Showing posts with label Events. Show all posts

January 1, 2024

What's in store for 2024!

Happy New Year 2024!

Well, here it is, the day I write out all my goals for the year only to find out on December 31st that I did not meet my expectations..

2024 I believe is going to be simplistic, very simplistic.

Bolt Action

I am going to keep Bolt Action on the list for another year. I know last year I had thought I'd get in a few more games than what I actually did, but you never know.

Painting Goal: None

Gaming Goal: None

Marvel Crisis Protocol

MCP was my main game in 2023, and it looks to also be in 2024. I honestly do not currently see a game system that will be taking over in 2024. I am excited for some of the new releases coming out early this year and it will allow me to play a new Affiliation.

That is one thing that I like about MCP. If you get tired of playing one Affiliation, just change it up to another (and you can still "splash" in your favorite characters).

Painting Goal: 2024 will be much like 2023 in regards to painting, when I am in the mood or when a “new, cool” model gets released it will take priority. I still have to get to some of the models in the newest Core Set that was released a few months back. Right now models are getting done to fill in spots/roles in our current rosters.

Gaming Goal: With 80+ games played in 2023 (which once again was a record for me with a single game system), 2024 “should” be a good year too. Just like last year, I am going to set my goal of just shy of 1 game a week with a total of 50 games played for 2024. I need to keep it reasonable just in case "life" gets in the way.

Star Wars Legion

Star Wars Legion (SWL) is one I am unsure about just like Bolt Action above. Usually when I have time to get a game in, we play Marvel Crisis Protocol. I think I will leave this one up as a "just in case".

Painting Goal: None

Gaming Goal: None

New Games for 2024?

I can HONESTLY say that I am not looking into any new games for 2024. Star Wars Shatterpoint was a possibility last year (and we did not jump on that) and I really do not see anything else this year. Atomic Mass Games is doing a nice job on releases for Marvel Crisis Protocol, and it is keeping me excited.

Events

2023 was actually a pretty good year in events for me and as much as I would like to keep that up, I think realistic 2024 may be a few less, and a few changes. AdeptiCon is our yearly staple event and especially with living in the Midwest, so as long as we can get registered for the events we want, that one is a must attend.

New for this year will be Cherokee Open 2024, the Tournament Organizer for Marvel Crisis Protocol in 2023 is not able to run it in 2024 and Frontline Gaming had asked for a volunteer. I decided to step up and offer my services. I do like attending Frontline Gaming events and had never been to the Cherokee Open yet, so I thought this would be a fun event. This is where a lot my time at the end of 2023 went into painting terrain for this event.

Unfortunately with adding a new event, some previous events will fall of the list. One of these is Frontline Gaming's Atlantic City Open. I really enjoy attending Atlantic City Open, and we made it out there the last two years, but my vacation days are limited this year and I cannot justify that long of a drive. Another event with distance in Nove Open. I really thougt we had a chance in attending in 2024, but my company changed some of their days for their floating Holidays and removed a day from Labor Day weekend and added it to Christmas. So with a shortage of vacation days, NOVA Open in 2024 will be tough to attend, but we still may do it.

A new event we attended in 2023 was Warfaire Weekend in St. Louis. St. Louis is not a far drive (about 5 hours), but I was not too impressed with the event. It may have to do that the location was under construction and some of the restaurants that were opened in years past have been closed/torn down. It "may" be one to add again in the future, but I do not think it will be one to use up vacation for this year.
In the fall we also have a couple more local events, Michigan GT and Second Wind. 2023 saw us attending both of these events for Marvel Crisis Protocol, and I think these are two we will be shooting for once again in 2024. Both events are less than a 2 hours drive, the issue with Second Wind will be if we can get in. This event sells out quickly.

One of the big events of the year, Las Vegas Open is going to have to be a pass again in 2024. 2025 is doable (as I still have airfare credit), but it will depend on how much money is spent on our Fall 2024 events.

I am also still thinking about adding another Canadian event weekend, it is just a matter of finding the right one and what dates will work.

Here is my tentative list of events for 2024.

January 18th - 21st: Las Vegas Open (Not Attending)
February 23rd - 25th: Cherokee Open (Tournament Organizer)
March 20th - 24th: AdeptiCon
June 14th -16th: Atlantic City Open (Not Attending)
August 29th - September 1st: NOVA Open (?)
October xx - xx: Michigan
October xx - xx: Second Wind 6
October 31st - November 3rd: Warfaire Weekend (Doubtful)

As you can see above I still included events that I know we are not attending for sure, just so that I still have a record of the dates. Michigan GT and Second Wind 6, the dates are unknown as of this writiing.

Now we’ll see if the above holds true for 2024.

Daily Chronicle: Heading to Atlantic City Open 2023

I honestly did not think we would be heading to Atlantic City Open 2023 once again this year with my youngest son/s graduation next week and then the family heading to Florida (without me) for vacation, but I decided to bite the bullet and go down one more time. Next year is going to be really tough, so I thought I was going to have fun one more time.

Atlantic City Open 2023 is Father's Day weekend this year, June 16th-18th, and my oldest son and I are both signed up for the Marvel Crisis Protocol Weekend.

We plan on arriving sometime Friday morning and just relaxing for the day and recovering from the drive. Saturday will be the LVO Qualifier Event running 5 Rounds (so a long day) and Sunday is going to be a Fun 3 Round event for those that do not make the Top 8 from Saturday.

I am going just to have fun and enjoy the ambiance!

Daily Chronicle: AdeptiCon 2023 Recap

Adepticon 2023 has now come and gone and I had a good time. I managed to play 8 games over 3 days, and had time to do some vendor hall shopping and meet up with some old friends, for me that is what AdeptiCon is about.

We played Marvel Crisis Protocol all weekend (Thursday/Friday/Saturday) and the nice thing about MCP events is, if you are no longer in the running, you can easily drop out of the event to go and do other things at the convention, and that is what I did. I am not a competitive player as I go for the comraderie.

Thursday started with the Affiliations tournament and I played one of the smallest affiliations with my "Winter Guard". I ended up going 0-3, but they were all fun games. There were still 2 more games left in the event, but we went to start our shopping and get some dinner.

Friday was the 2v2 Team tournament, and game #1 they put us on table #1 streaming to all the viewers. It was a tight close battle, but we lost by 1 point, 10-11. Games #2 was better for us and we managed a win in the event. Game #3 was another tight battle and lost by 1 point again, but it was really fun, all 3 games we had great time and left after going 1-2. It was going to be a long night as there were still 2 more games, so we headed out to complete some final shopping and dinner.

Saturday was Championship day and one last hoorah for my "Age of Ultron" roster. Game #1 did not start off to good for me, my opponent was nice, but you can tell right away these guys were serious for this event. The super fast play and not much chit chat was not that enjoyable. Game #2 was much better as I had a great opponent and we had a good time. I had the early lead in this game, but then fell apart and got another loss, going 0-2. Only the Top 8 were advancing to Sunday, and you needed a 4-0 record to advance. So with 2 loses, it was my final day for last minute shopping.

After my son was done (who played all 4 games), we headed out to Buona Beef for dinner and then went back to the hotel and packed our bags and headed back home.

The one good thing about this years shopping was, I managed to control myself and kept my purchases to the essentials and did not walk away with a new game (like I usually do), but it was tempting.

Here is a photo dump from the weekend.

Daily Chronicle: Week of AdeptiCon 2023!

Adepticon 2023 is finally here. I cannot believe how fast the first three months of 2023 has already gone by.

Last year at AdeptiCon due to scheduling conflicts I was only there for one day, so I did not play in any events.

This year, we are driving in Wednesday night and we have events planned for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and on Sunday will be our free day to shop the vendor hall (what we cannot get to Saturday after our event).

All events this year will be Marvel Crisis Protocol (MCP) since that is all I have been playing the last year and enjoy it the most.

Thursday will be MCP Affiliations tournament. Your entire roster needs to be from only one affiliation.

Friday will be the MCP 2v2 tournament where my son and I are teaming up with an “East vs West” themed roster.

Saturday is the main event for MCP, the AdeptiCon Championships with the Top 8 moving on to Sunday (wont be us, hence the Sunday free day). I’ll be playing my themed “Age of Ultron” list for one final event.

Our goal is to play all games on Thursday/Friday (5 games each day), but we shall see how we do and may elect to bow out earlier.

Come back next week for a recap and photos from AdeptiCon 2023.

Daily Chronicle: Change in Convention Schedule for 2022

Yesterday I was thinking about our upcoming Convention Schedule for the rest of 2022, and was thinking about making some changes.

Originally planned, the next two events would have been the Motor City Mayhem in May (in which we were playing in the Warhammer 40,000 GT) and Cruisehammer in August (which also would have been a Warhammer 40,000 Open). Well if you have been reading this blog for the past two months, you would have noticed a lot of posts recently for Marvel Crisis Protocol, and I have been getting an itch to play in one of these events. A lot of gamer's that I had met playing Guild Ball made the move to MCP when Steamforged killed Guild Ball, and the camaraderie at these events with these players has always been fun and I am hoping MCP will be just like that.

We are thinking about doing MCP at the Michigan GT in October, but I was looking for something a bit sooner, well here comes the Atlantic City Open in June of 2022. I have never been to Atlantic City before and have always wanted to see it, so this would be a plus. The MCP badge at the Atlantic City Open is only $40, and that includes a day of open gaming on Friday, and two separate tournaments, one on Saturday an one on Sunday. Now I have two months to learn the game better and play faster.

In doing the Atlantic City Open, we are cancelling Motor City Mayhem and Cruisehammer (I have been leery about Cruisehammer for awhile since they still require a negative Covid test to board the boat taken not more than two before boarding, that makes it kind of difficult when it would take us one day to drive down).

This then takes us back to Michigan GT in October, and we may then decide to play Warhammer 40,000 at that event (we are still in discussions about this), I am also looking out for a Fall event for MCP, and there is a good one in Chicago, just not sure on the dates yet and if it will interfere with another trip of mine.

Weekly Chronicle 2022 #13 (AdeptiCon 2022 Recap)

AdeptiCon 2022 has come and gone, and unfortunately 2022 was a short event for me. I had to work on Thursday and had other personal commitments on Saturday, so Friday was my only day to really attend the event.

I was originally signed up for the Warhammer 40,000 Friendly on Friday, with the plan that I was able to get downstairs on Thursday to do my Vendor Hall shopping, but real work kept me busy all day on Thursday.

Thursday night after dinner, I did get a game of Warhammer 40,000 in with my son, and then I decided to bow out of the Friendly on Friday and do my Vendor Hall shopping and visits with old friends.

I did really good in the Vendor Hall, I was so tempted to pick up a few different games, but I never have time, so I kept it to my main two core of the year, Warhammer 40,000 and Marvel Crisis Protocol, and most of it was for MCP.

AdeptiCon 2022 purchases.

I am disappointed I could only attend 1 day at the greatest miniature convention in the US, next year I will plan it a bit better and make sure nothing else interferes with the weekend.

Here are a few pics from the time I was there.

Weekly Chronicle #5 Las Vegas Open 2022 Recap

Late last night my son and I came back to AZ after spending the weekend in Las Vegas for the Las Vegas Open 2022.

We were attending LVO for the Warhammer 40,000 Friendly event which was taking place on Saturday and Sunday (2 games on each day). Well for me, it was only 2 games on Saturday. My plan/intent was to play both days, but after checking into the event on Saturday, some of the lists were not so "friendly" and I knew my "fluffy all bolter themed" list had no chance.

I kept my 2 games pretty close, but ended up losing both of them. My son was playing his Dark Angels, and he managed to go 1-1 on both days for a 2-2 overall record. For some reason Best Coast Pairings is not showing the correct data, so we do not know where he finished overall.

I mainly attend events for the ambiance anyways, and the vendor shopping, and boy did we buy a lot, and it was mainly for our new game Marvel Crisis Protocol, I cannot even remember how many models we purchased, seems like every time we walked into the vendor hall, we came out with another model (there was a good deal going on, 25% off). My son also did find me a Chronomancer model for my Necron army that I have been looking for awhile, so I was really happy.

The dining is another reason I like to attend these events, especially in Las Vegas. For Friday night I had made us reservations at Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen, and then while having dinner there, I managed to get us a reservation for Saturday night at his Pub & Grill, so the dinners were very expensive, but I do not gamble much, so it all evens out.

Below are some pictures throughout the weekend.