When 10th Edition dropped for 40k I was not a huge fan of what I saw. I appreciated the free rules and army indexes, but it was clear that the 40k community would be beta testing an incomplete product for the start of 10th Edition. That is why when a friend of mine wanted us to sign up for the Battle of Maryland, a team tournament held in my area every year, I was a little hesitant to join up. I am extremely glad I did not listen to myself because team tournaments are the pinnacle of 40k fun, and this event was no exception.
One of the best things about the team tournament format is that your overall record matters much less. Sure, it is important you win your games, but taking a loss or two during an event doesn’t end your team’s chance of winning or placing well. In singles events, hitting that hard counter to your army can feel really bad since taking a loss basically puts you out of contention to win the event. In a team tournament you might get thrown into that hard counter multiple times in row to give your team a better overall chance at victory. For example, my poor Silver Tide Necrons were thrown to the Aeldari wolves during one of my team’s rounds. The Aeldari player had a ton of units with the Blast rule, making our matchup end right around the end of my opponent’s second turn. If this were a singles event I would have had a lot of time to sit and complain about Aeldari (we can ignore the fact that big bricks of 20 Warriors probably was a poor army list construction choice in the world of Blast), but instead I got to check out my teammate’s games to see if we still had a chance of winning the round. As long as my teammates won their games my sacrifice was not in vain! Rooting for your teammates during a round where you may have been absolutely stomped really takes the sting away from losing so badly.
Speaking of getting thrown to the wolves during pairings, the team tournament gives 40k players the unique experience of trying to choose their matchups. The pairings process of team tournaments is my favorite aspect of these types of events. Sure, it would be nice to pick the best matchups for every player each round, but that just isn’t going to happen. Someone is going to get thrown into a bad matchup, and making sure your team gets the least bad matchups is HUGE is team tournament play. With a three person team the pairings are pretty simple, just make sure 2 out of 3 matchups are in your team’s favor if you can. However, when the teams get to 5 people the pairings get extremely interesting. Some teams create pairing matrixes for 5 player events that include all the possible matchups against a team so they know what their best and worst case scenarios are. For our team event I just listed out the opposing teams and their chosen armies and then asked my teammates what their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices for that matchup would be. Something this simple really saves a team time during the pairings process and can save a lot of arguing/complaining when it comes time to pair.
An extra cool thing the Battle for Maryland does specifically is give out playing cards to all the players at the event that are handed over to your opponent if you lost your matchup. One playing card per team was worth 3 points while the other two were just worth 1 point. The player who had the 3 point card was secret from your opponents, so they did not know who would give them the most points. While this had no affect on the final team standings it was an awesome mini-game for the tournament goers, and I saw many players excited about beating an opponent with a 3 point card. I also saw some players get sad when they realized their opponent had already lost all their cards and would be giving them zero points which was even better to witness. The vibe of, “I took all this time to pair into you, beat you in 40k, and you couldn’t even have the common decency to retain a single card?!”, felt great every time I lost. The player with the most “card points” at the end of the tournament got prize support, and this was a cool way to reward players who were individually doing well at the team event.
40k is far from a perfect game, and it will likely never be the most balanced game on the market. I had a tough time with these facts during the release of 10th Edition. It really negatively affected the enjoyment I got out of the game, but The Battle for Maryland’s team tournament environment really showed me it doesn’t matter how imbalanced or beta-testy the rules for 40k are. 40k tournaments are all about getting together with other nerds who like to move models around a table, and the team tournament environment facilitates the most social interaction with those people. Sure, playing against a single opponent can make for some fun games, but having entire teams around a table really turns the comradery of 40k up to a whole new level. I had an absolute blast playing 40k with my buddies in the team tournament environment despite not loving the current state of the 40k meta (although it seems to be improving rapidly).
If you are looking to get your hands on some discounted 40k product check out the FLG webstore! Don’t forget they also sell second hand models for an even deeper discount on the minis you need. I ordered some Votann models through the second hand shop, and it was definitely the way to go. Cheaper, already assembled, and the models were packaged well so no damaged occurred during shipping.