Author Archive for MrGoldenDeal

Tournament Prep

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So, despite my sign off last time, I sadly don’t have shiny clockwork minis in my hands. I wasn’t planning on writing another article before Lock & Load, so Boots has made a liar out of me.

Boots, seen here “motivating” his contributers.

Anyways, with convention season for me kicking off into full swing (Lock & Load in a few days, Gencon in August) I figure I’d touch on something that goes hand in hand with conventions: preparing for a tournament. Now, just because I have convention play in mind doesn’t mean that the tips don’t apply to tournaments at your friendly local store. A lot of the advice is equally valid for that, too.

For now, this is basic, big picture advice. There are all sorts of other tricks that I can focus on in later articles, such as considering your meta, list pairings, etc. but I figure that broad strokes about what will give you the best play experience at a tournament (perhaps even your first one) will go the furthest.

“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.”

– Robert H. Schuller

Further Hysterics →

Throwing Down The Gauntlet

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ArtofWarmachine

With Lock & Load looming closer, it’s taken up a lot of my thoughts, particularly the debut of the new world championship: Iron Gauntlet. Being a brand new format, it’ll be particularly interesting to find out how it’ll develop. Will you see the same big names dominating the tournament scene? Will the same lists be prevalent? Only time will tell.

All pertinent information is here (and here is the document. Go ahead and read, I’ll wait). One of the first things that you’ll note is that the world is divided up into several regions. I certainly appreciate the meticulousness of the map, otherwise who knows what chaos would ensue when a player from Greenland or Nunavut entered? But I digress…

After a year of playing in various qualifying tournaments and accruing points, the top 2 players from each geographic region and 8 wildcard players (similar to how the NFL does the playoffs – hopefully nerd cliches don’t always hold true and you have a passing familiarity with sports) are invited to play in the finals at Lock & Load in Seattle. Due to the tracking of player performance over the year, player seeding in the finals is possible, something that I’m a big fan of.

Further Hysterics →

Kaiser Tournamente

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ArtofWarmachine

Hi folks. I’m new to the blog here, but some readers might remember some of my articles on Lost Hemisphere (or most likely not, but I need to milk that internet fame for all it’s worth). I previously wrote articles on the rules of Warmachine & Hordes, analyzed errata documents, etc. but at the moment there isn’t much to write about in that regard. So, as an avid Warmachine and Hordes player, I’m going to write about something near and dear to me: tournaments.

I love Privateer Press’ games because of the high level of competition and mental challenge that it provides, and you’d be hard-pressed to find that in greater amounts than at a tournament. Most people’s tournament experience will be from their local game store, but there’s also the option of travelling to other stores and going to conventions, both of which I’d recommend if you’d like to grow as a player (but I’ll go into that at a later time). Privateer Press has a rather extensive Organized Play section on their web site, but the main four formats that tournaments will fall under are Steamroller, Hardcore, Masters, and Iron Gauntlet. I know a lot of players out there are new to the game or haven’t done much gaming outside of a casual game with friends, so I’m going to attempt to make a tournament primer for y’all.

Further Hysterics →