How to prepare for a tournament- Part Deux

The proper way to get tournament practice games in and the psychology behind it.

As stated in part one of this series that I'm meandering along trying to put out there, you now have your army list picked out, you have what you think is a balanced army that fits well under the tournament setting, well it's now time to.....

Now, how do you go about doing this and making sure that the list/army that you've picked out will work.

well the obvious answer is to get more games in with the list, but I'm going to go a more in-depth analysis about this and HOW you get in these practice games will affect how you play.

Try and practice in an environment similar to what you think will be at the tournament. 

A lot of you reading this are like, What? What the heck are you saying? how do I go about and do this?

If it's a large tournament such as an adepticon, brawler's bash, Redstone rumble, etc.. expect there to be a lot.. and I mean A LOT of distractions. Expect your opponent to have his team/club mates/friends roaming around after the game and talking and discussing their game with your (probable) opponent. Expect visitors walking around asking about what your doing etc especially if they brought someone that is new to the hobby.  This will affect your game plan if your the type (like myself) that can get distracted easily.

In order to minimize your distracting tendencies try and follow these steps in the start of your play testing experience.

1. Play with some of your favorite music in the background. This will simulate a lot of people talking around you, as well as background noise from other players in the tournament. 
2. If there is a group of fellow players around ask them to chat with, but not help out, both yourself and your opponent. This will simulate fellow tournament players who have played their games and are just wondering how their friend/club mate/etc is doing.
3. Play within the time constraints of the tournament as well as simulating a slow player, or a fast player.
4. Try and play in the mindset that you think you will be in at the tournament, whether it be you without a lot of sleep, without a lot of food, or completely drunk off your tookus.

Now, 1, 2 are easy to do. I would like to go more into depth about number 3 and 4.

Playing within the time constraints and simulating different opponent play styles.

We all have that person in the group, that just starting to play their new army, or with a new unit and don't quite have it down to memory. maybe they have spent a lot of time on facebook, twitter, warseer and the likes and just playing a list that someone put up on say a blog or forum post. On the contrast, you have the person that can recite the pages of all the army books like it's second nature.

You will get both of these types of people in a tournament. Sometimes, although unfortunate, you will get the person that knows their army like the back of their hand playing slow or slowing down when they are ahead. To better simulate this, Ask your opponent to pick a random Play style and not tell you what style it is.

How will this help me? Well for starters if you can identify what play style your opponent is using and if they are using stall tactics you can either call them on it, or learn to adapt to the style they are using and use it against them.

For example: If you notice that your opponent starts out going fast, doesn't look at his book for his unit stats, and, for fantasy only, knows what order he is going to cast his magic spells, and all his charges are thought up two turns ahead only for the opponent to start to  look at stats in his book, starts blanking out on what spells he wants and taking upwards of 10-15 minutes per phase of the game to make a decision on what to do, especially when the judge has called 30-45 minutes left in the game, then you will have to counter this slow playing with some of your own.  Take your time to think of your charge reactions, whether you will use your dice for the spell etc. Use his own tactic against him.

Mindset play

Now the last thing I will talk about in this discussion is your mindset that you think that you will be in. It's a known fact that whatever mind set your in at the time of practice you will do better if your in the same mindset under the actual event/test/etc.

This is true for gaming in general. If you know that you are a night owl but the tournament starts at 9 am that you will be half asleep for game 1, semi awake in game 2, and finally fully awake and conscious on game 3, then try and set your mind like that. Try and play a game when your tired, cranky and haven't ate in a while and see how well you perform. If you find yourself making a lot of mistakes, learn to either correct the mistakes on the fly, or learn to adapt to how you play when your mind and body are tired/exhausted/etc


So, This concludes part 2. Stay tuned for part 3 where I'll give help on trying to get the most out of your tournament experience, and how to set goals for yourself.