Adepticon 2018

Typically February and March tend to be my most active months on this blog, yet this year was a bit different.  I'm usually pretty busy for the months leading up to Adepticon, yet I've always had time to post pics or something of what I was up to.  Unfortunately, this time around I bit off a little more than I could chew, going into Adepticon with models still needing to be painted.  I partially blame work, but I under-estimated the time needed to complete certain tasks.  I somehow managed to complete everything, but at the expense of not posting pictures (and staying up late every night for 2 weeks ahead of the show).

With Necromunda being re-released this past November, I wanted to do a full game board.  Something simple would not suffice.  I remember at the ripe age of 13 playing with the unpainted plastic bulkheads and the shitty cardstock buildings and then looking at White Dwarf to see the underhive in all it's glorious splendor.  Knowing I lacked the skill and the funds to create the battlezones at 13, I accepted the cardstock buildings and still managed to have a lot of fun.  This time around, in my 30's I have both the skill and the funds to create something awesome, something that screams "Necro-fucking-Munda", and that's exactly what I set out to do.

Not my picture, credit goes to Jeremy O.

Not my picture, credit goes to Jeremy O.

Not my picture, credit goes to Jeremy O.

This table was a labor of love.  I promised I would provide a table for Necromunda at Adepticon this year, so that gave me the motivation I needed.  I spent a good 2 months painting it and I know if I had a time machine and I showed it to the 13 year Dave, he would've pissed his pants.  I bought the MDF kit about 2 years ago from a website called Wargames Tournaments when they were having a xmas sale, and it sat in it's packaging until just after Thanksgiving of 2017.  I drybrush, washed, and drybrushed again every piece before putting it together and it took a long time.  I also added the munitions kit and 2 alchomite stack kits from Games Workshop to give it a little color.  I envisioned an industrial maze with huge towers belching smog as gunfire erupts on all floors.  I have a few more things I'd like to add to it like bases for the platforms and a few more larger towers, but I'm pretty happy with it for now.  The most important thing.... it's awesome to play on.

Getting back to on track, Adeption 2018 was last weekend and boy was it a lot of fun as always.  I didn't do any classes or seminars this year, just played games.  I think going forward, this will be the norm for me.  Not to knock the seminars or classes, but everything taught in them is pretty much on youtube and I rarely get to play games, let alone an entire 4 days filled with dice rolling.  So yeah, I'm going to stick to rolling dice rather than smearing paint at Adepticon.

So I played in the Necromunda tournament Thursday night and ended up taking 2nd place with my Delaque (seen in the previous post).  This was my first time playing the new edition, and I really liked it.  Sure, I miss all the flavor from the original version, but the new edition cut a lot of the nonsense from the original and "stream-lined" the gameplay.  I'm usually someone who hates the term "stream-lined" when it comes to games, be they miniature, roleplaying, or video games because it typically means they dumb it down to the lowest common denominator which tends to kill the soul of the game.  In Necromunda's case, the soul is still there.  They just cut out a lot of the fat that caused gameplay to take much longer and having to constantly be flipping thru the book.  Thumbs up to GW on this one, and I had a lot of fun playing in the tournament.  Here's a few of the tables we got to play on...

Friday, I just helped my buddy Brent run his "Attack of the Frost Giants" game.  It was a large 8-player Frostgrave game that pitted the players against both each other and a bunch of Frost Giants that would appear when certain treasure tokens were picked up.  Brent played the frost giants on his side of the table and I played them on the other side.  When the players picked up certain treasure tokens, a frost giant would appear, 8 total including a king and queen.  It was a lot of fun.  There was a ton of climatic moments but the only picture I managed to take was a lone dwarf about to charge my one giant in the center of the table.

And the dwarf won....

Saturday I played in a custom scenario written by the man himself Joseph McCullough who was present for the entire tournament.  Have a question?  Just ask the dude who wrote the game.  I always enjoy Joe being around at Adepticon to bounce a few crazy ideas off him, like my "Albino Orc warband" idea.  I still need to play him in a game of Frostgrave.... or maybe LotR's if he's up for that.  I'll bring the armies if he's got the time.

Basically it was 3 games on 3 different boards, each board had 4 people playing 2v2.  The 4 people stayed together on each board, but every game you were allied with a new person, so by the end of the 3rd game you were allied with each player for at least one game, hence the name "Strange Alliances".  Each game there was a task you had to complete with your partner while trying to prevent the other 2 players from completing they're tasks.  I played my necromancer for this tournament.  The first game, we were in the dungeons (scenario 3 in the package) trying to collect treasure and not be eaten by golems.  I got my ass kicked in this game.  The guy directly across from me was on fire and I took a beating, and then got eaten by golems.

I managed to fling some mud around, but my crew pretty much all died and my necromancer ended up being a snack to that one golem.  Oh well, life is cheap in Frostgrave.

The second game I didn't take any photos of.  I had managed to keep my guys alive going into it (minus one guy who had to sit out).  We had to insert keys into statues in the center of the board and grab a treasure being guarded by armored skeletons.  In order to get the treasure, we both had to insert our keys then the treasure would appear.  We actually managed to win this game.  My one opponent decided to shieldwall his guys in columns of 3 and play javelin toss with my wizard and a dog while I was able to carry out the task at hand.

Third game was similar, but there was a giant troll in the center of the board.

I ended up killing the monster and doing my task.  My partner got pinched in by like 2 guys while I was trying to kill 2 warbands at once.  I held off the one warband while seriously damaging the other.  We ended up losing the game barely.  Another few turned and I could've stopped the one warband and gotten at least a draw.  Oh well, it was a fun game.

Later that night, we played a big game called "Escape from Arcandium".  I was only supposed to help, but we lacked a few players, so I ended up rolling up a quick warband and joining the action.  I knew most of the players, so it was a pretty relaxed game.

It was 6 players total, 3 players on each side of the dungeon.  The goal was grab treasure, and kill this orb on your side of the dungeon, a total of 1 orb per side.  When both orbs were destroyed, the center of the dungeon would open up and you had to kill the orb in the center and then the dungeon would open up and allow you to escape.  A bunch of demons were in the center of the dungeon, plus you had to contend with 2 other warbands on your side, then all 5 warbands when the center opened.  I was on one of the edges of the dungeon, so I put mud everywhere in hopes the other two guys would battle each other and leave me alone to grab treasure and do the objective.  I wanted to be fresh for when the center opened.  My plan worked.  I blocked a narrow passage that led to my side of the dungeon which allowed me to grab treasure unhindered and destroy the orb on our side while the other two guys battled one another.  The one dude had some crazy roles and destroyed the other guy.  When the center opened up, it was an all out war.  I managed to place a wizards eye in a central location and sent my lackies in while I cast offensive spells from a safe spot.  When the orb was destroyed, I quickly left the dungeon.  I managed to walk away with the title "Treasure Hunter" and a brand new box of gnolls.  I had a lot of fun playing this game.

Sunday I played a game of Test of Honour from Warlord.  I didn't take any pictures, but I will post some pictures of my force at a later date (this entry is already very picture heavy).  I ended up taking 4th place out of 6 people, so not bad considering this was my first time playing the game.  I really like the mechanics of this game and hope to play more of it.

All in all, Adepticon 2018 was a ton of fun and I'll definitely be back for more action at Adepticon 2019.

My Adepticon 2017 Overview

So I had this huge blog post written up describing my experience and thoughts about Adepticon 2017 in detail.  After re-reading it this morning, I decided to delete it and do a short condensed version.  I'm sure most people who visit here could care less about me bitching about Adepticon classes, or my thoughts about the "painting elitist club" outside the classrooms that's turning into a staple at show.  Yeah, I hate cliques so nothing new there.  In all honesty, I'm not sure how I even feel about half of it.

It was a "Frostgrave heavy" show for me, with smatterings of Konflikt 47' and Necromunda mixed in.  I snagged 3 awards, 2 for best painted, 1 for best general.  I haven't played Necromunda since the 90's, so it was a shock to me that I took 2nd place overall.  I also helped my buddy Brent run 10-man Frostgrave battle Saturday night which was a lot of fun.  On Sunday I played a Frostgrave wizard death match with Ash the host of Guerrilla Miniatures (a youtube channel I regularly frequent).  I got to show that the Sigilist can be just as lethal as any other wizard with the correct spell load out and walked away with a box of cultists for my trouble.  I think Osprey made a wise decision in bringing Ash into the mix at Adepticon.  He was a lot of fun to be around.

Myself hanging with the famous Duncan Rhodes

Our 10-man Saturday Night Frostgrave Game

My awards for Adepticon 2017.  I took best painted in Frostgrave and Konflikt 47', and 2nd place overall in Necromunda

I took 2 classes.  One with Duncan Rhodes from Games Workshop's Warhammer TV which was awesome, one with Francesco Farabi (a 2017 Crystal Brush winner) which was awful.  The terrible lighting situation in the classrooms at Adepticon has reached a point where I refuse to sign up for any more classes until it is fixed.  Mr. Farabi is a fantastic painter, but his teaching style just doesn't work for me at all.

I got to hang out with Joseph McCullough (the author of Frostgrave and reader of my blog) for a few hours.  It was awesome getting to know him and ask him questions about his game.  It was refreshing how honest and down to earth he was.  Thanks for spending time with us at Adepticon, and thanks for letting me invade your "build and paint" event and swipe like 20 models.  It was a great time.

All in all, Adepticon 2017 was a blast.  Sure, the classroom lighting situation needs to be rectified, but I think from now on I will be playing in these smaller half day tournaments at Adepticon.  I look forward to Adepticon 2018.  If you are even remotely into miniatures, this is the place you need to be.

Adepticon 2016

I RETURN!!!!

 ::pause for awkward dramatic silence::

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.  So after my last post, I painted some wild warg riders for my nephew and got incredibly burned out in the process for some reason.  It's probably because the time table pushed me to my limits with having less than 2 weeks to get 12 miniatures done and wanting to experiment with different techniques of blending that did not go over well.  Unusually I'm at my best when I'm pressed for time as it forces me not to dally and stay focused on the task at hand.  Meh... it happens....

So what have I been up to lately?  A lot actually.  I took most of January and February off from painting.  Papa Nurgle decided to pay me a visit during that time and took me out of commission for a long time (3 weeks or something like that.....).  Yup, it sucked.  At the end of February it dawned on me that Adepticon was a month away and I hadn't gotten anything done that I planned for the two tournaments I was scheduled to play in for Bolt Action.  All the miniatures were purchased months earlier and still sitting in the packages they came in.

With a long deep breath, I dug in at the end of February, cleaned off my brushes, lubed up my airbrush, and got to work.  I spent the month of March painting every night, literally every night.  From the time I got home from work to bedtime, activity was happening on my work bench.  Whether 1 hour or 8, shit was getting done.  All the way up to March 31st (the first day of adepticon), and even then I stayed up till 4am wrapping things up and doing finishing touches.  It was rough, but rewarding.  Here are the fruits of my labor....

First up are my Panther's I won at Operation Sting last year...

And now for the Marder's.  Note that I didn't get a chance to paint the crews for them yet.  It's in the backlog for now.  They're glass cannons in the back that rock a huge punch but a glance will pretty much destroy them.

Here is the SdKfz 231 Heavy Armor Car, also known as Dracula's Coach.  Yeah, it early war and wouldn't have been included in a late-war German Grenadier force.  I just thought the model was cool.  It also filled the void I was looking for.... a cheap armored car used for annoying the opposing force.

 

  

 

Note that all the above armor was mostly painted with my Badge Patriot 105 airbrush (just in case anyone was wondering).

Now onto the men on foot.  Up next we have 3 of my special teams.  My medium machine gun, produced by Gorgon Studios, a flamethrower team, and a panzerschreck team.

Finally, we come to where the bulk of my time was spent.... the ground force.  I have 3 German Pioneer's (used as Assault Engineer's) mixed in there.  The flamethrower team and the dude holding the strumpistole.  They can be picked out by the blue pants.

All the above pictures is just what I got painted in March.  As far as the tournament, I used a bunch of guys I painted last year, so this is by no means the entire army I played.  Mainly I was rocking 3 squads of Regular Heer German (7 guys per, 2 Assault Rifles, 1 LMG Team, NCO with Assault Rifle, 2-3 guys with Rifles), 1 squad of Veteran Assault Engineers (1 strumpistole, 1 flame thrower team, 1 NCO with SMG, 2 guys with SMG's, 2 guys with rifles), 1 flamethrower team, 1 panzerschreck team, 1 medium machine gun team, 1 medium mortar team, 1st LT with Assault rifle with 2 guys, a Panther, and my SdKfz armored car.  The total was 1250 points on the nose.

How did I do in the tournament?  Well, my first game I got crushed.  I was taking on the Americans.  My guys couldn't hit the broadside of a barn door, and I couldn't pass any leadership test (even with 1 pin).  So I was rolling low when I needed to roll high, and rolling high when I needed to roll low.  All I could do is laugh at my terrible luck.  I missed getting a minor defeat by 1 point and ended up with a major defeat.  A great way to start a two day tournament.

My next game was another American army.  This was an attacker/defender game with 3 objectives that needed to be controlled.  I played the attacker.  It was a stalemate.  I stacked the right flank and hit a brick wall.  By turn 4, my panther was burning and my left flank was barely holding.  I did some gutsy charges and managed to take 1 objective, contest 1 objective, and couldn't get to the third.  It ended with a draw.  I blame the table partly as it was the desert island one with lots of water and shitty LOS.

My third game saw me taking on the Brits.  My opponent had 15 order dice to my 11, so I was outnumbered.  He had lots of cheap inexperienced units, and teams I've never seen before.  It was a base game where you needed to protect your base while getting guys in your opponents base.  The bases were in the corners of the table.  There was a large building in the middle of the board, and I made the mistake of charging the bulk of my force up the middle behind the building.  I was going to slit my force on turn 2.  My opponent declared he was rocket bombing the center unit and rolled a 6, taking out 2 units and stacking like 4-6 pins on everyone else.  I thought the game was done at that point.  My panzerschreck proved his worth by destroying an armored car carrying a large unit right into my base.  Managed to destroy the car and everyone inside.  My force then shrugged off the bulk of the pins, fought through the barrage of shit thrown at me, and I rammed my panther right into my opponents base on the last turn while holding the line.  It was a major victory for me.  Very fun game that could've gone either way.

My 4th game (Sunday morning) saw me in bed.  I overslept and missed it.  I still feel pretty shitty about it.  It's not like me to sleep in, but getting everything painted on time involved staying up late and took a toll on me and I slept right thru my alarms.  So I took a big fat goose-egg for my 4th game and rightly so.

I managed to crawl out of bed and get down to the hotel for my 5th (and final) game.  This one saw me taking on my painting buddy John's German force over at Plastic Legions.  It was a basic "kill the opposing force" mission, so not much thinking involved.  He won the roll off and deployed his force across his side of the board.  Being sneaky (and very typical of me), I stacked the right flank as we had 12" by 36" square along the right side of the board to deploy as well as the usually 12" on your side.  The first turn I thought I made a huge mistake as he had vets in a choke point in the forest preventing me from picking more optimal targets or even getting thru so I could get to his force.  I figured I'd sit back for a turn or two, put a little pressure on the choke point while getting the bulk of my force into a more optimal position.  He managed to get his guys over to me and it looked like I was going to get over-run when his motorcycles popped out from behind.  He had fanatics, so I didn't want to get into melee with him.  I just kept shifting my army while forcing him to change his tactics all while feeling his army out.  The last 3 turns saw the game shift back and forth a few times, but I think the deciding factor was my mortar getting a direct hit on his fanatics, forcing him to change his priority targets.  I give him credit for the ballsy panzerfaust attack on my panther.  I don't think it would've really changed a whole lot had they hit, but it brought his guys out of the choke point and allowed me to clear them off the table along with the commander.  Then again, it could've swung back to him if he'd taken out the panther as I wouldn't have been able to take out the bikes, which would've wreaked havoc behind my lines.  With it being a nail-bitter, victory being balanced on the edge of a knife, it turned out to be the funniest game of the tournament for me, and I walked away with a major victory in the end.

So I ended up with 2-2-1.  Not bad.  I think the Panther is a fun tank, but I probably should've taken a less point sink tank like a Panzer III or Panzer IV.  I think with a little tweeking here and there, I might have something really good.  I like the Assault Engineer's with the flamethrower, heavy SMG's, and will be using them from now on as my close range veteran unit.  I think 2 flamethrowers are a bit much and I'll probably drop my single unit.  I'll probably upgrade 1 of my Heer units to vets, all with Assault Rifles, and 2-3 regular Heer units.  A Panzerschreck team is now something that I will always have in my army as it saved my ass more times than I can count.  I bought 2 Hanomags at the show along with some bikes and a Kubelwagon, so I might try to fit some of that in the point gaps.

I also played in Bolt Action Tank Wars the first day of Adepticon.  While I won't go crazy into it, it's a fun game.  I ended up going 1-2 for 3 games.  I got annihilated my 3rd game, completely tabled.  Again, the Panther's are fun, but are not worth the point cost and Marder's hit hard but are weak to basically everything shooting at them.

So Adepticon 2016.  Fun as always, but it's lacking the charm from the prior few years I've been going.  It might be that it's getting too big, but it is what it is.  I look forward to Adepticon 2017, and I got my sights on Operation Sting in October.  Time to proof-read this thing and post it.  Hope you guys enjoyed it.