HoyaLawya said:

I am a member of a small but growing meta (15 attended our joust tourney last Sunday) in the Central NC / Raleigh area, which includes Cary.  We play at Gamer's Armory and asked the store to apply for a Regional which it got.  We were surprised to see another Regional in the same area, at a store where none of us play (All Fun & Games).  If there are indeed AGOT players there, our meta is not aware of it, which could mean that we have an opportunity to merge our groups to grow the meta.  Alternatively, as doulos2k mentioned, it could just be the store looking to bring some attention to themselves.  We did see a post on thier FB page dating back to mid-January looking for people to demo some of the LCGs.  The post got a few responses, but none regarding AGOT.  It will be interesting to see the response the regional there gets. 

I agree with some posters that the huge amount of Regionals (especially the concentrated pockets in certain areas) does give the impression of a diluted/false sense of "Regionalism." I think the real problem is that Regionals are the only widespread form of organized competetive play in the LCG format. Sure you can hold local tournies and pass out Kit prizes, but winning them has no impact on your standing within the perception of the larger national scene. If people want clearly demarked lines for Regions, a single Regional per Region then we first need a tier of organized tournaments below. And "do-it-yourself" kits won't work, because that just creates inconsistency within the OP program. The kits themselves are great, but a more standardized tournament system would be better to pair with them (with a way to report results to FFG towards building a player ranking system with its own unique rewards). Then that lower tier could do the job the Regionals are currently doing, and the Regionals can become more in line with what some seem to expect they should be - Regional in nature.