The History of ROC
For me, ROC began years ago during Mutant Mayhem and WizKids Venue select Pre-releases. They were similar to WKOs today but they were much bigger and more fun. My first was Douglasville Georgia and a group of us made a three hour trek to play in it. Until then, none of us had really ventured outside our venue. We did not know what to expect. Douglasville had over 100 participants. I was both stoked and shocked. I never imagined this many people playing Heroclix together. I discovered that there were a whole lot of people out there that love my game just like I do! I saw different team-building and strategies. We also did a lot of trading. I made a lot of friends. Friends that I still know today after all of these years.
Competition becomes community!
From that point on, my sons and I began going to every pre-release and began going to conventions. We loved it. We made more friends while playing the game that we love. We continued this year after year. I was a member of HCRealms.com and Heroclix.com. In those two places, I was able to trade Heroclix and read great articles. I often read articles from the best players in the world, champions of my game. I really enjoyed reading about the meta teams and how they were used. I liked comparing them to teams I built and think about how my team would fare against them. Life was good... then...Topps shut down WizKids. Disaster. My game was going to fade away...but it didn't. The community didn’t let it happen. HCRealms.com kept ticking and pitching someone to take up the game. We kept playing. My sons and I kept going to Dragon Con and playing Heroclix. I became a large contributor at this time to Dragon Con in the form of Heroclix. Those friends from the pre-releases were running Heroclix and I gave them everything I could to support the game. I gave factory sets, convention exclusives, carrying cases, singles and all that I could gather to support my community. Heroclix at Dragon Con thrived. Our Heroclix community thrived until one day NECA bought WizKids from Topps and our community began to grow again. The community that thrived through it all was built on competition!
Now that WizKids was back, I continued playing and traveling to conventions as often as I could. I continued to support Dragon Con. Heroclix continued to grow. This went on for a few years. HCRealms.com began sponsoring Dragon Con. Things were good but something was missing. The guys at Dragon Con brought it up to me. Outside of 2 or 3 conventions a year, where were our big events? We all wanted more. We wanted to play competitively more often and we all felt the community would grow from it. Our game was the largest miniatures collectible game in the world. Why didn't we have support like other games? We felt Heroclix was big enough to support a competitive tournament scene. We wanted one and we wanted to play in it. We loved playing and we loved the community that developed from playing. So five of us including Tony Burian from HCRealms.com sat down in a fast food restaurant in Atlanta after Dragon Con one year. I took notes on a scrap piece of paper. It may have actually been a napkin. We discussed how we could form a series of tournaments and tie them into a championship at Dragon Con. Tony was willing to sponsor and promote it through HCRealms.com. For whatever reason, during the meeting, I seemed to be leading the way but it wasn't my intention to lead. Later, I was told that the others considered me the leader and expected me to push us forward. We left the meeting with the intentions of putting together five tournaments the following year leading into Dragon Con. We also asked for and received WizKids support for prizing. I became the director and we had a successful first year. The community wanted competition.
Year two was a major turning point for ROC. You could say that is when we became ROC as you know it. We wanted to expand. We wanted to run different size events everywhere feeding into our championship. We asked WizKids for support. We were led to believe that we would get it. I was at Gen Con with Tony and we met with WizKids to solidify prizing but we got thrown a monkey wrench instead. We would receive no WizKids prize support at all. We could have thrown in the towel right here. We certainly thought about it. I began trying to figure out a way to offer money instead of prizes at our events but then something unexpected occurred. Tony told me that I should go talk to TCGplayer.com because they had expressed interest in what we were doing. So I did. I met two of the nicest and savvy people in the gaming community, the two founders of TCGPlayer.com, Chedy and Ray. I told them what we were doing and what we wanted to do. They explained to me the community of Magic players and stores that they already had and how their competitive system worked. I asked them about their prizing and they showed me a Magic playmat. A bell went off in my head and I asked them if they could make Heroclix maps, using the same material. That, of course, is how we got our ROC maps that we all cherish. Anyway, Chedy offered to guarantee $15,000 if TCGPlayer.com could come in as co-sponsor with HCRealms.com. I negotiated the deal between the two parties and ROC became what it is. ROC grew because of the competitive play we put forth and the community that developed from it.
ROC has now taken another turn. I now own it. I have no partners and no sponsors. I run it as a business, a business that makes a profit and supports competition and the community surrounding that competition. As a business, we are able to do that better than before. This step was necessary to take ROC to the next phase. We want to grow domestically and globally. I want every Heroclix player in the world to feel that sense of community that I have experienced over the years. Come join us and be a part of our community.
ROC... Competition becomes community!