NOVA Invitational 2012 - Changes and Initial Events Qual List

Good Morning All,

For 2012, there are a few changes to the way the NOVA Invitational will be played and organized.

Instead of having our players participate in 5 games in a single day, all of them tough and high intensity, and then have to compete in 8 more over just 2 days to follow, the changes to the format are as follows:

Rounds 1-3 only are used to determine Best Overall/Renaissance Man.  Rounds 4-5 are Final Four elimination rounds.

Round 1 occurs on THURSDAY NIGHT, August 30.  Players have no other games that day, so it's a single round on that evening.  The game will start at approximately 6:30 and go until 8:30, giving players time to wrap up and get as good a night's sleep as they desire.

Rounds 2-3 occur on Friday MORNING, starting early and wrapping up by noon.  At this point, there will be only 4 undefeated participants.

Rounds 4-5 occur Sunday AFTERNOON, after lunch and the culmination of the 40k GT Final Fours (for each of the 16 brackets).

So, an Invitational player who participates in the Invitational *and* the 40k GT will play, at most:
1 game Thursday evening
2 games invitational and 2 games GT on Friday
4 games GT on Saturday
2 games GT finals on Sunday AM and 2 games Invitational finals on Sunday PM

So far, several players have already qualified for the 2012 Invitational, and many more are yet to be determined.

The events we will be inviting from are:

1. NOVA Invitational 2011 - Nick Nanavati & Aaron Aleong
2. NOVA Open 2011 - Gabe Dobkin, Allan Hernandez & Tony Kopach
3. The Battle for Salvation 2011 - Eric Hoerger & Neil Gilstrap
4. DaBoyz 2011 - Nick Rose & Nate Stevens
5. The Mechanicon 2011 - Simon Leen & Mike Ludwig
6. Feast of Blades Invitational 2011 - Thomas Reidy & Kenneth Boucher
7. 11th Company GT - Kyle Cox & Devin Schafer
8. The Conflict GT 2012 - (2)
9. St. Valentine's Day Massacre 2012 - (2)
10. Bay Area Open 2012 - (2)
11. The Indy Open 2012 - (2)
12. AdeptiCon 2012 - (2)
13. WarGamesCon 2012 - (2)
14. The Bugeater GT 2012 - (2)
15. IFL Road to the NOVA Invitational 2012 - (1)
16. TBD NOVA Open-Run Preliminary Event 2012 - (1)
17. TBD Remaining Spots (2)

I'm leaving a couple of spots open for a variety of up and coming GTs, hence to be determined before we commit; also looking at West Coast events like the Broadside Bash, etc.  There will be several smaller but strongly attended events we'll use to identify alternates, with final fallback on alternates going by performance to returning NOVA Invitational 2011 players who will be at the Open regardless.

The prizes will remain the same this year - $1,000 cash for the Renaissance Man, $1,000 cash for the Tournament Champion.  We may tweak the weight of Appearance Score to properly account for only 3 rounds contributing to that score (that meaning, with the way our scoring by percentages work, there's a greater gap between 3-0 and 2-1 than there was between 5-0 and 4-1 last year; as a result, we need to make sure appearance scoring weight goes up a little to properly reflect a true 50-50 split, instead of just an on paper 50-50 split).