best in Grand Alliance and the like. Miscellaneous trinkets can work as well, in the past I have used little plastic trophy cups like for a little league team which you can get in a multipack at a party supply store or elsewhere. Something physical to place on the shelf next to the warband or that can be used at the next game night is always nice. If you have a club name and can order some custom swag that features your logo – stickers, T-shirts, you name it, you can potentially build some community spirit there as well. If you REALLY want to ball out, you can commission some custom card art like the Italians did at their last worlds qualifier.

PRIZE STRUCTURE

Now that we have covered some of the prizes you can use to support your event, let’s look at who you can give them to. You certainly don’t need to give out prizes for each of these categories every time, but these are some of the more common options for prize recipients.

Event winner and potentially top 3 podium

Generally, if you only give away a single prize, it goes to whoever won the event. There are several ways to determine a winner which I covered in some detail here but if your scoring system results in a ‘best general’ or what have you, that person should probably take home the glass trophy. Depending on the size of your event and how robust the prize support is, you can also grant something to the second and third place finishers as well.

Top in Faction/Grand Alliance

One fun thing you can do is give out ‘best player’ awards per Grand Alliance, or if your event is large enough, even within a given faction. Perhaps multiple people in your event are playing whatever warband or two is ‘top of the meta’ at the moment and so a given faction or Grand Alliance is overrepresented. A player who is taking one of the less prominent warbands or alliances and places middle of the pack could still appreciate being the ‘best player in their Grand Alliance’ for example. I have run a few events where the best Order player or best Destruction player was in 7th place but they still won a prize, which can be a morale boost and in some cases a reward for playing something off-meta. This could also be done for Rivals Deck pairings/Plot Cards in a Nemesis or Championship event should you feel that’s something you can do (though there are many Rivals decks now).

Best Sportsman

I personally believe you should effectively always include a Best Sportsman award for any event of any size. It’s very important to improve quality of play experience and incentivize politeness, fun, and positivity at the event itself, while also rewarding people for making the event worth attending. This can be determined by having each player vote for their favorite opponent of the day, general secret nominations, or having the TO seek out the most positive energy in the room. It’s another thing players can strive for even if they’re losing their matches and can possibly help people keep a smile on their face at the bottom tables. The Organized Play Kits contain an alternate art prize card for this, but you can also add extra goodies for this person (who is a prime candidate for a new warband or other major prize).

Best Painted

Much like Best Sportsman, the OP Kits also include a prize card with the alternate art including the Golden Daemon. I like to include best painted awards even in events that are not using OP kits becuase a major part of the hobby for some is the creative expression rather than the competitive gaming, and that’s great! Beautiful minis make for a beautiful event and can help encourage some people who don’t think they can win the tournament by winning games still come out and try their hand at best painted. Read more about why the hobby aspect of Underworlds is so valuable here.

I personally don’t require that minis be painted for my events, so this is a great way to help reward the people who do go that extra mile to paint up their warbands. The paint prize can either be judged by the T.O. or done by a peer vote – if you’re going to have a judge or panel review, it’s important to pre-specify criteria and a points rubric so nobody feels cheated or like you picked your friend rather than the actual ‘best’ (though art is of course subjective).

Door Raffle

A fair way to ensure everybody who attends your event gets a shot at winning a prize is to implement a raffle/door prize system. Some people know they don’t have much chance of winning the event or getting chosen for best painted, but if they have a shot at something just for showing up it can make the event a little more memorable/special. It can also incentivize people to stay for longer if you do raffle draws between rounds or at the end of the event – sure I lost two matches in a row but what if I win that prize with my raffle ticket?

I have done a few of these with the standard ‘one ticket per entrant’, but there are other options to expand on this theme. Previously I have given an additional ticket to anyone wearing a costume for our Halloween event, or for bringing a destruction warband to the St Patrork’s Day event. You could also allow people to ‘buy in’ for extra raffle tickets and donate the proceeds to charity etc if you had a large enough event and felt that had an opportunity for impact.

Consolation prizes

There are myriad ways to handle this, but this flavor of prize support gives something to whoever got last place. Some call it the wooden spoon or Smokin’ Boots, but the idea is to take the sting out of losing by way of prizes. I personally don’t use this very often because I have found it usually does more to call out ‘look at this loser’ rather than salve any pain of losing, though different people may receive the wooden spoon differently.

Perhaps a better way of handling this came from Derek/Kaptain Murder out of the Alberta scene where across an event each game loss gets your name dropped in a hat, which is then used for raffle prizes later on. This means the more games you lose, the greater chance you have of getting something later, but it doesn’t explicitly out you as the losing-est player at the event. Additionally, it leaves something to console you if you get knocked out of the running near the end (or early on!) which is the point of consolation prizes. Even winning a match 2-1, which can hurt you on tiebreakers, gets one ticket in the hat. Something for everyone except those 2-0 win streak people, who don’t really need consoling.

“Achievement Prizes” for “Side Quests”

Finally (and this one takes more paperwork for you as the TO) you can award ‘achievements’ throughout the event. There are near infinite side quests you can cook up for this – track whoever gets the most kills across the event, or who went the longest before rolling their first crit of the day, for example. Whatever you pick, it can be a fun side game for people and add a little spice to your event. “Maybe I’m losing this game, but if I delve three times I’ll have a chance to get a new set of dice”, your player might think. Arguably side quests make the game less competitive as people might be chasing goals other than winning the match, but if you choose ones that don’t affect gameplay choices, you might just sprinkle in a few prizes here and there in an equitable way.

Wrap

That’s the short primer on prize support! Click here to learn more about running your own tournament if that’s something you’re working on, and I hope your players leave well-awarded. Thanks for reading, and until next time, don’t forget to spend that glory!