Adepticon 2012 - In a small nutshell.

Adepticon was the man-cation I needed! After weeks of craziness in the office, I shut down my computer and jumped in a car at 5am to drive to Chicago, It was my first ever Adepticon and I was psyched about leaving the real world behind and heading to spend an entire 3 days in a hotel of gamerdom. 

For those few days, we all immersed ourselves in the subculture/subcommunity of minature wargaming. 

I came with three goals - learn the most I can about miniature painting in one weekend, play in the Infinity Tournament and stay within budget. I must say it was an all around success - though I wish, in retrospect, that I had gone over-budget. There was just so many cool things to spend your money on!

The first day, if I recall, held the 40k Championships. I helped some friends set up, wandered the aisles looking at armies, and cruised the vendor hall. 

I saw a heart-warming amount of Tau armies, but not a single Tyranid army. What's neat too is that a lot of the Tau armies were different in some way and that was cool to see.

Though, every second army was Grey Knights so far as I could tell. If It had dreadnoughts with Twin Autocannons, or non-red storm ravens, I basically assuming it was Grey Knights. But there were some daemons. One of which was the dark mechanicus - entirely converted and well-painted in a classic chaos scheme. Fuzzy pictures below.

My first class was an Airbrushing for Figurines Class with Matheiu Fontaine. This guy, I had never heard of before, but he knew his shit. I took two of his classes, one was 4 hours long. This guy can teach painting, man. 

The Airbrush Class was great, if a bit dry. It was a demo class so there was no hands-on activity, but he painted a fig in front of us. With an airbrush. A fig. Not a vehicle, not a walker. A little chick-fig in robes. 

We're not talking detailed, but basically shaded and highlighted by the airbrush. He'll have to continue on with a traditional brush but he ends up with a great foundation. 

Next up I had a blending class with this guy. There was about 50/50 talk and painting. We got to paint. He gave us a fig, paints to use, and a wet pallet. All we needed was a brush. I can safely say what once was a mystery, is now an attainable technique. 

Honestly I had basically fudged wet blending, by using washes, inks and edge highlighting. My results were not real blending - and you could tell. Now I can say that I know how to wet blend. I only need practice to master it. 

We also had an interesting discussion on paint brands. In both classes. 

P3 seems to be his preferred, but for the same reasons the old GW was my preferred. Which means that I'll likely be switching to P3, as I don't think the new GW paints are what I am looking for. 

Enough of painting stuff.

Infinity. 

Fuck yes!

The tournament was so much fun. All the scenarios were narrative based. I loved them - it's what I am looking for in a tournament.

I met a German guy there who had flown in for Adepticon to play wargames. Stroke up conversation about Infinity and he had an awesomely painted Battle Group and a unique play-style to boot. No camo, no Heavy Infantry. Just dirty nomads and their tricks. Turned out I was playing him in the second round. Beaten, Solidly. Damn those fucking nomads! 

My record for the end of the day at Infinity - minor victory, minor loss, crushing defeat! Yep, I seemed to get worse at the game as the tournament went on, haha! I must say I learned a lot about how to use the rules in Infinity - I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Looking back on it. I need to fill up my schedule a bit. There were a few hours here and there that could have been better spent, but I came back from Adepticon invigorated to paint figures and develop my Infinity game some. 

It's also an interesting trip into a different community. Our big nerd family...of mostly bros. Not too many girls.