Howl-etical ThoughtsTournament Etiquette: Part Two - What to Bring

Welcome to a special guest edition of Heretical Thoughts. Heretic has kindly allowed me to take over his column for the week and continue the discussion about Tournament Etiquette. In this week’s edition we’ll cover what you should bring along and FAQs.

What to Bring

First of all bring your army. I’ve never been at an event where someone forgot to bring their army but I’m sure it’s happened somewhere. That being said, we always bring extra armies and extra lists with us just in case someone does forget their army, doesn’t have enough points to play at the designated point total, or we have an odd number of players and need a ringer.
Now we’ll go over some of the less obvious articles you may want to bring with you to a tournament. You should always have dice, templates, a tape measure, a scatter die, a Warhammer 40K rulebook, and your codex. There are a couple of reasons why these items are important to have. First and foremost having all of these will allow you to focus on your games and enjoy the tournament. The event will be far more enjoyable if you don’t have to worry about where you’re going to get the scatter die for your teleporting terminators or who’s large blast template can you borrow for your battle cannon. The second reason to bring these items along is it makes the event run smoother. Sharing a tape measure with your opponent or looking for another player with the same army so that you can look something up in their codex takes time away from your game and can be distracting to all of those involved.
I’ve forgotten one or two of these things myself in the past. We all do it occasionally. The purpose of this articles is to help remind everyone of what you should have with you at a tournament. All of that being said, we often bring extra dice, templates, rulebooks, codices, FAQs, and anything else that we can think of.

FAQs

Don’t forget to check your armies FAQ. Games Workshop FAQS can be found here: Errata and FAQ Articles. Sometimes the changes are minor and won’t really affect you that much but sometimes Games Workshop makes major corrections like changing the effects of a Dark Angels storm shield to match the normal codex Space Marines storm shields.
The army books for Warhammer Fantasy Battle have been heavily modified with FAQS and it would be almost impossible to play WFB 8th Edition without consulting the FAQs. The recent changes made to all of the Space Marine Codices, Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook, along with the inclusion of the Night Spinner rules in for the Eldar in White Dwarf indicate that Games Workshop is willing to make major corrections/additions to the game rules without releasing a new book.

Howl-etical Thought for the Week:

"It takes a vast amount of self-control to be this dangerous"

Its all downhill from here

Some more pics.  If anyone has questions about how we did this and wants to learn more please e-mail me at astro-telepathica@atlanticbb.net

Heretical ThoughtsTournament Etiquette: Part One - Army Lists

So, the holidays are over and hopefully everyone had a good one. Now its back to the campaign and well "Blood for the Blood God". OK, now that that is out my system, I wanted to touch on something that as tournament orgainzers we have come across quite frequently. Prior to any tournament starting we obtain army lists and have to sort through them to make sure they are legal. In order to do this we use a variety of software, but most notable Army Builder by Wolf's Lair. We understand that most people do not want to use Army Builder to make theie lists, but there are many other options out there that can be used. Though Army Builder is good to use, it is $40 for a 2 installation license. Not everyone wants to spend their money on this, especially when that equates to a box and half of berzerkers. However, from a tournament organizer point of view, this can be an issue. When going to tournaments, you must have a copy of your army list whether it is our tournaments or others. Some things to keep in mind with regards to this are as follows:

• The list should include the total of the points for each unit
• Each unit should be clearly identified
• Abbreviations should not be used (All of us do not know what LRE/PS means - Leman Russ Exterminator with Plasma Sponsons in a guard list means)
• It should be legible
• 1 copy of the list for each round being played (for opponents), 1 for the judges and 1 for yourself - Therefore, for a 3 round tournament you should have 5 army lists.

We do not exclude anyone from entering our tournaments based on army lists for any of the reason above, but when organizers have to review 20+ army lists, it can slow down the start time of any tournament or in some cases, keep you from playing in a tournament. For our local tournaments, we will not keep you out playing in our tournaments, but the more we have to decipher, decode or ask questions about, the more time it takes to get started. So, that is the problem, but what is the solution?

You can buy Army Builder from Wolf's Lair which is an excellent program. You can also do a quick internet search for Army list programs that are free. There are a number of them out there. You can also just use MS Excel, which works wonders. An auto totalling spreadsheet works well - that is what I use for the most part. I also use the good old pen and paper method as there are times I just like to sit down and run through multiple options / lists at once and really no software easily allows this to be done.

If you need help in looking into any options, let one of us know as we use a variety of these programs. If you would like us to help build a spreadsheet that will auto total, let us know. We have some experience in doing so. If anyone has any other ideas as to how to generate army lists, please feel free to share.

Heretical Thought for the Week:

Let no good deed go unpunished

Let no evil deed go unrewarded