Live the Smogcon experience! Feb 2014, London.

[dr_norbert]

Smogcon: You are not prepared.

It is with great pleasure that the Smogcon organisers release a brochure and new website with full details about what we have in store for Smogcon 2014. Visit http://smogcon.org to view the information and download the brochure. Dates are February 21-23, 2014.

Smogcon is a unique gaming event held in the UK and modelled after fabled American gaming conventions like Templecon, Warmachine Weekend, and Lock N Load. This will be the 3rd year of the event and it has practically exploded with activities compared to the first two years. Any Warmachine/Hordes and Malifaux gamer within traveling distance of England should plan to come to this event. Also players interested in High Command, Dropzone Commander, and Bushido will have some activities to look forward to.

Full information is available in the brochure, but the key thing to know is that this is a 24 hour gaming party lasting 3 full days. It is not a single tournament, or even just tournaments. It is all that plus casual play (similar to Iron Arena), painting classes and painting competitions, open board and card gaming and RPG sessions. To briefly explain the concept, you pay one price to get a weekend long ticket and then you can participate in any of the activities on offer, all day and night long.  The exception is for the competitive painters out there; we are offering you Sunday-only tickets if you’d like to come and just enter in the painting competition, of which there are many categories to consider.

What makes this all possible is hosting the event within a hotel that has sleeping rooms and event space, all in the same building. The advantages are that you can go up to your room at any time for a quick nap or to pack away your bags and then head back down to your next activity. You can eat and drink at the site and socialise with friends old and new without ever leaving the action. It is a new and awesome gaming experience in Europe.

Early bird tickets are on sale now and are lower than the normal ticket price for a limited time. Very affordable room rates are also locked in for you to take advantage of. We recommend you take a look and share the information with your friends. Please ask us any questions you may have. We cannot promise you will survive until Monday morning, but we can promise it will be worth it. Hope to see you there!

--The Smogcon Organisers

[Joss]

Humm... definatelly something I'd like to attend if I can 

[dr_norbert]

If you have booked a hotel room at the Mandolay, please read this.

 We need all players who have booked rooms at the Mandolay to phone them and let them know you are staying in the hotel to attend SmogCon.

 Please check this as we need you guys to be included in our room allocations.

 Remember, to get the £99 room rate you need to phone the hotel and quote SmogCon when booking.

 Please share this with anyone you know who is going (or planning on going).

 Thanks.

 Team Smogcon.

[Portal]

Hello,

Juste pour dire que Norbert fait partie des orgas du MasterUK que nous avons rencontré là-bas avec Q². Leurs events sont très sérieux et franchement bien organisés. Il serait facilement l'équivalent de notre Zoro dans la rigueur et le sérieux de l'orga (mais il accepte moins de proxys).

Un déplacement sur un tournoi à l'étranger est une expérience que je recommande à tout ceux qui veulent ouvrir un peu les yeux sur ce qui se fait ailleurs.

Et j'ai promis de le dire : Norbert est très beau et très musclé. 

[dr_norbert]

SmogCon update – Phase 2.0

http://smogcon.org/?p=885

Support for this year has been huge, smashing our baseline estimates for attendance, then surpassing our wild hopes for numbers. As such, we wanted to respond to demand to make sure that everyone attending the event will be able to enjoy a full convention experience throughout the whole weekend.
 
As part of that, we are pleased to announce the next phase of the convention. We have now secured a second venue that is four minutes walk from the Mandolay, offering even more quality space to allow us to put on more competitive play for all our supported systems.
 
We will be using the Radisson Blu throughout the SmogCon weekend. This hotel offers bar and food offerings, and is also four star rated, offering free wifi, A/C, natural light and a patio area for smokers or those needing some vitamin D.
 
Also of interest, the Mandolay has recently redecorated their convention space and is looking very nice.
 
Malifaux will now have a dedicated room in the Radisson, running competitive events from 08:00 – 24:00 Friday and Saturday, with an 08:00 – close timeframe on Sunday. There will still be 24-hour open play space for all you Breach Heads in the main SmogCon venue via the SmogPit and we hope to see you all flipping cards throughout the weekend.
 
The Radisson will also be a rotating space for various Warmachine events, and this will allow us to offer up two new 32 player,  50 pt Steamroller tournaments which will qualify players for Sunday’s Masters.
 •We will now be running Beachhead on Friday (with two qualifying spots) and Assault on Saturday (again two qualifying spots, using Deathclock). We will be slightly shuffling the qualifying spots for the other events, with Onslaught now offering two places in the Masters, and Scalpel no longer being a qualifier.
 •To account for these changes, we will be allowing pre-booked players in certain events and current weekend ticket holders to swap into the new events first. Expect an email from us to explain how to do this.
 •Players who have spaces in Invasion, Iron Gauntlet, Onslaught and Hardcore cannot switch these places to the new events. We may also shift players in Invasion to Beachhead to have an even number of players between events as these events will run concurrently and both have the same format.
 •After a period of one week, on November 1st we will open these spaces up to newly booked attendees (still adhering to the two comp slots only at this stage)
 
Early bird weekend discount tickets will no longer be available as of November 10th. We will be capping the weekend passes at 250 (we are currently at 217 tickets sold), to allow us to offer a fantastic weekend to attendees without feeling too cramped and giving you all plenty to do. This does not include the one day passes for painters and Sunday event attendees.
 

This extra space has also allowed us to offer more space up to SmogCon supporter GCT, who will be adding to their event schedule for the weekend. Keep an eye on the site for full details shortly.
 
A final important point, as we are now locked in to most elements of the event, we will be closing the window for ticket refunds as of 00:01 GMT Sunday 1st December. If you need a refund before this time then contact us on smogcon@gmail.com . After this date, we will be unable to offer a refund.
 
 
 
Thanks for your patience, we hope you think the wait was worth it. SmogCon 2014 is going to be huge and a classy start to the 2014 calender.

[dr_norbert]

We sorted out our ticketing problem, so now's the time to get your SmogCon weekend passes. Reduced price ticket sales end on 12-Nov. There are more events now, so you can get into more tournaments, but not many, so don't delay.

http://smogcon.org/

--Norbert

[Portal]

Le truc est alléchant.
On touche à l'orga américaine, sur 3 jours, avec de nombreux tournois.

Je rêverai de faire Invasion le vendredi, le Onslaught le Samedi puis Midnight Madness la nuit. Bien sûr, nul doute que cela permette alors de se qualifier pour le Master du dimanche. 
Ce serait un WE bien rempli...

Dr.Norbert, my dear, just a question : I can see only 15 qualifying spot for master. Is there a hidden 16th ? Or is it reserved to previous year winner ?

[dr_norbert]

  Glad to see that you are interested in coming.  It would be great to have you there.  And yes, you can get TONS of gaming in at a convention like this, so you are getting your money's worth. 

  To others reading this, do not be worried about language problems.  Everyone will accept you here, particularly if you play in the SmogPit rather than in the tournaments.  So don't hesitate about this.  I'd also really love to see you enter into the painting competition to show off the French painting style!

  The Sunday Masters should have all 16 slots filled up by the various tournaments on Friday and Saturday.  No spaces are set aside.  Where did you see that there are only 15 slots for the Masters?  Here is the latest brochure http://smogcon.org/?page_id=651

--Norbert

[dr_norbert]

I'm not sure if any French came to SmogCon, but we'd love to hear from you if you did.

Pictures from the event here:  https://www.facebook.com/smogcon/photos_albums

Pictures from the painting competition here: http://smogcon.org/?p=1185

If you have any feedback, please email us at info@smogcon.org or else posting in the Feedback section of our Forums http://smogcon.org/forum/

Thank you for coming or hopefully see you next year!

--Norbert