First time coming to a big tournament like War Games Con ... What should I expect?

[mikeohara]

I'll be bringing an 40k army (trying to decide between my Blood Angels or buying and painting up a Grey Knights army) and competing in the main 40k tourney. This will be my first tournament playing outside of local play against friends and observing games to get the general hang of 40k rules.

What should I expect coming into War Games Con as a new player?

Thanks!

[DarkLink]

Bring something to drink, bring hand sanitizer and deodorant, and bring some sort of tray so you can pile your models on it and quickly move from table to table. Nothing's more annoying than having to unpack and repack your whole army over and over. Be friendly to your opponent, but don't be a pushover.

Other than that just have fun.

[SaganGree]

Also... wear comfortable shoes... you will be standing a LOT so try to mitigate the strain.

Expect to have at least one model break, so bring some superglue or whatever you use.

Something that I have started doing when it comes to Tourneys is to bring a set amount of dice, something that is easy to identify as "yours", and not to get too crazy with the number of dice; its real easy to loose dice when moving from table to table.

[Jwolf]

Expect games to take longer to play than you are used to. Practice getting your games over in under two hours, as it takes a little longer to get games done in a loud hall playing with a stranger. If you can get your times under an hour and a half with a friend, that's even better.

Expect to not be able to hear everything your opponent says; be prepared to ask them to repeat themselves.

Expect to not be heard by your opponent; be prepared to repeat yourself and talk facing them and pointing at what you're talking about.

Expect to get tired and cranky before the end of the day; you can reduce this by drinking enough water and eating a healthy snack at every break.

Expect to have a great time; large events are intoxicating even if you aren't drinking.

Expect to lose some games; even if you're king of the roost in your FLGS, you'll find that you're in a room with a whole lot of good players, many of them with dozens of GTs under their belts.

Expect judges to be available quickly; if you have any questions, one of our staff will be there in a flash to help out, so you don't have to waste a lot of time looking up rules - if there is a question, throw your hand up and say "JUDGE!" and we'll be right there.

[DarkLink]

To build on JWolf's communication points, there are some kind of unspoken courtesies that make playing a stranger go more smoothly.

At the beginning of your turn, pause for a second to figure out exactly what you're going to do. That way you don't keep changing your mind and moving and removing units (which is technically illegal anyways). It helps you keep track of what you're doing and avoid confusing yourself, and it keeps things clear with your opponent and they don't have to wait on you.

Once you've figured out everything that you're going to do, verbally describe literally everything you're doing as you do it. "Ok, this Rhino moves here, I need a dangerous terrain test, I pass..." and so on. Same thing with shooting and assault. Without this, your opponent won't know why the heck you're rolling dice and any confusion can lead to rules arguments and stuff.

When you roll a bunch of dice, pick up failures first and place them aside. That way your opponent can visually confirm that, yes, you really did get 3's or better to hit and there wasn't a miss hidden in there. Once you've removed all the failures, pause for a second so your opponent gets a chance to look at the results and confirm you didn't miss a failure. There's no better way to irritate your opponent than to pick up dice as quickly as you roll them so they can't see the results.

Play quickly. Practice it. Think of it as speed chess. It really sucks for someone to lose a game because you only got to turn 4.

Let the little things slide. Don't waste time arguing on something that is irrelevant to the result of the game, and don't get too nitpicky with the rules. Don't spend ten minutes arguing over whether a dice is cocked or not. I've met and played a couple people who had a bit of a reputation for being annoying to play because of stupid arguments like this, but I was fine because I picked and chose what I would fight over. And the odds are, you probably won't play one of these people anyways, in my experience they're pretty rare.

[L192837465]

I cannot stress enough the "don't argue very single rule" note above. It kills the game speed.

Bring as absolutely little as necessary to your table. Water, your bit of food, and game-tray with all your dice and rulebooks and stuff on it. It's awful trying to wind through 300 people with a precarious floor-tray with thousands of dollars of time and effort spent wasted when you nick the leg on something and oops, there goes your favorite model.