NOVA Open: My Curious Excursion

[The Bibliophile]

As I've mentioned plenty of times son my blog, I'm new to the whole tabletop miniatures gaming hobby. I am having a blast, and it has become something of a consuming pastime, sometimes scarily crowding out my interest in other things that might have once captured my imagination and arrested my attention.

So it stands to follow then that I decided I should go today to check out the biggest miniatures gaming convention in the Washington, D.C. area, NOVA Open. I liked the backstory of how the convention started as a big BBQ in a local fella's backyard, drawing about 32 players for an afternoon of fun back in 2009. It smacked of just the kind of community-building inspirational success story that's hard not to like.

Unfortunately, that homegrown spirit and sense of fun wasn't in much evidence today as I roamed around the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, Virginia (just across the Potomac River from D.C.).

Read my full report and check out dozens of photos at my blog, Scrum in Miniatures: https://miniaturescrum.blogspot.com/2018/08/nova-open-my-curious-excursion.html










Again, the full report and photos at my blog, Scrum in Miniatures: https://miniaturescrum.blogspot.com/2018/08/nova-open-my-curious-excursion.html

[fitterpete]

As a long time 40k and WHFB player I think it would be cool to walk around and look at all that nice terrain and models. As long as it was cheap and close to me but yeah not my idea of a convention either.

[boneio]

Thanks for the report. I share your sentiments re. the frivolity of playing - what's the point if one isn't celebrating good rolls or comedic moments and grumbling good naturedly over epic failures?!

Not quite with on the GW asethetic, I'm a fan of the 'middle' period but I've come to really like what they're doing now. Although another point I'd differ on is that the imagery etc isn't so much faintly fascistic as *definitely* so, especially the Imperium. But then again, it always was...

Very much like that river with the fallen trees and transparent acrylic, that's a great idea.

[boneio]

I just spotted that comment at the bottom of your article - not going to be so crude as to link that directly to your point about the imagery of GW games but one can't help feeling there may be some connection between the punters and the aesthetics... 

[TaltosVT]

Interesting.  Your report reads exactly how I felt visiting my local game store for the first time a couple of weeks ago.  Their sales shelves were a wall of board games, a wall of Warhammer 40K, a wall of X-Wing minis, and packs of Magic cards.  I actually dig the 40K aesthetic, but I was hoping for some more variety.  Nothing bad about anything they were selling, but I was clearly not their target customer.

[The Bibliophile]

I just spotted that comment at the bottom of your article - not going to be so crude as to link that directly to your point about the imagery of GW games but one can't help feeling there may be some connection between the punters and the aesthetics... 

Yeah...as I say in the blog post, these folks do take themselves awfully seriously. I knew that my opinion would be seen as a bit contrarian (hopefully in a wry, bemused sorta way) in some quarters, but I didn't expect the vitriol and umbrage that fella took. Oh well...kinda funny, really.