It’s probably a bit late to be starting this as I’ve mentioned a few times in the Weekly Waffle that a few of us are going to be returning to the good old US of A next year for Adepticon (2018). We were there are a couple of years ago for the 2016 even and really enjoyed ourselves. Now that we’ve had time to recover and save up a few pennies we are on our way back. Like last time my plan is to do a few articles that cover off some of the key milestones, that’s a bit of work creeping in, about our planning for next year’s trip.
We actually got the ball rolling a couple of month ago when we booked our accommodation. Unfortunately as I’ve previously mentioned that was a bit of fail for me. I had said I would book the hotel and was on the e-mail list to be informed when the block booking for the convention centre opened so I thought I was all prepped and ready to do. Only to find out that the booking went live, and sold out before the e-mail was sent. Not happy about that. But Darren came to the rescue and managed to book us into a hotel across the road. Now if your reading this in the UK I do need to point out that the road in question is an eight lane highway so we will need to use the bridge and not try the short cut of running straight across the road. All it means is that it’s about a ten minute walk but if the weathers bad the hotel do have a courtesy bus so we can always call them and blag a lift.
Now the hotel booked the next big step was to book the actual event tickets and my name was down for this as well. I landed this job last time we went, and the two things that I remember move vividly were worrying that I would mess things up so we couldn’t go and how awful the booking system was. So when it came round to this year the worry was still the same but I had a plan to deal with booking system. But as we all know, no plan survives first contact.
The booking went live last Friday (17th November) at 20:00 Central time which for those of us in the UK equates to 02:00 on Saturday morning. So I had two alarms set plus my phone to make sure I was up in plenty of time. Then I had my PC up and running along with my laptop, just in case. 02:00 came around and I started hitting refresh until page went live. Then I was off, the plan this year was to secure the weekend tickets and then go back to amend the booking by adding the events we all wanted to attend. That meant getting for weekend tickets before I did anything else and that pushed my nerves to the edge. Everything was working ok, but I’m guessing there were that many people using the system at the time it was taking forever to move from page to page. I ended up booking two tickets on the PC and two on the laptop so that I be typing on one whilst the other was refreshing. The top and bottom of it was that it took about forty minutes to book the tickets. But I felt a lot better knowing they are secure. The next step was to work my way through the list of events everyone wanted to attend which I did with mixed results. Everyone got something although some of the events were sold out before I could secure places which was a bit disappointing.
Now I can hear all asking what we have booked so here we have list of the events we have either secured places for or on the wait list for:
- Artemis SBS Bridge thing
- Game Workshop Studio Preview
- Malifaux Henchmen Hard-core
- Warhammer Underworlds
- Warhammer Car Wars
- Micro details seminar
- Level up your painting
- Melifaux Enforcers Battle
- Age of Sigmar Team Tournament
- Sensha-do: Girls in Panzer
- Making of the Award Winning Diorama
- Test of Hour Tournament
- Malifaux by Gaslight Achievement League
- Skin Tones
- Warhammer 40k Combat Patrol
- Zombicide Black Plague: Escape the city
- Secrets of the loaded brush
- Warhammer 40k Long War Doubles
As you can see there is quite a diverse selection of events but one thing we are all in for is the Artemis SBS Bridge experience thing. Pete did this last time we were there and really enjoyed it so we all thought we would give it a go. I can only imagine the carnage that will ensue. My main focus for this year has been on hobby seminars as opposed to game but I’m still planning on taking some models with me and seeing if there are any pickup games I can get involved with. Darren has also suggested taking along some Dystopian Wars as it’s not a game we get play together. Who knows if we can find a bit of space we could even run a couple of impromptu drop in games for other.
The other big difference for this year is that we are all going to enter a model into the Crystal Brush. Not that any of us have any illusions about our level of painting but we all think it will be a good challenge and if we are there we may as well embrace as much of the experience as we can.
I’ve not got a set format for these updates but the next big one will be booking the flights and Darren has kindly offered to take the lead on this. Then it will be all about progress for Crystal Brush and deciding which models to take along for the trip. The next update will probably be once we have the flights booked so until then keep safe and enjoy your hobby time.
