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Five rules I learned running my own Warhammer 40k tournament

Warhammer 40,000 tournaments and game events are the beating, social heart of Games Workshop's #1 tabletop wargame - here's how to run one.

How to run your own Warhammer 40k tournament - Wargamer original photo showing painted dark angels space marine minis fighting tyranids

People play Warhammer 40k for lots of different reasons, but for me, the primary draw has always been the social aspect. It’s a fun activity that I can enjoy with friends and, even when we’re not physically playing, we can take a break from the day to day reality of our lives by discussing a fictional fascist hellscape for a change. For a dose of that social gaming goodness, I recently ran my own 40k event – read on, and I’ll share my tips for doing the same with your pals.

For reference, my main gaming community is a UK-based online group that regularly gets together to play a few games over a weekend. These are usually casual affairs, with no particular theme or plan beyond discussing what folks fancy playing, which Warhammer 40k factions folks are bringing along, and suchlike – but sometimes we’ll have a themed weekend playing a specific miniature wargame, or even a full-blown narrative event.

When a few of us started talking about playing an incredibly comprehensive hack of Kill Team based on the Badab War conflict in 40k lore, I decided to take the plunge and organise a weekend of gaming for my chums.

I learned a lot in the process, so I’ve collected my gained wisdom here, so that you can share in my successes (and avoid my pitfalls).

How to run your own Warhammer 40k tournament - Wargamer original photo showing painted Lion El jonson, Dark Angels Space Marines, and Tyranid minis

Location, location, location

Having a good venue is vital. At a bare minimum, you need a brightly lit space with enough room for games to happen in, plenty of high quality gaming tables, and clean, functioning toilets. That may not sound like much, but I’ve been to more than my fair share of events and gaming meets that don’t reach this standard.

I’m fortunate enough to have access to a superb hall at my local club, but – luckily for us organizers, I suppose – the bar is set pretty low. It’s a sad fact that a lot of game stores and clubs don’t have the best facilities and that brings expectations way down.

If you can go above and beyond, you’ll discover that it enhances the experience for everyone. Coffee and tea making facilities are great to have and, if you can find an actual wargaming venue with terrain you can use, you’ll make your life a lot easier. The location of your venue is important too; ideally you want plenty of parking space, places to buy food and drink within walking distance, and good transport links to local hotels for anyone travelling from out of town.

How to run your own Warhammer 40k tournament - Wargamer original photo showing Black Templars minis fighting Chaos Death Guard minis

Keep it simple

With hindsight, I realise that choosing a fan-hacked game mode with extensive custom rules was not the best choice for my first ever wargaming event. Adding the further complexity of the Gallowdark boarding action rules was an even worse idea!

Even though my players and I spent the months preceding the event looking over the rules and playing test games to identify any potential issues (and we found plenty) there were still problems that cropped up over the course of the weekend that wouldn’t have happened if we’d just been using the vanilla Kill Team rules.

That’s not to say that running an event using a complex, hacked together or even entirely custom ruleset is a bad idea, just that it’s probably best left until you have a bit of experience. For your first event, stick with a well-established game that you and all your players know well.

How to run your own Warhammer 40k tournament - Wargamer original photo showing a swarm of painted tyranid miniatures

Flexibility is key

No matter what you do, you can’t plan for all eventualities, but you can give yourself wiggle room. For me, the major pre-event stress came from wildly fluctuating player numbers. I’d planned for 10-20 players, based on the initial interest and having a rough idea of how many people would be likely to drop out for whatever reason.

A couple of weeks before the event, though, players started dropping like flies. At one point, it looked like we were going to have half a dozen or fewer players and it felt like the whole thing was cursed! Thankfully, enough of the people whose attendance had been a bit touch and go managed to firm things up and we picked up some last-minute interest. However, I could have saved myself a lot of bother by anticipating this.

Make sure that your planned game structure has plenty of flexibility. Whether it’s a tournament, league, or some other format, figure out how you’re going to adapt if you end up with more or less than your ideal number of participants. It’s a really good idea to have a couple of backup players available who you aren’t charging for the event, but will be able to step in and play if necessary.

Sometimes this will mean playing the whole event, or even just playing a friendly game against a player who has ‘drawn a bye’ (i.e. ended up with no scheduled opponent in a round). In the same vein, make sure you’re not butting up against the minimum or maximum size of your venue. You don’t want to be too cramped, but neither do you want to run the risk of ticket sales not covering any hiring costs, and leaving you out of pocket.

How to run your own Warhammer 40k tournament - Wargamer original photo showing two Death Guard plague marine minis on top of an orange shipping crate terrain piece

Get by with a little help from your friends

Planning and running an event, even a small one, is hard work, so don’t try and do it on your own. Gamers are largely a friendly, helpful bunch and we recognise that scheduling a single game for busy adults can be tricky enough as it is – so we tend to be grateful for the opportunity to have a whole weekend of gaming.

If you find yourself struggling with any aspect of the event, don’t be afraid to ask for help! Whether you need someone to assist with the admin, act as an extra referee during the event, or anything else, chances are you’ll find plenty of people ready to step up and lend a hand.

My stumbling block was terrain. I wanted to use Kill Team’s Boarding Actions rules, which meant anything from 5-10 sets of specialist Warhammer terrain, to represent the internal corridors and bulkheads of a spaceship.

Between asking the attendees to bring their own, as well as seeing if we could borrow sets from community members who weren’t able to attend, I scrounged up what I needed and even had a double sized table for three-player games, solving an issue I had with having an odd number of players.

How to run your own Warhammer 40k tournament - Wargamer original photo showing a painted Black Templars Emperor's Champion mini

Build it and they will come (and have a jolly good time)

At the time, I thought my event was a bit of a disaster. There were rules issues I hadn’t anticipated, my plans for some cool custom terrain for the event hadn’t materialised, and I hadn’t achieved half the narrative juiciness I’d wanted to. Despite all of this, everyone had a wonderful time. By Sunday morning, everyone was so wrapped up in the conflict of Imperium of Man loyalists and dastardly, tax-hating Secessionists that there were actual, animated speeches and rebuttals before the fighting kicked off!

Ultimately, what the vast majority of gamers want is to have a good time playing games with good people. If you can facilitate that, then people will be happy and anything else you can provide will be a bonus. While it was hard, sometimes stressful work, I’m really glad that I organised my Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team event, and I’d encourage other people to do the same. Concentrate on those fundamentals and everything will work out. More people organising events means more gaming for everyone – and that is a very good thing!

For more in-depth Warhammer 40,000 recommendations, check out our guide to the best Warhammer 40k games and our picks of the best Warhammer 40k books to read right now.

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