This part of a brief, personal series on my experiences at Adepticon 2025.

What is this about?

“Pod” tournaments are typically 1-day events presented as a more casual and friendly environment within the context of a big convention, or adjacent to a Grand Tournament, so I was here mostly for vibes. I didn’t want to be extra competitive here but I had my adrenal glands ready in case I wanted to win. I had signed up for Kill Team Pods because I thought I needed some consistent practice for the Grand Tournament. I haven’t been playing nearly enough, other than the recent Chicagoland Dice Dojo Open, and every rep counts. I ended up at Pod 1 playing Warpcoven.

One fun anecdote: this tournament used a mix of Volkus and Octarius! Most players grumbled but I thought it was a nice variant. Octarius gives a beautiful chance for shooty hordes to shine - which is a nice thing given how adversarial Volkus is to them.

My first game was against Riley G., a Blooded pilot. He was quite new to the game so I tried to make it a good learning experience, explaining my intention and plays in detail. The mission was Secure, the map was Volkus Layout 5 - I think this is a very toxic layout for shooty teams so I explained my firing lanes in depth. Unfortunately I rolled insanely hot so that he lost the key pieces early and the game folded up quickly.

My second game was against Ryan B., a Hierotek player. Guess what? Volkus layout 5 again! The game went slowly, there were lots of Judge calls. I had one question about an “Interstitial command” play, which I was 99% sure my opponent was using correctly, but that I wanted to have clear in case I ran into another Hierotek player. Ryan used it for the plasmacyte to fall back which was pretty cute. Unfortunately we ran out of time and I ended up winning by a small amount.

My next game was against Cody B., a Hernkyn pilot. This was very good for me because I haven’t faced Hernkyn before. No need to guess the layout - it was Volkus Layout 5 again! I had a flying Sorcerer positioned very early so my opponent had a chance to play around it. My opponent positioned very aggressively on TP1 and wasn’t concerned about my Sorcerer. Unfortunately for him I got initiative on TP2, invested heavily on a big opening play (3 CP) and the Sorcerer killed his leader the required number of times. Otherwise, I would have been in a real pickle. The bad part was that we ran out of time again at TP3.

I found myself playing the final for the top spot, against Michael from the Chicagoland Dice Dojo. He is a wonderful opponent and knows me well - we have played quite a few times in this edition, and last time, I only won because one of his space lasers whiffed hard at 0 hits. The best thing was that it was on Octarius, that added some variety, and also was a very adversarial condition for me as I was cornered by his big shots and mobile operatives. I had a moderate threat on the center of the map, but he had more control of the flanks, putting lots of pressure on my home objective. I ended up winning, essentially, because he risked his dog too early and lost it. The result was close because I severely misplayed my TP4 and invested in Kill op for no gain while leaving 2 Crit Op points on the table.

Kudos to Michael for playing the entire tournament in a magnificent Space Captain Crunch cosplay - he even created a Captain Crunch proxy to use instead of Elucidia Vhane!

In retrospect, winning a tournament is always fun, but I got a gnawing feeling in the small of my back. I realized at most TP ends that I was making too many mistakes - I was lucky that my opponents didn’t realize it and exploited them. I think my final game was the only one with a clean execution on my part, but it served as small comfort given my extended experience in Octarius on 2nd edition and my knowledge on my opponent. We both agreed that we weren’t playing Kill Team much - rather, we were playing each other. Which is good for fun factor but poor practice.