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There is no "NOVA" team ... but Tony and others put it on their club listing in Torrent b/c they are from the Northern Virginia area, which people around here call NOVA (and that's why our event is called what it is). However, if simply being from NOVA makes you part of the TO's sekrit cheatin' team, then we have a pretty awesome few million members.

Tastytaste erroneously reported that Tony was involved in the playtesting and had early insight into the missions.

Since the missions were playtested over nearly the past year by a global audience of players, and designed and commented upon within google docs by a massive collection of TOs and the like that included Reece Robbins from FLG, Neil Gilstrap from 11th Co, and more (each with their own level of effort on creation, some small, some major), it is actually impossible for someone to have had early insight. They were public from the moment of their inception, pulled from the Independent Mission Catalog.

Also, Tony and I are definitely friends, though it would be fair to say I call 75% of the NOVA's attendees friend in a more-than-acquaintance way. That said, we haven't played a game of 40K together since AdeptiCon. We might have played one or two before that to get ready, playing AdeptiCon missions. He also failed to join thousands of worldwide gamers in providing feedback and playtest results from our lengthy mission design and revision process, so I suppose he actually did the opposite of help design them / have an inside track on them.

So ... hooray for sloppy reporting! Note, Tasty (Nick) and I had a long series of chats at AdeptiCon 2013, a bunch of handshakes, etc., and I willingly supported him with affidavit when BattleFoam sued him over the truths he posted about NOVA and other events in relation to BF, despite the fact that I'd remained mute on the subject of what happened there up until legal proceedings requested our recollection of the facts. So, I hold no ill will, and can only assume he doesn't either. He just reported too quickly, and without actually asking any of us what happened. So I'm sure the article will be corrected for the sake of journalistic integrity, and to once again avoid slandering a sub-21 year old kid who just played yet another awesome GT.

 jy2 wrote:
It's interesting to see the difference between East and West Coast tourneys (i.e. the BAO vs Nova) and the differences between the metas. The West Coast, with the allowance of Forgeworld, tended to be more Marine-dominated. The East, without the allowance of FW, tended to be more Eldary. Very interesting how the allowance of FW changes the meta indeed!

There was actually a quite large number of marines including droppods but I think the MoW theme at BAO favored Marines more than at Nova.

 Murdius Maximus wrote:
I guess to elaborate on my post, I am just so dismayed to see yet another Eldar Wave Serpent spam list take the top. Not because of the " that unit is totally OP" reasons, but because how on earth has this list not been figured out yet? Being that I am unfamiliar with Eldar, is the Wave Serpent really that good?

Also what is this thing about him having his list tailored to the tournament? I don't understand why people are saying that about him could somebody fill me in? I saw that his team was NOVA which I guess is a little fishy, but hardly a reason to call for any kind of rigging or whatnot....

I actually think an eldar wave serpent list is the simple solution to handle the rest of the Meta thats been played, its more of a counter to other list that are popular. Daemons fast attack spam, beast star, nids/crons/daemon flyer list, hard to hit invis targets, shrouded targets, 2+ save units... Its the share volume of fire, possible twin linked, and some which ignore cover, you get as a transport choice. If you spread out you can avoid losing multiple do to multi charge. If a Grav star lands, they can really only kill one of them statistically. The wraith knights pack a mean punch, and are a threat just sitting back protecting the serpents.

Mike you've sorta clarified the 270 degree arc thing, but I'm not sure if it's just semantics, if it's 45 degree arc anywhere from the front it may as well be a crazy fire arc like 270 degrees no?

Side note, tasty taste's article seemed like mostly bs BUT BUT the 270 degree arc complaint I've seen in may places. Anyway, stick it to bols, the insinuation game is no fun.

 Crablezworth wrote:
Mike you've sorta clarified the 270 degree arc thing, but I'm not sure if it's just semantics, if it's 45 degree arc anywhere from the front it may as well be a crazy fire arc like 270 degrees no?

It's actually like 225. The thing is, just going around saying "OH NOVA RULES 270 ARC" kinda discounts the fact that ETC rules the same way, as do many, many other events; it's not a new ruling; and "270 degrees" is neither the mathematical nor articulated ruling. Since 45 degree arc on hull mounted weapons is a super clear rule from the rulebook, it makes an event sound fundamentally unsound-of-mind to randomly decide to give a hull mounted weapon a 270 degree arc instead (when in reality that's neither the logic flow nor actual rule, nor even the actual way the rule played out mathematically).

Also, I don't have any objection to people not LIKING the ruling ... just misrepresenting it in a way that makes it sound raaaalllllll dumb / random.

MVBrandt wrote:
Also, I don't have any objection to people not LIKING the ruling ... just misrepresenting it in a way that makes it sound raaaalllllll dumb / random.

No I get that, just that was the only point in your reply on bols where I thought "k well it might not be 270 but it's more than 45 if you really break it down". Thanks for the info

@Tsilber- maybe I missed your point (I think we both share that we are fine with people using whatever is available.) My response was more to the feeling of your post that the winning list was not using x arbitrary strong (broken) units/combos, as if the Wave Serpent is not among the stronger units in the game. I think it is perfectly great that Tony won and what he won with to me is irrelevant to some extent because arguably every player he beat was also using strong units. Also agree Eldar (serpent heavy especially) have a lot of strong counters to the meta, and having 10 Objective secured units in general is strong in 7e.

Essentially I get tired when people (not you) post to tournament things "yuck the winner used those strong units" Well what did we expect honestly.

As for the whole Tony unfair advantage thing....ummmm the missions were out well in advance (in some form) and it is in his back yard so of course he is going to practice for it. That would be like saying Frontline guys have an unfair advantage out west because they always practice with their missions (unless they are practicing for something else.)

One thing I will say is that given the complexity of the NOVA missions people that prepared for them would definitely have a leg up....but that is not limited to any one group.

Tony had a good list, he is an amazing player, there are a lot of hard counters to his army that exist but it is very good in a TACs sense.

There are a few match ups that would have wrecked him but he did not encounter them.

Part of every tournament win is your pairings(as was stated) or dice rolls(like not getting invis are fortune). However what makes the good players is those that can mitigate the impacts of those things through list building and play by controlling the aspects you can control(like movement).

Tony is a strong player because he has good control over that aspect on top of knowledge.

Dont try and cheapen his win or his skills. Serpents are quite beatable although they are slightly more difficult than others. I am sure there were plenty of serpents at the tournament that didnt make it to the top tables.

and knights, and beastpacks, and etc.... that didn't make top tables is my whole point. I'm not trying to cheapen his win in any way. Great player, great list, able to overcome any bad matchups, or not run into them. List is part of the equation not the whole equation.

Saying he took a list with great units, doesn't make him any less of a player if all the other great players are doing it too. It makes him smart. People always seem to want winning players to have in some way reinvented the meta with their winning list, and more often than not it simply isn't the case.

A lot of people seem to want to see winning player running a bunch of pyrovores and still winning to prove that they are good. In any game people will take the best legal options to achieve victory if that is what they aim to do.

I'm just stoked that he won without taking allies or any other silly crap outside of his codex.

Lets face it DakkaDakka! No one who will ever win any tournament, will go unscathed of some sort of criticism.

Criticism and putting your points out there is one thing, but the obliterating, ignorant bashing is just some people which are just haters who are column C of my signature below lol.

And i am not refereeing to you Breng FYI with that statement. I understand now what you were saying, seems like we are on the same page actually with a lot of points, cheers.

I'm happy he won using such unconventional units. I mean yeah he spammed wave serpents but, no Farseer? No jetbikes? Night-Spinners and swooping hawks? Breh.

Very encouraging to see. His list very easily could have just been a Seer Council with Wave Serpents and Knights. I'm not jelly at all if the winning Eldar list has an Autarch HQ, Fire Dragons, Swooping Hawks and Night-Spinners.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I'm happy he won using such unconventional units. I mean yeah he spammed wave serpents but, no Farseer? No jetbikes? Night-Spinners and swooping hawks? Breh.

Very encouraging to see. His list very easily could have just been a Seer Council with Wave Serpents and Knights. I'm not jelly at all if the winning Eldar list has an Autarch HQ, Fire Dragons, Swooping Hawks and Night-Spinners.

And Zach was running an Eldar list without a Farseer and Jetbikes and had Fire Dragons and three units of Swooping Hawks. He made it to the semifinals before suffering his first loss against Donslund.... and he was 15 years old and a damned good player to boot for any age bracket.

And there was a stronger Daemon presence in the top 16 with Summoning, than Eldar presence as well.

I was surprised to see so many fire dragons and swooping hawks at top tables. I'm not sure if it was the meta but I've always felt warp spiders and D scythe wraithguard are better. I'll have to test some dragons and hawks now. At least they're fun to paint.

Toofast wrote:
I was surprised to see so many fire dragons and swooping hawks at top tables. I'm not sure if it was the meta but I've always felt warp spiders and D scythe wraithguard are better. I'll have to test some dragons and hawks now. At least they're fun to paint.

Fire dragons are not better than D scythe wraithblades. However, they are better in the meta that is Nova. Why? Because of the dominance of Imperial Knights at Nova.

And hawks were good because of the abundance of LOS-blocking terrain at Nova.

It appears both players running dragons and hawks did some playtesting of the Nova missions with Nova terrain layouts and have built lists that were more optimized for the Nova meta than anything else. It just goes to show that you should never look at units in a vacuum. Rather, you need to evaluate units both based on the synergies of your list as well as how they would interact with meta. Or so it seems that is what the successful players have done.

Daemons were the majority of the top bracket; mostly summoning mechanics. I don't expect that to last long though. With the hyper fast rate of codex release, every codex will have been updated within a year and I'm sure summoning will get the nerf bat in some way.

Hmm NOVA comes off as less friendly than the west coast events.

That or the lists arent as cheesy on west coast with more options.

It's very dangerous to question how friendly something is based upon army lists. I do keep hearing that the East Coast lists are generally harder or more competitive, but the friendliness, cameraderie, and lack of douchey game reports or rage quits at NOVA speaks to a harder time judging the fuzzy evaluation of where things are "more friendly."

I'd suggest that at MOST tournaments and conventions, MOST people are actually really friendly!

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Hmm NOVA comes off as less friendly than the west coast events.

That or the lists arent as cheesy on west coast with more options.

Don't get the wrong impression. The event and players were absolutely great. That being said, there sure as hell were very good people running very competitive lists. I gave every single one of my opponents full sportsmanship and got full Sportsmanship in return. And that was quite a common trend even at the top tables where Sportsmanship can sometimes take a second seat.

I would definitely recommend heading out there.

I haven't gotten out to any West Coast events, but spent some time with the Team Zero Comp boys and they seemed to be having a great time. Reece and Geoff were 3-1 day one and bracket high with Frankie in the top 16.

Not to say people are friendly in general personally

More of a comment on lists that its less of a "Friendly" tournament in that manner. Hyper competitive focused events as opposed to a "friendly" event.

Purely from a competitive standpoint is where i base "Friendliness" on, not how people actually act.

From the outside looking in, being someone who hasnt attended a tournament, I'd be more inclined to attend something like BAO as opposed to NOVA based on stuff like that from a pure "Which one would I enjoy more?"

NOVA strikes me as a "Go big or Go home" kindof event

Tony, congrats again. The last game of 40k that I played was against you on Table #1 at the Nova open in 2011. I'm getting back into the hobby, and I'll be there next year to beat the crown off your head.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Not to say people are friendly in general personally

More of a comment on lists that its less of a "Friendly" tournament in that manner. Hyper competitive focused events as opposed to a "friendly" event.

Purely from a competitive standpoint is where i base "Friendliness" on, not how people actually act.

From the outside looking in, being someone who hasnt attended a tournament, I'd be more inclined to attend something like BAO as opposed to NOVA based on stuff like that from a pure "Which one would I enjoy more?"

NOVA strikes me as a "Go big or Go home" kindof event

Nova and bao are both competative tournaments, your opinion is your own but I'm not sure how you've come to this conclusion. Strong lists present at both events.

I think his point is that the mission styles as well as army comp differences open towards different types of lists that will perform well and get max points at the events. As such you might see more diversity in list building when more options are available, just by virtue of their being options.

I think they are both extremely competitive events and I look forward to a trip to Vegas for the LVO this coming year. Hopefully I will also be able to attend NOVA next year.

Exactly

They're both competitive, but NOVA seems more rigid and thus less 'open' compared to BAO which allows more options.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Not to say people are friendly in general personally

More of a comment on lists that its less of a "Friendly" tournament in that manner. Hyper competitive focused events as opposed to a "friendly" event.

Purely from a competitive standpoint is where i base "Friendliness" on, not how people actually act.

From the outside looking in, being someone who hasnt attended a tournament, I'd be more inclined to attend something like BAO as opposed to NOVA based on stuff like that from a pure "Which one would I enjoy more?"

NOVA strikes me as a "Go big or Go home" kindof event

Every GT is a "go big or go home" event. Don't bring your "friendly" list to a GT unless you want to get roflstomped. Friendly lists are for Sunday funday at your FLGS, not 200 person GTs where you spend $1000 for travel, hotel, food and event fees to play against the best players and lists in the game. BAO and NOVA had slightly different metas due to missions and terrain, neither one was a friendly tournament. They are for serious competition, not fluff hammer.

Toofast wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Not to say people are friendly in general personally

More of a comment on lists that its less of a "Friendly" tournament in that manner. Hyper competitive focused events as opposed to a "friendly" event.

Purely from a competitive standpoint is where i base "Friendliness" on, not how people actually act.

From the outside looking in, being someone who hasnt attended a tournament, I'd be more inclined to attend something like BAO as opposed to NOVA based on stuff like that from a pure "Which one would I enjoy more?"

NOVA strikes me as a "Go big or Go home" kindof event

Every GT is a "go big or go home" event. Don't bring your "friendly" list to a GT unless you want to get roflstomped. Friendly lists are for Sunday funday at your FLGS, not 200 person GTs where you spend $1000 for travel, hotel, food and event fees to play against the best players and lists in the game. BAO and NOVA had slightly different metas due to missions and terrain, neither one was a friendly tournament. They are for serious competition, not fluff hammer.

Nova also offered more options for players looking for a more casual thing.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Exactly

They're both competitive, but NOVA seems more rigid and thus less 'open' compared to BAO which allows more options.

In part, I think that is because of 2 things mainly.

1) East Coast players are actually slightly more competitive. There are a larger number of GT's and large tournaments in the East Coast/Midwest than there are in the West Coast. Thus, the are arguably more people going to tournaments there and a larger pool of competitive players due to numbers. More tournaments (which are also longer established) -> more players -> more competitive players.

2) The allowance of Forgeworld gives most West Coast players more "tools" when it comes to list-building. Thus, you tend to see more variety in army build in the West just because there are more "toys" to play with and I must say, FW does give certain armies some very good "toys" to play with.

So you've got more players in the east running less varieties in terms of army builds, compared to less players in the west running more varieties in terms of armies (thanks to having access to more good units via FW). No wonder why many East Coast tourneys appear to be more rigid and less "open" than the West Coast ones.

I can understand the perspective that nova army composition is "more rigid" than west coast in terms of options. The unfounded claim I guess is the "more/less" variety in army builds. That just seems incredibly hard to prove or disprove but simply put, I haven't seen all 180 army lists from nova. Just saying. I'm the odd one out, nova and bao army comp both seem too permissive to me. That's just personal taste, nothing I can quantify.

It's more of an optical illusion. You take 100 guys (BAO) and give them an option of 200 toys to choose. You then take 200 guys (NOVA) and give them 100 toys from which to choose. In appearance only, the 100 guys seems to have a lot more options and, thus, different combinations than the 200 guys, who appear to have more "repeated" toys.

The truth is that in both samples, both groups of players will only play with perhaps 20-25% of those toys available and the difference in army builds will actually be much, much closer than it actually appears. For example, for every 1 west coast guy who brings a Forgeworld Eldar Nightwing flyer, you're going to have 10 from both groups running wave serpents. Likewise, for every 1 guy bringing a sabre platform, you'll probably have 5 running wyverns. The builds are actually closer than they look, despite all the extra toys available to 1 group.

 jy2 wrote:
It's more of an optical illusion. You take 100 guys (BAO) and give them an option of 200 toys to choose. You then take 200 guys (NOVA) and give them 100 toys from which to choose. In appearance only, the 100 guys seems to have a lot more options and, thus, different combinations than the 200 guys, who appear to have more "repeated" toys.

The truth is that in both samples, both groups of players will only play with perhaps 20-25% of those toys available and the difference in army builds will actually be much, much closer than it actually appears. For example, for every 1 west coast guy who brings a Forgeworld Eldar Nightwing flyer, you're going to have 10 from both groups running wave serpents. Likewise, for every 1 guy bringing a sabre platform, you'll probably have 5 running wyverns. The builds are actually closer than they look, despite all the extra toys available to 1 group.

Yeah I think that's a fair assessment. I think we can both agree that more choice won't always equal more variety. A restaurant could have 10 or 100 items on their menu, doesn't mean they all taste equally good