This year’s NOVA Open is the first to take place in DC. It’s a much larger, more glamorous venue and the team behind the convention seem very excited about it. I’m looking forward to seeing more space given to non-Games Workshop games and hoping it means growth in the historical segment for the convention in future years. I have a concept for a casual Chain of Command event to run next year, but that’s for different posts.

I’ve signed up for a somewhat diverse set of systems. I have Black Powder Red Earth—an ultramodern skirmish ruleset based on a graphic novel series with a focus on tactical combat. So much focus, in fact, that it comes with flat terrain pieces and uses 2D terrain. I’ll be doing their learn-to-play event Friday evening.

The next game on my list is InCountry: Recon. This is the tournament focused ruleset for InCountry, which is a larger narrative ruleset for ultramodern combat. Recon is skirmish based, with 8 models per side on a 2×2 foot board. The larger ruleset is more freeform and has rules for vehicles as well as full platoons. It seems able to scale up and down in size by tweaking the ruleset with the Close Quarters expansion. This one intrigues me more for the ability to run larger event games. I’ll be playing the InCountry: Recon tournament on Saturday night. I’ve never played before, so this will probably be my best tournament performance ever—as opposed to the ones I’ve bothered practicing for in the past.

Also on Friday, I have the Frostgrave Campaign Day. I may even participate in the free play time Thursday night if nothing else grabs my attention. I look forward to seeing Frostgrave out in the wild and seeing how folks really play it. I have a few games under my belt, but against the same opponent (save for one battle) which means I haven’t seen much diversity. I imagine the game shines in a more diverse environment and greatly look forward to getting a few games in. Plus, it’ll be a nice refreshing system to play after a full day of Horus Heresy on Thursday.

Finally, I have two Horus Heresy events. I dig that the community is more focused on narrative for Heresy rather than all-out war. The game seems to narrow heavily in a highly competitive environment, but the events listed this year are all focused on having a good time with effort put into balancing list power levels. I’m playing the Opening Salvo on Thursday which is a series of 2,500 point battles with flexible lists. Saturday, I’m in the Excruciatus event which is a series of 3,000 point games. Again, I look forward to seeing more diversity as most of my Heresy to date has been against one opponent. Hopefully, this leaves me with a positive impression. Honestly, these are the events I’m most nervous about—Heresy remains an unproven system to me. A full day of it may very well burn me out or charge me up.

Outside the events I signed up for, I hope to pull a few demo games here and there. I’d like to see more systems. I’m really hoping the dealer floor is better this year. I wasn’t super pleased with it last year, but that’s more due to my own personal taste. I found almost nothing to buy—especially when it comes to terrain. I was ready to drop $200 on MDF like an idiot and instead went home looking positively restrained. I think I bought some random tokens for the sake of buying something.

I’m also hoping to spend more time hanging out with the club this year. Victory Gamers is a great set of people and I’d like to meet some of the members from the games I don’t play. After all, every Warhammer player is just a young Historical player. Age comes for us all, and with it, the innate desire to refight World War 2 on tabletop.

Chain of Command always wins.