Spacecurves’ Adepticon Summary

Hello everyone, Spacecurves here, finally recovered from Adepticon weekend.  As always, Adepticon was an incredible weekend for all things wargaming related.  Myself, my wife, and my good friends Wyatt (Paintraina) and Sam made the journey from Boston to Chicago for the event.  

The first event I played in was the 40k championships on Friday.  My army list was:

The army list at 1850 is:

Baron S. 105
Haemonculus: webway portal 85
Haemonculus: shattershard 65
Incubi: 7 incubi 154
Raider: shock prow 65
Hellions: 15 hellions, including 1 sgt with stun claw 255
Wracks: 3 wracks 30
Venom: 55
Warriors: 5 warriors with blaster 60
Warriors: 5 warriors with blaster 60
Wytches: 10 wytches, 2 shard nets, hekatrix with agonizer, all with haywire grenades 170
Reavers: 6 bikes, 2 heat lances 156
Scourges: 5 scourge, 2 haywire blasters 130
Scourges: 5 scourge, 2 haywire blasters 130
Chronos: spirit vortex, spirit probe 110
Talos: twin linked liquifier gun, twin linked haywire blaster 110
Talos: twin linked liquifier gun, twin linked haywire blaster 110

I had a good laugh reading some of the comments on my pre-adepticon article about this army.  I believe some have referred to it as “April fools-dar” because they thought it would be terrible.  Well, it isn’t a joke and works very well!  When the smoke cleared on Friday I had won 3 out of 4 of the games.  Not good enough to make the finals on Sunday, but not bad for my first tournament with this type of force.  The game I lost wasn’t because my army list failed me, it was because my opponent played well and I made a bunch of mistakes!  I just need more experience with the new Dark Eldar, which I’m steadily gaining. This army is all about tricks and traps, I love playing it.  I will say though, that I’ve also had fun experimenting with Vect and a bunch of raiders, so I’m unsure what form the Kabal of the Bad Touch will take in this summer’s tournaments.  Either way, I can’t wait to play in more events with my Dark Eldar, they are a true challenge to play.

Saturday was the flagship event of the convention, the 40k team tournament. My wife, Alicia, and my friends Sam and Wyatt and I once again made up “The Pink Shirts.” We brought Space Wolves this year, the center piece of our army was “Hagar the Horrible”, a wolf lord who had tamed a Fenrisian Sea Kraken to use as a mount. In the game, he was a decked out thunderwolf lord, who I think only died once in the entire tournament.  That guy was awesome!  You can check out pictures of the model, and the entire process of building him on Paintraina’s blog.  The Pink Shirts had another good year, we came in 14th out of over 100 teams.  

Sunday I had completely to myself since I didn’t make the final 16 for the championships. This was the first time I had a day at Adepticon not completely filled with tournament games, and you know, it was pretty sweet.  I got to wander around, look at vendor booths, watch other people play, chat with friends from across the country, and generally relax.  I love tournaments, but I may need to build some more downtime into future Adepticon weekends.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was spending time with “Team Sweden”, 4 guys who traveled across the Atlantic from Sweden to attend Adepticon for the first time.  It was also their first time in the USA.  Myself and the other members of the American ETC team had met two of them in Germany last year at the 2010 ETC, and encouraged them to come to Adepticon.  One of the motivations I had for forming the first American ETC team was to promote international 40k play, so I was overjoyed when I learned they would be coming. These guys were just a joy to spend time with. They even won best sportsman in the team tournament! They are also very good at 40k. One of the guys, Henrik, made it into the Sunday finals for the championship. Always modest to a fault, when asked about this he responded: “Oh no, we are not the best players in Sweden, just the richest so we could make the trip!” Henrik also tells me that next year they are planning to bring two teams.  Beware my fellow Americans, the Swedish scouting mission was a success, the full invasion will begin next year! 

So there you have it, another exciting Adepticon in the books. As always, this event kicks off the US tournament and convention season with a bang, and gets me pumped for all the events in the following months.