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So I've signed myself up for a tournament that's gonna take place in just over two weeks. I've played a handful of games against friends, but not yet at my local club. I'm kinda nervous to play with longtime players because I'm still weak on the rules, but I figured that the best way to overcome the nervousness would be to dive right in. I still take a while to carry out my turn, and still look stuff up in the rules pretty regularly, but I hope that that won't be a huge pain in peoples butts.

It's a 2000 pt tournament, consisting of 6 games played over 2 days. I'm playing Dark Angels, and it's not a highly competitive list so I'm not expecting to pull a lot of wins.

What's your advice for me for my first tournament?

Most players are happy to help newer players throughout the games. Don't be nervous, you'll have lots of fun and as long as you are relatively comfortable with your codex you should be fine. Slow play can get on the nerves of many players so this is something you should take note of. Take a look at some forum topics regarding speeding up play. With an army like DA you shouldn't have too many models and I assume there is a fair bit of bikes. When you move the first bike 12" dont worry too much about taking out your tape measure and measuring every single bike. Move the first bike exactly what you want to and keep the following bikes as they were in the unit from the start of the move and you should be fine. Most tourny players know the rules well so if you forget something simply ask don't waste time looking it up in the rule book. "What does Preferred Enemy do again?" for example, it's really not that big of a deal. Have fun, enjoy the experience and learn from the other players.

Brush up on your rules. Know all the details, particularly about your army.

Work on speeding up your game. There will probably be set times, and you don’t want to slow things down. Fluency with the rules will help here (not having to looks stuff up) but also movement, counting out dice, etc.

Relax, have fun.

Be a good sport and a fun guy to play. Make friends, ask advice. Learn.

Know every rule that your army has to use. Not so much every rule you'll come across, but know what rules specifically you are using. If you miss a buff you have and your opponent doesn't know it and remind you of it, you could lose out on some wins you should have earned.

Know when to look in your book. If you expect to use Hit and Run in the Assault phase of your opponent's turn, look it up in their movement phase when you'd otherwise be doing nothing. Use the times when you're not actively participating to plan ahead and check up on things.

Go with materials you need in an easy format to read. This could be the reference sheet that's somewhere on this site made by a very helpful user. That might be a Battlescribe sheet that lists as many special rules you need as possible so you can look at a glance and not have to search the rulebook. Beforehand, make sure the info matches up though. Both of these resources are helpful, but they are made by third party humans who can make mistakes. They're references, not outright rule sources.

It's just little things like that that will make things go so much smoother. If your opponent sees you making that effort on your part, they will usually bend over backwards to help out too. That's atleast been my experience in wargaming tournaments.

Monstrous creatures are scary.... But don't focus on them so much that you don't notice or have a plan for the rest of you opponents army when it suddenly slams into your front line because you used two rounds of shooting to kill a monsterous creature or imperial knight.

Pretty much parroting what everyone has said. If you can get familiar with the general rules and especially your own army's rules will be a benefit to you and your games. Repetition repetition repetition has always worked for me for learning rules.

Sort out your strategy now. Split your army into a couple 1k pts and put then against each other, this get you working out your rules as well as help with seeing what you can do and give you practice at moving faster. The more games you do the more familiar you'll be with each unit and spend less time figuring what to do and more time just doing it.

Remember your player pack and the missions you're playing and strategize for each one.

Try not to get sucked into obvious bullet magnets, there might be a big 500 PT scary unit on the table but your opponent still has 1500 pts there to smack into you.

Aside from that, have fun and enjoy your first tourney experience.

Oh and make sure all your models are painted, this should be a given as most tourneys want painted models, but it looks and feels good to have a painted army there and other players really appreciate it.

If the tournament has released mission info, learn that like the back of your hand and be ready to play to the mission. I've won a good amount of games by focusing on the objectives when my opponent is stuck in the kill everything mind set.

If you don't go in expecting to win a lot you'll probably have fun. It should be a great learning experience and you'll become a better player.

From what I gather many tournaments will match players based on their performance so far in the tournament. After a couple of games you should be being paired up against people that are roughly on the same level as you.

One of the reasons I suppose you don't need to worry too much about taking a cutting edge competitive list to a tourney if you are there for the beers/banter/buddies.

 Nyoom wrote:
So I've signed myself up for a tournament that's gonna take place in just over two weeks. I've played a handful of games against friends, but not yet at my local club. I'm kinda nervous to play with longtime players because I'm still weak on the rules, but I figured that the best way to overcome the nervousness would be to dive right in. I still take a while to carry out my turn, and still look stuff up in the rules pretty regularly, but I hope that that won't be a huge pain in peoples butts.

It's a 2000 pt tournament, consisting of 6 games played over 2 days. I'm playing Dark Angels, and it's not a highly competitive list so I'm not expecting to pull a lot of wins.

What's your advice for me for my first tournament?

1. Drink a lot of water. stay hydrated. Six games is a fair amount. Diluted Gatorade or whatever works.

2. Bring a tray to place figs on as they die and so that your deployment takes less time. Put them away in their respective places in units. saves time between rounds.

3. Understand that a tiny bit of water added to super glue will freeze a model into place if you need to make a quick and effective field repair on your model. tiny bit o water on one side, glue n the other. FREEZE! Won't hold forever but great when you need it.

4. Get enough sleep. big on my list. i rarely get enough because im too amped, painting etc... the night before. Gamer tradition but its not good for your chances come game day!

5. First tournament? Pretty darn cool. dont freak out about everything. breathe and dont act like losing at a tournament is a big deal. Even guys who win a lot of them lose. If they are okay with it, you should be too. Don't be hard on yourself. That was my number one thing to overcome when i strarted competing was being hard on myself. I expect a lot of myself but Warhammer just isn't the place to be worrying about that stuff.

6. Play to win. Don't play not to lose. Take chances, be bold and go for it on every play. If you need to deep strike behind someone and it seems "too iffy" because theres not much room...do it anyways. You do what you have to do to win (except being a D-bag), and taking chances is one of those things.

My first tournament, I ended up winning the first 2 games 18-0 (that's how the points were scored in that one at the end of 5th in that tournament). My third game I was on the top table against a fantastic player and I got thrashed and then ended up losing all my other games as I slid back down to the lower tables.

But each time I lost - and I lost quickly - I asked the person I was playing against what I could have done better and got great advice. They were cool, it was clear I was an amateur and because they knew the game was going to be over well within time they were more than happy to give me pointers. You'll learn a lot from experienced players. In particular, I learned how important deployment is although it's still my achieves heel.

And as mentioned by others - a tray to put dead models on. Then by the end of the game you can simply move them to the next table without any loss of time and plonk them down on the next table.

Go in to expecting to learn, experience playing armies you've not played against before and have fun.