Special Characters at Blog Wars 3

As promised here's a rundown of the special characters that will be in attendance for Blog Wars 3 on Saturday. Let's start with the Emperor's Finest, for the mighty Space Wolves their only representatitve, Frank Marsh, has opted to bring along Grimnar's Champion, Arjac Rockfist. It's no secret that he's my personal favourite SW character thanks to his impressive "bang per buck" ratio and the fact that he can't be targetted separately. Oh and when you do hit him he gets a 2+/3++ save and Eternal Warrior, nasty.

Those shiny men of the moment the Grey Knights will be represented by two lots of Inquisitor Coteaz, Castellan Crowe and Grand Master Mordrak. I'm sure people are familiar with Crowe and Coteaz but I'm keen to see how Mordrak performs. Surprisingly no-one opted to bring along Draigo. We've lost a couple of Blood Angels players but Paul O'Boyle who stepped in last minute will be bringing Commander Dante and my mate Scott will be fielding the walking tank himself, Mephiston.

The other space marine chapters will include a 'counts as' Chaplain Cassius for the Iron Hands from Jamie Jackson, Kayvaan Shrike for the Raven Guard, Vulkan Hestan joining the Relictors and Pedro Kantor of the Crimson Fists. What I like about most of the Codex: Space Marines characters is that they allow you to theme an army to a chapter's particular style of play so I'll be interested to see how well these players pull it off.

Rounding up the Imperial offerings we've got Commisar "he just won't fecking die" Yarrick, the ever faithful 'Iron Hands' Straken (amongst others in John Holland's list), Sergeant Harker and the bargain Guardsman Marbo. This time around however, Marbo will in fact be "Marbo Fett" as he's part of a Star Wars themed army.

Onto the xenos scum then, the two Necron entries will have Trazyn the Infinite and reigning champion Andy Humphris will be bringing Anrakyr the Traveller (or Anorak the Gypsy if you prefer). The strong Tyranid contingent features a couple of Swarmlords, a sneaky Deathleaper and Graham Sanders' ever faithful Doom of Malan'tai. I remember facing the Doom for the first time at End Times and was a little surprised when Graham said it now had 10 wounds after just arriving from reserve and killing some grey hunters!!

The only Ork force will feature Boss Snikrot and his kommandos who'll no doubt be wreaking havoc on their enemies back lines. Dave Halfpenny (WeeMen) has Karanak in his Chaos Daemons force. His list is strongly themed towards the worship of Khorne but we'll have to wait and see how much blood he manages to spill for the Blood God.

Last but not least the Dark Eldar players, myself included, have shown a stunning lack of imagination and all brought Baron Sathonyx!! Now I can't pretend he isn't the best choice, which is why I've brought him, but it's a little bit of a shame that we won't see some of the other excellent characters from the book. I'll be interested to see everyone else's conversions. Mine is still a bit of a work in progress because I've not created his cloak yet and I'm not happy with his head at the moment!

That's your lot then. As you'll know from reading the scenarios, shrewd use of your special character could be crucial in all 3 missions. The last two tournaments have seen some great showdowns between special characters such as my Arjac Rockfist taking out Prince Yriel and a classic battle between Yarrick and Ghazghkull on the table behind me in Blog Wars 2.

Finally, just to confirm the prizes that are on offer this weekend:

1st Place - £50 Maelstrom Games voucher
2nd Place - £30 Maelstrom Games voucher
3rd Place - £20 Maelstrom Games voucher
Last Place - £10 Maelstrom Games voucher and limited edition Wooden Spoon
Best Painted Army - £25 Maelstrom Games voucher
Best Painted Special Character - £15 Maelstrom Games Voucher
Best Army Theme - Battleforce of the winner's choice

I've spent all the money from the entries then. As I've mentioned in earlier posts I'm considering revising the prize structure for future events so look out for information on that after this event.

Problem Solved - At least for now!

Thanks for the responses to Sunday's appeal post. Things got worse before they got better though! Firstly, I got to work on Monday and was speaking to Dave (who was bringing Blood Angels). Thanks to the unique and wonderful way our rota works he's now got to work Saturday and no-one is able to cover it for him. Sad as I am that he's not coming along (and making it full attendance from my little gaming group), it did kind of solve the problem, back to even numbers I thought.

So then I get home and find I've had a few emails with people offering to either show up themselves or post about in on their blog/facebook/twitter for me. Firstly, thanks very much for all your help in what was essentially a selfish endeavour since basically it's so I can play at my own tournament! Anyway, amongst these emails was one from Andy Lane of Claws and Fists saying that family commitments mean he also can't make it. Again, I'm gutted because Andy was one of the first people I met on the tournament scene and seems to be a constant presence at the events I attend but, of course, family comes first and I can't argue with that.

So that's me back to odd numbers again so I reply to Paul O'Boyle from Faulty Dice who's now at the bottom of the list of competitors. Please note the player numbers should've stayed the same. I've sent off an email to Tim King at Maelstrom (the guy who ran Summer Skirmish there last year is now Events Manager!). He's generously agreed to let me drop the food order to 26 despite having invoiced me. This means that at least I won't be charged for food we don't eat (although I suspect we'd still manage to eat enough for 28). However, it does mean that there won't be any additional prizes as I'd budgeted them based on 28 people coming and with the additional army theme prize I'm spent up. Mind you, I know temptation will get the better of me and I'll throw something else in.....

Anyway, thanks to all the people who offered help. Until you've tried it you have no idea how problematic it can be to organise a tournament, even a friendly one. I'm thinking that in future, I might set out not to play and only jump in if on the day itself we have an odd number to prevent people sitting out. That's if I ever do this again!!!

Fingers crossed that everyone else on the list shows up and I get to open up a few webways!

Blog Wars 3 - An Appeal (again!)

It's seems to be becoming a tradition that in the week leading up to Blog Wars I find myself in the position of having an odd number of competitors. At Blog Wars 1 I didn't find out until the day itself and a hasty text to Darren (TheBaron at C&F) lead to him throwing together an ork list and showing up just in time. Blog Wars 2 and no-one dropped out but with a week to go I was still looking at an odd number of players and the prospect of not playing. It seems Blog Wars 3 will be no exception. Unfortunately one of the competitors has had to pull out which means at this point I won't be playing. No hard feelings to the guy who's pulled out, these things happen, but I've been frantically painting up my Dark Eldar to get 3 colours on in time for Saturday, I'm putting the finishing touches on them as we speak. If the situation stays as it is I'll have wasted my time.

So to cut to the chase, if you would like to come along at the last minute (or know someone who might) then please get in touch with me using the link on the right ASAP. It'd really help me out and mean that the rushed painting wasn't for nothing. I know it's short notice and people can't necessarily arrange things this quickly but if you can please let me know.

Don't get me wrong I've known at each event so far that there's the possibility of me not playing right up until the day but I'd really like to join in with what should be an awesome event. Keep your eyes on the blog for more build up to the tournament including the final confirmation of prizes, an update on my army painting progress and a run-down of the special characters that will be appearing. Whether I'm playing or not I'll see you all on Saturday!

Blog Wars 3 - Build Up Around the Blogosphere

As promised here's my run-down of everyone's build-up to Blog Wars 3. With less than a week to go now people are either ramping up their painting to get things finished or sitting pretty knowing they've had the army finished for weeks. I'm certainly in the former category but my new approach of sod-it-let's-get-three-colours-on-and-leave-it-at-that is working out nicely.

Here's some coverage from the blogosphere which should hopefully give you an idea of the armies you'll face at the rapidly approaching Blog Wars 3 tournament. It's always good to know your enemy so I advise taking some time to get a feel for what you can expect.

Phil over at Armoured Sentinel has been taking us through the selection of his Tyranids list and talks about a couple of his games playtesting them before the day. I met Phil at one of the GW Doubles days and unfortunately he learnt the hard way about what JotWW can do to a tervigon list! Hopefully with only one Space Wolves list at BW3 he'll have a better time of it. It's certainly nice to see 'nids so well represented at Blog Wars 3 and I hope they can prove they can be a force to be reckoned with.

After toying with the idea of bringing Eldar, Graham Sanders from Rogue Trader/Claws and Fists eventually opted for his trusty Tyranids list. I often end up playing Graham in a tournament and it's always a friendly game. Highlight for me was playing him at the End Times which saw two games of SW vs Tyranids running side by side. After a punishing start Graham pulled back well only to be denied victory by a disgustingly good performance from the otherwise hit and miss thunderlord. Nothing yet (that I've noticed) from Andy Lane who's also from C&F but he'll no doubt post something up soon or failing that some AARs from the event.

As ever there's been a lot of coverage of Blog Wars 3 build up over on Sons of Sanguinius. Defending champ Andy Humphris has published several posts with him debating whether to be competitive or not. As I've previously mentioned he's also thrown up a post talking about how to beat the Necron list he eventually settled on. Elsewhere Bully has talked about what he would've taken if he hadn't had to pull out and I expect some stuff soon from Atreides and Kabalite about their offerings.

With three members attending this time around, Blog Wars 1 & 2 veterans the Weemen will be hoping to put in a strong showing this time around. With Chris (the6thdegree) winning Best Painted Army last time around it's certainly worth having a look through the blog for pictures of his Tyranids. Having missed out on BW2, Siph returns with his Relictors for some more Blog Wars action. I love the colour scheme of this army and he's put together a strong force for next weekend's event. Finally, pornstarjedi will be our only Daemons player so keep an eye on him to see how the ageing codex performs.

Ken Morley over at Ignatum placed 3rd in the first Blog Wars with his Tau list. Let's see if he can pull off a similar feat with Tyranids this time around. He's in good company for Tyranid players but confesses to being less experienced than others. Maybe bringing a different angle to the army will pay off. Look out also for Ken's friend Jon Cox who'll be bringing Crimson Fists along to BW3.

One of the armies I'm most looking forward to seeing in the flesh at BW3 is Ian Connolly's "Empire Strikes Back" IG list. There are some excellent conversions in there and some fantastic "counts as" offerings that should still work out great on the tabletop. You can check out his blog Need More Tanks for more pictures.

It seems only right to give a mention to my good friend Jamie and his Index Astartes blog. He's bringing along an Iron Hands SM army with some interesting conversions. Jamie always puts my poxy "conversions" to shame so I'm looking forward to seeing what he's come up with for BW3.

John Holland (MC Tic Tac) from Blood Claw has taken a different tack for Blog Wars 3. Last time around I have a very difficult Wolves vs Wolves game against him which saw him come out on top. Whilst his list for BW2 was very much a competitive list he's opted for a very strong theme this time around basing it on the old Catachans codex applied to the current IG book. I'm looking forward to seeing this army on the table too.

There'll be a strong competitive presence at Blog Wars 3 from the guys at the newly created Generation 40K site. Frank Marsh is somewhat of a nemesis to Matt and I as we've played him at various events across the tournament scene. His friends Rob and Gary will be joining him this time around and I'm sure I'll end up playing one of them at some point. Whilst the site is a bit sparse at the moment keep an eye on in it in the run up to the event and hopefully we'll find a bit more out. If not I'm sure there'll be some aftermath stuff on there.

Last but not least in the this round-up is James Lamb from Sheep of War who's bringing a Grey Knights list with a difference. There's a distinctly simian feel to the army with an abundance of Jokaeros. He's used some third party models to represent them and I'm looking forward to seeing how it's worked out.

So that's it for now. Of course I'll create a similar post for the after action stuff across the blogs. If you're coming along to BW3 and you think I've missed you out then get in touch and I'll make sure to include you. All in all I think it's shaping up to be the best event yet with a great mix of competitive lists and interesting army themes. Stay tuned for more build up over the coming week. Not long to go!

He Must Be Stopped!!

See what I did there?

As most of you who are coming to Blog Wars 3 will know. The first two tournaments were won by none other than Venerable Brother from the  Sons of Sanguinius blog (also known as Andy). Now I put this down to 3 things (in descending order of importance):

1. He brings competitive tournament lists to a tournament with a lot of fluffy lists (shame on him!)
2. He gets drawn against the right lists for his army (jammy get!)
3. He's not that bad a player actually (that's as generous as I'm willing to get Andy!)

Joking aside, it's very difficult to organise a 40K tournament to be purely friendly. Short of severely restricting army selection to the point where no-one will show up, you can't really make everyone bring something fluffy. Not to mention it's a tournament after all so therefore there are prizes and hence there has to be some competition. What you tend to find is that after round one the big boys go off and play on the top tables and look all serious whilst the rest of us enjoy ourselves in relaxed games at the bottom end. The problem is that first game where some poor bastard (i.e. yours truly) finds himself up against a list he hasn't a hope in hell of dealing with his "fun" list.

So with half of the field bringing something a little different that they wouldn't dare show up at other tournaments with that's already an easy ride for some of the top players. This wouldn't be a problem but for the fact that we can't let the bastard win again (as Atreides from SoS so ably put it). Funnily enough, Andy shares this viewpoint and as such he's published an article on how to beat his Necron list. Now frankly my army relies heavily on a few lucky rolls so I can't hope to think much about actual tactics but for the rest of you it wouldn't hurt to go have a read of his article so that we can give him something to think about at least!

Now I know what you're thinking (and to a small extent so am I), "who does this guy think he is? He's not only convinced he's going to win again but now he's got the stones to tell us how to beat him to make it more of a challenge!". Andy, of course, protests this but as I say, head over to Sons and read for yourselves. For those of you who read this blog and aren't going to Blog Wars 3 it's still a decent article on how to beat those pesky Necrons.

After Matt gave up using Necrons and sold them all off I've actually been thinking about getting some. Not only are they pretty cheap to buy but also they don't exactly take much painting to get them to table-top standard. Not to mention they've got some really nice models. It's just a shame I didn't think to offer to buy Matt's from him! Mind you, my current plan is to wait and see what 6th edition brings before I invest in many more models.

My Dark Eldar List for Blog Wars 3

As promised, here's my army list for Blog Wars 3. I'm sure I've posted it up on here before but thought since I've now seen all of your lists it was only fair for you to be reminded of mine. Frankly, if you get drawn against me you're in luck because it really isn't competitive. Anyway, here it is:

1,747pts of Dark Eldar
Baron Sathonyx
2 Haemonculi w/ Webway Portals

3 Blaster Trueborn in Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons
3 Blaster Trueborn in Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons

8 Hellions
4 Wracks
10 Wyches with Haywires, Hekatrix with Agoniser
10 Wyches with Haywires, Hekatrix with Agoniser
10 Wyches with Haywires, Hekatrix with Agoniser

6 Reavers with 2 Heat Lances
6 Reavers with 2 Heat Lances

Talos Pain Engine with Chain Flails and T-L Heat Lance
Cronos Parasite Engine with Spirit Probe and Spirit Vortex

So it doesn't take a genius to see that it's a dual webway list. The only vehicles are the two venoms which will transport the haemonculi and trueborn forwards to drop the portals. Everything else will come on from reserve. The beauty of a webway list is that you have the option of using the portals or bringing units on from reserve as normal. In my experience this often catches people out (though it might not now I've mentioned it here!). Opponents focus on the portals and forget that I can still deep strike or turbo boost on from the board edge.

Baron Sathonyx is a popular choice with regards to DE special characters. There's some great characters in the codex but frankly he's a no-brainer choice. Not only does he make the speedy hellions (fleeting jump infantry) but he also gives a +1 to the going first roll off. He comes with a Shadowfield which makes him difficult to kill if you don't roll a 1 for a while but otherwise he isn't really that impressive. High strength (S6) is nice but without ignoring armour saves he doesn't really worry many marine units. It's more about what he does for the hellions than anything else. As I've mentioned they're troops but also they gain stealth, re-roll dangerous terrain tests and re-roll hit & run rolls. This makes the already fast unit even better.

Whilst I love the look of the hellion models they never particularly blow me away on the table top. The combination of shooting and S4 attacks makes them decent but not all that exciting. If they get a decent combat drugs roll they're a little better but most of the time they don't do enough damage on the charge and with only a 5+ save they die pretty quickly. I think ideally I'd have a much bigger unit (think 20) to join Baron but I don't have the models or the time to paint them so maybe another day.

The haemonculi are just a webway delivery system. You're basically paying 85pts for the portals which is a bit steep but still the cheapest way. I originally gave one a shattershard and the other a liquifier gun but frankly they don't usually live into turn 2 so it seemed a waste. The trueborn should be in 18" of a tank so they can steal the pain token from the haemo and find nearby cover to take pot shots at vehicles. Should the enemy choose null deployment I'll keep them in the venoms and try to ride out some fire. As you can imagine, having an entire turn with essentially 2 units on the table usually means there's little left for turn 2 but by then they've hopefully done their job.

The wyches are pretty self explanatory. I'm quickly coming around to the idea of ditching the haywires in favour of a blast pistol because they have a nasty habit of blowing up vehicles and losing a lot of bodies in the explosion! Having said that it's always fun to blow up a dreadnought with a 12pt model! That 4++ save in combat really irritates dreadnoughts! The wracks serve two functions. Firstly, should one of the haemonculi survive that long then they'll join him and either charge something nearby or hug an objective with their FNP saves. If both haemos are dead they'll just walk on to an objective near my table edge and hold on for dear life. For 40pts they don't need to do much to be useful.

The pain engines can be really nasty but they're very slow. That's why I'd never consider taking them in any list that didn't have a webway. Well, that and the fact that they have to compete with ravagers and they normally lose that battle. The talos is probably the better of the two as it can be nasty in combat and with T7 is pretty durable. I've also given it a twin-linked heat lance so it can help with the de-meching. The cronos is great if you can catch a unit bunched up in the open and throw out 2-3 pain tokens to nearby units. On it's own it isn't deadly, it's a pure force multiplier.

The most obvious difference between this list and a normal DE list (aside from the webways of course) is that there are no ravagers! This means the rest of the army needs to be capable of de-meching things. This is where the reavers come in with their pair of heat lances. Their speed and the 18" range of the lances should mean they can blow something up when they emerge from the portal. In the unlikely event that there's no vehicles on the table they'll turbo-boost and hit things with their bladevanes. If they're still around late on their massive speed and 3++ save will allow them to contest objectives effectively.

Sounds pretty nasty right? Well the problem is that Dark Eldar have absolutely no way of modifying the reserve rolls. This is probably why we don't see webway lists.... ever. This means that success is in the hands of the dice gods. You can stack things in your favour by having plenty of redundancy but there have  been games when I just get things in totally the wrong order. For example, the wyches emerge on their own and can't demech anything to get stuck into in combat and by the time the anti-tank units emerge the wyches have taken heavy casualties. Ideally I want half of my army in turn 2 which I should  get but as you know with a 4+ save it never feels like 50:50!

So that's my army and my entire strategy laid out for you guys. Obviously there's the odd thing that I haven't mentioned but I don't feel like I lose anything by telling you about my list. Frankly it isn't going to do very well but when/if it does it will be huge fun! See you on the tables!

Blog Wars 3 - The Armies Assemble (and Scenario Updates)

Well that's it then. Ticket sales are closed for Blog Wars and at the last minute we have a record number of attendees. Now let's not get excited here it's only 2 more than the first Blog Wars but still I'm pleased that I'm keeping the numbers up. Interestingly, if everyone who'd been to the first two came along then we'd have easily hit the 40 mark. Ah well, maybe next time. It's probably because it's the start of the school holiday week.

Scenario Changes
Anyway, first off let me say that, for those of you who didn't check the attachments on the email, the scenarios have altered slightly to incorporate an Open War style scoring system. I'm hoping this will be both straightforward and decisive, in that there shouldn't be duplicate matchups. There's guaranteed to be a couple but hopefully they'll be at a minimum. Please note that in the KP mission a tabling doesn't give you maximum tournament points whilst in the objective games it does. At Open War they had a system where if you tabled your opponent without being on all 5 objectives you couldn't claim full points which just didn't sit right with me. I can see why they did it but seems a bit harsh for those who didn't realise.

Armies in Attendance
The first two Blog Wars tournaments gave us a wide variety of armies to be pitted against. BW3 keeps up this fine tradition with a nice mixture of lists:

• 3 Blood Angels
• Chaos Daemons
• 4 Dark Eldar (!)
• 4 Grey Knights
• 4 Imperial Guard
• 2 Necrons
• Orks
• 4 Different flavours of Space Marines
• Space Wolves (just one!?!?)
• 4 Tyranids

It's really quite an interesting mix we've got for ourselves. I'm hugely surprised at the number of Tyranid and Dark Eldar lists. I thought I'd be the only one but looks like I was wrong. The fact that there's just a single Space Wolves army makes me wonder if I ought to switch but, since my DE army is pretty different from the rest (no-one else is stupid enough to use webways!), I'll stick to my guns. Unsurprisingly there's a big Grey Knights and Imperial Guard contingent but all the lists are varied and a couple are brilliantly themed. I've already got a shortlist in mind for the Best Army Theme award but I want to see them in the flesh before I make a final judgement.

In case you were wondering, the missing races are CSM, Eldar, Sisters and sadly Tau. Again there's a part of me tempted to bring my Tau but let's wait and see what 6th edition brings for them. Given the friendly nature of the event I'm tempted to bring in a system that other tournaments use whereby you get a bonus if you bring a race that isn't currently represented. Maybe next time.

At some point soon, possibly tomorrow, I'll post up a run-down of the Special Characters who will be making an appearance. For now let me say thanks to everyone who sent there list in and special thanks to those who entered into the spirit of the thing and brought something a little different. Now I'm sure we'll all regret it when Andy wins again but at least we didn't all sell out to competitiveness eh Andy?

My Blog Wars list is up on here somewhere but I'll repost it this week and give you a run through of how crappy it is! Just by looking at everyone's lists I can tell you that some cames could be absolutely awful for me and in the rest I might just be lucky!

So, still to come in the Blog Wars 3 build up we have:

• A Special Character Roll-Call
• Blog Wars 3 Preparations Around the Blogosphere
• My Blog Wars 3 List
• A Mystery Plan (which may or may not work out)
• Additional Prize Announcements

Not to mention a few updates on my vain attempts to get my army finished in time! At this point I've given up on it looking pretty and I'm just hoping it will be legal. It'd be embarrassing to have to give myself a points penalty for not getting it done!

Blog Wars 3 - The Clock's Ticking!

Blog Wars 3 is now less than 3 weeks away and frankly I've got no chance of getting my Dark Eldar to the point I wanted them to be. They'll be three colours but not to the standard I wanted. It seems I didn't learn my lesson from the frantic Tau painting earlier in the year! At least I can take my time after Blog Wars when I'll be painting the rest of the army up. Didn't really help that I've been away for 2 weeks but what can you do?

Anyway, this is just a quick post to remind people that the deadline for army list submission is this Saturday at midnight. For those wondering why I'm requiring lists to be submitted before the day, it's because, as I've mentioned I'll be taking part too which means that I won't have time to sit and check the army lists on the day. However, tickets will be available right up until the end of next week so the very late comers will have to get their list to me as soon as possible after they buy their ticket.

I'll get an email out to everyone this week at some point with the final rules pack and scenarios so you can review them before commiting to your army selection. Speaking of which, if you need to make any last minute changes to your army after submitting your list then get in touch and, providing it doesn't change your list drastically, I'll probably allow it. After all, this is meant to be a friendly tournament. The only reason I check the lists is so that it makes sure it's also a fair tournament.

Unless you contact me stating a different address I'll be using the email address associated with the PayPal account used to buy the tickets to send out the emails. For those of you who bought tickets for several people you can either pass on their address to me (preferably) or forward on the emails once you receive them.

Anyway, I'll be posting again, probably on Tuesday, with some details about the scoring system and prizes available. As mentioned in the tournament details every play over the 20 mark adds another £7.50 to the prize fund. Whilst the main prizes remain fixed, I'll use this extra cash to throw in a few smaller prizes along the way.

Being A Tournament Newbie

It's been a good couple of years now since Matt and I made our debut on the tournament scene. It was the Freebootaz doubles and rather miraculously we placed 3rd! Ever since then we've struggled to replicate that performance whether in singles or doubles play. However, the main thing for both of us is the joy of playing competitively.

I often meet people who are playing in their first tournament or even sometimes those who have come along to watch because "they don't feel like their ready for a tournament just yet". This article is aimed at those people in a bid to expand the UK tournament scene so that I don't just see the same old faces (you know who you are!). So what can you expect at a tournament then?

Well frankly it depends on what you expect from it. Personally I attend tournaments to play somebody different and make me really think about how to best use my army. For others it's the painting competition and some just like the banter. There's also that small group who attend with the intention of winning. Let's get something straight, they're most certainly the minority. I'm not talking about people like myself who'd love to win but just aren't that good/harsh/lucky. I'm talking about those who aren't interesting in anything but winning. These are often referred to as WAACers on internet forums meaning Win At All Costs. For the tournament newcomer these are the guys who are most likely to put you off the scene.

This is a massive shame because, as I've said, they're most certainly the minority. In the tournament games I've had I've only come across these guys on a couple of occasions. Therefore don't let this be the reason you don't go to a tournament. Similarly, if you don't think you're competitive enough don't let that stop you either. With the exception of the first game you're most likely going to be paired up with someone of a similar skill level (or someone that was lucky/unlucky). This means that if you're only coming along for a bit of a laugh and bringing a list that reflects that then you'll likely find yourself playing like minded people towards the end of the day.

As in most things in life there'll always be someone better than you and equally plenty of people a lot worse than you. Over the course of a few tournaments you'll probably play a mix of these people. This will only help to improve your game. When you play the top players you'll doubtless pick up a few things from them and when you play the other guys you'll see them doing something wrong that you know full well you've done in the past.

The other thing to consider is the rules. When I first went to a tournament I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the rules of the game. I was wrong. Every single time I've been to a tournament I've discovered something I'm doing wrong or a rule I'd misinterpreted. Sometimes there's a moment like this in every game! Ultimately, whether you choose to believe it or not, playing by the rules is important. Not just because you don't want to be cheating your way to victory but also because the armies are designed with the rules in mind. If you aren't playing it right then your army might be performing better or worse than it should.

Anyway, I'm rambling now and I'm meant to be getting to the airport so let me leave you with a few points in summary:

• Don't be put off by the WAACers. They aren't what the tournament scene is about
• Don't worry about how competitive your army is, there's a lot of luck in who you get drawn against
• Winning isn't everything. I've been to tournaments and lost nearly every game but still enjoyed it
• No one will judge you for not knowing the rules - half of the time they're probably just assuming something that turns out to be wrong

So with all this in mind now comes the shameless plug for my tournament, Blog Wars 3. For anyone who hasn't played in a tournament before or has been to one but was put off I'd say BW3 is an excellent place to start/pick back up. Despite people saying a friendly tournament couldn't exist and still have prizes the first two Blog Wars did just that. Grab yourself a ticket and come along. It's only £15 for a whole Saturday's entertainment. For more details click on the BW3 logo on the right, below the ticket link. I hope to see you there!

PS. I'm now away for a couple of weeks but hotel WiFi permitting I'll answer any emails I get. Not had chance to schedule any posts though so it'll be a bit quiet on here until I'm back. See you on the other side!