The Road to Adepticon 2020: A Cautionary Tale, Part I

Cigars and whiskey, that's how it always starts. Take heed, friends.

At Adepticon 2019, Mike and I ran two events. One was a World War II naval battle and the other was a large game of Fate of A Nation covering the Battle of Chinese Farm during the '73 Yom Kippur War. It was a lot of work in the months leading up to the convention getting ready for them, and I can clearly remember still rushing to finish painting Italian battleships and Egyptian infantry the night before our games. Between running these two games, the work we did volunteering at the convention handling prize support and running the trivia nights, by the time Adepticon 2019 had ended I think the idea of running such large games might have soured a bit for us.

Chinese Farm

Don't get me wrong, we really had a blast running those games. We met some great folks who seemed to enjoy the events we put on, and there is a tremendous amount of satisfaction that we got from that experience. But on the last day of the convention, we were sitting in our hotel room after getting packed up, somewhat frazzled after the past week, and we both said at about the same time, “Maybe next year we just do one small game.” We both agreed that was a capital idea. It was a capital idea that lasted about a month. Enter the cigars and whiskey.

A few days after Adepticon 2019 ended, Mike moved to Pennsylvania to take a new job. This put a huge crimp in our gaming and socializing, including our fairly regular “Cigar Nights” where we would get together with our friend Dustin, another Adepticon worker bee, and shoot the breeze about gaming, politics, what have you. So to get around the limitations of geography, we started holding what we billed as “Cyber Cigar Nights.” We would stay at our respective homes, smoke cigars and drink whiskey, while talking to each other online over Discord. It wasn't as good as the original, but as solutions go it got the job done. In early May we had one of our first Cyber Cigar Nights and naturally the topic of the next Adepticon came up. This year had been my first year attending the convention, and I can remember saying that I already missed being there. Like my life now was basically just waiting around for the next one. Is that sad? I feel like it should be sad, but I remain unrepentant.


Anyway, we started kicking around ideas for what we would like to run in 2020. At first we kept our suggestions small and manageable, but I don't think that lasted even 20 minutes. A lot of people who run games at conventions plan for them to be small. I completely understand this thinking, because it keeps the games relatively easy for new players and the games generally move quickly. It makes sense. It is reasonable. But one thing about Mike and I, when we sit down at the table to start brainstorming about events that we would like to run, either at a convention or even at our local game store, we don't really leave any room at the table for reason. The phrase “go big or go home” may as well have been written specifically for us. We just like a spectacle. During our initial discussion we were coming up with so many ideas for games that we really wanted to run that I think we both quickly realized that there was no way we would be able to stick with our “just run one game at Adepticon,” plan. I think we were able to rationalize abandoning it by saying that unlike for 2019, we would be getting a very early start on our planning and if we worked at it diligently throughout the coming year instead of slacking off until the fall as we did last year, we could could manage two large games.

The first game we decided on was another World War II naval battle. We had great feedback from our players at 2019, and it is subject matter in which we are both interested. We quickly made the decision not to use the models that were used in 2019 in our Mediterranean Sea battle. Instead we chose to run something in the Pacific Theater and came up with an idea for a hypothetical scenario that had the Americans go to war with Japan in 1937 after the Panay Incident. It would mean having to buy all new models, but the nice thing about WWII naval games is that you only really need 10-20 models to have a big game.

Mediterranean Sea Battle

Our second game idea is where the real insanity began. Mike and I are both fans of modern combat games. I've been gaming the Cold War since I was in the army back in the 80's (that's back in the dark days when there were two Germany's and zero iPhones, youngsters), and we are very familiar with Battlefront's Team Yankee game. We were well into our cigars (and the whiskey) when the topic of Operation Market-Garden in World War II came up. It's one of my favorite battles to study and game. One of us, and I am going to blame Mike here, said something along the lines of, “It would be cool to do a modern version of Market-Garden.” Well it just so happens that in the alternate history storyline for the Team Yankee game, it is entirely possible for such an operation to occur. We were giddy. Ideas for the game started coming fast and furious, and they got progressively crazier. When we got to the point where we were talking about putting almost two regiments of Soviet troops in 15mm onto the table to face off against the French, British, Germans, Dutch (and maybe even some Australians), one of us finally had the sense to say “Okay, that's enough.” But we did make the decision to go ahead with what we are calling Market-Garden '85. Not long after that, at another Cyber Cigar Night coincidentally, the idea came up of doing a series of reports on our progress for Adepticon next spring. I have always been a big fan of Games Workshop's Tale of Four Gamers and similar projects that they have run in White Dwarf over the years, and I thought it might be interesting for people to see how we get along. So that's what we'll be doing with this Road To Adepticon 2020 series. I don't think we have any set schedule in mind for how often we will put out updates, but I think maybe once a month through the winter and then possibly a bit more as we get closer to the convention. We hope that you find this series entertaining.