The Nerd's Tale

Just because I moved 1000 miles away from Wisconsin doesn't mean I'm not part of the Wisconsin gaming community. That's why I flew back to run the second annual Northwoods GT in Reedsburg Wisconsin.

Back in August of 2025 my wife and I did the thing we've been talking about doing for many years. We sold our house in Wisconsin and moved to New Mexico.

Adepticon is the biggest miniature wargaming convention in the midwest. It features tournaments for just about every wargame on the market, and even some long-discontinued ones. I attended last year when it was in Chicago, but I didn't play in any events. This year the convention moved to Milwaukee, so it was even more convenient!

The Hoosier Storm Tournament is an annual tournament held in Lebanon Indiana. My friend Rob and I carpooled down and shared a hotel. It was only a four-hour drive.

After the Wildcat Tournament in Fall of '24, I started experimenting with a different rat list. I called it "The Expendables". The basic premise of this army was: What if I fielded the biggest trashiest army possible?

The Northwoods Grand Tournament was wonderful! The venue was perfect, we had awesome support from our sponsor (Three Mountain Games), and we all had a great time. Thank you to everyone who helped staff the event, and thank you to everyone who attended. We couldn't have asked for a better group of players. The sportsmanship was outstanding. We had players from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.

January is coming up fast, and I have been doing a lot of prep work for the Northwoods Grand Tournament. I won't be playing in this one. I'm running it.

When I was a teenager, I was very much a slave to the dark gods of the Citadel. If it wasn't an official Citadel miniature from Games Workshop, I didn't want it.

The Wildcat Invitational Tournament is my favorite Kings of War tournament. It is very casual because it doesn't count as a Masters Qualifier. It was also my first KoW tournament when I got back into Miniature Wargaming so I have fuzzy feelings for it.

Power ranking factions is stupid. If you are able to power rank the different factions in your wargame, that means your game system sucks.

The panel of experts on the Countercharge Podcast Ratkin Review all universally agreed that the Rats cannot do a viable "Monster Mash" style list, so of course I decided to do one.

The month of June was an eventful one. We had in addition to our normal league games, a miniatures swapmeet, a club cookout, and the first annual Interstate Doubles Tournament with the Minnesota Kings of War community.