Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Adepticon Bound!!!

First let me say thank you to Wyrd for the fantastic art that starts out this post. This is from the Gaining Grounds Malifaux Tournament document Wyrd released. If you have not already picked up Malifaux, what are you doing????

So, I am Adepticon bound! I am very excited to be headed back to Adepticon for my second year at the big event. This year I am planning to head out with 3 other friends from my local play group for a good road trip to Chicago. I am also looking forward to meeting up with old friends I have not seen in a while who will be attending as well.

For the local crew, (and a couple notable remote friends), I pulled together some $$ and sprung for a set of Gamers Lounge t-shirts for them to wear. I know, shameless promotion and all, but I think it will be cool to have a whole group of folks there showing their allegiance to the podcast.I will be porting along the recording equipment as well, and I expect to get some decent recording done similar to last year.

Adepticon is, at its core, a gaming convention. With this in mind, what do I have planned for gaming? I have 3 events I am registered for, one each on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I will close out the weekend with a last big event, the Poker Tournament/Mixer, which I am very much looking forward to. Everything is packed away, so I will not have too many pre-con pictures to share. With that in mind, however, I will talk a bit about what I am bringing.

Friday
Friday morning (11am-ish) I will be carting out my Dwarf's and partaking in a sound beating by 4 opponents in the Warhammer Fantasy "It's How you Use it" 1000 point tournament. This is interesting, as I only have 4 WHFB 8th edition games under my belt so far. I think the Dwarf's are pretty straight forward, as I can mostly ignore the magic phase on my turn. Overall, I am honestly just expecting to get in 4 games and have some fun. I will be looking for Equinox and his Dogs of War during the tournament. If we happen to play I have thrown out the challenge that the loser needs to buy the winner drinks that evening. My wallet is prepared!

Friday evening I plan to help out the local Chicago Wyrd Henchman by running Malifaux Demo's and whatever else he needs. Friday night there will also be a informal Q&A with some notable Wyrd Employees, Dave Bowen, Drew, and Zee.  Drew is better known as Wyrd Sketch on the Malifaux forums, and Dave Bowen is one of the fluff and background writers for the game. I am hoping, at some point during the evening or on Saturday, to pull Zee into a Malifaux challenge game.

Saturday
Saturday I will be back in the action first thing with the morning session of Warhammer 40K Combat Patrol. This beast starts early at 9am, so I will be missing out on a pilgrimage to Lou Mitchels for breakfast. C'est La Vie, onto the beating. I will be bringing a similar list to last years combat patrol to the table, carting out the Dead Tau project for a second year in a row. Even with the possible inclusion of Wave Serpents this year, I opted to stick with last years mix of War Walkers and Dire Avengers. While I expect to do better here than I do in the WHFB tournament, I really am not expecting more than an even win/loss ratio. It will be fun to get some 40K games in, but I am not putting much stock in the games overall.

Combat patrol is due to end at 2pm, which provides a whole lot of time for podcast recording, pick-up games, and socializing. I expect Saturday night to be the core of a party-con atmosphere, similar to last year. I expect I will be easily located near the Hobby Talk HQ guys, and I am looking forward to hanging out with the Phil again this year. Lest I forget, the TEW and Independant Characters crews will be floating around as well, which just adds to the fun.

Sunday
Sunday is Malifaux day. Up early at 8am, I will be bringing out my Neverborn for 4 rounds of Malifaux goodness in a 35ss tournament. There are already a number of predictions and, dare I say, whinging about expectations that the Dreamer/LCB is going to sweep the tournament. I will say up front, I am bringing the Dreamer/LCB along with Pandora and Lilith. I have the most experience with my Dreamer crew based on previous tournaments. To be fair, I made the decision to use him as a master, and Neverborn as a faction, specifically because I have a fairly expensive, customer sculpted, one of a kind miniature to stand in for Dreamer. I figure there is no better place than Adepticon to pull Max the Dreamer out to play. Now, I will admit that the Dreamer crew is very flexible, and I also think I am a damn good player.

All that being said, I am aiming and hoping for a top 3 finish in the tournament. While only the top 2 places are getting prizes, I will be happy to come in top 3 out of 32 players. Regardless of how I finish, my Neverborn will be headed back to the case for regular play after Adepticon. I have been working on additions for my Guild off and on, and plan to switch back to them after the tournament.

I am really looking forward to the competition at Adepticon. I am expecting the nation-wide draw to bring out a fair number of solid players, and to really give a good look at what the competitive Malifaux landscape is currently like. In addition, this will give me some insight into the best structure for the NOVA Open Malifaux tournament I will be running in August.

Road Trip
My road trip days are Thursday heading out and Monday heading back. I have already started planning our trip out, which is solely based around what cool restaurants we can stop at on the way. We will be headed out via Columbus OH and Indianapolis, looking to stop at some of the Food Network/Travel Channel featured restaurants. I also need to find a Tim Hortons along the way. Around or a bit after Mid-Day I expect we will be stopping in Columus, so if your interested in meeting up with the me and/or some of the Gamers Lounge crew, let us know in the comments here or on the Gamers Lounge site.

Monday, as we start the road trip back, I expect to stop at Lou Mitchells for breakfast before we get on the road. I love this place and my schedule over the weekend looks like it will hamper my desire to stop in. If your in the Chi-Town area and didn't get a chance to meet up with us during the weekend, let me know and I will try and include you!

3 comments:

  1. Woot! So looking forward to this trip!

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  2. Is the dreamer and Lord chompy bits kind of the space wolves or Imperial Guard of Malifaux. Im just gettting into the wyrd world and I have yet to play a game. I didnt know any one master was that much better than any other. Good Luck!

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  3. I do not believe so, but that seems to be the common understanding in the current Meta. Dreamer has some really cool tricks and is pretty tough to deal with, even when you know whats coming.

    For myself, as I mention I am using him because I have a really cool custom sculpted mini to replace the dreamer (http://deadtau.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-give-you-max-dreamer.html). I actually tried out a crew tonight in my local gaming group that could make the dreamer crew look fairly soft in comparison. With that said, lots of folk are afraid of him and he is the new hotness out currently.

    I think the biggest thing to remember about Malifaux is that the models/characters/masters/etc are all combo based. More-so than 40K or WHFB, the combo's can be really earth shattering and shocking until you get a chance to wrap your mind around how they work. When you combine this with the release schedule of models, it can be tough. The best counter in your faction may not necessarily be released for a certain combo/crew when you go to a tournament.

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