I'll be doing a daily update for the next thirty days as we close in on WAR Games Con, which I will be attending, along with, I am sure, many of you.
Let's talk about the rules for this 40K tournament a bit, as they are a little different from others of their type, and doing well at any tournament is easy. READ THE MISSION. In this of course, we do not know the missions, but you do have the rules set with you for the tournament.
Painting
The last few Grand Tournaments that I have been to have had a check-list style painting guidelines. For those that followed it, it was a easy way to rack up 35-45 points or so. Model Based (point), Base Highlighted (point), extrub gubbins on base (check). As someone who generally takes about a year to paint an army (Damn You TO Hell Goatboay! You fast painter! From hell's heart I curse at you!) I was able to pick up some bonus points. This time, you get 20 points if your entire army is painted to a complete tournament standard, and no more then 5 more bonus points for characters and extra stuff on the models. I hope to max that out, but that means that there is much less of a gab from those of us with triple highlights, shading, handpainting then anyone else. What does this mean for most people? It means it's not about the painting this year, folks. I have to say I like this. First I hate playing against unpainted non WYSIWYG armies. If I wanted to play with stuff like that we could all buy little army men and use rules for them. I do not approve of tournaments that have no points for painting at all, it just encourages people to purchase grey plastic, and slap it together (I'm looking at you 'ardboyz). Wargames requires you to have your stuff painted, but is not a painting competition. It has a painting competition, and if you are that great, enter your stuff there (I will, but I doubt I win jack)
Sportsmanship
Wargames Con has gone to a simple, yet elegant system for their sportsmanship that seems to take from some comments from the guys at Dice Like Thunder. The idea is that it's your job not to be "that guy". You get 6 points each round for having a normal game with someone. If someone tries to push models/cheat/lie/steal then you can rate them low, but risk a judge coming to ask what happened. If you do the opposite and rate them really high, you again get a judge coming over. No one wants to get hassled by a judge, so I really anticipate people getting mostly sixed, and only really spectacular games getting an 8. I can honestly say that I have only played one person in all my years of tournament play that I would rate in sportsmanship. What does this mean? It means, it's also not about sportsmanship.
Composition
Compared to the way that games are run in other countries, the United States must seem the land of Little Bunny Fufu kicking the field mice. Wargames has no composition as other groups understand it. You think some combination is rough? Bring it and put it on the table. Now, they do require that you submit your army to make sure they are legal (by the 15th of July now, so they are not due today). Again, what does this mean (and say it with me) It's Not About Composition.
Battle Points
Most of your points are going to come from Battle Points, I think it is around 75% of the total points actually, and of those remaining 25% most of those are gimme points (20 painting, 42 points of Sports and 10 for getting your list in on time). At most we are talking about a 5% sway in a person that gets average, and one that gets maximum of all painting and all sportsmanship. Actually, the difference is exactly 19 points total, that's not that much, and I would be shocked if more then one person got a perfect sportsmanship score. It's standard tournament format, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary with bonus points for certain tasks.
So what does this mean? It means it's all about the Battle Points, folks.
Now, then, I'll talk about how to prep for these games tomorrow.
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