Tits for Tournaments: NovaOpen the Tammeny Hall of 40k

Oh, NovaOpen how I try to avoid talking about you, but somehow you just cannot help yourself.

Lead by Boss Tweed Brandt NovaOpen finds new and inventive ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Year one, it was we are the most “competitive” ever tournament around, but the overall winner had an illegal list. Year two, it was the 1k money prize for the biggest douche around, then it was Njal can use his powers every time all the time…oh wait no he cannot, but I still won Nova for the second year in a row. Add in  Dashofpepper the perennially cheater “randomly” winning “Best Sportsman” at the same time being too drunk to accept the award.

Now year three the “2nd greatest 40k event of all time” seemed to have cleaned up its act. Any cheating could easily be attributed to the new rules. No Hurricane excuse for low attendance. Tony still wins with only a minor brouhaha over how Njal powers should work with Flyers, though it is funny the new FAQ says he cannot do what he did with Njal. Not much Internet coverage, but it seemed NovaOpen had put its ego in the closet.

Well let me open that closet door and tell you a different story.

It is a story of patronage, bribes, and out right lies.

What do you expect from an event right next to D.C?

Now before, I begin let me state by saying NovaOpen is a success, it is one of the largest 40k events in the world, and most participants seem to have a fab time. My problems are with the lies and outright cronyism that everyone should know about before attending.

Let us start with thelies.

If you follow the comment section of many blogs and forums for the last year you might have noticed Boss Tweed Brandt was everywhere.

If the words “NovaOpen” were typed little fairies sent message right to Boss Tweed ‘s computer so he could post in every forum and every chat about the magnificent that is NovaOpen. He went as far as hijacking other tournament threads just to bring it back to the NovaOpen. It got so bad that one forum had to be completely cleared because of the flame war. Luckily, by being called out on his behavior, and Tweed stopped, but now with NovaOpen 2012 over the Nova Talking Points is back and with a vengeance. Take for instance the recent benign thread about Njal storm powers effecting Flyers over at BoLS. Almost immediately, Boss Tweed struck with a logical defense, but before he got to the real argument he just had to boast about NovaOpen having over 600 attendees. Then oddly, that number started to pop up everywhere.

Funny thing is if you actually look at the max possible attendance you can have from the registered events the number is exactly 600. If you want to be generous add in another 100 people for seminars, narrative events, and random show ups. That means 700 total looks possible. This number also assumes that NO ONE else played across more than one event. Of course, if you played in the invitation and the grand tournament there was very little chance you were two different people. That goes for Warmachine and Flames of War. So for starters, we are down about 30 players from that 700 number in invitational cross over. Then here is the crucial one; the Grand Tournament had 184 players, not the 256 cap, so now we are down another 74 players.

Right there we are below the magical 600 number with basic arithmetic. Since almost all events didn’t cap out assume a 70-80% capacity without hard numbers. Don’t believe me here is Boss Tweed admits to less than 600 people in this video.

In addition, the video claims that Nova had 100 or so people just showing up for shits and giggles. Funny, the few seminar speakers I talked to they never had more than 10 people.

Maybe Boss Tweed is counting the Hotel staff, because there is no way Nova had over 600 attendees. Then we have the magic disappearing players that seemed to grow with each day. Remember never seeing any pairings posted on the internet past the second round? Most of the emails I got about the NovaOpen was about the drops. With the single elimination really creating the excuse for many players to leave.

Don’t believe me… here is progression over a couple of days.

It got so miserable that by Sunday, all the large vendors were packed and ready to go by noon, with the Warstore rumored to be so upset, they vowed not to come back next year.

But honestly who cares?

Boss Tweed does, and that is why he cannot stand that maybe, just maybe, his shit does stink.

Any event would be overjoyed with 400 or so people. It is the constant bragging with no basis in reality that makes it sad and recipe for failure. It is the fake accounts or the bribing for “thumb ups” and the form letter comments that always say the same exact glowing praise every time. I get it, you were the towel boy for the high school football team, or your father never acknowledged your accomplishments, but please, stop spamming the Internet.

Now on to the bribing!

So NovaOpen has this groovy old style raffle machine that the staff picks from for prizes. For the little prizes the machine was used, but then all of sudden (when large cash prizes were involved) they switched to the computer to “randomly” generate winners. Did I mention that only people present for the raffle could win? So with the same computer that had Dashofpepper win Best Sportsman the 2012 raffles winners ended up being either long distance travelers or staff buddies.  Then they were those vocal about not enjoying the event winning “random” prizes. Many of the winners also were not present to get their prizes (having left early like everyone else), but don’t worry Boss Tweed made sure they were going to get their prizes or at the very least it was put back in the into the kitty.

What about cronyism? Well we have that too!

We had whispers of the rigged painting competition, but the big one is the STAFF MEMBER that won all the 40k events.

Yeah you guessed it Tony Kopach was on staff. Now Boss Tweed says he was only on staff because of a short video made before Nova. Sadly, it is well-known Tony was on the design team to craft the missions. Even Boss Tweed has the balls to say in one video stream that he made Tony’s list. Funny, an army list designed by the head tournament organizer and play tested with the missions before anyone else ends up winning the GT. I should remind you again that Njal was judged to work against Flyers.

I get it with the cheat basket empty, there is no better way to tilt the scales, than having the winner being a complete insider.

The thing is NovaOpen should be admired, but the constant shenanigans and/or appearance of shenanigans truly needs to stop. The money giveaways, the false hype, the behind the door deals, have to end.

Now I am sure this post will generate some sort of response, but I want to be clear my description of events comes from the emails, phone calls, and simple internet investigation.  Boss Tweed can pretend that everyone loves him and call me a hater, but the truth is I only hate with cause. Blood of Kittens has always been about calling out bloated egos or talking shit to power, and I don’t plan on stopping, even if I get another round of death threats for daring to speak truth about the NovaOpen.

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