Time and time again, I've said that this year's Adepticon has been a year of firsts for me. Ever since my first Adepticon, I played in 8 straight years work of 40K. This however, was my 9th year in attendance, and the first ever that I didn't get one game of 40K in at all.
Yup, you read that correctly, be it Combat Patrol, the Championships or the Team Tournament, the only time I stepped foot into the main gaming hall for 40K was to meet with friends, browse the vendor booths, or judge the painting comp for the Firestorm Armada tournament.
…that'll be another post.
So how did a weekend full of Infinity work out for me?
Pretty darn good, that's how it worked out.
Adepticon made it easy for me to dive head-first into the deep end of Infinity gaming for the weekend with their "track" system. One easy click and I was signed up for three straight days of tournaments, the 200-point Campaign, the 600-point Team/Joint Operations, and the 300-point Grand Tournament. I got there on Wednesday and thought, "What did I get myself into…I hate it when I am closeted away in days of tournaments with no time to visit, socialize and relax?!?!"
Turns out that the only 2 real downsides to playing in three straight days of tournaments in all that was not being able to spend hours, and hundreds of dollars, in the vendor hall, and not being able to spend any real time photographing and looking through all the Crystal Brush entries. Other than that, each tournament started at 9am (the Grand Tournament started at 8), and ended at about 5pm. That's it. I could sleep later than I would normally be able to for a main 40K event, and I got done far earlier than I ever have in the past. It was glorious.
So how did I do? Since I played in 11 games, spanning 3 different tournaments, I won't give a blow-for-blow battle report for it all. However, I will summarize.
Thursday: 200-point Campaign Tournament
This was a day that I really wanted to spend learning how to play a solid game, taking timely turns, not forget any rules or anything like that, and just in general have fun. My first game was Supplies, and I actually won versus an Ariadna player, who had a Antipode Assault Pack, some Dog Warriors, and an Autocannon Tank Hunter. Why do these units stick out for me? Because I was definitely nervous on what they could do to me! Thankfully, AROs won the day for me for the most part here, and I had a blast playing a great opponent.
My second game was Frontline, and was against Jay from Warsenal. Awesome guy to play, and had a blast as he schooled the crap out of me. The man was out to win, and he did so with gusto. At the same time though he explained so much to me, why he was doing things, why he chose his side of the table, and more. I learned a ton from him, and even though I lost 10-1, I came out ahead in all the ways that mattered that game, I think.
The third game's mission was Transmission Matrix, and was against another Ariadna player with Dog Warriors and what will forever be my nemesis when it comes to that faction, the dreaded Autocannon Tank Hunter. Man, I hate that guy. I went into Loss of Lieutenant in my first round from him and it alls net downhill from there. The main highlight for me was a Guilang that went 4 or 5 orders, toe-to-toe with one of his Dog Warriors, and neither of us to touch the other. We even tie-crit once. A lot of good laughs on that exchange. I got rofl-stomped in the end, but it was a blast.
My final game was against vanilla PanO, and was my first game ever against PanO. The mission was Supremacy, and I won the initiative roll. I mention this here rather than the previous two synopses because I was learning and talking to my opponents all day, analyzing what I could be doing differently, etc. So this time when I won, I looked over the field and really wanted to set up well for it, so I chose deployment. Later I learned that with Supremacy, it's usually a better idea to choose to go second in order to set yourself up for last-turn grabs. My opponent knew this apparently, set up somewhat defensively and made me go first. Rather than bemoan my mistake here, I just went for it, deployed aggressively and drove forward. My dice were definitely with me that game, as were my ARO opportunities. I accomplished my Classifieds, and at the end of turn two he was tabled, with me holding all four objectives and quadrants, granting me a 10-0 win.
I ended the tournament in 6th place, with 19 Objective points total and a 2-2 record. I'm very happy with that! Jay from Warsenal took the trophy home for this one.
Friday: 600-point Joint Operations (Team) Tournament
Holy crap this day was a doozy with two-man teams, each one having a 300 point list. Originally we were to play 4 full rounds, but in the interest of time, it was cut to 3 rounds. My teammate was Kevin, from the blog Chronowraith's Corner, and he posted a great write-up of the day's action on his blog. This time the team of Jay and Bill from Warsenal took home the gold for the day.
Check it out here!
Because he did such a fantastic job with his article on the tournament, I won't rehash it here. I will though share that we were stomped heartily into the ground, only scoring 3 Objective points all day. Kevin and I went to dinner that night afterwards and really discussed what happened, and how to not let it happen to us again during the Grand Tournament on Saturday. After much discussion on tactics, efficiency and synergy between us, we both came to the conclusion that we just hadn't had enough practice as a team to play well off of one another. We did learn much though on how to improve our play, and both tweaked our lists that we had planned on bringing the next day.
…so I was going to go through all three days of tournaments in one post, but this one is a bit long in the tooth as it is! I'll post the games of the Grand Tournament tomorrow, and finish up with my overall thoughts of the Infinity tournaments as a whole.
- Tim