Games-Workshop selling tournament rerolls

Warseer and Bell of Lost Souls are both currently ablaze with news that GW has a new 'reward' for big spenders at their events. You can find the original article on the BoLS's website. I won't go into details of the deal here, as you can read the website for yourself. The quick summary though is that if you spend X on GW products you get rerolls to use during particular games, free shipping, and direct access to Forgeworld stuff.

Anyways... What's my take on this whole thing. First I will tell you what I think tournaments are for. If you are going to go to a tournament, then you are most likely going to try and show you are the best. It should be, for wargames, decided on who the actual best general on the field is, and not by who spent the most. Of course Games-Workshop games are fairly bad in terms of overall balance, so this automatically makes the tournament scene a bit... dodgy.

So then, GW is more or less coming off as rewarding players for purchasing from them. That is great, everyone loves rewards. What I don't agree with is making the reward capable of affecting other players. The free shipping, access to Forgeworld, even free minis are all excellent options for rewarding people who purchase directly, but the moment you let the players get the potential for having an advantage over another player simply because that player bought his army over time, bought from a local or online retailer, or bought the force long ago... the tournament scene is ruined outright.

Re-rolls, to me,  are something that has to have a point value. Something you sacrifice a piece of your army to get a hold of. That is what makes them special, and not just because I did or did not spend X at a GW event. I am no tournament player thankfully, so this hardly affects me, but I can see the potential for damage. if I was going to play someone in a serious game, and they pulled out a free re-roll on me that they got for making a purchase, I would just start packing up my force laughing to myself the whole time. This hobby is supposed to be a game, and if winning means that much to you, then you have lost sight of what the hobby is for.