Playing All the Games!

I put down my brushes a bit in exchange for lots of playing time these past two weeks. I had 2 games last week and 4 games the week before. After those 4 games in one week, I discovered I'm clearly not yet ready to weather 8 games over 3 days. But I'm working on it.

Purging the universe of Xenos scum!

 I'm trying to play a few games against every army so I can be prepared for anything at NOVA Open. I made a little chart to keep track of my progress. There are 15 armies, so far in my practice I have played against 6 of them, and a few of them more than once. I think I can somehow get on without playing against Space Wolves and I highly doubt I'll play anyone with Sisters (nor do I know anyone I could practice with) so there are 7 left I need to have a go at.

There are suddenly a dozen people in my local club playing Tau, so I don't think I'll have any trouble getting in plenty of games against them. I expect Tau, Necrons, and CSMs to be a large chunk of the armies at NOVA, so I'm going to concentrate on getting extra games in with them. Then I'll probably browse through some of the codexes to get acquainted with the armies a little further.

I usually play against the same 2-3 armies, so making a concentrated effort to familiarize myself with other ones is important. Nothing makes a game harder than not really knowing what you're up against. That's gotten me into a few bad situations before.

When you go to a big tournament, aside from painting the army, what do you do to prepare?