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So, I've been meaning to write up a little brief of my experiences at this year's Adepticon, but after getting back from the convention work absolutely slammed me to the point where weeks have passed and the timely nature of this posting has kind of been lost. . .oh well, I guess I'll just ignore whether or not anyone still cares and just plug ahead!


First of all, here's a link to the gallery of all the pics I took at Adepticon '09. They are big pics, so don't forget you can zoom in to check things out!

I'll paste in some of those pics below to illustrate some of the things I saw.



THURSDAY

So my work decided to give me a crap-ton of hours the week leading up to Adepticon including a 12 hour day right before I was supposed to fly out. Combine that with the fact that I had to get one of my teeth looked at a few days before and I had absolutely zero time to get my stuff packed and ready to go. That means when I got off work at around 4:00am and had to be at the airport at around 11:30am, I knew things were going to be bad!

I madly struggled to get my army packed, my army lists printed, etc, etc, etc. I then tried to fall asleep for 3 hours (and I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before too!). My flight was at 1pm and right about at that time Blackmoor called me to let me know that he had missed his flight out! Thank god he did, because if he hadn't called to tell me then who knows how long I would have slept?

I got to the airport pretty quick and was able to hop on another flight, getting the VERY last seat on a completely full flight. I thought for sure there wasn't going to be any space in the overhead bins for my army transport since I was the last person on the flight and I had money in hand ready to try to bribe someone to check their carry-on to make room for me but lo-and-behold I was able to still find a spot for my case and off to Chicago I flew.

I arrived around 8:00pm in Chicago and met up with Blackmoor at the airport and we were then picked up by Centurian99. We then headed out for our (now) ritual of hitting a local supermarket to pick up water, drinks and snacks for the upcoming weekend and then out for some dinner at a local diner-style restaurant (Centurian grew up in the area so he knew some places that were open late), I wish I could remember the name of the place. Somewhere around 11ish we made it to the hotel where I indeed realized that, yes we were in Chicago and not California anymore as it was windy and cold as hell (irony?). Spencer from 40K radio was busy unloading his massive amount of equipment so we said hi before heading up to our rooms to drop off our own luggage.

After getting settled in the room I then took the quick tour of the massive empty gaming hall and said hi to some of the other Adepticon staff who were busy helping to get things set up. I didn't take any pictures of the empty hall on Thursday night so I'll steal Iorek's picture for those who didn't see it:




I also took in the massive Ork Battleship created by the Sabol guys (this picture is also "borrowed" from Iorek):




I think I got to bed sometime between 12-2am and tried to get some sleep. Attempting to switch my sleep schedule from going to bed around 7am PST (I work nights) to suddenly trying to go to bed at 2am (12am PST) was quite a shock to the system and I can't quite say I got very restful sleep through the whole weekend.

But you know what they say: you can sleep when you're dead.



FRIDAY

I woke up bright and early and made my way down to the scoring table as I had agreed to be a rules judge for the gladiator. I love the idea of the gladiator but I've long given up creating really hard core armies so I just don't feel like I have any armies that are 'worthy' of competing in the Gladiator. Besides, I figured if any tournament would flush out any big issues with the INAT FAQ I had helped to write for Adepticon it was going to be the Gladiator and it would be good to get a first hand account of any issues on Friday so we the judges would have a gameplan for how to tackle them throughout the weekend.

As it turned out, the Gladiator actually run very, very smoothly as far as I saw (perhaps the best run 40K tournament that weekend?) and there were very few rules issues brought up (less than I expected), so overall it was a very pleasing experience to be a part of.

As always, the Gladiator armies were a blast to witness because you just don't get to see Super-heavies in tournaments anywhere else. Here's a few random army pics at the Gladiator I shot:








One game in particular in round 3 looked spectacular to me and it apparently was between two players who were pretty high up in the standings at that point. It featured two absolutely beautifully painted armies, both with Titans (Eldar vs. Orks). Unfortunately when I came by to take pics they seemed to be having a bit of a 'discussion' about the logistics of Deff Koptas shooting at a Dire Avenger unit under a Falcon but they begrudgingly seemed to resolve the issue without asking a judge (me), although one player seemed unhappy despite relenting to his opponent's opinion. Oh well, it sill looked like an amazing game, as I'm sure you'll agree! I only wish I could have stayed around to watch it.








During game 4 they needed a ringer player as some people had dropped out of the tourney so I gladly volunteered to play a Daemon army written up by Centurian that would give me a chance to see how the heck Daemons work when playing them. You see, we were using Daemons as our team tournament army on Saturday and I had never, ever played with them before and only played two games against them up to that point.

The ringer game was great and I learned a whole heck of a lot about Daemons, mainly stats, ranges, special rules, etc. I learned first hand that bare-bones Soulgrinders can be amazingly resilient killers in close combat and that it *is* possible to kill Eldrad, although it took a unit of Bloodletters like 4-5 rounds in combat with him to do so.

Unfortunately due to the crazy nature of the weekend I can't for the life of me remember the final outcome of that game but I think I scored a pretty decent win with the ringer Daemon army. My opponent was a good sport and he seemed to have a good time, which is what I really care about the most. In the end I am VERY grateful to have gotten to play that ringer game as otherwise I *really* would have been lost the next day in the team tournament.


If there was one 'hot button' issue at the Gladiator it was (apparently, I haven't verified this myself) that both the winner and runner-up of the tournament were Bell of Lost Souls guys who were playing with Reavers and using a screen of 3 cheap flyers (like the Arvus Lighter) with big custom made bases to prevent units from charging the Titan in close combat. Again, this is all hearsay from other people, but (to my knowledge) no one ever came up to the judges to complain about this tactic. If they had, we would have had to make a judgement on whether we felt players were using modeling for advantage (something that isn't allowed at Adepticon), and if we felt they were, exactly how to proceed.

Having a tournament that has sooo many available options usually means there ends up being one or two potential combos used that nobody else is expecting and therefore do not have counters built into their armies.

Of course, having both the 1st and 2nd place finishers using Reavers with flyer screens raises the question for next year of whether something needs to be done to limit this or not. Should Reavers be allowed again? Should a ruling be made about the allowable size of a flyer's base or should models be allowed to move over a flyer's base? Or are their enough counters built into the game to allow people to defeat this combo now that they know about it? For example, many people don't know that all 'pintle-mounted' weapons in the game also have the AA special rule (which means they hit skimmers on their regular BS instead of needing a '6' to hit). Will a bevvy of pintle-mounted Heavy Stubber and Hydra IG armies next year be a natural counter against this?

The other thing to consider is that the BoLS guys brought a total of 5 (Armorcast) Reaver armies, and they obviously played and trained with them and knew how to execute the plan they had developed. I personally can't just assume that their combo was automatically too dominate without considering the time and effort they did put into developing it and the unfamiliarity that other players would have as this was something new to this year's tournament.

Ultimately, these are all questions that the Adepticon crew (myself partially included) will half to think about and answer come next year. Even so, I still hope the Gladiator tradition always continues to support Forgeworld and Super-heavy models. I don't own any myself, but I love the idea that if I ever do get such a model that there is at least one tournament in the land that I'll be able to play with it and have a blast.

Although there were 5 Armorcast Reavers, I was only able to spot one actual Forgeworld Reaver which made the rest of them look like midget titans:




After the Gladiator concluded Centurian, Janthkin, Iorek (who I finally got to meet) and a few others including most of the Toledo crew headed out for a late Dinner at (unfortunately, since I hate chain restaurants) TGI Fridays. Food, drinks and laughs were had before heading back to sleep at around 2-3am to get a few hours of sleep before the glorious Team Tournament on Saturday!



SATURDAY

I woke up obscenely early (at around 6:45am) got the Dakka bowling shirt on and went downstairs to get our armies set up and then meet for Dakka Detachment #1's traditional breakfast/strategy meeting on Saturday morning before the team tourney. I had prodded Centurian into writing up a cheat-sheet of how he thought we should be splitting up our armies depending on which teammates were playing with each other and he obliged, being the player of us, by far, with the most Daemon experience, so I spent breakfast reading over his notes trying to absorb as much as I could about how the heck to play our Daemons.

With my belly full it was time to start the team tourney. Our army was entirely built and painted by Centurian99 this year, which was an amazing relief compared to earlier years where we tried different methods of either bringing our own armies (which never matched well) or by constructing our army in an assembly line by mailing it out to each other (which was a logistical nightmare). Centurian already had a pretty sizeable Daemon army so it was a natural fit for him to just add some more models to it. For pics of our army's models, you can check them out in Centurian's Dakka Deatchment Daemons Gallery.

I was especially impressed with the objective markers he came up with, which are cool looking daemonic portals.




Showing up for our first game I was relieved to find that I would be paired with Centurian in the first game. As the player in the team with the least experience with Deamons I was hopeful that I would be able to play along with Centurian in the first game as it would give me a chance to sit back a bit and let him do the strategizing while I learned more about the army.

The theme of our team army was "Swords and Sorcery" and it was basically a Tzeentch/Khorne themed Daemon army. One of the 1,000 pt armies was made-up completely Tzeentch models (plus a Soul Grinder) and another 1,000 pt. army was fully made up of Khorne models (plus a Soul Grinder) with the other two armies being a blend of Khorne with a bit of Tzeentch or Tzeentch with a bit of Khorne. In other words, when you line it all up the armies slowly blend between Khorne all the way to Tzeentch.

I had written a small story behind the army explaining how Tzeentch had used the Changeling to trick Khorne into working with him. I thought it came out pretty good for what it was. Overall it seemed like a pretty strong army. Plenty of Bloodcrushers and Bloodthirsters to go around and Fateweaver and Bluescribes running around doing nastiness as well.


All Khorne (Janthkin)
Bloodthirster
Blood Crushers
A couple of units of Bloodletters
Soulgrinder


Khorne/Tzeentch (yakface)
Bloodthirster
Blood Crushers
Bloodletters
Couple units of Horrors
Soulgrinder


Tzeentch/Khorne (Centurian99)
Blue Scribes
Big unit of Blood Crushers
Bloodletters
Horrors
Soulgrinder


All Tzeentch (Blackmoor)
Fateweaver
2 units of Flamers
A few units of Horrors, one with Changeling
Soulgrinder


To let you in on the dynamic of our team a little bit, Centurian tends to like to aim for the most powerful build possible. This year when we settled on taking Daemons his first inclination was to go for the maximum amount of Bloodcrushers possible. I tend to be a bit of the yang to his ying and I made a push that a 'maximum number of Bloodcrushers' is not a good theme. So I pushed to go for the shaded mix between Khorne and Tzeentch because it was a theme to build around while still creating a powerful coalition. I do think Centurian's initial ideas would have given us a more powerful overall team army, but I am happy with the army we chose. It was powerful but I still felt it had a coherent and fluffy theme behind it.

Of course in retrospect, there were quite a few quite similar armies, and it seemed that several others had the same thought process as us That kind of bums me out because I always like to try to do something at least a little bit different than most teams are doing and this year it definitely didn't feel that way. Hell, we even ended up facing an almost mirror image of our army in round 3!


Anyway, back to the story:


GAME 1

We walked up for our first game of the morning and lo and behold our opponents turned out to be one of the Wrecking Crew teams, this one containing Dakka's own Green Blow Fly! I'd met GBF at a few tournaments before but I'd never got to play against him before (and sadly, I wasn't paired against him), but I knew he was a friendly guy and the Wrecking Crew always brings tough armies so I figured it would be a good first game.

For those of you out there who wonder how I can say GBF is a friendly guy when all you see him as is a troll here on Dakka, let me tell you that once you meet him you instantly realize that there really doesn't seem to be an ounce of malice in him. In the very little I've gotten to talk to him he just seems like a genuinely affable individual. I don't think his posts ever have an ounce of malice behind them, its just that writing a forum post doesn't convey the spirit of the individual and once you meet GBF and understand how he is all of a sudden his 'voice' fits his posts and they take on a whole different 'tone' in your head; at least that's how it was with me.

Anyway, this Wrecking Crew team was playing a Biker Nob-ish style army, although two of the armies didn't have any Nob Bikers at all and these were the two teams that Centurian and I were paired up against. We were playing the armies that had a bunch of Trukkboyz, regular bikers, and Ghazghkull with Nobs in a Trukk. Now, I believe that Bloodcrushers are a pretty good counter to Nob Biker armies, so I was feeling pretty good with our chances going into this game.

Ceturian and I rolled to get our primary cohort in first and landed a nice net of units around the Ork's deployment zone, mainly on our right flank. They came at us with some units of Trukkboyz and Ghaz and used the bikes to nearly obliterate a unit of Bloodletters with their shooting. Ghaz and some Trukkboyz were able to kill one of our Soulgrinders but our other Soulgrinder was able to win combat against the Trukkboyz and they failed their morale check and fell back.

In our turn we used our other unit of Bloodletters and a unit of Bloodcrushers to charge into the combat with the remaining Soulgrinder, Ghaz and his retinue while some flamer shooting caused another Trukkboy unit to fall back. When the assault phase rolled around Ghaz called down his Waaagh to make his save invulnerable (and rally the two units falling back). Even with Ghaz's invulerable 2+ save the Bloodletters were able to cause enough wounds to bring him down and win combat!

At this point I think they could have pressed their advantage and thrown all their remaining Trukkboyz and bikers into combat against what we had left and tried to overwhelm us in one glorious charge, but they apparently thought differently and they packed up their remaining Trukkboyz into their Trukks and zoomed away into the corner of the table along with turbo-boosting their bikes into the same corner. I think they had decided that they didn't think they could overwhelm us in combat and that they would try for the late game objective grab instead.

That didn't really work out for them and when they headed back into the center of the table later in the game we had our entire army set-up to block them and we were nearly able to wipe them out (and certainly able to achieve each of the three objectives).

On the other table, Janthkin and Blackmoor were having a hard time cracking through all the Biker Nobs, but by the end of the game they had managed to do just that and there were very few Orks left on the table.

Overall our team had scored nearly maximum points in our first outing against some tough opponents. . .not too bad! Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of this game (as I often do), but maybe some of my teammates did?

After grabbing some hotel food (which was surprisingly affordable for a change!) for lunch, it was time to head in for game 2:


GAME 2

Game 2 had me paired with Blackmoor (and his all Tzeentch army). The first two years our team played together I had always been paired up with Blackmoor in game 2 and both years we had just absolute terrible games together. Sometimes I think our styles of play don't match each other well, other times I think we just don't always communicate as well as we should and other times I just think we get unlucky when we play together. Then last year I played with Janthkin in round 2 and we had a terrible game together. Then when Blackmoor and I played together in round 3 last year we actually had such a great game that we asked our captain Centurian to let us play together in the 'Captain's choice' round 4.

So I think what I'm perhaps realizing is that round 2 is cursed for me and it isn't which of my teammates I'm playing with (although I'll have to play with Centurian in round 2 some year to find out for sure). What I'm trying to say is that this year I played with Blackmoor again and again we had one of the unluckiest games I've ever been a part of.

We ended up playing against a Chaos and Ork combo team, which isn't something you typically see so that was pretty cool. On our table the Chaos guy had some Oblits, a Terminator squad with Lash Sorceror, some Noise Marines in a Rhino and some regular Chaos Marines in a Rhino. The Ork guy had some Deffkoptas, a few mobs of Trukkboyz, and a Warboss and retinue in Mega-armor also in a Trukk. They weren't the overly-friendly kind of players but they certainly weren't negative either so I would gladly play them again anytime.

We rolled to get our primary cohort (yay) and we won the roll to go first and gave first turn to them (which gives them one less turn to shoot at us and us the final chance to grab objectives). Their deployment pretty much looked like this:



When the game started they did a very smart thing that I would recommend to anyone playing a fast mech army vs. Daemons: they moved everything they had maximum distance out in every direction trying to minimize the amount of safe areas we had to Deep Strike into on our turn. That pretty much left us the right-side deployment zone as the largest safe area. Per Centurian's pre-tourney instructions, we dropped my Soulgrinders down first and then tried to land Fateweaver near enough to them so he could still run and be within 6" of them even if he scattered.

Unfortunately, because of our opponents' shrewd spread-out maneuver on first turn after the the Crushers landed the safest space we had for Fateweaver was about 7" behind them with about 10" to both our back and right board edges. Blackmoor promptly rolled an 8" scatter directly towards the Bloodcrushers and about 1/4" of his base landed on 'em. He then also rolled a 1 or 2 for the mishap roll and just like that Fateweaver was dead!

Their terminators were also lined up in a building in a perfect formation to be hit by Flamers so Blackmoor tried to land the flamers down for a suicide drop. He, of course, again directly scattered onto the Terminators and the flamers were put back into reserves.

Blackmoor then went to land his Soulgrinder in a safe place but there wasn't much room left so he aimed for an area with craters. I believe he did roll a 'hit' but this put him into the craters and of course he rolled a '1' for the dangerous terrain test and his Soul Grinder was immobilized!

Later in the game Blackmoor suffered two MORE deep strike mishaps which resulted in two units of Flamers being placed by our opponents in the very back right corner of our deployment zone. In other words, 85% of Blackmoor's army was either destroyed or rendered totally ineffective when arriving on the table!

After our deployment debacle, the enemy pretty much surged forward, with two Trukkboy units charging my Soulgrinder in a combat that would end up lasting about 4 turns. Except for one round of combat in which I hit with all 4 Soulgrinder attacks I kept missing with all of his attacks every time. But the two Nobs were unable to kill the Soulgrinder, just doing a weapon damaged result here, an immobilized result there, etc.




Blackmoor's other unit of flamers was able to land on target later in the game and pretty much vape the entire Terminator squad including, thanks to some lucky rolls, the lash Sorceror. We were also able to blow up the Warboss/Nob's Trukk and then charge them with the Blood Crushers (who were pushed back one turn by Lash).

In the turn 3 picture below you can see Blackmoor's immobilized Souldgrinder in the bottom right of the pic and you can see the crater in the center of the where the Nob's Trukk blew up where they'll eventually be charged and wiped out:




The only thing that really saved us was that the mission objectives had allowed us to give pretty much any unit in the army the 'scoring' ability and my Bloodcrushers were therefore scoring. Our opponents pretty much conceded the center of the battlefield rather than allow anything else to get charged by the crushers and the secondary objective (I think it was the secondary) was to capture the center of the table, which we ended up doing.

I think they ended up getting both the primary (table quarters) and tertiary objectives (can't remember what that was) but we were also able to get some of the mission's bonus points by holding at least two terrain pieces and by killing their most expensive units (Terminators & Nobs). So although we had lost, we managed to get a pretty decent amount of points still. Centurain and Janthkin seemed to do better and although I don't think they got maximum points they did seem to have done pretty well.

Actually I can't really remember what either of you guys said about this game (the sleepless haze of the weekend may well be affecting my brain here). Centurian if you wanted to post a little bit about this and the next game from your point of view I think even I would be interested!


With the cursed game 2 out of the way it was time for game 3!


GAME 3

Walking to the table for game 3 it was quickly apparent that it was going to be an interesting game. Our opponents were definitely also Daemons, and looking at their display board gave me an eerie sense of Deja vu! They had a ton of bloodcrushers, they had a ton of bloodletters and they had Fateweaver and some Tzeentch elements. In other words, they were also playing a Tzeentch/Khorne team army!

Crazier still, one of the players at my table was 40Kenthusiast here on Dakka, and apparently he had won the Fantasy Escalation tournament on Friday. I could tell very, very quickly that this was a guy who had a head for games. Throughout the game his tactical acumen was readily apparent and he had a very intense demeanor about him, all without ever being negative. In other words, he's the kind of guy you want to play against if you want a real challenge!

He made a comment really early that with such similar armies whomever got first turn would just decimate the other side, and while the game could have easily turned out like that, fate had other ideas.

The two armies that Janthkin and I were matched up against were pure Khorne while Janthkin was pure Khorne and I was all Khorne except for a couple units of Horrors. The big difference was that instead of the two Bloodthirsters we had they had 4 Khorne heralds. They also had the maximum number of Troops units in their armies, taking many small Bloodletter units instead of a couple big ones like we had. All told I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have close to double the number of units we did.

This meant the game would have a very interesting dynamic because they had so many more units they could theoretically burn a small unit of bloodletters tricking us into a charge and then counter-charging us with bloodcrushers and more bloodletters. We had bigger units of bloodletters which meant they could pretty easily soak a charge from one of their small bloodletter units, but they also had more bloodcrushers than us which would absolutely decimate our big bloodletter units if they got the charge. We had two Bloodthirsters that could tear up their Soulgrinders easily, but our Bloodthirsters could easily be overwhelmed by a counter-charge of bloodcrushers. Finally, without them having any Bloodthirsters, the only thing they had which could really hope to kill our Soulgrinders was their Souldgrinders, either in combat or by using their 'Tongue' shooting attack.

In other words, everything in both are armies could decimate another type of unit in the opposing army but were also very vulnerable to being charged by other types of enemy units.

We managed to win the all important roll to go first and took it. Despite 40Kenthusiast's super-dramatic 'Seize the Initiative' roll attempt, we managed to hold onto it. Both of us managed to roll for our Primary cohorts to come in first.

Our plan with the first turn was to try to capture the very center of the table thereby (with some good run rolls to spread out) being hopefully able to charge the enemy no matter where they landed and also hopefully limiting the amount of space available to land. If we had been able to accomplish this goal I think 40Kenthusiast's prediction about whomever got the first turn would dominate would have been true.

But like I said before, fate had some other ideas. Although we were aiming for the center of the table every single one of our units managed to scatter at least 9" towards the back left corner of their deployment zone. It was truly amazing. Although we didn't suffer any mishaps (barely) by the time the deployment was over it looked as though we had purposely set-up in a corner deployment zone mission. We ran our units as much as we could, but even so there was still most of the board available for our opponents to deploy into without fear of being charged, especially the right-side of our deployment zone.

As expected, they landed pretty much everything in our deployment zone, especially in the right side (which was the opposing quarter from where we landed). After both sides had finished that first turn we pretty much decided to swap the sides of the table we were standing on. One of the mission objectives required your units to be in your opponent's deployment zone we had both ended up deploying in each other's deployment zone and would be fighting our way back to the center of the table; very strange indeed!

With our opponents landing out of charge range of all our units the great stand-off now began. Both sides kept manuvering closer and closer to each other but trying not to allow the other side to get the all crucial first charge. Yes, our Bloodthirsters could have charged (probably on turn 3), our opponents had positioned things to make sure that sending in our Bloodthirsters alone would almost surely mean their death at the hands of counter-charging Bloodcrushers.

We pretty much tried to push up the right side of the table (from the perspective of THEIR deployment zone which we were now standing behind), trying to isolate the smaller part of their army while leaving the bulk of their force alone in the opposite table quarter where they landed. You can see us pushing up the right side of the table here (we've got the round bases they've got the square bases):



We did split off one Bloodthrister, one Soulgrinder and a unit of Bloodletters to go chase down a few units they had landed in the back left of their deployment zone (which is the side we're taking the picture from). You can see one of our Soulgrinders heading to that back corner to deal with those units knowing that none of the enemy units back there (Bloodletters and Heralds) had much of a chance against him, and because the Herald in that corner was the unit that was effectively 'marked for death' by the mission objectives.

Here's a wider shot of the same turn (the thing on the 40mm base that the Bloodthirster in the foreground is standing next to is an objective):



We continued to manuver on the right flank and we left a unit of our Bloodcrushers within charge range of our opponent but inside a unit of area terrain. Our opponents knew that if they didn't charge us that turn we would be charging them with pretty much overwhelming force, so they took a calculated risk and charged our larger blood crusher unit with a small unit of bloodcrushers. We struck first and managed to decimate their bloodcrusher unit and nearly all their attacks pretty much whiffed.

In our next turn we charged full out on the right flank. Our Thirster went into their other Crusher unit, our Soul Grinder charged theirs and our Bloodletters unit took on their Herald. We killed their Herald and Soulgrinder and our crushers still locked in combat with their crushers from the previous turn finished them off. Unfortunately, the Bloodthirster didn't kill enough of their Crushers and between that and the next round of combat on their turn our Bloodthirster was killed.

Our bloodcrushers then moved up along with our bloodletters and eventually finished off their other bloodcrusher unit that had killed our Thirster (but took a LOT of damage in the process).

But the real conclusion was going to come down to the center of the table where an objective sat on top of that little building (check out the pictures). Our opponents still had a giant 8 man Bloodcrusher unit and a Defiler moving towards the center of the table. Our other Bloodthirster had gotten killed in some ridiculous set of circumstances during the game (I know he took at least one wound from a Dangerous Terrain test and then I think he took at least another wound from a Soulgrinder 'Tongue' shooting attack).

We had ruled before the game that the building in the center of the game would be played like a ruin, in that you needed to expend a full 3" of vertical movement in order to move up it. This would prove crucial as it became pretty difficult to move up onto the top of the building to claim the objective.

Even though our Bloodthrister in the back left of the picture died, the 2nd Soulgrinder had moved back to that objective and was locked in a permanent combat with some Bloodletters and a Herald, so that objective was contested. Our opponents held the objective that was in the quarter their army had massed in when landing (the top left of the picture). The objective in the top right-side of the picture was contested with all the fighting that was going on in that right flank and we had the objective that was in the bottom right of the upper picture with Janthkin's Bloodletters.

Our opponents had so many units that on one turn they managed to drop yet another tiny Bloodletter unit back onto that one objective we held and if the game had ended there, they totally would have won. But the roll didn't happen and our bigger Bloodletter squad was able to kill off that small unit in combat.

But the real key was the center objective on the building. Janthkin was smart enough to move his remaining unit of healthy Bloodcrushers on top of the building, with one model on top and two models within 2" down at the base of the building. It was at this point that 40Kenthusiast's partner made a move that probably wasn't for the best, and when he realized this he got pretty bummed. Basically, their big unit of 8 Bloodcrushers was the only unit scoring on their objective in the quarter they had landed in (again the mission objectives allowed us to make certain units become scoring units).

Instead of stringing out this giant unit of Bloodcrushers to hold their own objective and contest the center objective, they charged into combat on top of the building instead. Because of the ruin rules, only 3 models on both sides (each side had one model on top of the building and two down below supporting) were really able to participate in the combat. This mean the combat was effectively a draw and both sides had to pull in, which yanked their big unit right off of the last objective they held.

The game finally ended and we had one objective and all the rest were either contested or not claimed (the one their crusher unit had been pulled off).

So we got the primary objective (objective markers) and I think the secondary was Victory Points or something which we also got. We hadn't been able to get their marked herald, so we didn't get the tertiary.

In the end, 40Kenthusiast was a little angry at the mistake he let slip by and I wasn't sure if he felt that we had somehow cheated him with the way we had played the building in the center of the table (even though we did agree before the game to play it like a ruin). He made sure to let me know that he was more angry at himself and the way things went down than by anything we had done, which I was glad for because he seemed like such a good, solid player that I would hate for him to think we won with a cheap play.

We looked over at Centurian and Blackmoor and they said that their game had also been a big chess match for several turns but eventually they had gotten a breakthrough and had ended up doing pretty well (again if either of them wants to post about it a bit more it would actually be informative to me!).

This was a very, very, very mentally draining game. Trying to move around without getting into charge range made me feel quite a bit like I was playing Fantasy (in a good way). I thought for sure at the time this would be the most draining game I'd play, but boy was I wrong!


As we walked over to our next table for game 4, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that it was the Toledo crew who were honestly approaching to play us. These guys are some of the better 40K players I know personally, and their armies are always very, very strong. In addition, they love the friendly jibes and trash-talking (especially with Centurian), so I knew that whomever lost this game would most certainly be eating their fare share of crow.

Hell, Centurian even normally has a 'steak dinner' bet going with Inquisitor Malice (Greg Sparks) about which of our teams will end up doing better in the team tourney, so here would be the game that would likely decide that whole bet in one fail swoop. Talk about a climatic end to our day!


DETAILS OF GAME 4 ALONG WITH MY SUNDAY AT ADEPTICON COMING SOON. . .

Nice write up, thanks

Whoa, sweet. I really enjoyed reading that. Thanks for taking the time to post that.

Yes thanks. More please.

Thanks for posting that up! Cant wait to hear about the rest of your experience there. I dont think I'd ever enter a tournament myself, but man it sounds like a blast.

Just so you know yak I heard a lot of people complaining about BoLS using the huge bases for their flyers to prevent opponent's from assaulting their Reaver Titans.

Great writeup and some very nice pix as well.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:Just so you know yak I heard a lot of people complaining about BoLS using the huge bases for their flyers to prevent opponent's from assaulting their Reaver Titans.

Great writeup and some very nice pix as well.

G

It's been talked about a lot at the AWC site. I'm sure at the very least they will allow assaults through flyer bases next year which is the biggest stumbling block right now. Nothing crooked about using that rule this past year however. Well played. The flyer bases were big, but so were a lot of other bases that were custom made because the model didn't come with one.

I hope no major changes occur in regards as to what you are allowed to field in the gladiator.

G

The Gladiator used to be 'no soft scores, bring your hardest list'.

I have no desire to play in a APOC-style tourney (which is what the Gladiator has basically become by allowing superheavies). I would play in a 'bring your hardest 2000pt list, there's not crying in 40k' tourney. Personally, I don't like most of the FW stuff, because I think that they are not well balanced (most of the FW stuff is fine, but it seems like there is always a handful that is ridiculously good for the points).

But, the Gladiator has helped give Adepticon a lot of its identity, second only to the Team Tourney. I also think there is a certain amount of 'if it's not broken, dont' fix it.'

The gladiator is not a gladiator if you can't take Forgeworld. It's just that simple.

G

Excellent report so far Yak, looking forward to the team tourny and beyond.

- Salvage

The Gladiator was originally envisioned as an “everything goes” tournament. They use to allow literally everything in it. If GW had rules for it, and they put them into print, you can play it.

This year with 5th edition just coming out, they toned it down a lot and it was mostly the base codexes + apocalypse/forge world.

You are not going to change the inclusion of Forge World because if you took that out, the Gladiator would just be another RTT.

Nice read. Thanks for taking the time to post it.

I'm looking forward to the next installment.

Blackmoor wrote:The Gladiator was originally envisioned as an “everything goes” tournament. They use to allow literally everything in it. If GW had rules for it, and they put them into print, you can play it.

This year with 5th edition just coming out, they toned it down a lot and it was mostly the base codexes + apocalypse/forge world.

You are not going to change the inclusion of Forge World because if you took that out, the Gladiator would just be another RTT.

But doesn't that just then mean you have to buy FW and/or Superheavies to have a chance to win?

Not criticizing, I'm genuinely interested if that approach (everything is allowed) leads to winners determined by wallet/bank account size, as opposed to being a measure of how good you are at the game.

Cruentus wrote:

Blackmoor wrote:The Gladiator was originally envisioned as an “everything goes” tournament. They use to allow literally everything in it. If GW had rules for it, and they put them into print, you can play it.

This year with 5th edition just coming out, they toned it down a lot and it was mostly the base codexes + apocalypse/forge world.

You are not going to change the inclusion of Forge World because if you took that out, the Gladiator would just be another RTT.

But doesn't that just then mean you have to buy FW and/or Superheavies to have a chance to win?

Not criticizing, I'm genuinely interested if that approach (everything is allowed) leads to winners determined by wallet/bank account size, as opposed to being a measure of how good you are at the game.

Out of seven years, four armies included forge-world:

2004 - me (3 Cyclops)
2005 - Hank (An'grath)
2008 - me (Trygon)
2009 - Jon (Reaver/Thunderbolt/Arvus)

This last year was really the first year where super-heavies and flyers (in tandem) dominated to the extent they did.

Cruentus wrote:
But doesn't that just then mean you have to buy FW and/or Superheavies to have a chance to win?

Not criticizing, I'm genuinely interested if that approach (everything is allowed) leads to winners determined by wallet/bank account size, as opposed to being a measure of how good you are at the game.

In the past that was not true. You could win with a regular codex army, and they did win the gladiator most of the time, with only a few exceptions.

But things have changed. The introduction of cheap and accessible super heavies (Baneblades and Stompa) plus the addition of apocalypse rules (strength D weapons and templates) means that the regular codex armies have become marginalized.

You don't have to buy superheavies to win. My friend played in the Gladiator with a DE list containing 21 brightlances. He took out An'Gorath twice, once with a fateweaver, and then the Nurgle big demon that I can't remember the name of. Those first three games he massacred the opponent except for the last game which he drew. He placed fifth with no superheavies.

Blackmoor wrote:You are not going to change the inclusion of Forge World because if you took that out, the Gladiator would just be another RTT.

Do Ard Boyz tournies allow FW items? Not allowing FW does not have to equal 'just another RTT.' Mind you, I think about 95% of FW's stuff is probably over-pointed. But, there's 5% that's underpointed. As much as the dakka community complains about GW's shoddy rules writing and playtesting, I'm willing to be that FW does even less.

Dietrich, I refuse to play anyone that has FW units. They are overpowered and undercosted. They should not be making rules, they are not a game company, they make larger than average plastic minis for a game company.

pakman wrote:Dietrich, I refuse to play anyone that has FW units. They are overpowered and undercosted. They should not be making rules, they are not a game company, they make larger than average plastic minis for a game company.

Wrong. FW IS a game company, because it's a division of Games Workshop, NOT A SEPARATE COMPANY.

Also, it's very rare for a FW unit to be overpowered and undercosted, they are few and far between FW's usual underpowered and overcosted units that are the norm. Why don't you actually look through the FW books before you post generalizations like this when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

If all you see are the overpowered, undercosted units, that's a problem with the people you're playing, NOT a problem with the rules themselves and occurs quite often within GW's other books, as well. Don't blame FW(or GW for that matter) because of the players taking the few viable choices.

Having not played in the Gladatior, I can only pull from the Team Tourney. But, it seemed like every year we ran into one FW item that just seemed 'too good'. And it wasn't always the BFG of OMG, sometimes it was little things that just added up.

Trojan support vehicle. Like a 50-pt troop choice. In a 1000 pt army, spending 50pt on your mandatory troop choice vs 200pt (2 squads, PCS + weapons) is huge (in fact, it's a Leman Russ MBT). Now, this was fourth, so it was scoring. Same list, Chimera with autocannon turrets. Not 'huge', but better than the multi-laser.
Weapon turrets. I remember one SM army that fielded like 2-4 of the 20-pt BS2 twin-linked heavy bolter defense turrets. They 'advance deployed', so he put them between his lines and ours. Just to force Target Priority tests to ignore them. Sure, it's a sound tactic, but for like 20 pts each, it seems over-powered.
And I remember a Nid army with some sort of FW biovore template madness that seemed ridiculously cheap for what it did. Sorry, don't remember more details, and don't own the FW books.

Compare the Tau Piranha with a Targetting Array and Fusion Blaster to a the XV-42 with twin-linked Fusion Blaster and BS4 (Targetting Array included). About the same points. XV-42 is better, same BS, but TL. Plus, the 42 is NOT open-topped, it gains a side armor, and it doesn't have gun drones (so it's only 1 KP vs 2 KP).

I think that is another fair point about FW. Most RTTs (at least ones that I've played in) don't allow FW. So, people don't buy the FW books. And don't know the rules. Which, puts you at a disadvantage when you show up at a tourney that does.

Now, FW produces a lot of cool models. Variant turrents for Leman Russ, etc. And I can believe that 95% of their stuff is fine. But, I can't believe that they do as good a job playtesting as GW, and we all complain about how bad a job GW does at that. But, I understand the desire to field X because it looks cool and it works well.

Ultimately, it's up to the Adepticon council. I have a lot of respect for them. They understand the game better than me and have always been very responsive to feedback. Plus, it's easily the best tourney that I've ever been to. It's run incredibly well, and the amount of time that they all devout is amazing. If I happen to pass Jeff Chua, I always stop to thank him for running the show. It is amazing.

But, my two cents (which are worth less thanks to inflation than they were a few years ago), is that allowing FW has its problems.

Instead of complaining, you have the option of "not playing".

FW models are awesome for the most part. Just like those who had "concerns" about the flier bases, you should ask or know the rules before wanting to play.

Saying you "wouldn't ever play against someone with FW models" gives your opponent the auto win.

Excellent pics. Looks like a great tournament.

I'm bumping this thread as I've now updated the original post with games 1-3 of the team tournament on Saturday.

Fantastic write up there Yakeface, thankyou very much and well done on game 3, sounds very hard to face daemons when you are them as well, lol

I am loving this report. It sounds like it had been a great weekend. I wish I could have been there!

good reports for the TT and great pix ! Bill's daemon armies look a lot better in person.... He needs to buy a better camera.

G

Thanks...I did build a lightbox recently, that's helped a bit.

Here is a picture of Yaks game #3. I took it while playing my game because it was funny seeing a sea of red.




Not so much red in our game. A lot more blues and purples with the exception being Cent99's bloodcrushers.

yakface wrote:
We looked over at Centurian and Blackmoor and they said that their game had also been a big chess match for several turns but eventually they had gotten a breakthrough and had ended up doing pretty well (again if either of them wants to post about it a bit more it would actually be informative to me!)

I have been putting it off, but I can download my pictures and write up my batreps in a couple of days.

Looks like another amazing trip. Too bad DD2 wasn't able to get our act together this year.

Next year, beware DD2, Electric Bugaloo!