Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Get Ready to Compete – Practice, Practice, Practice
Goatboy here again how to prepare and sharpen your game before, during, and after events.
This is a two-part bit of discussion. The first part is talking about practicing. This is something that gets a heck of a lot harder as you get older and your life has a lot more options than just going down to your local store/basement/buddy’s house and throwing down with whatever evil idea you have to crush the competition.
It’s the Little Things
I have talked about building armies that fit your play style but actual practice is how you can quickly figure out what you have to do. You also end up not forgetting an important rule that you missed throughout the last tournament. Heck, I did this at the LSO when I forgot my Tallyman can make a core unit get a +1 to hit. The entire 6 games of the event I forgot I could have been more of a jerk with my Dreads/Blightlords and thrown out some 2+ hitting damage.
This small thing is something you would have caught and remembered if you actually played your list more often. Heck, the list I brought I only sorta played once (it originally had Morty in it). I just completely forgot as I jumped on the whole Tollkeeper relic and thought nothing more than the Tallyman was just a CP generating jerk who let me have exploding 6’s. I am sure if I brought one of his stank bros to the game I would have forgotten something as well.
I think I forgot something…
These small things again don’t show up as you build your list but during a game when you have to make quick decisions. Between figuring out what missions you can score, what is mean about your opponent’s list, and making sure you didn’t expose your “good” units too much during a game. I know I needed a few more reps in but trying to get a game in, keep the family happy, and wrangling my employees makes it a lot harder to find the time.
Be Realistic & Enjoy Yourself
Now of course this leads to my next point in making sure you set your expectations. I know it will next to impossible for me to get to the Top 8 most of the time. I know this and come to an event hoping to win more games than lose. That is all I really care about score-wise and even if I get my butt beat all over as long as I had fun in my games that allows me to “win” in my cold black goat-heart.
Setting your bar low lets you utilize the event for what you need it to do – keep you sane during these months of isolation, seeing your friends you haven’t spoken to in real life in a while, and hopefully showing off your sweet looking Pandemic army you built/painted/created. It’s always these tiny little things that keep me coming back to this game. Heck, it is what made me buy 2 boxes of Beast Snaggas so I can be as prepared as I can to get my red Orks on the tabletop.
What if the Orks were red and the Squigs were green? Hmmm…
I am going to call most of this year a wash for my true competitive nature. My children are getting older and showing some interest in the game so it might allow me a little more breathing room to find events/games to do. It also means they are getting less all up my wife’s butt and letting her have some breathing room more. We love our kids but sometimes I want to try and be a grimdark master of the universe and push plastic nonsense around a giant mousepad.
Get those games in!
