Trent's School of Warhammer

I've signed up to an ongoing series of emails from the Golden Boy of Warhammer - Mr Trent Denison - a rambling but ultimately incredibly useful diatribe on some of the intricacies of the Warhammer game. To be honest it's bloody great and I've already come away from it (after three 'lessons') with a deeper sense of understanding about some of the 'hidden' elements of the game (usually hidden in plain sight but hidden nonetheless).

With Trent's permission (and all credit to him for this) here's some of the points I found most valid (so far):

- a review of the Four Stages of Competency (summarised as: you suck but don't know you suck and don't know why; you suck, don't know why, but acknowledge you suck; you suck much less and want to get better; you're good enough to not have to think about the mechanics of the game - ok, Trent put this a whole lot better than I just did).

- Results Focus. In line with the experience of some of my more recent games I am most interested in how to mitigate what looks to be a big loss - turning this into a minor loss or a draw with more conservative play and keeping track of the points balance throughout the game to gauge who is ahead, by how much, and what I need to accomplish in the remaining turns while keeping realistic and achieveable goals in mind.

- drawng on comments from Charles Black's article in IF4 - compulsory reading for all developing generals. The article goes through practically every element of the game in some detail. Awesome read.

- the idea that your preparation before anything hits the table equates to 50% of the game. Army design is a BIG part of this and was fortunate enough to get some great comments back from Trent about my plans for a 2250pt Empire list. As luck would have it he has experience with a list that has some startling similarities (which was immediately heartening) and was able to give me some GREAT advice. Thanks for that mate :-)

- a fantastic outline of various aspects of the movement phase and tactical applications of movment which, essentially, is what will win (or lose) you the game. Some of this stuff I'm doing but not well (at all). Some of it I'd barely considered (at least consciously) and have yet to actively put into play.


I sincerely hope the lessons continue as I'm really getting a lot out of it. Looking at next year I'm planning to get over the ditch for the first time for one of the big Oz tournaments (DogCon looks like the primo option) and I dare hope to be able to play some of the big names of the scene - surely this is where some of the best lessons in Warhammer lie! While I in no way under-rate the competition and player ability here in NZ there's something quite cool about the idea of playing a game against someone like Gav, Traishy, Andrew, Jeff... or Trent.


I highly doubt anyone reading this hasn't seen it but just in case you haven't go to Warpuppy Games and check out A Dogs Breakfast (Trent's vidblog).