It's a nice little vacation (without really going anywhere) and it's much easier to stay at the hotel than to drag my butt (and all my gaming stuff) back and forth every day.
On the advice of friends, I took part in the Narrative this year as a Nightfighter. Just three games over 3 nights. Nothing quite as grueling as the GT, 8 games over 3 days is a bit much for me. But one game a night was just the perfect way for me to jump back into 40k.
I took a few seminars, including another great one from Raffa Picca of Massive Voodoo. He and Roman came to NOVA last year and I was so happy that they returned for 2016. Raffa's freehanding class was probably my favorite one of the weekend. We painted the Imperial dragon, which I thought would be really hard. But I'm a big fan of Skyrim and I trusted Raffa wasn't crazy, and sure enough, I made it work:
Not going to win me any awards but a solid start. After taking the class with Jessica Rich last year at Adepticon and now this one, I feel pretty confident about using it going forward on some of my projects.
NOVA did some Horus Heresy events for the first time this year, and they were incredible. They even did a 110,000 point Big Blam game across several tables. That was quite something to see.
My most fun game, though, was my last. We did a team game for the final night of the narrative and it was the most enjoyable game I've had in ages. I got paired up with Todd who had a lovely Eldar army and we kicked a ton of butt!
All in all, it was a fun weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing what events happen next year.