NOVA Open Event Recap Part III – Horus Heresy Doubles: A Crapshow at the Frick Factory

Hi all,
This is part three of my series detailing my experiences at the NOVA open. This will be the spiciest part of my review, as this event was a complete disaster. In all my experiences going to tournaments, this was by far the worst one I have ever attended. The craziest part is that my bad experiences didn’t come from the players or missions! It was entirely the event organization!

The event was set to start at 9:00ish AM and run for three rounds. Each team was made up of two members who each had a 1.5K list. The event cost $40 per team and didn’t award any prizes, intended more as a fun low key event. Things got off to a bad start when the event started 45 minutes late. We didn’t have nay pairing app and instead told to “find out own tables”. With close to 20 teams playing this descended into chaos as everyone started shouting trying to find their opponents.

My partner and I found a table with some good terrain and set up for our first match:

Game 1:

Our first battle was against a traitor force of Ultramarines and Word Bearers. The Word Bearer player only deployed a dread on the board with tons of jump infantry in reserve. The mission was an odd one. There were five objectives that disappeared after being held for a turn. These could explode, grant negative victory points or up to D3 victory points when held. Our opponents, for some reason, didn’t bother to focus on any objectives so we secured 4/5 on turn 1 (due to some good scout moves). However 3/4 immediately blew up and the other netted us 3 points. In this mission you also got points for slaying the warlord and killing more enemy units, making the game a knife fight for the last objective.

The Night Lords mainly worked to tie up enemy units around that last objective as the Iron Hands slowly got into position. The brick of Immortals charged a squad of 20 enemy assault marines with an apothecary, Librarian and enemy Praetor and wiped it out after one Iron Hands character tanked 6 straight 3++ saves lol. The Arquitor didn’t do much, spending 4 turns shooting at a Phobos Landraider and blowing off a few weapons and taking down to 1 HP. Funnily enough, the landraider also spent four turns shooting at the Arquitor and took it down to 1 HP after it immobilized itself on terrain turn 1. We managed a 4-1 victory after the dust settled.

After this game was when things started to go down hill. The event organizers informed us they were assigning tables, but our next match was on a table that didn’t exist. Other people got tables with barely any terrain. Thus most people resorted to finding their own tables again. In all the clamor, I ended up having to carrying our display board and armies up and down the hall a few times which was incredibly annoying.

Game 2:

Our opponents for this match were a Dark Angels and Alpha Legion force. They had a big scary robot and tons of vehicles, to the delight of my Iron Hands partner. We deployed on the line and got first turn to open with a brutal salvo, blowing up a spartan and two predators, alongside some Iron Circle robots and Mechanicus dreads. My Vigilator sniper also pinned the lascannon squad. In the next turn and a half vehicles of all sorts perished. My bike squad was eliminated as were the Sabres. The Dark Angels poured a lot of fire into the Iron Hands which did very little. As we were midway through our opponents turn 2 we were told to put dice down and the round was over.

This shocked us a bit, but we were told that since the event started late they needed to speed things up. Thus the round was shortened and there would be no break going into round three. Thus we won 1-0 as our opponents didn’t get much of a chance to respond.

Round 3:

This next match was the highlight of my Nova Open tournament. We were paired against an Ad Mech and Alpha Legion list that had a lot of knights and Knight Adjacent units. All the objectives were on the center-line meaning it would be fought largely in the open. The Alpha Legion infiltrated a squad of headhunters and a few other squads onto the objectives early. The headhunters managed to hit the Arquitor with a Multi Melta shot but it passed its shrouded save. There were only a few other casualties as Night Fighting weakened everyone’s firepower. The bikes folded the Alpha Legion Inductii squad on the right

Turn 2 the dreadclaw comes down and spits out a Mhara Gal dreadnought taken as a reward of treachery. The Ad Mech and Iron Hands players content the middle objective, both wary of the other’s firepower. The Arquitor pins the Head Hunter squad while the rapiers pick off a few other enemy units. I hold the right objective but the other two are held by the Alpha Legion.

The enemy dread charges and takes one Iron Hands squad when it is kileld and explodes. The dreadclaw flies over another squad and manages to kill a number of them, somehow. My tactical squad combines with the Iron hands to whittle down the headhunters on the left while a squad of inductii moves up to contest the objective. Our shooting continues to pummel the ad mech walkers. My bikes charge the Ad mech lord but get walloped in close combat – _ – and flee. However we end up holding 2/3 objectives.

At some point during this round we heard them start giving out a few prizes they had for the event, which was odd as we were never given any time warnings or asked to submit scores. Already fed up with the organizers, we pressed onwards.

By the top of four most us where down to our last units. The dreadclaw, again, somehow kills more Iron Hands with its flame sweep and other shooting kills the squad. The Knight tries to charge my Delgatus, but he pulls his Night Lord shenanigans and retreats beforehand. The Headhunters and Innductii charge the left-hand Iron Warrior squad, lose horribly in combat and get swept.

On my turn the Sabres arrive and do nothing : / combined shooting kills the Alpha Legion recon squad on the center objective. By the end of turn 4 we now had a commanding lead and we called the game as people start cleaning up around us. There were so many great moments here, from the Alpha Legion Dread blowing up and killing tons of units, the Dreadclaw racking up a massive body count by just shooting flames at Iron Hands, sniper battles between vigilators, 6+ saves on Multi-Melta hits. It was a tense battle that we pulled out, mainly due to our abundance of Line units and the general annoyingness of Iron Hands.

I do want to reserve the final portion of my article to talking about just how poorly this event was run. Everyone knew this event was not a competitive event that didn’t result in anything but a few, token, prizes. However, each team payed $40 to play and so I expect a bit more from the organizers.

They were sharing the space with a few other events which I get. However, the other singles event featured 3K armies that only played 2 rounds and didn’t have any issues on timing. I have no idea why they thought they could squeeze 3 rounds in for doubles. The event was horribly organized, they started very late (if time was an issue why was this not a priority?) had little to no attempt to organize players, and communication was terrible through the event.

The event felt like an afterthought, and would be fine if it were free, but as a paid event it was not up to the standard I would expect. I am seriously hoping the event organizers will take the criticism they get and put more effort and thought into this event next year.

Luckily, the day was salvaged with an amazing burger from Tasty Buns and a chance to relax and chart with the Pittsburgh crew. It was a great way to round out the event and talk about great moments and funny twists of fate.

I really enjoyed my time at Nova, with some upcoming life changes I don’t know if I will be back again next year. However, my experiences, last year and this year, were some of the highlights of my gaming career.

And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!