Greg “Klobasnek” Narro: Welcome back to our quest to maximize our Adepticon gaming time by playing Necromunda en route. Last time we arrived at Adepticon’s new home of Milwaukee after playing 4 games in the Texas Eagle lounge car.
Adepticon could be a whole series of posts on its own, but I figure you’re probably here primarily for the Ham Train adventure, so we’re going to do a lightning recap of our Adepticon antics so we can get back to the train in Part 4. Keep your eyes peeled for a Goonhammer Round Table with the broader crew’s thoughts on Adepticon’s new location.
Thursday: The 40k Narrative, Day 1
This is the second year that internet Guard Guy Cadian Sergeant Steel has run a narrative 40k event at Adepticon focused around the Fall of Cadia. I didn’t really know what to expect out of this; narrative events vary a lot more in format (and, frankly, quality) than matched play ones do. The good ones lean into the things that you can’t do in matched play:
- Themed terrain
- Custom, asymmetrical missions
- Alternative formats like Boarding Actions
- Imperfect information / secret objectives
This event did all of those things, plus they had key characters from the overarching narrative which would occasionally join your army for a game, allowing you to attempt to fulfill their secret objectives and advance your team’s plotline.
The event used Crusade, but did 1500 point games and three hour rounds. If you’re going to attempt to do Crusade in the time frame of a con, doing long rounds and smaller points is a prudent decision.
I brought my renegade guard narrative army, the Urdeshi 409th. I’m running a lot of infantry with the Recon Element detachment, which means most of my games are gonna take the full 3 hours. I am playing for Team Chaos.
Andrew: Usually I’m an Imperial Guard/Space Marine player who thinks the flavor Vanilla rules and Human Fighter is the best, but I decided it would be fun for this narrative to set down the mantle of Hero of Team Imperium and don the title of Big Busta, Warboss leading his Breaka Boyz and Bomba Bots in their quest to bust the biggest things they could, Bust Big so to speak. Although the seductive power of More Dakka lurked like the Green Goblin mask in my peripheral vision, I opted to run Dread Mob because pushing buttons and blowing up your own shit is very funny and more thematic.
Greg Round 1: vs Tyler’s Carcharodons (counts-as Blood Angels)
The Mission: Command Bunkers (setting and defusing explosives on objective markers)
Most Memorable Part: Glorious Rough Rider calvary charge to try to take out Lemartes and his remaining Death Company, only for Lemartes to spike his invulnerable saves and single-handedly wipe the squad
Final Score: 90 – 45, Loss
Andrew Round 1: vs Daniel’s House Orlock Wargang (Astra Militarum)
The Mission: Ugbash’s Camp (honestly very funny to have the orks see raiders plant bombs on their stuff and go “Zog dat’s a good lookin bomb right dere, mine now”)
Most Memorable Part: Two moments stuck out to me in this mission, first was my Kommandos spending 3 turns getting beaten to death by Orlocks (Catachans) after they reached too greedily for the shiny commander and the awesome moment where a commissar stood alone against a Deff Dread for a turn of combat, even managing to plink a wound out of spite. Really channeled that Commissar spirit.
Final Score: 105-40, Victory
Greg Round 2: vs Dominic’s Dark Angels
Mission: Power Facility (objective markers grant a 5+ invulnerable save to units holding them)
Most Memorable Part: I was given one of the Chaos characters for this, Arwid the rogue psyker, and a secret mission to have as many friendly models die near the center of the battlefield as possible. I accomplish this with aplomb, getting 30 of my guardsmen slaughtered in the center as Bladeguard and Deathwing carve through them with impunity.
Oh, and for the second game in a row, the Rough Riders nearly take out a Space Marine character, only for them to spike their invulnerable saves and murder them to a man on the clapback. RIP.
Final Score: 100 – 60, Loss
Andrew Round 2: vs The Archivists (Thousand Sons)
The Mission: Prometheum Raid (suck up the good stuff, put it in da tank)
Most Memorable Part: For this mission and the previous, I was given custody of Ugbash, the Wasteland Warboss character along with secret missions to accomplish with him. The first mission was easy, escort a lone op character across the map sure thing. This one asked for a little more danger and needed him in the middle of the table at the end. And I was going first. In what can only be described as a Benny Hill-esque scenario, Ugbash spent two turns running around the middle prometheum objective desperately trying to hide behind Busta’s Boyz and lend his drill to the fight where he thought he could get away with it. In the end he couldn’t quite make it, but he gave it a damn good go.
Final Score: 63 – 30, Victory
Thursday Evening Activities
Andrew: The best part of events is hanging with the friends made along the way, especially ones you rarely get to see. That night I walked over to Major Gregsby’s to meet up with the goons who had made the trip. It was a decently sized sports bar right across the street from the venue and hotel. Since the night before I had had beer and schnitzel and a burger for lunch during the narrative, I thought I’d mix things up and get a beer and burger. Burger Rating: Pretty Good. Of course there were cheese curds and an absolutely gigantic pretzel which rocked.
We talked, ate, and drank for a few hours before I headed back with JD, Craig, and “Contemptor” Kevin to watch an absolutely awesome game of Space Hulk. This shit goes so hard.
Greg: I suppose we should point out that this is Andrew’s first Adepticon and my second. I think everyone has that same reaction to the Basement of Death guys’ Space Hulk game the first time they see it. It does, indeed, rule.
I regrettably missed the GH dinner, because I succumbed to the temptation to sign up for way too much stuff at registration. I spend my evening in a four hour painting class on rust and weathering techniques. I don’t get to be social, but I do paint a very nice wall.
Friday: 40k Narrative Day 2
Second verse, same as the first. Each round some players got assigned to the Boarding Actions tables, and the Boarding Actions players played two games in the time the regular tables played one.
Round 3: Greg vs Andrew… in SPAAAAACE
There can be only one! And it’s going to be Andrew, because Orks are much better than Guard in Boarding Actions and also Andrew is easily the better player.
The Mission: Take the Teleportarium (two half sized boards, models at the Teleportarium can deep strike into the ship’s engine room area)
Memorable Moment 1: Bullgryn form a shield wall and push the Kommandos and Burnas out of the Teleporarium Chamber
Memorable Moment 2: Andrew, knowing he’s already got the win in the bag, risks overwatch to get Big Busta in position to charge the Kasrkin. The Kasrkin land a bunch of plasma and melta hits with a 5+ overwatch stratagem, but Andrew makes every single 5++ Waaagh save and comes out unscathed.
Andrew: Spoiler alert, karma comes collecting
Final Score: Andrew 95, Greg 53
Greg Round 4: vs Harrison’s Space Wolves
The Mission: Seize the Engine Dock
Most Memorable Moment: Vice-Admiral Armatis Carina has joined the Space Wolves, and his (nominally) secret objective is to end the game next to the Valkyrie in the hangar bay. The Valkyrie is fully armed and under my control, however, so he elects to wait until the last turn and then charge it to avoid getting shot.
What he isn’t expecting is that the traitor Valkyrie must be possessed by a Bloodletter or something, because it furiously slams its gangway into the Admiral’s head repeatedly, coming within one command point rerolled 4+ save of crushing him. Did you know in Boarding Actions an Astra Militarum officer can issue an Order to any friendly Astra Militarum model regardless of other keyword restrictions? Fix Bayonets, Valkyrie!
Final Score: 72 – 40 Victory
Andrew Round 4: vs Jonathan’s Thousand Sons
Mission: Find the Signal Data
Most Memorable Moment: In the first of two moments of karmic justice, my Big Mek Tin Skull managed to get a charge into some melee combat with some foolish rubrics and he was in Waaagh. Confident in his ability to at least tie them up so they couldn’t overwatch next turn, he proceeded to fail to kill any rubrics and got smacked in the skull by a sorcerer’s staffs straight through invulns and a feel no pain enhancement. Who else to twist fate but the Thousand Sons.
Final Score: 87-29
Greg Round 5: vs Mike’s Adeptus Mechanics
The Mission: Promethium Facility (do an action to siphon fuel from the no man’s land objectives, Deadly Demise is triggered on a 5+ instead of 6+)
Most Memorable Moment: I use Draw Them Out to retreat some Kasrkin to the safety of a ruin, only for my Hellhound on the other side to explode in the following shooting phase, killing them as well as another squad. 11 Kasrkin in one explosion. Oops.
Final Score: 85 – 40, Loss
Andrew Round 5: vs Jonathan’s Thousand Sons
Mission: Mining Tunnels
Most Memorable Moment: While not technically a moment, the mission itself was a real highlight. Each turn an Ambull would appear around whichever objective had the most peeps hanging out on it, run in to beat them up, then vanish back into the tunnels with what I assumed was a Zoidberg wooping sound. You got points if you killed it, but also points for losing models to it so there was a fun bit of tension in baiting it to objectives you thought you could keep secure and lose some guys, but not too many guys. Just good wacky shit, loved it.
Also I’d be remiss if I didn’t shoutout the second bit of karmic retribution that occurred that day after Greg and I’s match. I set up my Morkanaut Da Good Eye o’ Tin Skull and the Tankbustas Good Loot Wreckas to lay into Magnus and I pushed all the Dread Mob buttons I could. And when the dust settled, I had achieved 0 damage into Magnus across (I believe at my last count) 17 4++ and done 9 mortals to my Morkanaut and lost half my Tankbustas through hazard checks. Sometimes you Push Dat Button, sometimes it pushes you. We had a good laugh, but alas there was no coming back from it and the Thousand Sons and the Ambull from below took the last game.
Final Score: 67 – 103, Loss
Friday Evening Activities
After our second game of the day we hike a few blocks to meet fellow occasional Goonhammer contributor Greg “Greggles” Hess at The Explorium Brewpub. Greggles has a burger that’s wrapped in pizza dough and baked, and a hazy IPA that’s good enough to order a four pack for later. We also have excellent burgers, beers, and ill-advised skillet cookie desserts. I swear Milwaukee was designed in a lab to keep cardiologists busy.
Andrew: That was probably the best dinner I had on the trip. Great burger, excellent fries, and an IPA I actually liked. The cookie was definitely a bridge too far, but there was no time to succumb to a food coma since I had joined the goon Trivia team. While we didn’t win (Daughters of the Emperor predate Brides of the Emperor and the god Kuranos gave the Aeldari the gift of Desire if you had been wondering) it was a great time and I’m just glad I wasn’t completely lost on my first time doing trivia.
Greg: Because I overbooked myself, I have a class from 9 to 11 pm on using oil paints. It’s interesting and I learn a fair bit, but it’s a bit of a bummer that there isn’t time to get hands on experience with oils.
Saturday: Apocalypse & Necromunda
Andrew: Ahhh, Apocalypse. I’ve always thought of Apocalypse games the same as the giant null sector fights in EVE Online. Spectacular pictures and awe inspiring scale, terrible to actually participate in. The exception to this being the short lived 8th edition release of Apocalypse that treated it as more than just 40k but even more points which was excellent and please GW support this again I beg you.
Apocalypse is often rife with hour long stretches of doing nothing or just rolling saves and god forbid you go second and lose half your army in one turn. Plus the scale of these games usually means there’s teams of at least 3 or more players which increases the round length even further and can lead to a lot of yelling over each other trying to resolve offset phases and attacks. This all sounds like I signed up to hate myself but you’re not my therapist so shaddup. I signed up because:
- I like seeing narratives through to the end
- Big Busta wanted to Bust Big, and what’s bigger than Titans?
- My brother and his girlfriend live nearby and we were going to meet up that day to hang out, so a big neato game to Ooh and Ahh at all the rad models while we hung out and drank sounded like a good time.
Things went a little differently than planned.
Bad news first, I did not get to hang with my lil bro. Work and Life make fools of us all, alack and alas.
Now the good news. I’d like to really praise the organizer and players of this event. One of the rules he had instituted was a reinforcements ability for all armies to bring back all unit types for both alliances for the first 3 turns. I was pretty nervous hearing this as usually things like this can lead to extreme time overruns, but he did a fantastic job of keeping people focused and set very rigid turn time limits to keep the game on a reasonable schedule while also ensuring nobody got knocked out turn 1. Shoot what matters, fight what’s worth rolling, good stuff.
The players were super open to just doing cool and cinematic stuff. At one point early on there was a large Tau air wing featuring a Manta wrecking up the Imperial alliance on a table. Seeing that their forces were just not up to the task, the players of both teams agreed to have a desperate deep strike attack occur with Terminators and jump pack marines deployed into melee along the back of the Manta to try and bring it down. When they finally did, the players would roll to see which models escaped the ensuing crash.
Later on some players with a massive Tyranid collection arrived and they were slotted into the game. They launched a massive invasion on one of the planet tables and suddenly established battle lines disappeared and chaos reigned. Hell yeah, that’s the good stuff right there.
Each turn the organizer would update the teams on Narrative story updates as different objectives were taken and lost, lending a bit more investment into both tables (TWO wars?) and the fun apprehension that comes from not knowing if hell is going to be rained upon you or if the eyes of the gods will turn upon your enemies. To cap everything off at the end of the final turn, all Titanic units were permitted one final round of simultaneous shooting, with all units that died automatically triggering Deadly Demise.
Big Busta in his Hulkin Busta Armor met his end there, abandoned by his ladz as they fled a crushing Eldar advance, but he died happy in the nuclear fire of the Warlord Titan that had given him the best show of Dakka he’d ever seen. Godspeed you beautiful green weirdo.
Greg: I figured Apocalypse wasn’t the move for my collection of 80 infantry dudes and 10 horses; I didn’t really feel like being the NPCs in a tower defense game. There’s just no universe where the models I could bring would have made any impact in that kind of game.
I had instead signed myself up for Necromunda: Blood in the Wastes, which was a campaign in a day format. At the top of every hour, the TO would pair off anyone who wanted to get a game in, and there was a big spread of both underhive and ash waste tables to choose from, each with an assigned mission. The missions were tweaked to standardize rewards, and the injury table was tweaked to make it less likely for your gangers to spend all of Adepticon in convalescence.
The terrain was great, painted to an exceptional standard and completely functional. The whole event was great, I’d recommend it to anybody.
Back into Lightning Round format:
Game 1: vs Adam’s Squat Venators
Mission: The Beast
Most Memorable Moment: Just looking at Adam’s models, to be honest. Adam sculpts minis as a hobby / side hustle, and that gang is largely Rogue Trader era squats with additions he sculpted. Really cool stuff.
Result: Loss
Game 2: vs Bart’s Spyrers
Mission: Scavenge
Most Memorable Moment: Big Angus, my stimmer, gets charged by a Jakara, disarming him and inflicting an almost certainly lethal hit, but the Unstoppable Behemoth tactics card keeps him alive, and he nearly takes her out in return with only his bare fists.
My gang gets mauled, sending both my leader and champ into convalescence, but my juve, Charles Atlas, opens a loot crate shortly before I get tabled. Since Bart’s Spyrers never opened any loot crates, I get the win.
Result: Win, technically
Game 3: vs Elijah’s Enforcers
Mission: Takeover
Most Memorable Moment: On the first shot of the game, Gama lobs a frag grenades at Elijah’s long rifle patrolman. It misses, but scatters directly onto Lucky, one of his other enforcers who isn’t even in line of sight. Lucky, naturally, fails his layered flak with armored undersuit save and rolls a skull on his injury roll. Nominative determinism is a harsh mistress.
This game was also a blast because I was missing my leader and stimmer, so I had no good answer for Elijah’s riot shields. My idiot gangers nearly got Knockback’d clear out of the room they were trying to take over. Eventually combat shotguns saved their bacon.
Result: Win
Game 4: vs Noah’s Ash Wastes Nomads
Mission: The Beast (again)
Most Memorable Moment: In my first game, the Beast never really caused me any problems. In this game, it ate Tommy on the first turn. Tommy may be good in a bar fight, but he is no match for shai hulud.
Result: Win
Game 5: vs John’s Khornate Escher
Mission: Toll Bridge
Most Memorable Moment: I charge John’s twin chainsword Death Maiden with Charles Atlas, my juve, who manages to survive the encounter by triggering Knockback with his spud jacker. The invincibility of youth!
Big shout-out to John, the TO, for squeezing this game in with me in between managing some multiplayer scenarios for other participants. His Khornate Escher are full of great conversions and beautifully painted.
Result: Win
Saturday Evening Activities
After dumping our minis in the hotel room, we join a group of Goonhammer friends at Doc’s Commerce Smokehouse for another delicious and heavy dinner. After dinner most of us swing by the 40k hall and hang out with Campbell at the traditional Badcast meetup point of Table 69, before eventually we tap out and head to bed. Sunday morning we have a train to catch.
Next Time: Back on the Rails
And so ends our time at the convention, but there’s still the train trip home. Will Amtrak put us on a bus again? Will we run out of train table sized Necromunda games to play? Will Andrew redeem himself and be timelier than Amtrak on the drive back? Tune in next time for the thrilling finale.
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