The War Altar: The future of competitive 40k.

For those who don’t know what the Nova open actually was, it was a two-day, bracket-style tournament that featured 7 games. Four games were held on the first day, only those that went 4-0 and the best 3-1's went through to day 2. The victory conditions are designed to explicitly prevent ties. The five 4-0's were the ''tournament aces'' , the top 3 players in the 3-1 category also went through.

The Tournament used its own custom missions designed to favor no army. It ran with a primary-secondary-tertiary mission style. Missions use the same three victory conditions: victory points, table quarters, and objectives. For each round, one was the win condition, and the other two were the primary and secondary tiebreakers. For all rounds, if everything was tied, marginal VP difference was the tiebreaker.

This is a fantastic system but it doesn’t end there...

One of the major issues in our hobby is the divide between the WAAC/competitive gamers and those who prefer a much more casual approach. The latter prefer painting or the social aspect, basically, they're people who don’t really mind if they win the event. The Nova Open catered to these guys as well. They kept their prizes and ''scores'' separate from the main tournament event. This way, the competitive gamers got their hard core tournament and the rest got to enjoy their aspect of the hobby.

There was tons of spot prizes and grab bags which could only be won by the people who lost their games (I'm told each bag had roughly 30 dollars worth of loot in them , the entry fee was only 50 dollars). There were major “Soft” Awards (Sportsmanship, Players’ Choice, Painting, Conversion by

system) and the player who had the highest combined scores from the above won ''Renaissance Man''. He received a Las Vegas ticket just like the Nova Open tournament winner. Both ''faces'' of our hobby were equally rewarded.

MVBrandt has created something truly amazing for our hobby. The Nova Open is, without doubt in my mind, the best template for competitive 40k tournaments. The time has really come for competitive play in America but why should it only evolve there?

I think the Nova Open should be used as a template for future 40K tournaments across the world. Here in Ireland, we certainly have those that prefer hard fought 40K and those who enjoy the ''soft score'' aspects. I think if all the major clubs came together we could certainly pull off an event to rival the Nova Open. Personally, I would certainly be up for this and would actively commit my club's resources to anyone who wanted to start up an event like this in Ireland.

Finally, I'd just like to give a big shout out to Stelek of YTTH and congratulate him on his 3rd place finish. I think he was in a class of his own and was only defeated by the eventual tournament winner, Tony. Big props to MVBrandt for helping the Nova Open become such a huge success and I hope to fly out to next years event to take part :)