In late 2022, a friend would introduce to the world of Warhammer 40K when he showed me the games club he attended every week. I've been a part of this games group since then, getting into 40K, as well as Necromunda, and more recently, Age of Sigmar. The club for the last few years has held a 40K tournament, around October-early December each year, with different people running it. A few months ago, at the club's AGM, I got to be put in charge of the club's tournaments for this financial year.

It had a bit of a rough start. On our club's group chat, a member suggested that maybe we should use chess clocks to keep time in our 40K tournament this year. A couple agreed with him, but a lot more disagreed with him. I also stated my disagreement, saying that I wanted the tournaments to be friendly, casual, and accessible for all skill levels. I think time pressure would go against it. That, and we had a 4 hour time slot to set up, play, and put away a 1500 point game, which seemed mostly doable. I actually went and bought a cheap chess clock, played a 1500 point game with it, and then donated it to the club, just to try it, and see if it changed my mind. It was an interesting experience, but didn't change my mind. Sadly, the member who brought this issue up, would suddenly quit the group chat, and seemingly the club as well right after I pushed back against his idea. I have been told he has done this before in the past, fallen out with someone and quit for a while. I don't think anyone blames me for what happens, and I hope he decides to return at some point, so I can properly apologise to him.

Being the tournament organiser for the year, I was keen to want to have one for Horus Heresy, The Old World, and Age of Sigmar as well as 40K, since those game systems were all popular in the club. Horus Heresy was the first I "organised", although really what I ended up doing was having to outsource that one since I know nothing about HH. I really wanted to get HH done since that was when the rumours of 3rd edition were going around, and thought it was best to do an HH event before 3rd edition would change everything. That was pretty simple, he got a campaign with 6 people over 3 games, and they knocked it out over 3 weeks. 

The next on the list was The Old World, since at this point I wanted to wait for The General's Handbook 2025-2026 to release for AoS first to use it for that tournament. The Old World tournament would see 10 participate over 4 rounds, with me boring a rule book and getting some help to choose what scenarios to use. Annoyingly, when I was organising this was when GW announced the Match Play booklet, so we didn't end up using that. For next time though. The Old World tournament would drag on a bit, since this was during June and July, and some people were also going on holiday. I had to extend deadlines a couple of times, and even then, that didn't always work out. Round 2 would see 4 people not play, and Round 3 see 2 people not play. Still, most games would happen, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. It did end of a slightly anti-climatic note, as due TOW's core book's rather simplistic tournament scoring system, 3 people finished in joint first with 9 points each.

The Age of Sigmar tournament is starting next week. I've been very involved with this one, as for the last month and a bit, I have been finally learning how to play AoS, so that I can participate with my Skaven. 10 participants, 4 rounds 1500 points. I will be a bit harsher this time on deadlines since we will also be doing the 40K tournament straight after this, and we just don't have time to delay that even further. Using The General's Handbook was pretty easy, since unlike the 40K mission deck, in AoS battleplans come with the mission rules, deployment zones, and even terrain layouts all ready decided. I ended up choosing 4 battleplans that were relatively easy to understand and had a good amount of variety, and getting a couple of AoS veterans to approve my choices. I'm looking forward to this, as well as getting to sink my teeth into the tournament personally. Probably going to get dominated, but it's good experience.

Finally, the plan is to do the 40K tournament in early October to early December. 4 rounds again, 1500 points, probably looking at least 10+ people, 40K is still the most played game at our club currently I say, even if a few members are really annoyed by the current state of 10th edition. Will use Chapter Approved 2025-2026, use the tournament packed to choose the 4 combinations of mission and deployments. Should be fun, I'm hoping to run my Kroot Hunting Pack this time.

I'll probably update this blog in a couple of months once the AoS tournament is over. I've been enjoying running things, I like to manage things. Just trying my best to make these enjoyable for everyone. Any advice or criticism is welcome. Thank you.