Bring and Buy hits new heights
The room where we held the Bring & Buy last year is
no longer available so we have to find somewhere new
to hold it. Current thinking is to hold it on the
third floor of the bar area, commandeering the small
tables and possibly the chairs also, and throwing
out anybody who has sneaked up there for a crafty
quiet drink.
Hooray for beer
As per usual, the con will be supplementing the
beers, wines and spirits on offer in the hotel bar
with a selection of beers that will be available in
our own bar in the main gaming room.
Some might describe these beers as "real ale"
but some maintain the term "ale" applies only to
beers brewed without hops; I know - it's not like
beer bores to be pedantic!
Anyhoo, the beers will be provided by Dancing
Duck, a local brewery based in Derby.
On draught, we'll have Ay Up, 22, dcuk, Abduction
and Dark Drake.
Ay Up - pale session ale
22 - best bitter
dcuk - fashionable pale hoppy ale
Abduction - full-flavoured Indian Pale Ale (IPA)
Dark Drake - oatmeal stout
Register your games for the Bring & Buy
You can now list the games you want to sell in the
Bring & Buy
sale on Saturday using the
online app.
Less than a month to go
T'committee members are girding their loins for a
pre-con meeting on the 13th to complete the final
preparations. To be honest, we're at the stage where
it's largely a case of wash, rinse and repeat but
that won't stop us arguing the toss over whether the
staples in the con booklet should be vertical or
diagonal or whatever.
The thing to note is that the discount for
registering in advance of the con has now passed.
You can still turn up
at the con and pay at the desk. Although bookings
are comfortably ahead of previous years, we should
have room for our usual number of "walk ins".
Giles is beavering away on the Bring & Buy web app
and this should be ready to go a couple of weeks
ahead of the con.
A number of people - well, two - have told me that
they have not received confirmation of their hotel
bookings from the hotel. I received a confirmation
but it did take about four weeks. Anyway, if you
have not received confirmation of your hotel
booking, it might be worth calling to check.
Someone has kindly pointed out that a part of the
web site was still saying that the wearing of COVID
masks will be mandatory in the Atlee gaming room.
This was the case in 2020 but we dropped the
stipulation in 2021 and just to confirm, there is no
need at this year's con to wear a mask, unless you
want to celebrate Bonfire Night.
We're back!
More fun than a Conservate Party conference, MidCon will
take place this year on November 4 - 6 at the
Mickleover Court Hotel, which is the place where we
held it last year.
The committee was split over whether to return to
the Midland hotel (good for public transport, within
walking distance of centre of Derby) or stay with
the Mickleover Court (bigger, more modern hotel but
stuck out on a limb) but in the end the decision was
taken out of our hands, as HM Government has once
again block-booked the hotel out all year.
There are a few things to note about this year's
con.
Firstly, we have booked out the whole hotel - all 99
rooms of it. This means that if we sell all 99
rooms, we will pretty much have the hotel to
ourselves but don't forget, the hotel has a
restaurant that is open to non-residents and they
will probably want to spend some time in the bar
before and after their meals relaxing, without
having to worry about a nearby game of Pit! or
Liar's Dice deafening them.
There is a first-floor balcony area that is likely
to be less crowded and suitable for card games or
smaller games, such as Carcassonne.
If we don't sell all 99 rooms then we'll have to
release some back to the hotel come October so there
may still be some bewildered tourists wandering
around wondering what in tarnation is going on.
Our expectation is that it'll be the family rooms
and suites that are most likely to go unsold but if
you did not attend MidCon
last year, feel free to invest the money you saved
and treat yourself to a suite.
Secondly, as I understand it, the hotel is insisting
that they will only offer the MidCon
rate on bookings of two nights and that the cheap
rate will not be available on Thursday night or
Sunday night. There are other hotels in the area and
I for one will be staying somewhere else on the
Thursday (and going home on the Sunday night).
Thirdly, you should note that last year the central
reservations team at Best Western (who now own the
Hallmark hotels) had at best a passing acquaintance
with the arrangements at the Mickleover Court and
our advice is to book directly with the hotel, as
per advance given in
Booking link in the left-hand margin.
Layout of the hotel
This will be our second year in the Mickleover Hotel,
although happily the manager is someone who has been
in charge at the Midland when it was used to host
MidCon so he knows what to
expect.
We have a
map of the hotel and it is absolutely huge. By
which I mean the map is huge although the hotel
apparently is a bit bigger than the Midland where
the con used to be held.
The Gladstone suite will be used for the Bring & Buy
on Saturday.
The Atlee room is for gaming, gaming and more
gaming.
Separated by a partition from the Atlee suite is,
appropriately enough, the Churchill suite. This will
be used for general gaming and the quiz on Saturday
evening (it says here).
Along the corridor from the Atlee/Churchill
coalition is the Eden/Macmillan "quiet gaming" room.
This tends to be colonised by the 18xx players but
anyone who wants a quiet room where they can play
"thinky" games are welcome.
No, I don't know what Sir Anthony Eden did to
deserve having a suite named after him. Perhaps they
will rename it the Liz Truss suite next year.
In the corridor running outside the
Atlee/Churchill/Macmillan suites will be the
registration desk and also the area where the
MidCon meals will be
served. It is apparently a wide corridor.
In 2021, meals were priced at around £7.50, I think.
It will not have escaped the notice of most of you
that prices are currently rising faster than Warren
Beatty's trousers when there is a surprise knock on
the door. There
are not many restaurants in walking district of the
hotel - in fact, I think there is precisely one - so these
meals might prove popular.
On the other side of the corridor is the main gaming
room where you will find Spirit Games and the real
ale bar.
Ales on offer this year will most likely be from the Dancing Duck
Brewery. Last year we had Ay Up (an amber session beer); Dark
Drake (a chewy ale) and 22 (a hoppy, pale coloured
ale). In an unprecedented event, the beer ran out by
Friday tea-time so we can surmise that the stuff
went down well. Of course, we re-upped on Saturday
and Sunday and the last pint was drawn at about
5.55pm, just five minutes before the con officially
closed.
Drinks will also be available in the hotel's main
bar.
There is a sort of mezzanine overlooking the
bar where people may have a crafty game of Mamma
Mia, Love Letter or Drang Nach Osten if they wish.
Breakfast
Those lucky souls who snagged a room at the hotel
will be entitled to breakfast, assuming they did not
book the room via some dodgy bandit rip-off booking
app.
This is how breakfast worked last year when things
were a bit more Covidy. Breakfast had to be booked when checking-in
(Jeremy suggested it needed to be "pre-booked" but I
maintain that is a tautology), and slots will be
available at 30 minute intervals from 0700. Please
note, that start time is an hour earlier from usual
weekend timings.
The 30 minute slot thing is a hangover from tighter
anti-Covid measures, and may note be in place this
year.
What did you do in the Diplomacy era, Daddy?
John Harrington (that's me but I love writing about
myself in the third person) has done a bit of a
nostalgia piece on what games
were available to con goers in the early days of
MidCon.
MidCon committee
members John Harrington and Dave Simpson sharing a
pint at ManorCon
We already have a Facebook page, but now we have
a
Facebook
group to make it easier for you to do whatever
it is people do on Facebook groups.
I expect we'll be putting things on it such as
the Bring & Buy spreadsheets but our big hope is
that it will prove a useful resource for matching up
people looking for games with those looking for
players.
If this is your first time, or if you've a bad
memory for faces, it might be useful to see what the
committee members look like, just in case you wish
to raise an issue with them, ask them a question or
buy them a drink.
We'll include their mug shots in the con booklet,
and possibly have them on display in the main gaming
rooms - so you have been warned.
For a sneak preview,
images
of the committee member are on this page.
Spirit Games will once again be running the
official games stall. If any you have any specific
games you'd like to buy from him - including those
released at this year's Essen games tournament -
phone him on 01283 511293 or
e-mail
him to see whether they have it in stock and, if
they do, he will put it to one side and then bring
it along to the con.
We have a Boardgamegeek guild
If we'd created the guild 42 guilds earlier we
could have got the coveted 1830 number for our
guild, but as it is, the URL is: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/guild/1872
Please join the guild because currently I am
Nobby No-Mates and the only guild member.
The guild has a calendar - just one entry on it
at the moment - plus a forum (empty) and an images
library (ditto).
Farcebook and Witter
As well as the Facebook group we have a bog
standard
Facebook page here We also have a
Twitter account that is not so much dormant as
comatose.
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