40 Tournaments

It's now just over a year since I returned to 40k and pretty much a year exactly since I went down to my local club (York Garrison) for the first time. One of things that I quickly discovered were "tournaments", surprisingly these were actually a completely new concept to me (from a 40k point of view) at first as my previous experiences with 40k, and wargaming in general, pretty much took place on someone's dining room table and were often cut short by the need to return the dining room table to the purposes of food consumption. It became apparent straight away though that there are a hell of a lot of these that occur and that they are a huge part of the hobby now. It may well actually be that they were a huge part of the hobby in the early 90s as well but I certainly didnt know about them at the time.

Of the people I've met and played against over the last year there have been quite a few who seem to take these tournaments, and 40k in general, extremely seriously. To me 40k is a very casual game that I play because I enjoy it and I couldnt really care less whether I win the game or not, as long as it is fun. I know that sounds a bit cheesey but some of these people really do take it very, very seriously indeed. Not that there is anything wrong with that, its just that (in my very limited experience so far) quite a few of them also seem to be a very cliquey bunch who dont always have a lot of time or interest in those of us who's lives aren't quite so focused on 40k. Again, there isn't necessarily anything at all wrong with that but it has definitely turned me away from tournaments a bit really as some of these people have just been downright unfriendly and haven't in anyway inspired me to want to play a "fun" game against them.

This post isnt intended at all as an attack on tournament players (I've also met a lot of extremely friendly ones), Its pretty much just a ramble about how I have found things so far and the prompting for me to write it is that I have finally given in and decided to attend a tournament myself this saturday. It's a doubles tournament down at York Garrison and Im partnering up with another Necron player, quite curious to see how it all goes really and once its done I'll try and get something posted on here about it.


"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that"        :-)