Greetings folks! It's been a whirlwind recently, with the event I look forward to most happening over the past week - The NOVA Open! I took a mess of pics, so buckle up as we dive in to a long weekend of Heresy goodness!
Day One
Got into D.C. on Wednesday late afternoon and got checked into the hotel. The NOVA Open is held at the Crystal City Hyatt which is a rather nice location, quite near Reagan airport. The rooms appeared to have been remodeled somewhat from last year, and were spacious and comfortable, always a good thing!
Charity Armies
Swung down to the event space to pick up my back and events packets and snapped some shots of all the sweet charity armies on display. Had to lay some money down for a couple of the raffles as well!
Ran into a number of old blogger buddies and Heresy battle brothers, and ended up calling it a reasonably early evening as the next few days were going to be packed!
Day Two
Escalation Armies
Thursday morning we rallied down in the event space where the Heresy campaign was being run and folks were laying out their armies - So much goodness on display, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!
These are just a sampling of the awesome armies, sadly my usual 2 of every 3 pictures taken being garbage applied. I really need to bring a monopod to the events! They asked everyone who brought a primarch to line them all up, and we almost had the full set - Just missed out on Magnus and Lorgar if memory serves.
Escalation Game One
The first day's games were designed such that we had the option of playing 2000, 2500 or 3000 point games. I knew I wanted to do some big games and get all the boys on the table at once (the later games in the weekend were all 1500 points or less), so once all the table assignments were set, we dived right in! They allowed us to call out any "grudge matches" we wanted to play against specific opponents, and the always-awesome
Todd Sherman from Sincain40k and I got down to it!
I'm not going to do blow-by-blow battle reports for each game as the pictures speak for themselves. Suffice it to say, Todd's Raven Guard utterly smashed the Dark Angels which was to be expected - His army is dynamite! Gorgeous games with beautiful armies run by great opponents on awesome tables, so even losing the game was a great experience!
Escalation Game Two
The second grudge match of the day was against the inestimable Nate Taylor and his absolutely stunning White Scars. The game was a massive see-saw, with the Dark Angels causing massive casualties on the first few turns...
..But the reinforcements led by the Khan himself rapidly turned the tide and the Dark Angels were driven from the field in disarray (a common theme to the weekend, it turns out)! Another completely fantastic game full of laughs, cheers and jeers!
There were a number of awesome little goodies handed out by the event
team, including this rather on-the-nose dig at the semi-recent Space
Wolf upgrade kit release. Too funny!
Being a little wiped out from a pair of back-to-back 3000 point games, and not really having enough time to complete a third game in the slot the Dark Angels vowed to return the next day for vengeance!
Next up, Day three events and mayhem!