What To Expect At Tournaments

[TauBoss]

Hi everyone, I am taking part in my first tournament in a couple of weeks and I am not to sure what to expect. Obviously there will be competitive games of 40k, but how are the games different from battling with my friends?

I'm just after some of your experiences, and if you have any advice to give.

[Mr Mystery]

90%+ all fun and games, as gamers come together to indulge in their hobby.

Small percentage of attendees taking it all far, far too seriously, risking the enjoyment of whichever poor opponent they run up against.

At least one WAAC arse with a really beardy, badly painted army, strutting about like he's a tactical genius.

90%+ is all solid though

[TauBoss]

Thanks mate, appreciate it

[Denzark]

TauBoss - there are tournaments and there are tournaments.

depends where and what event, but I'd say be prepared to play against the clock - that can be a shock and I'd say at least 50% of my tournament practise games are about playing under time pressure.

Also, be prepared to come across unknown codexes with special rules that make you think 'WTF? You can do that?' If so don't be afraid to ask to see the rule in writing.

Finally, presumably you want to win. So always have in the back of your mind 'what is the objective?' It can lead you to do strange things to enhance your position. Ie I really need to kill those last gretchin, so I'll fire a devastator squad at them. Counter-intuitive- except when you are chasing easy kill points. If in doubt kill their scoring units, in a large number of scenarios this will not hurt.

Also, to be a tournament good guy, be clean, on time, not speaking on your phone, have a laugh, have a printed army list and preferably not a grey blob of unpainted minis with no arms.

[BananaDynasty]

TauBoss - there are tournaments and there are tournaments.

depends where and what event, but I'd say be prepared to play against the clock - that can be a shock and I'd say at least 50% of my tournament practise games are about playing under time pressure.

Also, be prepared to come across unknown codexes with special rules that make you think 'WTF? You can do that?' If so don't be afraid to ask to see the rule in writing.

Finally, presumably you want to win. So always have in the back of your mind 'what is the objective?' It can lead you to do strange things to enhance your position. Ie I really need to kill those last gretchin, so I'll fire a devastator squad at them. Counter-intuitive- except when you are chasing easy kill points. If in doubt kill their scoring units, in a large number of scenarios this will not hurt.

Also, to be a tournament good guy, be clean, on time, not speaking on your phone, have a laugh, have a printed army list and preferably not a grey blob of unpainted minis with no arms.

^All of the above. One thing that wasn't mention though bring a fresh pot of glue with you in case of breaks in transit or dropped minis.

[Defenestratus]

Be prepared to face individuals who base some measure of their self-confidence on how well they play with plastic dolls and dice. Its a sad sad reality but the people who strictly play tournaments and nothing else can't handle being reminded that what they're doing is make-believe, fake, doesn't matter, etc. Its a hobby that they've turned into a competitive endeavor and therefore have to inflate its importance in order to justify the time and treasure they've dumped into it.

So when you're having a miserable time because Timmy has decided he cares more about winning some pickle dish at a plastic doll contest than how much fun you're having, just remind him that he's no Rommel, No MacArthur, not even a Sergeant Slaughter.


The people who are there, like you, because their buds showed up, are usually ok.

Usually.

[TauBoss]

I have only played against Eldar, Space Wolves, and blood angels. I have no clue about nods or orks, so I am very concerned about 'special rules'.

It is only a local tournament, it's not like the Las Vegas Open or anything.

I have to be honest, the turds that think they are Gods gift to gaming I'm not looking forward to them.

Thanks again for all the help and advice guys.

[Captofthe8th]

Defenstratus, you just won all kinds of awesome points for mentioning Sergeant Slaughter!

Haha, he was a childhood hero of mine!

[-Tom-]

I have only played against Eldar, Space Wolves, and blood angels. I have no clue about nods or orks, so I am very concerned about 'special rules'.

It is only a local tournament, it's not like the Las Vegas Open or anything.

I have to be honest, the turds that think they are Gods gift to gaming I'm not looking forward to them.

Thanks again for all the help and advice guys.

I took part in my first ever tournament this weekend just gone. There was a random draw to start off, just paired up as 'names out of a hat'. Beyond that, the number of points you'd scored determined who you'd face next, top 2 scorers vs each other, etc. There was a theme to the tournament so that specific missions were written out rather than using the BRB, although which orientation to deploy in was done as the name by which the BRB refers to it... there were 3 x 1500pt games to play in the day, and time to have lunch and move between tables when scores were totted up, so as has been said before in a reply here timing can be pretty tight. You've got to aim to be efficient with what you're doing.

I was worried before the event about 2 things: 1) that I'd be really slow, and 2) that my army list would be abjectly hated by all opponents. I personally felt it was a bit of a dull list, but I chose it for simplicity to try and help me be faster. As I say though, I was worried that by the end of the day I'd have been forcibly ejected and told that wave serpent spam wasn't appreciated. (My list featured 5 wave serpents, 3 carrying 5 man Dire Avenger squads, 1 x 5 Wraithguard also with Spiritseer as HQ, 1 x 5 man fire dragon squad, and 1 Wraithknight too. Scatter Lasers, Shuriken cannons, and Holofields on all the WS's, but no other upgrades on anything, not even Exarchs in the squads.).

I knew what my strengths and weaknesses were going to be in general going in. With 5 wave serpents, popping off the serpent shields, I could pump out a lot of fire at reasonable strength, but would find high armour values to be tough. I also didn't have anything with Skyfire, so was going to be relying on lots of shots to bring down flyers. Having only played against Marines, Orks and 'Nids in the past, I was thinking in terms of those as to what I could deal with well, and what I'd have problems with.

So, the initial draw put me against Necrons. My opponent gave me a quick talk through of his list (as did I with mine), and I just heard lots of 'AV 13... AV 13...' and glazed over a bit, panicked that I couldn't really deal with it very well. The scenario of the first round involved allowing only scouts / infiltrators to deploy on Turn1, and everything else came in from reserves on Turn2. I won the roll, and the obvious choice seemed to be to choose to go second, so you get to actually shoot at stuff in your first turn. To be honest, that was a mistake I think. If I'd opted to go first, I could have come on, turbo boosted, had a ludicrous cover save and been ready to drop the fire dragons and wraith guard into really offensive positions in turn2. As it was, I gave him free run of the table in turn1 and was on the defensive from then on.

That said, I still enjoyed it. I was learning something new. I could take what I learnt into the second game, where I also faced Necrons. This one turned out to be a fairly solid victory.

The 3rd game was against demons, where I had tabled the guy by the end of turn 3 due to ludicrous luck as 2 of his demon princes got taken out by overwatch. One of them charging the wraith guard / spiritseer and the other against the wraith knight. That game was less fun really, because it was over too quickly. I think I'd rather try and mitigate a loss than have a too easy win.

The overall result then managed to somehow leave me in joint 3rd place (I wasn't expecting that in the slightest). Sharing joint 3rd was a Necron army (not one of the two I'd faced), 2nd was Eldar (wave serpents, jet seer or jet autach, and war walkers), and 1st was a Space Wold drop-pod force.

Oh, and the guy that people disliked playing...? Tau / Grey Knight allied force. Unpainted. Spent 10 minutes of the first game building the army with blu-tak, and still didn't really have a lot of things represented on the models. i.e. the dread knight that could either be a beast at shooting, or a beast in combat, yet somehow seemed to be both, seemingly changing war gear as the game progressed and shooting moved into combat. He didn't have a written down army list either apparently so it was hard for his opponents to actually check what he had.



So, as a TL : DR summary

- You should try and build a balanced force, as you don't know who you'll be facing. That said, Keep It Simple. You've got to remember your own force rules to be able to use them effectively. There's no point taking fancy stuff that you forget to use.

- Luck will play a part. Chances are you'll have a force that will fare better against some armies, and worse against others, and whether you face them or not is really going to just depend ultimately on which name was picked to go with which other name as it came out of the hat at the start.

- Most importantly - Have fun. If a total noob like me can turn up and somehow manage to end up in a ranked position, then there's no need to be beardy/arsey with people taking it too seriously.

[DarkLink]

The third guy is where you go the the TO and tell them 'go do your job'.

Also, none of the wargear on a Dreadknight is mutually exclusive. You can take all the shooting upgrades, and still take the nasty combat upgrades. Doesn't change the fact that the Dreadknight is massively overpriced, though.