Have you heard of immersion therapy? I bet you have. These days it means dunking yourself in freezing water, like what we imagine Viking warriors did, possibly. Citation needed. Anyway, I'm talking about the other sort, also called exposure therapy: exposing yourself to a lot of a thing you're scared of, to cure the fear. Its benefits are debated, but my own recent experience speaks in its favor: after nine solid years of avoiding Warhammer 40k tournaments for fear of losing, I dived straight into a two-day, 40 person, five game league. And I lost, badly. And I absolutely loved it.
If you haven't read my earlier piece anticipating this adventure, some context (or you can just scroll down to the game advice, I ain't the boss of you). I've loved Warhammer 40k since I was about 10 (23 years ago), it's been my primary hobby since 2017 (nine years ago), and I've been editor of a wargaming news site since 2020 (six years ago).
I collect eight of the Warhammer 40k factions (not to mention five Age of Sigmar armies, two Old World forces, two MESBG forces, and a roomful of other miniature wargames). My living space is filled with well over a thousand Warhammer minis, and (here's the real flex) at least 40% of them are painted. I'll pause there for amazed gasps.
In my time at Wargamer, I've covered two Gen Cons and a Warhammer Fest, met and interviewed dozens of 'Hammer related luminaries (James Workshop actor Steve Conlin was the funniest, and the great Duncan Rhodes the nicest). But in all that time, with all that blood, sweat, and Nuln Oil spilt - I'd never participated a single organized play event, at any scale, for any game - not even my beloved 40k.
I was just too scared my erratic scatterbrain would cause me to get stomped non stop. I was sure I'd end up having paid in hours and money to just feel shit for a couple days. I was convinced it'd break my spirit by reminding me that I can know humungous amounts about a game, write about it for a living, and still be absolutely atrocious at playing it.
Well, as they say, one out of three ain't bad. I took my Death Guard to a two-day league event run by the delightful Tabletop Tactics crew in their snazzy UK HQ, studio, and event venue - and yes, I got stomped. Of five games, I lost the first four. I narrowly won the fifth, but only with incredibly sportsmanlike coaching from my more experienced opponent, who was running a Chaos Space Marines list he'd already found to be lacking.
It was Swiss Pairings, after all, so he and I had already gone 0 for 4 by then, and were competing for the wooden spoon. And despite that win, I still came 40th out of 40 league players, because I'd fluffed my secondary objectives so spectacularly throughout. My list was fine, my opponents were as perfect as you could hope - I just made no end of mistakes from start to finish.
But did I only feel completely shit? Did it break my spirit to be reminded I suck at the game I'm a supposed expert on? Surprisingly, no. I was salty, of course, but, once the haze of mentally exhausted self-flagellation ebbed away, I ended the weekend hungry for more. I failed, but I loved it.
Why? For one thing, the venue, staff, and players were just the best - big up the TTT team for running a Warhammer tournament that was everything you've been told these things aren't: cheery, comradely, bright, clean, mostly odorless, with a well stocked bar. But, more importantly, this experience didn't just show me I was shit at the game; it showed me why. For those tournament noobs like me, here's what I learned:
1. Don't just learn your army - choreograph it
In my casual Warhammer 40k games, I generally knock up a list the day of, play straight from the app, and wing it. I'm not very good, neither are my regular opponents, and we're playing for fun on weekday evenings, so doing homework is not on the menu.
Obviously I knew that wouldn't cut it at a tournament, so I deliberately picked a 40k detachment (Mortarion's Hammer) that played simply and relied on strong datasheets more than complex stratagem plays, positioning, or combos. I learned its strengths and weaknesses; I watched tactica videos about it. I still lost four games on the trot.
The first reason for that (and my first lesson) is that it's not enough to know the overall rules of your army's dance - you've got to plan the steps. Whether your list is a simple 'kill 'em all' dealie, or a meticulously tuned clockwork instrument, the requirement is the same: work out exactly what each unit needs to do in the first two rounds, plan it out, and execute it as best you can.
My downfall was having a general strategy based around my army and detachment rule, and hoping that would be simple enough that I could plan unit roles on the fly. Unless you're far smarter than me (and maybe you are) this does not work, because there just isn't enough mental RAM to make all the right decisions as you go.
Instead, isolate groups of units within your army to do specific jobs they're good at - hold primary objectives, move around the board to score secondaries, head off dangerous charges, pick off scouts, et cetera. Then begin the game with at least a loose plan of where each of those groups is going, and what they're doing, in turns one and two. Of course, the most important of those roles are the first two, because…
2. Objectives are King
Let's do what I comprehensively failed to do at this tournament, and work backwards from the point of victory.
To win, you need VP. For VP, you need to score primary and secondary objectives. To do that, you need to get your units to various locations on the board as quicky as possible and keep them alive. And for that, you have to take risks and make sacrifices - both by putting units in harm's way, and by passing up chances to do damage.
One of my biggest rookie mistakes was that I deployed too cautiously. Then, in a frantic rush to realize my list's killing potential, I focused each turn's thinking entirely on what I could shoot or fight, and forgot the winning priority: get to objectives and score points.
Sometimes you need to Advance a unit you wanted to shoot with. Sometimes you need to do an Action with a unit, even if it condemns them to getting slaughtered next turn. It can feel unintuitive - and it's easy to make mistakes on this, as I did over and over again. But you've got to do the objective scoring math first, and focus on killing only the stuff you need to to score.
Of course, we now know that, in Warhammer 40k 11th edition, we'll be able to choose our own primary objectives via list building, which will change this side of things a lot - but not fundamentally. At a basic level, you'll still need to sacrifice some kills to win those crucial VP, so (unless you're playing World Eaters) put objective-scoring before bloodlust.
3. Learn the plays, not just the rules
My Mortarion's Hammer list had two squads of ten weakling Poxwalkers in it, for 'screening'. Screening is not a rule you'll find anywhere in the Warhammer 40k rulebook. It's a function of those rules - a tactic that's often a literal requirement to win games, but which you can only learn by playing. It means using weak, cheap troops just to cover areas of ground, protecting your more valuable units in various ways.
Some of these rule/tactic fusions (let's call them 'plays') are simple, but some (like screening) are mini strategy games in themselves. Screening out Deep Strike is easy enough - you string out models behind your main line so there's nowhere enemy teleporters can arrive more than nine inches from them, stopping them from jumping right up your behind.
But for my army, the screening I really needed those Infiltrating Poxwalkers to do was up front. They needed to block enemy units from zooming across the board right away and claiming objectives, before my slower Death Guard could get close. I utterly failed to do this, because I really had no idea where that screening line needed to be, or that the optimum placement varies subtly based on your opponent.
In my first game, I confidently strung out my zombies across the mid board, forgetting my Custodes opponent's friendly warning that his models could Advance and Charge turn one. Far from hindering him, my Poxies became a handy stepping stone that allowed him to cover twice as much ground in the first turn, and get an easy kill into the bargain. More fool me.
There are a lot of these plays, you need some grasp of them even at lowish level play, and (as is tradition for tabletop games) they all have inside baseball nicknames that you don't know but the Big Boys do, like 'Uppy Downy' or 'Jailing'. It pays to know what these stupid things mean, how to do them properly, and how to deal with your opponent doing them.
4. Your opponent is playing the game with you, not just against you
Those were all a bit gloomy, I guess - stuff I did horrendously wrong that encouraged me to do them right. So let's end on the happiest (and most important) reason I'm itching to go back and get stomped again: with the right opponent and mindset, it's far better to lose than not to play.
One of the things that scared me most about 'competitive' Warhammer wasn't even the prospect of losing a lot. It was the expectation that everyone there would be so obsessed with winning that the games wouldn't be fun, they'd be a grim, joyless, socially awkward grind. At some events and with some opponents, I'm sure they are.
But at this Tabletop Tactics event I was pleasantly surprised to find that everyone I played practiced the modern religion of "Honest Warhammer". That is to say, all five players flagged every strong combo they wanted to play, and 'played by intent', explaining what they were intending to do with each move or attack, and inviting collaboration on fairly resolving any edge cases that didn't seem quite right.
Most (especially the fifth, whom I narrowly beat) regularly explained the threats they were presenting in certain situations, or reminded me of non-obvious rules and abilities a key unit had, before I walked into that particular trap. For me, this collaboration is what makes the difference between a game-winning competition, and a competitive game.
Both are valid ways to spend your time, of course. Competition is a spectrum. But one of the funny things about Warhammer is that it's a lot like Chess, only with no grid on the board, and hundreds of slightly different pieces you can play. This means that, unless you're a computer, trying to play it without constant, open communication about rules and strategy is impossible.
With literally thousands of rules, near infinite possible moves, and near infinite ways for them to overlap (not to mention the fact that each game is supposed to have an element of shared, fantasy storytelling in it) there's simply no way to play this game without sharing a few secrets with each other along the way.
Exactly how many secrets you should share, or how many you can expect from your opponent, is governed by subtle and fascinating social rules. What level of openness stops a game being 'competitive'? The only universal answer is 'ask your opponent', and that will never stop intriguing me.
In the weeks since my crushing 40th place finish, I've been really enjoying tactics videos by YouTuber High Stakes 40k. One phrase its presenter Damien Cooper repeats a lot, in support of promoting lots of collaborative 'play by intent' stuff, is "you're playing this game together".
That resonates hard with my tournament experience. Of course I lost a lot; I don't play often enough, I didn't prepare or practice enough, and I didn't follow any of my own advice above. But every game felt like a game, for mutual enjoyment, rather than a sadistic ego-boosting whipping session for the obviously better player. That meant I left wanting to play more and get satisfaction from improving, not run away and cry into my wet pallet.
So, my last piece of advice, if you, like me, enjoy Warhammer, but have shied away from tournaments because you kinda suck. Find one with a reputation for a good crowd and a positive environment, go to it, and get absolutely destroyed. It has more benefits than you'd think.
Come to think of it, though, unless you do it in the next two months, you'll be playing a brand new edition of the game. So in the meantime, best join the free Wargamer Discord community to get alerted of all our rolling coverage of the new rules, models and everything else (plus live AMA events, giveaways, and more). Gotcha moves aren't allowed, I promise.