Yet another epic 2025 convention! The Nova Open has really grown into a cool cross-genre, cross-game event hosted in DC (interesting historical tidbit, at the very hotel where Regan was shot) that has become a staple of my gaming year.
And the number one thing about it that I love is that I can take the train to the con. Seriously, I love riding trains.
But there are also many other things to recommend it- it has a growing scene of non-40k games (a great Infinity event, an amazing LOTR tournament) and some cool indie stuff that is starting to happen (like the Mordheim event). It doesn’t have a lot of the large-scale historical wargaming in the vein of historicon, but still loads to do.
But the biggest draw for me is the Capital Palette paint competition, which has morphed into one of the best painting shows for fantasy and sci-fi miniatures in the US. And as part of that, you get an amazing range of painters and classes there. And did I mention I can just put my minis in a box and ride the metro there? It’s great (or at least it was in 2025, 2026 remains to be seen due to the ongoing controversy and revectoring of the competition … more on that sometime I suppose)!
Mordheim
So I did jump in for a second year into the day-long, 3 game narrative Mordheim event held by the Styrofoam King and Cosmic Kraken!
These formats are a blast- three fun linked scenarios, 2 1v1s followed by a multiplayer game. This year the them was around the deck of chance, and there were custom cards that players could draw from for bonuses and aid to the warband, gaining more as you accomplished scenario objectives and such.
So I gathered together my drunks of Taal, the Horned Hunters Warband! This features a bunch of oldhammer models in a human warband I figured no one would take. But when I got there, the gentleman next to me was running a very cool Horned Hunters warband also! Go figure.
I also contributed my board, which is designed to fit in a backpack and ride down on the metro, which is sweet.
During the event, I absolutely ran my warband into the ground, loosing 50% or more of my warband each game! It was an absolute bloodbath, and I was tantalizing close to getting tabled in my last game.
In the final battle, we played the headless ghost scenario (https://broheim.net/downloads/scenarios/nightoftheheadlessone.pdf), where a powerful specter would arise to attack us from the cemetery, and if you controlled his head you could make him do your bidding! It was awesome to fight over his head, aiming to control it. One of the warbands even managed to bring it down, before it sprung back to life!
I got the “It was a good day to die” award for loosing so many warband members, and I had a blast doing it. Toumas Pirinen was at NOVA promoting trench crusade, so stopped by to say hi and thank everyone for still playing Mordheim. It was a great time, and he was kind enough to sign my book and chat a bit, even though it’s a reprint and my old black book is long dead!
Painting Classes
I got to take two great painting classes at NOVA Open, which was a real treat, both of which I’ve gotten the pieces far enough along to put on this blog!
Natalia Oracz (Owlsome Creations)- Unveiling the Secrets of Transparencies. Here we focused on the Owlsome veil bust, which was at a slightly smaller academic scale than the retail one. Natalia walked us through sketching the whole piece in her style, as we followed along. The focus was on understanding the transparent veil and how to represent the interaction of the veil with the skin, and when to glaze over the skin and when to paint the veil color at full strength. It was a lot of fun, and got my thinking about new materials and effects to try!
Zabaart – Oil painting for NMMs. This one was another one that was out of my wheelhouse. I’ve been having fun putting happy trees on some little 2d art, and I’ve done oil washes and filters (which I like) but I had never considered oils for actually painting the mini! This class focused on just this, painting a sword just with oils, over a matte acrylic underlayer. We went through all the prep steps and tricks, then blended out a really nice NMM in no time. I really enjoy blending with oils in 2D painting, so it was a joy to discover this for the miniatures themselves!
Thanks to them both for great classes- very unique styles and good instructors, so I would recommend!
Capital Palette
This year, it was a bit of a rush, but I did bring 5 pieces to journeyman. I had been working on a couple while traveling, and did a couple touchups on pieces I took to historicon.
Beserker: This was a single figure, with a few improvements from my historicon piece!
Crisis Troop Scorch: For Your Force Projection Needs. This was a new one, with a large-scale Black Powder Red Earth mini.
Ambush at Caenarfon: Also a spruce up from historicon. Entered it in Diorama instead of Units this time, if that is worth knowing.
Happy Dragon: A new one for the bust category.
The Justicar: Also back for the busts.
It was just awesome to hang at the cases, chatting with great artists and seeing all the amazing stuff. I literally spent hours, and went back several times, and brought people and met people to chat about these things. I just like looking at this stuff I guess, tickles the photoreceptors! Ran into Krzysztof Kobalczyk and Squared Paints to talk about their entries, and saw Erik Swinson, Chris Shure, Ninjon, and many many other’s work up close. Many of my friends entered and brought home some nice hardware-but even for those that didnt their stuff was rad! The logistics were super smooth and the format was great. The judges were all top notch and it was a great time. We’ll see about next year I guess, all that happened after the 2025 event, which was pretty great!
So I had a great time in 2025 at NOVA! It’s been fun the past few years, and Capital Palette was the first major open show I went to. But now I have broadened my aperture a little bit and have some opportunities to try some other things! So with some of the ongoing staffing and changes to the competition, we’ll see about 2026 but I may be putting my efforts towards other things!
-BS