Adepticon Team Tournament

In the last of my Adepticon 2012 in review posts centers around our Team Tournament Army.  If you are not familiar with this particular format, its 4x1,000 armies and you are pared with one of your three teammates randomly each round. The last round is a captains choice. The tournament uses a modified force organization which makes things even more challenging in army creation. You can read more here. I'll skip the complaint about how many Grey Knight armies were in attendance and focus on our army!

An old friend (as in friend for a long time, not just because he is old!) has wanted to do Dark Angels for some time now. The unusual format provided a great opportunity to use both the Ravenwing and Deathwing squads.  In addition, we were able to get a Cestus Assault Ram for the army as well. 

At the end of the day, we are a non-competitive team and ended up our usual bottom middle-third of the final standings. Our painting earned high scores, but it was theme were we did well, nearly maxing out the points. 

We had the to big boys, Sammael and Belial, to make Terminators and Bikes scoring for all four players. It was a nice luxury to have. 

What I Learned at Adepticon

Adpeticon has come and gone, and I've (finally) recovered from the Con. Before moving on to GenCon and the other summer cons (as well as getting back to painting) I wanted to share my thoughts about what has become the best miniature wargaming con in the land.

Adepticon is still the premier wargaming con, bar none (you've heard that already).  Don't believe the blogs and what not- the tournaments are only a small part of the experience. Though most of the events are tournament related, most of the players are just here for the experience, meet up with old friends, and games in a well organized area. Its still a Gentlemen's Gaming Con.

Just an 'average' hobbyist army! No, this was seriously cool DE army display board.

Special Operations: Kill Zone was a blast. You can read more about that here.

Giving away a Battlefoam Bag is a recipe to get 1,000 gamers to line up hours before registration begins. I was especially thankful for getting a VIG badge. I'll put that on the list for next year as well! On that note, the Adepticon swag bag has already been a thing of legend. Please keep it that way. Well worth the trip, just to get the bag. This year's special miniatures were nothing short of awesome.

The only camera I used was my iPhone 4GS. No DSL-R for me this year. And the pictures I got were just a great as any with my big camera. As an added plus, the iPhone was with me everywhere and I wasn't constantly looking after my big camera making sure it didn't sprout legs and wonder off.



No need to carry that big camera around anymore fellas!


Registration for an event is purely optional. Despite most events (at least 40K related) being sold out months ago, there were a lot of no-shows for nearly every event. Its certainly possible to show up early and get in an already full event. Trust me. I did it for several events!

In a sense, this event has become "Lobby Con" for me. Two nights we sat in the Lobby drinking beer and eating (usually pizza) just hanging out, seeing old friends, making new friends, and just talking to other hobbyist. Just hanging out seems to be a very reasonable way to spend a lot of time at Adepticon.

Unidentified friend enjoying Lobby Con... very

The Team Tournament still remains the highlight of the weekend. The amount of awesome armies and awesome people will never be forgotten. Three of our games were spectacular. And while one game fell flat, the team captain sought me out the next day to apologize and promised a better game next year if were to ever play. So sign me up, we'll be back again for the Team Tournament.

Big Display armies for the Team Tournament. This from our friends at the Axis of Ignorance.

Our Team- Hot Wings sporting dual Raven Wing armies. Complete with custom templates we gave out to our opponents.

Justin of Secret Weapon Miniatures is a stud teacher. It was my only hobby class this year, but was well worth getting out of bed on Sunday for. You'll be seeing plenty of weathering effects in the coming months. Everyone should do at least one hobby event every year. You will grow as a hobbyist, promise!

Mr. Justin.



My Death Wing terminators and my 'old' rust effect.





It would be cool to see more "small" vendors in the back halls. Battle Ready Figs and Techtonic (laser cut MDF) had booths set up. But I could envision small vendors with unique hobby supplies or supplements with a very low cost, fan friendly set up. The main vendor hall was nice (as always) but I am interested in seeing what the small guy has up his sleeve.

One of about 1,000 Psy-Bolt Dreadnoughts.

I just love the Chaos fliers. Come on GW and give us some flyer love this summer!!

I was shocked to see the 'lack' of hobbyist involvement with Warmachine. No doubt there were lots of players present, but the amount of cool looking armies was low. In fact, there were many unpainted models. In contrast Warhammer Fantasy and Flames of War had as many players, with many fantastic looking armies. Malifaux remained small, but had a dedicated following. The new Dust Tactics/Warfare game was constantly drawing people's attention. It will be interesting to see what happens to the game in the next year or so. Mantic had their new space dwarves and space 'rats' (i.e. skaven) on display. Expect to see even more 'counts-as' armies next year!





I expect to be painting some of these soon. I've been wanting to do Space Skaven for nearly a decade now.

Adepticon 2012, Kill Zone, and oh yeah, I'm Back!!

Well I'm back doing the blogging thing again. It took some time to get my crap together... Adepticon has come and gone for another year. It was awesome as always and we all had a blast. Later in the week, I'll post The Things I Learned at Adepticon. However, tonight I wanted to talk about the awesomeness that is Special Operations: Killzone. Brain and the team put together some very awesome tables and provided us all with a great opportunity to play.

My Death Cult Assassin is taking out one of Taneth's finest. 

Awesome Jungle Board with ruins. Plenty of places to hide here.

My Inquistor and Plasma totting henchmen stare down warriors of chaos...

With the Inquistor dead, the DCA had to take them all on her own!

Later the girls had to battle some brutal orks. 

I brought my Inquistorial Henchmen who started off slow, but built up steam as the day (Friday) progressed. I finished the first session with only one win but played Mission Denial at least once!

My plasma gunner had a great shot on a Kan. And it would have blown up, if it wasn't for a blasted cover save!

The Inquistor was brave. But died anyway, lol!

The squad moving among the buildings. 

I walked on the afternoon session and added a couple of wins for my Inquistor and ultimately took home best theme/appearance!  Yeah, my first Adepticon win!  I got a very awesome Chris Borer miniature as well.

The Artillerist, so awesome. I'm really happy to have this model. 

So thanks to Brain and the team for providing awesome tables, awesome prize support, and for just being awesome.

I'll be back soon with more pictures and thoughts about Adepticon. I hope that everyone hasn't forgotten about me in my internet absence!

Blood Bowl Card Game

Marghh! Giants!!!

Here is a little something special to keep you busy until my next post. Have a great weekend.

Big Units in Fantasy

That sounds like some odd porn title. but its not what I wanted to talk about today!
One of the issues I battled with this Orc army is how to keep track of all of the boys in the unit. Enter the simple and effective solution.
I picked up some customizable printer labels that you can peel off (here) for another project. For this, you simply cut down the label and put them on the underside of the base. Now you know where the guy goes and change the order over time (like for instance if GW changes the rules on you!).
Initially I used a Sharpie but it was hard to see (unless you have the super cool Silver Sharpie) and its hard to change.

There you go. Your simple tip of the day. 

Orc Boy Champion

A couple of days ago, I showed the completed unit. But today I wanted to share the unit champion in detail. While the standard troopers can get a bit repetitive over a short time, the unit leaders and the characters are nothing short of awesome.

The base is cork board with snow effects. Simple, effective. The rust effect is from Secret Weapon Miniatures. The 'dust' was added to water and applied like a regular thinned paint.