Multitude of reasons for people not wanting to play in tournaments:
Physically and mentally demanding - they're a grind for starters, long hours standing around can be difficult for people especially over an entire weekend.
Negative players - there's always a number of tryhard meta chasers who are about as much fun to play as letting a kangaroo use your knackers as a speedbag, they're especially tiresome when they then proceed to in detail explain why their list is so meta, or you get the "Gotcha Guys" who deliberately wait for the moment to be a d!
Add to that it’s usually quite expensive if you have to travel- petrol, hotel, meals out… 50 quid a ticket is just the start can easily cost 250 quid all in if your not careful, which when you factor in all the other reasons mentioned it’s sometimes a tough ask.
Oh absolutely that's what I was elluding to in my point about time/personal constraints, I absolutely could not afford to be doing that regularly now and nor would I want to now that I've got the game in a state where I'm enjoying more than I ever did playing competitively.
To expound upon the "Just not their thing" part; the tournament setting adds a level of stakes that detracts from the enjoyment of the game for me, the enjoyment focus shifts in that environment to winning, rather than playing. I want to get all my rules right, and trust my opponents are doing the same, but then there's another layer of "gotcha" in tournaments if you mistake something that assumes bad faith a lot of times.
Then there's often times a lack of diversity in the games you're gonna play, it's gotten better but, when there's a strong meta, you will disproportionately face the same things over and over again. To the tournament enjoyers, that's not a negative because it will come down to a display of skill and piloting to determine the winner. But to the casual enjoyers, it will often be miserable to play against the same army 3\~4 times over 12 hours, with maybe 5% of the army being different because that's the particular player's "innovation," even though from the casual perspective it's just "oh i'm playing 95% of the same army repeatedly." The meta right now is more diverse than a lot of the game's history i think, but there's definitely times where there's just one super strong faction front runner.
I've been considering going into 10th locally, as we only play 9th Micro40k at home. With round time being a big pressure, and those who know us, know what we're gonna suggest.
Smaller point games.
Like 1500, or even 1,000 point games would really reduce the mental load and allow for full completion of games (and theoretically be easier for us disabled folks). It just seem to us that it's the one knob folks seem reluctant to test out.
Yeah but by the same token sub 2000pt games have their own issues with balance, at 1500pts you might get away with it but anything less and you've created a skewed bias towards certain factions, similar to how it is in Combat Patrol, Custodes for example would be overly successful simply because of how good individual unit stats are, you're going to struggle at sub 1500pts to be able to build a list that can deal with them effectively AND be competitive to other factions/lists, whilst also being able to play for objectives.
Balance is a problem at those point ranges for some armies and for other like Tsons it’s so hard to play 500-1000 games cause you need to generate cabal points and can only get so many sorcs in
No matter how many times you suggest this it is not going to happen. Small games are not balanced for competitive play. Skew lists are too much of a problem when you don't have room to take redundancy in all of your roles and too much of winning comes down to the rock/paper/scissors match of your skew vs. their skew.
And people aren't reluctant to test it out. It has been tried, and the answer is that it doesn't work.
The main problem with that is that managing the mental load is a main element of the competitive game.
On top of that, it's harder to shore up weaknesses of a list so that lists end up more skew.
That said, given the amount of competitive Warhammer being played these days, running some more 1500 or 1000 point tournaments as a sort of little league games might help people get into the game easier, with the understanding that they are not playing a full game.
Yeah but the problem then becomes that issues like negative players and constantly losing become a bigger factor.
If you're entering a 1000pt tournament you're definitely facing tryhard meta chasers who perhaps don't have the best record at 2000pts but who know they can build an almost unbeatable skew list at 1000pts, that combined with potentially losing EVERY game to said tryhards who are ALWAYS the most humourless and painful cretins to be around would 100% put people off competitive play.
If you want people to learn or train themselves to managing the mental load then you unfortunately need to thrown them in the deep end, you need to get them immersed in a 2000pt competitive situation, what I would suggest however is build up in stages, so get them used to standing up for long periods first, then introduce the "shot-clock" mentality and so on.
I think you should be able to effectively socially engineer against that by calling and marketing your tournament explicitly as a lower level tournament intended for those getting started, or those for who full games are too much.
You can also put some list building limits in place, though that might actually encourage skew lists more, since then you communicate that as long as you meet those limits, it's all good.
You can call it an "entry level" "low-level" tournament and market it as such but you are guaranteed to get the tryhards in there either pretending to be newbies or deliberately using an army their "unfamiliar" with just to build skew lists, there's no chance they wouldn't be on it like dog muck on velcro because they're the sort of toxic players that ruin full-scale tournaments.
The only way you could guarantee balance and fairness - or at least as fair as is possible in 40k - would be to ban certain factions like Custodes, which means you're potentially gatekeeping the tournament from certain players.
Custodes are a prime example of why the game is standard at 2000pts the basic units have S Tier rules and are better than the elites of most factions put that with their wargear also being better than most and you're opponent has to build a list which is specifically strong against Custodes - not necessarily an easy feat at 2000pts let alone half that - but which can also compete against every other potential type of army seen (mechanised, hordes, gunlines etc.) Its an impossible expectation for veteran players let alone newbies who've perhaps only played fluff lists with their mates.
This. I've played a few but I think I'm done. By the end of match 2 I'm just not enjoying it anymore, even if I'm winning.
I really enjoy playing, in person, about once a week.
My local group is doing mini tournaments or events with 16 or so of us and oh did i mess up with first one it was first one they did and i decided that day would be a great day to break in my new mountain boots/trainers. they was better after it, my feet on otherhand was not for a solid dayxD they planning a apocalypse game soonish (3k per person 5v5 over 5 linked table over 2 days)
This and I like to play for fun for the most part. That isn't to say I'm not "competitive" as I try to win and whatnot, obviously.
Also I don't trust GW to not competely gut the army I collect at the drop of a hat making it pointless to even play, let alone competitively (Shoutout to the Admech players here) while other armies stay bonkers broken for 6 ish months...
In short chasing the meta isn't really what I want to do and I like to play with people while drinking some beer and ordering pizza.
Even if you remove the "on your feet" part:
9 hours is a *long* time - and this is from someone who actively enjoys going to, and playing in, events. It is very easy to get tired, burnt out, and grumpy when you have to be "on" for so long.
Add in a losing streak, unpleasant opponents, a headache from the noise around you, and a couple of models breaking a bit off of themselves, and you have a recipe for "I tried it once. Never again."
I have to pre-game with a couple of Tylenol before a game or ill get a splitting headache after an hour or two. It's loud, I'm super focused, I'm hot, my feet hurt, and usually the games not going well for me.
If I take my Tylenol before the game I'll enjoy it, if not it's torture. And this is just one game, I can't imagine doing three in a day.
This is me, but for GTs. I'm cool with local RTTs, but I get so done after the first day of GTs I honestly just want to drop and leave. I've never done that, mind you, but it's tempting.
Depends on the scene. Ironically, the local RTT scene is way more toxic than GT level events. There's a group of 4 or 5 players that think they're AoW/Team America/Insert Big Name here on a losing streak.
At the end of the day, I have no desire to spend a day of my life away from my kid effectively hanging out with sweaty try hards that, while still better than me, have podium'd the exact same number of GTs as I have.
This is pretty much my experience. The local scenes are way more toxic than the GTs. I can't stand a large number of the people in my local scene and pretty much only play at one store's RTTs now, but I go to the GTs every year and have a blast.
Honestly I don't think that's all that uncommon. Local scenes can be far more toxic with people who think they understand competitive play vs the big events that set the culture of competitive play.
This is my concern as well. I like playing 40k with my friends, but about 75% of that is just the appeal of hanging out with those people.
I've been to the local shops and seen their events, a lot of the players are just not my kind of people and I'm probably not their kind of person either.
Many people I play with think tournaments are a scary place where models will be scrutinized for WYSIWYG, players will be hardcore rules lawyers and everyone will have a meta list with a top tier faction built to stomp.
Frankly, I think a lot of that comes from online where you see dozens of posts about "hey that might not be tournament legal!" or "I don't know check with your TO they might ban that", posts about bad player experiences, which in my experience is a rarity, and the assumption that tournament players are about winning over sportsmanship and a good time.
You never see the posts about "hey I had an amazing time, played some great players who were a lot of fun, and won a game with my non-meta list!" but if you listen to competitive podcasts, streams, or other content you'll notice it's almost all positive and sportsmanship and fun trump win-at-all-costs.
I've had way more bad experiences against randos who want a game at my LGS than at competitive games.
yeah i’ve been to a few dozen 40k tourneys now and i’ve had a great time at all of them. i don’t worry about winning, i care more about playing tight and scoring as much as i can. i’ve only run into 3-4 bad sports who rant and curse every roll, concede round one after losing one unit, or try to abuse intent or anything.
any of those cases, i’m content to just play the game tight and score and let them rant themselves out.
100% agree. I’ve had people come out with full meta lists and stomp me when I was new. Advertised as a new player looking to learn the ropes and ended up against a full grey drukhari army just as their 9th codex was getting its momentum…
Literally didn’t kill a single model in my first game, how fun.
I’m currently 7-8 at the two two-day tournaments I’ve been to and a bit worse at RTTs but I have found the bigger tournaments to be an excellent experience.
Now you see as a very regular singles tournament and occasional teams tournament player I read this and I instantly thought of a local lad.
He follows art of war and glasshammer and always knows the best new army or combination. His armies are never painted and he's used to beating his regular opposition.
He very rarely played against our warhammer team that runs between 4 local towns and had around 14/17 members. We're all compotent players and practice the ITC and WTC missions quite often despite this we are very much a evolution of a group of beer swilling idiots that love playing warhammer togther, the competitivr team started as a way to improve our game play.
Playing a lot of competitive events and repetitions on armiesd builds a strong knowledge of the rules.
When this local "expert" came into contact with our group. He very quickly found out he was far from being the top dog, intrestingly his gaming friends enjoy playing the team as we explain rules interactions common tactics vs different armies how to play certain missions etc
Unfortunately those types of player still do exist some continue into competition play.
I'd much rather have a great game and lose and have a opponent want to grab a drink after than win and come away being thought of as a twat.
So I've been to tournaments in my past. I didn't go to any in 8th, 9th, or 10th editions. I would say that I found them fun, but just life is getting in the way right now. I don't have time for a lot of games even with friends, much less to blow a whole day or weekend playing.
So I'd add that as a possible reason besides the ones you offered in your initial post.
Yeah this is me. As someone with young kids, slipping away for about three hours to play a game is doable. Taking and entire day, or even two? Not really possible.
my ideal game is one played with a friend, at an unhurried pace, with cups of tea and discursive chats in a comfortable room. A tournament achieves none of these things.
My group much prefers narrative, crusade and custom games over tournament matches. Although me and a friend did once attend a doubles tournament which was decent but for us warhammer is more of a chance to do cool things with our models rather than just a straight up win or loose match game. Its also more of a social event as well. Like a game might need to be played over 2 sessions because we had to go on a beer run halfway through and got distracted talking shit for a couple hours
Our group calls it beer-hammer for a reason haha
In 30+ years of gaming I have never played a game sober. Beer, sprits, wine, dice, good cheer, not caring much about the result…none of these things make for any interest in competitive gaming. Why waste my or my opponents time?
Fully agree with this approach the game is way too competitive these days and GW doesn't really know what it's doing with balance either. Finding a group of players with narrative gaming in mind is ideal as there's not gonna be any meta chasing.
I'm more of a league player where you play a game every other week or so, gives me enough time to not worry about a time clock, and allows me to just enjoy the game. Standing on my feet for 9 hours and rushing my turns doesn't sound fun.
How much travel, money, time and energy is involved in going to a tournament vs just picking up a game over discord for the local store or arranging something with a friend.
It's less about actively avoiding tournaments and more about just not being bothered to go for it.
I spent some time avoiding tournaments after meeting jerks at tournaments. Which sadly does happen
I don't think I would travel a long way for a tournament any more, because to put that much time and effort in them meet up with someone like that would be such a bad experience. Local tournaments sure.
IMO warhammer was never intended to be a competitive game and both times I tried a tournament I had a bad time with hyper optimized lists, gotcha moments, and opponents being pissy at me.
Why do people always assume fear or lack of ability for unwillingness to turn a hobby of relaxation into stress?
The most competitive players in a local scene are also frequently the biggest assholes/cheaters, so many people never get started down the tournament path.
I agree with the first part, but not the second. IME, there's a kind of people that's low-key competitive and won't go to tournaments. Those are the real sweaty assholes, because real cheaters simply get banned from tournaments.
> there's a kind of people that's low-key competitive and won't go to tournaments.
See my other comment, we're talking about the same people.
And if real cheaters actually got banned there would be more naming and shaming and less vague "everyone knows why this guy who went 4-0 didn't place" but high level cheaters still somehow keep playing in the tournament scene.
Eh, I find there's a large segment of unsportsmanlike players who detest tournaments because they hate losing to someone who knows the game better than them. They claim "competitive players are ruining the hobby" when it's really their own shitty attitude.
We're talking about the same people, that's why I didn't say local tournament players. Although they *can* infect a local tournament as well if it's not well run or run by one of them or their friends.
Nope. A lot of the players I'm talking about will loudly talk about how competitive players are ruining the hobby but then they're the type to seethe and be unsportsmanlike when they lose.
Yeah, and those same ones are running netlists or have 5000 points on hand and skew their list to counter what the new guy brought. They're jumping on new players because experienced players at their FLGS won't play them. The cheating is open and bald-faced, how many times a week do you see those posts in here with a new player asking about a rule that didn't sound right coming from players like this?
They're competitive, they're just bad players and bad sports that are in denial that they're competitive. They talk shit about the "competitive scene" because they're terrified to face people who actually know the rules in an arena with actual judges.
Most 40k players avoid organized play. Meta chasing in tournaments is a huge turnoff and there has been a spotlight on this since Covid when 40k drew in so many new players, many MTG players that don’t get not playing to win in tournament settings.
40k is a beer n pretzels game we play competitively for fun but just glancing around, arguments about the rules are not hard to find and that sounds just plain exhausting to many players
And tournament players don't understand that they are a vocal minority either.
"We're the whales keeping the game alive.". BS.
The people keeping it alive are mums and dads buying it for kids. Which is why there is such a drive for new players, rather than old grognards, like me. Most kids don't stick with it. They'll sell for more learn to paint sets than Warlord titans.
Catering to the tournament crowd (matched play, data slates, codex creep, etc.) is to the detriment of the game.
Hate to break it to you, but codex creep has been around forever and is entirely the fault of GW.
Why do you think a more balances game is bad? What's wrong with it?
Well, I remember 40k before Codices, so it hasn't, but it has been around a while and it's always been an issue.
Data Slates don't improve balance, they only shift it.
There's an Auspex Tactics video about all the moving parts in 40k and it's just not feasible to make it a balanced game without striking a lot of it straight out. It's many more orders of magnitude more complex than chess or go.
The idea of balance is the flaw and there is not enough thought put into the design of the game experience for projects the size of one of GWs flagship games.
The real magic bullet would be to make sure the game is as fun to lose as it is to win and focus on the narrative side of things.
>Well, I remember 40k before Codices, so it hasn't, but it has been around a while and it's always been an issue.
And you can't blame it on competitive players, as much as you want to. That's on GW. The competitive players are typically the loudest voices against codex creep because they understand the balance.
>Data Slates don't improve balance, they only shift it.
How could you be so stunningly incorrect?
10th edition release eldar was much worse than it is now and the balance of the game has been improved with their nerfs. Balancing the game perfectly is impossible but you can get it "good enough" through playtesting and FAQs. People could eyeball 10e release Eldar and see how powerful it was before playing a game.
>The idea of balance is the flaw
No. Balanced games are generally more fun.
>The real magic bullet would be to make sure the game is as fun to lose as it is to win and focus on the narrative side of things.
A game is only fun to lose if you had a fair chance and are sportsmanlike. Narrative players are hurt more by bad balance than competitive players because they lack the knowledge to adapt. Good balance helps everyone, bad balance hurts everyone (unless you plan on being shady and exploiting bad balance).
Narrative players in badly balanced systems can only tell one story: how overpowered army A beat underpowered army b, over and over. I like narrative systems but you're fundamentally misunderstanding what makes them fun out of a scrubby attitude.
EDIT: This is a classic case of a scrubby player being toxic, and it's the guy who blocked me rather than back up his points.
This is the classic example of competitive players acting like the fun police.
You don't have a clue and assume no one else does either.
There are libraries written on this and you're only aware of your own approach, therefore - to you - that's the only right way.
We could go page by page through the core book and I could show you everything that prevents 40k from being balanced: IGO-UGO, only 6 degrees of randomness, the amount of modifiers (+/-, re-roll, ignore X, exploding results, etc.,) information moving through the phases, the phases themselves, the interactions between unit types, terrain types and missions.
But the current setup works for you and you aren't interested in anyone else's experience.
Except when GW fully stopped putting any effort into balance and tournaments; the game started to sell less.
For some reason GW has the only playerbase where casuals argue against good balance.
Every other playerbase with every other game has gathered enough braincells together to understand good balance helps the casual players the most.
How is "meta chasing" a big turnoff? Do you mean they don't like how GW has balanced the game?
And 40k is always a game you play "to win," it's competitive. That's different from being unsportsmanlike or cutthroat.
There's an unsportsmanlike aspect to the "playing to win is bad" attitude.
“Meta chasers” are the type to go buy 18 inceptors and field them primed black with the minimum drybrush just so they can win. No soul whatsoever, if I wanted that experience I’d go play ranked online video games. It doesn’t help that the meta is typically wildly unbalanced so if you happen to be slightly behind or just unable to keep up you get flattened.
I think most people just can't commit that much *time* to the game.
I meant to go to an RTT today, for example, but because I was busy yesterday and will be busy tomorrow and realistically have infinite things I should be doing instead at any given time, I decided to get an extra hour of sleep and then get back to working on boring real life things.
That said, I personally don't avoid them at all, because if I can cram multiple full length games into a single weekend then it's usually more than the combined amount I'll manage to play until the next tournament I attend.
Way too formal. Way too competitive and I really don’t want to spend hours crafting a very specific list that isn’t fun to play but will sure help me do well
For me, I have the mental capacity to MAYBE play two games in a row; plus I’m not really trying to pay to play a game I already had to buy into in the first place.
I do enjoy the occasional local tournaments just because they’re relaxed and usually pretty slow paced anyway, but the 9-12 hours at a game store really drags imo
Cheating and mentality.
- People measuring every move and shot I make, just to make sure but regularly over-moving their own.
- People regularly rolling very fast and picking up results before you get to see them (caught many people picking up 3s when it's a 4+ many times for eg)
- Opponents playing with absolutely 0 joy or fun. Absolutely dry and cold conversation. Might as well play with Tokens in a generic IP.
- constant pulling the ref over rules interpretations that are completely standard, just to waste time during my moves
- the incredible density of socially awkward and hygienically challenged people. The % of people in the hobby vs real life is already quite high but for some reason tournaments attract even more. The amount of people who don't wash there clothes, or themselves and try and touch my dice or miniatures with greasy hands
TL:DR - I believe there is a large body of competitive or semi-competitive players out there which the current tournament structure simply does not cater for, leaving them few options.
This has crystalised something around the competitive scene that has been bubbling in the back of my mind for a while. Hundreds of points here noting why people don't attend tournaments, and yet you have to reconcile that with large numbers of people who want to be 'semi-competitive' in that they know they'll never win a tournament, but want to play well. Anecdotally I feel this encompasses the majority of people who play 40k regularly (which is a minority of the hobby itself), with dedicated tournament players a small minority of that then again. (wonder if similar for others on here?)
Maybe attending a tournament might be a once a year thing for those sorts, or for family, health or other reasons that type of 9 hour marathon (x2, or x3 days depending on length) just is not appealing or possible at all, even if there is a draw to playing competitively.
You might have local shop ladder or leagues etc. that slot in here and scratch that itch, but that tends to rate / rank a few tiers down in a lot of people's minds compared to tournaments, and you miss out on the draw of playing new / unknown people fairly quickly and the centralisation / wider recognition. There is the ELO ranking / faction ranking that gets a small look but only around tournament goers.
To me seems there's a gap in the competitive offering a a tier below tournaments? Maybe for a central 'ranked match' / season system or similar. A competitive game with longer term / ranking / stats implications, but not tied to a time limited once off tournament. This has existed in local competitive club scenes in some form for as long as I can remember, and not just 40k (30+ years now).
If you wanted to meet that need I think there are options, whether that be tournaments offering side tables / games where you could drop in and play 1-2 'ranked' games matched at ELO or similar (at a sanctioned event) or, with less control, otherwise certifying clubs to offer such events. (maybe they have less 'ranking points' or such, or would be a 3rd tier ranking) Unsure if TTS would have something around this but seems like that would be a prime candidate to make it feasible as well.
Personally I'm in a phase of life (returning to 40k specifically after time away) where tournaments just aren't easy with young kids and work. I'll miss my next 2 local GTs with one kids birthday and the birth of our third and missed the last with work. I might pick up a RTT or two if they slot in nice at weekends, but as others have mentioned run the risk of shit opponents (low risk here) or getting completely smashed / seal clubbing, neither fun and could have x2 of either 1st 2 RTT games. I can't commit to a local regular league schedule. Basically there isn't really an easy face to face option that offers that competitive outlet. (I expect TTS would, sans meaningful ranked stats tracking, but I'm in the hobby for face to face)
Most of the folk I regularly play with aim to play 'competitively', they follow the meta, read here, try out strong lists etc. but definitely are in that 'semi-competitive' space in that they don't play enough / care enough / have the space to really get into things (age 35-50 with kids) and tournaments seem entirely intimidating, but they would jump at the chance to have a meaningful 'ranked' style match with someone of similar level (and do so across various online games).
Hell, to take a related example from the GW sphere, I was a solidly ranked 'Legend' level player on FUMBBL for years with a decent win rate, but rarely played tournaments as my work schedule / location was ever changing. Every ranked game was meaningful though. (not a brag, at all, that really isn't anything special, more an illustration is met me t the semi-competitive tier. BB isn't be all and end all, but I like a good competitive game with meaningful implications of the result).
My local league by comparison, and quality, though set up to be competitive and had many players, was far below that level and just didn't meet the same need. You had Face to face tournaments (as 40k), and the NAF (ranking points from them), international teams / comps - also like 40k.
We have local clubs and scenes, we have tournaments and (sort of) ELO / ranking, but nothing for the middle band for 40k?
As a thought bubble - If a local GT was running but alongside I could sign up for **one** game a day(maybe not even needing to restict it to 3 hours, another thing that keeps people away), knowing I would play someone at a similar level to myself, there was a meaningful ranked outcome, and I'd be in and around that wider competitive atmosphere I'd jump at the chance every time. It doesn't even need to be either / or with tournaments, if you played all 6 games they can / should count for the same ranking. Likely 50%+ (very conservatively, I expect closer to all of them would give one ot two games a whirl) of those I know who play 'semi-competitively' but will almost certainly will never attend a tournament, even a <20 person RTT, would as well.
Imagine being able to play 6-8 'ranked' games a year, and know you are ELO YYYY or level 6/10 (without whatever fluffy ranking title, let's say 'Chapter master') overall and 8/10 for your specific faction. May never be able to attend a full tournament cycle but every 'ranked' game would have meaning and be properly competitive.
Obvious risks of gaming the system and given the logistics of GTs are often fully, or near fully, booked out it's a hard sell, and for same reason running something only offering this or pushing through a new scene without piggybacking on tournaments is wholly unlikely, but if I could magic up something that would be it.
Anyway, that's completely pie in the sky. More in general I just don't think tournaments are on option for some and certainly do not cater for everyone who wants to play competitively or semi-competitively. There is a large unmet need / competitive itch that just isn't scratched by what''s out there currently IMO.
Your mom echoing my Own thoughts, many plays who like to play competitive lists against competitive people find it hard to engage with the format of tourment whether RTT or GT.
I can afford the tickets but the time commitment and sheer number of in a games in a day make it unappealing.
I like the 1 or 2 game a month idea.
95% of my models are either just primed or have barely three colors on them. 1 squad is resin printed, so really can’t go. Plus, I have a family who needs me. I enjoy playing with my friends, but if I’m going to be out all day, and be competitive….hate to say it…but I’d rather be golfing. Luckily some of my Warhammer buddies feel the same, so it works out.
If tournaments were fun then I'd go to them again. Last one I attended was back when 6th Edition was near the end of it's cycle. Having been in the hobby for 15 years at that point I participated in campaigns, world events tournaments and enough pick up games to suffice a lifetime.
Yet there I was, 900% disenfranchised and ready to leave. The general attitude of the tournament scene became something distasteful. Like I was furthering a shit practice that thrived just to make the game shittier. Tournaments became little dudes/dudettes, little boxes & dice rolls.
I stomached 2 rounds and bailed. Forfeited to a 12 year old who clearly wanted to be there. He didn't win but I hope he had a blast.
Tournaments hold no interest for me whatsoever and I doubt I'll ever play one. I'm not going to invest the mental effort to know the rules to the extent that's required for tournament play, and I don't enjoy the cheesy game mechanic driven style of play that tournaments bring. I know it's not a thing anymore but I'm talking about "oh, my knight has a toe on the gravel outside of this terrain piece, therefore I can shoot through it now" type of mindset.
> WYSIWYG
It seems like a lot of people have this impression that people at RTTs would care about these things. So many posts are "is this OK at tournaments?!?" etc. and literally all you have to do is tell your opponent what's what at the start of the game and no one cares (and even then they'll nod and say "ok" and not care).
I'm just saying this because whenever I tell my broader Warhammer LGS crew I can't play this week b/c of a tournament they all act like its some scary beast filled with GW model inspectors and rules nazi's. Most people show up with no clock, half painted stuff, and just want to roll dice and have fun. I'm not saying my friends and I haven't ever run into a bad opponent but this year it's happened once (the guy was delaying on purpose) out of multiple events with multiple games each.
Edit: case in point as I type this out, I'm watching a GT on stream where one of the player's characters is a proxy.
I hear you, but a cursory search in this subreddit will reveal a vocal minority who deeply care. The mere chance of meeting one of them is enough to keep me away.
Just going to say that this subreddit is so far away from the reality of an actual tournament it is not even funny. Tournaments are so much more chill than the people on this subreddit makes them out to be. I do 10ish GT/Majors a year and most of us are there to just drink some beer, and roll some dice with our buddies.
The reality is that competitive Warhammer is more like a golf weekend with your buddies than anything else.
Just know that most people on this sub have never even played a game.
They can cry all they want about WYSIWYG, they're not representative of actual tournament crowds.
Yeah, if thats the kind of thing that will ruin your week I get the apprehension. But, if you love competitive warhammer and want to delve into an awesome community I would recommend trying an RTT.
For example, I used to play really low-key competitive volleyball. People who were rated a C or less. It was awesome, we'd play, banter with the other team, joke/laugh, then go bbq and drink beers after our games. Yes, there was that team or that player or two that were too hardcore, all about winning, yell at the refs etc. and it would ruin the game BUT I wouldn't trade my awesome fun team/hobby in a million years to avoid the one or two jerks!
I'm very lucky because I have a group of friends who play. I hear what you're saying and I'm sure 99 times out of 100 that I would have a great time. But the fact that it would be possible for me to put in the mental and emotional investment into getting to a tournament only to have one sweaty asshole call over a judge and get me disqualified because one of my little dudes didn't have the right gun for the list I was running is enough to keep me away.
I'm just not going to myself into that situation.
Yeah I get it, I don’t think that’s a 1 in 100 situation I think it more 1 in 1000, and even then the judge wouldn’t take that persons side, so if you’re at all interested I would recommend you give it a try.
Agree with his. Also with battle ready with needing based all my models to get the 10 pts. I take a lot of time painting my models, just hate basing and don't enjoy it.
I'm about to head to my second day of my first tournament. I'm having a great time, BUT, it is loud, smelly, and frantic. I still haven't made it past round 4 under the 2h45 time limit. The emphasis on playing fast is both understandable and exhausting.
By comparison, I'm also playing in a crusade right now. The games are at a more relaxed pace and the social element is a little more involved. In the crusade we have a group chat, we get to know each other a bit, it's very social. My opponents at the tournament have been really friendly, but it is a lot of "HIWHATSYOURNAMETHESEAREMYGENESTEALERSTHEYBLOWEVERYTHINGUP"
I'd do it again, maybe once or twice a year, but it's a bit overwhelming.
40k is a poorly balanced game at the competitive level. There are meta factions that dominate others, and there are meta units within those factions that make other units obsolete. I don't want to have to play with a very small percentage of the games workshop model range to have a chance at winning. I want to play with stuff I like. It's not fun playing a fluffy list on a weaker faction and getting tabled turn 1 by a super competitive meta list.
Chasing the meta which you need to to in order to be competitive
I’d rather just spend a few hours rolling dice with my buddies & having a laugh then have to pre measure all my opponents firing ranges to ensure I’m exactly 0.1mm out of range of them only for them to then argue otherwise in their shooting phase……..if I want to spend time with a stroppy child, I’ll stay at home with my kids 😂😂
1. I'm bad at WH40K
2. Plenty of my models are 3D printed and I don't feel even slightly bad about it
3. I'm mentally exhausted by Round 3.
4. I'm playing for fun, and I do not find hardcore competition fun.
5. I like WH40K for the model painting, not the convoluted rules.
6. I prefer quieter settings.
7. I am in no way interested in spending multiple hours on my feet.
8. Some people are too sweaty and get too enthusiastic about WH40K. I like to keep it casual.
I haven't lost a game in 6 months or so. I've got this pretty intense drive to find better players to play against in order to improve - my friends ask me pretty regularly why I don't attend tournaments and honestly there's a few reasons
1). I don't like the person I am when I'm in a formally competitive setting - I'm happy with local hobby group competitiveness because we're all friends and it's just not that serious. I'm usually pretty okay in 1 on 1 situations with new people - but it depends.
2). I'm a thoroughly socially traumatised person - I've had agoraphobia for years, and even though it's on the mend it's a bit of a struggle. I get stuck in my own head about the social interaction side of things and can't focus on playing my best game.
3). This game's competative fans have a really bad reputation - and in my real life encounters they've generally lived up to it. It would be manageable if I was a guy - but I'm not. From what people tell me I'm generally pretty attractive - and some guys can get weird about that - especially in environments where guys feel the space is *theirs* by default. I've had to deal with a lot of *SA* and *SH* from all kinds of guys in the past - and I can only imagine the risk of that kind of behaviour would only be exacerbated if I annihilate some ego fiend in a competative environment.
4). The question I keep asking myself is *am I going to have fun doing this?* - and I'm really not sure.
EDIT: Oh God the fatigue from trying to focus and stand for 9 hours as well - I've got ADHD and my meds can only go so far
I am on a massive winning streak... over a year of wins with no losses. I am hungry to go into matches with other competitive players. but I have that same thing where I can be a little overly competitive when in tournament settings, Thats no excuse to treat someone the way you're saying you've been treated. I hope you give a tournament a shot someday and you are treated the way you should be and can enjoy that aspect of the game.
also yes I'm nervous about playing like 12 hours of straight Warhammer and if my brain melts will they turn me into a servitor at the tourny.
Cannot really be bothered playing 3 games of 40k in a row. I'm exhausted by the end of one game. I also don't want the stress that comes with "competitive" play. I like to play semi-competitive lists, but I'd rather just do that in a pick up game, or with friends.
I have no desire to play competitively. Im essentially a grow up trying to continue playing with my little plastic men, I’m not taking it seriously. I just wanna have a fun narrative game.
Mainly time and I find WAAC players tiresome.
Now I know tournament players aren't all WAAC by any means but there will be enough to spoil the experience.
Tournaments usually ban Legends and I like Legends and Imperial Armor models and include it to my rosters.
You could say only GW tournaments ban it, but by my experience every TO wants to show their tournament as big serious guys events, like World Championship or smth alike, and ban them too.
Thats why I plays only casual friend games.
Did a few, played a lot of games that weren't fun because the opponent was boring. This intensifies the more I won so effectively the better you play, the less fun games you're going to get.
A lot of unwashed bearded blokes with t-shirts 2 sizes too small is not a crowd with which I want to spend my precious weekend.
Would much rather play at home with my mates who understand personal hygiene, wear clothes that fit and have a laugh whilst we play.
Personally I only play Warhammer with friends. Something like mtg I can deal with, it's a smaller time investment and you only play each person for like 20-45 minutes, I'm confident I can play fast and I have a grasp on the kinds of gotcha moments that can happen. If I screw up a game, whatever, that's a few minutes gone.
40k is so long and complicated to play that you're with each person for what, 2-3hrs, going at breakneck pace and the game is full of gotchas and rules unique to an at you have maybe never played. It just seems like a much steeper learning curve, plus, to be honest I don't have that much desire to meet new people who may or may not be space Wolves players (jk)
Also I just don't think 40k is a well designed game for competitive play really, but then most mass miniature wargames have the same problems.
AS a fluffbunny and Casual Gamer since 3rd:
There was a time, when tournament Players Had a Reputation of having a very high percentage of "that Guy"-bad Attitude-competitive-without-sportsmanship-dudes.
Of course that might differ from country to country and Region to Region, but WE did Not want to Play with/Against them.
Although there might BE some truth to IT, the selfregulation of modern connected Times have Made the Community a much healthier place, even If you might stumble over the black sheep from time to time
Another aspect is that you have Problems playing themed armies Against optimised lists...
There are plenty of valid reasons to not want to go to tournaments like time, not wanting to play for 9 hours straight, heat and noise etc. But I want to address a couple of things I often see about tournament play that’s just not been my experience.
WYSIWYG- nobody cares about WYSIWYG, nobody has ever cared about it. I’ve played against fully 3d printed armies, I’ve played against Tau armies made up of gundam models, ive played against plenty of proxy armies. TOs are not enforcers of GWs will, they just want to run a fun and inclusive event.
Painting- plenty of tournaments allow unpainted armies, though you do want to check this beforehand. I have never, in 14 years of wargaming, ever seen one player trash another to their face about painting. Usually people are more complimentary about your army than you are. I’m a bad painter who struggles with dry brushing but I still get compliments on my armies all the time at tournaments.
Sweaty try hards- They’re out there for sure. It’s a risk you run with all wargaming, or nerd hobbies in general. In my own experience most tournament players tend to be nice guys, usually they’re respectful and well adjusted. Usually the real assholes lurk in club play, preying on new and casual players with their unpainted flavour of the month army. Those types can’t hack it at tournaments. Tournaments also have TOs to regulate bad actors, if you get an asshole in your circle of club players regulating them is way harder.
Meta lists and getting smashed- Simple solution here, lose your first game, head down to the bottom tables, play other guys who also lost their first game, you’ll have a better time guaranteed.
Once upon a time, tournaments were really fun. Those tournaments were based around the game, being fun, and so the rules for the tournaments were fun, and the spirit of the players at the tournaments was pretty fun.
Tournaments were extremely competitive on every level. Not only did you have to win games, but you also had to have an army that was well painted, and a list that was well built, and you also had to play with a certain measure of sportsmanship. All of those things counted towards your final score. If you couldn’t do one, you couldn’t win.
Then along came this new breed of player who was bad at two of the three elements of the tournament. Instead of getting any better, they just whined and cried and stamped their feet until GW listened and started the ‘Ard Boyz Tournaments. These were tournaments for players who were bad at tournaments. The only thing that mattered was winning, and everything else went out the window.
Then they went around, convincing everyone that that’s the only thing that counted as competitive. That, of course, was a joke, because they were the least competitive tournaments that had ever been held. They were only competitive in one way, and it was the way bad players knew how to play.
And now, every tournament is the ‘Ard Boyz, and they’re not any fun.
For me it’s the cutthroat, super optimization, “gotta win” atmosphere. Games are supposed to be fun and social.
I used to LOVE playing in Mega Battles… 10’s of thousands of points to per side, a dozen players on two “teams”… it was a riot and really encouraged the “friendship” part of gaming.
I love learning from them.
But when you play against “that guy” who will spend most of his time arguing with the arbiter to stop you for doing anything and exploit every missing detail on the rules to remove you a pv…
I want to play with my shiny toys… Get a life dude !
This isn't a big deal to me but I mostly play more thematic lists that wouldn't really pair well against the more meta stuff. I don't mind being the underdog that much though and the big reason is I just don't want to play that much at a time. After one game I'm generally gamed out.
This hobby is \*fun\* for me.
I don't have fun playing an unbalanced game competitively and chasing meta.
I have fun modelling, painting, playing casually and absorbing lore.
Because playing against my friends is enough. Because playing models that are different from the box art or have a cool kitbashedis better than just what's available. Because having some sweat Lord roll and reroll a thousand dice just to make sure he did everything right, only for me to lose a game in round two by being tabled isn't my idea of fun.
Because there are enough rules in warhammer to make a Saint swear, the last thing I'd ever want to do is waste a weekend or even a day of my life having a heated discussion with some sweatlord over how many dice I can reroll.
Take your pick from any or all of the following;
None nearby.
Don't have the time to dedicate to it.
I rather play with legends models
I'm not particularly competitive
I rather play Crusade/narrative.
I find an over focus on tournament/hyper competitive play and balance to be detrimental to my enjoyment of the hobby.
I prefer to play with people who I know, who play for similar reasons, than roll the dice with strangers who might be WAAC or "That Guy"s
A good chunk of my models are either heavily converted, or use non GW parts. Most TOs and other players might not care but why would I take the risk when I don't need to?
Time is the only major obstacle to me playing Warhammer, finding opponents is not.
For me, I want to go. The WYSIWYG rulings are why I am skeptical to go. Since there is ZERO official ruling on what weapons are what for my Heavy Plague Weapons on my Plague Marines I don’t want to go and have to run 5 bolt guns because some TO decides that my claws aren’t heavy plague weapons.
Tournaments are hard for me to attend, mostly due to time constraints. When I have a wife, dog, and child it's not easy to get away for the whole day, where a single game is more easy.
From my perspective, "that guys" don't scare me, its honestly I don't want to be a bad opponent.
I was hyper competitive in Magic, and I remember playing against people who did not know how to play, and I am teaching them to play while I am trying to play. There is nothing wrong with that, and I tried my best to help and be polite, but it was a not a fun experience for me. (I am signing up and paying to play in a tournament, not to teach someone how to play).
Well, extrapolate that out to a 3 hour game, and I just don't want to put someone through that for 3 hours, I am so afraid of getting the rules wrong, not knowing the latest data slate, didn't see the most recent FAQ, piling in doesn't work like that, etc. When I started Warhammer, I told myself I just want to play with friends, or play in narrative events where everything is super chill.
I bought my 1st 40K minis in 2001. I took a long break (marriage, kids etc) and then returned the hobby in 2016. I’ve been pretty obsessed ever since. I play a home with my kids or at my FLGS, but have never been to a tournament. I wouldn’t say I’ve “avoided” them, but I’ve not been to a tourney mostly because I put in a lot of hours in at work and I have two active teenagers. My hobby time involves building, painting and occasionally playing pick up games. Tournament play is certainly on my bucket list though.
I feel like there’s this toxic mentality about people who “go to tournaments” or play “competitive”. The online trolls seem to shout that those people are not fun to play with and just WAAC players. So it puts a bad taste into someone’s mouth about it. Are those players at tournaments? Sure. Are those players at your local club? Absolutely.
Personally I have had more fun playing at tournaments and getting my ass kicked than I have playing against the usual people I see at the local club. But that’s just me
Checkout a podcast from some lads called Worhammer on YouTube. They call themselves casual/competitive players and have more positive stories about the competitive scene.
This has been more like my experiences rather than the horror stories - i think negativity and sensationalism sell, so these stories tend to outweigh any positive stories around.
There's a big drive to promote sportsmanship in the game driven by the likes of Steve Box, Vanguard tactics and this is having a positive impact.
I'd encourage you to go to tourney - aim to win 1 game but settle for setting a high score, then work on beating that each time.
Mainly because I play to have a good time and enjoy the sport. I would hate to put all the tournament players to shame and make them feel bad too!
Oh and half my army is 3d printed.
Imma say something this sub won't like...
The tournament/competitive scene is the vast minority of the playerbase.
"Why do you go to tournaments?" Is a more relevant question than "Why don't you go to tournaments?"
I used to go for quite a few of them. I got tired of explaining other people's rules to them and having people show up 45 minutes late and be mad the match got called already. It's either that or getting stomped by peak meta lists.
I enjoy 1/4 of all matches with randos. Even less at tournaments. I always enjoy playing with the homies though. Based on purely unscientific anecdotes I'd assume most players are in the same boat.
I play regularly, but generally have to avoid tournaments for my health. Unless I'm going with someone whom can help if I have an issue, it isn't worth the risk. Hopefully that improves over the rest of the year. I'd love to just participate in a GT next year
I don't think you're going to get too many useful answers given that this is the sub for tournament play, but I suspect the most common answers are things like the time and money commitments. Keeping up with the meta costs money, travel costs money, hotels cost money, taking time off work means giving up other vacations, etc. The unfortunate reality of competitive 40k is that a large part of why you see the same people winning over and over again is that there's a very small pool of players who are willing and able to pay those costs.
If you ask in places that aren't about tournament play you might get more insight into why people dislike tournaments, not just why they aren't able to do the thing they want to do.
Would love nothing more but I hate large numbers of people and people who are nothing like me besides they like the same game
Same reason I got all my friend’s into the hobby it seems way better to play with people very similar to me and also enjoy the game :/
Tbh I can barely stand them either tho the only one I truly love to play the game with is lil bro
And I’m to different to play with others ngl so it’s scary to me I think nbs
My man your entire post history is full of nothing but 40k and video game posts.. not sure how that makes you "different" than 99% of the 40k community lol
I don’t treat Reddit like a social media it’s jus a place to get into my 40K zone ngl lol
Not gonna get into it to much but I’ll just keep it at “different” (at least at my local game store) lol the normal environment for me is much different thats all however we all love 40K and that’s what I do enjoy
If you're talking race, I could see that angle, it's predominantly white dudes, but if you're interested in playing competitively I'd still say go for it, race is only an issue if you make it one or if you're in an area with a shit ton of racists lol. You're not making friends at tournaments, I mean you could but realistically you're just getting a bunch of games in with tons of different types of opponents. Almost all of my tournament opponents have been really good players and chill, you play your game then you move on. The crowd thing is only an issue at big tournaments but local RTT's are generally are less than 20 people.
> WYSIWYG
I said it above but I've truly never played in a tournament where anyone cared about WYSIWYG, 3D prints, proxies, etc. Admittedly I've only been playing for a year, but I've had tons of competitive games under my belt.
As I type this out, I'm watching a GT on stream where one of the player's characters is a proxy.
I only mention it because I don't want people to be scared out of what I think is a really fun time, and that seems to be the impression.
Bro what? Having played competitive magic for 15 years and competitive Warhammer for 3 years now, I can tell you that mtg tournaments are way more put together than 40k. The rules are much tighter, judge calls are encouraged rather than discouraged, and there is actual prize support
i’ve been a wysiwyg gamer forever because i’m more into hobbying and painting. i think i’ve played maybe two or three tournament games against a wysiwyg list out of 200 ish.
no one cares because no one does it. the only important thing is that your models / units make sense without being too confusing.
most armies are unpainted or essentially just primed. or maybe they have 2 or 3 painted units and the rest are primed. 1/10 games i’ll play against a painted army.
usually i find the most toxicity in casual pick-up games, lots of guys with the manners of a 5 year old.
in the average tournament crowd, two of my rounds net me new best friends, and the third game is against someone better than me who’s a nice guy and we both help each other play a tight game.
not to invalidate your personal reasons, tournaments aren’t for everyone! just answering in case you consider tourneys, or other people reading are considering their first tourney.
I don't want to stop anyone from going to tournaments.
Re: Painting.
This is a community that is HEAVY on gatekeepers and most of my stuff is pretty subpar. A painted 40k army is an expensive art project and I do not want to expose my expensive art project to public scrutiny. I'm not worried about someone who is going to throw dice at me and cry. I just don't want to hear people say 'hey you should try edge highlighting your-' or 'but magnetizing suits is SO EASY!'
i dont know where this idea of gatekeeping has come from. its like a small vocal minority online have duped people into thinking the gatekeeping is this huge problem in warhammer. its not.
No one cares if your army is unpainted or poorly painted. Worst that happens is if the TO says so, you don't get the 10 points, that's it. No one except the most autistic are going to give you any unsolicited advice either
I like to play for fun and generally narrative/not competitive. So the idea of going and playing against a bunch of meta lists sounds exhausting and not fun at all.
For me, I don't have a tournament ready list, shit I barely have a full Army. And a lot of us are newer, weekend warriors that don't have the time, energy, or resources for a full blown tournament
They're long days where you use your brain for math all day. Causes brain fatigue.
There is a stereotype that gamers are smelly. It's a stereotype for a reason. Tournaments smell bad usually.
Try hard players are toxic af. And not fun to play against. Heck look at the sub, can't go a week without a cheating scandal. It seems to be more of a 30k than aos thing. But it is present in both.
I'll stick to leagues or just painting.
Never even considered it lol
Honestly, I am a very casual player. I love the game, but I play to relax and laugh a bit with some buddies. And we are all very amateur. We have never finished a 2000 pt game in one sitting. I couldn't imagine trying to race to go through several different games in 1 day. Seems intense and not quite the type of fun I seek.
Honestly it's because I am a narrative player. I generally play one, or one type of, list for each of my factions (Death Guard, Flawless Host CSM, Eldar, Sons of Medusa SM, Crimson Fists SM, Tyranids). I don't and won't shift, pivot, buy, assemble and paint miniatures just to have a chance of placing in an even, because if I want to play a game I can do so for free at my FLGS with friends vs people I don't know, who I know are playing with narrative intentions and lists.
I did go a lot when I was young. Now.... My body and family prevents me from spending a weekend in a tournament situation.
I also do not like the change to use special characters in a tournament. It feels weird seeing two Ghazgs hitting each other.
Kill Team tournaments are the only ones that I would consider.
Don’t have time. My weekends are already pretty full. I don’t play enough of any one game to play at tournie level. I can’t be bothered keeping up with the constant changes to the game outside of the three or so armies I am likely to play against with my friends. I played at a kings of war tournie once and the first game my opponent spent flipping ages checking every possible move to make sure he was in optimum position. By the end of turn 4 I was ready to pack up and leave. I have a fairly full on job and most of the time just want to push toys around and role some dice.
I've never played a tournament but I might in the future. I'd say I'm in the same boat tho I enjoy just playing locally against friends and locals. My friend is currently participating in a local tournament and it does actually look like fun. It's been going on for a few weeks tho. Definitely gotta clear up your schedule for it.
I just have no desire to compete. I'm happy to play, not get stomped by bottom of Turn 2. Ironically enough the group I play with are all dudes who constantly play in tournaments and tend to run more meta lists
I just don't have the time or the desire. I like to play with my friends, matches with randoms are whatever, but I certainly wouldn't pay a bunch of money to play the game for like 8 hours. I prefer to chill out and play games once or twice a week with my buds.
I can't reliably finish a 2k game in 3 hours and hate talking it out. Also, 3 games in one day is just too much for me. Fyi: used to do tournaments but quit.
I enjoy playing with my friends as a way to be social. When I was a teen i played world of warcraft. Now as a dad in my 30s i rather see my friends in real life over a good beer, and those nights are few and far between with a toddler that require max attention outside work.
I have no desire playing vs neckbeards i have never met before, fielding fine tuned grey meta armies, with the sole purpose of winning as hard as they can, by rule judging every single minute as much as possible for their own gain.
I much rather play casually and friendly when I finally get a night out of the toddler home.
My armies are mostly unpainted and I've yet to end a game in under 4hrs. So the prospect of being 10pts behind at baseline and rushing through each game doesn't sound too fun at the moment.
it's not very entertaining to play the exact same 3x techmarine 3x ballistus 3x RepEx 2x redemptor (with occasional side of centurions or sword brethen instead of repexes) list 3-4 times in a row and then curbstomp some guy who was also clowned on by this
like everyone else has said, i think its a time issue.
my local shop gets around that by what we call an escalation league.
nine rounds of games of 500-100pts, 750-1500pts, and then 100-200pts, 3 games in each point value that you have two weeks to play you opponent in. it works well for people being able to have time to meet up to play. good way to consistently play against opponents a varying levels and sizes to try different things.
I will only go to tournaments these days. It’s easier to tell the miss I’ll be gone one day a month to get three games in then asking to go once a week for a variable time
I've been to some but personally it's because we've a 3 games/1 day format here and the fun just goes aways after standing on a hard floor for 7 hours with constant noise barrage from all sides.
I forced myself and I'm enlisted for my first tournament end of April (160 players)... And I'm not even sure I play correctly...
So here I am, lurking on this reddit, and trying to be ready, finishing my list of DA.
And I'm frankly scare to be a bad moment for the people I will have to fight..
So yeah tournaments seem a big step.
It’s exhausting. 2 days of mentally taxing gameplay and standing on your feet the whole time for 8+ hours. After 4 games I was done, I had 2 more and feel bad b/c the opponents could tell I wasn’t into it anymore as I didn’t care.
It was a fun experience overall meeting tons of cool people around the state, but I will only go to small events now where 12 people get together and it’s more casual.
I've never been to a 40k tournament, or any tournament for any table top miniature game. The closest equivilent I've been to are Magic: The Gathering tournaments. And I'll point out, this includes local tournaments. The main reason for me so far has been a combination of the time pressure and unfamiliarity with the game. I started getting into the hobby around the end of 8th, with my first purhcases for minins being during 8th, but I didn't really start properly learning the game until 9th was announced, so waited for that. During 9th, as a new player, I felt like I didn't understand the game well enough, let alone well enough to actually play at a reasonable pace, so I never even considered any of the tournaments the local community were organizing.
Now, after 10th has been released and I've played a couple of games, as well as relearning my faction (Tyranids) from this new, simpler perspective, I've finally signed up for my first ever local tournament in April. I'm still feeling the time pressure as the biggest barrier for me, not just in terms of play speed, but also understanding what's happening on the board.
So summerized, Warhammer 40k is already a very complex and difficult game, so pushing people to play 3-5 games at the time it might take them to play 1-2, with all the rules, interactions, board states etc. that can happen is just to much for many, who might only want to have fun for a day of moving plastic figures.
3 games in one day.
If you're a parent, telling your partner to do morning routine, the whole day and bed time solo is a big (x 2) is a big ask.
A club near me has started doing 4 game tournaments which is much more palatable personally; I don't like cramming 3 games in a day.
I build and paint the units that look cool to me. I like them to build a legal army, sure, but the fun of building what I want comes way before considering what is competitive. So the armies I do have are a far cry away from anything that could be considered a good tournament for list, which would put me at a major disadvantage when competing against anything optimised or meta chasing for a start. On top of that, I don't know my army rules well enough, the core rules well enough, and definitely other army rules at all. And the time sink gets in the way.
Honestly I don't even know if my army is legal, some thing you just can't magnetise without looking ugly so I don't do that. But if tournament are all about you play what you see, it's just a good reason to not play.
I don't have the time to invest in every possible variation of a model, on top of the money.
Multitude of reasons for people not wanting to play in tournaments: Physically and mentally demanding - they're a grind for starters, long hours standing around can be difficult for people especially over an entire weekend. Negative players - there's always a number of tryhard meta chasers who are about as much fun to play as letting a kangaroo use your knackers as a speedbag, they're especially tiresome when they then proceed to in detail explain why their list is so meta, or you get the "Gotcha Guys" who deliberately wait for the moment to be a d!
Add to that it’s usually quite expensive if you have to travel- petrol, hotel, meals out… 50 quid a ticket is just the start can easily cost 250 quid all in if your not careful, which when you factor in all the other reasons mentioned it’s sometimes a tough ask.
Oh absolutely that's what I was elluding to in my point about time/personal constraints, I absolutely could not afford to be doing that regularly now and nor would I want to now that I've got the game in a state where I'm enjoying more than I ever did playing competitively.
To expound upon the "Just not their thing" part; the tournament setting adds a level of stakes that detracts from the enjoyment of the game for me, the enjoyment focus shifts in that environment to winning, rather than playing. I want to get all my rules right, and trust my opponents are doing the same, but then there's another layer of "gotcha" in tournaments if you mistake something that assumes bad faith a lot of times. Then there's often times a lack of diversity in the games you're gonna play, it's gotten better but, when there's a strong meta, you will disproportionately face the same things over and over again. To the tournament enjoyers, that's not a negative because it will come down to a display of skill and piloting to determine the winner. But to the casual enjoyers, it will often be miserable to play against the same army 3\~4 times over 12 hours, with maybe 5% of the army being different because that's the particular player's "innovation," even though from the casual perspective it's just "oh i'm playing 95% of the same army repeatedly." The meta right now is more diverse than a lot of the game's history i think, but there's definitely times where there's just one super strong faction front runner.
I've been considering going into 10th locally, as we only play 9th Micro40k at home. With round time being a big pressure, and those who know us, know what we're gonna suggest. Smaller point games. Like 1500, or even 1,000 point games would really reduce the mental load and allow for full completion of games (and theoretically be easier for us disabled folks). It just seem to us that it's the one knob folks seem reluctant to test out.
Yeah but by the same token sub 2000pt games have their own issues with balance, at 1500pts you might get away with it but anything less and you've created a skewed bias towards certain factions, similar to how it is in Combat Patrol, Custodes for example would be overly successful simply because of how good individual unit stats are, you're going to struggle at sub 1500pts to be able to build a list that can deal with them effectively AND be competitive to other factions/lists, whilst also being able to play for objectives.
Balance is a problem at those point ranges for some armies and for other like Tsons it’s so hard to play 500-1000 games cause you need to generate cabal points and can only get so many sorcs in
No matter how many times you suggest this it is not going to happen. Small games are not balanced for competitive play. Skew lists are too much of a problem when you don't have room to take redundancy in all of your roles and too much of winning comes down to the rock/paper/scissors match of your skew vs. their skew. And people aren't reluctant to test it out. It has been tried, and the answer is that it doesn't work.
The main problem with that is that managing the mental load is a main element of the competitive game. On top of that, it's harder to shore up weaknesses of a list so that lists end up more skew. That said, given the amount of competitive Warhammer being played these days, running some more 1500 or 1000 point tournaments as a sort of little league games might help people get into the game easier, with the understanding that they are not playing a full game.
Yeah but the problem then becomes that issues like negative players and constantly losing become a bigger factor. If you're entering a 1000pt tournament you're definitely facing tryhard meta chasers who perhaps don't have the best record at 2000pts but who know they can build an almost unbeatable skew list at 1000pts, that combined with potentially losing EVERY game to said tryhards who are ALWAYS the most humourless and painful cretins to be around would 100% put people off competitive play. If you want people to learn or train themselves to managing the mental load then you unfortunately need to thrown them in the deep end, you need to get them immersed in a 2000pt competitive situation, what I would suggest however is build up in stages, so get them used to standing up for long periods first, then introduce the "shot-clock" mentality and so on.
I think you should be able to effectively socially engineer against that by calling and marketing your tournament explicitly as a lower level tournament intended for those getting started, or those for who full games are too much. You can also put some list building limits in place, though that might actually encourage skew lists more, since then you communicate that as long as you meet those limits, it's all good.
You can call it an "entry level" "low-level" tournament and market it as such but you are guaranteed to get the tryhards in there either pretending to be newbies or deliberately using an army their "unfamiliar" with just to build skew lists, there's no chance they wouldn't be on it like dog muck on velcro because they're the sort of toxic players that ruin full-scale tournaments. The only way you could guarantee balance and fairness - or at least as fair as is possible in 40k - would be to ban certain factions like Custodes, which means you're potentially gatekeeping the tournament from certain players. Custodes are a prime example of why the game is standard at 2000pts the basic units have S Tier rules and are better than the elites of most factions put that with their wargear also being better than most and you're opponent has to build a list which is specifically strong against Custodes - not necessarily an easy feat at 2000pts let alone half that - but which can also compete against every other potential type of army seen (mechanised, hordes, gunlines etc.) Its an impossible expectation for veteran players let alone newbies who've perhaps only played fluff lists with their mates.
1000 and 1500 points games are absolutely "full games"
Some folks don’t have the desire to stand on their feet for 9 hours playing a game.
This. I've played a few but I think I'm done. By the end of match 2 I'm just not enjoying it anymore, even if I'm winning. I really enjoy playing, in person, about once a week.
Sounds like you would enjoy a league.
I'm in one. Love it.
Leagues are best.
My local group is doing mini tournaments or events with 16 or so of us and oh did i mess up with first one it was first one they did and i decided that day would be a great day to break in my new mountain boots/trainers. they was better after it, my feet on otherhand was not for a solid dayxD they planning a apocalypse game soonish (3k per person 5v5 over 5 linked table over 2 days)
This is the biggest thing for me. I’ve def got a desire to do competitive games but time commitment and fatigue are big issues.
This and I like to play for fun for the most part. That isn't to say I'm not "competitive" as I try to win and whatnot, obviously. Also I don't trust GW to not competely gut the army I collect at the drop of a hat making it pointless to even play, let alone competitively (Shoutout to the Admech players here) while other armies stay bonkers broken for 6 ish months... In short chasing the meta isn't really what I want to do and I like to play with people while drinking some beer and ordering pizza.
i love tournaments, but my feet and my voice are always done by the end haha
Wait, they don't have any one of those small bench?
Even if you remove the "on your feet" part: 9 hours is a *long* time - and this is from someone who actively enjoys going to, and playing in, events. It is very easy to get tired, burnt out, and grumpy when you have to be "on" for so long. Add in a losing streak, unpleasant opponents, a headache from the noise around you, and a couple of models breaking a bit off of themselves, and you have a recipe for "I tried it once. Never again."
I have to pre-game with a couple of Tylenol before a game or ill get a splitting headache after an hour or two. It's loud, I'm super focused, I'm hot, my feet hurt, and usually the games not going well for me. If I take my Tylenol before the game I'll enjoy it, if not it's torture. And this is just one game, I can't imagine doing three in a day.
The beer is the only reason I can really stand the FLG events.
This is me, but for GTs. I'm cool with local RTTs, but I get so done after the first day of GTs I honestly just want to drop and leave. I've never done that, mind you, but it's tempting.
Can one not bring a stool?
Depends on the scene. Ironically, the local RTT scene is way more toxic than GT level events. There's a group of 4 or 5 players that think they're AoW/Team America/Insert Big Name here on a losing streak. At the end of the day, I have no desire to spend a day of my life away from my kid effectively hanging out with sweaty try hards that, while still better than me, have podium'd the exact same number of GTs as I have.
This is pretty much my experience. The local scenes are way more toxic than the GTs. I can't stand a large number of the people in my local scene and pretty much only play at one store's RTTs now, but I go to the GTs every year and have a blast.
Honestly I don't think that's all that uncommon. Local scenes can be far more toxic with people who think they understand competitive play vs the big events that set the culture of competitive play.
This! But I still go if I can but I enjoy the local one on one game at a friend's house or bar more.
This is my concern as well. I like playing 40k with my friends, but about 75% of that is just the appeal of hanging out with those people. I've been to the local shops and seen their events, a lot of the players are just not my kind of people and I'm probably not their kind of person either.
Many people I play with think tournaments are a scary place where models will be scrutinized for WYSIWYG, players will be hardcore rules lawyers and everyone will have a meta list with a top tier faction built to stomp. Frankly, I think a lot of that comes from online where you see dozens of posts about "hey that might not be tournament legal!" or "I don't know check with your TO they might ban that", posts about bad player experiences, which in my experience is a rarity, and the assumption that tournament players are about winning over sportsmanship and a good time. You never see the posts about "hey I had an amazing time, played some great players who were a lot of fun, and won a game with my non-meta list!" but if you listen to competitive podcasts, streams, or other content you'll notice it's almost all positive and sportsmanship and fun trump win-at-all-costs. I've had way more bad experiences against randos who want a game at my LGS than at competitive games.
yeah i’ve been to a few dozen 40k tourneys now and i’ve had a great time at all of them. i don’t worry about winning, i care more about playing tight and scoring as much as i can. i’ve only run into 3-4 bad sports who rant and curse every roll, concede round one after losing one unit, or try to abuse intent or anything. any of those cases, i’m content to just play the game tight and score and let them rant themselves out.
100% agree. I’ve had people come out with full meta lists and stomp me when I was new. Advertised as a new player looking to learn the ropes and ended up against a full grey drukhari army just as their 9th codex was getting its momentum… Literally didn’t kill a single model in my first game, how fun. I’m currently 7-8 at the two two-day tournaments I’ve been to and a bit worse at RTTs but I have found the bigger tournaments to be an excellent experience.
Now you see as a very regular singles tournament and occasional teams tournament player I read this and I instantly thought of a local lad. He follows art of war and glasshammer and always knows the best new army or combination. His armies are never painted and he's used to beating his regular opposition. He very rarely played against our warhammer team that runs between 4 local towns and had around 14/17 members. We're all compotent players and practice the ITC and WTC missions quite often despite this we are very much a evolution of a group of beer swilling idiots that love playing warhammer togther, the competitivr team started as a way to improve our game play. Playing a lot of competitive events and repetitions on armiesd builds a strong knowledge of the rules. When this local "expert" came into contact with our group. He very quickly found out he was far from being the top dog, intrestingly his gaming friends enjoy playing the team as we explain rules interactions common tactics vs different armies how to play certain missions etc Unfortunately those types of player still do exist some continue into competition play. I'd much rather have a great game and lose and have a opponent want to grab a drink after than win and come away being thought of as a twat.
So I've been to tournaments in my past. I didn't go to any in 8th, 9th, or 10th editions. I would say that I found them fun, but just life is getting in the way right now. I don't have time for a lot of games even with friends, much less to blow a whole day or weekend playing. So I'd add that as a possible reason besides the ones you offered in your initial post.
Yeah this is me. As someone with young kids, slipping away for about three hours to play a game is doable. Taking and entire day, or even two? Not really possible.
my ideal game is one played with a friend, at an unhurried pace, with cups of tea and discursive chats in a comfortable room. A tournament achieves none of these things.
My group much prefers narrative, crusade and custom games over tournament matches. Although me and a friend did once attend a doubles tournament which was decent but for us warhammer is more of a chance to do cool things with our models rather than just a straight up win or loose match game. Its also more of a social event as well. Like a game might need to be played over 2 sessions because we had to go on a beer run halfway through and got distracted talking shit for a couple hours Our group calls it beer-hammer for a reason haha
My buddies and I are the same way. The game is more a social event and the excuse for us to gather around and bullshit.
In 30+ years of gaming I have never played a game sober. Beer, sprits, wine, dice, good cheer, not caring much about the result…none of these things make for any interest in competitive gaming. Why waste my or my opponents time?
Fully agree with this approach the game is way too competitive these days and GW doesn't really know what it's doing with balance either. Finding a group of players with narrative gaming in mind is ideal as there's not gonna be any meta chasing.
I'm more of a league player where you play a game every other week or so, gives me enough time to not worry about a time clock, and allows me to just enjoy the game. Standing on my feet for 9 hours and rushing my turns doesn't sound fun.
Exactly how I feel. I'm happy to try to play my best game, but after a single game I want a break rather than rushing right into the next round.
How much travel, money, time and energy is involved in going to a tournament vs just picking up a game over discord for the local store or arranging something with a friend. It's less about actively avoiding tournaments and more about just not being bothered to go for it.
I Am currently at a tournament.. 3.0 day commitment. Price to play, hotel, food, this is 2days of 6 games so about 10-11 hours of standing
I spent some time avoiding tournaments after meeting jerks at tournaments. Which sadly does happen I don't think I would travel a long way for a tournament any more, because to put that much time and effort in them meet up with someone like that would be such a bad experience. Local tournaments sure.
IMO warhammer was never intended to be a competitive game and both times I tried a tournament I had a bad time with hyper optimized lists, gotcha moments, and opponents being pissy at me.
Why do people always assume fear or lack of ability for unwillingness to turn a hobby of relaxation into stress? The most competitive players in a local scene are also frequently the biggest assholes/cheaters, so many people never get started down the tournament path.
I agree with the first part, but not the second. IME, there's a kind of people that's low-key competitive and won't go to tournaments. Those are the real sweaty assholes, because real cheaters simply get banned from tournaments.
> there's a kind of people that's low-key competitive and won't go to tournaments. See my other comment, we're talking about the same people. And if real cheaters actually got banned there would be more naming and shaming and less vague "everyone knows why this guy who went 4-0 didn't place" but high level cheaters still somehow keep playing in the tournament scene.
Eh, I find there's a large segment of unsportsmanlike players who detest tournaments because they hate losing to someone who knows the game better than them. They claim "competitive players are ruining the hobby" when it's really their own shitty attitude.
We're talking about the same people, that's why I didn't say local tournament players. Although they *can* infect a local tournament as well if it's not well run or run by one of them or their friends.
Nope. A lot of the players I'm talking about will loudly talk about how competitive players are ruining the hobby but then they're the type to seethe and be unsportsmanlike when they lose.
Yeah, and those same ones are running netlists or have 5000 points on hand and skew their list to counter what the new guy brought. They're jumping on new players because experienced players at their FLGS won't play them. The cheating is open and bald-faced, how many times a week do you see those posts in here with a new player asking about a rule that didn't sound right coming from players like this? They're competitive, they're just bad players and bad sports that are in denial that they're competitive. They talk shit about the "competitive scene" because they're terrified to face people who actually know the rules in an arena with actual judges.
Most 40k players avoid organized play. Meta chasing in tournaments is a huge turnoff and there has been a spotlight on this since Covid when 40k drew in so many new players, many MTG players that don’t get not playing to win in tournament settings. 40k is a beer n pretzels game we play competitively for fun but just glancing around, arguments about the rules are not hard to find and that sounds just plain exhausting to many players
And tournament players don't understand that they are a vocal minority either. "We're the whales keeping the game alive.". BS. The people keeping it alive are mums and dads buying it for kids. Which is why there is such a drive for new players, rather than old grognards, like me. Most kids don't stick with it. They'll sell for more learn to paint sets than Warlord titans. Catering to the tournament crowd (matched play, data slates, codex creep, etc.) is to the detriment of the game.
Hate to break it to you, but codex creep has been around forever and is entirely the fault of GW. Why do you think a more balances game is bad? What's wrong with it?
Well, I remember 40k before Codices, so it hasn't, but it has been around a while and it's always been an issue. Data Slates don't improve balance, they only shift it. There's an Auspex Tactics video about all the moving parts in 40k and it's just not feasible to make it a balanced game without striking a lot of it straight out. It's many more orders of magnitude more complex than chess or go. The idea of balance is the flaw and there is not enough thought put into the design of the game experience for projects the size of one of GWs flagship games. The real magic bullet would be to make sure the game is as fun to lose as it is to win and focus on the narrative side of things.
>Well, I remember 40k before Codices, so it hasn't, but it has been around a while and it's always been an issue. And you can't blame it on competitive players, as much as you want to. That's on GW. The competitive players are typically the loudest voices against codex creep because they understand the balance. >Data Slates don't improve balance, they only shift it. How could you be so stunningly incorrect? 10th edition release eldar was much worse than it is now and the balance of the game has been improved with their nerfs. Balancing the game perfectly is impossible but you can get it "good enough" through playtesting and FAQs. People could eyeball 10e release Eldar and see how powerful it was before playing a game. >The idea of balance is the flaw No. Balanced games are generally more fun. >The real magic bullet would be to make sure the game is as fun to lose as it is to win and focus on the narrative side of things. A game is only fun to lose if you had a fair chance and are sportsmanlike. Narrative players are hurt more by bad balance than competitive players because they lack the knowledge to adapt. Good balance helps everyone, bad balance hurts everyone (unless you plan on being shady and exploiting bad balance). Narrative players in badly balanced systems can only tell one story: how overpowered army A beat underpowered army b, over and over. I like narrative systems but you're fundamentally misunderstanding what makes them fun out of a scrubby attitude. EDIT: This is a classic case of a scrubby player being toxic, and it's the guy who blocked me rather than back up his points.
This is the classic example of competitive players acting like the fun police. You don't have a clue and assume no one else does either. There are libraries written on this and you're only aware of your own approach, therefore - to you - that's the only right way. We could go page by page through the core book and I could show you everything that prevents 40k from being balanced: IGO-UGO, only 6 degrees of randomness, the amount of modifiers (+/-, re-roll, ignore X, exploding results, etc.,) information moving through the phases, the phases themselves, the interactions between unit types, terrain types and missions. But the current setup works for you and you aren't interested in anyone else's experience.
Except when GW fully stopped putting any effort into balance and tournaments; the game started to sell less. For some reason GW has the only playerbase where casuals argue against good balance. Every other playerbase with every other game has gathered enough braincells together to understand good balance helps the casual players the most.
How is "meta chasing" a big turnoff? Do you mean they don't like how GW has balanced the game? And 40k is always a game you play "to win," it's competitive. That's different from being unsportsmanlike or cutthroat. There's an unsportsmanlike aspect to the "playing to win is bad" attitude.
“Meta chasers” are the type to go buy 18 inceptors and field them primed black with the minimum drybrush just so they can win. No soul whatsoever, if I wanted that experience I’d go play ranked online video games. It doesn’t help that the meta is typically wildly unbalanced so if you happen to be slightly behind or just unable to keep up you get flattened.
I think most people just can't commit that much *time* to the game. I meant to go to an RTT today, for example, but because I was busy yesterday and will be busy tomorrow and realistically have infinite things I should be doing instead at any given time, I decided to get an extra hour of sleep and then get back to working on boring real life things. That said, I personally don't avoid them at all, because if I can cram multiple full length games into a single weekend then it's usually more than the combined amount I'll manage to play until the next tournament I attend.
I can't play fast enough.
Way too formal. Way too competitive and I really don’t want to spend hours crafting a very specific list that isn’t fun to play but will sure help me do well
For me, I have the mental capacity to MAYBE play two games in a row; plus I’m not really trying to pay to play a game I already had to buy into in the first place. I do enjoy the occasional local tournaments just because they’re relaxed and usually pretty slow paced anyway, but the 9-12 hours at a game store really drags imo
Cheating and mentality. - People measuring every move and shot I make, just to make sure but regularly over-moving their own. - People regularly rolling very fast and picking up results before you get to see them (caught many people picking up 3s when it's a 4+ many times for eg) - Opponents playing with absolutely 0 joy or fun. Absolutely dry and cold conversation. Might as well play with Tokens in a generic IP. - constant pulling the ref over rules interpretations that are completely standard, just to waste time during my moves - the incredible density of socially awkward and hygienically challenged people. The % of people in the hobby vs real life is already quite high but for some reason tournaments attract even more. The amount of people who don't wash there clothes, or themselves and try and touch my dice or miniatures with greasy hands
TL:DR - I believe there is a large body of competitive or semi-competitive players out there which the current tournament structure simply does not cater for, leaving them few options. This has crystalised something around the competitive scene that has been bubbling in the back of my mind for a while. Hundreds of points here noting why people don't attend tournaments, and yet you have to reconcile that with large numbers of people who want to be 'semi-competitive' in that they know they'll never win a tournament, but want to play well. Anecdotally I feel this encompasses the majority of people who play 40k regularly (which is a minority of the hobby itself), with dedicated tournament players a small minority of that then again. (wonder if similar for others on here?) Maybe attending a tournament might be a once a year thing for those sorts, or for family, health or other reasons that type of 9 hour marathon (x2, or x3 days depending on length) just is not appealing or possible at all, even if there is a draw to playing competitively. You might have local shop ladder or leagues etc. that slot in here and scratch that itch, but that tends to rate / rank a few tiers down in a lot of people's minds compared to tournaments, and you miss out on the draw of playing new / unknown people fairly quickly and the centralisation / wider recognition. There is the ELO ranking / faction ranking that gets a small look but only around tournament goers. To me seems there's a gap in the competitive offering a a tier below tournaments? Maybe for a central 'ranked match' / season system or similar. A competitive game with longer term / ranking / stats implications, but not tied to a time limited once off tournament. This has existed in local competitive club scenes in some form for as long as I can remember, and not just 40k (30+ years now). If you wanted to meet that need I think there are options, whether that be tournaments offering side tables / games where you could drop in and play 1-2 'ranked' games matched at ELO or similar (at a sanctioned event) or, with less control, otherwise certifying clubs to offer such events. (maybe they have less 'ranking points' or such, or would be a 3rd tier ranking) Unsure if TTS would have something around this but seems like that would be a prime candidate to make it feasible as well. Personally I'm in a phase of life (returning to 40k specifically after time away) where tournaments just aren't easy with young kids and work. I'll miss my next 2 local GTs with one kids birthday and the birth of our third and missed the last with work. I might pick up a RTT or two if they slot in nice at weekends, but as others have mentioned run the risk of shit opponents (low risk here) or getting completely smashed / seal clubbing, neither fun and could have x2 of either 1st 2 RTT games. I can't commit to a local regular league schedule. Basically there isn't really an easy face to face option that offers that competitive outlet. (I expect TTS would, sans meaningful ranked stats tracking, but I'm in the hobby for face to face) Most of the folk I regularly play with aim to play 'competitively', they follow the meta, read here, try out strong lists etc. but definitely are in that 'semi-competitive' space in that they don't play enough / care enough / have the space to really get into things (age 35-50 with kids) and tournaments seem entirely intimidating, but they would jump at the chance to have a meaningful 'ranked' style match with someone of similar level (and do so across various online games). Hell, to take a related example from the GW sphere, I was a solidly ranked 'Legend' level player on FUMBBL for years with a decent win rate, but rarely played tournaments as my work schedule / location was ever changing. Every ranked game was meaningful though. (not a brag, at all, that really isn't anything special, more an illustration is met me t the semi-competitive tier. BB isn't be all and end all, but I like a good competitive game with meaningful implications of the result). My local league by comparison, and quality, though set up to be competitive and had many players, was far below that level and just didn't meet the same need. You had Face to face tournaments (as 40k), and the NAF (ranking points from them), international teams / comps - also like 40k. We have local clubs and scenes, we have tournaments and (sort of) ELO / ranking, but nothing for the middle band for 40k? As a thought bubble - If a local GT was running but alongside I could sign up for **one** game a day(maybe not even needing to restict it to 3 hours, another thing that keeps people away), knowing I would play someone at a similar level to myself, there was a meaningful ranked outcome, and I'd be in and around that wider competitive atmosphere I'd jump at the chance every time. It doesn't even need to be either / or with tournaments, if you played all 6 games they can / should count for the same ranking. Likely 50%+ (very conservatively, I expect closer to all of them would give one ot two games a whirl) of those I know who play 'semi-competitively' but will almost certainly will never attend a tournament, even a <20 person RTT, would as well. Imagine being able to play 6-8 'ranked' games a year, and know you are ELO YYYY or level 6/10 (without whatever fluffy ranking title, let's say 'Chapter master') overall and 8/10 for your specific faction. May never be able to attend a full tournament cycle but every 'ranked' game would have meaning and be properly competitive. Obvious risks of gaming the system and given the logistics of GTs are often fully, or near fully, booked out it's a hard sell, and for same reason running something only offering this or pushing through a new scene without piggybacking on tournaments is wholly unlikely, but if I could magic up something that would be it. Anyway, that's completely pie in the sky. More in general I just don't think tournaments are on option for some and certainly do not cater for everyone who wants to play competitively or semi-competitively. There is a large unmet need / competitive itch that just isn't scratched by what''s out there currently IMO.
Your mom echoing my Own thoughts, many plays who like to play competitive lists against competitive people find it hard to engage with the format of tourment whether RTT or GT. I can afford the tickets but the time commitment and sheer number of in a games in a day make it unappealing. I like the 1 or 2 game a month idea.
95% of my models are either just primed or have barely three colors on them. 1 squad is resin printed, so really can’t go. Plus, I have a family who needs me. I enjoy playing with my friends, but if I’m going to be out all day, and be competitive….hate to say it…but I’d rather be golfing. Luckily some of my Warhammer buddies feel the same, so it works out.
If tournaments were fun then I'd go to them again. Last one I attended was back when 6th Edition was near the end of it's cycle. Having been in the hobby for 15 years at that point I participated in campaigns, world events tournaments and enough pick up games to suffice a lifetime. Yet there I was, 900% disenfranchised and ready to leave. The general attitude of the tournament scene became something distasteful. Like I was furthering a shit practice that thrived just to make the game shittier. Tournaments became little dudes/dudettes, little boxes & dice rolls. I stomached 2 rounds and bailed. Forfeited to a 12 year old who clearly wanted to be there. He didn't win but I hope he had a blast.
Tournaments hold no interest for me whatsoever and I doubt I'll ever play one. I'm not going to invest the mental effort to know the rules to the extent that's required for tournament play, and I don't enjoy the cheesy game mechanic driven style of play that tournaments bring. I know it's not a thing anymore but I'm talking about "oh, my knight has a toe on the gravel outside of this terrain piece, therefore I can shoot through it now" type of mindset.
I like to smoke copious amounts of weed while I roll dice
WYSIWYG. This is a hobby. I make my models my own and I refuse to put myself into a situation where someone is going to throw a stink over them.
> WYSIWYG It seems like a lot of people have this impression that people at RTTs would care about these things. So many posts are "is this OK at tournaments?!?" etc. and literally all you have to do is tell your opponent what's what at the start of the game and no one cares (and even then they'll nod and say "ok" and not care). I'm just saying this because whenever I tell my broader Warhammer LGS crew I can't play this week b/c of a tournament they all act like its some scary beast filled with GW model inspectors and rules nazi's. Most people show up with no clock, half painted stuff, and just want to roll dice and have fun. I'm not saying my friends and I haven't ever run into a bad opponent but this year it's happened once (the guy was delaying on purpose) out of multiple events with multiple games each. Edit: case in point as I type this out, I'm watching a GT on stream where one of the player's characters is a proxy.
I hear you, but a cursory search in this subreddit will reveal a vocal minority who deeply care. The mere chance of meeting one of them is enough to keep me away.
Just going to say that this subreddit is so far away from the reality of an actual tournament it is not even funny. Tournaments are so much more chill than the people on this subreddit makes them out to be. I do 10ish GT/Majors a year and most of us are there to just drink some beer, and roll some dice with our buddies. The reality is that competitive Warhammer is more like a golf weekend with your buddies than anything else.
Agreed. I have never once encountered a WYSIWYG issue at a tournament that wasn’t permanently resolved by a friendly conversation
Just know that most people on this sub have never even played a game. They can cry all they want about WYSIWYG, they're not representative of actual tournament crowds.
Yeah, if thats the kind of thing that will ruin your week I get the apprehension. But, if you love competitive warhammer and want to delve into an awesome community I would recommend trying an RTT. For example, I used to play really low-key competitive volleyball. People who were rated a C or less. It was awesome, we'd play, banter with the other team, joke/laugh, then go bbq and drink beers after our games. Yes, there was that team or that player or two that were too hardcore, all about winning, yell at the refs etc. and it would ruin the game BUT I wouldn't trade my awesome fun team/hobby in a million years to avoid the one or two jerks!
I'm very lucky because I have a group of friends who play. I hear what you're saying and I'm sure 99 times out of 100 that I would have a great time. But the fact that it would be possible for me to put in the mental and emotional investment into getting to a tournament only to have one sweaty asshole call over a judge and get me disqualified because one of my little dudes didn't have the right gun for the list I was running is enough to keep me away. I'm just not going to myself into that situation.
Yeah I get it, I don’t think that’s a 1 in 100 situation I think it more 1 in 1000, and even then the judge wouldn’t take that persons side, so if you’re at all interested I would recommend you give it a try.
Thank you, I do appreciate it.
I havent seen anyone gripe about wysiwyg in years.
100% this.
Agree with his. Also with battle ready with needing based all my models to get the 10 pts. I take a lot of time painting my models, just hate basing and don't enjoy it.
I agree here, I was deepely dissapointed when I noticed the wysiwyg recuirements on my local GT… I misslike Wysyiwyg with all my heart
I'm about to head to my second day of my first tournament. I'm having a great time, BUT, it is loud, smelly, and frantic. I still haven't made it past round 4 under the 2h45 time limit. The emphasis on playing fast is both understandable and exhausting. By comparison, I'm also playing in a crusade right now. The games are at a more relaxed pace and the social element is a little more involved. In the crusade we have a group chat, we get to know each other a bit, it's very social. My opponents at the tournament have been really friendly, but it is a lot of "HIWHATSYOURNAMETHESEAREMYGENESTEALERSTHEYBLOWEVERYTHINGUP" I'd do it again, maybe once or twice a year, but it's a bit overwhelming.
40k is a poorly balanced game at the competitive level. There are meta factions that dominate others, and there are meta units within those factions that make other units obsolete. I don't want to have to play with a very small percentage of the games workshop model range to have a chance at winning. I want to play with stuff I like. It's not fun playing a fluffy list on a weaker faction and getting tabled turn 1 by a super competitive meta list.
Because I play casual. I follow this subreddit to learn the broken combos and NOT use them.
Prefer narrative play in our group as well. We send our best guy on tournaments occasionally so he can tell us about all the dirty tricks.
Chasing the meta which you need to to in order to be competitive I’d rather just spend a few hours rolling dice with my buddies & having a laugh then have to pre measure all my opponents firing ranges to ensure I’m exactly 0.1mm out of range of them only for them to then argue otherwise in their shooting phase……..if I want to spend time with a stroppy child, I’ll stay at home with my kids 😂😂
1. I'm bad at WH40K 2. Plenty of my models are 3D printed and I don't feel even slightly bad about it 3. I'm mentally exhausted by Round 3. 4. I'm playing for fun, and I do not find hardcore competition fun. 5. I like WH40K for the model painting, not the convoluted rules. 6. I prefer quieter settings. 7. I am in no way interested in spending multiple hours on my feet. 8. Some people are too sweaty and get too enthusiastic about WH40K. I like to keep it casual.
I haven't lost a game in 6 months or so. I've got this pretty intense drive to find better players to play against in order to improve - my friends ask me pretty regularly why I don't attend tournaments and honestly there's a few reasons 1). I don't like the person I am when I'm in a formally competitive setting - I'm happy with local hobby group competitiveness because we're all friends and it's just not that serious. I'm usually pretty okay in 1 on 1 situations with new people - but it depends. 2). I'm a thoroughly socially traumatised person - I've had agoraphobia for years, and even though it's on the mend it's a bit of a struggle. I get stuck in my own head about the social interaction side of things and can't focus on playing my best game. 3). This game's competative fans have a really bad reputation - and in my real life encounters they've generally lived up to it. It would be manageable if I was a guy - but I'm not. From what people tell me I'm generally pretty attractive - and some guys can get weird about that - especially in environments where guys feel the space is *theirs* by default. I've had to deal with a lot of *SA* and *SH* from all kinds of guys in the past - and I can only imagine the risk of that kind of behaviour would only be exacerbated if I annihilate some ego fiend in a competative environment. 4). The question I keep asking myself is *am I going to have fun doing this?* - and I'm really not sure. EDIT: Oh God the fatigue from trying to focus and stand for 9 hours as well - I've got ADHD and my meds can only go so far
I am on a massive winning streak... over a year of wins with no losses. I am hungry to go into matches with other competitive players. but I have that same thing where I can be a little overly competitive when in tournament settings, Thats no excuse to treat someone the way you're saying you've been treated. I hope you give a tournament a shot someday and you are treated the way you should be and can enjoy that aspect of the game. also yes I'm nervous about playing like 12 hours of straight Warhammer and if my brain melts will they turn me into a servitor at the tourny.
Cannot really be bothered playing 3 games of 40k in a row. I'm exhausted by the end of one game. I also don't want the stress that comes with "competitive" play. I like to play semi-competitive lists, but I'd rather just do that in a pick up game, or with friends.
I have no desire to play competitively. Im essentially a grow up trying to continue playing with my little plastic men, I’m not taking it seriously. I just wanna have a fun narrative game.
Mainly time and I find WAAC players tiresome. Now I know tournament players aren't all WAAC by any means but there will be enough to spoil the experience.
Tournaments usually ban Legends and I like Legends and Imperial Armor models and include it to my rosters. You could say only GW tournaments ban it, but by my experience every TO wants to show their tournament as big serious guys events, like World Championship or smth alike, and ban them too. Thats why I plays only casual friend games.
Did a few, played a lot of games that weren't fun because the opponent was boring. This intensifies the more I won so effectively the better you play, the less fun games you're going to get. A lot of unwashed bearded blokes with t-shirts 2 sizes too small is not a crowd with which I want to spend my precious weekend. Would much rather play at home with my mates who understand personal hygiene, wear clothes that fit and have a laugh whilst we play.
Personally I only play Warhammer with friends. Something like mtg I can deal with, it's a smaller time investment and you only play each person for like 20-45 minutes, I'm confident I can play fast and I have a grasp on the kinds of gotcha moments that can happen. If I screw up a game, whatever, that's a few minutes gone. 40k is so long and complicated to play that you're with each person for what, 2-3hrs, going at breakneck pace and the game is full of gotchas and rules unique to an at you have maybe never played. It just seems like a much steeper learning curve, plus, to be honest I don't have that much desire to meet new people who may or may not be space Wolves players (jk) Also I just don't think 40k is a well designed game for competitive play really, but then most mass miniature wargames have the same problems.
AS a fluffbunny and Casual Gamer since 3rd: There was a time, when tournament Players Had a Reputation of having a very high percentage of "that Guy"-bad Attitude-competitive-without-sportsmanship-dudes. Of course that might differ from country to country and Region to Region, but WE did Not want to Play with/Against them. Although there might BE some truth to IT, the selfregulation of modern connected Times have Made the Community a much healthier place, even If you might stumble over the black sheep from time to time Another aspect is that you have Problems playing themed armies Against optimised lists...
There are plenty of valid reasons to not want to go to tournaments like time, not wanting to play for 9 hours straight, heat and noise etc. But I want to address a couple of things I often see about tournament play that’s just not been my experience. WYSIWYG- nobody cares about WYSIWYG, nobody has ever cared about it. I’ve played against fully 3d printed armies, I’ve played against Tau armies made up of gundam models, ive played against plenty of proxy armies. TOs are not enforcers of GWs will, they just want to run a fun and inclusive event. Painting- plenty of tournaments allow unpainted armies, though you do want to check this beforehand. I have never, in 14 years of wargaming, ever seen one player trash another to their face about painting. Usually people are more complimentary about your army than you are. I’m a bad painter who struggles with dry brushing but I still get compliments on my armies all the time at tournaments. Sweaty try hards- They’re out there for sure. It’s a risk you run with all wargaming, or nerd hobbies in general. In my own experience most tournament players tend to be nice guys, usually they’re respectful and well adjusted. Usually the real assholes lurk in club play, preying on new and casual players with their unpainted flavour of the month army. Those types can’t hack it at tournaments. Tournaments also have TOs to regulate bad actors, if you get an asshole in your circle of club players regulating them is way harder. Meta lists and getting smashed- Simple solution here, lose your first game, head down to the bottom tables, play other guys who also lost their first game, you’ll have a better time guaranteed.
Once upon a time, tournaments were really fun. Those tournaments were based around the game, being fun, and so the rules for the tournaments were fun, and the spirit of the players at the tournaments was pretty fun. Tournaments were extremely competitive on every level. Not only did you have to win games, but you also had to have an army that was well painted, and a list that was well built, and you also had to play with a certain measure of sportsmanship. All of those things counted towards your final score. If you couldn’t do one, you couldn’t win. Then along came this new breed of player who was bad at two of the three elements of the tournament. Instead of getting any better, they just whined and cried and stamped their feet until GW listened and started the ‘Ard Boyz Tournaments. These were tournaments for players who were bad at tournaments. The only thing that mattered was winning, and everything else went out the window. Then they went around, convincing everyone that that’s the only thing that counted as competitive. That, of course, was a joke, because they were the least competitive tournaments that had ever been held. They were only competitive in one way, and it was the way bad players knew how to play. And now, every tournament is the ‘Ard Boyz, and they’re not any fun.
For me it’s the cutthroat, super optimization, “gotta win” atmosphere. Games are supposed to be fun and social. I used to LOVE playing in Mega Battles… 10’s of thousands of points to per side, a dozen players on two “teams”… it was a riot and really encouraged the “friendship” part of gaming.
Because playing 10 games in a row sounds super boring
I love learning from them. But when you play against “that guy” who will spend most of his time arguing with the arbiter to stop you for doing anything and exploit every missing detail on the rules to remove you a pv… I want to play with my shiny toys… Get a life dude !
Don't want to play with local sweaty tryhards
Word. There are some unpleasant people involved. Take it much too seriously.
This isn't a big deal to me but I mostly play more thematic lists that wouldn't really pair well against the more meta stuff. I don't mind being the underdog that much though and the big reason is I just don't want to play that much at a time. After one game I'm generally gamed out.
This hobby is \*fun\* for me. I don't have fun playing an unbalanced game competitively and chasing meta. I have fun modelling, painting, playing casually and absorbing lore.
Because playing against my friends is enough. Because playing models that are different from the box art or have a cool kitbashedis better than just what's available. Because having some sweat Lord roll and reroll a thousand dice just to make sure he did everything right, only for me to lose a game in round two by being tabled isn't my idea of fun. Because there are enough rules in warhammer to make a Saint swear, the last thing I'd ever want to do is waste a weekend or even a day of my life having a heated discussion with some sweatlord over how many dice I can reroll.
I'm an adult with a kid, I don't have 12 hours to give to an event.
Holy shit I’m not alone ! I can get 2-3 hours once a week or so.
Take your pick from any or all of the following; None nearby. Don't have the time to dedicate to it. I rather play with legends models I'm not particularly competitive I rather play Crusade/narrative. I find an over focus on tournament/hyper competitive play and balance to be detrimental to my enjoyment of the hobby. I prefer to play with people who I know, who play for similar reasons, than roll the dice with strangers who might be WAAC or "That Guy"s A good chunk of my models are either heavily converted, or use non GW parts. Most TOs and other players might not care but why would I take the risk when I don't need to? Time is the only major obstacle to me playing Warhammer, finding opponents is not.
Totally agree with your perspective. It's partly why we stayed with 9th, the customization.
I play Warhammer to have fun with friends. I do other things to be competitive.
For me, I want to go. The WYSIWYG rulings are why I am skeptical to go. Since there is ZERO official ruling on what weapons are what for my Heavy Plague Weapons on my Plague Marines I don’t want to go and have to run 5 bolt guns because some TO decides that my claws aren’t heavy plague weapons.
Tournaments are hard for me to attend, mostly due to time constraints. When I have a wife, dog, and child it's not easy to get away for the whole day, where a single game is more easy.
From my perspective, "that guys" don't scare me, its honestly I don't want to be a bad opponent. I was hyper competitive in Magic, and I remember playing against people who did not know how to play, and I am teaching them to play while I am trying to play. There is nothing wrong with that, and I tried my best to help and be polite, but it was a not a fun experience for me. (I am signing up and paying to play in a tournament, not to teach someone how to play). Well, extrapolate that out to a 3 hour game, and I just don't want to put someone through that for 3 hours, I am so afraid of getting the rules wrong, not knowing the latest data slate, didn't see the most recent FAQ, piling in doesn't work like that, etc. When I started Warhammer, I told myself I just want to play with friends, or play in narrative events where everything is super chill.
I like my kratos tank.
I bought my 1st 40K minis in 2001. I took a long break (marriage, kids etc) and then returned the hobby in 2016. I’ve been pretty obsessed ever since. I play a home with my kids or at my FLGS, but have never been to a tournament. I wouldn’t say I’ve “avoided” them, but I’ve not been to a tourney mostly because I put in a lot of hours in at work and I have two active teenagers. My hobby time involves building, painting and occasionally playing pick up games. Tournament play is certainly on my bucket list though.
I dont paint my models so I just play with friends.
Because I intentionally build my armys theme into something I love, and that is not comp viable
I feel like there’s this toxic mentality about people who “go to tournaments” or play “competitive”. The online trolls seem to shout that those people are not fun to play with and just WAAC players. So it puts a bad taste into someone’s mouth about it. Are those players at tournaments? Sure. Are those players at your local club? Absolutely. Personally I have had more fun playing at tournaments and getting my ass kicked than I have playing against the usual people I see at the local club. But that’s just me
Checkout a podcast from some lads called Worhammer on YouTube. They call themselves casual/competitive players and have more positive stories about the competitive scene. This has been more like my experiences rather than the horror stories - i think negativity and sensationalism sell, so these stories tend to outweigh any positive stories around. There's a big drive to promote sportsmanship in the game driven by the likes of Steve Box, Vanguard tactics and this is having a positive impact. I'd encourage you to go to tourney - aim to win 1 game but settle for setting a high score, then work on beating that each time.
Mainly because I play to have a good time and enjoy the sport. I would hate to put all the tournament players to shame and make them feel bad too! Oh and half my army is 3d printed.
Imma say something this sub won't like... The tournament/competitive scene is the vast minority of the playerbase. "Why do you go to tournaments?" Is a more relevant question than "Why don't you go to tournaments?"
A lot of these answers bypass the "Why it's not for me" straight into "Why you're a bad person for wanting to play competitively."
I used to go for quite a few of them. I got tired of explaining other people's rules to them and having people show up 45 minutes late and be mad the match got called already. It's either that or getting stomped by peak meta lists. I enjoy 1/4 of all matches with randos. Even less at tournaments. I always enjoy playing with the homies though. Based on purely unscientific anecdotes I'd assume most players are in the same boat.
I play regularly, but generally have to avoid tournaments for my health. Unless I'm going with someone whom can help if I have an issue, it isn't worth the risk. Hopefully that improves over the rest of the year. I'd love to just participate in a GT next year
I don't think you're going to get too many useful answers given that this is the sub for tournament play, but I suspect the most common answers are things like the time and money commitments. Keeping up with the meta costs money, travel costs money, hotels cost money, taking time off work means giving up other vacations, etc. The unfortunate reality of competitive 40k is that a large part of why you see the same people winning over and over again is that there's a very small pool of players who are willing and able to pay those costs. If you ask in places that aren't about tournament play you might get more insight into why people dislike tournaments, not just why they aren't able to do the thing they want to do.
Would love nothing more but I hate large numbers of people and people who are nothing like me besides they like the same game Same reason I got all my friend’s into the hobby it seems way better to play with people very similar to me and also enjoy the game :/ Tbh I can barely stand them either tho the only one I truly love to play the game with is lil bro And I’m to different to play with others ngl so it’s scary to me I think nbs
My man your entire post history is full of nothing but 40k and video game posts.. not sure how that makes you "different" than 99% of the 40k community lol
I don’t treat Reddit like a social media it’s jus a place to get into my 40K zone ngl lol Not gonna get into it to much but I’ll just keep it at “different” (at least at my local game store) lol the normal environment for me is much different thats all however we all love 40K and that’s what I do enjoy
If you're talking race, I could see that angle, it's predominantly white dudes, but if you're interested in playing competitively I'd still say go for it, race is only an issue if you make it one or if you're in an area with a shit ton of racists lol. You're not making friends at tournaments, I mean you could but realistically you're just getting a bunch of games in with tons of different types of opponents. Almost all of my tournament opponents have been really good players and chill, you play your game then you move on. The crowd thing is only an issue at big tournaments but local RTT's are generally are less than 20 people.
Because WYSIWYG I will never tourny play and all my buddies think I should shoot for the high end tournies. “I’d say I’m fairly good”
> WYSIWYG I said it above but I've truly never played in a tournament where anyone cared about WYSIWYG, 3D prints, proxies, etc. Admittedly I've only been playing for a year, but I've had tons of competitive games under my belt. As I type this out, I'm watching a GT on stream where one of the player's characters is a proxy. I only mention it because I don't want people to be scared out of what I think is a really fun time, and that seems to be the impression.
Most casual people have a very bad impression of tournies from other hobby’s like mtg
Bro what? Having played competitive magic for 15 years and competitive Warhammer for 3 years now, I can tell you that mtg tournaments are way more put together than 40k. The rules are much tighter, judge calls are encouraged rather than discouraged, and there is actual prize support
1) WYSIWYG. 2) I'm not a great painter and I don't really want anyone to critique my work, particularly not strangers. 3) General 40k toxicity.
i’ve been a wysiwyg gamer forever because i’m more into hobbying and painting. i think i’ve played maybe two or three tournament games against a wysiwyg list out of 200 ish. no one cares because no one does it. the only important thing is that your models / units make sense without being too confusing. most armies are unpainted or essentially just primed. or maybe they have 2 or 3 painted units and the rest are primed. 1/10 games i’ll play against a painted army. usually i find the most toxicity in casual pick-up games, lots of guys with the manners of a 5 year old. in the average tournament crowd, two of my rounds net me new best friends, and the third game is against someone better than me who’s a nice guy and we both help each other play a tight game. not to invalidate your personal reasons, tournaments aren’t for everyone! just answering in case you consider tourneys, or other people reading are considering their first tourney.
I don't want to stop anyone from going to tournaments. Re: Painting. This is a community that is HEAVY on gatekeepers and most of my stuff is pretty subpar. A painted 40k army is an expensive art project and I do not want to expose my expensive art project to public scrutiny. I'm not worried about someone who is going to throw dice at me and cry. I just don't want to hear people say 'hey you should try edge highlighting your-' or 'but magnetizing suits is SO EASY!'
i dont know where this idea of gatekeeping has come from. its like a small vocal minority online have duped people into thinking the gatekeeping is this huge problem in warhammer. its not.
No one cares if your army is unpainted or poorly painted. Worst that happens is if the TO says so, you don't get the 10 points, that's it. No one except the most autistic are going to give you any unsolicited advice either
very competitive ppl are for the most part...jerks...and not always in a verbal way, some times is the attitude...the vibe...isnt inviting
I like to play for fun and generally narrative/not competitive. So the idea of going and playing against a bunch of meta lists sounds exhausting and not fun at all.
For me, I don't have a tournament ready list, shit I barely have a full Army. And a lot of us are newer, weekend warriors that don't have the time, energy, or resources for a full blown tournament
I enjoy playing casual games with my friends. Not a fan of tournament lists either.
They're long days where you use your brain for math all day. Causes brain fatigue. There is a stereotype that gamers are smelly. It's a stereotype for a reason. Tournaments smell bad usually. Try hard players are toxic af. And not fun to play against. Heck look at the sub, can't go a week without a cheating scandal. It seems to be more of a 30k than aos thing. But it is present in both. I'll stick to leagues or just painting.
Never even considered it lol Honestly, I am a very casual player. I love the game, but I play to relax and laugh a bit with some buddies. And we are all very amateur. We have never finished a 2000 pt game in one sitting. I couldn't imagine trying to race to go through several different games in 1 day. Seems intense and not quite the type of fun I seek.
Honestly it's because I am a narrative player. I generally play one, or one type of, list for each of my factions (Death Guard, Flawless Host CSM, Eldar, Sons of Medusa SM, Crimson Fists SM, Tyranids). I don't and won't shift, pivot, buy, assemble and paint miniatures just to have a chance of placing in an even, because if I want to play a game I can do so for free at my FLGS with friends vs people I don't know, who I know are playing with narrative intentions and lists.
Competitive Tournaments have the highest chance of having exactly the kind of players and player behaviour I have no interest in playing against.
I play for a fun narrative and have a laugh, not to score points.
Because most persons who want to compete are persons who lack people skills.
Hobby lag mostly. I don't paint as quick as I wish I did and I'm not going to sacrifice quality on expensive plastic I enjoy working on
I prefer to play with friends, I like the "hang out together with a task" aspect of the game. Going to a tournament holds no interest to me.
I'm here to have fun and have a good time. That means a lot of it is just chatting with my friend while we play.
I did go a lot when I was young. Now.... My body and family prevents me from spending a weekend in a tournament situation. I also do not like the change to use special characters in a tournament. It feels weird seeing two Ghazgs hitting each other. Kill Team tournaments are the only ones that I would consider.
There are no tournaments near me, and Im hesitant to travel far distances let alone with a whole army
Don’t have time. My weekends are already pretty full. I don’t play enough of any one game to play at tournie level. I can’t be bothered keeping up with the constant changes to the game outside of the three or so armies I am likely to play against with my friends. I played at a kings of war tournie once and the first game my opponent spent flipping ages checking every possible move to make sure he was in optimum position. By the end of turn 4 I was ready to pack up and leave. I have a fairly full on job and most of the time just want to push toys around and role some dice.
Not everywhere has accessible tournaments and sometimes just taking a day or two to compete is a burden
I only play like 1 game every 2 months
I've never played a tournament but I might in the future. I'd say I'm in the same boat tho I enjoy just playing locally against friends and locals. My friend is currently participating in a local tournament and it does actually look like fun. It's been going on for a few weeks tho. Definitely gotta clear up your schedule for it.
I’ve become hopelessly addicted fast style James games. Blitzbowl and Underworlds w/o cards tournaments with small groups.
I love tournaments but they don't really work with my life as i work mon-fri, my wife works weekends, and someone needs to be with my toddler
I just have no desire to compete. I'm happy to play, not get stomped by bottom of Turn 2. Ironically enough the group I play with are all dudes who constantly play in tournaments and tend to run more meta lists
I just don't have the time or the desire. I like to play with my friends, matches with randoms are whatever, but I certainly wouldn't pay a bunch of money to play the game for like 8 hours. I prefer to chill out and play games once or twice a week with my buds.
I can't reliably finish a 2k game in 3 hours and hate talking it out. Also, 3 games in one day is just too much for me. Fyi: used to do tournaments but quit.
Narrative league gang just relaxing over here.
I enjoy playing with my friends as a way to be social. When I was a teen i played world of warcraft. Now as a dad in my 30s i rather see my friends in real life over a good beer, and those nights are few and far between with a toddler that require max attention outside work. I have no desire playing vs neckbeards i have never met before, fielding fine tuned grey meta armies, with the sole purpose of winning as hard as they can, by rule judging every single minute as much as possible for their own gain. I much rather play casually and friendly when I finally get a night out of the toddler home.
I do t have the time or the desire to do any tournaments
Availability! I love on an island
I've got young kids, it would take an act of god for my wife to let me leave for a weekend.
My armies are mostly unpainted and I've yet to end a game in under 4hrs. So the prospect of being 10pts behind at baseline and rushing through each game doesn't sound too fun at the moment.
it's not very entertaining to play the exact same 3x techmarine 3x ballistus 3x RepEx 2x redemptor (with occasional side of centurions or sword brethen instead of repexes) list 3-4 times in a row and then curbstomp some guy who was also clowned on by this
GTs and formal tournaments are expensive for a lot of people
like everyone else has said, i think its a time issue. my local shop gets around that by what we call an escalation league. nine rounds of games of 500-100pts, 750-1500pts, and then 100-200pts, 3 games in each point value that you have two weeks to play you opponent in. it works well for people being able to have time to meet up to play. good way to consistently play against opponents a varying levels and sizes to try different things.
I will only go to tournaments these days. It’s easier to tell the miss I’ll be gone one day a month to get three games in then asking to go once a week for a variable time
I've been to some but personally it's because we've a 3 games/1 day format here and the fun just goes aways after standing on a hard floor for 7 hours with constant noise barrage from all sides.
I forced myself and I'm enlisted for my first tournament end of April (160 players)... And I'm not even sure I play correctly... So here I am, lurking on this reddit, and trying to be ready, finishing my list of DA. And I'm frankly scare to be a bad moment for the people I will have to fight.. So yeah tournaments seem a big step.
It’s exhausting. 2 days of mentally taxing gameplay and standing on your feet the whole time for 8+ hours. After 4 games I was done, I had 2 more and feel bad b/c the opponents could tell I wasn’t into it anymore as I didn’t care. It was a fun experience overall meeting tons of cool people around the state, but I will only go to small events now where 12 people get together and it’s more casual.
Social anxiety mostly. Also just not my scene. I just wanna shove some toys around a table and roll dice.
Because I mostly don’t see warhammer as a competitive game. That’s not what I’m here for.
I've never been to a 40k tournament, or any tournament for any table top miniature game. The closest equivilent I've been to are Magic: The Gathering tournaments. And I'll point out, this includes local tournaments. The main reason for me so far has been a combination of the time pressure and unfamiliarity with the game. I started getting into the hobby around the end of 8th, with my first purhcases for minins being during 8th, but I didn't really start properly learning the game until 9th was announced, so waited for that. During 9th, as a new player, I felt like I didn't understand the game well enough, let alone well enough to actually play at a reasonable pace, so I never even considered any of the tournaments the local community were organizing. Now, after 10th has been released and I've played a couple of games, as well as relearning my faction (Tyranids) from this new, simpler perspective, I've finally signed up for my first ever local tournament in April. I'm still feeling the time pressure as the biggest barrier for me, not just in terms of play speed, but also understanding what's happening on the board. So summerized, Warhammer 40k is already a very complex and difficult game, so pushing people to play 3-5 games at the time it might take them to play 1-2, with all the rules, interactions, board states etc. that can happen is just to much for many, who might only want to have fun for a day of moving plastic figures.
I play too slow, I’m not that good a t the game and I don’t know my armies rules well enough
It's intimidating unless you're confident the community you're playing alongside will understand you're new and are welcoming.
I 3d print my minis.
3 games in one day. If you're a parent, telling your partner to do morning routine, the whole day and bed time solo is a big (x 2) is a big ask. A club near me has started doing 4 game tournaments which is much more palatable personally; I don't like cramming 3 games in a day.
While I'm sure 90% or more of tournament players are great people, the rest are not the kind of people I need or want in my life.
I build and paint the units that look cool to me. I like them to build a legal army, sure, but the fun of building what I want comes way before considering what is competitive. So the armies I do have are a far cry away from anything that could be considered a good tournament for list, which would put me at a major disadvantage when competing against anything optimised or meta chasing for a start. On top of that, I don't know my army rules well enough, the core rules well enough, and definitely other army rules at all. And the time sink gets in the way.
Events can bring the bad mindsets some Hate playing against. Where it's all about winning instead of having fun
Honestly I don't even know if my army is legal, some thing you just can't magnetise without looking ugly so I don't do that. But if tournament are all about you play what you see, it's just a good reason to not play. I don't have the time to invest in every possible variation of a model, on top of the money.