Bandai Card Fest Disaster - Fans Are Upset
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By: Oliver Copeland
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The Bandai Card Fest just wrapped up in L.A this weekend and overall, fans were left disappointed.
It’s no secret that Bandai has dropped the ball recently with the One Piece TCG not being printed enough to meet demand, so it’s possible that players of the new game were already on edge when they attended the event.
Posts on Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram are now being swarmed with upset fans expressing their disappointment in the event.
Many fans claim that the event was “Poorly planned” and an “embarrassment”.
It seems that long wait times and the lack of events to participate in are the main culprits. In addition to this, fans were limited to purchasing only 5 booster packs each, which is far less than desired.
As previously mentioned, Bandai has failed to meet the demand of the One Piece TCG fanbase and continues to do so by limiting purchases on product.
An attendee had this to say…
I decided to reach out to Stephen Bragg, who attended the event for both days and voiced their opinion online after the chaos was over and asked for a statement on his experience. He had this to say:
“Only participants were allowed in initially, spectators were not allowed in until 1 pm – That being said, none of the activities nor the retailer were going to open until 1, so early entry didn’t mean a whole lot for participants.
The tournament was supposed to begin at 9:30 and it didn’t get started until about two hours or more beyond that time with no communication from the organizer short of letting us know that if we have a two-round bye, we weren’t supposed to be checked in yet. There was no estimated time we’d start and the communication was abysmal. We all felt like we could start any second, so we all had to just hang around without being able to do much exploration of the event.
By the time 1 pm rolled around, the retailer opened and, having had a two round bye, I got in line to purchase some sealed product. I learned that, in spite of having quite a lot of sealed product available, they were limiting everyone to five booster packs. I decided I had nothing better to do, so I stood in line only to barely move more than five feet after probably an hour of waiting. There was, again, zero communication here on what was holding the line up and zero organization to try and ensure no one was cutting or jumping back in line, etc.
Beyond this, there was a scavenger hunt for participants to do but the lines for this were so ridiculous that tournament participants basically had zero time to do it. When we finally found some time to get one or two of the activities in, several spots were booked full or out of product entirely so you couldn’t get the freebies you were supposed to receive.
Finally, there were a total of three re-pairings during the tournament, leading to further delays and resulting in the tournament concluding one round early (it stopped after round 10 when there were supposed to be 11 rounds) and quite late into the night.
I will say, as a silver-lining, day two was much more smooth but not perfect. There was some interesting exhibits to experience, they got their lines much more organized and they seemed to find product for their scavenger hunt. They still had what felt like an arbitrary cap on their sealed product and a lot of their other items available for purchase seemed to have long sold out so it was very limited for those looking to purchase.”
Mistakes were made
One of the worst moments of the event was when some players actually got eliminated from the tournament due to it being delayed and the organizers running out of time. This is frustrating to hear and write about.
Bandai did manage to pull together some freebies, performances on stage, and discount coupons for free shipping, the lack of core product and gameplay is what hurt the event.
The most basic thing they could’ve done was supply tables where players could sit down and play their casual games of choice, but even this was in limited supply.
Another possible goof by Bandai was the marketing. Some comments on Facebook and Reddit are arguing that the vent was meant to be a tournament, not a shopping experience. But others say that it was designed to be a festival and Bandai failed to provide festivities.
Either way, it seems that Bandai failed to express the event’s true identity and purpose.
Final Thoughts
Multiple factors contributed to the event’s poor feedback from fans.
Bandai needs to print more cards – that’s a fact. But it sounds like the event either had low funding (which it shouldn’t have) or just straight-up poor organization. While many fans have expressed their position on next year’s event, (skipping it, obviously) Bandai will have a second chance to redeem themselves to they’d better pay attention.
