I participated in the Opening Salvo for Horus Heresy on Thursday of the NOVA Open. I’ll say at the front: excellently run event with amazing people I loved meeting. Incredible community. Great personality. Tons of fun.

Now let’s talk about how much it sucks to run a bad list.

The issue is I chose to run an Armored Spearhead, which is a heavy vehicle list. Essentially, I ran a skew list. This is entirely my fault.

My first match against Thousand Sons was actually excellent. It was back and forth and we both held equal objectives at the end. He won because Traitors got more points for holding objectives than Loyalists, but the game was everything I love about Horus Heresy. Beautiful armies, excellent back and forth, and a great opponent. It came down to the wire and I loved it.

My second and third matches didn’t go so great, but my opponents did have excellently painted, beautiful armies. I fought against Sons of Horus (they punched me to death) and World Eaters (they punched me to death). It was still fun, but sucked. Does that make sense?

Both opponents were fantastic people and I must say the 30k scene is full of great people. I had a blast, even with it going poorly.

I’m a bit closer to having a review of the system. I learned a lot during this event and hopefully I’ll be able to improve going forward. In reality I ran a poor list and rather than fixing it mid event (which was allowed) I decided to see if I could make it work. It speaks volumes that I still had fun and regret missing the Saturday event I had signed up for.

I hope to intercept some of these guys again in the future, ideally with a more well prepared list. My poor Bird Boys (Invictus Suzerain) saw no play time and that was definitely a mistake. Not to mention the lack of a single dreadnought in my list. I’ll aim to do better, and I’m more than happy to have left NOVA Open feeling that way.