NOVA Open 2017

 

Hello All,

The NOVA Open 2017 has come and gone. This year was amazing. Quite possibly the best event yet.
Wednesday- Had to work the night before setup. I work nights so I did not get to bed till after 4 and had to be at the hotel for set up at 9 AM. I was 2 hours late getting there, thankfully I did not miss all the fun. There was still plenty to do :) 
 





The lounge was super cool this year!





1. Wednesday night I was able to attend the Games Workshop Upcoming Preview event. This was a lot of fun even though I had to sit with a pillar blocking most of my view of the presentation area. The new stuff coming out by Christmas was amazing. Necromunda! That's all I really care about on this one , but there was some other fun stuff too. Afterwards I attended the Demos for Necromunda and the new Age of Sigmar small scale game. The tables filled up quickly so I did not get a chance to play, but it looked like everyone was having a good time.
 

 



Not the GW Upcoming preview event





3. Thursday- Thursday was my Seminar day and I managed to pull off 4 in one day. Two were 4 hour classes! I attended a hands on airbrushing seminar where I got to paint a walking tank and attended two of Duncan Rhodes painting classes where I got to paint a Plague bearer and a Primaris Reaver. The seminars were awesome, but due to my misreading of the scheduled times some of them overlapped by as much as an hour. In the end it all worked out, but for future reference I need to really look at the schedule more closely. Robby did some early appearance judging for 40K and Hobbit SBG.

 

 



I like the face





 

4. Friday- Friday was time to get to work. My Army appearance team had their first real taste of army judging with the AoS doubles event! It went well, but because of some feedback I will be making some adjustments to the 2018 primer.  Friday is also the time when Capital Palette starts to ramp up. Models flooded in with one person entering 27 separate entries! We actually had a case full of busts! That has never happened. With so many models in the case the stress of making sure they stayed safe was high.  In the end we had more than 250 entries in competition.  More on that later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Friday evening I had another Seminar with Duncan this time on The GW methods for painting metallic colors. We painted a Stormcast Liberator.

 



 5. Saturday- Saturday was a busy day. We had more appearance judging than any other day covering events like Age of Sigmar, Warmachine and 40K. For the most part these went well, there were one or two hiccups along the way, but overall not bad. The cutoff time for Capital Palette entries was 4 PM Saturday, but we accepted some late entries until 5 PM since the judging was not scheduled until much later that night and entering in so late could count against you in the "fan Favorite" as folks have less time to choose your entry as their favorite. In a strange turn of events I was allowed to enter the competition this year. Normally Staff and board members are not allowed to enter NOVA Open competitions. It was decided that since the judges are independent and we agreed to accept no prizes if we actually won anything (and paid for our entry anyway) we could compete. I entered my Glotkin as a diorama since the action on the base is way more fun than the Glotkin model itself. More on that later. Saturday night was my final Duncan class this time we were working on special effects the GW way. It was a lot of fun using paints from GW's technical line including Ryza Rust and Typhus Corrosion. This time the model was one of the new Death Guard models.

 

 



Not Death Guard models





 

 6. Sunday- AH the final day. Sunday was a fun day. We only had one event left to judge (Infinity) and No new entries for Capital Palette were accepted as the judging was done overnight. As a matter of fact the only real duty we have to perform on Sunday is make sure the entries get safely back to their owners. In the early afternoon I attended the Capital Palette awards ceremony where to my surprise I made first cut in my division and was awarded a finalist pin. I asked Mike Brandt about it at it was decided that the finalist pin did not constitute a prize since it was an indication that the model would be further judged in its category and had not actually won. I was allowed to keep it. For me it was like winning a gold medal as it means I was taken seriously my first time out! I feel more confident to try again next year. Later I attended the final awards ceremony and sat with my clubmates- the Victory Gamers! After the ceremony it was time to start breaking things down. I worked late into the night repacking the glass cases of the Capital Palette to get them ready for the Monday move out.

 



My Glottkin that earned a finalist pin.

 





 

 

Some High Points for me...

A high point for the weekend was getting to help out with Kidshammer. Some of the appearance judges showed up at Kidshammer to give advice to up and coming young gamers. It was a lot of fun and I hope the advice given helps them.

Having my friends from the Victory Gamers club show up. These are a great bunch of guys and made a strong showing at the NOVA Open,  placing well in several events.  I hope even more of us show up next year!

Spending time with my Son. This is my yearly vacation and I am thankful that Robby spends each NOVA Open with me.  As usual he was my assistant with Capital Palette and Army Appearance Judging.  It is my favorite week of the year and Robby is a huge part of that.

Making lots of new friends. Between capital palette and army appearance judging I made several new friends over the event and look forward to seeing them again next year (if not sooner.)

 

Lastly the a big high point was working with the NOCF. A lot of money was raised for several good causes and getting to be a part of that (even in a small way) was amazing. The models for this years raffle were the best yet!

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

Well that's it for now.

 

Till Next time!

 

RGH

The 2017 NOVA Open Airbrush Speed Painting competition

This year's NOVA Open Airbrush Speed Painting competition is going in a different direction. Gone are the tanks from previous years. (Links 1/2)

2015

2016

In their place are these amazing vehicles for Trenchworx own game: Road/Kill Ultimate Car Combat (https://trenchworx.com/product-category/roadkill-ultimate-car-combat/) The chosen car is from the Road/Kill Viking Pack and were all assembled the same way.

From the Trenchworx website used for illustrative purposes.

The ones I did were put together slightly different from the example above. 

Assembly of these models was a little time consuming. To be absolutely honest there was flash and excess material on most of the kits that needed t be clipped, scrapped, and/or cut off before the pieces were ready for assembly. Overall though they cleaned up real nice. The metal parts were cleaner than most I have worked on in the past and were ready a lot faster than the resin main sections.

Putting the parts together was the best part as the pieces fit together with minimal effort and look pretty good when assembled.  

I was able to get all 27 cars completed in just three building sessions of around 2 hours each.

Priming these models took a few hours. As usual I used Vallejo Light Grey primer and a few light coats later they are ready to go for the competition!

Well That's it for now.

RGH   

Terrain Build July 23 2017- Hopefully the last of the season

Hello All,

Yesterday was an amazing day for building terrain! In advance I want to thank everyone who showed up and help as well as all the unseen heroes that helped make the terrain builds and the NOVA Open so successful.  As always it is an honor to work with you.

Yesterday we had a tall order to fulfill. We had 341 pieces of terrain to paint and 600 small wall sections from Tectonic Craft Studios (Link Here) to assemble and paint. We managed to get all 341 terrain pieces painted to a tabletop standard as well as assemble all of the TCS walls and even got most of those painted until the weather dictated that we were done painting for the day. :)

A summer storm blew in around 3 o'clock  blowing terrain off of tables and almost sending our sun shade to Oz. We quickly stopped all production and scrambled to get all outside activities cleaned and packed up.

We were not to be defeated though, and simply moved activities inside where we concentrated on getting the TCS terrain finished.  Less than half of the TCS walls are unpainted, but since they look pretty good "natural" I figure we can get away with using them as is this year and hit them early in 2018.

Lunch was served around noon and was some delicious sandwiches, fruit salad, Cesar Salad. Cookies and cake for dessert. The Sandwiches were awesome and I have to admit I over indulged a little.

Dan from Tectonic Craft Studios drove down from New York to be in attendance and personally deliver the 500+ wall sections we worked on. This gave us a great reason to hold hourly raffles for prizes. Every hour you were in attendance your name went into the box. the longer you stayed the better chance you had of winning. The Prizes were from TCS (naturally) and were quite nice. This worked so well we are considering making it a regular part of terrain builds next year. here are a few pictures of our winners. Sorry in advanced if I missed your photo op. 

Dan picking the next lucky winner!

In the end we worked almost to 5 PM on the nose. It was a long day, but a Prodigious amount of work was completed.  Hats off to all that attended!

See you at the event!

RGH