Road to Adepticon, Part 1
As most of you know, the largest annual Warhammer event in the world happens in Chicago. With more than 1,000 players at the table, Adepticon is *the* event for Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 enthusiasts. This is a special event for everyone at BOLS and we are busily ramping up our best game, so be there or be square.
So for the next few weeks, we’re going to be sharing our preparation for Adepticon with a series of “Road to Adepticon” articles for Chainfist and Bell of Lost Souls.I’m kicking off the series with an article about one of the Bell of Lost Souls Teams for the Warharmmer 40,000 Team Tournament.
This year Jwolf, Goatboy, Darkwynn and I have banded together like a team of superheroes in a bad 70’s Saturday morning cartoon to form a team for the Warhammer 40,000 Team Tournament (here are the rules). The team is called “BOLS Thread Level Red” (blame the name on Darkwynn and his unhealthy obsession with the Homeland Security Advisory System thing).
THE B-TEAM (the B is for BOLS)
For those of you who know the unholy quartet only from our articles, let me continue the SuperFriends analogy. If you didn’t watch that show growing up*, shame on you. Here’s a primer:
So let’s look at the team:
Jwolf is definitely Superman. He’s an invincible Man of Steel on the gaming table, but as nice as they come off the table. If you’ve played him, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Goatboy is Wonder Woman. He’s almost as strong as Superman and looks super-nice on the outside, but he has an arsenal of nasty lists and won’t pull punches on the table. Darkwynn is Aquaman. He can telepathically talk to freaking fish, man. Actually, I picked Aquaman because Darkwynn is super strong, incredibly durable and endlessly adaptable on the table. And in the right environment, he can’t be beaten. That makes me Marvin White (the guy on the right with the green M on his shirt). I have no special powers and my major contribution to the team is comic relief — but I am practicing my flying and hope to hold my own as a Junior Member of the Justice League!
Now that you’ve been properly introduced, let’s move on to the plan!
THE PLAN
Although we’ve all been close friends for years, each of us has a very different play-style and have different motivations for picking up dice. Darkwynn and I are the list builders and Jwolf and Goatboy are the tacticians, so it was impossible for us to come up with a single set of lists that satisfied everyone.
Goatboy wanted to play Space Wolves and Darkwynn wanted to play Imperial Guard. Jwolf doesn’t like abusive lists (no challenge) and I love abusive lists and tricky combos. So instead of trying to shoe-horn all of us into a single army build, we decided to take that left turn at Albuquerque.
Each of us is bringing a favorite 1,000 point army from his own collection and we’re all going to blog about the experience. The idea is that if we are each comfortable with our armies, we’ll perform better — and we can share the development process with you. So you’ll see elements of Goatboy’s Space Goats, Jwolf’s famous Tallarn, Darkwynn’s Leafblower and my own, well, whatever I settle on (probably Witch Hunters or Daemonhunters).
To make the event fun for everyone, we’ve decided to compete against each other to claim the most “heads” in the tournament (here’s a link to how “headhunting” works at Adepticon). Our first priority will be winning games, but the team member claims the most heads in the tournament wins a year’s worth of bragging rights. So think about it as a mini-tournament between the four of us. There’s nothing like creating your own personal metagame (in our case collecting scalps) to make an event more fun.
Here’s an army draft of list that I created for the event. It’s still early, so I’m certainly going to scrap it and start over. The 1,000 point Headhunter’s army:
HQ
DH Inquisitor Lord (Psycannon, Psychic Hood)
— Retinue: 2 Heavy Bolter Servitors, 2 Mystics
ELITE
Vindicare Assassin
TROOPS
5-man Inquisitorial Storm Trooper Squad (2 x Meltaguns, Chimera)
6-man Space Marine Scout Squad (Camo Cloaks, Missile Launcher, 4 x Sniper Rifles and Telion)
10-man Tactical Squad (Meltagun, Lascannon, Power Fist, Rhino)
HEAVY SUPPORT
6-man Devastator Squad (3 x Plasma Cannon)
Using the Army: This is a pretty simple army. The Inquisitor Lord and Devastators setup near each other (and at least one objective) in the best cover I can provide. They have a good mix of anti-personnel weapons (e.g., 2 Heavy Bolters with Targeters, Psycannon, and 3 Plasma Cannon) and the Sages will help me deal with Chaos Daemons and Drop Pods (especially those pesky Sternguard). The Vindicare and Telion make sure that I get my opponent’s head, while my two mounted Troops choices deal with grabbing and holding objectives.
Note: The plus side is that the Vindicare ignores targeting restrictions, so I’ll have the option of killing my own teammate’s HQ (to claim his scalp), if the competition gets to close. Just kidding. Well, mostly kidding. 🙂
I’m sure my teammates will be posting their drafts in future articles (here or at Chainfist.com), so if you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments or email me at [email protected].
* SuperFriends was a terrible, terrible Hanna-Barbera comic based on the Justice League of America. Kids from the 70s (like me) never missed an episode.
~If you are going to Adepticon (and plan on playing in the 40K Team Tournament), I’d LOVE to hear from you. Post your team name and what kind of army you guys are building. And if you aren’t going to Adepticon, post a comment and tell me what you think of the plan!
