Aug 31, 2010
So over the last week Blood of Kittens has been getting a steady stream of emails and complaints about a certain tournament organizer that has done a terrible job at running his events. These GT events go under the header of Conquest and if you have followed this or a number of sites you might have noticed that things aren’t going too well for this events. In order to help us understand exactly what makes Mondo a douche it is only fair we present a simple chronology of what has gone wrong. Blood of Kittens thinks that anyone planning to attend a Mondo Vega event should think twice about attending.
Let us start with the first event held this January– Conquest Seattle. Some major drama took place before the event even got started. Conquest events had secured terrain from a group of gamers that had provided it for previous Conquest Seattle events. With Mondo newly on the scene things got a little weird. A few weeks before the event took place the group pulled all their terrain as well judging duties they were going to perform. Leaving not only Conquest without terrain, but also without judges.
Now thankfully a dedicated group of players and the GW stores in the area provided enough terrain for the event. As well Mondo flew up a judge from San Francisco to head the event. So disaster averted. At the time Blood of Kittens didn’t think much of this as most players placed seem to place blame on the group that pulled out. In retrospective this looks like a sign of things to come.
So now on to the next Mondo Conquest event this one set in Las Vegas. This event was canceled do to lack of interest. People had to be refunded money which still hasn’t happened. This is back in March mind you. This is the start of another pattern: no real local support, nor any real advertising. Hoping the lure of winning a ticket to GW’s Vegas event would be enough for people to put down $60 bucks.
Now we move on to the Conquest held in the Bay Area. Once again no real advertising or promotion. Did I mention that people who didn’t even pay won prizes? This is also the first time that Blood of Kittens met Mondo Vega in person. Blood of Kittens noticed that Mr. Vega really could care less to watch his own events. Having covered two Conquest events Mondo only seemed to show up to hand out the prizes or tell people that they were going to be mailed to them. This is quite the departure from going to any other event where TOs spend most of the time walking or at least watch their own events.
Now we move to the next GT. This time in sunny Los Angeles. Due to lack of players Mondo drops a day from the event and moves to another location. Did we mention that the players were informed just a week before the event that this was happening? A few people dropped out of the event and asked for a refund and were promised they would get one. These players were told a little chestnut by Mondo himself: players had to wait 6 weeks for a paypal refund…funny that if you want to dispute a charge through paypal you only have exactly 6 weeks to file a complaint. Lucky at least one player has gotten his money back as of today because of shit storm he had to start to get Mondo’s attention. Also at this point with the exception of Conquest Seattle no event by Mondo has been able to get over 30 players combined Fantasy and 40k players.
After the Los Angeles event Blood of Kittens started to get messages and talk about how all Conquest events have been pulled from the GT circuit because of all the complaints. Now I am not sure how this works but, GW runs some sort of message board or email list for circuit TOs. This board I guess is sworn to secrecy as no one is able to give Blood of Kittens copies of the emails about Conquest being booted. So at first Blood of Kittens didn’t feel good about posting any of this sort of information. Now though the evidence is kinda overwhelming. Having heard from a few GW reps as well as other TOs, Conquest events were indeed booted from the Circuit. So what does Mondo Vega do? He continues to promote his events as a Vegas qualifier. This is plain simple false advertising. The question still remains will GW honor GT Vegas tickets regardless of Mondo shenanigans? To top it all off he has not paid the travel expenses for some Judges for his events.
This behavior is nothing new from Mondo as other horror stories by non 40k conventions have attested to that he has been running into the ground. For all the hard work by judges and players that make these events possible for a poor opportunist to take advantage is pretty sad. Why Mondo thought Warhammer events would be a gravy train is anyones guess. It was obvious from speaking to him that he cares more about the money than the players or his staff. Let us hope he does the right thing and pass the torch to other gamers in the area he wanted to run events. The biggest lesson here is that our hobby works best when people start small and work from the ground up. At the very least Mondo Vega seems to have gotten well in over his head.
There is an email list that goes around to all the tournament organizers. I know because I’m on it. I don’t know if it’s necessarily so secret; I think it just hasn’t occurred to anyone that there would be merit in sharing those emails with a website that’s looking for reasons to publicly vilify someone.
That having been said, if Mondo continues with the kind of behavior you describe in this article, he will eventually get a visit from the police. He needs to be careful.
You tread very carefully, so this seems more of an informational service that stunt. But generally RealGenius doesn’t like talking about RealGenius in the third person.
I know nothing of this whole deal, except that this isn’t the same Mondo as Don Mondo on Dakka is it? That’s who first came to mind when I saw “Mondo” who I have had good dealings with in trades and such.
Ah, the douchey little blog-magazine that could!
I’ve always said I think of BoK as a hobby centered US Weekly, and I mean that as a compliment.
We need someone to perform this function. I blog as much as anyone and I’ve never heard these stories.
Either Mondo is a crook or he’s incompetent – either way, he shouldn’t be running events. You’re going to save folks some money.
That’s a public service, Nick. I think you need a medal!
Yup, ConQuest events are gone from the circuit. The e-mail referenced and sent to all TO’s does indeed exist.
Most of this info was on message boards, Brent. Try to keep up, dammit.
So what Brent, you dont like US Weekly? =]
::fist pump::
That means that TSHFT will be the only Vegas Qualifier in Seattle for 2011 at this point. We’ve been going head-to-head with Conquest to be the best tourney in Seattle, and I feel like we won. ::flex::
LTMDTTS
It really was no contest Fluger.
Nope, different Mondo.
You’re going to be there, right?
Kind of. The wife wants to do stuff this weekend on Saturday, but I’ll stop by Sunday morning to say hi. On the bright side Dan Root gets to use my ticket and I think he’ll have a good time, he has a very cool ork army he has been working on for a while that he will bring.
The more Orks the better. YAY!
Sorry you won’t be there for me to destr…I mean…play against you. >:)
He has already been reported to the police.
I just received an e-mail from him saying that my fee from Conquest LA will be refunded this weekend. This is the first response that I have gotten from him after over 5 e-mails since June.
It is a shame in a way. He had a great idea to team up with a convention and hold several GT level events. He got on the golden ticket bandwagon and just he thought the money and players would come rolling in.
The lack of foresight with his promotion and marketing was the death of these events. If he only devoted some time and effort into them, they could have gone so well.
I was one of the few that gave him a second chance after the Vegas fiasco last April. I attended the LA Conquest, which changed venue a week before the event. I still had a good time. The simple fact is, you can only give someone the benefit of the doubt once. But now, his credibility is shot. The real positive thing about his event was Doc Dragon as a rules judge. Now that Doc is gone, what is really left? I still have not received my Golden Ticket and will be contacting GW directly. I won’t be holding my breath. Any future events with Gabriel Vega (Mondo) will be avoided like the plague (or more specifically plague censor bearers). I will have to say that BOK did an excellent job getting the info out there for the gaming community. If the Conquest events are dead, then they died at the hands of their own tournament organizer!
There was some other drama too. He originally told people he was affiliated with the Slaughter (SCGWL), which I run, even naming the Seattle event the “Seattle Slaughter”. When I asked him politely to change the event name (we have been using Slaughter for our events for 4 years now) he was a flat out dick to me. All I did was ask that he change the name so that there would be no confusion between our events. And, oh yeah, the Seattle tournament had some serious logistics issues.
So, months down the road, he emails me wanting to talk to me over the phone. I try to get him to correspond over emails so that I have a paper trail on him, but he presses for a phone call, so I have a conversation with him over speaker phone with my wife present. Basically, he wanted us to do the judging for him and “lend” him our terrain. His offer was boxes of unoppened GW terrain, which we have enough of in reserve to build furniture out of. I politely told him no and that we had a conflicting event on one weekend he wanted to borrow our stuff (NeonCon in Vegas) and he told me that Neon Con was going to be cancelled and not happen. This, of course, turned out to be total BS, but I politely declined and went on ignoring him. Anyone who has had any dealings with him will tell you that dealing with the guy feels like dealing with a used car salesmen.’
There were some other issues, but those are the only ones I can personally vouch for. The guy ruined the Seattle Conquest GT and has pretty much been a poisonous force on the circut.
~Q aka Phazael SCGWL.Com
When and where is TSHIFT? My group are looking for a replacement convention for Conquest.
There are 2 TSHF tournaments for 40k & two for WFB each year. The website with all the info is http://tshft.com/
You don’t recieve a golden ticket from the event. The TO sends the list of the top two plus whover finished 3rd to GW and GW has you on a “list.” As long as the scores were reported to GW you should be fine.
Better hurry and get registered, the event is this weekend. The site says there may be tickets at the door but reserving is much safer.
Assuming the article and your post are true, then I heartily suggest that anyone from Conquest NW events should put their energy into making TSHFT bigger and better. It’s already an established con, with an honest TO, a sensible scoring system, and an active player base.
Here’s the rules packet
http://tshft.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=7&func=view&id=511&catid=12
Only thing is that it’s 2000 points for this event and I’m not sure if Zen updated that or not.
The location is at Magnuson Park and its a bit tricky to find (just look for fat guys and you should find it!
).
If you can’t make it this weekend we have another one in 2011 in March and then another next September. The Sept 2011 one will be a Vegas Qualifier.
Seriously, I can’t tell you how strongly I feel that TSHFT is a great event. Zen has worked hard to make comp-bunnies and competitive players alike have a great time and its just a solid event through and through.
Plus…I’m there!
Absolutely. We’ve done 5 40k TSHFTs now and each one has been better attended than the last. We’re drawing people from the Portland area and from the Tri-Cities and Bellingham. I’m hoping to get some Canadians down here as well as some of the guys from Eastern WA and Idaho, but SpoCon and OFCC and Astronomicon all kind of leech out the player pool.
In any event, The Seattle Heart of Fire Tournament is awesome and you should check it out.
Tasty is coming to it this weekend and I know Chaosgerbil is going as well. Those two and myself should have plenty of stuff to talk about in the upcoming week in regards to the event.
Also, Nathaniel is banned from TSHFT.
We certainly don’t want to see any player pools leached out as a result of our events.
We have a great working relationship with WarMaster’s Challenge in Ontario – maybe we can work together to cross promote TSHFT and Astro, ensure they are far enough apart to prevent any leaching and improve the success of both events?
More events is always good. Drop me a line and let’s see if we can work something out to make both (indeed all) of the local events stronger out west.
Mike M.
Astronomi-con Co-organizer
While I’m TSHFT’s biggest cheerleader; Zen is the one who runs it and plans it. Best bet to get in touch with him is PM him on the Ordo Fanaticus boards or else go to his blog: http://bloghammer.net/ or go to TSHFT.com and talk to him there.
lol
Yeah, they’ll be sending them out at the end of the GT season from what I understand.
So let me get this straight. I signed up for the Bay Area conquest GT, and paid extra for a t-shirt. I didn’t get the t-shirt, since Mondo claimed they were losing money for the event. I accepted this, and wasn’t going to push it. I had a good time.
But you’re saying that some of the prize winners didn’t even pay their entry fee? Now I’m pissed.
Well, I just got a notice that Conquest refunded my money for that t-shirt. Go figure.
Just got back from Conquest SF/Pacificon. I had a good time, but was bummed that nobody stepped up to run a 40k tournament there.
I can attest to the veracity of the LA events as it was I who had to cause such a flipping drama scene (which I don’t like doing) to get my money back. It took 9 weeks of BS.
I can’t say with utter certainty that the guy is a fraud, but the evidence is so stacked against him that I can’t see any other explanation. I hate to see an active TO get slammed, but this dude brought it on himself.
Yeah, I know. But the fact is I have little faith that he will follow through on his end. So I will just make sure GW has the information for myself (2nd place) and the other person who won (he got first) the Conquest LA GT.
What happens is that we fill out a spreadsheet and submit it to Ed Spettigue. In that sheet we detail the top three for Golden Ticket contention, based on whatever criteria our event is using (in our case, 1st overall, Best General, then 2nd Overall is the alternate) with full contact information for those people. I think the third person is there in case someone gets invites from multiple events, making an alternate an option. In any case, once this spreadheet is submitted, its out of our hands and fully within GWs.
I just wanted to Chime in advise that Gabriel Vega’s Conquest events are in no-way related to ConQuest Calgary & Imaginary Wars, which are locally run, locally supported
Well post on here that they have you information. I was the 40k winner (Brad Townsend) along with Ryan Shepard so as long as they have your info they should have ours
Regarding the Seattle GT. There was a lot of behind the scene drama that happened between Conquest and the NW Fallen (the group that was going to run the GT). NW Fallen has everything that transpired documented. No need to get into all that now… but I will say the terrain was not pulled it was flat out refused by Conquest and GW reps. Terrain was there the night before the GT started and it was said it was not needed. *shrug* Believe what you will.
XC
Hey Y’all
I hope that Prizes & Refunds are going out at this time. I no longer have a say in this but after much back and forth this past week I told Mondo’s assistant (Mondo no longer answers my e-mail) to use my $285 to pay back those people who need refunds & prize support. I just gave up on getting my money and I hope they use it to pay y’all back.
As a result of all this I’ll not be back at Pacificon to run Warhammer as I’ve done for the past 5 years.
Doc
That’s very standup of you, Doc, and completely unnecessary. No one I know feels you were in any way responsible for any of the controversy, and I personally feel that you were responsible for the positive aspects of the tourneys. I hope this does not discourage you from your participation in the hobby, and I look forward to gaming with you again in the future.
That’s very standup of you, Doc, and completely unnecessary. No one I know feels you were in any way responsible for any of the controversy, and I personally feel that you were responsible for the positive aspects of the tourneys. I hope this does not discourage you from your participation in the hobby, and I look forward to gaming with you again in the future.
After my drama with Mondo at the Conquest SF Ragnarok, I can completely believe everyone else’s stories about the guy. I am so thankful that I paid with American Express as they were happy to retreive my refund for me. Doc, you were one of the best parts about that event and I seriously hope you look into running them yourself as I feel they would be way more organized and you probably would have plenty of volunteers/apprentices.