Road to Adepticon 2010

Here we go! first post of the year and it's January in Chicago, it's bitter cold and the basements warm, that means one thing for me and lots of the readers here: Adepticon. Big and Bolder in 2010, Adepticon has even more events and grown from a Games Workshop hobby event to a full blown minatures wargaming event. Lot of different systems going on, and while I am interested is Flames of War, I am sticking with the GW events this year.

I know from personal stories from some of you, that like me. 2009 was a financial disaster for alot us, many friends had lost jobs, homes or just had financial woes, that seriously hit our time and motivation to play with toy soldiers. Personally my business almost shut its doors twice last year, and the unknowing of what this Spring could bring forced me to back out of running a Legend of the High Seas Campaign at Adepticon this year, (Fear not fellow Pirates as I will do one again sometime this year at my house). Part of being broke, while also having to be way more hands on at work also forced the canceling of plans to attend Gathering in the Desert as well. Despite these set backs, Adepticon takes place a mere 10 miles away from my home, so I am going to be there even if I have to sell a bunch a junk to pay for it. I signed up for three events this year and will be around all day friday, and saturday..staying until way late in evening to celebrate/commiserate our games over Beers, If you read here and we haven't met
please stop by and say hi!

My three events and progress report on each as of today is.

Friday AM- Lord of the Rings Championships 350pts-

My Grey Company Army of Gandalf, 3 Rangers of the North and and 12 Rangers
is small even for 350 pts..but surprisingly flexible against most armies., The Army seems to do worse against other good armies..but I know they try to set you up against the opposite faction when they can. My Army is done, the display base is done, just need a 40mm objective..I know what its going to be..I just need to paint it and paint it well, I feel like if I can win any "best appearance" award at the Adepticon this is going to be it.



Friday PM- Warhammer Fantasy Warbands Nighttime 500 pts-

No offense to my pals James and Steve running the 2999 point, No comp Warhammer event but that just doesn't interest me at all. I'll miss the good ol'Escalation tourney for sure, and wish them luck with their event. Personally I like the warbands rules so much I just had to play in that with my Empire. I'm doing a Pirate Theme'd Milita army with Handgunners and Huntsmen with two Characters for my 500 points, I'm building as much new stuff as I can specifically for theme purposes..most of the free company is done..I need to 5 models including a standard bearer...I have a new Captain in the works..and am probably going to do new Huntsmen and theme'd handgunners to boot. How much of this is new vs what comes of normal stock is up the in the air right now depending on what I do on Saturday..needless to say, I have 500 points of Empire covered.



Saturday- Warhammer Fantasy Championship- 2000 pts-

If you follow these things like I do, you know there is as much pre controversy about the WFB Championships this year as there is the normal post controversy, Lowering the points to 2K, pissed some people off and using WPS as the comp system also pissed some more people off. But in the end the people that got pissed off about this are the ones that will be playing in Friday's 2999 event and are for the most part, people I really dont care if I play anyway..so while I prefer 2250 for my Empire. I am gladly accepting of the changes and know it will make for a better event.

The major dilemma for me is- what to run, I have two options, my Empire or my Daemons of Chaos. 2000 points forces me to look at my Empire much differently then I normally do, I can get a median WPS score of 15 and build a much more difficult Empire list. than I normally run at 2250. Why? because of the hyper competitive environment, WPS penalizes things like fast movers, monsters and lots of magic and while it does penalize shooting and war machines, that's about the only thing in an Empire Army it penalizes, so I can take 2 Cannons and a Steam Tank, and get a better score than I certainly would under any player jugded comp. If I am going to run Empire, I'll have to do this to be competitive..many people will surely run as low a WPS score as they can and then hope to make up the difference in Battle Points by winning games. The Comp score is only 25 pts..and most sane people will be at the median 15 or below..going higher isnt going to win you any games, so you'd lose more that you should for an extra 5 or so points of comp Knowing your comp score going into the event is both good and bad, it's good in that there are no surprises when it comes to what your score is on composition, which cuts down on complaints. It's bad, in that it opens a whole other can of worms in tactical list building that usually isn't necessary, if I do run Empire..everything is pretty much ready to go..the list I am debating has two units of Crossbows..so I may need to build another..and I am toying if using a Mortar..if so I'd need on of those..otherwise I am all set.

Daemons of Chaos on the other hand get hit pretty hard on the WPS scale, That list centers around my Forge World Great Unclean One and comes in at a whopping 9 WPS. Even with my GUO's never ending paint job..he's looking pretty bad ass these days and must go on the table on these days so I see opportunity here. My planned list is not what I normally see being played with DoC these days...its slow, and tarpitty. Coming in at only 62 models I have a GUO, Herald BSB of Nurgle, Plague Bearers, a Beast of Nurgle, 2 Units of Bloodletter Infantry and one unit of the shock troop Fleshounds, some furies and finally Nurglings...I am going to use infestation of Nurgle..to spam these little buggers...starting with 3 I could have up to 9 bases by games end giving me an extra 210 pts on the list for free., they'll all be in one unit..so with the GUO being very hard to kill..and a 9 base nurgling unit..that ideally it will be easy to keep more than 50% of alive..I should have 1000 points easy sticking on the board...not to mention the Herald led Plaguebearers being very hard to kill also being another 438 pts...in short almost 3/4 of my army isn't going away quickly..the Khorne stuff is there to kill as much as it can before it goes poof...its a point denial, spoiler army..not what I am at all used to playing..but it's intriguing me, I might just go for it, if I do I have a good month of solid painting to do to get ready..plus some display work..The jury is out this one..I of course need to see how it plays..so I don't expect to make a final decision until the end of the month.

I'll be updating each with new photos soon, expect me working on either Championship army in some capacity regardless, right up until crunch time.