Brown breaks down his games on the quest for a 5th Adepticon 40k Championship win and some lessons from what happened along the way that we can all learn from as players.
Adepticon 2018 has come and gone, and thus concludes another amazing year! Easily one of my favorite events every year by far. I apologize as this will be a little less about tactics or 40k theory like most of my articles, instead, it’ll be about my Adepticon experience.
Let me also start off by thanking Nights at the Game Table for sponsoring me through Adepticon! They’re an awesome team that wants to help you guys succeed at 40k, just like I do. Definitely, check out their stuff and see what they have to offer.
They’re some of the nicest guys I’ve ever met and hopefully, they’ll continue to sponsor me for future events.
As some of you may know, I taught two 40k Tactics seminars Wednesday night before the tournament, the 40k basics course, and the 40k advanced course. These were a HUGE success. I had so much fun teaching the classes and felt that I was really able to connect with everyone who attended. I also used those courses as somewhat of a testing arena for some potential new services I could offer in the form public teaching so stay tuned as that may become a thing in the near future.
I had a lot of really good discussions with my classes, and many guys stayed after to chat more. Some of the most heartwarming things of the weekend were when two different students who attended found me during the Championships to tell me they applied the lessons I taught them! They found real weaknesses in their list and used specific tactics I talked about in their games to beat their opponents. It was really an impactful moment for me.
So enough about that gushy touchy-feely stuff. Let’s talk about the Championships. I know I promised you all I would win, but 2nd place isn’t too disappointing, right? I had 8 really fun and unique games against 8 really cool opponents. Not a single person’s list was the same. Kudos to 8th for really intensifying the diversity in competitive 40k. Also, if you’re unaware of my list you can check it out here.
I also know I promised you a lot more streaming than I gave. The failure there was entirely due to my inability to foresee technically difficulties like battery life and the logistics in streaming and trying to play at the same time. I’m so sorry you guys weren’t able to follow along like I promised you’d be able to, but I promise that these are all things that I will work on in the future.
So to recap what I played against in the championships:
Round 1- Nids/GSC with 18 Biovores, 6 Hive Guard, 80? Guardsmen type people and God knows how many mortars. Between Biovores missing and spore mines move blocking everything, chewing through this army is such a pain, but eventually I was able to connect and the rampage began.
Round 2– 3 Fire Raptors, Guilliman, 20 Scouts, 2 Culexus. This game actually made it onto my stream, but for those of you who aren’t aware, the Space Marine player actually managed to wipe every Poxwalker in one turn. I relied on the grit of my army and solid play to carry me through this one.
Round 3– 3 Imperial Knights and a mini Guard battalion. Not much to say about this game besides watching 3 Knights trying to kill 4 trillion models was hilarious. That said, Abaddon chopped a Knight in half and that’s pretty epic.
Round 4– 81 Tzaangors with bows played by Captain Canada himself. I definitely felt favored in this match, but a couple crucial mistakes from his end and first turn sealed the deal almost instantly. Also, seeing it deploy and move across the table looked amazing.
Round 5– One of the coolest Eldar armies I’ve ever seen, featuring a huge unit of Rangers, only 10 Reapers, Serpents with Wraithblades, and 3 fire prisms. My opponent played really well and understood his advantages and disadvantages greatly. In the end, the progressive scoring mission and some clever tactics on my end to avoid being shot (a tactic I love to use) helped me seal the deal.
Round 6– 5 Flyrants and a shadowsword. Ok, this is similar to 7 Flyrants, but I haven’t seen it done with a shadowsword. In the end, a good deployment, some clever assault tricks and a lot of creative pile-ins, coupled with the cancer that is Poxwalkers was just too much.
Round 7– This was a phenomenal game played by Steve Pampreen. He had 90 Plaguebearers, 20 Bloodletters, 4 Plagueburst crawlers and some trees. He used his army in some of the most unorthodox and creative ways I’ve ever seen and took an auto loss matchup and nearly won. He also had the opportunity to slow play me for the win, but being the stand-up guy he is, he didn’t, allowing me to break through and begin my snowball to victory.
Round 8– VS Matt Root Mr. Adepticon Champion himself. Matt understood the horrible mismatch he was in as Flyrants vs Poxwalkers and went for a Hail Mary with his deployment, setting himself up on the line with no screens in an attempt to dominate board control and kill all my Poxes turn 1. He seized and the gamble paid off. This goes back to one of my previous articles where I go over risk management. Not to say Matt won because he seized, all that means is that he saved himself from auto losing by seizing (which is no different than just winning the roll for first turn nowadays). To say he won because he went first would be very diminishing to the game that was played. He played one of the most tactically impressive games I’ve seen in a long time, and he certainly earned that win.
To continue, and speak to Matt’s character as a person, on my first turn I moved 2 Cultists before realizing I didn’t pay the command points or declare I was using the Stratagem to make my Poxwalkers grow in size. Since that Stratagem is used at the start of the Movement phase, he had every right to tell me I couldn’t do that (see Tony at LVO) but Matt graciously allowed me to use it. To return the favor around turn 4, the judge came up to us and said 10-minute warning, meaning we were only going to get 4 turns in. Now, it was pretty apparent that I’d win if the game ended on 4, but the longer it went the worse it would get for me. I had every right to “follow the rules” and enforce the game ending. But I didn’t want to do Matt dirty after the incredible game we had been having for the past 3 hours.
Additionally, I definitely did not want to be the guy who won Adepticon because he slow played with 300 models. So I asked the very understanding and cooperative judge for a time extension since it was the finals, and he obliged, allowing us to get a full 6 turns in.
With that, Matt got me in one of the most tactically enthralling, and sporting games I’ve ever played. So the moral of this story is that super high-level Championship matches in 40k can also be incredibly sportsmanlike as well. It’s all about how you play the game. I, for one, am honored to have lost the way I did, and to an amazing player like Matt (the former ITC champion). Also, 4 Adepticon championships are more than enough, gotta let other people have a turn right?
So now, let’s move on to the Adepticon Team Tournament. I can’t thank my amazing teammates- Werner Born, Brad Nichols, and Matt Robertson from Wales, enough. The amount of time, blood, sweat, and tears Werner and Brad put into our display board and army was just out of this world. And Matt literally flew across the planet to play with us. We played pure Ad Mech with the Dark Mechanicus theme, and the army was stunning. Sadly, our lists were just not up to snuff and we finished middle of the road with a collective 6-4 record. But this was easily one of the most fun times I’ve ever had at the Team Tournament and I can’t wait to do it again!
I also want to send a special shout-out to Alan Bajramovich and the Chicago Kamikazes for winning. They worked so hard and earned every ounce of that victory. It’s an award I know Alan has sought after for years and seeing him finally be rewarded for that was really great. Seeing the genuine excitement and disbelief on his face and literal tears of joy trickle across his face as he walked up to the podium was the perfect way to end an awesome event.
For anyone who hasn’t attended Adepticon, you really have to. It’s a completely amazing experience, and they’re really trying to improve as a tournament. Okay, that was a lot of verbal diarrhea, so I’ll stop now. Stay tuned for my next article, I promise it’ll be more tactical!
