Terrain Moves Forth, Plus a Sample LOS Center Blocker for 2012

A lot of what I'm going to hit up here is from our most recent Road to the NOVA post:
http://roadtonova.blogspot.com/2012/05/road-to-nova-13-getting-jump-on-thing.html

We've made several advancements to terrain this year, alongside our drive to become fully self-sufficient (no borrowing, from anyone, for any reason).

First and foremost, as I've said before, we won't be using our large hills as CENTER blockers this year. They'll be in diagonally opposed corners.

A sample of a fully painted / finished center blocker can be seen here:

Second, we've dramatically improved the painting process for our pieces, upgrading to airbrushes for most of the paint work (then drybrush/etc. for highlights and flock), i.e.:

This gives a WAY more gorgeous base color pattern and approach, and also makes it much easier to add contrasting colors to the base grey than we did last year. These pieces are far-ish from completion, but the point is - we're going to have not only way cool and interesting terrain, but attractively painted terrain to boot.

A final note, a sneak preview on a near complete (final touches, LED lighting, etc. still to go) Lincoln Memorial done by Kevin Kovarcik (our webmaster/communications guy, and a HELL of a talented artist) to act as a centerpiece on one of the DC Narrative Tables this year during the evenings (does not conflict with GT, go sign up, it's built to work for both competitive and casual players alike, with table assignments, missions and pairings all oriented around list / playstyle).

To give you a sample of Kevin's work, plus a look at Infinity, check out the Remote Presence Blog (click on the pic), done by our Infinity guys (including Infinity tournament lead, Kevin C.):

Enjoy the update; should give you an even better idea for what to expect at NOVA 2012. Look for primer packets, and shots of sample tables, on or around June 1.

 - Mike

We Made a Movie - The NOVA Open Comedy Short Film

Last year saw the beginning of NOVA Open Terrain Days. These were days where some awesome guys and gals would get together, build tables and terrain, drink beer, and ham it up nonstop. Over the course of this time, we got to talking about a lot of the gamer "stereotypes" out there, about  Youtube movies, about funny things about our hobby in general ... and out of all that, one of our guys, Jon, said "Wouldn't it be cool if all this was like, in a hilarious movie or something?"

Bad move, Jon. To me, the NOVA Open presents a sandbox for each of its staff members and organizers to kinda do whatever they want ... until now, just with formats and tournaments and all that. BUT ... thanks to Jon, we've now expanded that vision. We made a movie.

I want to caveat I had NOTHING to do with this; I acted in it, because they cast me in it, but I didn't come up with the plotlines or the story or anything other than the things I tried to adlib during each scene.

We stuck a TON of "Easter Eggs" in here as well ... ranging from references to LOS blocking terrain all the way to movie quotes and even a Family Guy reference. Let's see how many of them you guys can catch and point out!

Enjoy the film, and I hope to see ya'll at the NOVA this year, where Unicorn, The Rage, Catbox and others will all be in character and happy to say hey!

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW9S2Ll1xJ8

NOVA Open 2012 is a Team America Qualifier

Bell of Lost Souls link:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/05/40k-team-america-2012-is-go.html

Long story short, ETC2012 is the "main" qualifier, as the top three scorers and captain return. The remaining spots will go to winners/alternates of NOVA 2012, AdeptiCon 2013, and WarGamesCon 2012.  A Wild Card fourth is subsequently drawn I believe from the combo of DaBoyz, Feast of Blades, the Bay Area Open and the aforementioned major 3.

Follow the link for all the data. The NOVA is honored to qualify a player to represent the US overseas.

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WarGamesCon Tix and Airline Acquired

Hello All,

A variety of posts are incoming soon (I say this often, to no avail, but for serious), including some interesting news relevant to us regarding a little international flair.  That'll pop later today.

I purchased my GT ticket for WarGamesCon this year, along with airline tix (AA flight 1113 out of BWI on June 21), and reserved my hotel rooms.

It's important for the community know the solidarity with which the various TO's work and interact. Some of my favorite moments in wargaming are long and productive conversations (chat and over phone) with JWolf of WarGamesCon, Matt and Hank of AdeptiCon, Reece of Bay Area, Chandler of Feast of Blades, Jay of DaBoyz, Chris of Colonial, Neil and Pat of 11th Co, Tim of Bugeater, Garrett/Aaron/Keith of Indy, Mike of SVDM (with whom I had a good long chat at AdeptiCon this year) and a host of others (as if that's not enough).

What always gets us is the competition many outsiders from the TO crew tend to see ... to quote WarGamesCon's JWolf earlier in chat ...

Jon: You know, if people read our chats they might get the wrong impression and think we got along and had the same perverse sense of humor.

Truth of the matter is, TO's are often the only folks who fully understand the effort and minimal gain involved with running these things. We each have slightly different motivations, but most of them boil down to wanting to show a great time to everyone, and wanting to share our hobby the way our personalities enable. Given the nature of Battle Points vs. W/L, I think I see more often a competition attempted to be drawn between WGC and NOVA ... well, I've got my registration paid to WGC, and JWolf has his paid to NOVA. Shocked?

Now, it's worth sharing that my day job is as a Proposal Manager for a large government contractor. It's a lot like being an attorney from time to time, with an RFP representing crash time on a major case. Long-foreseen time off requests are often required for even weekends (even if it doesn't actually burn vacation), and travel is tricky for me ... an especially major RFP release can cause me to have to cancel 'fun' travel ... which means paying several hundred dollars for event tickets and airfare carries a significant risk of me losing money for nothing. Heck, I caught crap from parts of my team on a relatively small proposal for attending AdeptiCon, with over 6 months lead time on time off request. In my opinion, that doesn't matter when it comes to showing solidarity on the circuit, and planning to make a great event. So barring the unavoidable, folks will see me and my NOVA Open polo shirts rolling dice and hamming it up at WGC this year. Like many of the other events mentioned above, and many I'm assuredly forgetting about, WGC is a pillar for our community, and I'm looking forward to it.

IF you're in Texas and looking for something to do in a few weeks, give a gander at the site (click pic), they may have some spots left.

 - Mike

Thoughts on "Randomness" re: 6th Rumors / Game Design, and a Silly Grey Knight List

Good Afternoon All,

I'm posting from Fort Worth, TX, where I'm at for the week working through a pre-proposal process (for those that don't know, I'm a proposal manager in my day job, for a large DC-based gov't contractor).

A couple of thoughts on rumors of more randomness in 6th Edition, and how this applies to Fantasy 8th Edition randomness as well.

More random effects are perceived by game designers and armchair hobbyists as creating a more laid back, unpredictable, beer and pretzels feel to a game.

I strongly disagree.

Random effects in terms of baseline activities, like what Terrain actually is when you go into it or not ... and how far you can move ... and how far you can charge ... these things are completely unknown factors. "Competitive" players spend a lot of time factoring in the odds of what they're doing, and the best ones put themselves in situations throughout games where the 'bad luck roll' is far less impactful. SURE rolling snake eyes over and over again is bad for anyone, but there's a reason the more competitive list-builders and gamers master the movement phase, and build highly redundant and durable lists, and win a lot of games ... even the random factors that are prevalent through 5th edition at present are managed ahead of time in the list-building phase, and during the moments of the game preceding the moment where you "need" the dice to not be bad.

NOT SO for more casual and laid back gamers.

More importantly, as a GENERAL rule the more competitive gamers ... game more often. If someone plays 15 practice games, and gets that 'awful dice game' during Games 1 and 3, he still has 13/15 games played where everything goes more or less according to how he played. These games probably occurred over a relatively short period of time, more important, and so they haven't really wasted a whole lot of their allocated gaming time.

What about the beer and pretzels gaming father, who gets one night a week to hang out with the guys and roll some dice. He's probably spent all week pondering how things will go at work ... thinking about what list he wants to play, scribbling list ideas cryptically in the margins of his notebook ... even if he doesn't, most gamers in general look forward to their game time. He gets his ONE night off family duties for the week, gets over to his buddy's house for his one game with the guys ... and that week happens to be his crappy dice week. Between the day after game night the week before, and the next game night, his ONLY chance to game is ruined by random bad dice. That's a 14 day period in which he gets one game, and his memory of it is: "My dice screwed me over."

The less a game is dependent on dice, the more a game will go about how you expect it to go, with regard to the lists brought to bear and the play of the opponents. The more a game is dependent on dice, the less a game will go about how you expect it to. The more experience you get with "Bad dice" games, the more your playstyle and list-building style will adjust to insulate you from it ... the less you play, the less your style will adjust.

The long and short here is if some of the rumors about a more random 6th edition come true, you're going to see I think 3 things happen ...

1) People are going to get a feel for the game, and make the general choice (internally) of moving toward quitting, or sticking with the game, based on how it feels.  Then, simultaneously ...

2a) Competitive and/or more regular gamers are going to over time adjust their lists and gaming styles to match the new rules, randomness, etc.
2b) Casual and/or less regular gamers are going to be increasingly frustrated as an increasingly random game screws over their "feel" for how things used to be.

This is especially true with regard to new and improved codices, the 'meta,' etc. The more the game changes, the less the casual players are able to comfortably stay up with it ... the more frustrated they become when they 'waste' their playtime feeling like they have no chance against those with more time, and/or feel like how they play or what they purchase has no real impact on the result, due to how random the game is.

YES, competitive gamers won't enjoy going to a tournament, and losing a game b/c of a more random situation, but tournament play as a whole will adjust to that ... if it's REALLY bad, something ETC-style will come up, and the game will develop a modified tournament system that's generally agreed upon, and that eliminates more random components. That's just how things work ... tournament players of 40k will adjust, because they *always have.* Warhammer 40,000 is not a tournament game. Organizers work hard to MAKE it one ... even in the simple ways of creating points or conditions assigned to the basic book missions.

The real issue is not how 6th edition will impact Tournament 40k, because it won't really. The real issue is how 6th edition will impact the fun of the game at the casual and beginner level. If the game becomes more 'who cares, it's random,' or less fun in general for those who don't constantly keep up with it (aka, NOT tournament players), you'll see a lot less people taking the game as a serious hobby, or keeping up with it. Sales will go down (as they apparently have with Fantasy), and you'll at THAT point start to see an impact on Conventions, Tournaments, and presence at game stores ... because as with any hobby, the advancement of 'new' or 'casual' gamers into tournament/traveling players inherently replaces the attrition due to life of those who preceded them.

Ramble ramble :)

SO, my buddy James and I were talking about 40k lists that are wonkier. He's adopted the style of Ork list I've always personally run/advocated, that focuses on 9 Kanz, 9 buggies, 2 battlewagons purchased as rides for 3-man suicide Nob squads, and 6 troop units with Trukks. It's a bit abysmal in Kill Points, but is entirely overwhelming and hard to deal with in objectives-based missions. Fun fun fun to play, and very competitive / effective. He was pondering a list that was similarly 'Weird' in some ways, but still competitive and fun and goofy for Grey Knights, and he wanted to have a Vindicare in it. So, with no revision at this point, I popped this one out there ...

Inquisitor Coteaz - 100
Psycannon Inquisitor - 80

10 Paladins w/ 4 Psycannons, Assorted CCW - 630
Vindicare Assassin - 145

5 Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters, 3 Meltaguns, 2 Death Cults, Dozer Heavy Flamer Chimera - 155
5 Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters, 3 Meltaguns, 2 Death Cults, Dozer Heavy Flamer Chimera - 155
3 Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters, Dozer Heavy Flamer Chimera - 81
3 Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters, Dozer Heavy Flamer Chimera - 81
3 Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters, Dozer Psybolt Rhino w/ Searchlight - 72
3 Acolytes w/ Storm Bolters - 21

Dreadknight w/ Heavy Incinerator - 160
Dreadknight w/ Heavy Incinerator - 160
Dreadknight w/ Heavy Incinerator - 160

2,000 points
Paladins Combat Squad, Hiijack the Chimeras (I guess they don't have to combat squad, if you want to make a deathstar and lower your KP by reserving things, etc. etc., which is why they aren't combat squadded)

Inquisitors split to small 7-man squads in Chimeras ... 2 death cults stubborn backed by inquisitor and hidden within 5 acos, who do have meltaguns. These are your versatility troops, keep 'em in-tact.

Dreadknights follow the action, are generally great when they can't be easily focus fired, and late-game. This list is designed to impact the late-game, while acknowledging it's not 'idealized.'

3-Man acolyte squads have storm bolters so they can actually do something from the backboard when they arrive from reserves, in some games. Worth the investment. People may shoot them, but in most situations you're fine with that, or can hide them if you're not.

Dozer Rhino is to searchlight things if you really feel a need, to bring psycannons to bear early on key targets. More importantly, it's a free ride for the Vindicare, if you want to make him a bigger pain in the ass to actually kill. Sacrificing a turn of fire to hop into a covered, fortitude-capable firepoint is never a terrible idea. Plus, all his rules work with his pistol ... keep that in mind in games where you'd rather keep him with the crew and mobile, instead of sitting somewhere with a marine equivalent save (cover) asking to get dakka'ed down.

Wee, non-NOVA post for ya'll :)

Preparing for New Editions - Possibility of 6th Ed for NOVA; Plus LOS Blocking Terrain

Alright, well word of 6th edition continues to build.

The timing is going to be interesting for purposes of the NOVA, for a couple of reasons, and I wanted to let ya'll know we're thinking about it.

The Invitational will remain a 5th edition event no matter what - everyone is qualifying in 5th, and it will be the last major relevant 5th edition event in the country. Final books will be written on the codices, as many fantastic players duke it out using theirs of choice in one of the known and heavily playtested tournament formats.

Unless it releases less than a month out, our NARRATIVE event and possibly Trios will actually be 6th edition. These are more casual events with 3 hour evening rounds, so they present the least issue in terms of adjusting armies in time.

First and foremost for the GT, possible release dates for 6th and associated general gameplan for how we'll handle them:

1) Late May / Early June ... if this is the release date, we'll definitely go with 6th Edition for the 40k GT.
2) Mid-Late June ... this is the trickiest date, though with over 2 months of release and more than a month prior of buzz and possible PDF leaks, it's HIGHLY likely (though not guaranteed) that we'll go with 6th Edition if the release date is more than 8 weeks prior to the NOVA Open, for the 40k GT. More on this later.
3) July - August ... if the release date is within 2 months of the convention, it's most likely we'll go with 5th edition for all except the Narrative/Trios evening events. If the release is within a month of the event, we'll stick with 5th edition for all.

Based on very early rumors, the things we'll have to contest with for any area of format prep are:

Force Organization / Army Build - If the FOC process changes, missions and model/WYSIWYG requirements will have to change somewhat for the first year also. Possible changes range from Troops no longer being the only scoring unit to complete removal of the FOC in favor of %-based army building.

Rules - If we go with 6th, we'll be playing the crap out of the game with all our judges leading up to it, aggressively predicting and working with FAQ issues, and preparing for all the crazy eventualities.

Paint Scoring / Modeling Requirements - This is a bit self-explanatory, in its relation to people having to make significant army changes within an 8-10 week window.

Relevant Issues with 6th Edition Shift.

1) Missions. Changes of all sorts are entirely possible here, including mission focus by GW (i.e. will Kill Points remain, will Victory Points as an optional tiebreaker remain, will Troops remain the only scoring units, etc.).

Invariably, there may be some mission changes as a result of the way they change the core rules of the game. We could go in numerous directions here, but it will be a tad wait and see. We will stick with the NOVA's format and scoring no matter what, but goals may change to mirror game changes and/or 6th edition mission releases.

2) Painting and Modeling. Normally, people have months to potentially paint their entire army and model extensively to meet a theme. While some players have such extensive collections that it's easy to be ready, not everyone can prep quite as extensively in time across every model in their army. So while a 6th edition early release and 6th edition GT won't lift our painting requirements, we may become more lenient on things like WYSIWYG and how we judge your army for appearance score.

An example of what I mean, so you don't overread into this, is as such:
Let's say "Meltaguns" become flamer templates, and Flamers become S8 AP1 guns (roll with me). Anyone who wants to subsequently count "every single Meltagun in my army" as a Flamer is more likely to be allowed to in a 6e NOVA. That said, it would still not be ok to say "well half my Meltaguns are Flamers, a quarter are Plasmaguns, and a quarter are still Flamers."

WYSIWYG violations that are extremely consistent and easy for an opponent to understand across an army are no problem. Trying to hide behind a new edition and run an intentionally confusing army set-up with tons of contradictory counts-as will NOT be allowed to slip through, however.

3) Rulings. Normally we have extensively rulings already in place for every possible scenario that may arise during gameplay. We have the NOVA FAQ, larger community FAQ's to fall back on, and extensive gameplay experience and GW FAQ's for many of the common eventualities. If we only have 8-10 weeks to prep, however, this won't be the case. That said, no matter how revolutionary the changes, our judges will be ready to go, and we've added more time to every round this year. Suffice to say, this is the easiest thing to manage by tournament time, and the most time-intensive leading up to it for us. Something to consider regardless.

The long and short here is we haven't formalized which edition we're going with, with the caveat that its presently 5th, because we have no formal confirmation of the release of 6th edition. That said, keep your ears peeled for incoming editions, and on the blog/newsletters/website for any changes. We don't want everyone to have to play a 2+ month old retired edition come NOVA 2012, and we think if it comes to that, we'll be ahead of and ready to deal with being both the last relevant 5th Edition event with the Invitational, and the first large 6th Edition event with the GT.

Have any thoughts? Share 'em! The NOVA is, has been, and will be built on player input ... yours is as welcome as ever.

Registrations are way up since AdeptiCon, btw - grab your ticket while you can!

Pretty things PS - We went to work on the last bit of our terrain project yesterday, our LOS blocking center pieces.

For those who haven't kept up, the boards at NOVA 2012 are like to have 2 LOS blocking area-terrain-counting hills (everyone's seen 'em by now) in diagonally opposed corners of the boards ... 2 partially LOS blocking area pieces 1'x1' each in the other diagonally opposed corners ... 2 roughly 1'x1' non-or-barely-blocking area pieces in the middle of the long table edges ... and a more attractive and/or intricate los blocking centerpiece that's not quite as large as some of last year's Figure 8 center hills were, in terms of how much blocked.

Many of the new ones of these can be seen below ... We have literally about 40 more LOS blocking center pieces to go, and the NOVA will be totally terrain self-sufficient. A summer full of painting and we'll be donezo in that department for the forseeable.

Pink Foam Building assembly line; making tons and tons of pink foam strips look like assembled building blocks/bricks.

A veritable city of LOS blocking terrain

Owen shared an unfinished marine he had sitting around to give some perspective to the terrain sizes

 

Stu makes some awesome pieces; this is a partial LOS blocking corner piece

Cool effects with pink foam, via cutters, knives, wood cutters, torches, etc.

Use low temp hot glue to attach little plastic things, or it takes forever for the tacky to set

 

Oh the wide uses of pink foam ... missing caps? NO problem!

Dewey put this rad piece together

Road to AdeptiCon 3

We made it. Great times all around so far. Looking forward to tomorrow. We caught up with a bunch of our NOVA crew buddies on the way at a random rest stop, hence the higher population!

Mike

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Road to AdeptiCon 2

Faith +1

And, extolling the virtues of Chenkov ...

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Road to AdeptiCon 1

Tony, Mark, Andrew and I at random middle of nowhere gas station.

Now that Mark is driving, the "oomp-chick" in the driver's music of choicehas markedly increased.

Dance party to AdeptiCon 2012 under way ...

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Happy 10th AdeptiCon - Catching Up With Everybody

Well, a ton of the NOVA crew will be making the trip to AdeptiCon this year, to have a blast with the fun times that are always presented.

The AdeptiConstruct, AdeptiCon 2012's Official Show Mini

I'm crashing five separate proposals here, and I absolutely refuse to use this weekend's trip as time off as a result :)

So no postings at the moment, really, but I wanted to let people know what my/our general schedule would be like, in case anyone wants to hang out, open game, join for Giordano's or other shenanigans, or join for the times I drive into Chicago.

This'll be the third year in a row attending AdeptiCon, and the third year in a row I'll be driving; it's about a 12.XX hour trip if you basically don't stop, but realistically closer to 14 with stops and everything else.

We'll be leaving Thursday by 6AM, so I anticipate an arrival time between 7-8PM on Thursday evening.

I'll be Tony Kopach's formal guardian for the second year in a row (parental signatures and all that jazz), and the last year, as he'll hit the 18 mark in June or July or ... well, something.  I've got to try to get him to the ETC Meet and Greet by 9, so that'll be my first priority, but other than that I'll be around for Giordano's with a lot of our crew, and starting to catch up with a lot of the great faces I rarely see.

I'm especially looking forward to seeing others among the TO's that go, including Chandler of Feast of Blades, Jon of WargamesCon, Hank and Matthias of AdeptiCon (primarily done with over-exaggerated hand signals while they're busy bees, as we all are come event-time), Jay of DaBoyz, Reece of the Bay Area, and many others.

On Friday I decided not to play in the 40k Championships. Last year I got quite ill during the drive up, and bailed out of the Champs to get myself well for Saturday's team tournament (my favorite event at AdeptiCon). The resulting amount of free time I had on Friday and Sunday (not that I'd have qual'ed, haha) was quite pleasant, and the sleeping in helped compensate for the grueling day of the Team Tournament.

So, lesson learned, all I really signed up for this year was the aforementioned TT. Socializing and catching in all the gorgeous armies and activities was really the highlight of both years so far for me, so no reason not to stick with what I enjoy the most.

So I'll be with team NOVA Superstars (we never bothered to change the silly placeholder name) wearing NOVA Open shirts and playing Guard/Wolves again on Saturday, and I'll be free to do whatever on Friday and Sunday. Definitely going to be driving into Chicago a fair bit on those two days as well, and I've got room for 8 in the Highlander (some spots already taken), if folks happen to also be free and haven't ever taken the time to check out the awesomeness of the Windy City.

With a clean bill of health this time, I'm also looking forward to plenty of Whiskey along with the 40k this year, so I can finally cover both bases of the blog's name.

AdeptiCon's also a great place to shoot the breeze if you've ever had a bone to pick with the NOVA format, or some great inputs you've always wanted to see ... I'm as open to criticism as ever when it's constructive and on point, and the great input of the community over the past couple years is a big reason why the NOVA has changed so much year to year.

Let me know via e-mail or here if you want to try and catch up some, I'm looking forward to seeing all the usual and new faces at one of the best hobby events in the world this weekend.

PS - If you haven't seen it yet, the first 1000 arrivals will get pretty much the most awesome show mini ever.

http://dev.adepticon.org/2012/04/enter-adepticonstruct.html