TheChirurgeon's Road Through 2026, Part 13: Adepticon Prep

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of hobby and competitive progress through 2026. Last time around I was on vacation with my family, getting in some hobby progress while I was away from home and assembling Accursed Cultists and Traitor Guardsmen. Then after flying back to the United States last Thursday, I was back on a plane on Tuesday to do it all again less than a week later.

That makes this update even lighter than that one - as I write this I'm sitting in a hotel in Milwaukee, here for Adepticon. In a hilarious twist however, I'm not playing in any events. While I did bring some 40k models - more on that in a bit - I'm mostly here for Business Development, representing Goonhammer and talking to other companies and vendors. This is something we've been doing more of over the last half a year and it's amazing how far just meeting with people in person will go to building relationships.

Said relationships are important for us because we really like playing and reviewing new games, and working with publishers to get the word out when we're really excited about a new release. We've done more of this work over the past year, and this year we've focused more on talking to companies about a few specific releases. If you want more detail on this I'd recommend checking out last week's episode of HAMS Radio, our weekly subscriber-only podcast, in which Kevin Fowler talked about attending GAMA and meeting with publishers.

All of this means is that the first time I'm attending Adepticon I won't even be playing in an event. To make things even more uh... interesting, I was flying out of IAH on a day when wait times due to the government shutdown were being estimated at 4+ hours. I was definitely concerned when I arrived at the airport four hours early that I might miss my flight, and the lines did indeed stretch a long way, out of the terminal and into the underground subway beneath the airport. Fortunately despite being advertised as 4+ hours, it only took an hour to get through security and I was able to make my flight with plenty of time to spare.

Hobby Progress

The big thing I've been preparing for is the new Defiler - the new kit looks amazing but I'm not about to give up my old Defilers for Death Guard - especially after seeing the new rules for the unit this past week. The new unit got a hell of a glow-up, and I'm excited to field them when they release. But that means I need to finally add bases to my Defilers. I painted three two years ago for the December Rise of the Empire teams event, but I never put them on bases. It was time to change that.

The puddle was easier than you'd think - I simply painted part of the primed base with a mix of different greens and browns - Castellan, Death World Forest, Gorthorr Brown, Ogryn Camo, and Army Painter Strong Tone - then I put a layer of PVA glue down over top of that and used it to make some ripples. It tends to dry glossy but clear, and then after that I added some Nurgle's Rot to give it some extra sickly shine. For added effect you want to have stuff look like it's floating in the goo, and that's where the barrel (taken from a Sector Imperialis Basing Kit) and some skulls cut in half do the trick.

The big thing with these is that they had to be magnetized. I glued magnets on the tips of the defiler hind legs and let that dry, then I put glue on the second set of magnets whilet hey were attached and glued it to the base, letting them sit wherever was needed. Once it all dried, you just pull the model off and get to basing. Most of this is some extra stuff and Astrogranite texture paint, but I'm going to come back and add some grass tufts when I have a few minutes - the important thing was to just get bases done.

With the pieces in place, it all works well, giving me a base that clips to the model easily and can be detached just as readily, making it easy to transport what are otherwise really large, bulky models that can take up lot of space. That means the bases can slide sideways into my mini transport case without any trouble, making it easy to travel with the army. That's a big part of what kept me from putting bases on the Defilers - well, that and being unable to move them past most ruins.

Adepticon Bound

I arrived in Milwaukee on Tuesday - my first time here - and it was kind of gray and little cold in a way that made me regret that I was giving up one of the few weeks of perfect weather we get in Houston before The Long Summer begins. I met up with Campbell - we're sharing a room again - and we did a bit of walking around before ending up over at the third street market.

Over at the 3rd Street Market they have an interesting self-serve tap system that's potentially very dangerous. The rest of the venue is like a food court, filled with different stands and places to grab food. I ended up housing some chili dogs while Campbell got some arepas. It's a cool venue to hang out at, but they closed pretty early - around 9pm - and on Wednesday night most of the places literally ran out of food. I don't think they were ready for Adepticon and the crowds.

Campbell and I met up with Norman and talk shop, then end up talking to the Trench Crusade crew for a while. Norman's been working with them on the Trench Crusade competitive play pack and they're a cool crew to drink with. We ended up turning in pretty late after meeting up with BuffaloChicken, who was in town with his wife to play some Necromunda. Overall it was good times, and a good start to the event.

Next Time: More Hobby Progress

That does it for this week's update. Not so much here but this is the stuff I can talk about right now. I'm currently excited about the new Defiler datasheet and looking forward to running them not just in my Death Guard but also in my Chaos Space Marines - that re-roll wounds ability seems insanely good. That said, I'm going to have to wait for the new model to release there because I'm not painting another of the old Defilers. I may also get in a game if I have time. We'll see.

See you next week.

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