Adepticon 2014 and the LOTR Tournament

I've been a tad silent since Adepticon 2014 ended last Sunday.  To sum it up, I love going to Adepticon.  If your even remotely into any of this hobby stuff, there's something for you at Adepticon whether it be sci-fi, fantasy, historical, skirmish, battalion, even boardgame like.  There is tons to do at Adepticon for whatever flavor your game is.

I didn't take a lot of pictures, well, because I forgot and was busy admiring other peoples stuff and whatnot.  I spent the bulk of my weekend going to painting and hobby seminars and shopping the numerous vendors for odds and ends, spending a ton of cash on hard to find stuff and things I probably won't open for a few years.  I only played two different games over the weekend.  DGS's Freeblades (check my last blog post for pictures of the 3 mini's I actually did get painted), and LOTR tournament.  I'm basically going to be talking about the LOTR games I played in this entry.

For the LOTR tournament, I did better than last year atleast.  Last year, I lost all 3 games in crushing defeat, yet oddly someone still did worse than me.  Go figure.  This year I actually won a game (while losing the other two).  I did manage to snap a few pictures, and I think the first picture sums it up pretty good.

I apologize for the blurry picture, but this was my last game of the tournament and I actually had to stop the game to whip out my camera and take a picture.  I'm starting off with the last game I played in the tournament for some reason (prolly cause it's still semi-fresh in my head).  I love when two battle lines are about to crash into one another.  After this picture was taken, within 3 turns my lines fell apart.  Knowing what I know now, I should've concentrated my hero's away from the trolls.  Those nazgul in the back (especially The Dwimmerlaik.... nasty nasty that guy is), basically neutralized my heroes while the trolls ripped them apart.  Initially I though, "Regular orcs with two trolls.... I got this shit".  Sadly, I did not have "this shit".  The bad rolling in the beginning didn't help much, but I've had worse luck than that, so I blame myself for the most part (though rolling 1's when actually getting a heroic strike off didn't help much).  It was a fun game and taught me a valuable lesson.  I took a minor loss even though he tabled me (minus Balin and 2 dwarves).  I held my camp in the bottom right corner and he was too busy mopping up my dwarves to realize the victory conditions.  I almost reminded him mid game too, but I needed as many points as I possibly could get my hands on by that time and alas, I remand silent while squeaking away with a few extra points.  Yay me?

John's Orc Army that looked good while crushing my dwarves.  If I drank I'd blame the ale

We'll do a "Quentin Tarantino" thing and go to the beginning now.  My first battle was against a Moria force led by Groblog with The Tainted and 3 fell spirits (?) as a contingency force.  She had too many special characters and not enough bulk troops which basically null-voids Moria's strong point.  Also, if I was going to bring a nazgul, I don't think The Tainted would be the first on my list (even though its a cool model).  She was also facing dwarves with an average defense of 7, so I win all ties, and if she does win a fight, she needs atleast 6's if not 6's by 4's to wound.  When facing a dwarf enemy, bulk troops is key.  Use your superior numbers to surround/trap, and throw 4 dice to my 1 or 2.  Basically, I charged headlong into combat with basically no strategy other than kill the Dweller in the Dark as quickly as possible, tie up the tainted, and make a B-line to any hero unit.  She failed her regular fury (non-heroic) roll with the shaman, and exposed Groblog too early which made me get the upper hand early on.  I downed the Dweller in one turn with Thrain and tied up The Tainted with Thorin.  Balin's special rule "longbeard" really helped me out in this battle, as I was able to steal priority twice, allowing me to pick and choose my targets.  It was a fun game, and afterwards I gave her some tips since she was fairly new to the game.  I'm not expert by any means, but I know a thing or two.  I took a major victory for this game.

The Moria army I faced.  Very nicely painted if I might add.

My second game was against Kyle and his amazingly painted Arnor Force converted into a Game of Thrones theme.  It was a pleasure just to look at his awesome miniatures, let alone play against them.  His diorama was fantastic as well.  I basically did my usual tactic again, bunch up and run in and try to kill his weaker heroes with my stronger ones.  Sadly, that didn't happen.  The terrain was definately in his favor, and he used it brilliantly against me.  He outnumbered me, so he held me up at a major choke point with some of his guys forcing me to split my force, and flanked the rear of my out numbered guys.  On the other side of the table, his cav was brutal.  It really could've gone either way, but he got a few rolls on me and my lines basically crumbled.  Well played sir..... well played.  I took a major defeat since he had all 4 artifacts in his position by the time I was below 25%.  All my heroes managed to survive and were a major factor in keeping me from getting completely overrun early on.  Well played sir, well played.

Kyle's fantastic converted Arnor army with the awesome diorama to go with it.  Everything about it looked awesome.

So I obviously didn't win best general.  I think my painting definitely stood out.  I think if I had a more elaborate display board, I could've competed a bit more with best appearance.  The judges got it right with who won best overall, best general, and best appearance.  The final award was best sportsmanship.  I'm not entirely sure how this is calculated, since for most players score a perfect score on this unless they're a total d-bag or hold up the game.  There probably is an X factor somewhere in there along the lines of effort or something to that degree.  Somehow, I managed to snag that award this year, which was extremely surprising to me in a good way.  I ended up walking away with a cool calendar to post in my hobby room, a box of Goblin Town Goblin's, and some Vallejo airbrush paint which can be used with brushes.  All in all, it was a fun time and I'm really looking forward to next year with (hopefully) a new army and better display board in to.


As for the rest of Adepticon, I'm a bit poorer in the pocket and I took a lot of classes.  I'll get into those topics later on eventually.  Hope you guys enjoyed the read.