Tits for Tournaments: Nova Open 2014 Top Lists

Another year, another Nova Open and it looks like Tony Kopach has reclaimed his title after a one year defeat, taking a Eldar Wave Serpent spam list to victory. In total, a little over 180 players took part in the Nova Open, the first using Warhammer 40k 7th edition. As always, NovaOpen brings out the hardcore of the hardcore lists, with Craftworld East Coast doing their part to channel infinity circuits to cheese. Tony looked to take advantage of the meta he knew was coming, and with boosts from facing three Tyranid players, 270° serpent shield arcs, and helped to playtest/design the Nova missions.

This doesn’t necessary take anything away from Tony’s victory, but does bring back memories of the famous “I helped design Tony’s list” comment by Tournament Organizers a few years back. Still, with all that said, those who live and breathe Nova Open practice the crap out for the event. It is just disappointing, list repetition appears regardless of player, because once consensus forms everyone runs to “break” the Nova format. Tony though actually had interesting elements you don’t typically find in Eldar lists, and had it pay off in spades. The Nova Open also fixed a glaring problem from years past (terrain); by having great terrain, with multiple LOS blocking pieces, (taking a page from Frontline Gaming) made the tables look fantastic

Then there is the mission packet which is the best and most complete tool to get players through a large event I have ever seen.

Enough of my two-cents though on to the lists!

 1st Overall Champion Tony Kopach Nova 2014

2nd Overall Thomas Donslund Nova Open 2014

3rd Overall Gareth Hunt Nova Open 2014

4th Overall Aaron Aleong Nova Open 2014

5th Overall Lee Zagrzebski Nova Open 2014

6th Overall Zach Pawlikowski Nova Open 2014

7th Overall Matt Schuchman Nova Open 2014

8th Overall Frankie Giampapa Nova Open 2014

9th Overall Matthew Robertson Nova Open 2014

10th Overall Justin Adams Nova Open 2014

11th Overall Kelsey Haley Nova Open 2014

12th Overall James Ramsay Nova Open 2014

13th Overall Robert Fortin Nova Open 2014

14th Overall Alexander Fennell Nova Open 2014

15th Overall Casey Christopher Nova Open 2014

16th Overall Werner Born Nova Open 2014

As you can see I am still missing a few lists. Don’t worry I am in the process of tracking them down and once I get them I will add them to the post. The best way to find more detailed information about the paths these players took to getting to the top 16 go check out Torrent of Fire by following the link.

http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/tournament/NOVA-Open/1/leaderboard

You will also notice much like Adeption many of the top 16 players forfeit their final games, so outside the top two players the actual true rankings are not representative of what would have happened if everyone had played all there games. The Nova Open also relies on 256 players in order to optimize the system they use, but as you can see they were far from the max number of players, making it harder to maintain the purity of the Bracket system. Overall, this shouldn’t take away from the accomplishments of the top 16 players, if you follow this sort of thing, have been top world players for a few years.