It's been over two years since NOVA put out a newsletter, but here we are again. A lot has happened since our last newsletter came out in the summer of 2035. Hopefully, with all other commitments met, we'll get back to our quarterly status with help of my group members. Because of space and time requirements some events will be glossed over. We hope this will not stop your enjoyment of the Starburst.

Congratulations are in order to Stephen Beeman, the man in charge of Car Wars at Steve Jackson Games. Good luck from all of NOVA.

To Scott Haring, NOVA sends some congratulations for being hired at TSR and leaving SJG so fast that the door had to be put back on its hinges (hope TSR knows what they are in for).

Next in line for honors is NOVA's latest club champions. In 2036 Jim Martin took both the club and the central region championship. Unfortunately, Jim could not make the world championship. The second club championship was plagued by the then "new" laser link arguments about volley attacks. Since NOVA traditionally holds its club championship in late August some rulings came late for us. I realize this is very early when compared to most chapters, but NOVA uses a multi-round tournament. Our club championships have been duels to remember with each one in a different arena with higher division levels for each round. This keeps the players on their toes.

Our third club champion is Norman McMullen (yours truly), which happened by chance circumstances. This happened at the end of our final championship round. Depending on where the central championships were going to be held the final three survivors in our final round would decide which among them would go to it. This was due to commitments of the three players involved. The players, from the first to third, were Kelly Resato, Danny (last name not known), and myself. Since that time neither Kelly or Danny has attended the meetings for a long while. In default I claim the club champion spot. I hope we will not have anymore troubles with our club championships.

The 2037 central regional was a flop because of the lack of the champions from CARS (Colorado), MADD and the Kansas chapter. This was very disappointing to NOVA. Hopefully the 2038 central regional will be better attended.

NOVA welcomes the new chapter in the state: the Lincoln Avengers. We wish them good luck with their joining into the AADA. A non-AADA chapter has recently appeared. It is called SWORD (Southwest Omaha Righteous Drivers). NOVA and SWORD have an uneasy relationship which has not been incurred by NOVA's part.

In the summer of 2037 NOVA held NOVAcon in conduction with Omacon 7. It was the first Car Wars convention ever. But NOVAcon had problems of all sorts; management, attendance, and finances. I don't think we will be running another NOVAcon for quite a while unless we have some good backing. Speaking of conventions, the following is a listing of 1985 through 1987 NOVA-run convention winners:

Contretemps 5 AADA Tournament

1st - Jim Martin, 2nd - Tim Moffit, 3rd - Scott Starr

Open Tournament

1st - Jim Martin, 2nd - Ben Scott, 3rd - Don Jacques

Omacon 6 Open Tournament

1st - Bob Calhoun, 2nd - Don Jacques, 3rd - Tim Jacques

AADA Tournament

1st - Bob Calhoun, 2nd - Geoff Rutledge, 3rd - Pat Washburn

Contretempts 6

1st - Ted Hunter, 2nd - Tim Wilwerding, 3rd - Cliff Christiansen

NOVAcon/Omacon 7

1st - Scott Starr, 2nd - Toby Boyd, 3rd - Brian Stevens,

4th - Norman McMullen

Part of the NOVA membership has voted to boycott the conventions run by Hobby Town (a Nebraska hobby store chain), namely the Lincoln and Nebraskacon due to their poorly-ran conventions with their third class prizes. NOVA recommends not attending either convention.

Since early September of last year NOVA has had an attendance problem due to a fist fight between the duelmaster and a player. After the duelmaster was expelled from NOVA for unsportsmanlike conduct and the chapter didn't meet for a month. When NOVA started meeting again in October our attendance was a quarter of its previous size. At present we are looking for some more good autoduellists to join our chapter; AADA membership is not required but good to have.

This is the department I've been dreading. It would take several issues to tell everything worth mentioning that happened in NOVA in the past few years. As we left it in Starburst 1-2, NOVA had just finished a deathrace. Before that NOVA held its first unlimited arena with vehicles of all sizes involved. Since then NOVA has held four other unlimited events. Each has featured a different type of combat; teams, trucks verses tanks, and helicopters. Our unlimited events takes care of the unlimited spending we have occasionally. The fights do tend to be free-for-all's, but that's part of the fun of it.

Arenas have become a big part of the metro area landscape with each one featuring something a little different. At present in the New Omaha/Council Bluffs area there are over ten arenas, including two speedways and a drag strip. This has made New Omaha the Duelling Mecca of the Midwest. NOVA members compete in all divisions of arena fights and drive most vehicles: cycles, cars, trucks, grasshoppers, helicopters, and boats. I can't seem to recall most of these designs, but they were good.

Over the years the ARF's have been NOVA's worst enemy. Troubling us to no end over the years, the ARFs suffered a major defeat when we destroyed their Midwest HQ. It's amazing how a little nitro can fix any problem. Nothing has been heard of General Chaos (the ARF leader) after his forces destroyed some choice bits of the New Omaha metro area. The ARF War will be covered in an upcoming newsletter as will other NOVA battles.

Another of our enemies was some transforming robots which harried us over an 18 month period. In one battle these robots created a new landmark, Giant Crater. Their last appearance was a hologram used by ARF in an attack last spring. The full details on these alien monsters will be featured in a future issue.

Our present foe is BLUD. We are hunting for them in Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska, hoping to destroy their Midwest HQ. As yet we have not found it. Rest assured NOVA will destroy them in good time.

For something completely different we had two "Wacky World" adventures. The first took place last year in February while on a road trip to a duelling event. On our way through Kansas our intrepid band encountered a dense fog bank and went through it, only to run over the Wicked Witch of the North. After that we encountered a city filled with armed clowns, the graveyard kids, the sesame street gang running a truck stop, and the Wicked Witches gang. Later it was revealed to us that we experienced a "strange" mass nightmare, but that does not explain why several of our members had boxes of "Road Toad" cereal in their cars. We have "seen" this cereal at the sesame street truck stop. As of now we still don't know who makes "Road Toad" cereal.

The second adventure occurred last Thanksgiving. Called "The Return to Wacky World", our merry group meet several weird fellows. Andre, tire slashing Cornhusker players, the WKRP crew in a turkey bomber, a giant hamster in a equally-giant plastic ball, and dead road toads made for a strange holiday. The Cornhusker players, already blasted with beer, were disposed of quickly. The WKRP turkey bomber suffered from a paint grenade messing up the controls and crashed. Andre crashed into a museum and disintegrated. The strange phenomena that caused all this has stopped, for the time being at least.

Another villain to freedom appeared last January by the name of "The Lightning Bug". With his small army of willing slaves and B.A.T.'s (Boiler Android Troopers) he attempted to conquer New Omaha with demented, hypnotic Rock-n-Roll music and drugs. Brave NOVA forces were able to stop his twisted schemes but suffered heavy casualties. Our battles with this fiend will be covered in another issue.

I know there is plenty of material to cover in future issues. The tentative schedule is as follows:

May 2038 Vol 2, No. 1 : The ARF War. July 2038 Vol. 2, No. 2: The Robot Invasion. October 2038 Vol. 2, No. 3: The BLUD

Bath. December 2038 Vol. 2, No. 4: The Lightning Bug battles.

This should take up back up to date and cover all future events.

NOVA will hold an open tournament at Contretemps 7 on April 22-24 for all who are interested. Also we might be cosponsoring the Central Regional at the same convention with the Lincoln Avengers. Presently Norman McMullen (President of NOVA) is working on a supplement of high speed duelling and racing due to be completed this summer under the title of The Fast Lane. Other projects NOVA is tentatively working on include the "Midwest Vehicle Guide" and the "NOVA Works Catalog".

Beginning next issue you'll see some more NOVA members helping me compile the Starburst. My thanks to Don Jacques who typed and edited this issue. Don is NOVA's Vice-President and Secretary.

Drive and Fly Offensively!

Norman McMullen, NOVA President

Don Jacques, NOVA Vice President, NOVA Secretary

Re-editing of Starburst Vol. 1, No 3 & 4 completed on 9/29/96 by Donald Jacques.

This issue was originally entered on a C-64 computer with an EPYX extender cartridge and using the SpeedScript 3.2 word processing program. Then it was retyped into a WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows file, converted into a HTML file by KEYview 5.0 and edited again by Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0.

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