How to win 40K Tournaments: Pay attention to the objectives!

At Bolscon I managed to do fairly well, and only won ONE game! I don't know where I ended up, but I think I was in the top 12 or so. I ended the tournament with 5 ties a win and a loss. We will get into the excuses about why I did not win those games later, but for now I want to discuss the 'must dos' when it comes to doing well at tournaments. I managed to squeak into the upper range of players with 5 ties because I paid attention to the secondary objectives. Most tournaments will have them. They will give you a primary objective that is worth say... 13 points if you wint it, 7 if you draw it and 0 if you fail to get it. Also, they will offer Secondary ones. Some more valuable then others. In the case of Bolscon, they were quite valuable indeed! An example would be the primary objective being loot counters as outlined above. Winner takes 13 points. But also very often they threw in secondary objectives like taking Table Corners or Victory Points. These are where I cashed in! In one of the secondary objectives, the player to own the most table corners got a full 13 points or so. I drew the game because the primary objective was loot counters and my opponent and myself each held two, but in reality, I actualy won because I held the majority of table corners. So, while it was a draw, and I only scored 7 points for the actual game, I managed to score 13 points for the secondary objective, plus bonus points for killing HQ, or all of his Heavy Support... etc

Bonus Points: As I just mentioned, I killed all of his heavy support and scored a bonus point. Tournaments love to throw in lots of way to score. In this case, you had to eliminate all of your opponents models in specific categories. He happened to only have 1 heavy support choice. I knocked it's guns off early in the game, and would have completely ignored it, but looking at the bonus points, I realized it had to die. So I popped it and scooped up a bonus point. This is crucial if you tie the game as you will need those points later on. Make sure you read all of the game rules before you start playing. It will do you well to actually examine your opponents army list and make note of what he has in each category. If you find a bonus point for killing off all of his fast attack, and he only has one bike squad, make sure it dies!

So while I did tie this particular game, I still managed to score all but 7 or so of the battle points... That was more then a lot of guys who won their games because I got the secondary objective while they did not. The point is that victory in games is not the only way to win a tournament. Of course, taking FIVE draws did nothing to help me, especially in games where I failed to take the secondary objective... but hey, I am happy with how I did.