Welcome to the 2018 Year's End Festival!

For the next six-plus weeks, until December 31st, we will be enjoying a cavalcade of shows, events and prizes available to each and every member!

What's the festival? It's a celebration of 13 years of Seeing Stars with shows, prize tickets and the return of members old and new as look to revitalize the forum and reinvigorate showing and activity between members.

Check out all the info below to see just what the hubbub's about!

Because this is a festival, there needs to be prizes. Obviously.

For each show, you will earn tickets for your horses’ placements and you can trade those tickets in for a number of different prizes! There will be several different tiers, as follows: 5, 10, 20, 35, 50, 75, 100. There is always the possibility of creating more tiers but right now I’ll be keeping it at these intervals in order to allow for variety and to give everyone a chance at the prizes they really want.

The types of prizes you can earn per tier will vary, with the lowest tier as simple as SS cash or a simple avatar of one of your petz, with jumps of custom show edits, tack, personal hexies and all the way up to full blown custom art and restricted breedings to retired and out of service horses.

Who can offer prizes? ANYONE! If you’re interested in offering a prize, please PM me or another admin so it can be added to each tier board. We won’t tell you how many tickets you want to charge for a donated prize; it’s up to you to determine if your art or hexing skills are going to be available for a lower price or if those two multi-titled horses you want to offer breedings to are of the highest tier available.

We will be hosting two types of shows – pose shows and working shows! Don’t worry, they’re basically the same shows we have right now, just in two easy to judge packages.

Pose shows will consist of – Dressage, Halter, In-Hand, HUS and Western Pleasure. These are mainly posed on pose themselves and will consist of either no edits or very minor ones in the case of IH, HUS and WP. They will be judged the same way that normal pose shows are.

Working shows will consist of – Jumping, Eventing (if demand is there), Reining, Showmanship, Endurance Racing (if demand is there) and Driving. These are shows that have the horse really “in action” and only Showmanship and Endurance Racing require heavy edits.

In addition to earning normal points in these shows, you will also earn TICKETS! A maximum of 10 tickets will be given out to the owner of the winner of each show, with the rest of the owners earning 5 tickets each. Please note that even if you enter multiple horses in a show, you will ONLY earn your set of tickets ONCE – that means if you have a horse that wins and another that places second, you can only take the winner’s share of 10 tickets. If you have horses that place third and fifth, you will only earn 5 tickets, not 10 (5 for each placement). This is to make it more fair all around, and a higher incentive to enter more shows or improve your poses for each show – you’ll earn more tickets, which will earn you more and higher tier prizes!

ANYONE can host shows! No matter who hosts, mod or member, you will earn tickets for the prize board and points toward your horses’ championships. As long as you know the rules of the show you’re hosting, you can open as many as you like – just be sure to judge them in a timely manner!

For anyone that needs help on judging or posing, we will have a posing service open and a coaching service for anyone who needs clarification on show rules. Never hesitate to ask a moderator or an admin – or make a help post in our showing board!

We also have NEW SHOW TYPES - Barrel Racing and Equine Obstacle Course. Be sure to check out the Beta Testing board for full explanations of each!

In addition to normal pose and working shows, we’ll also be holding other events for members who may not be interested in fully showing their horses. Don’t worry, you’ll get tickets for these too!

Do you have any dogs or cats that are interested in pose showing? We’ll have a few pose shows for them too! All points accumulated on SS will count toward their pose championships on other forums (except PKC).

Are you an artist or love to dress up your horses with tack and show edits? We’ll have a number of themed contests where you can show off your editing skills and win some general prizes in addition to earning tickets for our prize redemption board.

Or do you have the weirdest horse of them all and love to take photos? Photo contests that require no editing or posing will be open to everyone on the forum, with more chances to win tickets and more prizes!

If any other members have ideas for shows, GO AHEAD AND HOST THEM! Anyone can host a show, anyone can give out prizes – this is a forum wide celebration, get in on it!

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to run the Triple Crown and Tiara events earlier this year, but it’s better late than never! I am officially announcing the return of the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks as the first two legs of the Thoroughbred filly and colt spring classics, run just a smidge late.

All horses that earned points on the Roads to the Derby and Oaks are still fully qualified for both races, and instead of running each of the legs the requisite number of weeks apart (2 weeks and 3 weeks, respectively), I will be running them in back to back weeks to expedite the process. They will still count as full Triple Crown/Tiara races and you won’t need any asterisks next to your horses if one of them happens to win a coveted classic!

In addition to the above, I am happy to announce the RETURN of the BREEDERS’ CUP to SS! Much like the Triple Crown, I will do my best to run the BC in an abbreviated manner, including all “Win and You’re In” events, culminating in the Breeders’ Cup at the end of the year. All conditions will be the same as the Breeders’ Cup that was run on November 3rd, with our traditional 9 events. All races will continue to be weight for age, meaning Open Level horses will have the least weight while Grade I horses will carry the highest impost.

The real question is though – can you earn tickets while racing? Of course! There will be a separate board in the Festival section for races where you can earn tickets. You cannot earn tickets in the BC, TT or TC – tickets are ONLY available on the special festival board, so please keep that in mind when entering!

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What are you waiting for? Go enter, go win and get some great prizes!