MissionCatalog.com, Getting Excited About NOVA and Impending 40K Survey

First off, who is coming to NOVA this year and what are you planning on getting into while you're here?

Second off, future Missions will be posted up for comment and playtest at http://missioncatalog.com/

It made sense to set up an indie site since this is being run by a large group of TOs and not one in particular. We'll be incorporating the most NOVA-attuned missions from the Catalog into our primers and final packets for 2014. This won't impact the way we do formatting, scoring, bracketing, win-path pairing, etc. etc. etc. It should make for an even more enjoyable gaming experience, and one for which you need to do at least a little less hardcore metagaming/planning.

Third, there's a Survey coming in the January 15 NOVA Open Newsletter. We send these content-rich and hard-worked newsletters out on the 1st and 15th of every month, and if you aren't signed up for it yet please do so by e-mailing novaopen@gmail.com

They're interesting, a great way to keep up with things, include profiles of well-known people in the hobby, and keep you abreast of what's going on. Additionally, they'll let you participate in things like our upcoming 40K surveys, which will directly impact some of the ban/allow decisions we'll make for the 40K events this year.

Speaking of events this year, I wanted to put some detail out there on the Narrative and other things.
Also, we're likely to be bringing Malifaux and Blood Bowl to the NOVA. A full weekend of X-Wing events are now planned, they'll be run by the folks over at the ultra popular X-Wing website A Few Maneuvers, who've joined the NOVA Volunteer Staff (thanks again guys!).

So with regard to the Narrative:
The Narrative event has been formally named for this year:

NOVA Narrative 2014 - Descension

It covers the descent into madness and vengeance of Humanity following the intentional crashing of the Virtue mothership into the Earth's crust at the climax of 2013's events, as well as the descent into despair and insanity of the Virtue survivors holding on throughout the Solar System and Earth's wastelands.

There are two trracks to Descension
Warlord - Model UN type planning / strategic sessions, 1 game during each day Friday/Saturday/Sunday, and 1 game each night Thursday/Friday/Saturday nights, plus a final "night" round on Sunday AM. The Warlord tickets will comprise the Narrative War Council, and are strictly ticket limited to 16 participants per Faction, first come first serve.

Original Design Work for the Virtue Drones (a feature of the 2013 Narrative)
Virtue Drones could also be found littered about the 2013 Narrative's
custom scenic bases.

Nightfighter - The Nightfighters are tactical commanders who will be battling it out during the evenings and Sunday AM only, in line with past Narrative events. Nightfighters will be able to participate in the 40K GT or any other system's daytime events (or, alternately, daytime seminars) alongside their Narrative games.

Finally, Narrative players will be able to choose to activate optional supplements for their respective codices that introduce more Humanity/Virtue-thematic ways to play the codex, and help improve the playability of some less-commonly-seen build types from each respective Codex. These are fairly simple and straightforward, and do not preclude or obviate the freedom to play with your Codex in its base / GW-released format.