The Adepticon Write-Up Part II: Who's the Bossk

Well, I promised I would do it, though it's taken some time. Let's find out how this whole thing went down! (I'm aware the formatting isn't great, but hey at least you can read it?)

A face only a mother could love...

We ended up having about 30 odd players for the event, which was more than I hoped for.  I'd honestly figured I'd be doing this for me and the 10 friends I could coerce into playing it, but no, dang near full up.  Our winner ended up with 65 tournament points, which uh, well...... take that Top 8? You got outscored that day? It was a 3 round tournament, with things getting wackier and wackier as the rounds went on.  I'm not sure if that made things MORE competitive or LESS or what have you, but hey, live and learn.

Round 1 went as normal; commanders were randomly drawn and games happened.  Round 2 things got weird as, uh, dang near everyone decided that they wanted ME to draw their commander.  And as for Round 3, I let it be a reverse (current actual) tournament score draft for commander of choice.  So whoever had the least points got to call their shot and pick their commander, going up the bottom ranks until we had assigned them all to everyone.  I got that idea from Jack, and I definitely would re-do that aspect going forwards.  Way more fun for a goofy tournament for sure.

As for the lists and what I saw, there was much jank to be had.  Admiral Theia brought a full complement of Z95s and the ships to push them, the angriest anthill.  I saw 2 Gauntlets in use, for real.  Sadly, that guy didn't choose TF-1726 round 3, but ah well.  There were, if I'm remembering right, 3 different SSDs.  I saw Ezra steal one of a set of dual ISDs, Madine driving Arquitens MSU, Garm and Bail SSDs, a Raddus Providence (before it was legal!), and an Agate Onager.  Very goofy fun and I think* everyone had a good time.  There was a complaint or two afterwards, which I'll address at the end, and you'll see why.

I figure I'll start with a FULL list of the achievements you could have achieved had you played.  As I break those all down, I'll give my thoughts on them and whether I'd include them going forwards if/when I do this again.

Try to read em and then obviously weep. Or go blind, whatever

Yeah, sorry, I try to take bigger snapshots later

Let's go section by section, huh? (I also have a copy I'll try to make available offline if you email me for it).

So these first ones were just the start of the goofiness.  The collar or costume are from the fact that I suit up for most tournaments; I also wanted to reward anyone goofy enough to do the same.  Buying your opponent a drink was trying to foster good sportsmanship and oh wow so crazy how you could both buy each other a snack and it would give you a bonus so weird not gamed at all and definitely not the point.

The "don't deploy an onager" was definitely because this was janky and stupid and a goofy event, and "hey look you're getting shot turn 0 by a ship when you haven't fully figured out your commander woo such fun."  Comments about the competitiveness and fairness of the ship belong elsewhere, but I didn't want anyone signing up for the goofy time and then hitting 3 onagers in a row.  "Why didn't I nerf the Hawk as well?" Because without Agate it kinda stinks? If you're willing to play like a Tagge Hawk or whatever, more power to you dude.  But the Onager's problems aren't commander related, so that's why it was the only one hit.

And the vaccination card? Get vaccinated you clods.  THAT IS the nice way of saying that.  Moving on.

Beep boop I will cut you

List building! Some of these were spoiled on the blog, some were more meant to be something that happens when you showed up and then may have gotten some lucky extra points.  The problem is that (and this is a recurring theme going forwards) these lucky extra points could mean the difference between someone winning the tournament and someone losing it.  The complaint that was registered to me (and I FULLY admit its correctness) is that I didn't really distinguish between "goofy fun time" and "win your games." I WANTED goofy fun time but some of these also overlap into Win Time.  Ah well, lessons for the end and/or next time.  Had there been something on the line beyond a fancy Adepticon giant medal I'd feel a little worse about that, but this is strictly fun based.

Anyways, no one got the Imp bonus one, I don't think many people (maybe 1?) got the Spectre-1 one, and no one PLAYED GAR there, so, womp.  The VWC one was a throw-in from Biggs, and I think I got GiledPallaeon to use one of his cards? Not sure, I'll get him to comment haha.  This section didn't seem to work out as well as I had hoped, which I might going forward both edit this section a bit better and try to figure out some of these bonuses better as well.  Or publish this better going forwards.

Where's my Zeb card by the way....

The 4 officers one was something I was proud of.  Besides spinning and getting a random commander, sometimes you might get 5 random officers from a faction.  There was usually one related to squad pushing or squad helping, one token officer, and then a few that aren't as seen.  These were very fun and I would 100 percent use them again.  Again, I got to see Ezra pilot an ISD! I WOULD better explain that going forward, though.  "Execute Order 66" was... dang near everyone second round.  Wasn't planning it, but hey sure why not!

File this under: "my face round 2" and "in-jokes for the next section"

The second one of these fired like once or twice, and it was more of an attempt to fake flex on your opponent.  Oh, I deployed this ship that starts with tokens or dials in hyperspace, that's how much I'm flexing on you, muah ha haaaa? I didn't explain this one well enough, and I would likely cut it.  It's a lot of work and the only times it DID trigger were when I pointed out that someone could do it.  The first one was a nightmare of my own making.  "Hey, I can get a free bonus point if I bother John? I'm SURE he's not doing anything the first 15 minutes of the round, running around and helping everyone out." Cut this one in the future, anyone running one of these.  Save your life and sanity.

Spaceballs: the Flamethrower!

Going one by one:

• I don't know if anyone actually did a speed 0 maneuver but sure why not! Super fun sure who cares, its fine as it is.
• This was a special pass phrase that was "tell the judge Kallus+Tua"  My blog does not have the reach I thought it did, which, ah well? Better to Icarus and fall rather than to never take the leap, right?  Cut the dumb injoke, future TOs/Marshalls.
• The Truth Speed: See the CGYSO speed 0 maneuver.
• The special objectives were chosen WELL before this event, and were a 4th objective you and your opponent could choose from.  Blockade Run was the red one, and it was played round 2.  I think like all but 1 or two tables were playing it.  I personally think it's both competitive and a good objective, and hopefully more people came out of this event with either a new respect for it and or an idea for it. It's also one of Biggs's favorite objectives, hence the name.  Blue, Navigational Hazards was specifically because if anyone can figure out a good way to use this, I'll turn to shmitty.  I still don't know if we ever got one, but hey why not! That was round 1 and I think like, one table played it? As for the yellow objective, that was Fleet in Being.  Specifically because Eric and I played a mess of games when his son was just starting to learn to walk, and his grabby hands made sure you were in the center of the map quickly or you were about to have a Liberty on the floor or in a mouth.  FiB turned out "fine"/uneventful. It's OKAY as an objective but I still haven't cracked it fully.  My hope is someone got something out of these objectives, but if not, I got to watch like 10-15 games of Blockade Run.  That's a good day.
• As for the hyperspace ram, I can admit I saw it and I didn't have to jury rig anything for it.  One of the SSDs round 2 asked me to pick his commander, and I was going with random dealing from the bottom of the deck until I hit a "not your faction" and lo and behold, we had an Agate SSD.  They pulled it off, and Karneck even got it on video.  I know I'm going to be hanging onto that story for awhile, I hope they can too!

It was about as beautiful as this scene was, too

We now get to the "problematic" part of the goofiness.  These 4 (become 5 if you get them all) were INTENDED to be a way to reward creative thinking; it's easy if you're running squadronless to never do squads, and it's easy enough to not engineer if you don't get shot.  But not navigating? Oof, should be difficult.... if people didn't sorta game the system and just point their ships at each other and start firing.  I had "resolve" in there so you could take a token and power up, like, Intensify Firepower or whatever.  People in the end just..... didn't resolve any commands for a game, especially in the Blockade Run one.  Fun and goofy, but this idea isn't fully fleshed out yet.  It shows merit, I think, and if you were doing this semi competitively as a tournament I'm all for the inclusion.  Probably knock a few points off though, for sure. It's a fun idea but something is missing.  Hopefully I'll have it fixed by next year.

• I'm not sure if anyone did "Fly casual" but good luck to them. This is another "would be great if competitive, kinda meh in a goof tournament."
• I definitely enjoyed watching people not just try to hit every obstacle in a game but also try to figure out both placement of the obstacles and their starting ship to be able to not miss it and win the game as well.  Solid choice, would do again.
• The "called shot" and "one round a ship" ones were present? I didn't hear any specific complaints but I didn't hear anyone say it was amazing and the best thing ever.  Likely because the bonuses weren't as good for these, and that's more a "me" issue; I had to bring a sheet I could print out and fit everything and was having trouble on spacing until I just sorta mashed things into spots they sorta fit.  Let's call these 2 "has potential?"
• The "you were my brother" bit comes from the fact that Eric and I would play each other all the stupid time at tournaments, and I'm sure we've all had that moment or two where you drive a few hours with someone annnnnnd play them first round.  Dammit.  This one is worth keeping, though I have no idea if it triggered.  Probably should make the players have to yell the dialogue for abject hilarity.  Why does yelling things and making yourself the center of attention make it funnier? Shrug, but it does.

Still gives me chills...

Lastly we hit the "no dice modifications" bits.  Again, these were intended to reward people for never modifying their dice.  But as was pointed out to me mid-round 2ish, you technically (based on my poor wording, womp) can do all of these in one game.  As it was mid-game in round 2, I couldn't really go back in time on these (for anyone who either did them in round 1 or had started attempting in round 2).  A LOT of high points came out of this, especially for everyone that got, what, 10 in one game easily? If anyone else does this, please reword it and let me know what you get out of this.  I think this can be VERY amusing, but I don't believe it's perfectly fixed.  I love the concept and you can very much expect this to return the next time I do this.

So as I said earlier, the winning score of this whole 3 round event was 65 points.  That's..... a bit more than half the points from goofy stuff, if we assume 3 8-point wins.  Uhhh, not ideal there if I had wanted to do this as a real tournament plus some other stuff, but super great for a goof off!  I again acknowledge that everyone had fun, but I very much underestimated the amount of goofy points that people were going to score.  Life lessons for next year.  And yes, I want to run this next year for sure.  It is INSANE for an event, and it is a wonderfully zany time.  I highly recommend running it locally if you can spare the time to do it, you'll have a great time and I would 100 percent run this goofy format going forwards.

If you guys have any followup questions or want further clarification, please let me know!