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.

7 comments:

Gonewild40k said...

Jawa, do you use custom made objective markers?

Veggie said...

Jawaballs,

Is there anyway I can have you look at a army list I put togetehr for a beginers tuornement, I'm playing blood angels and I'm extremely knew to the game (one game where I used my freinds black templars) Thanks

Jawaballs said...

Sure man, I can post it up here and we can let the public have at it too. I think a good starting point for you if you are playing blood angels is simply to scour my archives for posts on tacitcs and lists. Put lots of assault squads in rhinos for free, load up your DC in a rhino and take corbs as your commander. Pretty cheap way to build a strong army.

Jawaballs said...

And not yet on custom objecitve markers... soon!

Veggie said...

Jawa,

Thanks! The tournement is 1000 points, and I'm limited on models and funds so I mostly built on what I had, but here it is.

Courbulo- 100

DC - Rhino, Six extra DC

Tact Squad - Five extra men, rhino, melta

Tact Squad - Five Extra men, rhino, melta

Baal Predator

Baal Predator.

The compitition is my suit mate's Chaos Marines (Nurgle) and a ton of Guard and Tau players, and maybe my pals Black Templar, if he can get off work.

Any advice from you or anyone would be great.

Thanks again

Veggie

Kaboom? said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kaboom? said...

Ok Veggie. This is an evaluation in my opinion (though don't pay TOO much heed to this, i started in April/'09

First point. I think because of your 2 tact squads you can only field 2 death company. 2nd: In my opinion, if you want to maximize your DC's battle potential, put Corbulo in it and replace it with a razorback for extra fire-power. Point 3: Have 1 Baal cover the razorback, and the other one covering the tank-busters.

On a completely different note, can I paste my SM army here for evaluation?

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