NOVA Open 2013, Aug 29-Sep 1, Washington D.C: Don't Miss Out - Get Registered Now!

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**Stoffer**

Lists available anywhere?

**Glocknall**

So I had a blast at my first NoVA. Absolutely blown away by the event and got 7 awesome games in the weekend. It was great to meet Neil and Pat, Labmouse42 (Whiskey is on me next time), my roomy Chance who was awesome, Frank and Sean from the Icehouse Warriors in Delaware, and so many more. Thanks to all for being so approachable and helpful. It really made the experience worthwhile. The NOVA staff was incredible and can't thank them enough for their hard work. I will definitely be coming back next year. Hopefully I can bring my crew from Gainesville!

I had a lot of games not finish as well but i blame that mainly on myself not making it a priority rather than a flaw in the format. The Missions were quick to start up and I didn't really have a problem with the way time was being called. Torrent of Fire was a very big asset through the whole thing and the ability to get your paring up and not have to crowd around the judges table made things easy.

My biggest complaint was with the alternate terrain layout used on the first day. I pointed out to the Head Judge that on many tables the terrain was pushed to the center leaving entire deployment zones w/o LoS blocking terrain. In my second game we played Hammer and Anvil and I had one LoS blocker deep in my deployment and no other significant piece until my opponents deployment zone. That left a huge no mans land which made it difficult against shooting armies. Would like to see some more robust LoS blocking pieces placed if the alternate layout is used again. The alternate layout played heavily to shooting armies who already dominate the meta. The standard layout was excellent.

I can't say enough how impressed I was by the staff and their professionalism. The attendees were extremely friendly and really put the tournament player stereotype on it's head.

See you all at NoVA 2014!

**Malagant**

I second Glocknall's evaluation of the Alternate Terrain Layout....that's really my only complaint about the whole party. It made the already "dominant" super-shooty-goodness armies even more dominant.

Here's a quick write-up of my fun at NOVA:

http://bloodskullsfire.blogspot.com/2013/09/home-from-nova.html

Thanks again to Mike and ALL the NOVA staff!

**krootman.**

yermom wrote:As far as scheduling goes why not make the invitational Thursday night and all day Friday? Then have the gt go on Saturday and Sunday. This would give you as to's more time to bracket and allow only gt players to not have to take Friday off from work. In addition the invitational loses a lot of hype since most people already left by the time of its finale. By having it happen first people not playing in it will actually care about it. Lastly for those playing in both and knocked out of the open on Sunday but not the invitational they had to wait through 2 rounds to ply in something they actually had a shot in. Meaning they couldn't leave to check out dc or other events.

Just a thought, Nick

Target wrote:Agreed with the above sentiments - while NOVA is always a great event, I won't go into the positives too much (as we know them, I've went like 4 years in a row now), but the points I feel could be improved:

-I'd really like to see the events separated like Nick and others above mentioned, having the invitational at the beginning, the awards for it, and then the GT on Saturday/Sunday. It'd benefit a lot of folks who can't take off work, and provide more continuity for both events. If you're running two lists, having games from two different events separated by ~30 minutes. Also, using more of thursday for gaming for the invitational means a lighter schedule in general, as you wouldnt need to do 1 game, 4, 4, 4 (thursday, friday, saturday, sunday). You could instead do a bit lighter, less burn-out prone schedule of something like:

Thurdsay: 3 invitational
Friday: 2 invitational, 1 GT
Saturday: 3 GT (seeding occurs)
Sunday: Games 5,6, then people free to watch the finals of games 7-8

That's definitely not perfect, but just an illustration of somerthing I'd think might work a little better if it was possible. No day has more than 3 games, except sunday, and that's only for the people in the bracket finals (so not everyone) and it allows everyone else to watch the finals of their brackets, or other brackets, or continue playing games if they desire.

-Increased time limits to 3 hours, and pairings up at least 10 minutes before the round starts. Many round the pairings went up right when it started, and then the schedule was kept. Having pairings pushed to phones is awesome, and torrent of fire worked great (a few kinks, but for it's first roll out, it went impressively) but you still lose round time if pairings push at 1:58 and the round still begins at 2.

I had, out of my 9 games, 1 end naturally - against an Ork player, between us we had 300 models on the table, and 3 games end due to tabling. My other 5 ended on turn 4, and affected the outcome heavily. I timed my turns, I reminded my opponents, but often it's just not enough, especcially if you know them and don't want to get a judge involved. I'll admit I left a bit baffled as I've played in plenty of GTs and not had this be an issue, so not sure what solution to suggest other than a lighter schedule in general or more time.

And beyond being able to finish the games where players can't seem to make timely decisions ( :-P ), there's the added benefit of more relaxed games where you get to know your opponent rather than just hustling.

Just my .02 on it, was still a great time to see everyone and catch up like every year, cheers guys

The issue here, is that you have to cater to the masses, while I hopefully will be playing in the invitational this yr I would like a schedule where you avoid a day with 4 open games if possible.

Thurs you could do 3 invitational games, Friday 3 open games, Saturday 3 open games one invitational game, Sunday the final invitational game first followed up by the final 2 open games. This way you only have 1 day with 4 games (assuming you play in both events). Yes invitational players have to take an extra day off, but most of the the ones I spoke to, ended up taking Thursday off anyways.

I don't think there is a perfect solution to this problem, as there are only so many days in which to play all these games in.

Anyways, I had a fantastic time. It was great catching up with everyone and I even almost ended up with a certain rubber duckie

The whole event went off mostly with out a hitch, and even when one of my scores was improperly entered Mike personally came over and made sure it was fixed for me. Also the super nova swag bag was really impressive and the vip perks were alot more useful then other major gts.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Glocknall wrote:
So I had a blast at my first NoVA. Absolutely blown away by the event and got 7 awesome games in the weekend. It was great to meet Neil and Pat, Labmouse42 (Whiskey is on me next time), my roomy Chance who was awesome, Frank and Sean from the Icehouse Warriors in Delaware, and so many more. Thanks to all for being so approachable and helpful. It really made the experience worthwhile. The NOVA staff was incredible and can't thank them enough for their hard work. I will definitely be coming back next year. Hopefully I can bring my crew from Gainesville!

I had a lot of games not finish as well but i blame that mainly on myself not making it a priority rather than a flaw in the format. The Missions were quick to start up and I didn't really have a problem with the way time was being called. Torrent of Fire was a very big asset through the whole thing and the ability to get your paring up and not have to crowd around the judges table made things easy.

My biggest complaint was with the alternate terrain layout used on the first day. I pointed out to the Head Judge that on many tables the terrain was pushed to the center leaving entire deployment zones w/o LoS blocking terrain. In my second game we played Hammer and Anvil and I had one LoS blocker deep in my deployment and no other significant piece until my opponents deployment zone. That left a huge no mans land which made it difficult against shooting armies. Would like to see some more robust LoS blocking pieces placed if the alternate layout is used again. The alternate layout played heavily to shooting armies who already dominate the meta. The standard layout was excellent.

I can't say enough how impressed I was by the staff and their professionalism. The attendees were extremely friendly and really put the tournament player stereotype on it's head.

See you all at NoVA 2014!

That as the reason I brought the skyshield, it saved me in the first 3 games.

**RiTides**

Target wrote:Thurdsay: 3 invitational
Friday: 2 invitational, 1 GT
Saturday: 3 GT (seeding occurs)
Sunday: Games 5,6, then people free to watch the finals of games 7-8

My take, is that even for folks not playing in both, it's nice to have them separated. A lot of folks on Dakka want to follow the Invitational, but honestly coverage of it got quite lost with it being split before and after/during the Open. Off-hand I can't remember who won and there has been little discussion of it compared to years when it was grouped together.

I like Target's suggested layout because the only day that there are 4 Open games is on Sunday, and only for a limited number of people. It also gives you the opportunity to do something else on Sunday for the last 2 rounds where most people are out of the running for best general- maybe something crazy like a team round or the like (just an idea

).

That said, you could also put two Open games on Friday, and then you'd only need to have 3 on Sunday. It means the re-seeding would need to happen Saturday afternoon, but I think that's pretty reasonable with only 3 games scheduled for that day:

Thurdsay: 3 invitational
Friday: 2 invitational, 2 GT
Saturday: 3 GT (seeding occurs in afternoon)
Sunday: 3 GT

You can also expand the schedule a bit if you don't try to make it so that Open players can play in the evening Trios- it sounds like that was too exhausting to really have fun doing anyway, so you can have them overlap if needed.

Pretty sure there's a scheduling solution here (regarding overall schedule and time for rounds) since that seems to be the only widespread piece of constructive criticism feedback (other than a bit about terrain)

Edit: The other thing I really like about this schedule is that the least number of players possible have a 4-game day... just the invitational players. It makes sense to minimize that for most players, and it keeps invitational players from having to juggle 2 lists. Win-win!

**Rickels**

While I was unable to make it this year, I would just like to say watching it was a complete blast. Thanks to Mike/Dave for helping to get some non tau/eldar on the 11th company ustream.

**krootman.**

Malagant wrote:
I second Glocknall's evaluation of the Alternate Terrain Layout....that's really my only complaint about the whole party. It made the already "dominant" super-shooty-goodness armies even more dominant.

Here's a quick write-up of my fun at NOVA:

http://bloodskullsfire.blogspot.com/2013/09/home-from-nova.html

Thanks again to Mike and ALL the NOVA staff!

You should have Stayed Sunday night, you missed a good time mang!

**ArbitorIan**

morgendonner wrote:
quiestdeus wrote:
I am curious to see what would actually happen if a major event dropped to something like 1500 points.

Just as a random continuation of that thought, when I was talking to Alex Harrison at some point over the course of the weekend he mentioned in UK they mainly play 1650 for GTs and that they found it doesn't really affect their lists but allows for games to be more timely and continue out to dice rolls.

Might be worth thinking about, I've never really toyed around with 1650 lists myself but if time is an issue and there's no wiggle room to expand rounds, the other main option is to cut back on points again. I don't think anybody missed playing 2000 points from last year.

I also will throw my support in with the group of other GT/Invitational players who would like to see the two events separated. I think Thursday night nobody would have had a problem getting in another game or two (maybe we could throw together a survey to find out for sure?) to avoid waking up at 6:30 am each day.

Again, this is me just being a little nitpicky / spitballing ideas because I had a blast. I think being able to drop the last two Open games was a good feature, as it was my only chance to catch up on a little sleep and also check out the awesome vendors.

I agree with the smaller points idea - I regularly play 1500 and 1750 in UK events, and find that it doesn't affect the tournament at all besides making games shorter. The game still works perfectly well all the way down to 1500.

However, a lot of people have been calling for 'separating the two events'. I disagree. There aren't two events - there are four events in the 40k bracket alone - GT, Invitational, Trios and Narrative. Of these, the Invitational is the least attended. If the tournaments were split like people intended, where do we fit the Narrative and Trios? Bunched up on Thursday as well?

There's also something to be said for having the Narrative and Trios as evening events - after three 'serious' games in the day, it's nice to be able to open a beer and play a silly game in the evening, and those last two events fulfill that nicely.

I agree with other suggestions in the thread that the Narrative / Trios be moved later - much if the reason I didn't play in a lot of the narrative games was that I was tired and wanted dinner - and I only had an hour to swap around armies, eat, rest and be back. I wouldn't have a problem with the evening events starting at 9 or 10pm...

I also agree with swapping Sunday around so that the last two invitational games come first and the last two GT ones second. No piont making 200 people wait around for 16 to finish...

**Breng77**

ArbitorIan wrote:
morgendonner wrote:
quiestdeus wrote:
I am curious to see what would actually happen if a major event dropped to something like 1500 points.

Just as a random continuation of that thought, when I was talking to Alex Harrison at some point over the course of the weekend he mentioned in UK they mainly play 1650 for GTs and that they found it doesn't really affect their lists but allows for games to be more timely and continue out to dice rolls.

Might be worth thinking about, I've never really toyed around with 1650 lists myself but if time is an issue and there's no wiggle room to expand rounds, the other main option is to cut back on points again. I don't think anybody missed playing 2000 points from last year.

I also will throw my support in with the group of other GT/Invitational players who would like to see the two events separated. I think Thursday night nobody would have had a problem getting in another game or two (maybe we could throw together a survey to find out for sure?) to avoid waking up at 6:30 am each day.

Again, this is me just being a little nitpicky / spitballing ideas because I had a blast. I think being able to drop the last two Open games was a good feature, as it was my only chance to catch up on a little sleep and also check out the awesome vendors.

I agree with the smaller points idea - I regularly play 1500 and 1750 in UK events, and find that it doesn't affect the tournament at all besides making games shorter. The game still works perfectly well all the way down to 1500.

However, a lot of people have been calling for 'separating the two events'. I disagree. There aren't two events - there are four events in the 40k bracket alone - GT, Invitational, Trios and Narrative. Of these, the Invitational is the least attended. If the tournaments were split like people intended, where do we fit the Narrative and Trios? Bunched up on Thursday as well?

There's also something to be said for having the Narrative and Trios as evening events - after three 'serious' games in the day, it's nice to be able to open a beer and play a silly game in the evening, and those last two events fulfill that nicely.

I agree with other suggestions in the thread that the Narrative / Trios be moved later - much if the reason I didn't play in a lot of the narrative games was that I was tired and wanted dinner - and I only had an hour to swap around armies, eat, rest and be back. I wouldn't have a problem with the evening events starting at 9 or 10pm...

I also agree with swapping Sunday around so that the last two invitational games come first and the last two GT ones second. No piont making 200 people wait around for 16 to finish...

I think you do push those event forward. I might have come this year (money was part of the issue as was getting time off from work) if Most or all of the games were saturday and sunday. By putting 3 open games on Friday you make the event more expensive for most of the people.

For me it meant needing to take off both Thursday and Friday from work, also means another night in the hotel (instead of just Friday and Saturday as a minimum, we now need Thursday, Friday, Saturday), as was mentioned teachers cannot do the friday games in many cases.

**Nicorex**

Well this was my first NOVA and I had a great time. I think Mike and the crew did a pretty damn good job.
It was nice to meet a number of Dakka personalities.
I personally did not have any issue with the time limit. All of my games but one had a natural finish either by tabeling or getting to turn 5+. But I was not near the top tables or any of the uber competitive lists.

Now I just have to get to work on a new army to take to NOVA 2014.

**Grimwulfe**

Ok here is my opinion on NOVA and my experiences.

Game Length - 2.5 hours is sufficent for game length but an addition 15 minutes of setup time would be great. So call parings and start 15 min timer from there. The game on!!

Projector Display - I liked having the pairings up on it and also Torrent of Fire. It would be nice however to have a Game Timer Countdown displayed on it as well so people can easily look up and get time remaining.

Torrent of Fire - Awesome app for tourny day even with the minor hickup. No way I would ever pay for it though.

Schedule - I think the best solution for the schedule would be to do

Thurs - 2 Invitational games and Trios and Narritive (this adds 2 hours to day but makes for an easier schedule during other days) Also remember you cant please everyone. The con already starts on Thursday and I dont see this changing to many games to fit in 3 days. So I support Thursday start fully.
Fri - 1 Invitational 3 GT Open games then Trios.Narrative
Sat - 1 Invitational 3 GT Open games then Trios/Narrative
Sun - 1 Invitaional Final 2 Optional GT Open games then Awards Ceramoney

I think with this schedule it spreads out the games allows for people to do 3 events but takes away the long delay on Sunday awaiting the final. Also for Sunday with the invitational first it will keep Open players engaged for the ceramony.

As for Trios now that Bill S. and my team has won 3 times in a row we are stepping down to focus on the invitational and I have also volunteered to help with running the trios and making it a more fleshed out experience. I would like to see Theme, paitning, and other paths to glory included into this great event.

Other then that NOVA was a great time and a great GT one that I will not miss in the future.

**Malagant**

There was a young man that won a bracket. Does anyone know which bracket he won, name, list, etc? I'm trying to use the info to motivate my son to play more and go to competitions with me!

**zedsdead**

interesting ideas here.

At the BFS we also run the bracketing system and i have a question for people regarding the win path for the lower brackets.

Would players in the lower brackets have prefered a Battle Points win path over say the standard single elimination ? This way players in the brackets would continue playing even after a first game loss.

Not sure if this would be preferable for all brackets under the Gold (champion) bracket or just for those brackets say below (bronze).

And if a BP win path was prefered for lower brackets would it be a BP win path that included a paint score or just BP alone.... sort of wondering out loud here.

The truth is that any tournament with less than 256 really only needs 6-7 games total to follow the win/loss path properly so TO.s can add in things to keep people playing for 6-7 games such as having the Ren-man and (if you choose to add in) Overall BP winners be determined bt 6-7 games. However in win/loss once you need to go 8 games to determine bracket winners and the ren-man /bp win paths end at 6 games... those last 2 games become easy to drop out of.

For me i would prefer to keep the gamers interested enough to complete all of there games but that does become more of a challenge in a format that eliminates players from any sort of contention when they lose.

Ive always loved the win/loss path and use it in my GT so this is by no means a knock on the format..

Opinions ?

**MVBrandt**

Ed - best suggestion was in someone's bat rep, and that's to have Bracket Ren Men, and Bracket Champs. Basically duplicate the parallel tracks for each sub-bracket. Then you get a lil BP in there, a lotta paint, and a lotta w/l.

**Breng77**

Yeah, I would prefer a separate Ren-man for each bracket if you go that way. IMO, I am not a fan of battle points if you have a single undefeated winner. I typically view battle points as a means to break ties between people with the same record rather than a method to beat out others. So unless the idea is to make brackets larger (almost like mini RTTs.), I don't really like the battle points. I would be annoyed if say I beat a player in my first round, won the rest of my games, and got jumped because they blew out easier competition on the way back up.

Futhermore if you still do 3-3-2, and go battle points in lower brackets chances are that people that lost the first 2 games, could be out of it for the last 2 games anyway.

**zedsdead**

MVBrandt wrote:
Ed - best suggestion was in someone's bat rep, and that's to have Bracket Ren Men, and Bracket Champs. Basically duplicate the parallel tracks for each sub-bracket. Then you get a lil BP in there, a lotta paint, and a lotta w/l.

Ok missed that suggestion... thats not a bad idea.

**krootman.**

Malagant wrote:
There was a young man that won a bracket. Does anyone know which bracket he won, name, list, etc? I'm trying to use the info to motivate my son to play more and go to competitions with me!

His name is Zach he used necron tau, nice kid. I think he wont bracket 13. I played him round 3 I think? His list was a lord on ccb, 4 scythes, 3 barges, buff comander, rip tide, 10 kroot, and broadsides. Its a solid list.

**Malagant**

Sounds exactly like Werner's list! If you know him, pass on my congratulations to him! Thanks for the info, Kroot!

**JGrand**

At the BFS we also run the bracketing system and i have a question for people regarding the win path for the lower brackets.

Would players in the lower brackets have prefered a Battle Points win path over say the standard single elimination ? This way players in the brackets would continue playing even after a first game loss.

Not sure if this would be preferable for all brackets under the Gold (champion) bracket or just for those brackets say below (bronze).

And if a BP win path was prefered for lower brackets would it be a BP win path that included a paint score or just BP alone.... sort of wondering out loud here.

The truth is that any tournament with less than 256 really only needs 6-7 games total to follow the win/loss path properly so TO.s can add in things to keep people playing for 6-7 games such as having the Ren-man and (if you choose to add in) Overall BP winners be determined bt 6-7 games. However in win/loss once you need to go 8 games to determine bracket winners and the ren-man /bp win paths end at 6 games... those last 2 games become easy to drop out of.

For me i would prefer to keep the gamers interested enough to complete all of there games but that does become more of a challenge in a format that eliminates players from any sort of contention when they lose.

Ive always loved the win/loss path and use it in my GT so this is by no means a knock on the format..

Opinions ?

I honestly think that if anything, it should have LESS to do with battle points. Some of the missions are far easier than others to go 20-0 on. In addition, I think when a player loses matters more than anything else. For example, this past weekend, if you lost for the first time in game 4, it was actually far worse than losing your first game and winning the next three. It is easier (at least on paper) to drop game one and play the next three than to face the uphill climb of winning three in a row and losing game four. It is far more likely the 3-1 who lost game 1 has higher points.

There should never be a benefit/potential to "strategically lose" games. The bracket winners should have to be 4-0 in their bracket. However, I do think a bracket Ren Man is a fantastic idea.

**morgendonner**

Malagant wrote:
Sounds exactly like Werner's list! If you know him, pass on my congratulations to him! Thanks for the info, Kroot!

Zach is actually from my FLGS so that's why his list is so similar to mine

In addition to me and Nick making top bracket our store I think won 3 brackets and had several other players in the finals for their brackets. Start 'em while they're young.

**yermom**

Zach and Werner play in the same club and I believe Zacha list is an exact copy of werners. (Not to take anything away from him as he played really well given his age/experience)

**Thamor**

Are the lists released anywhere?

**MasterSlowPoke**

Looks like I'm the dumbass who left his army case in the hotel room. ArbitorIan almost might have been the last person to play against my Necrons.

**morgendonner**

Thamor wrote:
Are the lists released anywhere?

I'm not sure if they are, but if you're looking for anybody's in particular we probably have enough people on this thread to give you a pretty close idea to what was in who's list. Was there any player in particular you were wondering about?

**RiTides**

Bummer SlowPoke :(. Maybe the hotel keeps a lost and found...

A local left his warmachine box in the gaming area but the organizers picked it up thankfully.

**Tomb King**

I will be posting the list of everyone I faced in the invitational. That should give you some.

**MarkyMark**

morgendonner wrote:
quiestdeus wrote:
I am curious to see what would actually happen if a major event dropped to something like 1500 points.

Just as a random continuation of that thought, when I was talking to Alex Harrison at some point over the course of the weekend he mentioned in UK they mainly play 1650 for GTs and that they found it doesn't really affect their lists but allows for games to be more timely and continue out to dice rolls.

Might be worth thinking about, I've never really toyed around with 1650 lists myself but if time is an issue and there's no wiggle room to expand rounds, the other main option is to cut back on points again. I don't think anybody missed playing 2000 points from last year.

I also will throw my support in with the group of other GT/Invitational players who would like to see the two events separated. I think Thursday night nobody would have had a problem getting in another game or two (maybe we could throw together a survey to find out for sure?) to avoid waking up at 6:30 am each day.

Again, this is me just being a little nitpicky / spitballing ideas because I had a blast. I think being able to drop the last two Open games was a good feature, as it was my only chance to catch up on a little sleep and also check out the awesome vendors.

Oh no we dont, the GT this year is 1650 which is the smallest so far, there has yet to be any quailfers played for the GT (first one is in October). They are trying it out for the first time to see how it works and the lists and timings are assumed to be the same.

To be honest even at 1650, slow players will be slow players, personnaly I have adapted to what I use and tournement timings and play accordingly even though I run a psyhic heavy army (trust me its a lorra lot of powers to roll for!) but I play against some people who spend 10 mins thinking about one move and another that decides to read my codex time and time again even though he read the same passage the game before!.

**Thamor**

morgendonner wrote:
Thamor wrote:
Are the lists released anywhere?

I'm not sure if they are, but if you're looking for anybody's in particular we probably have enough people on this thread to give you a pretty close idea to what was in who's list. Was there any player in particular you were wondering about?

I was interested to see what Tau builds made it to the top, especially the winners.

Thanks

**Phazael**

Did you guys sort out the scoring mess that happened on the Fantasy side?

**MVBrandt**

We're still looking into that. The board doesn't have any avid fantasy players, and we lean heavily on the leads. I think they figured it out, though. Definitely some QC to do on the fantasy side for 2014.