Drew’s Adepticon – Part 1

Adepticon has come and gone. It was a great time full of games, laughs and amazing talent on display. This year being in Milwaukee WI was great as everything was close by and the venue was HUGE. Plenty of room to grow. No more having to cross the interstate to see the other half of the con or drive several miles to get food only to lose your distant parking spot.

As always it was fun seeing old friends, new friends and having some great conversations and laughs with gamers from all over. Our club Iron Dice Gaming hosted three games using my Battle of the Bulge board where we refought one of the early battle of Senonchamps during Battle of the Bulge. We were on the 4th floor with the other historicals right by the main doors, which was nice as everyone pretty much passed by our board on the way in. It gave us a lot of opportunities to talk with people which was awesome. The year before we were jammed way in a corner and a lot of people didn’t even know we existed! The only negative was there were still a lot of other gamers on the lower floors that never made the trip upstairs to witness some very cool tables and gaming experiences in the Historical room.

Ben and Evan designed the forces and scenarios so we could run both Bolt Action and Chain of Command which worked great. Our goal was to keep the forces simple in case we had new players, but give them a lot of toys to play with (aka tanks!). The forces were typically a command squad, two infantry squads and two vehicles. Simple.

Both scenarios were designed with objectives needing to be secured with the Americans starting firmly within the outskirts of Senonchamps as the Germans advanced to take the critical town just west of Bastogne. I ran the Bolt Action version of the game which was a nail biter right down to the end. That American Lt almost pulled off a surprise victory at the end bravely, or foolishly, attempting to control the intersection before the arrival of German armor. Kudos to the group who played for being so fun. Ben and Evan ran Chain of Command twice on the same table. I don’t know the rules for Chain of Command well enough to run it so I just occasionally fixed a tree on the board that fell over or adjusted a building when my terrain OCD kicked in!

*Volksgrenadiers moving through the hayfield.*

By all accounts and judging by the intense concentration punctuated by laughs everyone had a great time. Of course the experience was sweetened by Kick Ass Mail Order who sponsored our club giving out free swag to those that played. Something that seemed rather commonplace for many years in the games I played in in the past, but a perk that was noticeably absent this year with everything I played in.