Chapter 416 Podcast

Episode 5: Waterfalls, Dinosaurs Adepticon Team Tournament Breakdown

• Alan Bajramovic • Season 1 • Episode 5

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🔥 Welcome back to the Chapter 416 Podcast! 🔥

In this chaotic and hilarious episode, Pajama Pants and Brad Chester dive deep into Adepticon Team Tournament madness! From Highlander list-building struggles (no duplicates!) to behind-the-scenes hobby nightmares, including Alan’s cursed waterfall display board, it’s all here.

We break down the latest Adepticon meta, talk Warhammer 40K singles fatigue (9 games in 2 days? No thanks!), and throw in plenty of rants about corporate 40K, terrain rules, and GW’s never-in-stock models.

Expect laughs, spicy takes, old-school vs. new-school 40K debates, and an inside look at how NOT to prepare for a major tournament. Plus, get ready for noodle references and Brad shamelessly taking credit for Pajama's work. 🎨🎲

Alan:

Hello and welcome back to the Chapter four 16 podcast. My name is Pajama Pants. That's Brad Chester, and today we're gonna be talking about Adept Toon amazing it's, how

Brad:

And what we're doing. And also we were gonna show you lots of pics and Alan said he wouldn't. He sent them to us in a group text. He's there's no way I could possibly get these picks ready. I'm like, you literally sent them to me the other day. A, he's

Alan:

Can't do it.

Brad:

can't do it. It's not even possible.

Alan:

do a picks episode some other time. when they're all finished. I like the idea of showing the finished product. I don't know. I'm not a big fan of I have to know that we're in fact gonna finish. I have to know that the models actually will look good in the end, and I have to know that. They're a good representation of what we could do. And then I'm cool with making a video about the

Brad:

let's talk about how we were gonna make a bunch of journeys. Videos and we were also gonna start so early this year'cause we knew for sure what we were doing. We were gonna do

Alan:

That's not true. We were

Brad:

a hundred percent true. We were not gonna, we never, ever were gonna play guard

Alan:

I was a thousand percent gonna play guard. I

Brad:

when did this even happen?

Alan:

bought Brian Carlson's guard Army. In order to play guard, like literally bought an army for guard. In fact, I will take a picture of that guard army and put it right here.

Brad:

Yeah. There's no chance you're doing that.

Alan:

A thousand percent. I'm doing that.

Brad:

Yeah, you can percent. I'm so busy, I can't possibly do anything you are, however, working on, so one of us had a dream, a vision, maybe even a vision quest. And that was Rochester. And he said, Alan, you know what I need in my life? My waterfall vision.

Alan:

Oh God.

Brad:

My vision of a and display board. Let's talk about what a Adep toon team tournament is. AEP Toon team tournament is old school 40 K. It's very big on theme. You actually have a comp score'cause it's built into that. I. You still have a battle score, you've got a paint score, and then of course you have your sportsmanship spirit or whatever the thing is, but there's a lot that goes into it. You have to have a little bit of everything and you want to get max it's an all purpose. It's again, old school. It's like it used to be thing. And it's one of my favorite tournaments, possibly my favorite tournaments. The Epcon team tournament. You have four players who each have a thousand points Army. And those players play two, two on two games. So there's 2000 points, just like a regular game on the board, on two different tables. And you have to play with each one of your teammates once and then you can choose on day two. cause we play five games you can play and then you get to choose on day two who plays together. So you make your armies to be the best at playing with a specific other, but you have to rotate through everybody.

Alan:

I think more people are probably familiar with doubles events. So it's like a

Brad:

Yeah,

Alan:

but you have multiple pairs of doubles.'cause it's four people on

Brad:

maybe even a double. Ah,

Alan:

double, A double. Yeah. What would that

Brad:

pretty sneaky six. Connect four. But that's so old by the way. That's like maybe the old, the oldest reference I've made in a long time. That's like a 1979 commercial,

Alan:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brad:

but.

Alan:

I agree. I think it is, it's still my favorite event and I'm very excited for it. I think Adept Con also is gonna be pretty, pretty packed this year. And from a

Brad:

It is jammed.

Alan:

From all the events, like all the Eternity, like the Lord of the Rings is on fire. age of Sigmar is on fire.

Brad:

the, it's gonna be

Alan:

I

Brad:

single's gonna be 300 tournament, 300 person tournament. The chair.

Alan:

Yeah. 300 person plus tournament. I,

Brad:

That's wild.

Alan:

Yeah. It's

Brad:

we have to talk about this. So there's a reason that I don't play in the singles. I love singles. I play a lot of singles events. My team's still my favorite, but playing that much. 40 k for a guy that's trying to hang on desperately to life because the singles tournament now is four games on Thursday and up to five games on Friday. If you make the top 32. So they used to be four games and then a top 16, which another four. But if you play all the way to the finals. Inept account championships. You're playing five games of 40 K on Friday, so you're playing nine games of 40 K in two days. That's crazy, man. I love 40 K, but that's a lot. That's a lot of 40 k Joseph.

Alan:

I've actually done it once. And it is very tough. I did it at the, the only event that I know of that you could have done this at was if you were trying to go for the Ironman at Nova, which I did do, where you're playing in the 40 K trios, the invitational and the open, if you're doing all three events, if you have one day where you play five games of 40 K in one day and it potentially six, I think I must have lost in the semifinals or somewhere. So I didn't play that six game, but I did play five games of 40 k. In one day. And that was Brutal. when I was playing Orks back then. Remember Brad, I was playing 180 boys with ork knobs. that was just a crazy army to play.

Brad:

were a powerful young lad at the time, though.

Alan:

yeah. But that's an insane army to play when you're playing five games in one day. You really wanna play more. I don't know, gimme 25, custodian guard, some dread knots

Brad:

Play nights, play like nine nights. You're good.

Alan:

play something small.

Brad:

it's a big deal at night because that isn't something that you want, I wanted to talk about today, which is when you play these bigger, these long tournaments, when you're playing eight, nine games, and I usually they're spread out over three days of Deon's kind two. if I was trying to win the championships this year. I would take an army that gives me faster games, which can also hopefully give me a couple auto wins. So like armies that have, are skewed a little bit so that you get, you meet certain things in the Met, and you can just steamroll'em.'cause you need a couple, any, anytime you're running a big, big tournament, you have to have a little bit of luck, In matchups, dice, whatever. But you need a, you need some quicker games. You need to be able to just go through because you're gonna get mental fatigue, man. You can only be on top of your game for so often. It's so much so that, I think that's a big deal is Army choice, Because there's certain armies that take, they really grind out. They play five turn games. They're really good armies. But if you're gonna play nine games in two days. Maybe you're not gonna be able to grind nine, five turn games, You want something that just smoke, show stuff. You want to throw your, daca, DACA works on the board kind of thing where you could just roll a million dice and pick somebody up. Maybe you wanna play your 15 know 15 warden Custodes with the new Lions of the emperor detachment, where you have very few units, but it's very powerful and gets game games done very quickly.

Alan:

Yeah, for sure. I totally agree. the best feeling you have at a big tournament, especially when you're trying to, when you're going to try to win, like I know back in the day with LVO for me, I would love, love. I would love to come to your table when you're still in deployment and I'm like, I'm done. I.

Brad:

Oh dude.

Alan:

that's like my favorite thing to do because I know I have a break now, like rounds 2, 3, 4, I can maybe get, a solid win out of those. if, I think round four is still the first game, day two, and then rounds two and three, rounds one, two, and three are a crapshoot. but yeah, if you can get those games out of the way faster than the two and a half hours, three hours, it's really good. very good for use. I like. Psychology wise, to just have that fresh brain going to those next games. I think it's super solid.

Brad:

One of the big things on this is I think a little prep goes. Way. So I think that you want to know, wait. It's a big deal to know. One of the things that people don't do enough of is just deploying your army. I can't state enough know what your deployments are and really there's only so many deploy. you're going to deploy a certain way. Hey, is this a shooting army? Is this a hand in hand? Army is, it's a hybrid. you're gonna go, Hey, we're playing search and destroy board corners. Hey, we're playing tipping Point. Put your army out there so you know exactly what you're gonna do, so you're not wasting time. I don't have very, I almost have very few clock issues because I play pretty quickly. But also I know what I'm gonna do before I come to the table. And I also think it makes it more fun because you feel more confident. You're, you know exactly what you're gonna do. You're not screwing around, you're not trying to make a game plan, right? Then you're trying to, you already know, how am I going to win? What am I doing? It saves a lot of time.

Alan:

But keep in mind also, just to play devil's advocate, not that I disagree with anything you just said. I think everything said's perfect. just always keep in mind that when you're playing someone, what you think their path to winning is as well. And if

Brad:

A hundred percent.

Alan:

your game quickly, that path, right? You could see players make mistakes, play the player. don't always play the game. Play the player too, and figure out where you think, if you're playing someone in chess and they love to use their queen. And they lose their queen in the game and they all of a sudden crumble. That's an important thing for you to realize when you're playing 40 K. same thing. So when you're playing a miniatures game or any strategy game really, you kinda wanna evaluate what does the other person really want to play with? Look for the best painted model. look for,

Brad:

I mean that, that's so funny that you say that. No, it, that's a big deal though, because if somebody's got one model, that's beautiful.

Alan:

Yeah.

Brad:

spent a lot of time on that. But they also love that using that model, so

Alan:

For

Brad:

it,

Alan:

is a game in person, on a table. It's not a

Brad:

I.

Alan:

game. So the person matters. so yes, have a strategy. Deploy your army, flex all of that. Make sure you really know what you are doing. so knowing thyself, right? The big part of

Brad:

Know thyself.

Alan:

Know, know thy opponent, right? Another part of it. Know thy opponents army a part of it. And if you could, if you can pivot just slightly. Even if it's a big risk, right? like a good example is a TC, like the last time I was at a TC, it's been like two years or so, but I was playing a ne run army with 18 bikes, 18 ne run bikes. And I got paired into this eldar army that was like all vehicle, no, actually I think it was a tower army, whatever it was. It was an all vehicle army with like just insane amounts of firepower and no one on the team wanted to play

Brad:

You were also bad against it. Your army was made specifically to kill infantry.'cause at the time, the best list, the top list that you were seeing in every single team were was infantry lists. These mass infantries.

Alan:

Which is perfect for my point because I saw this army and I'm like, oh my God, this army will pick me up. So if I could play it, I can hide behind terrain, use obscuring, get on objectives, play the mission game. all of that, right? that will most likely work. and I'll grind out a game or. I could just on the line and hope I go first Scout and engage his entire army and win the game in one second. And that's what happened. We rolled, I went first. I scouted the bikes forward. I charged his entire gun line army with all 18 of my bikes. And I looked at him, I said, do you wanna keep playing? And he said, Nope. Let's go get a beer. And that was it, 20 zero.

Brad:

I, I would,

Alan:

a strategy, but understand how you can pivot. Really important.

Brad:

I think what you meant to say was, give yourself an opportunity to have an opportunity.

Alan:

Exactly, that's exactly correct. and

Brad:

I.

Alan:

not, I'm not playing in the singles either, Brad, and that's because, I believe in a, I believe in a welfare state and a welfare program. And that is to take Brad team tournament war hammer 40 K art team, where, you know, 50% of the score is painting and modeling and theme and doing all this extra stuff. And, Brad knows how to do zero of it. None of it.

Brad:

I love

Alan:

none.

Brad:

the closer we get to Adept account. So farther off from Adept account, Alan is so happy I'm on the team. He's You're gonna make the list, we're gonna cross. You're in charge of all the game plans and what we're bringing. The closer we get to the more work he's now doing, the more I get. Yeah. I may or may not have just had a text thread, that just yelled, Alan yelled at everyone. No, he didn't. He yelled at specifically at me.

Alan:

it didn't help that you came over for practice week. You didn't know the missions. You didn't know the deployments,

Brad:

I did know the missions.

Alan:

No. You're like, look it up. Look it up. Look it up. Look it up. I don't even know where to look it up. So it's just so funny that you're supposed to be in charge and

Brad:

I did,

Alan:

you're like, I'm in charge of strategy, baby. That's it. I know how

Brad:

you said, you asked me how you wanted to set up. I go, I don't think I've ever set up apartment.

Alan:

Yeah. you've never put terrain anywhere,

Brad:

not once,

Alan:

like

Brad:

like just go ahead and do that.

Alan:

people do that for me.

Brad:

that's good.

Alan:

I'm here for how to win.

Brad:

Yeah, this is crazy talk place and terrain on the board. That sounds insane.

Alan:

that's the biggest thing that I have right now is I don't know, like what the missions are anymore because if you're just not in the loop, you gotta like refresh that part now a little bit more than you, you used to, I remember ba back in the day, you wouldn't know the mission. You go to the tournament, you get the mission in front of you. It's a brand new mission. It's like

Brad:

Every time

Alan:

of the board. Every turn it expands three inches and it's dangerous terrain. And

Brad:

d death think about, dangerous or death world death boards and stuff like that. You had

Alan:

that's how

Brad:

dangerous train everywhere.

Alan:

It used to just be like, get to the table, here's your mission. And the mission

Brad:

was some wacky shit. Sometimes though,

Alan:

Oh yeah.

Brad:

we were talking about the freaking GW lava boards where they had an h.

Alan:

Remember the one where if you, if you hold it, there was the mission, I don't know if you've ever played it, but I played a mission once where if you get the objective at the end of the turn. You roll a dice. If you have the objective, if you get a one, your opponent gets to pick up your unit and put it anywhere on the board, nine inches away.

Brad:

The, I actually think one of my favorite missions of all time was we had this mission where, and the gladiator, this is how long ago it was. It was gladiator. And you could pick one unit from your opponent's army and they couldn't bring it out until turn three.

Alan:

Oh,

Brad:

And

Alan:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brad:

it my,

Alan:

veto a unit. Yeah.

Brad:

yeah. my opponent went first and I went second. He chose a unit of Rath guard. I chose his warlord titan and he, I don't know why he decided to do that. He brings his guy on a three, kills him something, and I just bring Myra

Alan:

your rate

Brad:

unit right next to the titan and it blew up. And that's when they had that catastrophic, explosion and he got a 30 some, inch explosion and killed his entire army. And we were just like, okay, cool. I guess this game's over. So those are crazy stories though. I like such like that I do miss some of the random,

Alan:

Some of the

Brad:

we did have a lot, we had a lot more random back in the day

Alan:

Yeah.

Brad:

and a lot of people hate that. what are your thought? I know you like it, but what do you think?

Alan:

No,

Brad:

I do think it's a lot more flavor. I.

Alan:

I love the random, I'm playing a game with dice, right? that's the whole point. Like I don't think, I think that's, I think the random is super. I, it's super fun. I think that's what the game needs to have in my opinion. I also like, I don't know, I've never been a big fan, this already. I've never been a big fan of like set terrain, set missions.

Brad:

That's a, it's such a big deal now, dude. You know that people are like really adamant about that. You have that.

Alan:

I'm, oh, I'm in the gross, I'm in the very far minority. I know that I'm well aware. Yeah. I just don't, I'm not a big fan of it. I like different kinds of terrain. I like,

Brad:

Corporate 40 K is.

Alan:

stuff. Yeah. I don't like corporate 40 k. We know this already. We've talked about this in the past. I think people game, I think like it only gives advantage to people who are really have the time to invest in like practicing now, specifically for the terrain, practicing now specifically for the missions, designing army lists that take. Take advantage of the terrain and of the missions, right? what did we do? The first thing we did on the very first day we met was to calculate whether or not a 28.5 millimeter base can still charge someone if they're one, one inch and one millimeter away from the wall. And we figured out Yeah, you could. Yeah. So if a model is a 1.1 inches from the wall, which is like a normal strategy 32 millimeter base. can't engage it or anything bigger. Cannot engage it.'cause it would be in the wall.

Brad:

Right?

Alan:

but a 28.5 can, so LAR can't hide from'em. They

Brad:

and why And how it does is it fits between the grooves. Between every time there's a, the two models are together and you have the in debt, it fits in that

Alan:

Why is this even a thing? Like why do we even need this? to be honest, like we should just be able to charge stuff. If you could charge it, you could charge it.

Brad:

hundred percent.

Alan:

remember the year Nova where models could just exist in walls

Brad:

Yep.

Alan:

then they broke the game.'cause they had some walls that were bigger than the model. So we

Brad:

So it would stay inside the wall forever.

Alan:

what if warp splatters just in the wall? Then could you shoot him?

Brad:

Remember, rose did that. Rose did that. Just won the game. He was just like, I'm gonna stay inside this wall.

Alan:

stupid. Obviously.

Brad:

a hundred percent

Alan:

he should be able to stay in the wall. That's fine. But he should also be able to be shot.

Brad:

yes. All day long.

Alan:

now. that's

Brad:

He's part of the wall. He melded into it. He's in the spirit world, dog.

Alan:

So for those who are listening and actually care, they had these big rock walls

Brad:

They're thick.

Alan:

day, back in that day, war players can shoot and then move after they shoot. So he was like jumping out, shooting and then getting back in the wall. the judges were like, eh, it's fine. We ruled that walls cannot be like abused. You can't abuse walls. So that models can't fit, right? Like the train is situational based on the battlefield models. Placement is situational based on the battlefield. Let's embrace the narrative of war hammer. let's not play it like, literal, as literal as the base literally are. but yeah, it created another problem where they didn't rule the second part of the que like the rule using logic like obviously the warfighter should be able to get shot. That's

Brad:

All day long. This is so crazy.

Alan:

been like, he needs to pick a side. That's what I So I would've said you're in the wall, but for intensive purposes, you're either facing this side or this side. So models on this side could shoot you, or models on this side could shoot you. that's what I would've done.

Brad:

I have to say this year, going back to the, talking about the team tournament stuff, I'm gonna go back to the singles in a minute because I wanna talk about,

Alan:

yeah. Okay. The thing that you're

Brad:

yeah.

Alan:

with right now. Got it. Yeah, go ahead.

Brad:

Ah, Jesus. I love everything about this. It's so bad. Also waterfall,

Alan:

I hate waterfalls with a passion.

Brad:

But the team tournament, I actually really enjoy. I. Extra the problems and stuff that come in because you, speaking of and I embraced it as opposed to some of us who have a lot of hate for people on their team. I embrace the joy because Alan said we're playing Highlander this year. Zero, Across all 4,000 points.

Alan:

of any kind. Not troops, not dedicated transport, nothing.

Brad:

And so I had to make, with those constraints, I had to make four 1000 point lists, and I had a really good time. I like, I really, I really enjoyed it. I think our lists are really cool too.

Alan:

Yeah, I had fun as well. making the Army. So because we're Highlander, also made every single unit unique. I. None of the units are the same, so they're all like every single unit, like the jet bikes are a different dinosaur riding jet bike than the warlocks on bike. And the warlocks on bike are a different dinosaur than the shroud runners on bike, like totally different dinosaurs.

Brad:

I am excited to show people once we have'em on the board and we got some picks for everybody, we probably do it next episode and show some of the results from Adept Con.

Alan:

yeah, probably two episodes from now, like we'll have a recap episode so

Brad:

Yeah.

Alan:

time just to take pictures of everything and put it all together. But

Brad:

But I like them. I like them a lot though. I really, I enjoyed the way I. Yeah, I know, but the, I'm saying the model itself is really cool. Can you used raptors for our jet bikes and they looked like really cool. our cri crimson hunters a octo.

Alan:

Yeah. I'm working on the base right now. I love it. It's really cool. It's

Brad:

I, it looks really sweet. I think it's really cool. What? You know what? Talk about that. And the meta. What do you, if you were running right now, you are running a de toon team. Would you bring, would you put any cop restrictions on stuff? Because there is a big difference between a lot of the teams.

Alan:

I would handle comp very easy for adept con. if I was in charge and the way I would handle comp is I would look at, I would have a very small comp. based on the army you picked, like the army you picked should almost not matter. It'll matter a little bit if you're abusing the attributes of that army. So if you're running IG and you have all of the mortars, all of the special sauce you're taking all the toros, you're taking all of the special weapon guys, the, what are those guys called? the special teams, with all the melters and the L

Brad:

Oh

Alan:

and all. Yeah. If

Brad:

yeah.

Alan:

have all this, if you're just maxing, if it's four guys all everyone's maxing, then you're gonna get hit pretty hard on comp for me because,'cause you're spamming, right? So the moment I see spamming, I'm gonna start to go, okay, what did you take more than two of? And that's where I'm gonna start to say, okay, does your army have enough varieties so that this wasn't needed? if you're custodians. And you have more than two custodian guard units. That's okay. If you have more than two Paladin units, it's probably okay. If you have more than two of the custodian dread knots, it's probably okay.'cause custodians have a very small limited line. if you're playing harlequins and you're repeating with Harlequins, that's probably fine. but if harlequins are like the top tier S army. And you're coming with Harlequins and you have all four armies of harlequins. I would beg to differ. I would say you could have took some dark eldar, you could have took some eldar, you could have made a Harlequin versus something else battle as a theme and two harlequin to something else. The fact that you came with all Harlequin and harlequins are like the top army. Let's just hypothetically say that's where I'll take those two things into a, into one algorithm like. Highly high powered codex mixed in with spam of high powered parts of that code codex. That's where I would feel like

Brad:

Now, do you need a rubric for that or do you, are you doing it just all subjective?

Alan:

the moment you make a rubric, people will game the rubric. So you defeat your point with the rubric. The rubric will just tell you what's banned. That's all the rubric will do.'cause it'll just be like, Hey, this is our rubric. So you'll just start like banning things. And I don't think you can just universally ban, like I said. Like custodians, like harlequins right now are not considered the best. So if you did take an army where you spammed a bunch of stuff, I don't think it's that much of a problem. Let's say you took demons, and you wanted to play a bunch of corn, let's say four armies of demons, and you're going as corn, right? You're making a giant, don't know, let's say a casket, and it's themed with blood and it has a dead corn body in it and a dead skull throat.

Brad:

all hypothetical, of course.

Alan:

hypothetical. And there's like a fountain of blood like on it. I don't know. And it's super cool. And everyone has a blood thi everyone has a unit of dogs. Everyone has corn cor blood letters. Everyone has, a skull can or something like that. Should that get docked? No, that should never. That's awesome. That's awesome. If Korn was the best thing in the game, then yeah, maybe it does need to get docked. So I think that's that's why you can't really make a rubric. It has to be somewhat subjective, but I think we all know what armies are like the top five. And I

Brad:

Because we don't have anything of that.'cause we have had in recent years some real spammy armies that got perfect gut scores.

Alan:

the two years ago when we lost, we were in the championship round with our world Eaters army. we took a very balanced, very all around World East Army, Andon, four versions of anon. and we lost to the igs the Canadian guys, which are great guys. I was shocked that they won the whole tournament. I was absolutely shocked.'cause that was guards like, that was like the peak of

Brad:

They were powerful.

Alan:

was like two years ago. The team had 16 Lehman Ruses, four squads of Scout sentinels. They had four units of Kerins. Castor kins. Yeah. They had everything. They had all of the stuff that you'd be like, here's the stuff that's good in guard. They had that

Brad:

Yeah.

Alan:

anything that was inefficient. And then that was back when Detic Con didn't really have the best terrain. So we're in the championship

Brad:

Jesus

Alan:

of Adept Con teams with world Eaters.

Brad:

Player Place, train also.

Alan:

four pieces of player plays training the board. it was rough. We just looked at each other this is gonna be bad. and yeah. And it was rough. We basically pushed, I think one table lost a couple points. One table won a couple points, but then at the end, when they won overall and we got second, I was shocked. I didn't think, I didn't think we were gonna win the tournament. I thought

Brad:

I did.

Alan:

leapfrog us. I know you did. You did actually think we're gonna win.'cause our

Brad:

I did.

Alan:

just on point

Brad:

Our theme was so strong that year.

Alan:

so strong that year, I think, in terms of display and the models were heavily converted and everything like that. It's a really fun event,

Brad:

That was the year. That was the year I was most disappointed because of the fact that I thought we had the everything of it. You know what I mean?

Alan:

second place is second place, first loser, but silver.

Brad:

Rad place,

Alan:

bad place. You should be familiar with it. every event that we go to, at least, you're right behind me. and,

Brad:

boom.

Alan:

I think it's, that's actually super not true for the last seven years.

Brad:

you know what we're gonna, before I go back to the Def God signals, I want you to tell what you kept doing. So Alan would show up to tournaments under fake names,

Alan:

Oh yeah, I

Brad:

tell me he's coming. It would be stuff, and it would always be something in my hometown. He would come from Chicago to Toledo

Alan:

Yeah.

Brad:

just show up. And under a fake name. And you started getting so ridiculous.'cause not only he made fake names, they were all names of characters, from different TV shows. And he literally got a backstory for multiple of these. And I was like, dude,

Alan:

sleeve once I put on a fake tattoo sleeve. It took a long time to wash that off. By the way.

Brad:

with

Alan:

Brooklyn nine nine,

Brad:

Yeah,

Alan:

just, I would just show up as one of Jake Peral alter's, alter egos,

Brad:

dude.

Alan:

up, Brad?

Brad:

With the full backstory of he's a surgeon, he does this. He's did you really just make a backstory for your fake character, for your 40 K entry? yes, indeed I did.

Alan:

hell

Brad:

So I love everything about that. There is some cracky stuff on that

Alan:

I don't

Brad:

single.

Alan:

if I ever went back to singles, I will go back to singles. I plan on doing some singles events this year. I'm coming to your tournament

Brad:

Yep. June,

Alan:

June.

Brad:

6th, seventh, and eighth. The motor city, I actually changed it. It is the 40 K major, sponsor ed by the lower cast, run by Brian Horton at Rochester.

Alan:

nice,

Brad:

It'll be the June 6th, seventh, and eighth. Tickets are up. I'm super excited about it. We've got e

Alan:

Horton is running it with you.

Brad:

Yeah,

Alan:

I didn't know Brian was running it. Cool. Awesome.

Brad:

like you weren't gonna have an adult running it. You didn't have just me.

Alan:

I didn't know if John was playing a role in it or is

Brad:

No, it just, not just playing.

Alan:

Oh sweet. I'm

Brad:

Yeah. So one of the biggest things, I'm very excited about it because I wanted a tournament that had all the things that I like as a player,

Alan:

my tournament. Back to the game. Is'cause

Brad:

in,

Alan:

scored appropriately.

Brad:

yeah, we got individual tables, so you're, every table's an island. We have table service for drinks and food and everything else. Then we're doing per round with some prizes out there for wacky stuff.

Alan:

Oh man. I'm gonna get even with you on this one. I'm gonna get so drunk. I'm gonna get like the boys level drunk

Brad:

Oof. That's rough.

Alan:

I'm just gonna make, I'm gonna make a scene

Brad:

Oh God. I'm gonna have an a arrested.

Alan:

buddy. You gotta sit down over here.

Brad:

The, I'm actually super excited about it because I'm doing all this stuff that I want to have for a tournament. there's gonna be paint judging by like really good painters and they've got a full rubric that we're using. So I'm that's coming from some of the bigger turn.

Alan:

of rubric, speaking of rubrics, right? Theme and comp, hard to rubric kind of subjective. I agree. I think there are some universal rules with theme and stuff like that, like comp, I just went through it. Theme. It should be relevant to the 40 K universe in some way. If your theme is like Sisters of Battle and the Knights and Custodies and GR Knights got together to have a DJ party, not a freaking theme. I'm sorry, this is not a theme. I'm just gonna go out there and say it. I love everyone. Not a theme. not a theme, right? you, it needs to have some grounding in 40 K. It doesn't necessarily have to be based on a book. It doesn't even necessarily have to fully make sense. It could be your own version of a story that could happen in the dark grm future, If you take no effort or if you just make up nonsense, those are basically equivalent in my eyes. So if I was running it, that's how I would look at that. not running it. So whatever, people could do whatever they want, right? And they'll get judged however they want. But painting has always historically been a pretty easy rubric, right? there's a subjectivity on Good. Great. Awesome. That's like a 5, 10, 15 score. But then like highlighting, shading, basing, conversions, all those things, those are all like, freehand, those are like the six general categories. And then you just go again, good, great, awesome for all of them. And that's basically what it is.

Brad:

I,

Alan:

rubric.

Brad:

yeah, it.

Alan:

by the way, a max score on a rubric should always be like, 15 points more than the max score you can get. Because there should be like, there should be like best painted, which is the just who's the best rubric. And there should be like the painting score at the event. So let's say for example, the painting score is out of 50, make the rubric go to 70. Or 75 because then someone who has, let's just really quickly walk through this. Overall, it's awesome. 15 points overall highlighting is really good. It's not awesome, but it's highlighting is good, like really good. So let's say great, right? So they're gonna get another 10. So they're 25 conversions solid, not great, not awesome, but solid. So another five points. So they're at 30, right? Then let's say shading is really good. So that's 10 more. That's 40. Let's say their free hand is really good. That's 10 more. That's 50, right? They've maxed. You've already maxed. And they should have maxed, right? Even if the bases are just average, they should have maxed. And if the bases are good, let's say the bases are awesome, right? Let's say they're amazing, so like 12 more points or 15 more points on top of that, whatever the case may be. And then you give the best painted award to whoever maxed out the bracket. But it should be okay at an event to have roughly 10% of the event, maybe a little less, have a perfect paint score for the event. Overall purpose, like the overall purpose of the event. You shouldn't feel like only one person

Brad:

Yeah, they're doing, we're doing that.

Alan:

deserves a perfect score for

Brad:

They're, they're making a rubric and it's being, grabbed by a lot of the people, like the green banner guys and stuff like that have a paint score for that. And they're doing, and a lot of people are gravitating onto scores like that, where multiple people just get a level, You get, you're not just saying, this guy get a 50 because only one person can get a 50. You got a 49 kind of thing. No, you both got, you had great army, so you both have fifties, and I like that quite a bit.

Alan:

I think you should go further for the scoring though, so that you actually know who is best painted. That's a different concept, right? So best painted is different. When you're overall judging, though, I think it's okay for a hundred person tournament there's five to 10 people that have a perfect painting score, and then in that five to 10, there's a huge range. And that's totally fine, I think. and I think if you took a regular, let's say like a normie took someone off the street who doesn't know anything about painting or 40 K and you show'em like, the best model at the event, and another person who could have got a 50 did really well, like top five, they're not gonna be able to tell the difference between the two models. So for the purposes of the overall score, it's important, I think if you have the bracket go over so that you can award best painted the right way, but not, not create a curve. Because then the curve isn't justified in the mid round. Like the difference between the guy who has 41 and 50 in reality is not gonna be there. Like the guy who has the 50 is gonna get a 43 and then you're gonna feel bad giving the guy with a 41 anything lower, right? that's what's gonna happen. So you gotta make sure you give everyone that put in enough effort to get a max. They get a max, and then you evaluate who's the best after that.

Brad:

But that's a different award too. You know what I mean? So we're talking about two different things. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Alan:

Yeah.

Brad:

And I like that though.

Alan:

but those extra points don't go into the overall, that's how they used to do it. I'm not inventing anything here. That's how all of the old rubrics were back in the day, like way back in the day. For overall, you'd have an overall score of 50 for painting, but like the rubric went to 70, if you maxed it, or like 75. If you got every single point in the entire rubric, you were at like 75 points. That's why conversions were so important. I would finish a tournament back in, like we're talking like 20 10, 20 12, I'd finish a tournament and I'd have my army and I'd have a buddy of mine, buddy's army's painted better. We both objectively feel like my buddy's army's painted better, but my army has a ton of conversion, like just a ton and a lot more freehand. And then we get our scores and my painting score is higher. And my buddy's bro, I highlight better. And my colors, my color picks are better, my blending is better. What's going on? I'm like, I have all of those things. Good. Yes, yours is better. Mine is great though. And then I also have conversions in freehand. And you don't, and that's the difference. That's what

Brad:

That's how that's so hard too though. Like I actually think that the paint judging people have. Harder time than, regular 40 K engine. it's brutal.

Alan:

You have to forget the one you just saw. A good paint judge needs to not remember that. You cannot compare army to army

Brad:

Has to be a goldfish.

Alan:

Yeah. You have to be a goldfish. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta be noodling for those sixes.

Brad:

Noodling for sixes, baby.

Alan:

I gotta throw that in every once in a while. That's just a part of my contract.

Brad:

Who's gonna win the Deon? what faction? we've gotta co no. Okay. Yes. Team Tournament Con. We already locked in, in, I already called em up and said I won. So we got that in the, individual for the Deon 40 K singles event. You got some really strong armies. You got things like everybody loves Docker right now with sustain two on everybody.

Alan:

Yeah,

Brad:

You've got the cus.

Alan:

If I was going right now, I'd be playing orcs.

Brad:

It's a fun army too.

Alan:

Yeah, for

Brad:

got a lot of volume. Yeah. CTO's very strong.'cause I think it has a very big counter two ORs on that. You've got, you've still got Bobby G and the Ultra Marines doing their super shoot lists. You've seen, I. A lot of, you've seen blood angels and stuff do well, but I think that you saw a lot of bloodless angels and that be with the data slate.

Alan:

Yeah.

Brad:

said they no longer get their plus one on their oath, so any of those detachments, so we've got that, we've got a decent, you can win with anything, to be honest with you. Or is one of the complex armies like an ld, a RA dark LDAR, things of that nature. IG still very strong, even though Bridgehead got hit pretty hard, that army still. Nasty as hell. I'm wondering, what do you think, what would you put your Vegas money on? what do you think's gonna win again? Nine games of 40 K. So like some of these hoard armies are very strong, but are they strong for nine games of 40 K?

Alan:

Yeah, you're not gonna like my answer per usual.

Brad:

Yeah.

Alan:

your narrative and your brand and your. Your benchmark is to suggest that all armies could really compete and all, any army could win. Any army could compete. The Met is great. The game's awesome. that's the slogan of Brad. for me, like I don't know who's going, so I don't know, like the attendance pool. I'm sure I could open it up on Best Coast pairings probably, but I'm not gonna do that right now. But my opinion is you're gonna see a name you've seen before and my opinion on 40 K in general is that there is a very small. A fairly small group of people that are basically so good and play it so often and flex those muscles that we talk about so much that really the goal is to overcome them. You have to beat those people. So I don't know if the change to the armies that just happened recently, is big enough where, and I don't know if these, the top players have pivoted quick enough. to make up for that. but with all of that to be said, I'm not in, I'm not in the details on that. If I was going, I'd be playing the OR Army. I think the, OR Army is a really interesting concept. I think it's fun. I think it's a lot of shooting. So I think it changes the perception of the game quite a bit where we've been stuck in this high quality damage output, rent output game for a little while. And then that list comes along and it's like roll. Way more diced than you've ever rolled for saves ever. I don't care that you have a two plus save and I have no rent. Like I, it just, it's gonna happen, right? Like that. I think that's what's happening with that. So we'll see how that pivots

Brad:

So it's an R me with all multi damage too.

Alan:

no, I know. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So it's not like crazy multi damage, but yeah, damage two is

Brad:

But twos and threes, yeah.

Alan:

two, two and three is really serious stuff. So yes, I would go with something along those lines. I'm actually really curious, like what people make from the change. So I've been hearing some crazy army lists where like you're talking like, hundreds of models and that's pretty interesting. I don't know if the Met is ready for that right now. So if someone shows up to Adep Toon with a 200, 2, 300 model army count and like some hard hitting like. Close combat units are hard hitting, like damaged dealing units mixed in. It's gonna be really interesting.

Brad:

I think the Horde armies always have a play because of the fact that there's just a lot of armies that do not have enough dice to do anything about it. that's a fact. There's mo, there's so many armies that have, you've got great stuff, but you don't have enough actual weight of dice to go. I can't get rid of your 300 Ronalds kind of thing.

Alan:

and if there is a pivot to hoards armies with guard and demons and I don't know if Gs c's coming back at all or whatever else

Brad:

GSC has been doing very well, but the guard detachment for just the hoard of Guardsmen is a legit army man.

Alan:

the or Army is gonna be great. Counter to that meta.

Brad:

Oh yeah.

Alan:

shifts to a horde and then someone brings the daca, like who? Oof.

Brad:

It just says, take 800 saves. There you go.

Alan:

yeah.

Brad:

Remember the time you took 800 saves. It was right now.

Alan:

It's pretty sustained. Two is no joke, man. I, what I would tell you is I would expect to see, I'm shocked that GW did push out a change before Adep Toons cutoff. I feel like those people talk, so I feel like AEP Toon might've been like, Hey, can we not do this? And I maybe they said, Hey, we're cool with it. I don't know, but I'm shocked it came out like the day before. it was like literally the day of, or the day before of their cutoff. it was a pretty big shakeup, I think in general. so we'll see. I don't know. I would be, very surprised if there isn't a fast FAQ post the deacon where someone does come with something very abusive that no one saw, and they're just like, oh no, this was not what we wanted.

Brad:

Yeah. This is not what we did. not want you to play that shit, we had it two years ago with that, if you remember, the initial Harlequin release.

Alan:

Yeah,

Brad:

just, I've never seen shittier looking harlo court armies.

Alan:

weavers.

Brad:

Oh man. It was just like, people were just finding these things and slapping'em together.

Alan:

you get that many Popsicle sticks?

Brad:

Yeah, it was, they were bad looking.

Alan:

Why is your tank melting?

Brad:

Yeah. It was woo.

Alan:

So I think that's something that GW needs to be aware of right now. Not to go into a rant,'cause I don't want a rant right now, but. The idea of making an army like I can't imagine they on purpose make mistakes like these, like some of the mistakes they make, or I guess mistakes are not on purpose. I can't imagine that these are real mistakes that they're making. I feel like they intend, to make certain things better, then once they make them better, they, they're gonna sell models. But here's the problem. There's two problems. A, void weaver is a good example of this. Everyone goes and gets a 3D printed, or they get it from Russia or China or somewhere. The second thing, they don't even have the model in the store.

Brad:

That's my point. That's where I'm going. That's where I was gonna, I was going with this is I don't understand GW because they make these models and you're like, I would love to buy your model.'cause people don't want to have to go 3D print. They want to buy the thing like, I want an extra print, I want a gladiator tank. I wanted those void weavers at the time. If you can't get'em and it's the be, it's the best thing or one of the best things for your army. you're still gonna play with it, player competitive players are going to find these, they're gonna find a way to put it on the board. I think it's crazy to me that they just don't have it. And I don't know, I have no idea what gws with logistics and everything else, but man, it seems like you're really missing the boat when you see people bringing three of whatever in every army and you're like, none of these were GW bought. that's a lot of money that they're losing, by not being able to have that model.

Alan:

I, I, that's exactly how I feel too. So I can't, I feel like they can't be making the mistakes are so blatant. That like they couldn't have not known that they've created a vacuum of power somewhere in the game when they make some of these changes. But then the fact that they don't have the models available they also know that 3D printing is eating their margins. what's the point? Like just try to make it balance. try to not screw up in the first place is where I'm coming from.

Brad:

Yeah, but man, we have 27 factions with, six to eight de. Per it's

Alan:

was gonna be easier. Less books, less dice, less re-rolling. That's what they claimed. I have a video. You want me to show it to you? I can

Brad:

dude,

Alan:

actually

Brad:

I love that. when they first came out with 10th and they said there's gonna be less re-rolling. And then they immediate

Alan:

There was supposed to be less

Brad:

Yeah. Remember no, the next, no. The next day they released Oath of the Moment, which was full reels, and at the time it was full re rolls to Hit and Wound,

Alan:

I remember people going, oh, it's just gonna be Space Marines. It's

Brad:

and then it was just, nah, everybody's getting in.

Alan:

everybody's got re-roll everywhere. I'm like shocked that they haven't gone back and said, you know what? We're gonna allow re-roll to re-roll.

Brad:

Rero,

Alan:

let's go

Brad:

you can reroll it until you make it. You can't be stopped.

Alan:

that weapon, there was a weapon once where it was basically in my opinion, I mean I know it's not literally the same thing, but it was, it felt like re rolls to re rolls because it was like a weapon where you had five attacks. And for every attack that went through, you got those attacks back.

Brad:

Yeah, it was sustained. It was insane. That's when sustained was a way different thing. You kept getting you, you got more attacks every time you hit

Alan:

Yeah. Yeah. every time it went through, you just got more attacks, oh,

Brad:

so crazy.

Alan:

more, more.

Brad:

what? I only got 36 hits. You're like, what?

Alan:

it's

Brad:

This is crazy.

Alan:

Yeah, that was nuts. so yeah, no, I'm excited for Dcon. I know you're coming up.

Brad:

Are you excited for my new audio equipment? Eh?

Alan:

I always say coming up, but technically, is Toledo on the same

Brad:

I'm actually north of you.

Alan:

Are you north of me? I don't know.

Brad:

I think so.

Alan:

now.

Brad:

Hold on. We're gonna, we're gonna look at maps together.

Alan:

Put a map here.

Brad:

Map of the us. am I above Alan? I, no, I think that Chi-Town is slightly above me. Is it

Alan:

No, you're

Brad:

of

Alan:

I think

Brad:

Yeah. I'm,

Alan:

87

Brad:

yeah. Wait. Because you have to go up and you have to go up and around because they have to go around the lake.

Alan:

I like it.

Brad:

I love you. Hey, what are we gonna, you're like, what are we gonna do at the end of the video? Probably randomly talk about what my drive to Chicago looks like. You're like, thanks everybody. I'm glad you hold on for that one. That breaking

Alan:

Clearly scripted here.

Brad:

good news everyone. Tell me about the Patreon things you can help. Again, I'm getting, I got new audio. A said quote, Brad, your audio sounds like a bag of cats banging pans. And he went buy this and sent me a list of things

Alan:

I am

Brad:

which are currently right over there.

Alan:

a little bit of an audio snob so that the story tricks out.

Brad:

Sitting right in boxes and bags right now, ready to be done. I have to pick up a microphone from one Mister Pajama pants

Alan:

Yep.

Brad:

in three days,

Alan:

Yeah. What am I'm gonna be making a waterfall. That's one thing I'm doing. And

Brad:

an that's an excellent choice. I really appreciate you coming up with a waterfall idea. I was very happy.

Alan:

human being that walks up to our display board and says, Hey man, I really like the waterfall. I'm gonna say it. Yeah, no problem. That was my idea. Everyone who

Brad:

you.

Alan:

every single person,'cause you did nothing for it. And the waterfall

Brad:

I did too. I said, Alan, I want a waterfall.

Alan:

needs so much love and so much attention and you did nothing for her. Nothing.

Brad:

Yeah, I did. I said, I want a waterfall.

Alan:

Dad, you should be paying me child support for this waterfall. For the rest of

Brad:

Child support for the waterfall. I.

Alan:

You should pay me child support. Some kind of like alimony, some kind of psychiatric alimony support for dealing with such a waterfall. No, but no joke, like I know I could have made a very simple waterfall for you and you would've been like, thanks man. We have a waterfall, our whole display board.

Brad:

This makes me so happy. I'm joyous about this.

Alan:

it's went like waterfall extreme, and now I'm just mad at myself. now I'm just mad at myself at this point, but yeah, no, I gotta finish. I gotta finish all the rocks. rocks are tough, like making rocks outta pink foam people think is easy. Making shitty rocks outta pink foam is easy.

Brad:

Tell me why it's hard. I actually don't know. Tell me why it's hard.

Alan:

so pick pink foam is fairly it's fairly susceptible to breaking in ways that you didn't intend. So you don't, and you can't use a pink foam cutter. So there's like little wire cutters that cut pink foam, but those are like for precision cuts. When you're making rocks, you want like a rock shape. You want a, you don't want something that's precise because that doesn't happen in nature. There's no straight lines. So you kinda want like the rugged edges. you want it to look. Rocky, like it has like flat sides and curves and all that stuff. So then a dry brush is really nice, like a real rock. But it's ha it's hard to do. have a flat side, so you have to like, really, you almost have to carve them. You have to physically carve rocks outta foam using like a sharp blade. and then you have to fi figure out how to glue them. To the rock wall that you're making in a way that makes them all look the same. You can't have rocks that go, think about nature. All the rocks look like they flow together. Like the mountain looks like it works, like it was carved, it doesn't look like, doesn't look random. So you can't have the, you can't have the carvings be one direction on one rock and a totally separate direction than the other rock. So the normal way to solve this is you glue a bunch of pick foam together and you carve it all at one time. We can't do that with our board'cause there's fucking waterfalls. No, I'm just kidding. It's because of just the general structure of the board. The general structure of the board doesn't really support that model. I could have probably done that looking back. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe that was something I should have done. didn't do that though. So we're doing it a different way, but I'm learning. I'm not an expert at making display boards, despite the practice that I've had.

Brad:

I was just about to say you've been making display boards for 20 years.

Alan:

Yeah, pretty much.

Brad:

it just, yeah, it is.

Alan:

And that's not 20, it's 18, but yeah.

Brad:

Whatever. it's a while. How about that?

Alan:

they're progressively better, like the display boards I made in like 2008, 2009, all the way to 2015

Brad:

You know what I still have in my bedroom?

Alan:

What do you

Brad:

A ld, a Gladi, gladiator, arena is over there.

Alan:

I made that in two days with the whole

Brad:

I love it still up there.

Alan:

Yeah.

Brad:

It has socks on it right now.

Alan:

Yeah. So I gotta make, I gotta finish. That's so funny. Where do you keep your socks? I keep them in a Colosseum.

Brad:

Exactly

Alan:

A Colosseum that exists only in Kro.

Brad:

the Greatest Warriors Battle to the Death and Socks.

Alan:

No, I think I'm gonna start making some more like display boards for singles events and just like flexing those muscles. I find it very relaxing, like despite the anger of the

Brad:

I was just about say, I feel like you are not a relaxed, you've,

Alan:

it's

Brad:

you keep sending middle of the night angry texts to our team groups text.

Alan:

Yeah. That's more the fact that I have so many other responsibilities outside of building this display board, but yeah. I also do it to myself, right? So I could have made a smaller display board with less going on, and I decided to not do that for some reason.

Brad:

weirdly enough you have been saying that it's gonna be small and that it keeps getting bigger and bigger apparently.

Alan:

somehow just keep getting bigger. I don't know how it happens. Yeah. It's so weird. It's so weird. Yeah. So in retrospect, I would've approached it very differently. and it would've been a lot easier, I think. But yeah, it didn't do that

Brad:

I'm excited to see it. I hope that it, I'm really hoping it's not a circle.

Alan:

It is for the first time, not a circle. Yeah,

Brad:

It's good times.

Alan:

For the first time. It's not a circle. that's it for today's episode on the Chapter four 16 podcast. My name is Pajama Pants. That is Brad Chester, and we are out. Thank you for tuning in, and feel free to like and subscribe to the podcast.