Adepticon Team Tournament Recap

We had a blast!  This was my 11th team tournament (had to miss it one year due to a vacation) and is definitely one of the more fun events.  This year the Adeptus Film Co. went all out for theme type stuff outside of our armies and displays base.  Here's some of the pieces of flair.

- Avatar 2 movie posters
- (for the Greater) Good-bar candy bars to give away
- new shirts and our usual directors hats and scarves
- jungle sounds and music playing under curtain.
- an actual movie trailer created for the base.

We unfortunately didn't get any practice in the games so we went right down the middle for battle points.  Some tough match ups with wave serpents all over the place.  I ended up going 2-2-1 so it's about as average as you can get!  I think as a team we've just decided to go for theme and painting and scrap the potential of battle points.

With that said, we won best Xenos!  It seems to be my award, it's the 4th time I've won that one.  Alien scum for the win!

Here's how our board ended up turning out.

I didn't take any shots of the games, but there were so many beautiful armies.  Here are some inspirational pictures.  I wish I would have remembered to take my camera out more, my wife always gives me a hard time for constantly forgetting.  I wish I could have seen the shadow box display.  There was always a line.  That is a concept I've been dying to do for a Death Korps of Kreig army display.

sucking the life out of the imperial world.  Even had "fluid" rising

I loved the backdrop effort that went into this

Very thought out theme.  Great building, tone of detail

Our friends from the north, team Quebec!

Next year we're putting Danny in a costume

Team Handsome's beautifully painted Eldar.  Gorgeous

swooping hawk themed wraith knight

dark reaper themed wraith knight

Chicago Kamikaze's brought flowing water... loved it!

Next year we're really going to try and design the miniatures to fit into a movie.  Any ideas on a cool theme?

Adepticon 2014 Champs Coverage

Another great year of Adepticon.  Had a blast and am still trying to recover my voice (from yelling over the crowds).  We had a blast running the 40k friendly and were happy with all the great games we had on the team tournament.

I figured since I never take great notes on the games, I'd just post some cool pictures and an overall recap with how things went.  This post will focus on the 40k Championships.

The great thing about this event was there was absolutely no pressure for me.  I was 100% committed to running the 40k Friendly on friday so no matter what if I advanced I planned on rejecting... like I really had a shot.  I ended up winning my first games, 2nd being against my team tournament and regular gaming partner Jeff (small world).  The third game I lost against Bill Kim who ended up winning the overall for Thursday, and the last game I lost against a great opponent with a beaststar.  Was my first experience against it and surprisingly I was able to take it out - at the cost of a good portion of my army.

I had a great time with 4 great opponents.  I think I ended up around 57th our of 220 players.  Not too shabby with as little practice I get in.

Here's the army in all it's glory that I took.

One thing I realized is I just hate static shooting.  Whereas the broadsides were a huge deterrent and a focal point for my opponents, I don't like not being able to move with them.  I think I'd much rather go a third skyray and third riptide to keep mobility.  Either way, Tau are getting shelved for awhile while I work on my imperial forces.

Now for the massive photo dump... captions in the photos!  I realized that either my camera is getting worse or I just was way too unsteady while I was taking photos.  Sorry if the quality wasn't 100%.  Time to get a tripod.

first round against Tyranids.  I stole the initiative which is really harsh when playing Tau.  Kind of went downhill from there.

Second round against Jeff's armor 14/13 brigade. Way more difficult then I thought it would be but ultimately pulled out the win.  Serious amount of lascannons!

Bill Kim's demons in round 3

The beasts of slannesh ended up being my undoing.  Just didn't have a solution to get rid of them.  Ended up having a sole kroot on the table at the end!

Round 4 opponent's beaststar elder

Killed the beaststar in the end, but didn't have enough to pull a win.  Going 1st is rough when there are jet bikes on the board to grab objectives.  

Next post will cover the 40k team tournament.

Droned Out, and Not-So-FLGS

I spent the weekend frantically painting, I give kudos to my wife for being patient with me this time of the year every year.  Yesterday was spent painting drones all day.  Whoa, they are monotonous.  I guess since it's the exact same model over over.  I'm about 90% finished with them: 8 marker drones and 12 gun drones.

Additionally, I painted about 25 flying stands.  I realized after playing tau for so long the drones pop off those flying stands all game long.  It gets super annoying.  Even though it'll be a bigger pain to transport them since they'll take up more space, I'm going to glue them down to the basing.

Here's where I left them at last night.  All lined up in their assembly line painting.

On to my little rant.  I went to my local gaming store Saturday for an Adepticon practice tournament. It was 1,850 and designed to prepare for the champs.  I really wanted to knock the rust off my dice and was excited to participate.  Made the 30 minute drive over and got my army out and set up on my display base.

After chatting with the other players I made it over to the check in.  Was #17, and heard an employee say, "well I guess that means we have an odd number of people".  I thought nothing of it.

Table pairings came and apparently they just went down the line for pairing.  When it got to my name they said I had a bye.  F@#K!  Maybe I am getting old, but honestly the point of playing in a tournament is "playing".  Not getting full victory points for a bye.  I don't want to wait around 2.5 hours until the next round starts.  Why they didn't have a ringer army was beyond me.

I went up to the counter and asked for my money back and to withdraw from the tournament.  The owner asked if I'd like to play a 1,000 point game.  My response was no, I was here to play my 1,850 list.  He then followed up with saying he could scrap something together.  I said no, I was looking for a competitive game (and didn't want to basically try to rush the game in a short window of time). Was this an unreasonable thing for me to expect?  Still not sure why there was no ringer army prepared since half of the time you'll get an odd number of people.  I've run many tournaments and it is just something you have to prepare for.

Packed up, then drove home.  On the way back my blood was really boiling and is making me reconsider going to that store anymore.  It is pretty irritating I basically wasted a few hours of my Saturday. At least I got to get a workout in and a little additional painting.

I thought more and more, is it time that I look at opening up my own store?  There is a lack of gaming stores in the Chicago area.  We have Games Plus in Mt. Prospect, and now Draxtar (my lovely experience Saturday) way out west in Batavia.  Not a whole lot in-between.  I know a couple of people that are interested in getting together to do this too.  Having been in trade sales at GW, I know how ridiculously hard it is to run a gaming store, but I wonder if I could make it work.  Food for thought...

Back to painting drones!

Adepticon TT Display Progress #3

We had a super productive night last night working on the display board.  In addition, we have some extra surprises that Danny worked on... going to really add to the overall presence.  After looking at the display more and more, we think we're not going to do a backdrop, it'll take away from the 3d aspect of the viewing experience.

I'm still psycho worried about the one platform that I jacked up the wires on, Greg and Jeff will be bringing it to Greg's work to get re-soldered.  Hopefully everything goes well.  We did a test run and by angling it in, it fits in my jeep, so at least that works.

We really went to town adding fake plants, and dry brushed up the extras and added flock and bushes, I really think it turned out well and captured the look and feel on what we wanted, basically the islands of Pandora from Avatar.  Onto the progress shots!

grrr... the bottom platform doesn't light up!  Hope we can fix it

I like how the over brush of the sand actually picks up the light

I'm working on more painting, heading over to a 1850 practice tournament at my FLGS this afternoon.  I gotta knock the rust off my dice!

Sunday will be my big paint day, I hope to basically do the painting marathon and get everything done.  Still have about 2 hours left on my riptide, a few hours on the skyrays, and the 20 drones!