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.