A quick rundown on the 8 most important thing my team mates and I learned at Adepticon this year.
8- If you are making a display board, make it light. Unless you are going for best display, just keep it light and simple. (see coverage part one to see what I mean).
7- There is a Medieval Times in Schaumburg. This is getting built into next years schedule for my friends and I.
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| Actual photo I took :( |
6- Bring a Camera, not your phone. There is A TON of cool stuff. TONS AND TONS! But overall the lighting is pretty bad. I have tons of unusable photos because they looked okay on my phone and terrible now. Poorly lit and blurry. Having a real camera would make a big big difference.
5- If you can help it, bring a car. Driving means more time off work, yes, but it makes a giant difference while there. There is nothing immediately around the hotel, and you don't want to be wasting your precious hobby dollars on taxis/ubers. If at least one person in your gaming cohort can bring a car, do it. It will save you from eating ONLY over priced chicken fingers all weekend.
4- Make sure you have enough space to bring back all your swag. Seriously, our Swag bags had tons of stuff in them, plus everything we bought. Fitting it all for the return journey was a little tough. We all thought about it before hand, and it was still tough. SO REALLY REALLY Think about it.
3- Model Movement: How are you going to do it? This maybe a regular consideration for most tournament players, but is something I had not given much thought to. You are going to need something stable, safe, easy and fast all weekend. Your custom cut foam trays are not that, nor is your regular carrying case even. You have to be able to go from Hotel Room to event, and table to table, all in very short times. Packing and unpack models is unrealistic and can severely cut into game time. I am thinking of making some sort of custom tray myself.
2- Take Monday off. Seriously, if you are already taking work off to go, just Spring for that extra day on the back end. You are going to want it to get some sleep and calm down from a helluva weekend. You are non-stop all weekend, and it is intense. Plus, if you are playing in any Sunday events, you are likely flying out late, and as such getting in late. I got back to CA at midnight and had to drive 2 hours. Finally got to sleep at 3am only to get up at 6am. It sucked. Take the extra day. Speaking of flights....
1- Check your flight times. This was a really hard lesson learned for my team. One of my team mates booked MONTHS ago, and forgot to double check times until the Saturday night after day 1 of the team tourney. He unfortunately had to leave before the tournament ended, so we backed out. It wasn't a total loss, as we had an easy Sunday and weren't going to win anything big (though we were doing MUCH better overall than we had been expecting). But a hard lesson learned none the less.
So if you are planning on going to ANY major event, take these as food for thought.
