Redtoof’s guide to Tournament Preparation

Hello!

Due to boring stuff like work and sleeping taking up all my time during the week, I decided to do my packing for Element Games' Element Games Grand Slam at Element Games early. I also thought I'd use it to make a little guide to tournament preparation, so here is exactly that.

Step 1: Find a tournament to go to. Buy the ticket. Sort out travel/accommodation as appropriate. Luckily I have already done all this, since the tickets have been sold out for ages.

Step 2: Read the rules pack. Especially the bits about army restrictions and list submission. If you are really into doing it properly, you might want to study the missions and scoring system in use, and apply that information to step 3. I had a good read through it, and largely ignored it for the purpose of writing my list. But at least I knew what I was ignoring!

Step 3: Write an army list. Ideally using miniatures you own and are painted - but if not, painting your army the night before is totally a thing. The list I'm taking can be found here, but as there is also a casual, friendly 1000 point tournament the night before the main event, I wrote two lists! Obviously I couldn't resist taking the new Orks again, so my other list looks something like this:

Snakebite Battalion - 999 points

HQ:

Warboss, Powerklaw, Kombi-skorcha, Warlord trait: Brutal but Kunnin'

Weirdboy, Brogg's Buzzbomb

Troops:

20 Ork Boyz, Shootas, 2 Big Shootas, Nob with Powerklaw

20 Ork Boyz, Shootas, 2 Big Shootas, Nob with Powerklaw

24 Ork Boyz, Choppas, 2 Rokkit launchas, Nob with Powerklaw

Heavy Support:

Gorkanaut

Step 4: Put that army in a box. I guess you could carry them in a bag, but that's probably inadvisable. I like to put all the models out in one place first so I can see them all together and make sure I've not missed anything. Boxes are available from the internet and from shops.

Step 5: Grab all the rest of the stuff you need and put it in a bag. You could use a box for this, but then you'd be carrying two boxes! The madness! Frequently the rules pack from Step 2 has a nice checklist for this. Some might say the existence of such lists renders this blog post almost entirely irrelevant. To that I say; "good point".

Anyway, my checklist is something like this: 

• Army - see step 4.
• Tickets for the event if it requires a physical copy
• Rules for the game/army - I mostly use digital rules these days, so I sometimes put together a cheat sheet or take screenshots of the unit entries I'm using and put them in a convenient folder for easy access.
• 2+ Copies of your army list - Your opponent might want to be able to reference it during a game if they are taking it more seriously than I do.
• Any other rules or references you need - e.g. FAQs, Maelstrom cards etc.
• Dice, Tape Measure, Objective markers/wound counters and other stuff you need for the game.
• Pen and paper for making notes and filling out score sheets.
• Superglue - essential, as evidenced when one of my Orks fell off his base getting out of his box.
• Paracetamol. This is arguably the only useful bit of information in this article. A day playing 40K surrounded by other sweaty nerds will probably give you a headache.
• On that note: bring some damn deodorant! Even if you are playing a Nurgle army!
• If you are staying overnight. Bring some clothes, toiletries etc. And don't forget to shower!

Step 6: That's basically it. Now don't forget to turn up! (Especially if you were painting your army all night instead of sleeping...)