Today I wanted to talk about getting prepared for a tournament. I am not talking about remembering to bring your dice and tape measure but how do you prepare your game for an upcoming tournament. I am going to try to touch on a bunch of different topics without using walls of text so if I am vague about something please feel free to ask.
Practice Makes Perfect
Lets get the obvious one out of the way; practice. If you want to get better, faster, and more efficient with your army you have to practice. Repetition is the best way to get rules in your head and you can use these practice sessions to get faster with your army without sacrificing quality of play.
When you set out to practice there are a few keys that make a practice session worth it. Play someone better than you. Finding a new guy who doesn't know his way around a tape measure may result in your victory but what have you really accomplished. Play someone way better than you, get your butt kicked and banter back and forth about what happened and what you can do to be more successful in the future.
Play against the netlisters. If you are serious about winning a tournament you have to get over the fact that you are going to play people using netlists. This means that learning how to beat them is just as important. Find someone who is playing these lists and ask them for a game. Playing against the guy with a completely whacky army or fluffy army is awesome for beer and pretzels warhammer but not for practicing for a tournament, it is just a waste of time.
Where Did I Put that Deckchair Unit?
The next thing you want to prep is your list. I am writing this article assuming you have all made army lists before. When preparing for a tournament I try to play against as many different kinds of armies as possible; this lets you essentially look through your toolbox and make sure that you have the right tool for the job so to speak. Make sure that your army list is accomplishing what it should with the tools that you have.
Don't be afraid to admit to yourself that you have too many hammers and not enough screwdrivers. What I mean by this is maybe you are smashing infantry to pieces but three land raiders show up and you have zero or very limited answers. Balance your list so you can efficiently deal with most threats and never tailor your armies to deal with gimmicks.
Never, and I mean ever completely revamp your list. Think about it; you put weeks of practice into this list and you play against an army that absolutely thrashes you. The first thing you do is go home and work something completely different up to deal with that list. All the practice you have done before hand is now completely useless. Instead take your time, make some tweaks here and there and play the army again. Maybe the problem wasn't your list at all in the first place.
Be Like Water
This is all about refining your playstyle; look forward to a full article on this. When you are preparing; work on preparing your mind to have a very flexible playstyle. I hear all the time "I am an aggressive player," or "I play super safe." Don't compartmentalize your game like that you need to be playing however the game, mission, opponent, and format dictate you to play. I have played against many different kinds and skill levels of players. There are some I always have hard games against, those that destroy me, and some that I destroy.
I have noticed overtime that the difference isn't that army that they are playing, or bad luck it is based on both of our abilities to adapt to the situation. Games that are tough; we are both playing "like water," games that are super easy for me, the person has a set play style which is always apparent right at deployment 99% of the time. Those games that I get demolished I can always think back to what I should have done differently or see what my opponent did that was unconventional. This means I didn't adapt to the situation or my opponent was able to adapt to what I was doing one turn ahead of me.
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Nice article Bill. As we have played so much its good to have you reiterate a lot of the lessons you have tried to help me learn over the years.
ReplyDeleteYou will roue the day Trebek!
Thanks for the reply brosef, yeah we have certainly learned alot from each other all the times we have played.
ReplyDeleteI'll take anal bum cover for $1000
So true. All to often I fall into an aggresive playstyle and forget to be like water. This year has seen me recognize this traight and try to meld my way of thinking ot be more fluid. Its a tough road but with practice and a great gaming group I find things comming together nicely.
ReplyDeleteGood words of advice Billy now I just need to learn to follow through...
Yeah the practice consistency thing is my #1 issue with becoming better at 40k I think. I usually play once a week (except at tourneys), which would be OK if I didn't also have terrible army ADD and switch to a different army every month or so. Anyway, I loved the article, keep it up!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments guys. It makes me feel great knowing that you are enjoying the articles.
ReplyDelete@Troy, one thing I am going to touch on in my future article about adaptive play style "being like water" is being able to admit what you need to work on as a player.
@ Matt don't concern yourself with practice consistency, yeah playing 3-5 times a week will help you improve but more worry about your quality of game. I absolutely get the ADD, I always want to (and often do) play different lists. Just play what you enjoy even if it only for a short time. Remember, it is still just a game.