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I have finally returned to my home after a long weekend of gaming, chatting, buying models I don't need, and taking a LOT of pictures. Adepticon was once again awesome. I'll be posting pictures of some of my favorite models and boards. I also demo'd some cool new games that are in the works. For those of you who don't know what Adepticon is, it's a gaming convention in Chicago Illinois USA. I think this was its tenth year, maybe? It is probably best known for its 40k team tournament but there are plenty of other tournaments going on as well. If you live in the northern hemisphere you should go!

Now, I am a member of the Wardens of the Maelstrom. I figured I'd start off by showing off the teams display this year.


It's a Badab War themed team. We have Mantis Warriors (Gitsplitta), Lamenters (Solar_lion), Minotaurs (briancj), and Space Sharks (Mr.Malevolent). Solar made the board this year and it was awesome. Major kudos to him!






Here are some close ups of each army on the board. Something my pictures don't pick up are the working lights that are flickering in the base. There is also a pit with a back lit genestealer up top by the space sharks. It was very cool.

Thats awesome. Glad you had a good time!

Just for the record, we got 56 of 60 points in appearance and 56 of 60 points in theme. Near perfect! We were also a finalist in the theme competition. Final standing: 50th place out of 120. A 40+ place improvement over last year.

Very nice looking. Thank you for sharing with us.

Very nice, thanks for sharing!

As I only had my phone camera with me (which isn't great) & it was mostly running low on batteries... I only took a few pics, and out of those, only a couple are worth posting. But here is one that I liked... got it wandering through the hall while the Gladiator was going on. Stunningly beautiful army.

FYI - That Eldar army belongs to Chris Courtney of the Rochester DaBoyz.

Wow, great display guys!

Yes, that Eldar army stopped me in my tracks for a picture, too. Great army.

I sent this out privately... but I wanted to make it public as I feel some official recognition of all the effort everyone put in is due.


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To this year's active members of The Wardens of the Maelstrom: (Briancj, Solar_Lion, Mr. Malevolent, Ice Angel and Steve... who doesn't have a Dakka account but at one time was known as "Moonpie".

Dear Brothers-in-Arms,

My sincere and heart-felt thanks to everyone who participated in our Adepticon run this year. We met with unprecedented success in both military and presentation categories and were among the finalists in the Imperial Theme category which is always highly contested. Our team improved by over 40 (yes, 40) places in the overall standings and we only lost 8 points out of the 120 possible in theme and appearance (combined) and a very high sportsmanship score to boot.

We got to meet a lot of other dakkanaughts, including many mods, Legoburner and Yakface and we *nearly* got to play with Major Tom in his very first 40k game! Still, we all got to try Kill Zone with RiTides thanks to Briancj. We had 4 fantastic games in the tournament against fun opponents with interesting armies.

I know that Adepticon is a very large financial burden in travel, food and lodging... not to mention the investment in time and money getting your armies together. SL spent hundreds of dollars on the fantastic display, as well as hundreds of hours of build and painting time. Briancj took care of our shirts and name tags... I must imagine getting us to agree on a design was like herding cats, but the end result was fantastic!. I know that I can be a real pest when it comes to asking for updates, reports and assurances or requesting list changes in order to try to keep the team on task. I also know that those of you with families have had to sacrifice significant amounts of time with them in order to meet your commitment to the team.

You guys all came through with shining colors! I've very proud of our team's accomplishments and thankful to have convinced such a great group of talented guys to play together, following my rather myopic vision of 40k. The fact that people who are not playing continue to contribute each year to the team's success just blows me away. This year of course, it was Ice's contribution of the original fiction that made such a difference and was clearly implicated in our strong showing in the Theme competition. Both Ice and Steve supported us on Friday and all day on Saturday during the tournament.

In spite of all the stress and the 13-hour marathon of the team tournament... everyone kept a smile on their faces and good humor throughout the event (well... by the end of the 4th game I think I could be medically classified as "unresponsive" but I wasn't unhappy, it was just that from a mental perspective... the "off" switch had been thrown). We stayed positive, and kept fighting no matter the odds. I think that showed clearly in decent battle score for the year. I hope everyone had fun. An event of that nature is an extraordinary experience and the team tournament is one of the signature 40k events in the world today. We accounted for ourselves well, especially considering none of us fielded what could be considered a competitive army. We fielded solid armies and used them to good effect. Well done boys.

For these and a hundred other things I either don't know about or remember I want to thank each of you from the bottom of my heart. It was an honor to take the field with you. Something I'd be delighted to be able to again in the future.

Sincerely,
Gitsplitta

wow looks like everything came out looking great, really love the board cant wait to see the bat reps and read the stories Cie through together.

Wow. Just wow. If anything sums up dakka in all its modelling, sporting, playing glory, this is it.

Fantastic work again this year, guys. Just stunning, and really raising the bar well over where it already was. I played against Sons of Shatner and know how gorgeous they had to be to even be in the running against you guys. Wish I had gotten to properly drool over your stuff, and to meet you guys, but it was stunning.

inmygravenimage wrote:Wow. Just wow. If anything sums up dakka in all its modelling, sporting, playing glory, this is it.

Thanks mate. Couldn't be prouder of what everyone did and how they conducted themselves. It was FUN.

Mannahnin wrote:Fantastic work again this year, guys. Just stunning, and really raising the bar well over where it already was. I played against Sons of Shatner and know how gorgeous they had to be to even be in the running against you guys. Wish I had gotten to properly drool over your stuff, and to meet you guys, but it was stunning.

I was really disappointed that I didn't get to meet you as well, though I did learn that even people who know you aren't sure how to pronounce your handle! ("handle" is kind of an old, CB word... is there a more net-savvy word now?) Was hoping to meet Mikhalia (sp?) too but I just never seemed to draw a bead on him. I was delighted to meet all the folks I did though. Funny story there but I'll save it for later in the thread.

Thanks everyone for the kind words. Git especially. Adepticon this year was very different for me but I felt it really became a better event in my mind. Not only did I get to spend it with my team but I got to spend a lot of time checking out other games. Something I recommend is trying out a game called Leviathans, it should be out later this year. I also demo'd a game called Zombicide. I played it with the author of the flesh tearer novels. How cool is that?! I finally succumbed to the pressure and tried out Warmachine and Hordes.

Back to the 40k action though. Here are a couple of my favorite displays this year.


This is was the display for a french canadian team. They won something. They played a Mechanicum force. All of their vehicles were the front half of storm ravens. Lots of awesome conversions on that board.




Here is the winning, Cult of Charlie Sheen display. I don't think I need to say more.

Surprisingly I only had a couple actual army shots of the Cult. They were a fantastic demonette army.

My favorite pic stolen out of Ice Angel's gallery so far. That's one of our team mates (Steve), administering the coup de grace on Ice.


Would you like any Adepticon with your HAM??

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing.

I definitely had a blast!
Winning 2 out of 4 games in my first Adepticon left me grinning like a gitty school girl.
Got a bunch of pictures to sort thru but Jazmyn has finished the most important....
The team pic!

From left to right:
Me, Solar_lion, Gitsplitta, Briancj.
We kicked some arse!!!
Next year here we come.

Someone should have told me to suck in my gut... (sigh). Obviously Mr. M is the cute one. Briancj's the brains of the outfit. SL's the workhorse. Leaving me the what... promoter I guess?

Awesome pic! Nice to have one of the gang together.

My wife just pointed out that I'm the only one without a beard. I may have to work on that for next year!

Ice Angel. I was on the Cult of Charlie Sheen. Thank you for posting the pictures.

The team Won Best Heretical Theme and was in the close running with you and "The Last Order" for Spirit as well.

The members were.

Jennifer M.
Bill E.
Dan B.
and Luke C. (myself).

I can't believe you've posted pictures and written already. We're not even sure we left the hall that night.

Did you take our Daeomonette with you?

Hey FLB... your team's idea was BRILLIANT! Glad you guys got some recognition!

(I wonder if there was anyone there that *wasn't* from dakka??)

IceAngel wrote:My wife just pointed out that I'm the only one without a beard. I may have to work on that for next year!

Yeah c'mon man. Way to fit in haha

FlatlanderBoss2.0 wrote:Ice Angel. I was on the Cult of Charlie Sheen. Thank you for posting the pictures.

The team Won Best Heretical Theme and was in the close running with you and "The Last Order" for Spirit as well.

Your stuff was Amazing. Painting and all the little touches on your models/ Display shows why your winners. It was fun playing next 2 you all twice ( who's picking the tables )
We'll be sure to watch for you next year. Well deserved congrats.

Solar_ lion ( Lamenters )


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mr.Malevolent wrote:I definitely had a blast!
Winning 2 out of 4 games in my first Adepticon left me grinning like a gitty school girl.
Got a bunch of pictures to sort thru but Jazmyn has finished the most important....
The team pic!

From left to right:
Me, Solar_lion, Gitsplitta, Briancj.
We kicked some arse!!!
Next year here we come.

Left to right .. Mr. M, Solar L, Charming, and Briancj

The game we played against the Wardens was the highlight of the Team Tournament for me - a fantastically modeled and painted army and, even more important, a really good group of guys!

Thanks Alpharius, we felt exactly the same way about you guys. The true-scale marines both you and RiTides had and his MONSTER dreadnoughts were really something to see! We had a great time playing you too... can't remember smiling that much during a game, especially a tournament game... in a long, long time.

RiTides took a pic of his assault marines and mine right next to each other when we were playing Kill Zone on Sunday... really neat to see the size difference between my original plastic beakies and his true-scale marines. (it was huge) Hope he posts it eventually.

Ok I have a lot to post so I do it themed based..First up.. some People and our heros shots. I'll post some every day till all 200 + are done..

The pitch to the judges for our Book! Amazing work .. Good job Gits and Ice.



There was magic in the air... This is a still shot.. not an in motion shot! PS.. These dice rolled amazing well all day!


Heros.. Truely the finest People.. Briancj and Ritides



And the legend... wonder what mysteries is being pondered!


More tomorrow..

SL

Can a mod please delete those pictures of me? I'm sure that's NOT wargaming related... Kid_Kyoto... where are you when I need you?!!!

What SL didn't mention is that he cornered a die like that *twice* in about 10 minutes!

(Note the button Alpharius is sporting!)

tables and armys look realy good .. anyone got more pics or a link to the canadian admech army ?

I thought the tables were really good this year, my hat's off to the folks that put them together. We fought on 2 different Realms of Battle boards with lots of fancy buildings and such on them. They're kind of a PITA to play on as everything is sloped and the dice are just "dead" on them... but they sure are pretty, which is 90% of it for me.



Since I didn't have any pictures to add, I thought I'd tell a couple of stories about the weekend. The first is mercifully short, and is the story of why I changed my profession to "Nerd Ambassador".

Team tournament, awards, etc is finally over. I'm zapped. Needing food and sleep. It's near midnight. I have my little tray that SL made for me with my army on it and make my way to the elevator. As I walk in, 3 young people (20s) walk in, undoubtedly from the wedding that was being held at the same time. The tall kid says distinctly "Nerd hobby." as they walk in. Cheeky b*stard... rude too. However, within about 15 seconds of the doors closing, both guys and the girl were over by me looking at the army, asking questions, "did I paint them myself?", etc. It was clear they weren't interested in the game, but were impressed by the figures. By the time the car stopped, they were smiling and nodding and someone even said "pretty cool".

So I did my bit for God and 40k. Even after 13 hours of power gaming.