It’s finally back! After a long hiatus, Adepticon, one of the world’s premiere hobby events is back. Taking place at the Schaumburg Convention Center deep in the heart of Chicago-land, Adepticon is a celebration of table-top gaming in it’s purest form. In terms of 40k, and while it boasts one of the largest and longest running 40k Championship events, Adepticon is primarily known for it’s hobby excellence and perhaps the jewel in its crown, the 40k Team event. While many of my fellow Goonhammer contributors were in attendance, and will undoubtedly focus on these other events, I will solely reflect on the experience of competing in the 40k Champions event. In doing so, I’ll take the opportunity to reflect on the event itself, the state of the meta, and then close with a synopsis of my performance.

Adepticon’s Warhammer 40k Champions Event

As Stevie Nicks declared it years ago, Adepticon has gone its own way. In the past, the Adepticon 40k Champions event has been unique – unique missions, unique tables, and a unique player base.  And it has been unapologetic in being different as the Adepticon brand is less about top-table 40k competition but rather a beer and pretzels celebration of the love of gaming. However, the competitive side of 40k had exploded prior to the COVID era and is now looking to regain its steam as we look to move on. The US has seen a large expansion of independent GTs and Majors as well as a large event series hosted by Frontline Gaming and even Games Workshop itself. This has led to Adepticon being just another one of the many large events in the US rather than being a must-attend ’big three’ along with NOVA (which also returns this year) and LVO as had been the case in years past.

Veterans of the 40k Champions have long known Adepticon terrain to be uneven and in some cases, barren which has been partially offset by using a player-placed mechanic. Recently Adepticon had shifted from its custom mission format in the pre-COVID era to the GW GT mission set along with the rest of the world, but it still struggles with the terrain component of its tables. While looking pretty and keeping with the overall brand of Adepticon, entire rows of tables have terrain sets that should not be seen in a 9^th edition game and it’s worth addressing directly. Very large obscuring bases that when touched open the whole table to shooting, very little true line-of-sight blocking terrain, and in many cases extremely barren terrain pieces that simply serve as large cargo containers (looking at you Necron table). The result is a game that is open to being shot off the board in an edition where shooting has become ever more deadly and cna leave players feeling as if, “there’s nothing I could do”. Something which I believe runs counter to the Adepticon ethos.

Overall, Adepticon is a fantastic convention, but the Champions event continues to offer a subpar experience in relation to its growing list of peers. Any 40k event is certainly not a requirement to be offered by organizers, but I’d suggest that if you’re going to do it you also shouldn’t short-change it. I sincerely hope that in the coming year a dedicated effort is made to improve the table layouts and the planning that goes into running a still premiere event – lest it become overshadowed by the rest.

The Clown Car Meta – A Proposal

As I write this, Manchester GT and a couple of other smaller GTs are wrapping up this weekend and the results look increasingly grim. We all know that Harlequins took 3 of the top 4 spots at Adepticon and that it could well have been worse for the top cut it if it weren’t for some earlier mirror knockouts. Harlequins are broken. They’re probably the most broken faction yet in  9^th edition. Going back to the Iron Hands release of 8^th, the clowns may well push past them for the top spot of all-time meta terrors to rival Grey Knights in 5^th. In terms of my attitude on them, I still feel somewhat okay about my personal ranking of pure Asuryani at an above average A-tier rating of 6 in our Goonhammer roundtable. I might rescore that higher at 7.5, but I still feel the faction has a higher than average skill requirement. However, it’s clear that rating Harlequins near to the top with an 8 on a scale bookended by unnerfed Drukhari at 10, that Harlequins are easily a 10 and more likely, on another scale entirely.

After playing with them, seeing them in the field, playing into them at top tables, and discussing with friends, I have a few ideas on how the faction might be adjusted to bring it more in line to something manageable. First, it’s important to note that any changes to the faction shouldn’t kill them competitively – in an ideal world everyone sits in the A or B tier of factions and can build into other factions to maintain competitive games. Second, individual units shouldn’t be killed competitively – it’s okay to be good, great even, but a unit shouldn’t be so good that you sacrifice everything else to maximize its inclusion. I think the Voidweaver is a unit that a lot of people are going to rabidly demand to be taken out behind the shed and disposed of, but a unit can be fixed without being removed entirely.

At the end of the day, the issue with pure Harlequins is a combination of too much firepower with too much durability on top of their innate speed. The game has three key components – movement, offensive output, and defensive survivability. Harlequins, particularly in the Voidweaver Light builds, excel in all three of these categories. If we acknowledge that Harlequins speed is table stakes, we should then focus solely on their offensive and defensive components – and that is very nuanced.

Offensive output primarily comes in two phases – shooting and fighting. The Harlequins are traditionally mediocre in their capability to deliver ranged threats – having relied on short-ranged fusion pistol boats, specialized Skyweaver bikes that pay a premium to be a dual phase threat, or by allying in their heavier Craftworld cousins. However, the changes to the Voidweaver datasheet have given them a very significant, long-ranged threat with flexibility into a broad spectrum of targets with a strong mix of mid-range Shuriken Cannon volume, a dispersed Prismatic profile, and a focused Prismatic profile. There’s not a target in the game that isn’t good for the Voidweaver. Compared to the now limited fusion capability, or the far more specialized Skyweaver output, the Voidweaver is exactly what it is supposed to be – a unit that can cover for the army while it attempts to close the board and deliver small, targeted slice/dice units into key objectives. However, in the volumes that they are capable of being taken, the Voidweaver has gone from manageable to overwhelming.

On the flip side, the durability offered by the overlapping abilities of Mirage Launchers (cannot reroll attacks, -1 to hit), the Light subfaction trait (cannot be hit on better than a 4+ outside of 12”), the Mirror Architect aura that further reduces that Light trait to 6”, and the incredible utility of the Luck of the Laughing God rerolls has combined to create remarkable reductions in the amount of damage that any given Voidweaver unit is going to take – even when they stand in the open field. Any one of the benefits would be great, all of them together become nigh untouchable by anti-tank weaponry, and drastically reduces the impact of high-volume mid-tier shooting that are often low damage. As a rule of thumb, you can expect that only 25% of shots will hit or punch through the initial save – that will be reduced further by the wound roll and then any Luck rerolls the Harlequin player may choose to take. To get an idea of what that looks like – assume a Nightspinner, whose 2d6, S7, 2D guns generally have a favorable profile into the Voidweaver statline,  maxes its number of shots at 12 into a unit of Voidweavers – it’s hitting on 4s, wounding on 3s, and then 2D after saves. The Nightspinner can expect that 6 shots will hit, 4 will wound, 2 will be saved outright, then 1 additional on a Luck reroll. The best case for the Nightspinner will result in 2 damage on a unit of Voidweavers – the more likely, average, case is a ~50% chance of just 2D. You can play this same exercise out at all levels and find that there is no efficient way to handle Voidweavers that involves shooting.

The answer then, might be to engage close-in but here too we find challenges. The Void- and Starweaver datasheets received a significant upgrade over their previous edition – the Mirage Launchers maintain a -1 to hit modifier, no rerolls from all attacks, not just shooting. So regardless, you’re still likely to hit on 4s and cannot reroll. In general, melee threats tend to have fewer overall dice to hand out than the shooting phase so the impact here is more meaningful. Once you add the impact of the Luck dice to buoy the variance of a 4+ invulnerable save, selectively applied, you find that most combat threats will also come up short against the Star/Voidweaver profile. In response, the Voidweavers who are no slouch in combat themselves, may choose to simply blast themselves out of the situation, or fall back and fire for 1 CP on their turn.

At a micro level Voidweavers are very good and at a macro level they are overwhelming. They’re an incredible unit and the lynchpin of the Harlequin threat, however, their abilities are so interlaced and nuanced that point hikes alone will not solve their issue without pricing them out of the game entirely. As a result, after workshopping it a bit with friends, here is my proposal for fixing Harlequins:

• Increase the cost of the base Troupe member by +2 points per model and grant them CORE
• Increase the cost of the base Star/Voidweaver by +5 points per model
• Increase the cost of the Prismatic Cannon by +10
• Reduce the squad size cap on Voidweavers from 3 to 2
• Alter the Luck of the Laughing God mechanic by limiting the application of Luck dice to one success per unit per phase (credit in part to John Lennon)
• Change the Mirage Launcher (Sbtar/Voidweaver) ability to only effect shooting phase attacks
• Alter the wording to of the Mirror Architect ability so that it only applies to abilities and shooting beyond 12” (credit to Richard Siegler, James ‘Wings’ Grover, and Liam ‘Corrode’ Royle)

My default opinion is that in most things in life, you should apply the minimal corrective changes required to correct something. You don’t want to make widespread systematic changes that have unforeseen and unintended effects, and unfortunately that’s what we often get with massive point changes when more nuanced but targeted changes would have worked. In this case, I start with the basic acknowledgement that some things are bit too efficient – Troupes are required and the small bump is meaningful at an army-wide level. The Star/Void platforms take a small adjustment – some compare a Starweaver to a Venom, but this is a bad comparison in my opinion because the Venom itself I view as overcosted. Still, the -weaver platform is a hyper efficient platform that can weather the small bump. Finally, the Prismatic Cannon is clearly a standout over the Haywire Cannon and receives a point increase of 10 to a net of 15 on Voidweaver platforms (or +20 vs Starweavers).

The other changes to datasheets and mechanics are more nuanced in their effect and require a zooming out of how you think about their impacts on the army’s performance. First, the change to Mirage Launchers gives a significant defensive weakness to the vehicle platforms as their only defense becomes the reroll ability of the Luck dice. Second, the change to the Luck dice means that the combined limitation is significantly increased as only a single attack may be saved by them – in shooting or combat. It’s hard to overstate how impactful that change is to a unit that wants to be rerolling 3-5 save dice each turn if pressed. Furthermore, the limitation of the unit cap (from 3 Voidweavers per squad to 2) reduces the overall ranged output of the army by nearly a third (the max number of Voidweavers that can be taken becomes 6 down from 9) while also limiting the impact of stratagems like Bladestorm and making each Voidweaver loss far more degrading to the army’s performance than currently. Finally the change to Mirror Architect limits interactions with Light, Fog of Mirrors, etc slightly while still allowing opponent abilities (like 12” weapons out of deepstrike) to function without invalidating whole selections. These changes I believe would significantly alter the overwhelming nature of the current Harlequin menace without invalidating their competitive capability.

So on to the tournament!

The Champions Tournament Report

Having taken some time after the Las Vegas Open  to decompress I was excited to get back into it with the brand new Craftworlds book. An army that I’d been playing almost exclusively since the outset of 3rd edition, the white and green warriors of Biel-Tan continue to have a special place in my heart. So while everyone else seems to be zigging with Ulthwe, I’m going to zag with my brother-in-arms Wings and go Biel-Tan… and clowns. I would end up piloting the mixed Aeldari to a 5-1, 6th place finish which I’ll discuss further below.

My List - click to expand

Since I had first read the new Aeldari codex I knew I had wanted to run a Webway Gate. In fact, I am of the opinion that in tournaments with player-placed terrain that there are no Craftworld lists that are better without the gate than those with it. Having had previously mounted one of my Webway Gates permanently to my display board, I was fortunate enough to find a second before they disappeared from this earth entirely. Now that they have, I have held onto this thing for dear life actually fearing for the first time that I might have a model stolen.

With the Gate in mind, the list is built to leverage reserve shenanigans by spending 1CP to place up to 29 PL of units into strategic reserves. Generally speaking, the list will run by starting with the Dire Avengers, Striking Scorpions, and two units of Troupes in Strat Reserve, with the two Warp Spider squads in deep strike (Surprise Assault). What’s more, in an unfavorable position, I choose to place three additional units into the Gate to ensure an alpha-strike opportunity. The Voidweavers, Skyweavers, and then the D-Cannons might optionally be repositioned after deployment or placed into reserves with Phantasm.

What’s important to note about the Web gate is that units are not required to come out of it – but often the opportunity and board space it creates is enough to grant me incredible flexibility in how I want to use my incoming units – which is important because I’ll likely need to hit the right points at the right time to ensure late-game scoring opportunity as I give up the board early.

While the Craftworld half of the army functions as a hard-hitting out of reserve hammer, the Harlequins functions in the anvil role, granting the list the durability it needs to maintaina minimum board presence and position early on with some fierce output in their own right.

Game One – Tear Down Their Icons

Mike Twitchell – Necrons

Mike's List - click to expand

My Secondaries

• Stranglehold
• Retrieve Nachmund Data
• No Prisoners

Mike’s Secondaries

• Stranglehold,
• Grind Them Down
• Investigate Signal

Mike Goes First

The first match of the weekend was a fun and friendly castle-defense style match into the walking metal carpet of Mike Twitchell’s robots. With the coffee yet to kick in I had absent-mindedly selected Stranglehold on the 5-objective map not thinking about how he was going to walk 100+ reanimating bodies forward over the middle objective – a silly mistake but not irrecoverable. His picks were all solid, however, he did not have the range to really threaten my more mobile forces that constantly kept him at arm’s reach which made Grind it Down challenging.

Mike’s list was built to handle Custodes with ease – and it would have done that marvelously, but against my heavy shooting, alpha-strike, mixed Aeldari list which brought Blast in spades it just couldn’t hold up to the withering fire leveled at it from turn one onwards. The first three turns saw me playing around the edges of his hordes and whittling them down while he collected as many points as he could on that center objective. We talked a bit about how the Silent King had became a non-issue as Mike had placed him towards one of the table edge objectives and kept him holding down a flank rather than pushing him forward where he could more easily threaten my force and fight for control of the center objective. As a result I ended up ignoring him all game which left him alive by the end of turn 5 to fight again another day. Over the course of the game he had reanimated over 50 of his robots which I’m oddly proud to have put right back into the dirt – an ancient nemesis after all.

Victory, 91 – 63

 

Game Two – Tide of Conviction

Jeremy Kay – Adeptus Mechanicus

Jeremy's List - click to expand

My Secondaries

• Psychic Interrogation
• Stranglehold
• Bring It Down

Jeremy’s Secondaries

• Engage on All Fronts
• Raise the Banners
• Assassination

Jeremy Goes First

This was one matchup where I thought if I was going to struggle off-meta, it would probably be Ad Mech. While the score ended up not reflecting, this proved to be a very challenging game. Ad Mech are far from the meta terror they were, but they’re still plenty capable of laying down a lot of heavy firepower combined with a lot of overlapping synergies. They have an answer to just about anything and that includes units arriving from reserve and mortal wound dropping planes. My Voidweavers and D-Cannons are susceptible to the planes – both of which are key units in this matchup due to the mix of vehicles and large infantry blocks Jeremy was sporting.

Confident I could push Jeremy off one objective each turn, I went with Stranglehold despite the 6-objective mission, then psychic interrogation – leveraging my speed and his large number of supporting characters, and finally settled on Bring It Down knowing that at least 7 points of vehicles would be coming my way, and I could probably reach the final 4-6 if my Voidweavers survived.

Jeremy deployed castled up went first, stupidly, I chose not to reserve my Voidweavers or D-Cannons and it nearly cost me as he bombed the Voidweavers. However, he made the critical mistake of not doubling them off to try to kill multiple or the full squad on turn 1, which would have been a devastating blow. Instead he split on my Skyweavers and Voidweavers and finished neither squad, which allowed me clear a couple of flanking units and his advancing walkers and leaving one his flanks stranded with the other flank guarded by the gate. While it would continue to be a slugging match, I was able to keep his primary points low by hopping objectives and ultimately, despite us both being fully ground down, the score reflected a much different game than what had transpired on the table.

Victory 93 – 35

 

Game Three – Data Scry-Salvage

Chris Bormann – Drukhari

Chris' List - click to expand

My Secondaries

• Stranglehold
• Retrieve Nachmund Data
• Psychic Interrogation

Chris’ Secondaries

• Engage on All Fronts
• Retrieve Nachmund Data
• Grind Them Down

This is a game I was all too familiar with as I had spent a fair amount of time playing the new Craftworlds into my Drukhari for our review of the new book. In addition, I had spent the better part of a year playing Drukhari and I knew the book inside and out – this wasn’t going to be a good matchup for Chris and he desperately needed to go first.

I Went First

I used Phantasm to reposition all my units forward so I could range his exposed and forward placed vehicles. What followed was a shooting gallery that saw both of his Ravagers and a Raider downed as well as a hapless Wrack unit that just wanted to go sit somewhere pleasant. To add insult to injury, some explosions ripped through his ranks and brought some Hellions with them. By the time turn 1 was over I had wiped out half of his flank and forced Chris to be pinned between my Webway Gate and the rest of the army with nowhere to go. By the time Turn 2 was over, there was scarcely anything left – a couple of Wrack squads, a Raider with some Incubi, and then Draz.

I would have liked to have said that there was more that Chris could have done, but unfortunately, he lost because he didn’t have anywhere to hide. The scarce terrain he had was deployed in the mid-board where I could easily leverage it – which left his backfield wide open and afforded me the opportunity to pin him in his deployment zone from the get go. This was a game that resulted in a landslide victory 100% because of the Adepticon terrain and a lack of coverage.

Victory 94 – 31

 

Game Four – Conversion

Mark Benning – Crusher Stampede

Mark's List - click to expand

My Secondaries

• Stranglehold
• Retrieve Nachmund Data
• Bring It Down

Mark’s Secondaries

• Warp Ritual
• Stranglehold
• Grind Them Down

This was probably my favorite game of the tournament. I’ve found that Crusher can be a tough matchup for Eldar, which just makes it more terrifying that they’re about to get a new book. However, as you can see from this picture…

There just wasn’t a lot of terrain for Mark’s Hive Tyrants or Hive Guard to be hidden by that wasn’t going to get immediately shot by my Voidweavers. Despite this, Mark had the perfect plan in to me – which was to run his Heirodules forward, sit the objectives on a 4+ Invulnerable or 5+ Feel No Pain, zone out the mid-board with Hive Guard, and then just wrack up points on the first two turns with Stranglehold and a yo-yo’ing Warp Ritual Hive Tyrant (supported by the Swarmlord). He just needed to go first.

Mark Goes First

It would have worked beautifully if Mark had been able to hold down the whole “roll a 4+” thing. Unfortunately the Heirodules failed some key saves on turn 2 that greatly opened up the board for me as my Skyweavers ran in to tie up his Hive Guard for the rest of the game. The Harpy, having chosen to drop Mortal Wounds on my Voidweavers preferring instead to blast a Shadowseer off the board, was unable to do any damage to the boats before it too was cast away. A brave Striking Scorpion Exarch single-handedly munched a Hive Tyrant, his Warlord, before nearly finishing the second a turn later. It was a bloody, knock-down, drag-out brawl of a battle and one that was very fortunate to get a way with. We spoke a bit about the outrageousness of the power creep in the game, and I understand Mark might take a step back from the game for a bit while it settles out. I can’t say I blame him, even if he does have a new book right around the corner.

Victory 81 – 76

 

Game Five – Tear Down Their Icons

David Fields – Ultramarines

David's List - click to expand

My Secondaries

• Stranglehold
• Bring It Down
• Psychic Interrogation

David’s Secondaries

• Stranglehold
• Retrieve Nachmund Data
• Oaths of Moment

David Goes First

Dave and I go back a bit as former teammates, we had circled each other multiple years at Adepticon only to come up just shy of the top cut – placing in the high teens to low 20s each year leading into the most recent event. So how awesome it was that we were to finally play with both of us having finally made the top cut in the first round. He’s a bit of an online star after his most recent adventure taking G-man and his bois to round 5 of Adepticon. On his way he dropped 3 Drukhari lists which do not normally struggle in handling Space Marines. But this is merely an example of what I and others who know Dave understand – he is an excellent list writer, and he plays his lists perfectly.

Dave’s army relies on perfect positioning, a massive amount of quality shots generated his Redemptors, and the distraction provided by his Invictors early to force you into a game he wants to play. This is buoyed of course by the ability to out deploy and redeploy leveraging the Ultramarines ability and his Phobos captain. I knew I’d be able to alpha-strike his force, and despite all of his redeploy shenanigans, I wanted first turn to prevent his Invictors from laying into me round 1. Even still, Dave went first and was able to clear my entire Skyweavers squad turn 1 with his Invictors and Redemptors – a significant win for him early on that forced me to play far cagier. However, using obscuring terrain to minimize his sight lines, and bringing in my reinforcements to threaten his limited backfield objective holders while dropping D-Cannon and Voidweaver shots on his advancing dreads meant that by the time my Scorpions came in they were doing little more than clean-up on what remained of the center.

More than any other game I think this is where the power of the webway gate shone through – it allowed me always be present near to the center objective, even when I wasn’t on the board, and facilitated a lot of reserve help that was sorely needed to not have to fight forward through Dave’s advancing dreadnoughts.

Dave, feeling that same bit of staleness I do now, likely will seek to take a break until Chaos Knights come out – getting back to his Chaos-y roots.

Victory 90 – 67

 

Game Six – Tide of Conviction

John Lennon – Harlequins

John's List - click to expand

My Secondaries

Me: Retrieve Nachmund Data, Psychic Interrogation, Stranglehold

John: A Deadly Performance, Stranglehold, Raise the Banners

I Went First

I chose Nachmund when I should have taken Bring It Down, but I gotta be honest, I didn’t really care. All you really need to know about this game is the tale of the dueling Death Jesters. I went first, and my Death Jester went hard in the paint, exploding for 12 hits on John’s Death Jester. Our boy then promptly saved 7 of 8 wounds, then turned around 360-no-scoped my Shadowseer in the face with his own 12-hit performance. Take 9 Voidweavers, throw in a couple of deny the witches on Psychic Interrogation and well, baby you got yourself a 26-100 stew going.

This is probably the hardest I’ve ever been rolled, and I knew it was going to happen coming into the game. John, for his part, was gracious enough to not acknowledge how screwed I was… but he also knew. If I’m being honest, if the run was going to end in clown shoes I’m glad it was John who was wearing them.

Defeat 26 – 100

 

Final Showing: 5 – 1, 6th Overall

It was a good run, and both David and I had finally broken through that top-cut ceiling we’d hit at the last two events. But overall I can’t help but feel this game is an utterly awful place. More than ever, the game feels like it’s less about making the right plays and more about simply getting enough of your dice to land on the correct facing. With each new release more powerful than the last, one is left to wonder what’s even the point of trying to build your army to compete when it’s simply invalidated faster and more ruthlessly than ever before. Unlike when there was one or two dominant armies, building into the likely most powerful army now means heavily handicapping yourself against the second or third best which just a month ago were also historically broken. It’s a challenging time and a smart but decisive fix is needed now more than ever.

 

What’s Next?

While I remain enthusiastic about my first-love Craftworlds, I am less enthusiastic about the state of the game overall. I suspect many players are not having fun at the competitive level and most are not having fun winning. That said, my tickets are purchased and flights paid on the upcoming Dallas Open and Motor City Mayhem – at a minimum I’ll be able to roll dice with friends, shoot the shit over beers, and chat about our shitty game. Who knows, maybe we’ll get an emergency fix – until then though

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.