Schizophrenic’s Guide: Adepticon Blues

I, Dalton Lewis, worked like crazy to get ready for Adepticon, the biggest wargaming miniatures convention in the country. It’s located in Schaumburg, Illinois, about an hour from where I live in Grayslake, Illinois. I prepared for months getting ready for the tournament. I put together and painted fifty or so miniatures and painted them and based them. I decided to use space marines as my army of choice, thinking that they were tournament viable and strong and powerful, with a lot of firepower. Three years ago I played with thirty marines, a couple of heavy hitters, and an imperial knight, so I went with a similar concept this year. I went with thirty deathwatch marines that were powerful and well-armed, a leviathan dreadnought, and a knight. I wanted to win three games and lose one — everyone gets four games on the first day. I showed up to the tournament at seven am and got ready for the first game, which ended up starting at nine am or so. I played a young man who had some astra militarum flyers, an imperial knight, two smaller knights, and a lot of scions with plasma. He got the first turn and dropped plasma scions out of flyers on the first turn. They immediately fired and killed ten of my thirty marines. His flyers did ridiculous damage to my dreadnought, preventing it from doing anything in the game.

I counterattacked. I brought in ten of my twenty reserve marines and killed his scions and one of his flyers. It wasn’t enough. He did more damage on the next turn, killing almost everything. My knight died killing my opponent’s knight and a smaller knight, so I had killed two-thirds of my opponent’s units. It didn’t matter — he finished off my remaining units in the start of the third or fourth turn. He tabled me. I started off Adepticon with a loss.

I figured I’d get a win in the second round because I was going to play someone who had also lost game one. My next opponent was a nice young man with an accent who played with ad mech and a knight and two smaller knights. He had four kastelan robots, six or so kataphron units, and two seige drills with rangers in them. He went first and killed most of my army in the first two turns. I killed very little of his units and lost everything by turn three. I don’t even know what I did wrong or what I should have done to win that game. I just didn’t feel like I had a chance.

I was so mad. I couldn’t believe that I had done that poorly. I refused to play the third or fourth games and quit and went home. I arrived home around five pm and went to sleep. I slept from five pm until three pm the following day, only waking up to take my pills around midnight.

I couldn’t believe how poorly I played. Earlier in the year I lost a dozen games in a row, and I don’t believe that I have improved at all. I feel so stupid, and I don’t know what to do about it. The same few people tend to win these tournaments every year. It frustrates me to never be one of those players. I feel like I should do something completely different to be effective. I just don’t know what I should do about it — my life seems to be defined by failure. I am not a famous novelist or successful at strategy games. Those are my two hobbies, and they aren’t going well. I know to keep going and try harder and harder, but it gets frustrating when this happens over and over, year after year. I don’t know what to do.

I want to try to get better. I do. I don’t want to fail at everything that I do. I have confidence that things could get better, that I could improve at the things about which I am passionate. I just don’t see progress recently.

Progress? I would count wins as progress. I would count novel sales going up as progress. I would count a blog that has reads as progress.

I will finish writing my novel. I will persist with the deathwatch marines. I won’t quit — I won’t give up. We will see if I can make some progress in the goals of my life.

Thanks, and take care, friends.