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Hello all

I have been playing 40k for about 2 1/2 years now with some of my friends and occasionally a group at my local game store.
Lately I have been getting the urge to try out the tournament scene, but am a bit apprehensive since I mainly just play 40k for fun, not to win. The game store that hosts these tournaments runs 1850 points with ITC rules and missions.
I have a few questions
1.) how competitive are people generally
2.) Does ITC do a good job at balancing the game
3.) How strict is the WYSIWYG rules? for instance if i had a marine with a melta gun could i simply claim he had a plasma gun? Or would I be able to run a land speeder vengeance as a dark shroud?

I play dark angels and I have the following units:
1x land speeder vengeance
4x terminator squads
1x interrogator chaplain
1x chaplain in terminator armour
1x drop pod
3x 10 man squads of space marines
1x rhino / predator
9x raven wing bikers
3x attack bikes
1x ravenwing nephilim jetfighter
1x raven wing command squad
1x veteran squad
2x venerable dreadnoughts
3x land speeders

I was considering doing something along the lines of a ravenwing strike force coupled with a battle demi company.

Thoughts?

1) No way of predicting it. However, I dont recall having ever played against a true 'that guy' after several GT's and local tournaments. I think a lot of it depends on you and the way you carry yourself.

2) Its balanced for some armies, but miracles cant fix the power creep differential between the current codexes. ITC does do its best though, which is why its so prevalent.

3) This is up to the individual tournament organizers, check with them first.

1. Varies. I find that the tourney crowd actually tends to have a better attitude than the garage players. There are still some less than stellar peeps that show up now and then, but oddly enough, the top tables at big GT's tend to be super chill. WAAC "you moved your model half an inch too far" jerkiness seems rare.

2. ITC is better than not ITC, for what that tells you. There's still some red flags in the balance issues, but at least the top tables tend to vary a good amount. There are at least half a dozen "tier 1" list blueprints, followed by several more "tier 2" underdogs that are close enough to cause upsets.

3. Check with TO. In general, wysiwyg on weapons is non-negotiable at the events I've been to. The only one I've ever seen allow proxies was a little local event that allowed them to get a couple newbies in and make it at least an 8-man day.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
1. Varies. I find that the tourney crowd actually tends to have a better attitude than the garage players. There are still some less than stellar peeps that show up now and then, but oddly enough, the top tables at big GT's tend to be super chill. WAAC "you moved your model half an inch too far" jerkiness seems rare.

2. ITC is better than not ITC, for what that tells you. There's still some red flags in the balance issues, but at least the top tables tend to vary a good amount. There are at least half a dozen "tier 1" list blueprints, followed by several more "tier 2" underdogs that are close enough to cause upsets.

3. Check with TO. In general, wysiwyg on weapons is non-negotiable at the events I've been to. The only one I've ever seen allow proxies was a little local event that allowed them to get a couple newbies in and make it at least an 8-man day.

Thanks for the info, I will check with my TO about the rules of wysiwyg. I would not have expected that you can't just call a melta a plasma gun, or a plasma gun a melta gun.

My advice, just enter a tournament and play with what you have. Even if you are running a top tier list/army it wont matter. Some tournaments are a lot more competitive while others cater more towards a casual player. You will learn a ton in a tournament, especially a bigger one . Dont sweat it, find a local one if you can, enter and have fun .

cnkid wrote:
I would not have expected that you can't just call a melta a plasma gun, or a plasma gun a melta gun.

It's because keeping track of that stuff adds a lot of work. At the end of a long day of gaming you want to be able to look at a model and tell which squad has the melta and which squad has the plasma, and it's really frustrating to see one, make plans based on it, and find out at a key moment that the model is proxied as something else. And this is assuming both players are honest, non-WYSIWYG armies/models open up a lot of room for people to cheat and play "oh, no, that squad that your tank just drove up to has the melta guns" games. It's much easier to just say "WYSIWYG required" and eliminate these problems.

Now, personally I do think that a small number of proxy models should be allowed, especially for standard unit types ("all my devastators have grav cannons"), but I can understand why people take the simple option and insist on WYSIWYG.