Mini Mayhem: Adepticon 2014 - Part 2

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Adepticon 2014 - Part 2 - Warhammer Tournament

I played in my first tournament at Adepticon. Being more of a casual gamer, I was happy enough last year at my first Adepticon to just take in all of the sights of the convention. This year, though, I greatly appreciated the unexpected invitation to participate in the Doubles Tournament. One of the fellas from the Inner Circle club from Maryland needed a doubles partner, and I was pleased to fill in.

My good pal, Oko, and all-around good dude, Chad, from the Inner Circle.

My doubles partner, Spencer, playing Warriors of Chaos.

Game 1

Very little planning occurred ahead of time (meaning, no planning occurred), and we found ourselves at game-time matched up as "Desperate Allies". That meant we were forced to split our Power Dice, and that meant we essentially self-annihilated our Magic Phase. Sure would have been helpful to pop off that Chain Lightning or that Harmonic Convergence...

During the first game, it was even worse, because we thought we had to split our Dispel Dice, too. So we could neither cast spells nor dispel them. It turns out that the tournament rules overrode the standard rules, so you could at least combine Dispel Dice. Funny, our opponents didn't share that with us. And one of them was the tournament organizer! Hi, Alex!

Alex is on the left. Nathan is on the right.

Here we are advancing forward on Turn 1. Note that we went second on Turn 1. Which means that Alex and Nathan sat on their butts, content to win the game by just sitting back and flinging shooting and magic at us. Putzes. :-) So, yeah, we had to go get 'em.

Mirrored Warriors of Chaos on the left. Nasty Daemon of Chaos on the right.

I took the brunt of the attack while my allies waffled about on the left. ;-)

I softened 'em up, so that our Warriors could mop 'em up.

But, long story short, we lost.

"Hi, ho, my job is done here...."

Game 2

In our second game, we faced Ogre Kingdoms (on the left) and Skaven (on the right).

The highlight of this game was achieving a perfect encirclement, something I have tried to do ever since I started playing Warhammer.

Unfortunately, we were unable to close the noose. The plan was to sacrifice the Saurus the unit, and allow an overrun into the waiting Chosen Ones unit. But the Chosen Ones were tempted by the opportunity to run down the defeated Skaven General, and the Chosen abandoned their position instead of reforming. The encircled Ogre unit was thus able to escape the trap. Still, after all was said and done, we actually won the game.

Game 3

While we spent 2-and-a-half hours resolving the 2nd game, we resolved the 3rd game in 2-and-a-half minutes! And this one was a loss. The scenario was a "Fortitude" scenario, where banners, generals, and overlords are worth Fortitude points. In our game, each side had a total of 8 points. The first side to bring their opponent to 5 points wins the game.

On the very first action of their turn, our opponent shoots a cannon at our overlord. The overlord fails his "Lookout, Sir!" roll, and the cannonball takes off his head. He's worth 3 Fortitude. Game over.

It was pretty hilarious.

Other

One of the highlights of the day was meeting all of the British podcasters who came to Adepticon. Last year, the Bad Dice crew came over, and I said hi again this year to Ben Curry, Mark Wildman, and Gareth Dix. HeelanHammer visited as well this year, so I introduced myself to Dan Heelan and Wayne Kemp. I also tracked down Dave Witek and Chris Yu of GarageHammer and chatted with those guys. It was really awesome to put faces and personalities to voices.