When I write “mini-review,” do I mean small or do I mean miniatures? The answer is yes.
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I had never been to Adepticon before, but as a gamers in the Chicago area it was past time for Deri and me to go. Adepticon bills itself as “THE WORLD’S PREMIERE WARGAMING CONVENTION” and in my opinion, it lived up to that billing. It takes place outside of Chicago (Schaumburg) and has been running for 18 years.
It’s a mini-review because we’re not really Warhammer 40K players, so we didn’t participate and chose not to buy badges or anything. It’s a miniature review because most of what there was to see were the most intense miniatures I’ve ever seen, but don’t take my word for it, scroll through the pictures yourself.
I’ve been to my share of conventions, but Adepticon is one of the most focused cons I’ve been to. The people who are there, are there for the events and tournaments. These are heavy duty events with serious players there to play. It’s not the kind of general mixing and gaming that I saw at the Polar Vortex Con just a couple of months ago. That was how Deri and I read it, anyways, so we didn’t spend any great length of time there, just enough to get a good look around and demo some Star Wars Outer Rim!
Let’s cover Star Wars Outer Rim before we delve into the miniature part of the mini review:
Outer Rim is a different sort of Star Wars board game. It’s actually a pick-up-and-delivery type of game, kind of like Firefly the Game or Xia, both of which are based loosely off of the Merchant of Venus. You choose a character like Han, Lando, Boba Fett or in my case, IG-88. Each has a special ability and chooses one of two starships. From there, you try to build your status by delivering goods or collecting bounties, depending on what kind of character you are. As IG-88, I captured BoShek (the pilot from the Mos Eisley cantina) by defeating him in combat, though he beat me on my first try. It’s not a heavy combat-oriented game. You just sort of need to overcome obstacles, and once in a while, you have to fight one of the other players, but it’s not part of the game the way it is in Xia. We didn’t complete the game but I definitely found it fun, and it seemed well done and balanced. At the same time, I barely get to play Firefly and I’d rather play that than invest in a new game along the same lines.
As for the Warhammer 40K stuff, people bring their fully painted, bad, beautiful armies and actually battle it out with other armies on landscapes that Adepticon provides. It’s almost like a paired off Hunger Games for Warhammer players. Since I don’t play Warhammer, I really can’t elaborate, but these minis are some of the best I’ve ever seen.
People would bring these minis:
And then they’d fight them out on these sorts of battle grounds:
