SRM's Roundabout to Adepticon 2026: Curd Is the Word

I've been going to Adepticon for nearly a decade now. I documented my first trip on my short-lived wargaming YouTube channel back in ">2017, and have intermittently attended every other year or so since, having most recently gone in 2025 when they moved from Schaumburg, Illinois (notable chiefly for its proximity to several highways and Chicago's IKEA) to their new space at the Baird Center in downtown Milwaukee. If you want the extremely short version of last year's recap, I think the new location whips wholesale ass, and on the attendee side the transition has been bereft of growing pains. Last year was the best the con had ever been, and somehow, this year was gearing up to be even better.

The Plan

Cool, that's the bona fides out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks, the straight poop, the luxe interior details. I'd be showing up a day early, arriving on Tuesday, mostly to hang out with other members of the team, and then head home Monday morning. I didn't know that tacking on a single extra day to my normal Adepticon attendance would be what fully shotgun blasted my hippocampus, but here we are, my memory as melted and full of holes as the slice of Swiss cheese on my final burger of the event. If that means I might have missed something, you're right, I probably did, but there's already enough words in this puppy to put down an English teacher and I only have so much to say about Schlitz American-style lager.

For the majority of the con, I'd be rooming with my 40k Badcast co-host and all-around beefy boy Boyd, Dan. After setting aside Tuesday and Wednesday to hang out with my fellow Goonhammer crew, Thursday and Friday would be spent in the 40k Flex, essentially organized casual play courtesy of Carl Tuttle and the rest of the Independent Characters podcast crew. While this is a great event for just getting in some garagehammer-style games in with some like-minded friendly folks, for me it's an opportunity to organize games with the people I've come to know and love over the years I've been doing this whole thing. Friday night would be spent playing the Basement of Death crew's genuinely epic version of Space Hulk, and Saturday and Sunday were set aside for the Blood in the Water Trench Crusade Narrative. It was a fairly full dance card, but hopefully one with enough space on it to accommodate spending some time in the vendor hall, hangs with friends, and so on. In preparation for all this, I went ahead and won a local RTT with my Ultramarines and undertook the difficult task of locating my Trench Crusade minis after haphazardly tossing them into a minis case during my move last year. Would I refresh myself on the rules, write my list, or otherwise prepare for the thing I'd be spending half my time doing at the con? No, of course not, that's for chumps, clearly.

Tuesday - Into the Breach

My alarm went off at 4am, early enough for a 6am flight, with some built-in cushion in case the TSA was a shitshow amid the ongoing shutdown. After a frantic search filled with much cussing and second guessing, I determined that no, I didn't leave my wallet at the bar the night before, it had just fallen into a boot, and I was off to the airport. The TSA lines were unusually long, but that had more to do with spring breakers coming and going than any interruptions from the sundry ongoing kerfuffles rotting out seemingly every service and institution at this particular juncture. Oh, and apparently someone brought a gun through security so it was most hands on deck over on that security line, not to bury the lede like the Glock in their carry-on bag. At some point last year someone tried to bring a loaded Winchester rifle through Redmond airport security, so I guess plane hijackings are out and stagecoach stick-ups are in.

After boarding my plane, a somber, downtempo version of A-ha's Take on Me started playing over the PA, and in this house, we only recognize the ">Reel Big Fish version as canon. I'm not even a ska guy, much to the chagrin of the skankin' skumbags I call friends and coworkers. I listened to The Mountain, the new Gorillaz album while attempting to doze on the 2.5ish hour flight. My first impression of the album is "Damon Albarn took a vacation to India and decided to make it everyone's problem" but subsequent listens have me feeling more positive about it when taken as a complete work. ">The God of Lying is at least a good track.

At my layover in Denver, I beeline for Mercantile Dining and Provisions, arriving well before any of my fellow passengers from Oregon. I have two cups of better than okay black coffee, and a French omelette with side salad. The avocado on top is wrinkly and the omelette badly needed salt, pepper, and hot sauce to bring it around, but it all eventually came together. I try not to waste away on my phone during meals since it makes me feel like I'm one step off from a car refueling while a screen on the pump plays ads for Doritos, but I had games to schedule. You see, one of my listeners, Matt "HamSlammo" Raebel, had put together a spreadsheet for listeners to schedule games together at the aforementioned 40k Flex. In classic fashion, I had not actually filled out my own availability, so took this time to schedule some games. A middling chocolate chip cookie and watered down iced coffee were my companions as I read the last dozen or so chapters of Chainsaw Man, still plenty of time to go before flight number two. I'm still not totally sure how I feel about the ending, though I won't spoil it here. It felt abrupt, but I genuinely don't know where it could really have kept going given the increasingly apocalyptic scale of the story over the second part. I'm looking forward to seeing this discourse play out louder and dumber in like eight years when the anime adaptation finishes.

The second flight was spent playing Into the Breach on my iPad, a game with the power to melt time like only the best strategy games can. For the rest of the week, I'd be having a Tetris Effect-like mental pattern from playing so much of it on flights, in my hotel room, or otherwise waiting around. It's a genuinely brilliant strategy game, and I'd recommend it to anyone, anywhere, on any platform.

Mini Review: Concerta Urgent Care - Milwaukee Airport

A week before Adepticon, I managed to lose a fight with a can of San Marzano tomatoes that decided they shouldn't be the only red sauce that night. Four stitches in my right hand later, I was told I'd need to wait til Tuesday at the earliest to get them pulled. After my protests that I'd be in Milwaukee at a convention by then, I was told to find an urgent care there. I didn't much feel like doing DIY hotel bathroom surgery, so walked the mile from the airport to the nearby Concerta Urgent Care. After getting situated, the doctor, who had kind of a dotty grandma vibe, got to work pulling the stitches and asked why I was in town. I said it was for a tabletop gaming convention. She asked if that was anything like Warhammer. I said yes, exactly that. She stopped working on me and went to get her phone, where she showed me pictures of her son's games, all of which looked straight out of 2004. Entirely metal armies of Old World miniatures clashed on a dining table, with books and dishes for terrain. I said that was cool, he should go to Adepticon too. She then informed me that her son hadn't seen his friends or played in a few months as he, and I present this quote verbatim because I could not forget it if I tried: "...has mental health problems and probably isn't going to live much longer." Before I could even think to get more information or ask if her likely suicidal son needed help, she asked if I knew where I could sell all his stuff. I think I was too dumbfounded to say much more than a bumbled "eBay" because it's not every day an old stranger asks you how she can profit from the impending death of her son, and weirdly I didn't have a prepared answer to that one.

Anyway, I give the urgent care a C+

The 3rd Street Market Beer Wall. Credit: SRM

Arriving in the city, I met Rob at the Courtyard Marriott downtown, dropped my stuff off, and we headed to the 3rd Street Market for beer and food. I sung its praises last year, and clearly the word got around, as this place would be slammed every day of the con. The place has a serve yourself beer wall where I saw an infant grasping at a tap handle, the Wisconsite instinct already strong within them. Basically you put a little keycard into the reader at each of the two dozen or so taps and serve yourself, with each beer having a cost per ounce. The attendant described it as like a gas pump for adults, but last I checked, they already have those, they're called gas pumps. Believe it or not, I did not see anyone pull the 7-11 Slurpee Special and take a little bit of every beer to make artisanal small batch jungle juice. On the bright side, it means you don't need to take a full pour of anything if you don't want to. Conversely, if you fuck up a pour with too much head, it's your own fault and nobody else's. That was the case with the Moon Man I poured myself, New Glarus' so-called "no coast" pale ale. I've enjoyed it before, but this time around I just found it kinda bland and fizzy. Now the Půlnoc from Transcend Beer Crafters, that was more like it, just a beautiful Czech dark lager, roasty, toasty, bready and full while still being easy drinking. I followed that with Lakefront Brewing's Fixed Gear Red Ale, which is another comfy middleground between rich and drinkable. Red ales can be kind of hit or miss in my experience, sometimes falling hard on the caramel sweet side or just being an IPA with more steps, but this was more on the bitter side, which is precisely what I was looking for to go with my basket of tiny Empanadas from Anytime Arepa. Two pockets each of cheese, chicken, and beef pockets of fried gold, I was happy as could be. I try to frontload events with salads and the like, but with all my sundry allergy problems, it's hard not to jump when presented with deep-fried forbidden fruit. I'll just touch on that since it might seem contradictory - I have wheat and soy allergies, so I can have all that lovely non-wheat gluten like you find in the bulk of beers, but wheat specifically is The Devil's Grain. Cool, you're up to speed, I'm three sheets to the wind, and the night's not even done yet. Norman and Callum show up, and the four of us hang out, crush beers, talk event plans, and, well, nothing more specific than that because I had a fourth beer and my memory is, as mentioned earlier, buckshot blasted. I close out this particular leg of the evening with a Wisconsitis from Three Sheeps Brewing, a pretty standard cream ale that didn't do much to excite me. The always delightful Peter and Kat showed up somewhere around this time, and got to join us for the rest of the evening.

We met up with a couple folks from the Trench Crusade team and headed to Milwaukee Brat House, a cozy, dimly lit pub not too far from the market hall. Here we just shot the shit talking about games and other nerdery, and I got to talk to Mike and Jamie about how Trench Crusade was going, having last talked to Mike at length when I interviewed" frameborder="0"> him for the Kickstarter. He's a great dude and it's always a pleasure just talking with him about what kind of weird little freaks he's drawing up, and I definitely get the feeling he was never expecting this much limelight from the game. It also turns out, there are some lines of what's too gross for him even, but I won't repeat it here. I ordered a Schlitz, because I have a fondness for shitty old local lagers, and of all the American light lagers consisting primarily of corn, this is one of them. It's like a less refreshing Rainier or a sweeter PBR. More interesting was the form factor, where instead of 16oz glasses like most bars, here you get a pair of 8oz mugs. Apparently you get a third during happy hour. I don't know why exactly they do this but it sure made for a lot of empties at the end of the night. I ended with a Strongbow cider, simple and a bit too sweet but a good contrast to the bits of bratwurst I was stealing from the plate in the middle of the table. After an evening of Probably Too Much it was firmly bedtime, and when we got to the hotel I crashed nearly instantly.

Wednesday - I Promise I'm Keeping this One Short on Purpose

Not the most scenic view of Milwaukee, I'll admit. Credit: SRM

Rob and I hit the hotel breakfast, and it was a far step above your typical warming tray eggs or lobby Starbucks fare (though it also had Starbucks coffee, and was in the lobby, but bear with me.) I had a bowl of eggs and kale over rice with hot sauce, and was just happy to have some vegetables. The coldbrew was fine - if you've had it from any Starbucks you've had it from all of them - but the bowl was far tastier than I expected, the eggs cooked over-easy and seasoned pretty well. Loaded up, we were off to do some exciting Goonhammer team stuff that you'll have to wait for some indeterminate amount of time in the future. Sorry to be a tease, but consider it a mutual mercy that I'm sparing us both the couple thousand words I'd otherwise be writing here.

That evening I made my way to the convention hall proper, where a que had formed that would make any Brit blush. The line for badges was long and winding, and I felt fully vindicated for spending the $15 or so required to get my badge mailed to me. A street market vibe took over as dozens of people held up their unwanted swag bag contents in the air, shouting for trades. I social engineered my way past the person shooing people away and found my crew of people - Carl, Chelle, Josh, Matt, and Dan - all setting up tables for the 40k Flex. They were just wrapping up, so we headed to the 3rd Street Market for dinner. My brain somewhat overloaded from the day and the noise of a suddenly far more crowded hotel and eating establishment, I settled for Anytime Arrepa again, this time getting their pabellon empanada and an order of sweet plantains. Fried plantains are too rare a treat, and these were every bit as good as I'd hope, just ripe enough to have give but not enough to be mushy. The pabellon empanada had even more plantains in there, along with beef, cheese, and beans. I had that Ratatouille moment where I took a bite and flashed back to my regular burrito order from Taco Loco in 2013 when I lived in Somerville, Massachusetts. Basically what I'm saying is that any time you have the opportunity to put fried plantains in your burrito, do it, it's a game changer. My friends were probably talking about something cool, but this clearly took priority in my memory. I also had an Imperial Grape Cider from Ciderboys and found it tasted like grape soda with booze in it, not a glowing recommendation from me there. At some point the GW reveal show started, with none of us too excited to get up and head over there. For one, it would all be online later - and even covered in detail here on this very website! For two, we were hanging out and chatting over beers, which is far more enjoyable than waiting in a long line to only sort of see a projector screen in a hot, cramped room full of people. I think everyone should go to at least one though, just to feel that much condensed energy in one place.

We headed back towards the convention center so Dan could get his swag bag now that the lines had died down, and while he didn't get the primo-luxe-double-plus-good-plus-ultra-chumbucket-megabucket-bag, he did get a regular one which was still loaded with stuff. It was a wide range, with starter sets for Konflict 47 and Battletech, plus a Death Guard Combat Patrol and some frankly busted looking models for Star Trek: Away Missions. Somehow the Big Head Mode cheatcode doesn't do those Trek sculpts any favors. Most of the contents of that box would be distributed to our listeners or left on a counter with a "free" sign on them later in the con, but I kept the BattleTech starter. I'm kind of over most swag bags at this point since even if most of the contents are cool, by their nature they can only cover so many of the games I'm interested in.

At some point I spoke to one of the people at Games Workshop responsible for the lasgun props they used for the Kill Team laser tag events some years ago. I suggested they spice things up by making a bolter t-shirt cannon for their reveal shows. If this happens at any point in the future, know that I planted that seed. Unless of course it leads to a grievous ballistic textile-based injury, in which case, I am not liable.

Thursday - What if Podcasts Were Real? Scary if True

If you were waiting to hear about actual gaming experiences, consider that a nearly 3000 word preamble to anything resembling die rolls, measurements, or tactics decisions less from the pages of Sun Tzu and more from the pages of Dr. Seuss. We hit up Canary Coffee Bar, a cafe right outside the hotel tragically bereft of things I could eat, but at least with some rather good coffee. I instead crammed down one of the gluten-free knockoff Fig Newtons of dubious age from my backpack. They were emergency rations with more miles on them than your car, but I didn't get ill so they couldn't have been that old. With that, we headed to the convention center for our first game of the 40k Flex.

Game 1 - The Badcast Beatdown (Blades of Ultramar Space Marines vs. Dan's Shadowmark Talon Space Marines)

Ultramarines vs. Raven Guard at Adepticon 2026. Credit: SRM and Dan Boyd

Dan and I maybe get to play each other once per edition, so we made a point of getting each other on the books for our first game. Both lists were reasonably tuned for competitive play, and we set up an approximation of a competitive layout using the Flex terrain. As this event largely inherited the old Adepticon 40k terrain, it's more suited to casual or narrative play than strict symmetry. Regardless, we soldiered on. I had first turn, a bad hand for objectives, and took it cagey as a result. He similarly was holding his forces back in turn 1, as we only had some light skirmishes over the objectives in no man's land. Said skirmish also accidentally zoned out my Hellblasters, who I really wanted to pop his 6-strong Devastator Centurion squad. However, that's where my Inceptors delivered. I dropped both squads next to his Centurions, and he popped Armour of Contempt, absolutely stonewalling the first squad. The second squad, however, lit those power-armored chubsters right up, almost clearing the squad in one gnarly fusilade of bolter fire. My Victrix tore into his Vanguard Veterans, while my Assault Terminators promptly failed their charge on his Vindicator and plopped in the middle of the board, where they would proceed to stand around getting shot until the game ended. Taking out those Centurions seriously defanged the ability for his army to do much damage, and the rest of the game was scrappy little hit and run attacks from his smaller squads into my larger ones, never quite doing enough damage to take my squads out. It was a low scoring game, but I shut him out on primary. The Ultramarines ended up taking the day, and we had a great time duking it out together. Our game took a bit longer than I think either of us expected due to the number of friends and listeners coming up and saying hello, but I certainly won't lament getting to spend longer at the table with one of my best friends.

For lunch we hit up the acai bowl place in the convention center. Who would have thought that the place serving up fruit and granola would have a markedly shorter line than the stalls of tacos and fried cheese. There also was a Korean-style stall serving up "K-Bowls" which I would have thought are the meals one makes when deep in the throes of a Ketamine trip, but my assumption was that they would be loaded with soy, equally detrimental to my own gaming experience. Anyway, the acai bowl was about as good as lunch sorbet can be, loaded with bananas, strawberries, some honey and granola. It wasn't too much to write home about, but I was happy to eat some actual fruit.

Game 2 - The Clash of Casts (40k Badcast vs. Independent Characters)

The Independent Characters vs. The Badcast Bois at Adepticon 2026.

I always try and get a game in with Carl at Adepticon, and I've only played a single game of Necromunda wish Josh, so I pitched the idea of doing a doubles game of our two podcasts against each other - The 40k Badcast vs. The Independent Characters. For those who don't listen, Dan and I have transformed from narrative gamers to Genuine Competitive Perverts over the last four years or so, and the Independent Characters have largely stuck to their garagehammer roots, so a strictly competitive Matched Play game probably wouldn't be the most fun for anybody. We'd each take 1000 point lists, and as I declared the challenge, I'd let them choose the turf. They picked a White Dwarf Bunker mission, where the table would have nine objectives, with half toggling on or off in each turn. What unfolded was a total blast of a game, where the ICs crew took an early lead on objectives while we hid from Carl's Forgefiends and Josh's Land Raider Redeemer, waiting for those threats to get taken down before committing with our more fragile infantry. Unlike last game, this time the 10-strong Terminator and Calgar brick actually did some work, taking the charge from Josh's oversized Assault Intercessor squad, clearing them out, and only eventually falling after successive fights with Vashtorr and a Maulerfiend. Cato Sicarius and his Victrix avenged the Chapter Master, with Sicarius alone one-rounding Vashtorr with Devastating Wounds. We'd largely cleared the table of Josh's assets by turn 3, and were able to just squeak by on score by the end to get the win. It was one of the most fun and chaotic games of Warhammer I've played in years, and it was great to meet the ICs where they're at and hang out with our Ham Dads for a couple hours.

That night was the Goonhammer team dinner, and Stillman had scouted out Cafe Benelux, a Belgian beer bar with a great menu. We piled into a few rideshares for it, as while I would normally love to take a brisk 20 minute walk before and after dinner, the weather had firmly transitioned from "brisk" to "Sub-Zero Fatality" in the way midwest days tend to. We took up a long table, and I spent most of the time there talking with Jake, our resident writer of all (non-Battletech) things hex-based. I hadn't met him before, but it was great getting to know him and talk about the bumpy ride Underworlds has gotten and some tentative plans for what comes next if that game is truly as dead as it seems. My favorite bit was his research for Gundam Assemble, which involved watching more Gundam than I think even I've watched, and that's already a load-bearing part of my personality. I started with a Bofferding Dark Lager from Brasserie Nationale, and it hit the spot. Roasty enough for a chilly night like that one, but light enough that it didn't hit my stomach or brain like a brick. I followed that with a Cascade Hopped Cider from Ramborn Cider, which managed to make a hopped cider that didn't just taste like weirdly abrasive apple juice. It added just enough bitterness to balance out the sweet apple, and made for a cider that drank like a beer. I needed that stronger flavor, as when a beet hummus plate came out, I grabbed a pair of what I thought were celery sticks but turned out to be shorn green onions. Listen, I enjoy scallions as much as the much Bulb Vegetable Enjoyer, but rawdogging two entire raw green onions (or gronions in my personal vernacular) is maybe a bit more onion than I was expecting. I still had a third. The pickled cauliflower and carrot sticks were more forgiving. My main course was a Cuban sandwich, something all too rare in my sadly deli-deficient neck of the woods. It's a top-tier ham and pork delivery system, and this was a great take on it, with enough melty Wisconsin cheese to really make it stick to the ribs. The salad with it was also rather good, and much appreciated after all the aforementioned pork and cheese. As a decentralized group of weirdos who rarely get to share the same ZIP code, let alone the same table, dinners like this absolutely whip ass.

Friday - Game Over, Man, Game Over

The prospect of playing three high-intensity competitive games of tournament 40k after a late night out and a modest morning hangover is something that is getting a smidge less appealing with time, though two friendly games was sounding far more doable. Fortunately, the 40k Flex delivered again. Breakfast was a cup of yogurt and granola from the hotel Starbucks with a strictly okay cold brew, as the latent New Englander instinct to order cold coffee when it's cold outside will never leave these caffeine-dependent veins.

Game 3 - Awoooooooo (Blades of Ultramar Space Marines vs. Ian's Saga of the Great Wolf Space Wolves)

Ultramarines vs. Space Wolves at Adepticon 2026. Credit: SRM and Ian

I've been seeing Ian at cons since, geez, maybe Adepticon 2017? 2019? A long time either way, and in all those years I don't believe we've ever actually gotten a game in. He's been playing loads of 40k with his Space Wolves over the last year, assumedly in one long Rocky-esque training montage, and he booked a game with me via the Badcast spreadsheet mentioned approximately thirty five years ago in this article. Leaning into the spirit of the event, I said we should go for a White Dwarf mission, and it ended up being one where we each picked priority targets to take out in our opponent's armies, plus some extra points for objectives and the like. We each picked a hammer unit (my Terminators and Calgar, his Blood Claws and Ragnar Blackmane) and a chaff unit (Scouts all around) to keep things fair, and got to slamming. On turn 1 my Incursors Scouted up and cleared his Scouts, while my own Scouts hid away, playing keep-away with their piñata of victory points. As per usual, my Terminators slammed into the middle of the table, staging in a big ruin before crashing out and clearing Ragnar's boys, nabbing me some more victory points. It took a second squad of Blood Claws, several Terminators, some absolutely flubbed Desperate Escape test rolls, and a smidge of shooting, but Ian eventually took down Calgar and his running crew, earning some victory points after a several turns-long melee in the middle. My defensive stratagems largely frustrated Ian's efforts against my Victrix and Redemptor (Venerable Brother Thiccums) leading to the fall of Arjac Rockfist and his own Terminator crew, and the ensured survival of my fragile and valuable Scouts. By the bottom of three Ian was basically out of assets with no way of getting to said Scouts, and with a firm lead on points, we called the game there, another victory for the Ultramarines. It was great to finally play Ian after all these years, and he was a joy to hang out with. I scarfed another acai bowl for lunch and got to my next game.

Game 4 - Maybe White Dwarf Missions Aren't All Good (Blades of Ultramar Space Marines vs. Peter's Recon Element Astra Militarum)

Ultramarines vs. Catachans at Adepticon 2026. Credit: SRM and Peter Dolan

Peter is one of my dearest friends in this hobby, with our first games going back to games at my apartment over a decade ago, and combo party/Warhammer weekenders at his old cabin in New Jersey, where I would meet the people who would eventually be running the show at this very website. We've had couples camping trips, wargaming weekends, parties and hangouts aplenty over the following years, and I was so happy to hang out with him and Kat at Adepticon this year. I picked a mission that seemed fun for us from the White Dwarf stack, again trying to lean into the spirit of the event despite my competitive proclivities. This mission, however, was kind of bupkis. Half of each player's army goes in reserves, and unless you hold the central objective, you can only bring one unit in at a time, with all of your reserves showing up at the end of your third turn. In theory, this means each player has a drip feed of units coming in, simulating a meeting engagement. In practice, this means the player holding the central objective will smash their opponent with far more assets on the board, while that second player will have only two turns to make up the difference. Reader, I was that first player. I infiltrated some Scouts on the central tower, Scouted my Incursors towards the second before taking it in turn 1, and was able to hurl my Victrix Guard into Peter's defensive line of Catachans at the top of turn 2. By the time Peter's Rogal Dorn arrived, he was already hemmed in to his deployment zone, and while it cleared most of my Victrix Guard out, the block of Terminators was right behind them. Inceptors dropped in and took out his Kasrkin and Ursula Creed before hopping over to his home objective, my chaff units held onto those central objectives, and the drip feed of Guard units just wasn't enough to deal with a 46 wound brick of 4+ Invulnerable Save models in his backfield. Eventually Rough Riders, Sentinels, and Kasrkin came in to save the day, grabbing my home objective and taking one objective from the Incursors, but it was too little, too late, in a mission that set us up for a sadly foregone conclusion right off the bat. It was still a delight to hang out with Peter, and it was a great looking game even if it was far too one sided. I very much appreciated the iced Americano Kat picked me up from Stone Creek Coffee; mild and not too watery in the way an iced Americano can be. My brain was cloudy as hell after four days of beer and cheese and five days of bad sleep.

Dan (left) and Campbell (right) with their too big beers. Credit: SRM

I caught up with Dan once he finished his game with Craig "MasterSlowPoke" Sniffen and his beautiful Rainbow Warriors, then Dan and I headed to Mader's, a German restaurant and local institution with a celebrity guest list of both the coolest and most canceled famous people you can imagine. On the one hand, you've got a handwritten note from John Wayne complaining about the lack of legroom under the tables. On the other, Billy Gibbons and the guy who designed the 60's Batmobile ate here too. Walking past stained glass and suits of armor to sit under a heraldic shield and several crossbows, zweihanders, and other medieval accoutrements, we each got a comically large boot of beer. I got a Köstritzer Schwarzbier, the ideal form of that vaunted German style. Is a literal liter of beer too much? Absolutely, I don't recommend it, as you'll have to drink it pretty fast if you don't want it to get warm. It was a good enough beer that drinking it that quickly wasn't much of an ask, however. It paired with their Rehinischer Sauerbraten, roast beef with gingersnap sauce over gluten free spaetzle and pickled red cabbage. It was warming, with the sauce and golden raisins offering an unexpected but pleasant sweetness amongst the slabs of savory beef. Tragically, I couldn't finish the whole thing, even as I shut up and chewed while Dan explained the movie Beerfest to me. I shot back, recommending the Naked Gun requel, which has a joke density that is pretty unmatched in modern comedy. It was a great hang, and one of the quieter ones among all the clang and clamor of Adepticon.

We still had some time to kill before that night's game of Space Hulk, and Dan wanted to scout out some locations for his impromptu Magic the Gathering event, so we hit the bar at the Hilton on his friend's recommendation. We decided the tables probably wouldn't be sufficient for the dozen-plus people who expressed interest in playing wizard poker, but the cocktails were certainly good enough to warrant hanging out for a bit. Our bartender, Virgie, recommended the Toffee Old Fashioned, and we happily knocked back one each. You'd think the brandy and toffee syrup would make it too sweet, but there was a balanced bitterness from the orange bitters and Amaro Nonino that kept it from being cloying. I'm also under the impression that muddled fruit in an Old Fashioned is a midwestern thing, if the special features on the Mad Men Season 1 DVDs are anything to go by, and that's just how I like them. We were joined by our pal Greggles, and I introduced myself to the extremely talented "Brushwizard" Scott, who informed me I've met him at least four times before. I took a moment to recover from that mortification by focusing on the guy playing a gentle acoustic version of the ">Kakariko Village theme on his guitar at the other side of the bar. God, you meet a lot of people at these events.

Hulking in Space with the Basement of Death

Basement of Death Space Hulk at Adepticon 2026. Credit: SRM

The Basement of Death crew have been running awesome Space Hulk games for years now, and they've got the scenario down to a science. Six players each take a team of Terminators, and the BoD crew, now joined by Carl and Chelle, run the Genestealers. This is a board game expanded into convention-level spectacle, blown up into the third dimension with modeled corridors, with LED lighting and smoke machines for ambiance. I played last year, and was lucky enough to bring Dan along for the ride this time. Unfortunately, in this take on what is essentially Aliens: The Movie: The Game, while someone gets to be Hudson, someone has to be Hicks. Dan immediately lost his Chaplain, and my Sergeant wasn't far behind. Josh and Aaron were absolutely killing it with their Space Wolf and Salamanders teams, while Skye's Imperial Fists clambered forward. Dan's Ultramarines continued to be picked off one by one, and while the Inquisitor leading my Black Templars did reasonably well for a time, once he went down the rest of my guys weren't long for this world either. I managed to run one trooper far enough to mash the button and give my fellow Marine players an extra turn to extract from the ship before it exploded, but sadly Dan and I spent a good portion of the evening just waiting to die after some early bad luck. So it goes with Space Hulk. Last year I definitely had a better time, but I won't chalk any of that up to the people we were playing with, as they're all great folks and I'd happily play again. Sometimes that's just how dice games go.

That night I hastily scrawled together an army list for the Trench Crusade narrative I'd be spending the next two days playing. With a pencil in one hand and a Goonhammer guide to New Antioch on my phone in the other, I scrawled out a list and tried to refresh myself on rules I hadn't played since July. Reasonably satisfied with the results, I hit the hay.

Saturday - Crusading (Trench Optional)

I woke up well rested and excited to Crusade some Trench, though the four game schedule of the day did have me a smidge worried. I steeled myself with a hot black coffee and another yogurt from the hotel Starbucks, then made my way to the Trench Crusade narrative.

If upstairs in the con was the glitzy, polished, and approachable side of tabletop wargaming, the area where Trench Crusade, Mordheim and other skirmish games lived like was the back alley basement bar where everyone cooler than you hangs out. Seemingly every queer punk in the entire con was down there, and the vibes were excellent. I hung out with Alice (in a nun's habit, leaning into her Papal States force) and Norman (in a Goonhammer jersey, not thematic, just repping the brand) while we waited for the first round to start. Norman agreed to match into me first round so I could get to grips with the game again, which might have been a bad move since the guy who ran the Trench Crusade GT the day before should be more than capable of kicking my poor New Antioch warband's collective asses. As pairings were firmly vibes based (we were meant to just walk up to people or sit at tables and ask them to play) this pairing didn't upset any delicate BCP balance.

Game 1 - New Antioch Vs. Norman's Black Grail (Great Hunger)

New Antioch vs. Great Hunger. Credit: SRM and Norman

I hadn't played into this particular warband yet, and found them to be extremely difficult for my poor dudes with bolt action rifles to really do much about. Norman knew what he was doing with them, including avoiding the pools of boiling blood that dotted the field. As I had no flame weapons, I lacked the specific tools to really deal with all his zombies and other undead cretins, relying instead on the terrain to do the damage I had to do. While my Sniper Priest (Padraic Thrice-Blinded) dropped a zombie or two, most of my warband was trying to avoid his Gregori Gula while plinking away at his Matagot Hag, or otherwise avoiding his Butcher Knight. Basically, his gang was fast, durable, and highly lethal, and my guys were none of those things. My Lieutenant was able to kill his dog though, so that's nice. When we tallied scores at the end, Norman just eked out a win, getting one more Epic Deed than I did to break the tie. I felt comfortable with the game mechanics again by the second turn, and confident I could take on the next few games. I also appreciate Norman being patient with me here, but I wouldn't be the only inexperienced goober in this event.

Game 2 - New Antioch Vs. Heretic Legion (Naval Raiders)

New Antioch vs. Naval Raiders at Adepticon 2026. Credit: SRM

My second game was a treasure hunt on a beachhead table, one where we agreed to come at it along the middle instead of reenacting Omaha Beach. It would have probably made thematic sense for that instead, especially with him playing Naval Raiders, but probably would be one sided and not too much fun. Instead we duked out over the fortification, trading our more valuable characters up there until my Lieutenant went down and his surviving Heretic Priest ran away with some chum and treasure from the battle. My Sniper Priest holed up in a bunker and domed fools every time they poked their heads out from cover, while my Yeomen stormed up the beach, tossing grenades and taking ground from the Heretics. "Mad" Malcolm, my Combat Engineer, blew away a couple dudes with his Satchel Charge, while my Shocktrooper with a Greatsword came from off table and cut down my opponent's mercenary. When the dust had settled, we'd tied on points, but after rolling for casualties, six of his seven troops taken out of action died, while mine all were fine. This was the lesser known cousin of the pyrrhic victory, the suicidal draw. It was a bloodbath, and we both had a lot of fun with it, even if I probably came off a little sweaty trying to determine the victor.

These rounds were unfortunately short, and the time between them shorter, but I managed to run to 3rd Street Market and grab a Harvest Turkey salad from Goodland Greens. It wasn't particularly notable, but I needed to spend $20 on a salad instead of $20 on a fruit bowl again. It wasn't bad by any stretch, but when the speed at which you eat can only be described as "horking" it's hard to enjoy the much-needed vegetables in front of you. The few minutes of relative quiet between the pounding thump of the food hall and the cacophony of voices of the convention center were not long enough.

Game 3 - New Antioch Vs. Ezra's Heretic Legion

New Antioch vs. Heretic Legion at Adepticon 2026. Credit: SRM and Ezra

Ezra had clocked my New Antioch guys and really wanted to play them, and I was more than happy to oblige. This mission required us to set charges and sabotage terrain in our opponent's territory, and at this point I had a few Mechanized Heavy Infantry to take the hits in my warband. On the east side of the board, his Death Commando and Chorister were proving a lethal and hard to handle pair of jerks to deal with, while on the west his Artillery Witch was proving a nuisance. I'd also added a Witchburner to my roster, who would proceed to maybe get off two of his attacks in the entirety of the event. His west flank quickly folded, my troops dashing between cover and suppressing the Artillery Witch, but never quite making it into Ezra's territory to set off a bomb. The east was more of a fight, with his Death Commando only going down after getting caught in the open and taking more machine gun fire than is medically advised. One Yeoman and my melee-tooled Mechanized Heavy Infantry broke through and got into Ezra's territory, setting off a pair of bombs and winning me the game. Ezra's mistake was setting a charge with his chorister and trying to get away before setting it off, taking a bullet from my Sniper Priest for his troubles and going out of action. My dudes simply trusted that no bomb laid with righteous purpose could possibly harm its user, blowing themselves up to win me the game. Somehow, they were both fine. Ezra was a great opponent with a lovely looking warband, and I enjoyed playing what felt like a classic matchup.

Game 4 - New Antioch Vs. Geoff's New Antioch

New Antioch vs. New Antioch at Adepticon 2026. Credit: SRM and Geoff

We were both looking for tables and didn't end up finding any Heretic forces to fight, so it was a New Antioch vs. New Antioch mirror match. People of the same faith never fight over minor differences, right? Certainly two sects of Christianity wouldn't murder each other for reasons inscrutable to someone outside of their specific denominations, right? What a wacky fantasy game this is! This battle took us into a submarine dock, where the table would be bathed in darkness, save for one quarter which would be illuminated each round. Points were scored by holding territory, with extra points for holding the illuminated quarter. The first few turns were slow, each of us racking up equivalent points as we couldn't do much damage to the other guy - long range debuffs were significant given the darkness of the map. However, Sniper Priests gonna Sniper Priest, and ours were still putting some hurt out. The real battle emerged over a narrow bridge on the east side of the map, where my Trench Mole Yeoman (Molière, RIP) held up his advance, only for my Combat Engineer to return and huck a Satchel Charge, wiping out Goeff's advance and clearing the path for my Lieutenant to rush in. By the time I finally broke through, however, the game had run its course, and Geoff had racked up a few more points than I did. It was a hell of a game though, and we both had a great time with it. That Satchel Charge, in all its self-destructive glory, was probably my favorite moment of the day, and that board was just incredible. Hell, all the terrain in this event was some of the most beautiful and thematic I've ever played on, but the submarine boards were especially cool.

With the first day done, Dan and I met up with Arbitor Ian in the lobby and went out for dinner. We'd wanted to meet up but hadn't found the opportunity until now, and I'd picked the rare restaurant that could navigate the Minesweeper game for Ian and I's collective dietary restrictions. He sarcastically asked if it was another brewery, I said no, it's a distillery, totally different. We hit up Central Standard Distillery, a chilly fifteen minute walk from the convention, but well, well worth it. We crossed the bridge over the river and waved at a hot tub boat before I remembered that this route takes us near the Bronze Fonz, the bronze statue of Henry Winkler from Happy Days. Dan and I split the cheese curds which instantly justify the existence of Wisconsin as a state. Imagine a mozzarella stick, but more, and also better. I lack the words. I had the Farrow Island Salmon, which was probably the best-cooked piece of fish I've ever eaten, succulent and juicy over a bed of mashed potatoes with a bacon vinaigrette that made the roasted vegetables underneath just as savory as the fish on top. I feel like the Huron Street Manhattan was kind of a miss, its vanilla and cherry notes never quite coming together, but I was really there for the company. Ian is a genuine dude and a sparkling conversationalist, and as someone who watches his videos and remembers reading his battle reports on Dakka Dakka as a teenager, it was great to finally meet him in person. He was mostly just at Adepticon to hang out and meet people, and we were more than happy to oblige. The conversation bounced around until he mentioned he played bass, then him and Dan talked about ska, bass guitars and amps for probably twenty minutes. My days of lead guitar in shitty grunge bands are far behind me so I didn't have much to contribute beyond the recommendation of Phonogram, Kieron Gillen's comic where Britpop is literally magic. On our trip back we stopped at The Bronze Fonz, grabbed a dimly-lit selfie, and kept going back to the hotel. Ian peeled off to go check out some painting competition stuff, while Dan got ready for his Magic event.

We ended up in the unsettlingly Backrooms-esque meeting space behind the bar at the Hyatt, where some familiar faces were already getting their decks and mats out. I was determined to do my Trench Crusade homework, tracking level ups and injuries and the like, as Magic - much like poker - is a game that people will keep teaching me and I will keep forgetting the nanosecond they look away. I had a Riverwest Stein from Lakefront Brewery, a beer I remembered I could drink last year, and scribbled away at my pile of character sheets. Burger and his brother Chris came by and we hung out a bit, none of us daring to touch the pack of room temperature hard Mtn. Dews between us. If you can think of a more cursed series of words than "room temperature hard Mtn. Dew" I implore you to leave them below. Peter and Kat rolled in sometime after, themselves also not Magic Gatherers but there for the hangs. I subbed in for TD for a few minutes, long enough to kill Alice and then get killed in turn by Craig, which is probably enough cardboard tapping for me this year. I spectated a bit at the StarCraft and Fallout Factions games going on around me, excitedly showed some cool Trench Crusade art from the rulebook to anyone who'd look, and made my way towards the Golden Daemon cabinets in the hopes that they'd be a smidge less crowded now that it was like 11:30PM.

They were not less crowded. The line moved along the cases at a glacial pace, and while I had a decent running crew of people with me, the majority of them peeled off before the end. As always, the quality of painting is frankly insane, and we didn't even get to see the winners in the cabinets - at the time, they were getting photos taken for the eventual WarCom article, so we just got to see the remainder. I'm proud to see my friend TD won best 40k unit for his Hell's Last piece; I fondly remember getting lunch with him and Avery last year where they talked competition painting and I could barely follow along. I'm a good painter, but the difference in skill between the armies I paint and the single models these folks put out is enormous. At the end of the line, I overheard a familiar voice - Andrew, who had painted the "Resist" piece that kind of set off the whole NOVA implosion. He was a delight during our interview a few months back, and was just as energetic and kind in person. We talked for a bit about how things have been since that interview and I headed to bed, crashing some time around 1:30.

Sunday - Grimdark School Picture Day

The morning came around too soon, as I barely rolled out of bed around 9am. Another Starbucks cold brew, this time with their take on a Rice Krispie treat, and I was back in the Trenches in which I would soon Crusade. There were only two games today, mercifully, with more time per round so we wouldn't be quite so rushed. There was also a neat little area with a photographer and one of the demo boards available so we could get some professional photos of our warbands taken between games. I'd bring my warband up for photos later, as it was time for my first game.

Game 5 - New Antioch Vs. Austin's Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent

New Antioch vs. Court of the Seven Headed Serpent at Adepticon 2026. Credit: SRM and Austin

I'd met Austin at one Adepticon or another several years past, as he was part of the old Independent Characters crew. I don't believe we'd ever actually gotten to play though, and when we met the day before, we promised to rectify that. We set up our game on what was definitely a Mordheim board, replete with Skaven graffiti, and played a scenario similarly right out of Mordheim, competing to gather ~~warpstone~~ blood shards. My machine gun Sniper Priest (Papa Cap) finally got to do something this game, perched up on a building and raining fire down the few clear lanes I had to put blood markers on his Hell Knight and Yoke Fiend, while his Pit Locust ran up to get the blood shards early, only to get chased away and hunted down by my Combat Engineer. His Hunter of the Left-Hand path proved problematic as it teleported around wasting my poor Yeomen, but a turn of concentrated effort from my Mechanized Heavy Infantry and Shock Trooper took it out. The main fight broke out where his Praetor locked down a pair of my melee-focused Mechanized Heavy Infantry, only for my Captain to rush in and save the day, his Precision Strike skill making short work of the big guy's armor. This is the game where Molière, my Trench Mole, finally got caught and killed by a Yoke Fiend, all in an effort to draw dudes away and get me some angles on Austin's Sorcerer. I don't think I ever quite got that particular quarry, but I was able to secure all five blood shards by the end of the game, scoring another win for New Antioch. It was a hard-fought, back and forth battle with little skirmishes erupting all over the board from the very first turn to the last, and might be my favorite game of Trench Crusade I've played so far. I'm glad Austin and I finally got a game after flying in similar circles for so long, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

With the short lunch break being mostly devoted to arranging my models for paint judging and the aforementioned Grimdark School Picture Day, I only had time to cram a granola bar and some almonds in for lunch. Sometimes buying a boatload of hiking snacks two years ago pays off, I guess. One of the judges saw my Dropkick Murphys shirt and told me that he used to live in the same triple decker as them in Boston. I don't really have anywhere else to fit that anecdote, so I'll sandwich it here, like the fire code noncompliant middle floor of a Boston triple decker.

Game 6 - New Antioch Vs. Naval Raiders

New Antioch vs. Naval Raiders at Adepticon 2026. Credit: SRM

This scenario was wild, and as a result I think everyone got to feel a little bit bad for a while. It's the Hunt the Dragon scenario, where an extremely dangerous monster in the middle of the table will move towards the closest model and attack it, unless something else draws its ire. For the first full turn, I couldn't beat a 5 on 2d6, and I was starting to get a bit frustrated, all while my opponent was dropping my dudes left right and center. His first attack from his Artillery Witch took out my one useful Heavy Mechanized Infantry dude, while a shot from downtown knocked my Sniper Priest off his belltower, though Padraic miraculously survived. Meanwhile I'd fail my aim action and end my turn early. Then, as if on cue, he started rolling 6s to activate the monster, and as most of his dudes had advanced up the board already, it started swiping at his warband and wiping the floor with them. Around this time my troops decided to renounce God and start praying to the giant grody hand floating around the middle of the board, as it was activating fairly often and slamming Heretics pretty reliably. The east flank was mostly my dudes getting shot and the floating hand clapping the Heretics for me, while the west flank had more of a fight going on. He tried to move my Mechanized Infantry towards the hand with Puppet Master, but I skirted the flanks of the table and finally got to grips with him as my dice heated up. A back-and-forth battle between his Heretic Priest and my Lieutenant ensued, involving a lot of running away, shooting, then charging back in, at least until my Combat Engineer did what he does best and blew the Chorister and Priest up with a Satchel Charge. Our surviving troops ran to the corners as we avoided the hand's ire, and by the time it turned towards my side, including the heroic Yeoman Shaughnessy who survived two entire rounds of combat against it, my opponent was mostly out of models and I'd managed to score a tiebreaking Epic Deed by taking out his leader. When the dust settled I don't think either of us were too thrilled with that particular battle, as luck made it particularly swingy and neither of us wanted to commit to fighting the hand, but I know on other boards people were able to one-round it with sufficiently hot dice. With dice like mine that round though, I doubt it would have gone so smoothly. I also might have gotten a contact high because my opponent was vaping the whole time, which, hey, please don't do that.

The end of the narrative, which I'll admit I didn't pay all that much attention to, saw the Heretics getting a narrow victory, dooming the Aegean Sea for the foreseeable future. I'd been fortunate and only had a handful of troopers die whole time, with my injury rolls largely being full recoveries or otherwise pretty positive. I'd absolutely attend another one of Sammie's events in the future, as the vibes, missions, terrain, players, and event staff were all an absolute delight. The creativity of the warbands on display and the sheer craft in the terrain boards were some of the best I've seen in all my years of gaming, and I found the weekender format worked really well for Trench Crusade. I've been wanting to run a campaign for my own local crew, and this gave me the confidence to move forward with that. If I had any critique, it would be that the rounds were too short, with too little time between them on the first day. Four games with just over an hour each is pretty tight, especially when we're playing unfamiliar missions against people we don't know, plus finding those people and picking them before the game starts. It's also not a ton of time for the between-game record keeping. I think just doing three games would give people enough time to make it a bit more relaxed, as I found myself so crunched for time that I skipped all the story stuff just to figure out who and what I'd be playing. That's less than ideal for a narrative, especially when there's a bunch of effort put into the player packet like there was here. Don't let that criticism temper my positivity here too much though, as I had a wonderful time playing in the Skirmish Game Punks Demilitarized Zone.

I helped clean up the Trench Crusade tables, packing terrain and putting away mats and the like before taking a final lap through the con, catching up and saying my goodbyes to as many people as I could. I caught the aftermath of Goatboy's game and chatted with him for a bit about Challenger's Cup before heading to the 40k Flex area and saying bye to the ICs crew. On my way out of there I was accosted by my local boys from Bend, Oregon, who'd been traveling in a pack for a hot minute and only just found me then. I apologized that I didn't get to hang with them here, but it's not like we don't see each other nearly every Wednesday in the calendar year. For a lot of them it was their first con like this, and I'm excited to hear what they thought of it. It's also here where the cumulative exhaustion of the con was really hitting, as I was looking in the faces of some people I've known for literal years and blanking on their names.

I went out to dinner with Norman, Craig, and Stillman at Copper on King, a sports bar some five minutes walk from the hotel. I had no intention of going hard that evening, so I just had a strawberry cider from Ciderboys, and it was more refreshing than intoxicating. The restaurant was out of fries, chips, and cheese curds, as apparently a number of eateries in the area had been essentially devoured whole by the sudden influx of ten thousand nerds. I was fine just getting a burger with a gluten free bun, which they curiously dressed with an onion ring, which is very much not gluten free. I gave that to one of my tablemates and munched away at a decent pub food burger. The cauliflower bread with whipped feta that Craig ordered for the table though, that was the good stuff, the actually memorable thing. Salty, savory, and not too heavy, it was a solid appetizer that didn't spoil the meal, even if it overshadowed the burger that came after. Norman was beat, having run the Trench Crusade GT then played in the same narrative I'd played in, while Craig seemed fine and Stillman had gone to a baseball game, so clearly wasn't too worn out either. I was absolutely running on fumes though, and aside from espousing the virtues of learning how to cook (please do this, it feels good and will make other people like you more) my memory of this evening has an onion ring-sized hole through it. I said my goodbyes and headed back to the hotel. I did a customary check of the hotel room, packed my stuff, dropped off Dan's abandoned swag bag contents on a table in the lobby with a "FREE" sign taped to it, did a final sweep for people I knew, then crashed at 9pm. There were invitations to play poker at an afterparty, but I've already talked about my ambivalence towards the game in this article, and I was firmly partied out. I popped a melatonin and the next thing I knew, it was 5:45AM.

Monday - The Running Man (Me) Watches The Running Man (2025)

A painless checkout, a brief cab ride spent mostly talking with the driver about why they should watch and a lengthy TSA line later, and it was just about time for my flight home. I betrayed my New Englander origins by getting an iced coffee from a non-Dunkin' establishment in the airport, with a cup of yogurt just to get me through my next flight. I ended up next to a guy on the plane who was shopping for boats on his phone, and instead of locking in on that with all the rapt attention it deserved, I instead opted to watch a movie.

The Running Man (2025)

The Running Man (2025) lacks a lot of Edgar Wright's typical directorial flourishes - the jump cuts, smash zooms, clever dialogue, and heavy use of needle drops he's known for - and instead is just a reasonably well put together action movie. His fingerprints are still on the film and it does have some flair, and the cinematography is often beautiful, with some genuinely great tech-noir set design in the first hour. It's definitely Wright aiming for more mainstream appeal, replete with Tom Cruise's chosen successor, Glen Powell. I've never read the Stephen King novel so really just have the 80s Schwarzenegger movie to compare it to, although I'd say this feels more like a take at a Verhoeven 80's sci fi than the film that shares its namesake, replete with its exaggerated, grotesque fake advertisements and less than subtle social commentary. Said commentary feels at once of the moment (real-time deepfakes propagated by the worst people in the world to intentionally stoke the fears and anxieties of the public) and of the distant past (why does The Network care about TV ratings when they own everything?) but I think it all still mostly works. The movie's maybe 15 minutes too long and starts to feel pretty episodic after that first hour, but I enjoyed it. Colman Domingo is perfectly cast as the show's larger than life host, and Josh Brolin gets to be convincingly scummy as the big bad boss. I feel like Powell would make a good B.J. Blazkowicz if that Wolfenstein project ever gets off the ground and a script lets him inject some more pathos into it, but here he's mostly just a couple different flavors of angry. There's also palpable irony in Paramount being the studio behind a movie about fighting against a corrupt, all-powerful disinformation machine given their kowtowing to the current administration's most craven demands, but I digress.

I had to watch the last five minutes of the movie on my phone in Denver airport since the plane landed early, and I did so while munching on a slop bowl from Garbanzo. I didn't have time for anything more interesting than that pile of rice and vegetables, though Denver's got some good options. I did a few laps around the airport, my back aching from my less than ergonomic backpack and a lumpy mattress, then it was time for my flight. I played Into the Breach until my iPad yelled at me that it was about to die, my plane landed, and I was at home with my cats a half hour later, laundry already in the wash.

Final Thoughts, Parting Shots, and What Have You

The roll to piss table. Credit: The Flagellant and the Fool

Losing NOVA felt like losing my home. Again, listen to our podcast about that if you missed it. There are few feelings worse than a space you consider sacred getting rotted out from the inside and taken from you, with no opportunity for recourse. The sudden ouster of all the people I knew and cared about who made that convention run for years was a dark day, and I felt like shit about it for weeks. Adepticon had been a fun con to go to, sure, but it never felt like "home" to me. That is, until this year. With so many returning faces, Badcast listeners, and NOVA refugees making their way to Milwaukee, this didn't just feel like a gathering of disparate nerds, but a genuine locus of community, and one I'm excited to go to next year. Maybe I'll keep my schedule even lighter, the better to make connections, hang out with people, and maybe even see what lies more than a block or two in any given direction from the Baird Center. My heart is full, my arteries are clogged, and my liver is working overtime. That's Adepticon.

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Tags: battle reports | Warhammer 40k | Road to Adepticon | trench crusade