Back From Adepticon!

Man did I have a great (although exhausting) time! I have to say this and Nova are up there competining for my favorite event slot, although I might have to give it to adepticon based on that I got to meet a lot of guys I've always wanted to meet!

Let's see I got there way too early Friday and hung out with Brad (Hulksmash for awhile) then we eventually got a pick up game in, in which due to time we called it, but we both agreed I had it. It was a nice friendly warm up for the champs the next day.

Speaking of which I played my grey knights it. In hindsight had I known there were no tyranid players I would have played my tyranids, but after the event of the weekend took place I don't know if that still holds true. Round one I got paired with  newish player playing foot marines with sternguard and pedro. Some poor deployment errors, and the bad match up he got, was way more than enough to make up for the slightly below average rolls I had. It was a fun relaxing game which was good, and I actually felt like my opponent honestly enjoyed it.

In round 2 I found myself against Christian A. The guy who won the Bay Area Open with guard. Only about half way through the game did I actually realize that and then I understood why the match was so tough. In general my grey knights have only lost to guard once and Christian came damn close to winning it this time. A had a few above average rolls against chimeras early, and then I also got first turn, which proved to be too much for the guard. But man was that a good game.

Round 3 I played against a grey knight player (it had to heppen eventually), which was a shame since grey knights is the worst match up for my army. He was a guy all the way from Sweden named richard, and he really knew what he was doing. He was also a fantastic sport. I played a lot of really, really good and fun games this weekend, but this one was my favorite. I won the roll for first, which honestly may have been the only reason I had a chance, his list was shootier, more mobile, and more assulty than mine, the only the thing I had him on was durability of scoring models. I threatened his ravens witht eh alpha strike so he opted to reserve them, but the then both came on turn 2 and boosted in my face. He rolled an 11 for his shrouding check which allowed me to blow up a raven and remove the multi melta from the other. In the end his army started walking through ine, killing my vehicles and strikes in droves (he got every single vehicle barring a weaponless dread) eventually though I  demeched him and my death cults got 2 seperate charges off on each of his deathcult squads and slaughtered them both, thanks to some cleansing flame back up. In the end I managed to have it set up for a turn 5 win, unless he could pick up a kill point with his dreads (easier said then done since the only this he could shoot at was my infantry, but he did just enough wounds to my death cults, to force me to allocate 1 save to my inquisitor causig him to fail his 3+ go to ground and get insta killed. In the end we drew all the way down including in victory points with a margin of 127 I think in my favor (I needed 185 to win). A great game it was.

Round 4 I got paired up against a space wolf player who knew he was in for some hurt. He basically ran a bunch of grey hunters and long fangs, but again I won the roll for first and there was no decent place to hide. I shot his army for 2 turns killing every rhino and the long fangs, basically leaving him at the mercy of my land raider and death cults. He did have some pay though as a grey hunter squad charged and vaporized a strike squad and he almost stole one of  the objectives (recon) which was to get more units (scoring or otherwise into your opponents deployment zone than they have in yours. He used his 3 units of 1 speeder to hide and hopefully threaten the deployment zone. It ended with my deathcults eating 2 or 3 squads of grey hunters and a rune priest and happily camping in his deployent zone, and the heavy bolters and psyflemen shooting what little parts of the speeders they could see.

Every game I played I had a great time in and really enjoyed. As we were waiting for results I found myself sitting with Tony Kopach and Reece Robins talking about how we all drew a game (those 2 drew each other final round) and how Tony was probably guarnteed a spot in the top 16 thanks to getting 11 out of 12 possible objective but me and Reece probably were out since we both only had 8. I also assumed Reece had a stronger strenght of schedule than me since he played Tony drew the round after I did. So the judges came up and started spitting out awards.

Early on the mentioned sportsmanship, and they said 2 players tied for best sportsman, and they were goign to give it to someone named Noah, with no other mention of the other guy (which I found to be strange but made no mention of). Then they got to the final 16 and the 16th seed was Reece, at which point my heart sank as I thought that meant I was out, then in 15th seed they called me! My goal for the weekend had been achieved, to qualify for Sunday. That's all I reasonably wanted to do (winning it all would've been awesome but I did say reasonably lol) I was actually so happy that I didn't even hear them call my name for best overall. That's right, someone had to tap me on the shoulder telling me that I won, for me to realize what had just happned!

I won best overall in the 256 person GT! Apparently I was the guy who tied for best sportsman with Noah, and I had a 38 out of 40 for paint. I was absolutely ecstatic! I was telling my team mates from the team tournament that I was going to be too full of myself with happiness to actually give a crap during the team tournament, but I'm glad that didn't actulayy happen.

On a humorous note, aside from the comedations and the fancy plaque, I pretty much won a free tyranid army. WOO! Exactly what I needed lol....

So Saturday came around and me and my amazing teammates, Andrew Gonyo, Brad Townsend, and Aaron Aelong were in the team tournament. Also I have to give a shout out to Andrew for building, converting, sculpting, and painting the eintire 4k point army and display board which was apparently 100 hours worth of work to an excpetional standard. The guy has mad skizzles. We were all trying our absolute best to try and win it, with no honest expectation of doing so given that there were 116 teams. However, in round 3 Brad and I drew he game only getting half the points. Well we figured it was okay we were still sitting at 201 out of a possble 227 battle point after round 3, and then we figured if we could max out round 4 we could stand a pretty good shot at winning! However, the unthinkable happened. Aaron and Brad lost their half of round 4, and Andrew and I came damn close to losing too, but eventually squeaked it out.

There were no hard feelings between any of us, we all did our best and we all had a good time, but we were pretty bummed out when they didn't call our name for any of the other prizes. We assumed all out  efforts were for nothing but then, right as I was about to pass out from a combination of dissapointment and exhaustion, they announced the winners, team They Shall Know Fear! That was us! We won the team tournament! We all started screaming like little girls and have a bromantic orgy with each other but it was all good and fun. I'm pretty sure we ended up with a box bigger than me, and in it we found ourselves with easily 300-400 worht of models per person. We all hung out in our hotel room until about 12:30 or so at which point I decided sleep needed to happen since I had to be up at 4:30am for champs.

More on that to come, but so far I have won best overall out of 256, tying for best sport, (which I think I'm most proud of), and getting a 38 out of 40 for paint which was also freaking awesome! And then our team won the team tournament! What an amazing weekend!