Adepticon - And There It Went! Part Deux!!

 Adepticon - And There It Went! Part Deux!!

Bane: "You would fight to the death?"
Batman: "It makes no difference now."

But seriously. If you haven't seen the episode of Batman/Superman Adventures called Over the Edge, go back and watch it. It's truly excellent.

Since being knocked 6 ways from any sort of Armada contention, the only planned things left for me at Adepticon were the X-Wing qualifier on Saturday and the Armada team tournament on Sunday. Given that the team tourney is just supposed to be fun and I have no expectations from X-Wing, I've got nothing to lose! We go out on Friday night to get dinner, but I'll admit that I'm still feeling sour and embarrassed about how Armada went, so I decline meeting anyone out. Josh and I grab dinner, I end up with leftover meatloaf and mashed potatoes (which are delicious, though I can't remember where we went!) and I figure that'll be my lunch the next day since that worked out so well for Armada. We unpack Armada and pack up X-Wing while watching some Birdgirl (which we'd never seen before, but is quite funny!), and then crash to get some sleep for the next day. I sorta follow Josh's lead on this because he's a very skilled X-Wing player and he's absolutely playing to make Day 2 (which will require at least a 5-1 record) and I'm absolutely not.

After getting some quality sleep and putting Armada in the rearview mirror, I feel better. Shout-outs to Josh and my friend Scott (another STL Armada player) for checking in and asking how I was doing to make sure I wasn't a grump!

Now. I've played some X-Wing online with Josh as he taught me the game, and I'd estimate that I played something like 5 games with him online with the squad I was bringing. I had played each objective at least once, so that was something, anyway. I had played in some pods on Thursday, so at least I had played X-Wing in person with minis several times too. But again - LOW EXPECTATIONS. I anticipated losing, so I just wanted to have fun, do my best, and learn while I went along. In the first round, I was paired against Tommy A. flying a First Order squad and we would be playing Scramble the Transmissions. Unfortunately, I don't remember much of the squads against which I played simply because I am still learning X-Wing and so don't know archetypes, don't have a head for what exactly happened, etc. I will absolutely say this: every damn opponent I played was kind, patient, and had no problem at all walking me through some aspects of the game. It was damn magnanimous of them. I don't have a lot of experience at all with the X-Wing community. But every single one of my opponents was super nice, and that really made a difference in my day. Tommy absolutely STOMPED ME OUT.

Honestly, I'm ashamed of my NY Giants now in the wake of the Brian Flores bullshit (especially because I really wanted them to freaking hire him in the first place!), but at the time of this Super Bowl, I couldn't have been prouder.

He controlled 4 objectives to my 1 by round 2 and I'm pretty sure he killed off Chertek due to my positioning him too aggressively. By the end of round 2, he was up 11-2 and I only had Grievous and two HMPs left. It was basically mop up for him from there, as he continued controlling objectives and neither of us killed anything else. He mopped the floor with me, 20-2. Certainly not how I wanted to start the day, but whatever. Dude was really nice and it was all good. I catch up with some other folks between rounds and go straight into round 2 against Nathan H. flying Imperials. Another thing worth mentioning: this tourney moved. I'd never used TTT before we did it for Armada the day before, but man, that is tight. Really easy to use, keeps everything flowing, and eliminates any need to swarm the couple of printed matchup sheets that get posted. Nathan and I played Salvage Mission and this is a match I honestly don't remember well at all. I think Salvage Mission in general works decently for my squad because only half of my squad can really pick up the tokens. The HMPs don't really want to pick up the tokens because when they execute a Sideslip, they have to drop the tokens. That's right, y'all: Sideslip is the one advanced maneuver that must be performed, and therefore, the cargo gets dropped and the maneuver executed instead of the cargo being retained and the ship performing a 2 forward white maneuver (I'm pretty sure that's what it is, yeah? It's a basic straight move, anyway - 1 or 2). So Grievous and Chertek both pick up cargo and the HMPs go...do...other stuff? He got one of my ships in the second round and I'm pretty sure it was one of the HMPs getting caught out of position, but I can't recall for certain. But by round 4, I'm blowing up some of his ships and without any objective tokens or additional kills, Nathan can't keep up. I win this round 21-6.

Woohoo! A win!

Hey man, I'm just happy I was at .500 at one point. It didn't last long, but for one shining moment, I was there. I can't remember if it was at this point that they posted a faction breakdown on the day, but I think it was. I anticipated the tournament would be real light on Seppie players for a variety of reasons (at least one of which - how difficult they can be to play well - was why I decided they'd be the faction with which I learned the game), but I didn't know how light. Turns out I was 1 of only 9 Separatist players! So now, I've got a goal: make Top 8. Whereas before I was just playing for fun, now I really want to finish ahead of at least one other CIS player so I can get whatever prizes come with Top 8. Round 3 is our last round before lunch and I get paired with William R. running a Rebel squad, and we have Assault on the Satellite Array. I bought a couple of Rebel things because I'm curious about running a U-Wing. I just think it looks cool, honestly. I don't know how much I'll play Rebels just because I'm still really enjoying my Separatists, but what the hell? Stuff was on sale.

Anyway, he had a couple of B-Wings, an A-Wing, and I think 2 X-Wings? Maybe an X-Wing and a Z-95. In fact, as I'm writing this, I'm pretty sure he was fielding Blount, Thane, Gina, and Braylen. Not sure about the A-Wing. I feel decently about this matchup even though I infer from William's disposition that he's a much more skilled and experienced player than I am. But I think I'm starting to feel a bit more comfortable with my squad and I at least know what to expect from the B-Wings, which was comforting. The comfort doesn't last long as he doesn't bite on any of the bait I think I'm laying out for him. Turn 2 sees him up 6-2, but I think I'm still in this thing. Then disaster strikes in round 3 when I manage to lay out Thane for 4 points, but he gets...Grievous, I think? Hard to say, since every ship I have rostered is worth 5 squad points, so the score tracker doesn't tell me much and it was a little while ago now as I write this! So the end of round 3 sees William up 13 to my 7 and he's got objective control, positioning, and numbers. I lose another ship the following round and the game ends at the end of round 4 with him winning 20-7. So I'm 1-2 on the first half of the day. But honestly, I'm having a lot of fun, I won a match, and even the last match I lost saw me do better than my 20-2 loss in the first round! Progress is small, but I like to celebrate the small victories.

I think it was during the lunch break that I learned I was ahead of 2 or 3 other Separatist players. I'm not exactly an NHL franchise over here, but I start to learn why it's better to generally ignore the standings mid-tourney. Win enough and the rest of it doesn't matter. When we come out of the lunch break, I'm paired up with Alex S. flying an Imperial squad, and by process of elimination, we're to play Chance Engagement. I remember that he had Vader (I think he was in a Defender, but it might've been a TIE Advanced) and a bunch of TIE Fighters. I remember one of them was "Night Beast," but other than that, I don't recall. I'm just not familiar with the faction at all. I felt decently about this matchup because we just had to circle and engage. The HMPs can circle the battlefield, Chertek could bounce around in weird ways...as I say, I felt good about it. But things went pear-shaped by round 3 or so. I just wasn't lining up shots very well and my ships were taking half damage. Alex flew very well and never missed a shot to take a shot. And I screwed up Chertek a couple of times, so the tractor tokens I planned on landing? Yeah, those didn't happen. Ruh-roh. Alex was landing half damage by round 2 and killing stuff by round 5. I think I killed one of his TIEs, but this was another whooping - he closed it out in round 8, 22-4.

I'm feeling as though I need a win going into round 5, and luckily, I get it! And by get it, I mean my opponent concedes. Basically, some stuff had changed around during matchups, so people were moving. I got to my spot and my opponent told me not to bother unpacking. For some reason, it didn't click to me that he was conceding; I just thought he meant we'd likely be moving again! I wish I could say I'd rather win the honest way, but I was still trying to make Top 8 Separatist players, so I had no pride about this and was happy to get the win 😂

Round 6 sees me paired with Max who is...wait, really? Whoa, he's also flying Separatists! If we're at the same table, there's a good chance we're right there together and if I can beat him, I'm in Top 8! Honestly, this sort of driving force made the tournament a little more fun for me because it gave me a specific goal beyond learning. If I recall correctly, Max flew nothing but Belbullabs. Honestly? Super nice guy! It was fun chatting with him in general, but beyond that, it was nice to talk to him specifically about "our faction." We played Scramble the Transmissions and he just had a far better handle on his approach than I did on mine. He beat me at the end of round 4, 21-5. All of my points came from scoring objectives, but he managed to down 2 of my ships, netting him 10 points in addition to his objective points. Honestly, I was all over the playing area, so I couldn't hold down anything. I had plans in my head, but I'm not entirely certain where half of them came from. I had trouble actualizing anything. To the point where I got mixed up as to how my...HMP, I think?...would be sideslipping, leading to me sideslipping it right out of the play area.

Max insisted I take that back and go the correct way - the way I clearly meant to go. I insisted it was okay, but he insisted that I just do the thing I clearly meant to do. I know neither of us are in the running for Day 2, but still, for him to insist on that was incredibly gracious of him. It was late enough in the match that I don't think he was in any danger of losing, but still. In my mind, it's a tournament and when stuff like that happens, it's unfortunate, but that's how it goes. Max felt differently, and I know my buddy Josh does too. Even in a tournament setting, he feels strongly that if you "clearly meant to do something," then you should just do the thing. There's a limit, of course: you can't go back several phases or change movement from a turn ago or something, but in general, if you meant to get a token or meant to activate a thing you were *clearly* going to activate, then just do the thing. So like I said, despite getting beaten and thinking that might've knocked me down to ninth in the faction, I had a really great experience playing and talking with Max.

And that closed out my day! Well, closed out my Adepticon portion of the day, anyhow. I got some really cool swag, so kudos to Gold Squadron for running a really cool tournament in which I won cool stuff even going 2-4 on the day! Also, as it turns out, I did just finish above the line and came in eighth in my faction! WOOHOO!! It's silly, I know, but it was nice to also hit a couple of goals I'd set for myself. Especially after the disastrous Armada tournament I had the day before. Josh and I met a bunch of his X-Wing buddies over at Beerhead again after we recommended it to them and had a boisterous evening over there, which was great fun.

Knowing that Sunday was our last day at Adepticon, I decided I just didn't feel like putting everything together for the Armada team tournament. I thought it would be fun, but after enjoying a light first day at the con, decided I also wanted a light last day. Josh agreed and we ended up playing more Aces High on Sunday before having plenty of time to eat lunch prior to my dropping Josh off at the airport and driving back to STL. And while all of that was good stuff, none of it was the highlight of my Sunday. No no no! The highlight of my day stems back to Friday. I had swung by the Wyrd Miniatures booth to inquire about Vagrantsong. Apparently, they were selling a limited number of copies of the game each day of Adepticon, but they were going fast. They basically broke out a predetermined number each morning. I was told that my best bet was Saturday morning because that's when they'd have the most for sale and when I was most likely to be successful in securing a copy. I thought about trying to make that work on Saturday, but I decided it wasn't worth stressing myself out about because I'd be playing X-Wing that day. So Saturday came and went and I just didn't think much of it.

On Sunday morning, we got to the con a bit late because we weren't in a rush. We decided to do a final sweep of the vendors before sitting down for our X-Wing pod. We had been through there, but that was on Thursday and not all the vendors were set up. So maybe an hour and fifteen minutes after the vendor hall had opened, I swung by Wyrd. There was a single wrapped copy of the game on a table right next to their register. I thought it might be for sale, but thought it might also be for display purposes only since there was only one. I went to ask the person before grabbing it because...I don't know, it would've felt rude to presume? Josh was with me and I noticed that he sort of slid to the side, all but boxing out anyone else who might approach the little bartop table with the copy of Vagrantsong on it. I kind of chuckled to myself because it looked as though he were intentionally blocking the game with his body just in case it was for sale. The woman confirmed that it was for sale and was their last copy of the day. So I snatched it up, paid, and was quite happy with my purchase! I checked off nearly every box on my Adepticon goals!

Come on, now. Tell me that doesn't look cool!

After snatching that last copy and walking away, I mentioned my observation to Josh and he was quick to confirm that he was absolutely running interference for me to ensure I got the game. I'm pretty lucky to have great friends, yeah? Anyway, we played Aces High and I broke out DGS-047 equipped with Concussion Missiles and Proximity Mines. It was dumb, but I thought it'd be fun to just launch explosive stuff in every direction. I got killed a lot, but seeing those Proximity Mines all over the table got us laughing about it all pretty hard. We actually got some dirty looks from some other X-Wing folks who were also playing pods, but I guess I'd have been jealous too if someone else was having more fun than me.

And that was Adepticon 2022! I had a really terrific time and plan on going back next year! I like the location of the con, the distance from STL is totally manageable, and overall, I'm just really satisfied with it. If you end up going next year, look me up!