How To Play In Your First Age of Sigmar Tournament

By Wesley Floyd | July 19th, 2018 | Categories: Age of Sigmar, How To Tutorial

With people losing their minds over the ATCs and plastic toys, I’d like to talk about something in a positive light for the newer hobbyist community.

If you’ve been on any hobby site longer than thirty seconds for the past week, you’ll know about the ATC. There were a few bad apples in the group. But that’s just what happens when you have that many people together in one space. noPeople are talking more about the small negative side than the overwhelmingly positive side of the event.

With that being said, I’m going to talk about my journey from being a noob to playing in an Age of Sigmar tournament.

How To Play In Your First Age of Sigmar Tournament

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a dirty Skaven player and if there’s one thing I learned in school, it’s how to procrastinate. Where am I going with all this? Well, I ended up waiting to base eighty Clanrats, nine Stormfiends, and assembling, painting, and basing a Brood Horror until two days before leaving.

I made two best friends on those late nights sitting my couch getting everything up to tournament standard. Their names were Corona Extra and Spotify. They never left my side and gave me the strength to keep basing those Clanrats after I lost all the grip in my fingers because of all the glue runoff. (I never said I was good at hobbying).

I managed to get everything ready just in the nick of time… We actually hit the road with some water-effect epoxy still drying on my Brood Horror. But the risk was calculated and I ended up beating the clock.

A Nooby Wonderland

Considering this was my first time at an event like this, I was a little blown away to see so many people playing everything Warhammer. I was nervous at first but quickly found out that all of the AoS players were total bros and were some of the nicest people I’ve ever met in the hobby.

You’d think that by going to a tournament, the games would be serious and the players would be scrutinizing each other’s lists. That wasn’t the case at all. I laughed with every one of my opponents and we had fun with our games. We weren’t just trying to wax each other’s models, pack up, and move to the next opponent. Everyone took their time, had some laughs, and made new friends.

If you ask me, that’s how every game should be. Not just at the local game stores on a Saturday with your buddies, but even at the pro level.

How did the Noobie Do?

I realized very quickly that I was not playing a top-tier army. There was one list with two Greater Daemons of Tzeentch machine gunning Endless Spells through a portal and crapping out Chaos Spawns for every model he killed…He won turn one.

I got clubbed like a baby seal in two out of three matches but I had a ton of fun. As a Skaven player, it’s your job to enjoy the game regardless of how it’s going. When you DO actually manage to pull off a win, it makes the victory so much sweeter.

Ultimately, no one went home with hurt feelings, nobody was in a bad mood, and everyone became friends. It was definitely worth punishing my liver and listening to all the ads on Spotify to get my army legal to play.

Take it from me, your army doesn’t have to be remotely competitive to pull off a win or enjoy the game. Don’t be discouraged if you’re new to the hobby. Just have fun with it because that’s what the game is all about.

Are you new and want to go to a tournament? Have you had to rebase your models yet? What army do you play? Let us know in the comments of our Facebook Hobby Group.