Lessons from Wargames Con

I took 2009 nine off from large scale tournament play, and as the nun can tell you, it showed. I did not do as well as I liked(and have done historically). I can blame a lot of things, but the person in the mirror is the only one to really blame.

To help work on that I have about finished my tournament table, and Andy is coming down this weekend to break it in with me. However, that being said, I made (with help from my friends) a list of things to remember before going to tournaments. Here they are:




1. Do not forget the chapstick/water. I talk more at these events then I do on a normal basis, and therefore become dehidrated, and my lips crack. Both of the things above would have gone a long way in helping me think clearly.

2. Don't forget to win. Sounds silly, but a lot of the times you concerned with things in a game and missions come second, always play to the mission.

3. Do not play generalist marines. I mean this. Vulcan is fine, he is no generalist. 70% of all armies at tournament are marines, and everyone there is bringing things to kill... you guessed it kill marines. When you play marines, you are falling into that trap. If you do bring marines, bring them focused on doing one thing:

4. Make your list to kill marines: See my above post. If 70% of all armies out there are marines, why spec out to fight that one tau player that is at the tournament.

5. Do not take an all alpha strike army. You will win some games, but if things don't go correctly, your army falls apart. Darkwyn apparently get's away with this, but he also seems to roll well to go first with those guardsmen!

6. DO take enough scoring units

7. DO Relax... it's a game. Being stressed makes you play bad.

8. Do play to the tournament. Look at the tournament rules. If painting is heavily scored, bring your best, if it's about beatstick armies, bring that. If not, you really aren't playing to win.

9. Do play regularly against ALL codexes that are out. If not, when you run into that one army you don't play about, not only will you not know how to counter it, but you can't call your opponent out when they make mistakes (Dark Eldar - Wargames Con with incubi fleeting into HTH in round 1). If I had played against Dark Eldar more, I would have known this.

That's it for today folks!