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. 

Adepticon Bound

Well, I'm off to Adepticon for the weekend.  Finishing touches on this batch of Vikings are done.  I'm happy with the looks of them.  Played some practice games with them a few weekends ago they are hard, but have quite a few faults in the army build.  We'll see how I do.  I have preordered the new Gripping Beast plastic Dark Ages box, and begun building a few Saxons also, in addition to some new Viking characters.  My expansion will be into some Bondi and Saxon allies, all of which will double for my playing of some SAGA in addition to WAB and hopefully some Clash of Empires.

For Adepticon, I'll be playing the big Hastings game against some Saxons and Normans Friday night.  On Saturday, I will play the WAB singles tournament.  Then on Sunday, Mike Butcher and I will team up in an attempt to win the WAB Team tourney for a second straight year. 

Friday night coincides with the first open practice for the kart season, which I'm going to miss.  Is it ever going to warm up, forecasted High of 43F, and we are supposed to have snow most of the days this week???  Well, my dad is going to shake-down my new racing kart, I helped him finish up his kart this past weekend.  We still have all the body work repair to do on both of them, just ran out of time with too many things to do.  Season begins May 3rd.

So if you are at Adepticon, swing by and look for my Vikings.

When I get back I'll probaby take a short amount of time off, recharge my batteries by doing some racing.  Then I've decided to take a spin down the road to doing some Flames of War with a couple of buddies.

Wargames Illustrated - Adepticon Coverage.

I see some pics of us playing the big Crusades Game and some of my Romans fighting against Vikings made it up on th eWargames Illustrated website.  If you scroll down to the WAB gaming at the following link:  Adepticon Coverage Link

The first pic, you will see Rich from Chicago Terrain Factory and Pat Lowinger from the Historical Wargaming Podcast and the nwhistoricalwargames blog.

Third pic down, the bald guy is the infamous Mike Butcher from the Butcher's Bill blog and the balding guy is me when I'm not in a go-kart.

The fourth pic down is a pic of my Romans taking on some Vikings....well the Praetorian unit was sold recently so technically I guess the praetorians are no longer mine, they are in Texas somewhere.

The seventh pic down is a pic of Mike's dirty rotten arabs in action, a very nice looking army, something I could not pull off with those figures.

The eighth pic down is a pic of my Crusaders teamed up with Mike's Saxons in action, from I think the first game.  We went on to win the WAB Team Tourney.

Then there are pics of the Minnesotan, Bennett Blalock-Doane's gorgeous Roman army, completely puts mine to shame.  Bennett is also a great player and won the Singles tournament beating Mike in the last round for the win.

All the above is very much worth checking out, in addition to that Flames of War stuff ahead of the WAB.  I'm not into FoW, but there is some really good stuff on there.

Pics of My WAB Roman Army in Full Force

For the Glory of Rome.

I'm not really setup in this place to take a full army pic, but here it is, my Roman Legion Army. I will be taking some form or variation of these models to Adepticon's WAB singles tournament. Not sure what the final makeup will be just yet, as its a 2000 point tournament. I'm guessing there will be a fair amount of Greek Phalanxes to deal with. The display is one that use with my Warriors of Chaos army. This is not the display base that I intend to use, but being behind on my 1/2 a 1000 point WAB team army for Adepticon, will probably make this the display base that I will use as I'm running out of time.



Close-ups of some of the various units.

Some of the vets, better pics of the cavalry unit will be coming at some point.

The new archers, one of two scorpions in the back ground, I hope to be able to deal with the elephants. The General in the foreground that I will probably not use, he may become a regular cav officer.

Huge unit of Praetorians that I will use as veterans also.

Three regular units of legionaires.

Definitely, not my best army, but I'm still happy with it.

For those interested, the bulk of the army with the exception of 4 character models, these are are all Warlord Games models. The majority of those are plastic. I do have an Aventine model and 3 Foundry models in the army as characters.

And to seriously make fun of my poor game playing skills, the legions are numbered the 17th, 18th, and 19th. And yes my general is Varus. ;)

Many Projects Coming...

I’ve had a number of people ask me what projects I have on my agenda this coming year, and I tell them that if things go as planned, which they never do, I will finish for sure my Roman Legions, have a playable 2500 points of Warriors of Chaos army, painted a 1000 points of Norman/El Cid/Crusades Knights for Adepticon, the beginnings of my next major and hopefully extravagant Fantasy army which will be the brutal Orcs, and starting my British Napoleonic’s/War of 1812 army.

The Roman Legions are basically done with the exception of the movement trays, which I’ll be finishing up shortly. I hope to have pictures of the entire assembled army within the next month. I don’t think I will get done with a display base for them when I go down to Adepticon, so I plan to use my 1000 pt Warriors of Chaos display as a fill-in, it is roughly using the same basing.

My Warriors of Chaos army, otherwise known as the Mutant Marauders, is approximately 1250 pts of completely finished models.

I started this army back in 2007, then the interim chaos rules came out separating beasts and demons from the book, then the new chaos book came out and I began to lose interest with them, then I got it back, then 8th edition fantasy came out and I lost interest in the game for a bit, but I like these guys and still love the models, so I decided to just keep going with the army. Not my normal style of doing things. I like to build everything first, then paint it all in one fell swoop. What makes it more complicated is that one of the colors I’m using for the army is a custom blend. I think in the next post, I’ll discuss my concept of how to I build armies whether fantasy or 40k or ancients.

The knights, something I have always wanted to do. I love reading about this period of history, I find it very intriguing and fascinating. Not much else to say about this army, other than it is meant to be for the Adepticon Team Warhammer Ancients Tournament. If it goes as planned, I will be teamed up with a bunch of Saxons under the command of the Mike “Old Coot” Butcher.

The orcs, much like my Khorne Demons, are meant to be my next extravagant, and hopefully the army will blow people away. With my Khorne Demons, my theme was obviously the evil depths of Chaos with blood pools throughout the basing and hands reaching up out of the depths of hell to drag victims down into the pits of despair.






I think it was interesting change from the whole lava based Khorne army scheme that you see done over and over. With my Orcs the theme is quite simple, brutality. And that brutality in particular will be directed at humans, namely the Empire and Bretonians. The orc project will be moving forward, now that I have figured out how to do my bases and movement trays. More on that to come, and I will probably do some posts on using themes to build your armies, something that seems to often be lacking in Warhammer 40k and Fantasy from the more casual army builders.

British Napoleonic is something I’ve also wanted to do over the past decade or so, so I decided to at least make an attempt at it. In this area I know of one other person that is interested in trying this and wants to do French, so I think will try this out, probably using Warlord Games’ Blackpowder Rules.

As for the other things on tap, there will be a few one-off display pieces, some more 40k conversions, and some commission work. I’ve basically caught up with my commission work, and have decided that this year; I will likely take on less commission work than I have in the past. I don’t always show pictures of the work I do, as once and awhile people request that I hold off doing so for a period of time for different reasons. I will be continuing with the VC Orc commission project, it’s been a lot fun, and is sort of an on-going project. This is not to say that someone may come along with a commission project that I simply can not refuse. For me, it has to be something that I want to do before I take it on.

On the Road to Adepticon...

My journey to Adepticon is in full swing as the new year has started. I decided after last year that I would not be playing 40k and after seeing the goings on of the Fantasy realm that I would not play the Fantasy tourney.

The 40k decision was easy as I have not played 40k in a few years, though I have to say I'm being tempted to return the game, space marines are beckoning me.

The Fantasy tourney...I hate to say it, but their rules decisions for last year really soured me towards playing the tourney, the composition scoring was pitful in my opinion and having only one playable army ready to take to the tourney that was utterly killed by the composition scoring, I figured why bother. Also locally, in state, I think my Khorne Demon army is well liked, but there are a number of bloggers in that area that have talked smack about it the last time I went to Chicago and really I don't think appreciated my efforts. I'm pretty thick-skinned but some of the comments were uncalled for, ill-informed just quick glances based on their comments, and quite frankly ignorant in my opinion.

I know Marty aka Mr. Clean who runs Adepticon Fantasy. I like the guy, he runs good tourneys and fun events and attends the bigger tourneys here in Wisconsin. So I really don't know what the story was with last years tourney, and honestly I have not asked him. Marty is about fun wargaming, and that did not look like fun. I'm sure he will run a great event this time out, but 8th Edition is something I'm not comfortable with and not something that I have an army built to play. I am also currently annoyed with the rules changes. I played the local tourney here with my only playable army and got pretty well spanked by everything. That and I'm sick of painting Khorne Red, to make it playable for 8th, and the Warriors of Chaos is too far away from being in a playable form. So I will pass on Fantasy.

So 40k is out.

Fantasy is out.

So what to play. Why Warhammer Ancients 2.0. The game appeals to me. I'll be going there full force and playing WAB Singles and WAB Team, bringing with me the Romans and hopefully the Perry Knights for the Team effort. Its a smaller and olded turnout and played in a quieter setting. Geese I must be getting old. I'll be teamed up with my buddy Mike Butcher, our team is the "The Grumpy Old Coots".

Crusading preparations...Perry style

I've been converting away, trying to get things somewhat ready for painting. I've converted a bunch of Perry Miniature early Normans to get them a little bit further into the crusades. And of course make them very different than your normal Perry Miniature Normans. Something I like to do.

Note the plastic shield is a GW High Elf shield. This is what I came up with after looking at reams of reference materials.

In the end I do think they turned out good enough.

I do not however plan to put caripsons on every horse, just way too much work, but quite a few of them will have them.

For Adepticon I plan to field at least two units of 8. One probably being a Holy Order, still need to figure that out before I start painting them though.

Back From Adepticon...

It was a fun weekend. Got to talk briefly to the usual Wisconsin and Illinois gamers that I normally see, along with Dave Pauwels, Dave Taylor, Chris Borer, Bennett Blaylock Doan, and hang with my buddy Mike Butcher. Played my first games of WAB on Sunday teamed up with Mike's Greeks which are pictured. Mike had a really cool game against Bennett's Britons, which may be the best looking army I have ever seen, also pictured. On Sunday Mike and I got to square off against Dave Pauwels and Jamie's greeks and Etruscans, both beautiful armies, was pleasure to finally play against Dave, whose elephant just owned my Romans.

Adepticon this weekend....

I'll be making what has become an annnual event for me, down to the Chicago area for Adepticon this coming weekend. Been going to this event quite awhile now and it keeps getting better and bigger every year, adding more and more things to do. This year I'll be playing Warhammer Ancients for the first time in the team event, teamed up with Mike Butcher and his Greeks on Sunday. Should be interesting and fun.