Impending Primer Changes, FAQ This Week, Narrative Primer Incoming, and NEW VENDORS!!

First thing's first:

Grex Airbrush will be a NOVA Open Sponsor and Vendor this year. They'll also be demo'ing their airbrushes live from their vendor booth.
http://www.grexusa.com/grexairbrush/

The Painting Competition is going to have AWESOME prizes this year, as a result of Grex and others:
Each of the 6 Paint Competition category winners will take home one of these:
http://www.grexusa.com/grexairbrush/products.php5?id=Tritium.TG

MSRP around $300

In addition to sizeable gift vouchers from Secret Weapon Miniatures, and a number of additional perks and prizes, the Paint Competition is already at ENORMOUS prize value for every category in only the first year of the event. Sign up for it now! It's cheap to do so, and there's no reason not to ... for $10 you can submit to all 3 sub-categories for either the Sci-Fi or Fantasy genres (they also cover/are inclusive of other games, and indie line models). For $15 you can submit to all 6 sub-categories (the 3 from each genre).

Next up, Tectonic Craft Studios will be Vendoring at the NOVA Open this year:
http://www.tectoniccraftstudios.com/

Tectonic is one of the new successful results of the rise of Kickstarter, a company begun from the ground up by YOU all as hobbyists and investors. From my talks with Dan at Tectonic, the beta launch of their full site will be coming shortly in August, and the NOVA will be the first major convention they're selling at. He's giving us some fantastic shwag, and also loading up some of our Warmachine and Hordes tables with some rad-tad terrain.

Dan's stuff is in high demand, with a long wait list of invested kickstarter customers, and new ones lining up ... you'll have a chance to win some, or buy some at the NOVA this year.

Primer changes and possible changes impending:

• Possible reversal of Warlord Traits to "standard" instead of pick-from-2-rolls; this one is loved by many, but some of the purists are making the good point that we might want to just stick with book and see what happens here. Still TBD, on account of SOME results being major game changers, SOME results being completely useless, and us not being entirely sure we like that randomization (but also not liking the idea of changing it).
• Quarters Goal - Scoring and Denial only - thank you all for feedback! Scoring units will no longer count full til the end, and will only be worth half points when at or under half; Flyers will not count for Quarters *ever*; All other vehicles / etc. will count when relevant via things such as Big Guns Never Tire, and The Scouring; we'll clarify questions surrounding those two permutations in the updated primer (by Aug 1).
• Anticipate that Kill Points by 3 will be the TERTIARY Goal almost always, and only rise up infrequently / in about 1/6 rounds, to reflect its much less frequent occurrence in the new book. As an editorial aside, the change to Transports never being able to score/deny was a much more elegant way to suppress MSU than Kill Points ever was ... a bravo there to GW.
• Modified Hammer and Anvil will stay - and will use the H&A reserve rules. Just in case, as a clarification, you'll reserve on from the short edge, fall back toward the short edge, and outflank from the long edges.
• We measured out the faster way to figure out Vanguard Deployment ... what an awful rulebook explanation of it. It's 21.5" down the long edges on each side, 14.5" down the short edges on each side, then connect the dots to complete the triangles.

The Narrative Primer is being worked on. An unformatted DRAFT is included here:

http://www.novaopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Narrative-DRAFT-Primer-and-Rules.pdf

We're working on finishing up the FAQ; I'll be doing the draft of our conglomerated rulings today, running it by the 40k head judge for final inputs, and then publishing it out.

Do note - we will put the FAQ in your Guidebooks also, along with GW FAQ's as printing costs allow, and a quick reference guide to big new rules / changes for 6ed that we're working on. This should make your lives easier come game day, in terms of looking up rulings / rules / etc.