Warhammer 40K: The Best Ways to Clean Up Your Competitive Game
Goatboy here with some tips and tricks to clean up and improve your competitive Warhammer 40K play.
Let me give you some hints to help clean up your Warhammer 40K competitive game experience. A few of these are pretty obvious but they do wonders in helping make sure both players keep the game moving along smoothly. Especially if you are not experience playing under a locked in time limit for your game.
5. Moving Large Units
If you are playing with large units or against large units the best thing you can do is to help your opponent quickly gather a “farthest” distance point and thus let them quickly gather the units to move them forward. If you are playing with these big units then for you the best way is get the furtherest point and fill in the rest keeping the same size you had when initially deployed. These quick methods of moving means you can quickly go from unit to unit, ensure both players know the distance between things, and ensure your movement phase doesn’t take all your time.
4. Rolling Dice In The Open
I know sometimes terrain can make it hard to roll out in the open if giant pieces are in the way. But try your best to always roll things in front of each other. This lets the players both see your good luck and bad luck and just ensures the game doesn’t leave either of you feeling like something was shady. I know a lot of players utilize a dice box with the notation that anything that rolls out is rerolled and I always find that a nice touch. I try to use mine as much as I can but if you start running around the table top dealing with your models dying on their side it can be hard to roll it in the box all the time.
3. Announce Required Distance to Charge When Moving Assaulters
I always like to make sure we define the distance to charge an enemy model before I start moving my models. This way we can easily see how far I need to roll to charge and make sure both players agree to it. This game is as much about agreement as it is about crushing your enemy and remembering that is an important thing.
2. Count DOWN Your Wounds
You need to present as much information to your opponent at all times to allow them to not ask you questions throughout the game. Counting down your wounds is an easy thing to do and quickly gives your opponent that bit of info on how much damage they need to do and how many wounds is left in your unit. You can tell oldschool players who started playing the game in 2nd Edition if they still count up.
1. Explain All Your Army’s Gotchas When You Reach the Table
These are things like out-of-phase moves or reactive things that could catch someone off guard and create a poor game experience. Remember you are supposed to present all rules to your opponent which includes anything you can do. I know a lot of players don’t own all the 40K rules so it can hard for them to have access to everything. Also a lot of the time these events have rough WIFI to use in there. It can be hard to go look something up online somewhere or read an army breakdown from your favorite site. I always like to make sure my opponent knows anything funky my army can do and while it isn’t your role to remind them all the time it’s your role to present it initially to let them decide how to play the game from there.
These 5 simple things should make sure you provide a good experience for your opponent as well and hopefully for your self when you get to an event. These events are a heck of a lot of fun as they let you get together with like minded hobbyists, get a break from reality, and just see if your giant plastic monsters can wreck things like the fluff says they can.
Have fun out there and happy 40K gaming!
