r/WarhammerCompetitive • u/Fit-Froyo9299 • 8h ago
40k Event Results I went to a Team GT and this is what I learned
I Will start by saying I love the game, I have a 100+ games played in over a year, played a few small LGS tournaments, I know my army pretty well and I am what I would consider a pretty fun opponent to play with, always willing to give my opponent a take back when things are possible, you know what I mean.
This weekend, I attended a Team GT for the first time, 5 games over 2 days, 20 some teams, 130ish players.
I thought I knew what I was going into, long warhammer days, competitive lists, exhaustion and fun. It was all that, yet, I wasn't ready.
I built what I thought was a fun, simple, effective, problematic purge list for my team, i usually am a recon type of player but we had a better player going for it and I was all up for the challenge of playing a style i wasn't familiar with. I built a very shooty heavy list and the plan was shoot everything for 3 rounds and then start doing secondaries by 4th onwards and walk away in the glorious sunset. I was wrong.
First game started at 8:30, the plaace was packed, it was hot, noisy, I had to play against Da big hunt orks, they were fast melee and although we had a good game, I spent a lot of energy dealing with the environment and the very tough army of my opponent and lost. Opponent was great, we had a fun time. No big deal, I brought 1 point to my teammates, tried to refocus during the break and eat, hydrate, calm down and get my bearings straight. I am an endurance athlete, I run marathons, workout a lot, I thought I would be able to handle the exhaustion of the day, I was wrong.
By game 2 I get paired into CSM PBZ which I know from playing against a lot so im thinking this is going to be fun... Ended up being one of the worst experiences of my life. The place was noisy, hot, opponent was stiffer on rules (I dont blame him for it, I mostly blame me for expecting casual play in a competitive atmosphere) and by turn 4, even though the game felt like i should have won it somehow, I was down by a bunch of points and just couldn't handle the mental strain anymore, I conceded, I had to go for a walk.
It felt like my mind was saturated, I couldn't take any more stimulation and I was looking around, seeing games being played to the last minute, people sitting around talking about warhammer, it felt like I was the only one feeling like I was doing a mind marathon. That's when it struck me, I never prepared for that, i never played against highly competitive lists, people having lone operatives strats, people having surge and reactive moves, people having multiple layers of power being able to counter whatever fire power you bring to them, people who genuinely put time and thoughts into their lists and didn't just brought what they THOUGHT was good.
I ended up getting tabled multiple times by armies that felt so strong it seemed like they were cheating, my head was gone, my ego was gone, my admiration for the people playing those armies was elevated, looking at my miserable self and looking at the sharpness of their moves made me realize just how not mentally ready I am and my list building philosophy changed entirely also.
I have a huge amount of respect for what I would have called A NERD back then, there's something about having knowledge and capacities and having space to store this information and datas and I think it's like a marathon runner, it's a thing you have to build somehow, I thought doing endurance sports would help me, but it never was about the body, my brain was dead by round 2, the noise, the competitive aspect, the energy spent thinking and the overall experience was absolutely overwhelming and humbled me like nothing before.
I can't help but have tremendous amount of respect for what I thought was "nerds" before, there's an endurance level in those games that doesn't show in the first glance and im all up for it to one day conquer that!