Any basic tournament advice?

[jesse the frozen]

Hello my fellow hungover brothers! I am getting ready to goto a tournament in febuary and it will probably have atleast one of every army. Can anyone give me general competitive advice? Like i heard that if you are facing tyranids do not be within 18" of a table edge or something otherwise you risk a turn 1 assault. All i really know how to fight are necrons and eldar. And the eldar i face is normally a bunch of snipers with a group of banshees that kill everything on my field with there I 10 power weapons. Anyways thanks for any advice.

[Grey Mage]

Play the objectives. Your opponents army doesnt mean squat if you havent completed your objectives.

 

Annihilation is ALWAYS a victory condition.

 

Shooty the assaulty stuff, assault the shooty stuff.

 

Any chance is better than none- dice are random, so praying for a miracle is always better than giving up.

 

The game isnt over until the judge calls time- until then anything can happen.

 

Whirlwinds kill Pathfinders, Tau, and anything with less than T 6. Never leave home without one *unless you drop pod*.

 

Troops are excellant- especially for space wolves. Take many, eat your opponet for lunch.

 

All armies need 3 things- Firepower, Speed, and Durability. Remove these from your opponent, any of them in its entirety, and watch their plans fall apart. On the other hand, never let your opponent take any of these from you for anything less than final victory.

 

Always be a gentleman, even if the other players an asshat. Its cost me a tournament or two, but I look back at it and feel better about myself than if I hadnt.

 

Research your rules- so many tournies are lost because players didnt know the rules that could save them, or let the opponent use ones that werent accurate.

[Thunderpup]

Play the objectives. Your opponents army doesnt mean squat if you havent completed your objectives.

 

Annihilation is ALWAYS a victory condition.

 

Shooty the assaulty stuff, assault the shooty stuff.

 

Any chance is better than none- dice are random, so praying for a miracle is always better than giving up.

 

The game isnt over until the judge calls time- until then anything can happen.

 

Whirlwinds kill Pathfinders, Tau, and anything with less than T 6. Never leave home without one *unless you drop pod*.

 

Troops are excellant- especially for space wolves. Take many, eat your opponet for lunch.

 

All armies need 3 things- Firepower, Speed, and Durability. Remove these from your opponent, any of them in its entirety, and watch their plans fall apart. On the other hand, never let your opponent take any of these from you for anything less than final victory.

 

Always be a gentleman, even if the other players an asshat. Its cost me a tournament or two, but I look back at it and feel better about myself than if I hadnt.

 

Research your rules- so many tournies are lost because players didnt know the rules that could save them, or let the opponent use ones that werent accurate.

 

Grey Mage... You rock! (Shoves a tankard into your hand.) Cheers. /bow

[Tograth]

a few things to add to Grey Mage:

 

Pick one type of transport and stick to it - avoid mixing tanks and pods. Each can be effective, but mixing them is much less likely to help.

 

A mix of pod and infantry can work, but for that you need large numbers.

 

 

Grey hunters are your bread, butter, and cheese. these guys are fantastic, whether it be as 6 strong objective sitters in lazbacks, or in 9+WG or 10 strong packs heading upfield to deal with stuff.

 

Dakka predators are the bomb. 85 points for a pred with heavy bolter side sponsons and you have a model which can really throw out a world of hurt.

 

Dont forget your shooting. Are you planning on assaulting with that squad of grey hunters this turn? no? shoot their bolters! if you are outside charge range, so are the enemy, so shoot them dead. Nothing in range? run them towards cover/ objectives.

 

Melta is good. Plasma on vehicles is almost as good.

 

Remember that terminators have relentless - you can move, shoot everything, and assault as well.

 

Troops - unless you think you can get an annihilation victory every game, 3 scoring units is a must.

 

Troops over toys! If you have the choice between extra toys for a few squads and a whole extra squad, then go for the extra squad.

With tanks, avoid extras unless they offer a big advantage - Extra armour on assaulty dreds, multimeltas on any landraider, second weapon on land speeders.

 

named characters count as toys - avoid them in anything less than 1750 points. Avoid too many HQs.

 

 

 

above all, remember the rules, have all your own rulebooks / codexes with you, and be friendly. If you're friendly, the opponent is less likely to be an asshat, and remember, its just a game.

[Warhorse47]

These answers ought to be stickied. Well explained Brothers! More elk on the way!

[Aurick]

Lots of wisdom in those comments. Love it.

[jesse the frozen]

I know my army pretty well fellas, i meant what should i be on the watch for from others, i am mostly concerned about tau,ork green tide/bikers and nasty eldar armies. Thanks alot for the advice though.

[Grey Mage]

Well, what do you want to know?

 

Eldar have as many build options as C:SM and C:SW put together, one of the reasons they can be difficult to combat. Whirlwinds and Missile Launchers are very good ideas to take....

 

And theyre just as good against Orks, and rather good against tau.

 

Orks come in two varieties- Mounted and Footslogging. Mounted means youll be in assault turn 2, maybe turn 1 if the deployment is on their side. Do your best to pop their transports to gain time shooting at them. Against Footslogging take out their fire support *most lootas and Deff Dreds* early on, and use your GHs to beat the tar out of them.

 

Tau also tend to come in Mounted or Footslogging varieties- fast units like Swiftclaws and Landspeeders need to be used wisely, wich usually means to hunt down and kill suits. Get near them as fast as possible while hugging cover. They only have medium tanks, so plasma and higher is good. Dreads without venerable are almost a free KP though.

[major_kittens]

To me, the most important rule is to always make sure your opponent knows and uses his correct rules and dont be afraid to call them on it / help them out even if it benefits you.

 

For example if your opponent does something wrong rules or turn wise correct them and let them have a do over, like if he skips to his assault phase and forgets to fire his land raider at your squishy rhino, let him know and allow them to go back a phase and take their full turn.

 

This kind of "selfless" generosity will make you friends real quickly. Also your opponent is more likely to extend the same level of generosity to you if you make a silly mistake. It will also make any arguments you have with your opponent over things like RAW or RAI go much smoother, because he knows you arent trying to be cheap and win, you are trying to be as fair as possible to both players.

 

P.S. this will also gain you high sportsmanship scores as well

[WolfLordRadulfr]

Alot of real good advice in this thread. It has been along time since I played in a tourney. Major_kittens has a good point tho with sportsmanship.

 

@ Warhorse47 that these answers ought to be stickied as well and a keg of fenris's finest ale to the mod if he does!

[Stormbrow II]

Here's something to further flesh out Tograth's advice and was posted on another forum by a guy that regularly wins tournaments.

 

1) Boys before Toys: Classic one I know, but can't stress how important it is. You should be very wary of taking any upgrades that don't significantly improve the survivability or damage output of a unit. Most people are aware of this idea so it doesn't really need much explanation.

 

2) Kill the Big One: as a general rule I try avoid more than 1 unit in an arm that doesn't have a respectable anti-amour threat (i.e more than just a few Krak grenades). Two main reasons for this 1) Mecha is everywhere! 2) You can kill a guardsman with a lascannon but you can't kill a landraider with a bolter. So generally anti-armour weapons are more versatile than anti-infantry. For units that rely on close combat to get tanks they better be able to catch them too! I only really break this rule is a unit is very cheap (about 60 points or less), extremely effective at killing a range of infantry and/or of realy strategic importance.

For example: My Guard 1500pt list has 4 units that I consider to not have a significant anti-armour threat. 2 of these are chimeras, they are cheap and have some anti armour (Multi-lazor) . One is a cheap 4 flamer company unit, they are cheap and of strategic importance (makes a valk scoring). Finally a Plasma Death Tank (Executioner with plas sponsons), I consider it a poor anti armour unit (5 Str 7 shots is not good for over 200 points)but its extremely effective at killing all infantry from terminators to big boys units.

 

3) Target Saturation:

This is very army dependant, i.e. some armies can pull it off while others do better to ignore it. The basic idea is to make sure a large part of you army is only vunerable to a certain type of weapon. i.e. If everything is in a transport they who cares how many bolters the other guy has. Ideally all you armour should be vulnerable to exactly the same type of weapons. The best example of this is mecha sisters, where everything that can be shot at is AV11 or 13. So the more variation you have the more the other guy can make use of speciallist weapons. AV14 is the only possible exception to this (especially Monoliths), a single AV14 tank tends to survive reasonable well as many armies simply don't have the weapons to deal with it.

 

4) What is a good unit?: This is somewhat more subjective, the general rule I use when assessing a unit I'm not sure of is think of a 1500 point army made purely of this unit (ignoring the Force Org chart), if the thought of acing this army scares the hell out of me, then its a good unit.

For example: 10 Dark Eldar with 2 Dark Lances comes in at 100 points. So think of an army of 15 of these units :). 30 BS4 dark lances on 150 infantry, dam scary. Thus a good unit.

Conversely: 10 Spate Marines with a las cannon and Flamer (about 175). So you'd get about 8 in 1500 points. Sure you'd have 80 marines, but most 1500 point armies would laugh off the damage output, thus not a strong unit.

 

5) Scoring Units: This is an idea that lots of people struggle with, how many is enough! The simple answer is it depends. The big considerations are a) how good are you troops choices (for most armies, not that great compared to other units) B) how likely are them to survive the game (this depends not only on how hard they are too kill, but also how agressively you play them. E.g. Grentchin in reserves survive more than Nob Bikers tearing into the other guy.). As a general rule (in armies with sub optimum troops) I aim to have 2 units of troops alive at the end of the game.

For Example:

My sisters tend to have 3 units of troops. Two I play reasonable aggressiv ely but they are quite survivable (10 sisters in power armour), so I recon 1 will have some models left at the end of the game. The 3rd is there mainly to claim objectives (sometimes only 5 stormies in reserve), giving me 2 units left at the end of the game (hopefully!) .

 

6) Kill Points: Once again how many is too many. I don't this you can set a number of this. The important factor is not how many kill points you have, but how hard they are to get. For example 10 guardsmen in a chimera is 2 kill points for a little over 100 points, but most of the time you have to crack AV12 to get at either. For similar points you get a small unit of gene-stealers, only one kill point, but much easier to get. I usually allow myself 1 or 2 units that are easy kill points, but only if they excell in some other way (e.g. 4 melta command unit in a Valk, the other is going to kill them, but they can reliably pop almost any problem vehcle turn 1).

[Madsakre]

Lots of rune priests.

Lots of grey hunters.

Lots of long fangs

 

All of these combined gives you a balanced and point worthy list. Your long fangs gives you a huge area of denial. Go for two squads with las cannons and missile launchers.

 

Kit out your grey hunters for survivability. Kitting them out really depends on your playing style. I Prefer to kit them out for an all purpose role, both cc and shooting if i find the points.

 

For pure luxury you can always throw in a wolf guard in the squad for ex. More power fist attacks.

 

One of my fav list involves 3 squads of long fangs with a rune priest and wolf guard each. This really makes them nasty, as your rune priests living lightning really makes a mess of most anything.

If you want to make that kind of list, then you dont have the point for a death star. But death stars dont win games, they win combats.

[Quillen]

Almost all of the advise is sound.

 

Are you on Vancouver Island by chance? We have a tourney this Feb too.

 

Here is some things I thick was missed.

 

Mobility. Alot of people see Rhinos as rolling coffens. And in a way it's kinds of true. Yet moving where you need to be fast is important. Transports get you there. And that is all that matters. When I see a rhino heavy force with a Land Raider. I shoot the Rhinos. If over half his force is walking, I have a better chance of winning. Almost all your shots will bounce on that Land Raider. Rhinos are like shermans-Poof gone.

 

Now how I win tournies is I look at what he is tring to do. Then I don't let him. Sounds simple but alot of people don't seem to do it. They have their game plan and run it. Even when your making his plan worthless. They can not adapt to you counters and you have them. So here is my main simple rule. Don't play their game. Make them play yours. Which is alot like shoot the assault and assault the shooty. If he really wants to get that squad of what ever in your line. Fall back a bit while plastering it. Look at his list and think, "What would really screw his plans." Always try and see what he is doing. If you know what he is after you can stop him.

 

Concenttrait fire power. Alot fo people have a habit of shooting a little here and a little there. And the result is alot of units still in good enough shape to do their jobs. Instead of having 3 GH packs shoot 2 troop choices. Have 2 Light up one. Kill it off or down to 1 or 2 guys. Now it's worthless and can not do it's job as well. If it's a troop. Use all 3 and completely remove it. Unless there is a priority some where. If you completely remove 2 units a turn for 3 turns, you just won that game. So pick something and kill it dead.

 

Win the mission. Once again sounds simple but I have watched people loose focus on the mission of the game and I win, even thou I more or less lost the battle. To me those are the best games. Cause they never see it till it's over and then the look so supprised. So look at you mission objectives. Is it to hold a spot? Or do you have to kill something or someone and keep yours alive. If so do it. Don't get caught up in killing that squad or Gaurd/gaunts/tank and not move to take an objective or target the real target.

 

Be aware of the phase in a round And this is one that hurts me from time to time. If you need take a piece of paper with these simple sentences on them.

 

Did I do all my movement? Even my reserves? Sounds silly but I was so caught up in one game I forgot my termies. They did not show up till turn 4. And only then cause I was like. Man where is he getting all this fire power. Then I realised I have some sitting doing nothing. They will not tell you, "hey you forgot those guys that will beat me." It's not going to happen. So look at all your units in all places and see if they moved.

 

Did everything shoot that needed to? Once again, seems simple but people forget. And in a tourny most people are not going to be forgiving. Alot of them are jerks and rules lawyers. So look at each squad and make sure it did what you want before you move one unit into assault. Cause if you assault, they will not let you shoot anything else. You can use counters as well saying Will assault and chunk it down by the unit so you know what you intend and can keep looking for targets for other squads.

 

Did I declare all my assaults? Once again, some people are tight wads and will say, You never said that unit was charging and we already rolled dice for assault. I want to say you do the assaults one at a time now. But you use to have to declare assaults. So move all the units you can into base to base. Then roll those dice. Always declare an assault even if it looks like they will fail to reach. Cause 6 inchs can be alot longer then you think (just ask my wife =P). You might just be in range and then they have to counter into you now.

 

Always give them take backs. As stated above. They will respect you for it and most likely let you take back something. It's all about being a good sport. That said I have horrid stories of bad sports. Kindness goes a long ways. You can not win if you are a jerk except for one game I know off.

 

 

Here is my story of a selfish player. I went to a toruny here on the island. It was my 3 or 4 here in Canada. I go and I see a bunch of familar faces and some I do not know. So I get thrown in and away we go. I get a solid win game one. A minor win game two. A Solid win game three. And then I have my 4th and last game of the event. Well I see the guy and look at his list. Leash line. With a demon. And a squad of Nurgal marines to hold an objective. Not all that bad. So I give him ok rating on his list. Max or one point off. Nothing that would hurt him. So we play. And we are having fun. he is up tight, and I let him take back 2 things he did wrong. No biggy, and then I forgot to move my scouts. And he would not let me. I pointed out I let him do 2 things, and he still didn't want to give in, but the guy running the event heard it and came over and asked. Suddenly I can move my scouts.

Well long story shorter the game ends, and he has tabled all but my scouts which were not near the objective and my Hero. He had 3 or 4 havics left and a Demon. And it was a great 2 rounds. He shook my hand and I congragilated him. He got a minor win. No big deal. I knew we were close, and everyone was coming over to look at the game.

Well I gave him one point less on sportsman ship. I felt he should have be more forgiving of my forgetting to move my scouts. It would not have effected the game really. So his buddy walks up and whispers in his ear. He looks at me and then writes on the paper and turns it in.

See his buddy found out on battle points we were even. And in sportsmanship I was a point over him. And so this guy, wanting to win, gives me a 1. Yup a freaking 1 for the guy who let him take back 2 mistakes. All cause he wanted to win. Since it was a small tourny it only had a best general, best painted, and best sportsman (which usually goes to a new guy whom got spanked to encourage them). So I was out of the running.

 

Remember you will find jerks at Tournies. They think winning is all. So don't sink to their level. Be a good guy and help others and good things will happen. If this guy shows up this time, all of my friends and I are going to give him 1s. Same guy is running the event and he knew what happened last time. So this guy cooked his own goose.

 

That is all the advice I can think of off hand.

[Sven Bloodskull]

Greetings,

 

i myself also have some advice to give:

 

Don't take Whirlwind's

Yes, i know they kill pathfinders etc. , but we need to consider what a tourny is going to look at. most likely 75% of the participants are going to be space marines, who are almost all mechanized. Also, most of the other 25% of the particapents are also most likely going to be mechanized. Take it from me, Whirlwinds do squat when facing something like that. I'd rather take an auto-bolter predator, since that can bust up tanks. Or even better, a vindicator!

 

Take Vindicator's

Vindicator's are awesome. They are just plain terrifying. Nobody likes the thought of a large blast that can kill entire squads or tanks firing at them. Even if the units are in cover, they still hurt alot. Yeah, if they lose their weapon, or are immoblized they are screwed, but until than, you have a tank spitting instant death at a lot of stuff. This is going to distract your opponnent, because he can either focus on other stuff like your grey hunters and long fangs, or he can focus on your vindicators. It is also our best means to kill a monolith. I myself, for all of these reason never EVER leave home without at least one (in my list, i use 2 of them).

 

I hope this helps a bit,

 

Sven Bloodskull

[Grey Mage]

Well and thats personal preference- myself, Ive busted open Chimeras, Trukks, and Hydras with my whirlwinds in the last month or so... 5+*2*d6 picking the highest vs side armor...

 

And against marines, its a pie plate of heavy bolter shots, that pins. Better by far than a Predators similar firepower against a tac squad *or equivilant toughness*.

 

Vindicators... vindicators are right beasts though, I just dont like the short range on an artillery peice.

[commander alexander]

I have to agree with the others, being a gentlemen (or lady for those rare ones out there) is really important in my opnion. Last year at my local ard boys comp, my first game was against a chaos player, and he and I couldn't seem to do a damn thing right, but because we were being nice to eachother, we allowed one another to re-do stuff, and enjoyed the game.

 

Also, the last game I played in that tourny was against an "asshat" who I tried to be nice to the whole game through, but in the end at the last assault phase, I tried to force a rule which was completely in my rights to do, and he would have nothing of it, and I didn't keep pushing it or get the judge involved. Morale of the story is, it cost me the top three :( , and be polite, not necessarily really nice.

[Wildfire]

Figure out your targets in order of importance before you fire a single shot. Write things down if you have to. Then shoot them in the most advantageous. For instance, got a bunch of Nobs comming at you? Fire your missile-armed long fangs before you fire your grey hunter's bolters to keep him from taking instant death hits on wounded models. Got several enemy transports you need to take down? Fire the squads that have the least number in range first, so if they miss you don't have someone sitting around with no target. Prioritizing fire is one of the biggest keys to victory.