by Jim Owczarski, 2 April 2025
Now a bit better rested, it is likely time to talk about historical gaming at Adepticon, but first:
Animadversion #4 — The space, generally speaking, worked.
It is not hard to deduce that the organizers of Adepticon wanted to grow into a larger space from their former home in Illinois. Milwaukee’s Baird Center is still young enough to have that new-convention-center odor on it so the two seemed a logical fit. It largely was. The events and vendors appeared to find space sufficient. They were spread out over the center’s four floors and two buildings, but they were all connected. Way-finding might have been better, particularly given how much there was to see. I am fairly adept at such things (I think), but managed to miss several rooms full of games for two whole days as they were cleverly hidden in plain sight near one of the center’s entrances.
In my experience, no convention has figured out the dark mystery of delivering badges to Will Call attendees. My own badge was mailed to me weeks in advance, but those in our group who had to pick theirs up said they experienced a small amount of confusion and a larger amount of delay. Nothing terrible, mind, but there it was.
Adepticon made a strong effort to put convenience food options in the center of the convention. This did create traffic problems at meal times, but the options were good if the prices were predictably exorbitant. As to outside options, I know Milwaukee very well so will leave to others to judge how much they felt was available. Nearby restaurants seemed to do a brisk business and even the more upscale establishment where a group of us ate on Thursday evening was doing what I suspect was an atypically good bit of trade at dinner time.
One special note was the approach Milwaukee’s largest game store catering to the miniature wargamer took to Adepticon. The owner of Napoleon’s, the store at which my own love of the hobby was born and nurtured, developed a dislike for GenCon. He saw no value in having a pricey booth there and felt it was a net loss for his business. Old Guard Games, which, for reasons I will not go into here, is a spiritual successor in many ways to Napoleon’s, took the opposite view. It was a sponsor of the convention, had no small amount of advertising both inside and outside the venue, had a large-footprint booth on the show floor, promoted Adepticon in its social media, and even ran an hourly shuttle from its store on Milwaukee’s East Side to the convention. I am sincere when I write that I hope they had great success.
click images to enlarge
Animadversion #5 — Despite Games Workshop’s dominance, there must still be a lot of money in skirmish gaming.
I wrote last time about how a horde of Lilliputians continue to nip at the ankles of GW’s Gulliver. This is so. Nonetheless, there are many companies trying to figure out a way to prosper with more compact, perhaps complete is the better word, skirmish gaming experiences played with miniatures.
Some are based on space.
Trying this again, are we?
Some are old friends looking for a new audience.
And here I was thinking selling my Heroscape originals was going to put my son through college.
And some suggest we may be running out of ideas.
Narrator: There were more waves than this. And by the way, Legends of What, now?
Of course, Star Wars Legion and Shatterpoint fall into this category and both were very well represented.
Animadversion #6 — I will not say there were no historical board wargames played or sold at Adepticon, but, if there were, people were hiding them from me. This was truly striking when it dawned on me sometime during day two.
Animadversion #7 — History has a home at Adepticon.
No one is going to mistake Adepticon for Historicon, at least any time soon. Historical miniatures were present in their numbers, however, and, while this may be magical thinking on my part, are encouraged and welcomed by the organizers and have room to grow in the future.
The really interesting thing to me was the number of vendors who were either represented or hired staff to put on games. They were nowhere near the size of their fantasy and sci-fi counterparts, but it was great to see them.
Battlefront and its flagship product Flames of War had a sizeable presence on the show floor but also had several well-attended tournaments for both Flames and Team Yankee.
Warlord, still mourning the passing of one of its founders, had a booth with the attack on Hougoumont on it. This counts for something. Also, representatives of the Armchair Dragoons were given a demo of Bolt Action 3rd edition which, perhaps unsurprisingly, led to many questions from Achilles about how “that” was supposed to be realistic.
Historical skirmish wargaming remains popular and the companies meeting the demand were certainly present.
On a personal note, the merging concerns of Winged Hussar Publishing and On Military Matters — the latter of which I affectionately identify as my wargaming drug dealer — were out on the show floor. It was almost unnerving to review their rules offerings and realize how many of them I had already bought. I bought more.
The Wargaming Company, David Ensteness, and their flagship rule set Et Sans Resultat! were both on the floor and running demos elsewhere, but I intend to write more about all of that in a bit.
Not all the historical games were corporately-sponsored. The lads from the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society came out in good numbers. One of my favorites — to the likely surprise of no one — was the huge Waterloo game built using plastic WoFun miniatures. Played using a locally-developed set of rules, one of the most intriguing features was leaving a great many of the Allied forces hidden on a separate table, as if behind the Duke of Wellington’s famous ridge.
I also greatly enjoyed the sub search game that involved dropping “depth charges” into a blind box where submarines were placed at various depths using telescoping bases. Dr. Griffith would have understood.
And how do you not like a rousing game of the Battle of Lade, played using a heavily-modified version of Avalon Hill’s classic Trireme?
Before putting a wrap on Adepticon for this year, I wanted to thank John (Achilles) and Robert for being my patient companions as we made our way through the thing. John had never been to a convention of this type before and was a game fellow, even allowing himself to be shoved into a Battletech simulator pod. He took third. Robert, true to his SeaBee roots, managed to locate a set of dice John was keen for when it seemed none could be found. This is them, with a few A.I. liberties taken by folks in the Discord chat.
Nothing is forever. Adepticon appears committed to Milwaukee for something like the next three to five years. No doubt there were lessons learned, some folks will return, and some vendors never will. Overall, though, I am excited it was here and that miniatures wargaming — particularly historical miniatures wargaming — is welcome again in a large-footprint convention in the Midwest.
Adepticon 2025
PART ONE ~ PART TWO ~ PART THREE
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