Hi All,
This is part 2 of my recap of the NOVA narrative event. Part 1 saw me arrive and get a few games in. The following morning I got in a bit early and poked around a bit more. I was bale to get some great deals on some minis and check out the terrain. A fun note about the terrain, all 24 boards were populated with terrain the organizer owned!
The board with the Thuderhawk and Stormbird was especially cool. As part of the custom mission for that board you could launch the aircraft to go on strafing runs on other tables on the planet!
Game #3: Vs Campbell
This game I faced off against Campbell (who writes for Goonhammer) and his lovely Black Templars. I rolled with my Brass Scorpion list, which was terrible but made the game run quickly. I mostly ignored the board mission, and focused on getting into combat as early as possible. The Scorpion got a lot of kills but Campbell was able to make some key 4++ saves on his Gravis Captain, and rolled like a maniac on his plasma cannon shots. When the dust settled I won the planetary action on accident (it was the transmit data crusade mission and my Disco Lord, the only character, couldn’t do anything else so he did the mission action which swung the balance). It was a fun fast game that allowed me to play catch up on my roster.
Game #4: Vs Nick
This was a very wonky mission where you had to hold data terminals (above in grey) to decode data and haul it back to your deployment zone. It required a bit of luck and a lot of planning. I was playing against Custodes with two dreads and a Telemon. The game was pretty close early, I managed to get a key charge off with my Master Executioner who was then intervened into by a Blade Champion. While I should have had my ME kill the dreadnought I decided to see if I could kill the champ and I put 8 mortal wounds on him. However he made 2 6+++ saves and totally wiped the ME in response. Other than that I was able to do a lot of damage with the Disco Lord, Drill and Blood Slaughterers. For this mission I won the Planetary and Secondary missions. A wrinkle of this board mission was that you could both win if you extracted your data which my opponent did with his final unit on the last turn allowing us both to score points.
Game #5: Vs Wes
Wes was running a beautiful melee necron army but my army was a bad match up for him. Furthermore he was only playing a few games in the crusade while mine was rapidly approaching 18 Crusade Points. This mission went pretty poorly for him but I think we both had a good time. I was surprised myself with my own tactical genius by getting into melee with his lord with my Warp Talons. His lord interrupted another combat to swing at them but only killed 1 due to really bad rolls. While the Warp Talons busied themselves making confetti, I was able to get a massive multi charge across the board with the Disco Lord and Chosen wrecking everything in sight. However Wes was a good sport and we had fun chatting through the event.
At the end of day #2 I was holding up okay. The mission structure was really growing on me as, most of the time, you could still contribute even if you were getting stomped. I chatted with the event organizer ans he mentioned he was happy with how many splits he was seeing (games where one player won the primary, and one the planetary). I think this is something I would like to copy in future events and opens up some really cool wrinkles. I was getting a little tired arriving home at 11:45-12AM though.
It didn’t help that the place where I parked my car deployed roll-down that night. So I first had to find their (very well-hidden) entrance, then wander around the parking garage trying to figure out how to get the gates to go up (including calling the listed contact and emergency contact numbers with no luck). Finally I saw another car leave, and realized the gates slid up automatically and felt quite stupid.
I was happy to hear the dog was doing well in my absences. She, apparently, felt conflicted about who was in her pack now and slept half-way between my room and my brother’s haha.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
