Adepticon: The Aftermath

Greetings all!  SeerK here once again.  It has been about a week and a half since I got home from Adepticon and I am finally feeling normal.  I was exhausted for a couple days after, especially since I had to play catch up on several fronts. This would be why I am only posting about the convention now.  This year was very fun but at the same time extremely exhausting.  We had 6 events running this year and all of them went pretty smoothly.  I am going to list off the winners and announce the winner of the one of a kind Cortana portrait done by Sarah Campbell who is one of the 3D modelers at Studio 343.  Our Halo Event participants are all in running for this great piece of Halo memorabilia.
So lets dive into the winners and some reflections on Adepticon 2017.

New Spartan Games Podcast: Exploding Dice Radio

Logo by Tim " Miniature Tim"  Toolen

Greetings!  SeerK here once again.  This time I am here for some shameless promotion.  A new podcast will be released later this month.  Exploding Dice Radio on the Freebooters Network is a collaboration between myself and Andy "Ruckdog" Rucker of Man Battle Stations Podcast.  Exploding Dice Radio covers Spartan Games and nothing but Spartan Games.

Ruckdog and I will be talking tactics, new releases and previews, hobbying and whatever else we can squeeze in about our favorite games made by our favorite game company.

You will be able to get new episodes via the Freebooters Podcast Network  We just got done recording the first episode.  We are in the process of getting a blog set up, but you can send questions to edrpodcast@gmail.com.

We will have a new episode every month.  Our release dates are not set in stone as it will be posted when the network puts it into the rotation schedule.  I will post updates here and Ruckdog will be posting updates on the podcasts blog and over at Man Battlestations.

Next time I will be delving into game design.  I am in process of writing it and its taking longer than I thought it would.  I planned on it being a multi part series, but man we are really going down the rabbit hole.  We are also 2 weeks away give or take from Adepticon.  I will be doing daily updates and pictures dumps here and on Twitter.  If signal is good enough or we have wi-fi I will be doing some live streams as well.

Well back to writing and painting a metric butt ton of terrain.

Until next time crush the Alliance and as always...

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!!!!!

The Road to Adepticon: The Schaumburg Prime Offensive!

Greetings all!  SeerK here with our next update on the road to Adepticon.  In this installment we are talking about the big show.  The Firestorm Armada North American Championships.  The 3rd Schaumburg Prime Offensive.  As I write this, Spellduckwrong, Dreadbeard and Myself are putting the finishing touches on the Primer missions.  In fact we will be posting primer missions for all the Spartan Games events at Adepticon the begining of next  week.  Links will be here in the side bar, on the event pages and on the main Adepticon website

This Year we are back to 900 points and we are now in a two day format.  Day one is 3 rounds and a Qualifier for day 2.  Day two is the top 8 players from day 1.  Lets dive in and look in depth at this years North American Firestorm Armada Championships!

The Road To Adepticon pt 1: The Flashpoint Narrative Event!

Greetings everyone! SeerK here to talk Adepticon. I wanted to start going into specifics for each of the events we are running this year. As I said a couple posts ago we have expanded the events to include almost all the games that Spartan makes. I am going to give some details about each event starting with the new ones joining the mix in our Road To Adepticon series. We have Firestorm Armada, Firestorm Planetfall, Halo Fleet Battles, Halo Ground Command and Dystopian Wars this year. Spartan Fans can look forward to an event every day of the convention except Wednesday. I am planning on doing an unofficial mixer and meet and greet Wednesday night, but I am still deciding what to do. I wanted to start our series with our new Firestorm Armada Event. In addition to the North American Championships we decided to add a fun event for those who want to play, but may not be ready to throw into a tournament. Friday night we are proud to bring you The Flashpoint Narrative Event!

GateCon FSA Megabattle Debrief!

Greetings all. It was a busy weekend for me. I had two events going on this past weekend. I played in an I.T.S. event and we had an FSA mega battle at Evolution Games on Sunday. It is this event I want to talk about. We decided to kick off the War Gaming season with a Massive fleet battle that tied into the Flashpoint Amber campaign. Granted we did take some liberties as we wanted our own FSA personas to be involved. This was a 5 on 5 game of Zenian League vs Kurak Alliance. It was 1000 points per player for a total of 10,000 points of ships on the table. We got a little bit of a late start due to the grilling of steak. You can’t battle on an empty stomach. The whole battle took about 6 hours or so. Let’s dive in and take a look at how the battle unfolded.

State Of The Union

Greetings all!  SeerK here and I am going to get a little philosophical.  Last week was quite an adventure.  You may say, “of course it was you went to the Nova Open!”  My response sadly would be no I didn’t.  I was unable to attend Nova due to some circumstances I would rather not go into, other than say I had to attend a Funeral.  We had a lot of setbacks with our planned trip.  It is setbacks I want to talk about.  Setbacks and a malaise that has gripped the community. Players and Spartan fans grumble about it, but nobody is really talking about the fact a lot of established communities and play groups seem to be dwindling in size to the point they cease to be.  I want to talk about it a bit, at least my take on it.  Join me won’t you.

I am going to use the local scene as my first example.  Things die down during the summer around here.  It doesn’t really matter what game it is.  Infinity is catching on and we ran a league this summer, but we only had 6 players participate.  Others are starting to play now that summer is winding down and people are itching to play again.  We have not done a whole lot of Firestorm Armada or Planetfall in the local are this summer.  Halo is pretty much not a thing here in Lansing.  I am going to be trying to change that, but the player base is kind of tuckered out.

I am hearing about this from a lot of places.  Attendance at The Nova Open was lackluster say for the build and play tournament.  It makes me worry a bit about the North American Championships at Adepticon this year.  I think we are seeing our first real community wide rough spot.  This is going to be a major test for Spartan.  The only communities that seem to be growing fast and gaining momentum are the Halo related ones.  They have a feel like FSA when 2.0 came out.  

I think this is from a combination of things.  First and foremost I do not think the Vanguards are getting out there enough and in the right way.  Demo’s days and such get people into the game, but you have to be more involved than that.  If you cannot make it up to the shop on a weekly bases to help foster a growing community you should not be stepping up to lead it.  There is a lack of follow though.  There is also a lack of follow through on Spartans part.  We hear about stuff in the pipeline and plans for the future, but we are not seeing them come to life.  This has hurt Spartans credibility and the communities trust in them.  That is not a good thing.

Spartan is getting better and improving though.  Official play kits for the games and a marked increase in convention attendance is a good start.  The planning for shows and conventions is months in advance and they need somebody dedicated to doing it if they want to really get out there and get the community fired up.  They need somebody in the United States to do this.

The apparent supply problem has a bit to do with Spartan and more to do with the Distributors that shops use.  Golden Distribution is pretty much the only reliable one for Spartan product.  Most shops tend to use Alliance, who is terrible in my opinion, Southern Hobby and ACD.  I know Spartan has been working with the latter two to get products in and out to the players.  Shop owners will not carry stuff if there is no community to support it though.  It is a big investment getting a new game on the shelf.  This is where the Vanguards and local community cheerleaders come in.  

Keep the community going and growing with follow through and regular attendance.  I know it is disheartening when people don’t show up.  I have gone to game nights and been the only person there for weeks. I still went though.  Sometimes you have to be the beacon to get things going.  I know real life is busy, but if you want a community to flourish, you have to put in the extra effort.

So to sum up.  Spartan needs to overhaul the Vanguard program, they need to kick some of the rule sets in the pants and follow through in a timely manner.  They also need a dedicated Event Coordinator in the United States.  The supply issues could be solved with their own warehouse here, but in lew of that they need to continue to work with the distributors to keep products in stock and restock regularly.

This is really dependent on all of us getting out there and getting our communities rallied and playing.  Not only playing, but buying stuff.  That’s what shops want to see.  Players buying locally, not on the internet.  I am not going to get into my view of internet only vendors, that’s a whole different post.

So join me in getting the community back on track and growing again.  It’s going to be tough, but if we want to see more events and have more players we really need to start working together to do it.  I am hoping Spartan plays ball as well and continues to improve.  Well that’s my two cents

Until next time, Crush the Alliance and as always…

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!!!!!!

The New OSO! SeerK's First Look

Greetings all! SeerK here to talk Firestorm Armada. Spartan Just released the stats for the new OSO ships this past week. We had all our old favorites see updates in the model department and we had some new ships added to really flesh out the fleet. The new ships are following the trend set by Firestorm Task Force. That is we had a light cruiser and escort carrier added to the mix. The addition of an actual cruiser has helped immensely in terms of fleet building. Lets take a look at the three new vessels.

Gencon is Nigh!!

Greetings all!  SeerK here once again.  We are 22 days away from Gencon.  Yours truly will be in attendance for my second year.  I will be once again joining the Spartan Games crew at the Spartan Games booth in the Exhibitors hall Friday to Sunday.  The focus this year will of course be the release of Halo Ground Command.  Last year visitors to Gencon were treated to some of the prototype models.  This year we have the game making its debut.  Spartan will once again be teaming up with the Warstore.  You can look forward to demos and product at the Warstore booth.  I am really look forward to trying this game out.  i have been hearing bits and pieces  and so far I like what I am hearing.  Lets take a quick look at it!

Maximum Spider: The Relthoza "Cruise Dozer"

Greetings denizens of Aziza Prime!  SeerK here to talk Relthoza in Firestorm Armada.  Specifically I am going to be talking about my list development at the Patrol and Battle Fleet levels.  The events taking place at the Nova Open this year got me thinking.  Since I am not running things at Nova I have the opportunity to play.  Bill and Mike are giving us a whole slew of events at Nova this year and I am planning on playing in at least one of them.  The Singles GT tournament on Saturday of Nova is what I am planning on playing in.  This is an 800 point 4 round tournament.  This presents a little bit of a challenge.  You can do quite a bit at 800 points, but playing in a competitive environment and the nature of the missions dictates your selections.  I have a few thoughts and potential lists to share.  The Relthoza have gotten quite a boost with the addition of the Task Force ships.  The new fleet guides have also opened up a ton of new possibilities in terms of fleet building.  You can put a lot of hull points on the table now, even in smaller games. his has changed the meta, especially in at the home base of the Michigan Crew Lets take a look!

First Impressions: Firestorm Taskforce

Greetings Admirals and Fleet Marshals!  I have had a chance to look through Spartans latest release finally.  People in the good old United States should be getting their two player starters and Reinforcement Group boxes.  I received my Relthoza box today in fact.  Task Force is being toted as a fast playing game that can be played in 60 minutes or less.  From what I have been reading from across the pond this is pretty accurate.  I was expecting a very scaled back and simple rule set, akin to X-Wing and other games like it.  The Rulebook is longer than the X-wing book and this game is simpler than Firestorm Armada, but at first Glace seems to have a lot more to it and some tactical depth!  Needless to say I was surprised.

Its Official! The Schaumburg Prime Offensive That Is!

Greetings Admirals and Field Marshals.  I come to you on the Un-day with some pretty exciting news.  Four years has passed and it is February 29th, a leap year, once again.  Spellduckwrong, Dreadbeard and myself have been playtesting missions and making a boatload of terrain for Adepticon this year.  We have over 25 in our group, coming to the convention this year.  We have two sold out events and a sold out Class.  We have new logos and T-shirts on the way and some fancy new spaceships out in the form of Firestorm Taskforce.  Things are pretty sweet right now.  So what could be sweeter?  The Schaumburg Prime Offensive has been officially sanctioned by Spartan Games to be the Firestorm Armada North American Championships!

Adepticon 2016: Beach Head Primer Missions!

Greetings Admirals, Fleet Marshals and Generals!  After long last we have our Primer Pack for the First Schaumburg Beach Head!  My profuse apologies for how long it took to get this document done.  We had been waiting on word from Spartan. Spartan, as you may have seen is developing Organized play packs for the games.  It had been mentioned in the most recent Spartan blog covering Task Force, which is being released today.  The Packs were not going to be ready in time for Adepticon, so we are going with our traditional format of multi tier missions, that is you have Primary, Secondary and Tertiary objectives.  These award you tournament points.  The three Missions presented will be the missions at the tournament more or less.  since this is the first year I wanted to make sure people were able to really dial in their lists.

The missions will only change if it is found that some aspects do not work or are very unattainable.  that is they will be put through their paces by you the players and the final draft will include the tweaks and improvements.

The Schaumburg Beach Head Primer Pack is now in the side board on the blog here and on the Facebook event page!  Get practicing! We will see you at Adepticon!


Until then crush the Alliance and as always


REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!

Firestorm Task Force: Theories and Conjecture

Greetings!  The team and I are in full on Adepticon prep mode.  I posted this years patch design last time.  Things are really starting to come together.  Of course I will be worrying right up until the event actually starts, but thats typical.  I am not here to talk Adepticon though.  I am here to talk about Spartans latest Firestorm Armada release, or should I say the latest Firestorm Universe release.  I of course am talking about Firestorm Taskforce.

This release kind of came out of the blue.  There had been some rumors of new ship types circulating around the forums for a couple months, but nobody really had any info.  We then got the announcement of this new game more or less.  A new way to play Firestorm Armada.  A way to play it in 30 minutes.  Lets talk about Taskforce.  I have some thoughts and theories about the game itself.