Warhammer 40,000 Mini-Tournament

One of the benefits of being in the military is that there are a large number of hobbyists within the service... additionally there is usually a lot of real estate available to play games in at most garrisons. In fact some of this space is actually large enough for small tournaments to be run by enterprising gamers... which is exactly what a few colleagues and I did recently.

And so it was that a US Navy Commander (who had flown over from an Operational Tour of Duty in Africa to play) and a collection of Royal Navy and British Army serviceman assembled one weekend for a few days of gaming fun.

Each of us brought a force of 100 Power Points to play with and an Army List that would be kept the same throughout the tournament. This force was small enough to ensure games would be quick and simple whilst also being tactically rewarding.

The forces that assembled were as follows:

Dark Angels Space Marines

Crimson Fists Space Marines (My Army)

Genestealer Cult

Imperial Guard (Proxies)

Grey Knight Space Marines

Blood Angels Space Marines

Adeptus Mechanicus

We decided that each player would try and play as many games as possible between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. 

Each victory would be worth three campaign points; each draw would be worth two campaign points and each loss would be worth one campaign point.

As we are all fairly casual gamers the atmosphere was fairly laid back and we focussed on learning the rules and having fun as opposed to hyper-competitive power gaming.

For me a highlight was not only getting my Storm Raven on the table after five years... but also getting it involved in its very first dogfight with another flyer!

It was absolutely great to be surrounded by like-minded gamers in such a friendly and enclosed environment and we all had some great games.

Additionally it meant that we all had the opportunity to play against armies and opponents that we wouldn’t normally be able to. 

As we were all staying in military accommodation we also got to spend the evenings together and so after a few beers in the mess we popped down to the local town for some rather splendid meals in some gorgeous country pubs.



In the mornings we were back at the games tables nice and early to start rolling dice and winning battles.

Finally Sunday afternoon came around (far too quickly) and it was time to tally up the scores and see who had emerged as the mightiest warlord!

Overall victory went to the Dark Angels Player who had managed to win every single game that he had played... And a well deserved victory it was too! 

So with that done we packed up our armies and set off home! 

We have all agreed we’ll meet up again in December for another tournament... but this time around we’ll probably be using the new Kill Team rules that GW have just released! I can’t wait!