For many of us at Goonhammer, the most exciting aspects of the hobby are when we can actually meet up - and that usually happens at conventions and tournaments. These sorts of events are perfect for when one wants to really go "all out" with the hobby - from multi day tournaments ranging from cutthroat competition to long-term storytelling; hobby classes to learn from Golden Demon winners; and overall chatting with the creators of your favorite wargames, the big wargaming conventions are chock full of adventure and excitement.
SRM and Masterslowpoke at Adepticon 2025
Three events in the United States stand out the most from the many wargaming conventions available to you: The Las Vegas Open (Las Vegas), Adepticon (Milwaukee), and the NoVa Open (Washington D.C.). Going to one of these big events can be a significant commitment in terms of time, money, and energy. Recently, all three events have had a change in venue, including Adepticon moving to a different state entirely. Both of us have attended all 3 events in 2025, so we feel like we can give you some advice on which events to attend in 2026.
LAS VEGAS OPEN
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada - Expo at World Market Center
Dates: Early October, Thursday evening through Sunday evening
Entry to the LVO. Credit: Contemptor Kevin Stillman
The Las Vegas Open is home to the biggest Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar Grand Tournaments, and is where the International Tournament Circuit season has traditionally concluded. While 40K is clearly the overwhelming focus of the event, there are events for several other games and plenty of hobby classes.
VENUE: The Expo at World Market Center, just north of the Clark County Government Center and an outlet mall. LVO used to be held at the Rio, which was just off-strip. The change is is a bit of a double-edged sword: You do not have the intense nightlife options of the Strip just a walk away, but instead it's a 20-30 minute Uber. There is a hotel across the street from the venue, a new upscale Marriott. The official hotel is the Golden Nugget, but even that is still a mile away so you'll probably Uber. This means you have some options to just pick whichever hotel you think looks the coolest. We went to the Luxor for 2025.
We stayed in a pyramid and I went to the pool. Credit: Contemptor Kevin Stillman
At least for 2025 the event was held in the Expo’s large exhibition hall. This hall fit everything: all the gaming events, the vendor hall, the streaming broadcast area, and even the hobby haven. The only things not in this hall were the hobby classes, which are held next door.
DINING: There are multiple food trucks available and pop up stands for just about anything you could want. Outside of that, of course, this is Vegas and so you can find anything from the
worst fast food you've ever had to the highest of high dining.
GAMING EVENTS: Warhammer gets the focus, being the largest GT for both 40k and Age of Sigmar in the world but there is a lot of other events from the usual suspects like Marvel Crisis Protocol, Song of Ice and Fire and Flames of War. Likewise, there are narrative events for 40K and Horus Heresy. With the new space, it does appear FLG is interested in expanding the games available. They had very clearly outgrown the Rio and ensuring they had enough space for Warhammer was at cost to other games.
HOBBY EVENTS: The LVO does not have the selection of hobby events that Adepticon or NoVa have, but what it does have tends to be very strong. The LVO offers a few weekend-long “masterclasses” that are very pricey but thorough. There are also shorter classes taught by familiar faces such as Byron of Artis Opus or Clay Williams. The main weaknesses or the LVO’s hobby classes are 1) the open floor plan of the hobby class area, in which several different classes were in one large room at a building just off of the Expo and 2) the overall lack of humidity that makes paint dry too quickly. On the flip side, these classes do not necessarily fill up which gives the discerning hobbyist a chance to get into a good class. I've been told that LVO is not traditionally a class where the teachers make money, and I hope FLG and Verko’s Vault (whom are running the LVO hobby events now) work hard to improve the experience for attendees and teachers.
LVO Painting Class Setup. Credit: Contemptor Kevin Stillman
The Hobby Hangout was disappointing at LVO 2025. They had a selection of Monument Hobby Paints and a decent amount of space, but none of the bells and whistles that NoVa or Adepticon have at their hobby hangouts. One can get a project finished here, but there's none of the big names or meet and greets at this Hobby Haven versus Adepticon or NoVa (to a lesser extent)
EXHIBITOR HALL: It’s growing to respectable size, though the LVO XII hall felt like it was a bit smaller than it will be once they have more time to plan and prepare for the event. Probably the most unique feature is being a Frontline Gaming event, it has the Second Hand Shop, full of discarded sprues and bits from people who didn’t want them anymore. You can get some real gems at a discount. It's not the Toledo Game Room, but it's still very good.
REGISTRATION: The LVO uses Frontline Gaming's Squarespace website to display events. The more popular events (specifically, the 40K events) will often sell out, but most of the smaller events and even many of the hobby classes do not sell out. This makes it easier for one to try and get into their event-of-choice if they don't want to be at a specific location when tickets go on sale. The "High Roller" package sells out instantly, though because LVO decided to open registration extremely early on the Thursday before the convention it avoided the dreaded massive lines the Rio event suffered.
PAINTING COMPETITION: The LVO has a formal painting competition, run by Verko’s Vault. They also offer army judging across all systems, sponsored by the Army Painter. There are many smaller painting competitions, including a speed painting competition and best painted awards.
VERDICT: If you’re a competitive Warhammer player, LVO is your best bet to get lots of gaming against many different opponents. The GTs are the biggest in the world, and the location is ideal, being close to the Strip and Fremont Street. The hobby and narrative options are not quite as strong as the other two, but as FLG’s biggest event they’re constantly trying to improve its appeal to a wider audience, so that could change in a few years.
It's also worth noting that this was the first time they moved to The World Expo and had to work under some pretty tight time constraints, given the odds stacked against them it was still a pretty good showing and likely will only improve with time.
ADEPTICON
Location: Baird Center, Milwaukee Wisconsin
Dates: Late March, Wednesday evening through Sunday evening
AdeptiCon and Old Guard were running sweet ads on the billboards outside. Credit: Michael O "Mugginns"
VENUE: Previously, Adepticon was held at the Marriott Renaissance Schaumberg Hotel and Convention Center, where the infamous DashCon of 2014 occurred. The Hotel was notorious for selling out in literal seconds, because there just isn’t enough space for how big this convention is (over 8,000 attendees in 2024, up from over 7,000 in 2023). The location was also less than ideal, surrounded by a giant parking lot usually reserved for football stadiums. Adepticon offered shuttle service to many of the nearby hotels, but if you left something important at your hotel (like, say, a key part of your army or your glasses), it can be nerve-wracking to not be at the convention hotel.
Fortunately, Adepticon realized that they were becoming far too big for the Schaumberg space, and made the decision to decamp to the Baird Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Baird Center is attached to three hotels through a Skywalk: The Hyatt Regency Milwaukee, Hilton Milwaukee City Center, and Springhill Suites by Milwaukee. The first of these hotels alone had more capacity than the Schaumberg Renaissance, I believe. These hotels lasted for almost ten minutes when they went on sale. Also, by being in downtown Milwaukee you are not in a giant suburban concrete pit, and can likely enjoy Milwaukee’s ample selection of beer and cheese if that appeals to you.
DINING: Dining has been much improved by the move. While Schaumberg struggled by being in an industrial park far away from dining options, the Milwaukee Convention Center being right in down town means you have a ton of choices in the area for just about everything. Inside the convention center are various pop up stands of reasonable price and variety. That said, the whole area has a focus on beer and cheese curds.
Of special note to both of us is the Milwaukee 3rd Street Market Hall, which is a massive food hall with plenty of small and fantastic food vendors, a giant beer wall, and even some stores in the event you need some additional sundries or travel equipment.
GAMING EVENTS: Adepticon’s strength is its diversity of events. Out of the big 3, Adepticon is the best for finding a chance to play that game you bought 3 years ago and never got around to playing because nobody local plays it. There are a ton of events due to the large size of the venue. A word of warning is that the Warhammer GTs have been controversial in the past, due to questionable terrain choices, unusual mission choices, a reliance on a painting rubric that has been oblique, and having both the painting rubric be a disproportionate percent the overall score compared to other events. The recent standardization in Warhammer tournament packets have helped smooth out the Adepticon GT’s…quirks, but there’s still a significant hobby component to Adepticon Warhammer events that heavily favors locals. The teams events usually result in the most elaborate display boards to exist outside of the Warhammer World Exhibition Hall or the Rose Bowl Parade, and can be viewed Saturday evening. Adepticon has recently begun having a formal narrative event, in the vein of the NoVa Narrative and the 40K Grand Narrative. The 2025 reviews were positive, though neither of your two reviewers had the opportunity to play in it.
For 2026, we expect Trench Crusade to be a huge draw, with multiplayer, narrative, and even
competitive events taking place! Likewise, Battletech is an enormous presence (with a booth dwarfed only by GW's and *maybe* Atomic Mass Gaming) with competitive gaming and painting events. There's also an enormous
Historicals section curated in large part by Muggins. If you want to play it, you can find it at Adepticon.
Also of note, Adepticon features several trivia tournaments, for Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, Marvel, and in the past Harry Potter. The LVO does not have a trivia component and NoVa 2023 did not feature a trivia component. NoVa 2024 did not have trivia aside from some minor padding during the Games Workshop Preview, via an app.
HOBBY EVENTS: Best of the Big 3 in my opinion; from beginners to pros, there’s classes for everyone to take from some of the best out there and they’re running at all hours. The caveat is that though they are the best, they sell out quickly. As we were initially writing this (late January 2024), the only Adepticon hobby events that had not sold out were “Color Theory for the Color Blind”. Adepticon 2025 was similar, though for later classes (later in the day and the event) there are drops and thus the opportunity for walk-ins. While for many events there will be drops, particularly the ones in the evening or on Sunday, classes taught by popular presenters (Vince Venturella) will sell out instantly and will not have any room on the waitlist.
The Hobby Hangout in Schaumberg was a mixed bag. The hangout offered the chance to try out paints from Citadel, ProAcryl, Huge Paints, and Army Painter. Furthermore, many of the more famous painter YouTubers would hang out in the Hobby Hangout and were generally happy to chat with folks. The downside is that the Hobby Hangout tended to be crowded and getting a seat could be tough. The hangout in 2025 was bigger, but located a fair but away from the floor of the convention and on a different floor.
EXHIBITOR HALL: Also the best of the 3. The Exhibitor hall is huge, and dwarfs many conventions all by itself. There’s pretty much nothing you can’t get here, and many booths are running demos of their games for you to try out. Your backpack may be heavier after a run through the room, but your wallet will be lighter.
REGISTRATION: Uses Cvent, which largely works fine. However, much like getting a hotel, the system can get horribly bogged down when registration starts and many events sell out in minutes.
PAINTING COMPETITION: Adepticon used to have a convention-wide painting competition called Crystal Brush through the 2019 Convention. Many of the major exhibitors also hold their own specific painting competitions, such as Creature Caster’s Resin Beast and AMG’s various competitions. But the biggest traffic jams inside the Con are for Games Workshop’s flagship painting competition, Golden Demon. Adepticon, even moreso than NoVa and the LVO, focuses on competitive miniature painting in its own right.
VERDICT: Adepticon almost needs to be graded on its own rubric, because it has its own sort of goals in mind compared to the other two. While LVO and Nova pride themselves on the competitive crowd it attracts, Adepticon almost shirks away from that. It wants to be a much more well rounded hobbyist and competitive event, and feels much more like a gaming convention than just a tournament. If this sounds more like what you’re looking for it’s probably the right pick.
The major mark against it is how much of a nightmare getting into the convention, hotel, and events can be. You basically have to be at your computer at a set time twice: Once to get your hotel, and once to get your events.
NOVA OPEN
Location: Washington D.C.
Date: First Weekend of September (Labor Day Weekend) from Wednesday to Sunday
Credit: Kevin Stillman
VENUE: Washington, D.C. Hilton in Dupont Circle. The location is pretty solid, being in D.C. proper there's a lot to see and a lot of food options. Big warning however: as the hotel is within Dupont Circle, parking can be a significant challenge unless you arrive early on Wednesday. However, unlike the LVO and Adepticon, NoVa is on the D.C. Metro system which can easily take you from National Airport (DCA) and Dulles Airport (IAD). Fun Fact: This hotel is where President Ronald W. Reagan was shot by John Hinkley in 1981!
DINING: As stated the dining options are pretty wide. You have a lot of food options within walking distance. Be aware that the options in the hotel are an absolute racket though, being extremely expensive and extremely mediocre. I highly recommend either bringing your own food to snack on from one of DC's many fine grocery stores, or have time to run over to U Street in between rounds to go grab something from one of the nearby pizza joints. The beer selection is also extremely expensive, being priced as if you were in one of DC's major league stadiums. But it is a local brewer and very good.
GAMING EVENTS: NoVa has some respectably sized GTs for most of the usual suspects, and even a few more obscure games. The narrative events are really impressive, and was the forerunner to the official 40K Grand Narrative. The 40k Narrative is famous, stretching over the whole weekend with tiers from just jumping in as a foot soldier for one day to being one of the generals directing the whole event. Tickets for the more involved tiers can sell out quickly, but there are almost always drops. Sadly, Chris Stover (the NoVa narrative lead) generally does not ham it up at NoVa the way he did in the Atlanta Grand Narratives. However, he does a fantastic job running the NoVa narrative and works hard to make it a fun event for everyone involved.
Campbell "SRM" McLaughlin and Andrew Nguyen at NOVA. Credit: SRM
HOBBY EVENTS: NoVa's hobby events are pretty fantastic. In 2023 and 2024, these included comprehensive airbrush classes, drybrushing classes, and more. What sets these apart (for the most part) is that the rooms tend to have pretty good lighting and a fair bit more humidity than winter Vegas and the Upper Midwest. The Artis Opus class at the 2024 NoVa was significantly different than the one in Vegas, because the ambient humidity offered more opportunities to do things with glazing that the LVO was just too dry for.
NoVa Hobby Class results! Model Credit: (Left) Jake Bennington. (Right) Kevin Stillman Photo Credit: Kevin Stillman
The Hobby Hangout at NoVa is sponsored by Army Painter, and they offer plenty of speed paints. Kevin tended to park himself there during his downtime at the convention and just enjoy the ambience and paint. In 2025, NoVa started offering airbrush rentals - for a $10 fee or so, you were able to rent an airbrush and a booth for about two hours. This is one of the best deals at the Convention, because these are shiny new Harder and Steinbeck models that come thoroughly cleaned. Kevin was able to get a Saturnine Dreadnought from the GW event store to parade ready at the convention via this opportunity!
NoVa now offers a cosplay competition. This was a hearty addition to the convention, because making costumes is clearly part of the hobby and recognizing the creativity and care that goes into this part of the hobby makes the convention feel more complete.
EXHIBITOR HALL: In 2024, the NoVa Exhibitor Hall was on the bottom floor (the “Concourse” level) of the Hilton, with the bigger booths (Games Workshop, Atlantis Comics and Games, and an Army Painter Demo Booth) being in the big ballroom while most other vendors were scattered throughout the rest of the Concourse level. This was a substantial improvement over the cramped closet that was the 2023 NoVa Exhibitor hall, while NoVa was getting the hang of its new venue. The NoVa Exhibitor Hall is bigger than the LVO hall. It has many of the same vendors as the LVO, plus a few additional local-to-Virginia vendors. The downside is that NoVa lacks a big secondhand minis store: the vendors dealing in such had a relatively small selection. The Exhibitor Hall also has some issues with phone signals, so getting the event WiFi is an absolute must.
Credit: Kevin Stillman
REGISTRATION: NoVa uses Tabletop.events, a website for relatively small events. While feeling a bit archaic it mostly works and there’s little struggle getting events - well, after the site goes live. 2024 had the smoothest registration night in NoVa history. 2025, however, reverted to form and had forced everyone but Kevin to register a week later.
PAINTING COMPETITION: NoVa is home to the Capital Palette, where all miniatures, busts, and dioramas are welcome to be entered. It has three levels: Apprentice, Journeyman, and Masterclass. “Apprentice” is for those who have not won a medal in a hobby tournament before, “Journeyman” is for those who have, and “Masterclass” are for the Golden Demon finalists.
VERDICT: NoVA offers the “best of both worlds” option. While not quite as big as LVO, the competitive GTs are still very large and are a great way to meet many players, while also having way more hobby options and narrative based gaming than LVO does. NoVa is also in the cultural heart of Washington D.C., and thus many off-site restaurants are quickly available.
Alice enjoys a mixed drink at one of Kevin's favorite DC restaurants, Whitlow's. Credit: Kevin Stillman
Final Thoughts
Something we want to be clear on: All three events are worth your time. If you have to go to a particular one due to location or time of the year over another, you’re still going to have a good time. Our hope was just to clarify which one may be more your speed if you have a choice in the matter. We hope to see you around the United States in 2026!
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