AdeptiCon 2024 Retrospective

by Mike Rafferty

I feel like I say this every year, but this was the biggest AdeptiCon ever. Early estimates are over 8000 badged attendees with the numbers still being calculated. That means likely 10,000-12,000 through the door since AdeptiCon does not charge for a shopper’s badge and there are a lot of people that come to walk around and check things out. Early reports from the vendor hall is that the majority of vendors had their best year ever and the hall was packed when I walked through. Despite all these record-breaking notes, there is one important question: did I have fun?

I mean, yes, I did otherwise I would probably have been a lot more negative and wouldn’t have been volunteering with the con for the last 14 years. For transparency, I oversee the Hyatt venue and am also the Historical Director. This year we had some curveballs thrown our way, with the large growth of Middle-Earth and the last-minute addition of Star Wars Armada. Armada alone necessitated finding enough space for 145 players! This caused some moving around and tightening of space. While a bit cramped, everything worked out and we had few issues.

Logistics aside, what about the games? As mentioned before, Middle -Earth has grown considerably since coming over last year. Now a 100-person event, it has taken up all of the Sienna basement hall also known as the Mines of Moria. I’ve been trying to convince some people to dress up as Orcs and raid them, but to no avail. Bolt Action Combat Patrol and Doubles consistently sells out at 40 players, with some beautiful armies on display this year.

The Bolt Action events always run smoothly, and we were able to raise $1400 for the Fisher House with a charity auction. Big thanks to Andrew and the crew for running the event and the charity raffle here.

Armada was the new addition. This event saw some new challenges, with a large streaming set up and the larger number of players. However, due to the hard work of the Armada team everything seemed to go smoothly. One of my friends even managed to get obliterated on stream, something he was talking about all weekend.

A Song of Ice and Fire is one of my favorite games, and I was happy to see them in the main hall. It made it easier for me to check everything out and get some delicious baked goods from Marty. My friend Hazel and our own Mitch Reed even played in the Sunday Friendly. Mitch had just played his first game on Friday and loved it so much he wanted to play. He emerged as newbie champion too!

Battlefront had a great showing this year. A World of Tanks tournament along with Midwar Nationals and a Team Yankee tournament. There were a lot of nice armies there this year. AdeptiCon has always pushed for more representation from the hobby side of things and this year did not disappoint.

Then we get to the event games. We had a large slate of games this year, run by several individuals and groups. HMGS (both East and Midwest), Lard America, Steve Fratt, and my group The Nerds of War. This was the first year we ran events under The Nerds of War banner, but we’ve been wanting a group name and logo for a while. Now that we have one, we wanted to use it.

The first game we ran was a Victory at Sea game around a hypothetical Battle of Samar. I love Victory at Sea, but there are very few battleship-on-battleship battles during World War II. The pesky aircraft got in the way of my Jutland 2.0. I did a hypothetical scenario centered around Task Force 34 showing up to fight the Yamato at Samar. This battle did not go how I expected it. The American players divided into group and went right at the Japanese battle line but did not send anything to safeguard Taffy 3. The New Jersey got a crit on one of the first shots and exploded, ironically on the day the real New Jersey was moved to drydock. When the game ended, the Americans were in bad shape and the Japanese had forces set to destroy Taffy 3. I’m looking forward to running this again locally and seeing what happens then.

The second game was the Taco Friday, our Team Yankee game set in Norway. The main objective was a Taco Bell, a location of critical importance to the Soviet attack and NATO morale. This game went pretty well and the players seemed to have fun. I was able to step back and let the players run the game. Phil, who also ran the Team Yankee tournament, helped out with this game and was a great help. We learned that infantry does slow down these large games and using only tanks makes everything run smoother. We ran a second Team Yankee game centered around a hypothetical Soviet version of Sealion that we ran with only tanks. That one ran even smoother and going forward we will likely do tank-only games of Team Yankee for mega battles.

We ran two games of Battletech Alpha Strike themed around Tukayyid. This is one of the pivotal battles in the Battletech background and featured seven clans against Comstar. Originally, we were going to have missions for each clan but a few things happened. One, not as many people showed up to the game as signed up.

Second, I left all my Comstar minis in Toledo. Luckily, Randall Bills allowed us to borrow his mechs. This was very nice of him and saved me from buying 80 mechs and giving them a basecoat on Tuesday. We ended up playing two large games, one each on Friday and Saturday, and I meshed some missions together. Comstar won on Friday and the clans won on Saturday so it was a draw over the weekend.

Finally, we had our Gettysburg games. We have a beautiful board of the second day of Gettysburg and a lot of nicely painted Warlord Epic ACW miniatures. The first game went off smoothly Saturday night, with a solid Union victory. All three Confederate divisions broke from the field for the cost of the entire 3^rd Corps and part of the 5^th. However, the Union was able to hold both Round Tops along with the Wheatfield and the Devil’s Den. I’m not 100% sure what happened in the Sunday game as I was dealing with a nasty case of food poisoning. All I know is that the Confederates and my toilet lost.

Overall, this was a great convention. I got to see a lot of friends I only see a couple times a year and some I only get to talk to online. There were tons of great displays and games, too many to mention in one article. If you haven’t visited AdeptiCon, you really should.