Back From Adepticon with some Coverage

Traveling down to Adepticon was not bad, the travel home on the Interstate 90 however sucked due to all of the construction and tolls, thanks Illinois, a simply dreadful state to visit. 

The Warhammer Ancient games were good, the people in the event friendly.  I saw so many people and ran into so many people, many of which that knew me and unfortunately I don't remember names well.  That's embarrassing when people come up to you knowing who you are and you remember their face, but not a name. 

I do want to mention a number of the people that run blogs and other such things, its always good catching up with the people you maintain contact with on the Internet and who's work you admire:

Mike Butcher of the "The Butcher's Bill", I spent basically the whole weekend with my buddy.  Mike ran the big Hastings Redux game on Friday night where 8 of us went at it with large Dark Ages forces for good fun.  And unlike history, the Saxons actually won the game.  I'm sure that there will be some pics posted up on that big game, this will probably become an annual event in different time slot.  Mike was playing Flames of War with these Stugs below:

All of the terrain for that big game was built by Mark at "Baddogz Engineering", Mark's blog link Bad Dogz Engineering.  The terrain's craftsmanship was gorgeous.  If you do not follow his blog I urge you to do so.  It was my pleasure to team up with Mark on the Viking side of things.  Unfortunately we could not get passed the dang river.  Below are pics of the various terrain pieces that Mark made.

I also ran in to Chris Borer of  Full Borer Miniatures .  It was good to see him, just did not get to talk to him long.

I spoke with Alex Akers of Akers Minis and Battleroad Games.  Good to see Alex.

I got to listen to Dave Taylor of Dave Taylor Miniatures  discuss cricket with a friend of mine, I don't understand the game, but it was good talking with Dave who was covering things for Wargames Illustrated, I'm sure we will see some great pictures of the big Civil War game that he ran.

I ran into Dave Pauwel's and Jamie from Gorgon Studios.  It was great to catch up with Dave.  We're all going to try and get people to play SAGA next year.

Mike and I had the pleasure of playing one of my local good buddies who was teamed up with Rich of the Chicago Terrain Factory.  Rich is one of the Adepticon guys organizing many things, it was good fun to get in a game against him.  Chicago Terrain Factory

I played against Bennett Blaylock-Doane of Bennett's Blog.  Bennett's Huns engulfed my poor Vikings, too fast, too many arrows, and a big 0 points for me in that game.  Although it was a pleasure to look at his beautiful Huns.   I think I only killed like 5 of them in the game.  Bennett's paintwork is fantastic, and he puts on many seminars on his painting.

I also ran into Domus, Ryan, and Tom of the   The Magnificent Bastards blog      playing some fantasy.  Below is the funny army that Domus and Caius were playing. The minis have a strange resemblance to Domus

Ryan aka 'Bear' in action, with the infamous uninterested bearded fellow known as Legend.   I'm not sure who bought Ryan that shirt, but I would not wear those hideous colors.

And a pic of Tom on the right next to Alex who has ran the Fantasy Tournament in the past.

It was good to catch up briefly with these guys.  Ryan is actually Bear on Pointhammered Podcast: http://www.pointhammered.com/.  Also a pic of Ryan's ogres.

I also ran into these guys: 

Ben Cone looking very happy from Madison, WI who does the WiscoDice podcast: http://wiscodice.com/

Cool Mini-or-Not was there and running the Crystal Brush mini painting contest, some amazing stuff in the cabinets:

 



When I got on-site Friday I took a walk around and shot some pics of the Big Hall, where all of the 40k madness was going on.  This hall is simply crazy and packed all weekend long.

Friday was team tourney.

I was surprised to see a contingent of Star Wars games being played all weekend also.

Above you had already saw some of the Fantasy Team play on Friday.   That hall had 100 tables set up for the Singles Tournament.  Not sure how big the 40k Hall was.

Flames of War had a huge presence also at the event:

And Bored of the Rings still gets played??

I'll be quite honest that the main Warhammer Fantasy tourneys are nearly too large for me and the 40k main events have gotten way too large for me.  Not pictured was the Warmachine games being played and dozens of small games and demos that were going on.  I played Warhammer Ancients Battles, the singles and doubles tourneys.  It is always a smaller event, much more to my liking.  Even though the game is no longer supported, we still have a good core of players, but it is clearly dying as the doubles tourney only had 4 teams, singles had 12 players, 14 registered and two did not make it.  Its clear in my mind that Hail Caesar, while popular in some regions for being a friendly get together, is not a good game for tourney play as its rules are way too loose and open to interpretation to my liking.  And quite frankly I personally don't like the game at all, I very much prefer the warhammer based rules systems.