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SO I've been having a strange time finding a game of 40k so I can properly get enough experience to compete in a tournament.

I figured folks would appreciate someone showing up with a bunch of fully painted nicely based dudes, but the majority of people who were playing were kind of in their respective cliques and that's cool and all I just kind of wish there was more room for a hobby enthusiast who is a noob at the tabletop relatively speaking.

That brings me to the topic in discussion. Is it a viable option to learn the game online through a simulator so I can just get competent enough to go to a tournament and get matched with someone and be learned enough so that our game goes smoothly?

I've watched some videos on how it can be played using tabletop simulator, but I already have my army painted and ready to play so for me it's the issue of finding a reliable game where I can learn to be a better competitor not so much playing on the cheap.

Any advice would be appreciated as I'm having a hard time recruiting my own friends to get into 40k and the LGS scene is kind of hit or miss, mostly miss in my case.

If you haven't already stumbled across it, the TTS 40k discord is probably your best bet at finding a match

https://discord.gg/ttswarhammer40k

Learning with TTS is a good idea, the stats are on the models making it easier to check basic things that you want to have remembered before a tournament. I think you should check out Facebook groups for your area, maybe see if you can't get someone to take you under their wing.

You could totally do this.

One thing to keep in mind is that TTS makes almost everything easier, more precise, and less subject to error/accident. If and when you make the transition to irl play it will probably pay off to be conscious of that and try to mitigate any gaps that you can (eg. your expectations about time/turn management, making more of an effort to play with verbal statement of intent since irl is much sloppier than TTS, that kind of thing).