Adepticon Saturday - WAB Singels Event

Well It has been a while since I got back to posting here, life has a tendency to get in the way. Last week I had to fly down to North Carolina to visit my Grandfather who was in the Hospital with a stroke. I got to visit with family and comfort my grandfather, good news is he will be released this Friday to come home, although will be wheel chair bound for the rest of his life.

Anyway, not much went on on Saturday except for the WAB event I ran. It was a great event and we had 14 players. Here are the winners of the event:

The Classical Campaign Winners playing for the Greeks/Successors faction

Mike Butcher and Michael Cosentino

Best Painted Army

Bennett Blalock-Doane

Best General

Mark Henry

Best SportsmenMike Butcher

The following pictures are from the event on Saturday, the painting for the event is getting to be amazing and I look forward to seeing what shows up next year!

TK

Sorry for the lack of Posts

But Life has a funny way of getting in the way. Been real busy with other things that have not pertained to war gaming. But I will be getting back to regular programming soon, so stay tuned...

TK

An Apology

Folks,

It came to my attention that my last blog post on the LotR Championships came across as a bit harsh. That was not my intention, Jamie Welling runs an outstanding event and he does an awesome job keeping the Lord of the Rings Community together in the Chicago area.

My personal bias on terrain is well known (I love lots of terrain!) and Jamie had tons of it at his event. Not as much as I like, but defiantly more than most GW run LotR events I have seen run.

Also Jamie does an outstanding job of coming up with great scenarios, which if most folks know, are tough to write. He had a few items that I was not hip on but my comments were to try to make them better. In hindsight, I should have let Jamie know personally rather than on my blog.

So I apologize to Jamie, I am not perfect and I am sorry if my comments came of putting your event in a bad light, that was not my purpose, I value our friendship.

TK

Adepticon Day Two, Friday

So,

Friday morning came quick since I went to bed around 1:30am Chicago time (11:30pm Phoenix Time) and got up at 6:30am (4:30am Phoenix time) to meet up with Jay & Jeremy for some breakfast. Once I was filled up with a good meal, we all headed to the Lilac room for the Lord of the Rings Singles Championships.

While there waiting for the first match ups, I saw many faces from GitD, Frank B, John H, Jeremy W, Keith H, Kyle T, Tim C as well as a few other folks that I have met since attending Adepticon. I also met up with John Humphries from Plastic Legions and joked that I did not want to play against him again after being beat down the night before.

Well Jamie and his crew post the first round match ups and I get Frank Brown! Now I have know Frank for about three years now and I know he was the 2007, 2008 LotR Circuit Champion and placed second in the circuit last year, but I have never got to play him. I accused him of fixing the match up but was glad I got the chance to play him.


Frank brought a Uruk-hai list that had a few beserkers, a bunch of crossbows and Vrasku and a bunch of Uruk's. Now I knew that this would be a hard fight since I know Uruk Hai have the same Fight value as my Numenorians but I had the weaker strength, so I needed to win fights in order to win this game.

The first mission was called " It is precious to me" which the objective was to capture the enemies objective and still keep control of your own. This scenario had us deploying 12" in and the objective had to be just outside of the deployment zone. You got a Major victory if you controlled both objectives, Minor victory was reached if you only captured your own and the other side did not capture there own and your force was unbroken, Draws were anything not listed above. You got 3 bonus points for having more victory points than your opponent. Victory points were giving for all models removed for wounds, failed courage or other conditions and you got 1 point for every model. If you had more points you got the bonus points.

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Anyway, Frank and I jockeyed for position and when we finally entered combat we saw a lot of tied fights due to the same Fight values. Frank had the hot dice and when he rolled to see who won the fights he got all of them. Needless to say my troops started to die pretty quickly and before long Frank had secured both objectives. The only model still on the table for me was Isildur and he didn't even have a scratch on him. So I got a Major Loss and Frank got the Major Win, he also got the three bonus points.

Frank was great to play against, he is all business when he plays and he knows his stuff. He gave me some pointers on how to play the army better and I learned quite a bit from Frank. I look forward to playing him again.

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Game 2 was against Chad and his Cirith Ungol Orcs in a scenario called "One does not simply walk into Mordor". The scenario was to destroy the others objective which was in the deployment zone 18" from the corner. This scenario was much like Storm the Camp and you got bonus points for having more models in the other persons deployment zone.

As I mentioned, Chad was playing a Cirith Ungol list without Shelob but instead he had Gorbag and an Orc Drummer. He also had a ton of troops (46??) and I knew it would be tough to break through to get to his objective. Having played Cirith Ungol lists in the past, I knew just what his army could do, so I was not terribly worried about the game unless my dice went south.

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Chad won the deployment and also the priority and started the march across the board. There was two pieces of terrain in the middle of the board that forced him to funnel his troops through which I gladly waited for and shield walled up waiting for him. I had Isildur in the front leading my men and Chad kept moving closer to the fight. Once he got into 6" of me I won the priority and charged Isildur into Gorbag and then called a Heroic Fight, needless to say the Orc leader fell and Isildur started rampaging through his line and Chad could not stop him. I had sent a few troops around the left flank to race for his objective but time was called before I could get there. We both settled for a Draw since neither of us got to the others objective and no one was in the others deployment zone.

Chad was great to play against, and my only two critiques was that he was too predictable with the game. I knew exactly what he was going to do, perhaps that comes from me knowing what his army could do, but it felt like he was focused in on one plan and was going to stick to it regardless if he lost everything. And the other was that it was Orcs without any punch, he should have brought Shelob instead of Gorbag. The big spider would have given me something to worry about.

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So after two tough games I was 1 Loss and 1 Draw and I was not liking the next scenario which was "We will camp here for the night" a modified Clash of Piquets with a funky reinforcement rule. So as I walked up to check the sheet, I saw an army that I did not want to see again, yeah you got it, John's Grey Company! I heard John laugh as I turned around and he had a grin ear to ear as he waited for me to get to the table.

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So Game three was against the Grey Company and my good friend John Humphries. Well at least it would be a fun game against someone I know and it's always better to loose to someone you like!

This scenario was all about killing your enemy and not loosing too many of your own troops. A Major victory was if the enemy force has been broken and three quarters of your force remains. A minor was if the enemy is broken and you have less than three quarters, draws were anything else. You also got 3 bonus points for controlling more table quarters than your opponent. This scenario had you deploying in a zone that was 6" in and up to 12" from your table side. Half of your force was placed off table and at the end of your movement phase you rolled a dice, on a 1 or 2 the models did not come in, 3 to 4 the opposing player places them anywhere in your deployment zone and 5 and 6 you choose where in your zone.

John used the terrain to his advantage and he kept away from Isildur. Basically John shot the crap out of me and broke my force as I closed on him. I did get in a few kills but the damage was done and I could not recover. The good thing was it was nice to look at Johns beautiful army as it kicked the snot out of me! I thought for sure that John had the Best appearance out of what I saw at the event. John is also a blast to play against, we joked, laughed and I cried at the table, it was a blast and John had my vote for favorite opponent. I would gladly play him again and only wish he lived here in Phoenix, he would fit in great with the guys I game with and he is an awesome painter as well.

So now I was 2 Loss' and 1 Draw and when I looked at the next round I was at the very bottom of the ranking for battle points. Last year I went 1 Win, 2 loss's and 1 Draw, so I had to win this next game or I would have a worse record than last year.

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Game 4 was against a Robert Fenning playing a Elven force. This scenario was a battle until you killed everything of your opponents before time was called. Unfortunately I did not get any pictures since my batteries died during this game. The scenario was "Blood has been spilled this night" and you got bonus points for killing the highest point value hero in your opponents army.

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Basically in a nutshell, I sent Isildur into the elves and started tearing things up. Robert tried to stay away and kept shooting my regular guys to bits. Needless to say this was a blood bath game and Robert got me to break point first but with Isildur I was able to Stand Fast and continue to kill things. At one point I had three troops and Isildur left to 10 elves, Jeremy came by and was surprised I was doing so poorly. he came back by 10 minutes later to find me running down the last elf with Isildur to get the Major victory.

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So I ended the tourney W1, 2L &1D, not great but okay. I came in 14th out of 23 players and here are my scores:

Overall - 14th

General (Battle points) - 36

Painting - 23

Sportsmanship - 26

Army (combined painting & Comp) - 35

Composition - 12

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So I was 8th in painting out of 23, I was 8th with Army, I was 4th in Sportsmanship. So I think I did pretty well overall. Jamie runs a great event and for the most part runs smoothly.

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Anyhow, after the LotR event I was signed up to play Legends of the Old West that Jay Ryan was running. Jay had the game set up as a multi-player game were as the posses we trying to kidnap or rescue the prospector in the center. He had a variety of Posses and you could choose to use one of his or bring your own. I brought my Outlaws and was gunning for a fried Merle Dillinger right out of the gate.

The game was a blast with us trying to kidnap/rescue the prospector. At one point Merle busted out the Whiskey and was doing shots of it for some liquid courage and giving folks a +1 to their dice rolls. I played for a few hours than I had to leave to get the prize support set for the WAB events I was running the next two days.

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Needless to say it was another late night and I hit my room sometime around 1:30am again. Next up will be Day three and how I almost over slept!

TK

Adepticon Day One, Thursday

Adepticon Day One, Thursday

Day One started for me at 3:00am on Thursday the 25th, that is the time I woke up to get ready to travel to the airport for my 6:10am flight to Chicago. I was flying out of Phoenix on American Airlines, out of terminal 3. In years past I have flown out on America West out of terminal 4 and TSA security check is usually backed up, even in the morning.

Well I was the only one in line through security check when I arrived at 4:45am and quickly got to my gate and sat for an hour until my flight was ready for boarding. One thing I learned last year was to bring a movie or two along for the flight. America West had cancelled their in flight movies on the Chicago flights, so the night before I loaded Matrix & 3:10 to Yuma on my I-pod. We boarded on time but did not pull out of the gate until 6:35am since it was a full flight and the flight attendants were trying to make room for all the carry on luggage that people bring now. Thankfully I checked a large suitcase with Tom O's skirmish pack inside. His Charon Skirmish pack was 2" too large for a carry on, so I would rather check it inside my luggage for some added protection.

Flight was uneventful and smooth, I was glad for that and we touched down at 11:31am Chicago time. My friend Jay Ryan was waiting for my at the luggage carousal when I got down there. Once I got my suitcase we headed off to the Hotel which was about 20 minutes away. Before we got to the hotel we stopped at Portillos for some Italian Beef sandwich's. I have to tell you, Chicago does have some awesome food and the Italian sandwich was the bomb!

Jay was going to be my roomie for the weekend but when I went to check in the Hotel had put me in a King room with one King sized bed. I looked at Jay and said he would not be spooning with me & I asked for a roll away bed to be brought up. Jay & I dropped our stuff off in the room and I headed down to meet up with Hank Edley and Rich Nelson for set up.

Main Hall for 40K

But as I entered the main hall, most of everything had been set up and there was not much to do until later that night when the Specialist stuff would arrive. Did get to chat with Dave Taylor for awhile and he showed off his greatest modeling project that is a year old, his beautiful daughter! So after chatting with Dave I headed up to my room to do a little blogging and rest. But here is what surprised me, when I tried to access the WIFI, I was directed to a pay site for the Westin. It seems that the Westin does not offer free WiFi for their customers and I was not going to pay $9.99 each day to log on to the net. I have to ask why does the Westin charge for their guests? Hell I have stayed in Motel 6's and Hilton's and they never charge, so what gives Westin??

So after a short nap (man I must be getting old!) I headed down to check out the other rooms. Across from the Lilac room was the Junior Ballroom that was being set up for Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Flames of War. Since the 40K event has grown to 120 tables, the Fantasy stuff had to be moved to it's own room.

Right across the hallway to the Lilac room was another smaller room for Combat Patrols, Youngbloods and Necromunda. I never made it over to watch any of these games but I heard that everyone had a blast.

I finally made it to the Lilac room were the Specialist games was being set up. Although I think I take offense to the term Specialist games since that is a place were GW games go to die to the company. But we had big crowds in our room all weekend. We had Epic, Battle Fleet Gothic, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer Ancients Battle, Legends of the Old West, Space Hulk and even Warhammer Quest going on.

Anyway, I meet up with Rich and Jamie and helped set up the Lord of the Rings terrain along with the Warhammer Ancient Battle tables. Now, most people that know me or have attended GitD know that I like to have a ton of terrain on the tables for LotR. Now Jamie has a lot of terrain, but in my opinion, there was not allot of terrain and the tables looked bare to me. Now I am not trying to cause any trouble and Jamie is an awesome guy, but the lack of terrain was a bit disappointing to me. I would have to say that GitD beats Adepticons terrain hands down and we have much better tables to play on. Judge for yourselves.

After I helped Jamie, I than set up the LotOW table for Jay that would be happening Friday night. Most of this stuff is from Arnica and belongs to Hank Edley and it is awesome stuff. I could not wait to play on it Friday night.

Once we had the hall set up it was time for dinner, Rich had to head home so I asked Jamie if he wanted to eat dinner with me and John from Plastic Legions. The three of us headed for Harry Caray's for Burgers and Beers and spent a good amount of time talking Hobby stuff and anything else that came up. After dinner (which was an awesome Hamburger!) John and I headed over to the Lilac room for a little warm up game of LotR.

John had not had his Grey Company out since the primer and I had yet to take the field with my Numemoreans. We played a meeting engagement game and John proceeded to kick the crap out of me. I kept loosing guys to strength 3 bows and not remembering how to figure out tied fights with the same fight scores (Grey company only gets Strength 2 bows and you roll off for tied fights with the same fight value). Needless to say it was late when we played and being up since 3:00am was getting to me.

The game ended around 12:30am and I headed up to the room. During our game Jeremy Williams and Jay came down to watch and Jeremy said he had an extra bed in his room. So Jay decided to room with Jeremy. Well once Jay and Jeremy got to his room they found out that Jeremy does not know how to count and only had one bed! So Jay got to sleep on the floor since there was no more roll away beds left.

I hit the sack around 1:30am and set the alarm for 7:00am for Friday. The next post will be Fridays activities...

TK

I am Home...

Well,

I am home from Adepticon, had a blast and realized that I am stinkin tired and need to recover! Who would think that playing games can be so draining???

Well I will be posting up later this week about my travels...

TK

Bags packed, all ready to go...

Well,

Everything is ready to go, head out to the airport tomorrow morning and will arrive around 11:30am. Looks like I will be helping with set up and have a game of LotR scheduled for tomorrow night.

So stay tune next week, I will have a ton of stuff to write about Adepticon, see you this weekend.

TK

T-minus 7 days and counting!

Adepticon is just a week away and I thought I better get to posting what I have been doing to get ready. Once again I have to thank my parents for footing the airline bill for me to go, without that help, I would have been reading about Adepticon from Arizona, so thanks Mom & Dad!

So, I have been painting a Numidian Army for Warhammer Ancients Battle for Hank Edly. I offered to paint these guys up for him last year and they are now covered in paint. There is something like 70 figures plus 16 or so mounted cavalry models as well as an elephant. I will get pictures of these guys up once I get back from Chicago, I started packing these guys up for the trip.

I also will be running the two WAB events again at Adepticon like I have done in the last two years. We will have a 2000 point event on Saturday with two divisions, one being for the Classical Campaign we are running and one for the folks who bring other armies out of the classical period. The second event will be the Doubles event on Sunday, which is two teammates fighting with 1000 points each on the same side. This event is by far the most enjoyable out of the two WAB events for me since most guys just love playing alongside a buddy and talking smack to their opponents.

I also committed to bring two Posses for Legends of the Old West game on Friday night. I am bringing a Desperado and Lawman Posse. Both of these posses were painted for this event. It will be a 10 person free for all on a cool looking board. If you are at the event and not busy Friday night, come on by for some six gun action!

I am getting to play Lord of the Rings again this year on Friday for the Singles Championship. I am taking a Numenorian force with Isildur leading them. I had to paint up about 12 guys to add to the other 18 guys I had already painted. I was going to build a new display board, but I recycled the one from last year. Hopefully I will do better this year as opposed to last years showing!

Now I fly in on Thursday and come home on Monday. When I fly, I prefer to carry on my stuff, I hate checking bags. But it looks like this year I am going to have to check at least one bag since I am carrying Hanks Army out to him. I also will have all my rulebooks and dice that I will pack as well.

My plan as always is to try to document as much as I can of Adepticon. I will be taking my new I-pod which shoots video along with my camera. Adepticon is becoming a large event and there is plenty to see and do. If you follow this blog and are going, I look forward to seeing you.

TK

Red Dragon Painting Competition

Well, for the second year at Gathering in the Desert, we have ran the Red Dragon Painting Competition. This event showcases some of the outstanding painting that shows up in the armies at GitD. This is a free event for folks that are attending GitD and only cost $5.00 to enter if your not playing in the event.

This year we added a new category bringing the total categories up to four this year. The only stipulations for the event, is that it needs to be a Lord of the Rings figure and must not be part of your army (since the model will sit in the cabinet all weekend).

The Four categories are, Best Single miniature (25mm base), Best Cavalry miniature (40mm base), Best Large Miniature (40mm or larger) and Best Battle Scene (Diorama base). So here are the entrants for this year:

Best Single Miniature (25mm Base)

Brent Sinclair - Muhad King

Robert Brightwell - Gandalf the Grey

John Petrelli - Radagast the Brown

Tim McKnight - Aragorn/Strider

Dean Vukovich - Orc Shaman

Tim Kulinski - Legolas

Howard Beam - Gil-galad

Howard Beam - Elrond

Howard Beam - Celeborn

Best Large Miniature (40mm+ Base)

Keith Hruska - Dragon

Dean Vukovich - Mordor Troll

Brent Sinclair - Buhrdur Troll

Tim Kulinski - Gandalf in Cart

Mike Gingold - The Necromancer

Best Calvary Miniature (40mm Base)
Brent Sinclair - Muhad Raider

Dean Vukovich - Giant Spider

Battle Scene (Diorama Base)

Jeremy Williams - Spider Attacking Dwarf

Tim Kulinski - Death of a Hero

John Petrelli

With that I would like to thank all the folks who entered the Red Dragon Competition, Empire Games store staff are the judges and I want to thank them for taking the time to look over the models. So now without further ado here are the 2010 Red Dragon Painting Competition winners:

Best Single Miniature (25mm Base)
John Petrelli - Radagast the Brown

Best Calvary Miniature (40mm Base)
Brent Sinclair - Muhad Raider

Best Large Miniature (40mm+ Base)

Tim Kulinski - Gandalf in Cart

Battle Scene (Diorama Base)

Tim Kulinski - Death of a Hero

So there you go, look forward to seeing even more folks enter next year.
TK