Interesting read here at 11th Company where the case gets made for how Blackmoor "gamed" the NOVA format with his "substandard" list to make it work.  Specifically, using the BLOS to preserve units + Grand Strategy to make almost everything troops + the rule for troops counting for full squad VP for quarters if any models survive + extremely low KP count (8). 

Hmmmm....list building to fit the format of the tournament, including its terrain.  IOW, building for the NOVA meta, which is what we will probably see a lot of next year and in the future until it becomes a case of gaming the system rather than playing the game being the prime determinant of victory.

Dust Tactics is a Weird War 2 game from Fantasy Flight Games.  Fairly basic outline if you are familiar with Nazi conspiracy theories.  While a U-boat is messing around Antarctica, the Nazis discover an alien ship with alien aboard.  From the alien, the Germans (with strong connections to the mystic side) figure out how to build new high tech gear with new power sources and use it to deploy walker tanks, advanced infantry gear and "heroes" (think original Captain America type without the costume, tough with a bit better combat capability and some special ability).  Of course, add in the gorilla warrior experiments and zombies (trying to research how to apply alien longevity treatments to humans).  Of course, wanting to sell the game in Europe, fluff provides for the elimination of Hitler and liquidation of the Nazi party so it becomes Axis vs Western Allies, vs Sino-Soviet Union.  The aliens (Vrill) will be added later as they want to reclaim their power resource reserve planet.  Unfortunately, FFG hasn't decided to start releasing SSU units yet, so all we have are Axis vs. Allies.

Having just ordered my monthly budget of stuff for Dust Tactics, I thought I might give a few thoughts on list building for the game.  Oh, entry cost is much cheaper than for 40k.

Well, for a while the Whiskey & 40K blog appeared to be having troubles as I was trying post a comment to this post.  I thought I had gotten it up finally and when I checked back again, my comment wasn't there.  Darn problems with Blogger.  No matter, I tried again and reposted.  This time I made sure the comment was up yesterday before I went to bed, but then it was gone again when I checked it this evening.  Hmmm.  The little "test" comment I did stayed up.  Well, I'll put my comment up here anyway since it seems to have trouble staying posted on blogger.

Now I realize Mike was a bit hot about this subject and his terrain placement has excited a lot of commentary online.  Good grief.  Seriously.  Mike ran what appears to be one of the best GTs many in the community have ever seen and the two biggest "issues" that have any credibility are the location and the terrain.  In each case the "issues" are more about annoyance than actual "I'm never coming back to this crappy tournament".  Mike, people loved NOVA! 

Well, I was reading a post over at Nike's Bringer of Victory blog and that plus the commentary got me thinking about a little change up in my usual 2k list.  Pretty much pull the Assault Terminators, drop half the LS-Typhoons, fiddle with the Crusader squads some and plug back in a Castellan, Term Command Squad and cheap Dreadnought (okay, 120 may not be cheap, but it beats the 170 I'm used to...).