Derby Mickleover Hotel

MidCon 2022  - November 4-6

Derby Mickleover Hotel, Derby, DE3 0XX, UK

MidCon 2022 takes place in a comfortable hotel in Mickleover (about five miles from Derby) from Friday morning (9am) November 4 to Sunday evening (6pm) November 6. 

When we say it runs from Friday morning to Sunday evening, we mean it; rather like London's Windmill Theatre in WWII, we never close, so as long as people are still up and about playing games, the convention rooms will remain available for gaming although typically there are only a few diehards around at 3.00am (probably waiting for me to take my turn in Ark Nova).

The 6.00pm finish time on Sunday is nominal. Some people stay overnight on Sunday or live locally and so they tend to carry on playing until bedtime if the hotel staff are OK with that.

Note that this year, we have booked out the entirety of the Derby Mickleover Court Hotel, so we can play where we want (within reason; setting up a game of Twilight Imperium in the restaurant is frowned upon, for instance).

The convention features:

• the opportunity to play board games with like-minded adults, including all the hot games from this year's Essen games fair

• the MidCon music and general knowledge quiz for teams of four on Saturday evening

• a Diplomacy tournament, subject to numbers

• the chance to buy even more board games from Spirit Games

• the chance to sell your surplus games on the Bring & Buy stall on the Saturday or pick up a bargain

MidCon is primarily about playing games and meeting people. You can play any of the number of games people bring along with them, including the hot new games from the Spiel games fair in Essen, which takes place a few weeks before MidCon. Popular games include 18xx, Dune Imperium, Lost Ruins of Arnak, a depressingly large number of depressing games on an HP Lovecraft theme, Terraforming Mars and Great Western Trail, but you are welcome to bring along your own favourite games – you will almost certainly find some people willing to play at least one of them. 

Costs
Registration costs cover the costs of hiring the convention rooms, sending out flyers, maintaining this web site and so on. 

£25 per person for the whole weekend, when booked before October 24, £30 afterwards (i.e. pay on the door).

The day rates are: £15/£15/£10 for Friday/Saturday/Sunday. 

Please note: convention fees are not refundable unless the con is cancelled. The rates have stayed the same again this year even though the con lost about £2,000 last time because attendance was down owing to Covid.

You may register online via the Games Convention Booking System or by BACS (bank) transfer to "MidCon Convention", Lloyds Bank, Colmore Row, 30-00-03, 03033129.

If you prefer the old school way of of paying by cheque, please send  a sterling cheque made out to MidCon Convention, which you should send to Jeremy Tullett, MidCon, 7 Midland Place, Derby, DE1 2RR.

Please note that if you choose to stay at the Derby Mickleover Court Hotel, you should book directly with the hotel, not via Jeremy. Alternative accommodation in the area includes (but is not restricted to) The Littleover Lodge, Premier Inn Derby West, Marton’s Inn Lodge and the Great Northern.

You do not have to stay in the Mickleover Hotel to attend the con, but if you do choose to do so, our advice is to contact the hotel directly by emailing info@derbymickleoverhotel.co.uk and making it clear that the booking is for MidCon, and providing them with your name, room requirements and contact details.

You can also call to make the booking on 01332 521234, and making the employee aware that they are booking into MidCon.

The hotel is now part of the Best Western group and as such the hotel's web site will probably direct you to Best Western's central reservations team who quite possibly are based in Bumphuk, Montana and have no knowledge of "Durrby" or MidCon so you might have difficulty persuading them to offer you the convention rates.

Talking of which, here are the rates, which only apply to Friday and Saturday night and only if you book at least two nights. This is different to previous years and we suspect this leeriness on the part of management reflects unfamiliarity with the convention, which only switched to the Mickleover last year because its usual venue was closed (and remains closed in 2022). Our previous hotel also used to provide the same rates for rooms booked on Thursday and Sunday night but this does not seem to be the case this year but I will double check with Jeremy. If you are talking to an actual person, it might be worth asking whether the con rate extends to Thursday/Sunday nights.

Our illustrious leader speculates that if a family room is actually used by a junior founder member (rather than as an extra place to stash a big bag of games), a breakfast supplement of £12 per person will apply but that's only speculation.

There are 99 rooms in the hotel in total and we have reserved them all but if they have not been sold nearer the time (i.e. October some time) we will release some of the unsold rooms back to the hotel.

The conference wing contains seven rooms, which can (according to the hotel) accommodate 270 people. There is also a first floor balcony area laid to small tables and chairs for quieter, smaller games.

Additionally, there is a small public bar area with a few tables, but it may be best to avoid it as the restaurant will still be available to the public (as was the case at the Hallmark Midland), and they may wish to use that space.

In other words, there is plenty of space to accommodate a larger MidCon than we have ever actually achieved.

In 2020, we assigned one room as a "face mask" room (for COVID reasons) but no one used it so we abandoned that idea in 2021; however, feel free to wear a mask if you wish and if you want to minimise contact with others, probably your best bet is to play in the "quiet" gaming room (although I am not sure which one has been assigned that designation!).

The hotel has a dedicated car park but you will need to register your vehicle's details with the hotel reception to secure free parking (and avoid a hefty fine). 

Directions

• This hotel is just outside the “village” of Mickleover, about 5.5 miles from the city centre. It is situated just off the A38 to the south-west of the city.
  
• The A38 is the trunk road to Birmingham. The A38, A50 and M1 together form a kind of orbital route around the city, and they connect with each other.
• If coming by public transport, the best bet is to head to Derby railway station and then make your way to the bus station. There is a bus that stops near the hotel; the fare was £3.50 in 2021. Another bus runs as far as the village of Mickleover (and I presume the fare is similar)
• The taxi fare from Derby BR station to the hotel is about £10

Local amenities
This will be our second year in this hotel and the consensus is that it is a better hotel in terms of facilities than the Hallmark Midland. The gaming rooms are closer together, the car parking more copious and it is a more modern hotel. Plus it has a spa. Whoop-de-doo.

That being said, it is not in the centre of Derby so it is not so good for the social element of the con. We did look into hiring a shuttle bus so ferry con members into and back from Derby but at £75 an hour considered this as unvaible in the age of Uber et al.

There are some pubs in the village, a chippie, an Indian restaurant and a cake shop, so far as I can recall.

Although MidCon is "a games convention not a beer festival" we intend once again to have some ale on offer from the Dancing Duck brewery.