The Road To NOVA: 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!