II went to NOVA!

I got there Wednesday, without too much heartburn and only spent about 15 minutes finding a place to park in the Escher-esque hellscape that was the hotel parking garage*. Checked in, chatted with folks, ate dinner in my room.

Thursday I did play in the Infinity tournament and had a blast. The Infinity space probably had the worst (or second-to-worst) ventilation of all of the gaming rooms (by dint of smallness), but it was objectively excellent nevertheless. My air quality monitor reported CO2 levels that were “might as well be outside” and “better than your basement gaming space” for the entire duration.

Just look at that: the red spikes are my drive in to and out of the District. In between is the hotel and Infinity space!

Three good games, executed badly: I only finished all three rounds with one of my games, which isn’t ideal, but I did enjoy all of them and I hope my opponents did, too. My slate went Morats, Invincible Army, Morats.

Obviously I felt great about the space and was ready to sign up to play on Friday as well, but as soon as my third round ended I realized I hurt. Tournaments are physically quite demanding, and I’d forgotten that. And although the point kind of had been to exhaust myself cramming as much Infinity into the NOVA weekend as possible, I don’t think that’s in the cards any more for me… so I decided to head home after Thursday’s event. And, once I started thinking about seeing my wife, my buttsniffers, and sleeping in my own bed I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Shopping was minimal! I didn’t need much!

I bought some really nice from Baron of Dice that feel great in the hand and to roll and I think gave me a really great distribution of rolls throughout the day. I’m a convert!

I got a few paints: I’ve had trouble finding Skavenblight Dinge, and grabbed some bright pink speedpaints. I also got a dropper of the Monument titanium white that’s become a kind of cargo cult thing locally (verdict: it’s actually really good! but the bottle is absolute trash!).

Briefly considered some Steel Rift but having some partially painted from two years ago at home kept me from making that mistake. Might have gotten something from Catalyst, but I (FINALLY) got my address verification email for the Mercenaries Kickstarter, and that inoculated me against that. Was ready to make a poor spending decision on Warcrow but talked myself out of it when I realized the bundle was either a really bad deal or the book was insanely expensive (or both).

So: no new minis. I did hop online and, full of renewed vigor for Infinity order a couple of boxes to flesh out my Shasvastii and Morat options. (No need to agonize about paying full MSRP vs online discounts: nobody on-site had them: only Warsenal had any Infinity, and that was just a token selection).

That’s all! No other shopping (good on me)!

* I’m a simple suburban bumpkin. I expect there to be parking spots and for cars to go into those spots. By the time I left, it was a chaos of vehicles shoved into spaces (not necessarily parking spaces): cars double-parked across multiple motorcycle spaces, cars just parked behind other cars, a Tesla SUV just shoved between two pillars it was able to squeeze between (I think the driver had to get out through the trunk). I was more than a little freaked out by the utter anarchy of it all.

My household remains COVID-cautious. We socialize outdoors and, when indoors outside of our home, we mask up. I’ve been to my FLGS to game twice since I ran the Old Dominion Disagreement in Feb 2020 (both times in the last six months) and both times I had serious concerns about airflow (which is why it’s only been twice).

I love NOVA. It’s my convention, the one I get to go to. I’ve been to all of them (well, not the first cook-out one that was less formal – but all of them since the one at the Dulles Convention Center). The last two, though, I’ve only stopped by for a few hours to tell myself I’d been there and do some shopping.

I’m reasonably confident that the air flow is going to be better at the hotel than at the store, I’m going to be there anyway, and I’m going a little nuts. So: I’m going to play at NOVA this year. I’ve checked with my buddy who’s running Thursday’s ITS, who gets my situation, and he’s OK with me showing up playing a game and deciding the vibes (aka air quality, crowding, etc) are bad and peace-ing out.

I’m not planning on that, though: my hope is that vibes are great (air is OK), the N95 isn’t too oppressive for 8 hours, and so on. If that’s the case, I’ll be able to get through the day. In fact, because I really want this to work, I’m packing models and lists to play in Friday’s Narrative tournament as well, in case at end of day Thursday I think it’s a good idea!

Because I have major anxiety about finding parking (listen: entering the District is really fucking stressful if it’s not a thing you do often), I’ll actually heading out and checking in Wednesday night. I think it’s better setting myself up for success to avoid having to get up early, drive into town (in traffic) and find parking immediately before diving into the thing I’m going to spend all day doing. And, because it’ll be helpful to know I have a place to duck into, unmasked, to eat if I need it, I won’t be checking out until Friday… so if playing Friday is in the cards I’m set for that, too.

I’ll probably be less social than normal; it’s going to be a lot of time masked and if being anti-social in the evenings means I’m more likely to get to play in the events during the day: that’s a worthwhile trade-off. But just in case I’ll be bringing TAG Raid with me, too.