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2014/04/09 22:56:24
Subject: Jy2 Goes to Adepticon (WARNING - Lots of Pics! Batrep Links on p.1, Game #6 on p.11)
Hi all. This is my first time ever going to Adepticon and I must say, it was awesome!
I met a lot of dakkalites, including Roci, RiTides, Wyomingfox, Fxeni, Chancetragedy (my roommate for the trip), Eltrain (my Adepticon Team Tournament teammate), Coldsteel (my other Adepticon Team Tournament teammate), Yermom (Nick Nanavati, winner of the Adepticon singles), Mike Brandt and many others.
I'm also very much flattered by the many people who came up to me and said hello - people who either read my battle reports here on dakka or who saw me in one of the Frontline Gaming's videoreps. It is little things like these that motivate me to keep on writing those reports.
I also had some great games against some great people. All of my opponents were really nice and all the armies were beautiful. I also had the pleasure of playing against Tim Gorham (winner of the very recent Torrent of Fire tournament) and his tournament-winning Centurionstar Space Marines and Justin Cook (winner of the Nova Open GT 2013) and his tournament-winning O'vesa-star Tau. Then we got in a 2v2 pickup game between my roommate, Steve "Chancetragedy", and I against Team Zero Comp's Frankie "World's Greatest 40K Player" and his nasty venom-spam Dark Eldar and Geoff "InControl" and his FMC Tyranids.
This was deathstar 40K at its height. Of all the armies I played, only 1 was not a deathstar. The only non-deathstar army I went up against was mechdar with 5 wave serpents and 2 wraithknights. I then played against a Khorne 2++ deathstar (Forewarning + Grimoire), a Farsight-bomb, Tim's Centurionstar and Justin's O'vesa-star.
My only regret is that our team didn't get to participate in the Team Tournament. We were on the waitlist and we actually made it in. However, we were the odd team out. For us to play, there either had to be 1 more team in or 1 team dropping out. However, it wasn't a total loss. Instead, I got to try out the other events at Adepticon such as Combat Patrol and Zone Mortalis as well as to relax.
And I will have reports for every event that I participated in, including reports for the games that I played that weren't official.
Before I get into the meat of my report (and my list as well), I know you all want to see the "Eye Candy" of Adepticon. So without further ado, here are the many beautiful armies that is Adepticon:
BTW, if you recognize any of these armies (and their owners), feel free to give a shout-out.
Chaos
Spoiler:
Chaos and Eldar were probably the 2 most represented armies in this tournament, with Space Marines very close behind. Of course I don't have the data to support this, but from just a cursory glance, it seemed like Chaos and Eldar were everywhere.
I actually ran a very similar Chaos Space Marine army to this before (it was against Reece's Footdar).
Absolutely stunning army.
Honestly, I don't know whether this army was Heretical or Imperial in nature....actually, it looks like it might have included even a little bit of Tau! In any case, awesome conversions.
Bill Kim's (aka Centurian99) Daemons. Bill was my ATC 2013 teammate. This year, he made it to the Adepticon Top 16.
The colors! Me likey!
I really love this Lord of Change model. Superb! Anyone know what model/company it is/made this?
This was actually my Round 1 opponent's Khorne-star army. Skulltaker, 2 Heralds and Karanak with a unit of bloodcrushers. My opponent got lucky and got Forewarning along with re-roll Invuln's on 1 of his Heralds against me to make it actually a tough fight.
I love the presentation here. Reminds me of Gladiatior. Are you not entertained?!?
Helspiders! Love it!
Spidergrinder. Loving all the conversions in these armies.
The screamerstar in action!
This must be one of the Escalation armies.
Eldar
Spoiler:
This is the age of riptides and wraithknights. I've never seen so many of them before in my tournament life!
One of the many beaststar Deldar builds. This one belongs to Sean Nayden (aka OrdoSean), who finished in the Top 4! Way to go!
Watch out! Those hornets will sting you!
This was my teammate, Eltrain728's army.
Beaststar, I think.
That's a lot of jetbikes.
Awesome pose.
One of the few pure Dark Eldar armies.
Wassup bro. Long time no fight.
Spidey-knight.
Just too cool.
They're from the same army!
More jetbike madness!
Imperial Guards
Spoiler:
Guards with Marine allies.
Cool display board.
More guards with Marine allies.
This army and its display board from James Wappel was just sic. Guards + Sisters! I believe he won the award for Best Army.
Oh my goodness! This is GMM quality. Why do I only have 1 pic of this army?!?
Are you kidding me? A converted ork-guard army. I loved it!
Necrons + Orks
Spoiler:
There were a lot of Necrons and it was a decent showing for orks.
Awesome dakkajet conversion.
Loved this army. Very cool!
Necron Scarab-farm! This army kinda bugs me. Hahaha....
Wraithwing with a twist....ghost arks! Loved the color scheme here.
Lovely Forgeworld display board. I just might have to get one of those displays for my army next time.
This must be an early Necron army, before the night scythes came out.
Necrons with...Blood Angels? I find it odd that they are actually Allies of Desperation.
Finally, I knew I was bound to find a Chaos-cron combo. Love his heldrake.
Another early Necron army. You can tell by the night scythes.
This was my teammate, Coldsteel's Necron army. He brought with him the newest trend in deathstars - the Necron spyder-star!
Due to the high number of photos, I have split up the army pics. The rest of the army photos can be found on the link below:
Adepticon is currently THE Mecca of 40K gaming here in the US. It is also one of the more international events other than the ETC. There are people traveling from all over the world to attend. Adepticon is a competitive player's dream come true. There are soooo many good players here. For those coming from smaller venues, competitive-wise, you may think you were the king of your pond, but here, you're just another fish in an ocean full of sharks. That's how strong the competition is over here. Don't be surprised if you bump into a few GT winners in your games because most of them were there. Nick Nanavati, Nick Rose, Ben Mohlie, Tony Kopach, Thomas "Goatboy" Reidy, Eric Hoerger, Alex Fennel, Alan "Pajamapants" Barajmovic, Frankie "The World's Greatest 40K Player" Giampapa, Justin Cook, Bill Kim, Brandon Vallee, Brad Townsend, Andrew Gonyo, Kevin "Janthkin", Alex "Whigwam", Jim "Jy2" Yeh....the list of top players go on. I apologize for not mentioning the European/foreign winners as well as I am not so familiar with them.
But as competitive as Adepticon is, it is also a hobbyist event as well. About 20% of the field were top players. The rest of the players were more casual gamers. For the casual gamer just looking to roll dice and meet people, you may run into 1 super-tough opponent/list (who BTW is also usually pretty nice) but the majority of the guys you play against will most likely be more at your level, which will be casual. There are also many events for the more casual 40K gamer, including the 40K Friendly, Combat Patrol, Warzone, Zone Mortalis, lots of demo games, board games and many tutorial sessions (painting, sculpting, etc.). Then there were the other gaming systems like Warhammer Fantasy, Infinity, Warmachines, Flames of War, Space Hulk and many others. Although our team didn't get into the Team Tournament, in a ways, that wasn't so bad. It gave me the chance to try out some of these other events and they were quite fun. I ended up playing Combat Patrol, Zone Mortalis, Zombicide and some 40K pickup games.
Overall, Adepticon has something for everyone. It's got the Singles event for the competitive players. It's got the casual events for the casual players. It's got the hobby tutorials for those who want to learn or improve their hobby skills. It's got the BIG events for those with the BIG Forgeworld models. It's got many smaller games for those who want to try something different or new. Lastly, it's got its main attraction - the Team Tournament.
The state of the competitive meta is always fluctuating. From spam-lists like MSU to jack-of-all-trade Take-All-Comer's lists to deathstar armies - it has always been somewhat balanced. Then enter the dataslates and formations....no wait, it began even before then. Enter Tau. Yes, it was the Tau codex that shifted the trend in the meta towards deathstar builds. Tau was the perfect instigator for the deathstar armies. They've got one of the best force-multipliers in the game currently - the Toolbox Tau Commander, otherwise known as the Buffmander. That guy could do it all almost. He makes a unit twin-linked and lets them ignore cover. He gives them Tank Hunter, Monster Hunter, Stubborn and various other useful USR's. He could tank shots due to his 2+ save and Toughness 5 and could be given 4++ and FNP as well to make him even better. Finally, he lets them get out of combat with Hit-&-Run. More importantly, with Tau being Battle Brothers to the most armies, you could lend him to many armies to make them even more deadly.
The seer council and the beaststar has always existed ever since the beginning of 6th. But before the new Tau came out, they were more low-key. Even the Daemon screamerstar was just a trial deathstar in the early days before Tau. It wasn't until Tau came out that these deathstars became what they are today. Yes, it was due to how powerful the Tau and their shooting were that brought these deathstars into prominence. Few armies could stand up to the firepower of the Tau. What was needed was a new breed of deathstars, one with the speed to make it into Tau lines with minimal casualties. Enter the era of the super-fast and nigh-invincible deathstars.
To exacerbate the situation, Games Workshop then started releasing dataslates and formations, making every day like Christmas for many of these armies. Most influential of these formations/allies was the Inquisition. Now most armies - more importantly, most deathstars - have access to Divination psychic powers, powerful grenades, anti-deployment countermeasures and the ubiquitous Coteaz! It is a funny sight indeed. You could have Space Marines battling the Grey Knights fighting against Eldar trying to overrun Tau....and all of them with Coteaz in their armies!
Seer Council, beaststar, the O'vesa-star, the Farsight-bomb, Draigowing, screamerstar, centurionstar, nob bikers, wolfstar - the list of deathstars goes on and on. Get used to it, because this is the current state of the competitive meta. Deathstars are just so good nowadays that you will see more and more people running them. Before, they had weaknesses that could be addressed. But with each new release from GW, those weaknesses are getting smaller and smaller and the number of deathstars in tournament play are getting larger and larger. Some of the best TAC armies - armies like Flying Monstrous Creature-spam Daemons, Necron Wraithwing Flyer-spam and White Scars bikers - can still hold their own, but most are finding it hard to keep up with the new crop of deathstars. Even MSU (multiple-small-units) builds will have problems against the faster deathstars like the seer council, beaststar or screamerstar. Pretty soon, the tournament paradigm will be mainly deathstars and anti-deathstars unless either GW take the measures to re-balance their games or we, their customers, take it into our own hands to try to balance out the tournament scene ourselves.
I'm noticing a discrepancy between the competitive East Coast players (I'll just refer to them as EC players) and the competitive West Coast players (I'll call them WC players). As a WC player myself, here we tend to run slightly different competitive builds than the EC players do. I'm noticing that EC players tend to run more deathstar builds. We tend to run more spammy armies. They tend to run more FMC-spam daemons. We tend to run more mixed daemons. They tend to run more iontide riptides. We tend to run more burstide riptides.
Just to give you ideas of what some of the good WC players brought:
Jy2 - Wraithwing Necrons
Reece - Space Marine infantry-spam
Frankie - DE Venom-spam
Janthkin - Tyranids with no spam!!!
Blackmoor - Tyranids
Doug Johnson - IG w/allies
And these are some of the EC players:
Justin Cook/Jesse Newton - O'vesa-star
Nick Nanavati/Rob Tilly - FMC Daemons
Tony Kopach/Alex Fennell - Seer Council
Alan Pajamapants/Tony Grippando/Sean Nayden - Beaststar (don't know if Sean is actually EC)
Tim Gorham - Centurionstar
My opinion is that EC players are actually slightly ahead of the WC players. They are running more of the "newer" competitive power builds whereas we are running more of the "older" competitive power builds. This is partially due to the fact that the tournament scene in the EC is probably more competitive to those in the WC. There in the EC they have Adepticon, Nova, Battle for Salvation, Beakycon, the Michigan GT and a lot more large GT's than we do here in the WC. Also, most of these tournaments have been around much longer than the WC tourneys. Here in the WC, we have the Las Vegas Open, the Bay Area Open, Feast of Blades and the Golden Throne. Moreover, most of our tournaments, with the exception of the Feast of Blades, is still relatively new. Thus, the EC players are much more used to thriving in a more competitive meta, whereas here in the WC, we are slightly more laid back in terms of our approach to gaming. That is not to say that we WC players don't run deathstars or FMC daemons or the same builds as those in the EC, but our top players just don't run them as prevalently as our EC counterparts.
I apologize for not expounding on the Midwest players as well, but I am not as familiar with their competitive meta as I am with the EC/WC players.
For Adepticon, I was really ever considering 2 armies - my Wraithwing Necrons or Tyranids. I took Necrons to my last major tournament, the Las Vegas Open. Normally, I alternate armies between tournaments but for Adepticon, I decided to go with my Necrons again. Why?
1. My Tyranids weren't done.
2. I'm concerned about taking any army that I can't bring as a carry-on on the plane. I would most likely have to check in my bugs.
3. I wasn't really satisfied with the performance of my Necrons at the last tournament, the LVO. I did great, going 4-0 before finally losing in Game #5 to get eliminated from the Top 8 (the Championship rounds). Thus, I still had something to prove with my crons. Adepticon was a chance for their redemption.
4. I wanted to see how a great, balanced Take-All-Comer's army can deal with the current competitive meta that is deathstar 40K. Thus, I had to bring my strongest TAC army in order to see how balanced 40K compares to deathstar 40K. My hypothesis is this - TAC armies can still compete, even against the uber builds of today.
Thus, I was here at Adepticon with a goal. No, it wasn't really to win the whole thing. Rather, my goal was to make it to the Sweet 16. It was also to show that a good TAC army can still stand up to the deathstar armies. A fundamentally sound TAC army should have all the tools to handle deathstar builds. Then again, other than the seer council, I haven't really faced many of these new "super deathstars" yet, so it just may be a learning experience for me.
RiTides wrote: It was fantastic meeting you . Your posts and bat reps have been my guides to starting tyranids, which I and my teammate ran at AdeptiCon!
When I logged in, I didn't check on the "Keep me logged in on this computer" tab. I then closed the browser after I finished. I wonder why my info would still be logged on. Hmmmm....
Great to have met you there. Your converted Tyranids looked awesome. Shoulda took some pictures of it.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Byte wrote: Wow, thanks for sharing the great pics! Holy cow, Chaos much? Looks like FMC ruled the lists.
There's going to to be much more pictures coming out, but alas, that is still only a fraction of the armies that were there. Wish I coulda took more pictures.
Yeah, FMC daemons were definitely the predominant Chaos build.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Chancetragedy wrote: Hey JY2 that LOC model is from ultra forge I think. It belongs to a guy named Logan B.something. GEORGOUS army I got to play against at nova.
Awesome! I've seen the model before. I just forgot the name of the company. I actually have the Ultraforge Bloodthirster. Now I just may have to get their LoC as well.
BTW, thanks for sharing your room with me. Great to have met you.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/04/09 23:53:36
There were a lot of beautiful Eldar and Tau! Although it hurt to play against them (we faced a few that were equal parts beautiful and brutal on the table).
Thanks for the pics
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/04/10 01:02:57
2014/04/10 01:19:16
Subject: Re:Jy2 Goes to Adepticon (WARNING - Lots of Pics!)
It was defiantly good to meet you. It is always a good time when you get to talk bugs with someone who loves them like I do. I’ll go back and look at my army lists, but I know I played at least one of those Eldar armies. ( 4 out of my 5 games where either quad eldar or taudar)
IG, Necrons and Ork pics posted. Wow, only p. 1 and I've already got 84 pics posted. People watching this on cell phones may have problems viewing all these pics.
Still to come - Marines, Tau and bugs.
RiTides wrote: There were a lot of beautiful Eldar and Tau! Although it hurt to play against them (we faced a few that were equal parts beautiful and brutal on the table).
Thanks for the pics
It was my pleasure!
poppa G wrote: Jealousy consumes me! I wish I could have gone.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Good gravy those armies are amazing!
Oh well, there's next year....or maybe the year after that. No rush. I've been in the hobby for 5 years now and this is the 1st time I've gone.
Chancetragedy wrote: Yah adept icon was an incredible time poppa. If you get a chance I highly suggest making the trip. I'll most likely be back next year.
And Jim it was awesome meeting you and yah I'm definately glad we roomed together! Hopefully I can make it out to LVO next year and we can hangout.
Ah...you'd love it at Vegas. Vegas + gaming = WIN!!! You can even bring the family as there is something there for everyone.
Vegas is going to be a mainstay for me.
Mak_the_Knife wrote: How did I not see any this?! I thought I walked around pretty extensively, but I must have missed the "Cool Warhammer Models" room...
I'll have to do better next year.
Thank you for sharing these!
There are just so many cool armies that these are only a fraction of the armies that I saw. I'm sure even I missed out on a lot of armies there.
jathomas2013 wrote: Some of those wraithknights are JAW DROPPING. I'm now very sad I didn't do anything like that with my three!
Hope they give you some ideas. You can still do some external conversion work if you're into converting.
CitizenVll wrote: Hell yea! Great to see the Adepticon stuff get posted so fast!
I was one of those Dakkanites that ran up to your table when I saw you in the crowd, could'nt help myself to top and shake your hand
Cant wait to read those battlereports, keep them coming!
Thanks! I'm really flattered by all those who came up and said hi to me. I feel like I have friends everywhere now.
Roci wrote: It was defiantly good to meet you. It is always a good time when you get to talk bugs with someone who loves them like I do. I’ll go back and look at my army lists, but I know I played at least one of those Eldar armies. ( 4 out of my 5 games where either quad eldar or taudar)
Nice to have met you Roci. So did you run your bugs for the Singles? I'm planning on bringing bugs to my next major tournament (either the Golden Throne or the Bay Area Open).
I'm in SoCal so the GT SoCal is a given that I will attend!. I am thinking I needa start going to other tournies that are farther away like BAO and LVO...
13000
12000
:daemon 14000
:darkeldar 5000
2014/04/11 03:11:10
Subject: Jy2 Goes to Adepticon (WARNING - Lots of Pics!)
It was a great pleasure to get a game against you Jim, it was a good test of top level players and brutal lists (no spoilers!)
2013 Nova Open Tournament Champ- 2014 Las Vegas Open Best Tau Player/13th overall 2014 NOVA Open Second to One 2015 Las Vegas Open Best Tau Player/10th overall
Roci wrote: It was defiantly good to meet you. It is always a good time when you get to talk bugs with someone who loves them like I do. I’ll go back and look at my army lists, but I know I played at least one of those Eldar armies. ( 4 out of my 5 games where either quad eldar or taudar)
Nice to have met you Roci. So did you run your bugs for the Singles? I'm planning on bringing bugs to my next major tournament (either the Golden Throne or the Bay Area Open).
Unfortunately, like you, my nids are not quite ready. I have a gaggle of FMC that need to be wrapped up. I have the army back up to about 90% complete. I will be bringing them to Nova though. List will very based on if they open the door for formations or not. They will be attending some RTTS and local shop tourneys to put them to the test prior to Nova though.
Due to the high number of photos on this page already, I will post the rest of the army photos on p. 2 of this thread instead when it gets there. Otherwise, certain slower connections (i.e. dialup or cell phones) will take forever to open them. So if you want to see them faster, just bump up the thread with your posts until it gets to p. 2.
Instead, I will post my thoughts on Adepticon and the current competitive meta.
Adepticon
Adepticon is currently THE Mecca of 40K gaming here in the US. It is also one of the more international events other than the ETC. There are people traveling from all over the world to attend. Adepticon is a competitive player's dream come true. There are soooo many good players here. For those coming from smaller venues, competitive-wise, you may think you were the king of your pond, but here, you're just another fish in an ocean full of sharks. That's how strong the competition is over here. Don't be surprised if you bump into a few GT winners in your games because most of them were there. Nick Nanavati, Nick Rose, Ben Mohlie, Tony Kopach, Thomas "Goatboy" Reidy, Eric Hoerger, Alex Fennel, Alan "Pajamapants" Barajmovic, Frankie "The World's Greatest 40K Player" Giampapa, Justin Cook, Bill Kim, Brandon Vallee, Brad Townsend, Andrew Gonyo, Kevin "Janthkin", Alex "Whigwam", Jim "Jy2" Yeh....the list of top players go on. I apologize for not mentioning the European/foreign winners as well as I am not so familiar with them.
But as competitive as Adepticon is, it is also a hobbyist event as well. About 20% of the field were top players. The rest of the players were more casual gamers. For the casual gamer just looking to roll dice and meet people, you may run into 1 super-tough opponent/list (who BTW is also usually pretty nice) but the majority of the guys you play against will most likely be more at your level, which will be casual. There are also many events for the more casual 40K gamer, including the 40K Friendly, Combat Patrol, Warzone, Zone Mortalis, lots of demo games, board games and many tutorial sessions (painting, sculpting, etc.). Then there were the other gaming systems like Warhammer Fantasy, Infinity, Warmachines, Flames of War, Space Hulk and many others. Although our team didn't get into the Team Tournament, in a ways, that wasn't so bad. It gave me the chance to try out some of these other events and they were quite fun. I ended up playing Combat Patrol, Zone Mortalis, Zombicide and some 40K pickup games.
Overall, Adepticon has something for everyone. It's got the Singles event for the competitive players. It's got the casual events for the casual players. It's got the hobby tutorials for those who want to learn or improve their hobby skills. It's got the BIG events for those with the BIG Forgeworld models. It's got many smaller games for those who want to try something different or new. Lastly, it's got its main attraction - the Team Tournament.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2014/04/12 18:43:42
Let's get this bumped to page 2. Looking forward to seeing more of your thoughts on the competitive meta. From my understand adepticon is usually very follow the leader and I definately felt you saw that. Hell I'm just as guilty as anyone haha. Karma really kicked my butt event wise but the weekend was incredibly fun and it great to see old friends and meet new ones.
2014/04/11 16:09:50
Subject: Jy2 Goes to Adepticon (WARNING - Lots of Pics!)
.....Bay Area Open GT 2013 - Best Tyranids 
.....LVO GT 2014 Team Tournament - Best Generals
. Your posts and bat reps have been my guides to starting tyranids, which I and my teammate ran at AdeptiCon!
(we faced a few that were equal parts beautiful and brutal on the table).
13000
12000
- 3000pts Rampagers 
Cratfworld Alaitoc (
Order of the Red Mantle (
blog!
1,500 Points II 
125
3000
4000 