Brian Waltersdorff of Comic Store West in York, Pennsylvania read Scott Thorne's recent column (see "Rolling for Initiative--WotC Vs. Konami Pre-Releases") and writes in to share his frustration with the scheduling of an upcoming Magic: The Gathering Pre-Release event.

While preparing to schedule my next Magic: The Gathering Pre-Release event I noticed the date this event can be scheduled is between midnight on Friday, May 6 and Sunday night, May 8.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Hello Wizards of the Coast!  Do you guys know that many of the stores that hold these events are comic book stores?  What major comic book event happens on the FIRST Saturday of May?  Yes, Free Comic Book Day.

Now I know what many of you are going to say, hold your event at midnight Friday or wait until Sunday.  Well, we have a great group of players that expect us to have these BIG Pre-Release events on Saturday.  Many of the players are too young to be out after midnight on Friday and the size of our events prohibit us from having these on Sundays.  Normally our pre-release events run 8-9 hours and we are only open 5 hours on Sunday.

So now some of you will say stay open late on Sunday or don't have the event at all.  We could stay late on Sunday or open early.  But we employ a total of 3 people (2 of which are owners) and we all like to see our families and Sunday is usually the day we get to see our families.  Next you will tell me just don't have the Magic event.  Well that is an option, but these Pre-Release events generate over $1000 of pure profit for us and that would be foolish to pass up.

We always follow WotC rules to the letter, so unlike many of our competitors who are moving their Pre-Release events to the next weekend we will follow the schedule that WotC puts in place.

So yes there are options available to us, but maybe next time WotC you can schedule these big events the week before or even better the week after Free Comic Book Day.  Imagine all of the advertising I could do in the store for the Magic Pre-Release if it were held the week after our busiest day of the year.

PS -- Oh yeah, and WotC while you are listening please change Friday Night Magic to just Magic Night in America and allow sanctioned events any night of the week.  This would allow stores who have other games on Friday nights (like us) to have a successful sanctioned Magic event another night of the week.

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