Forgetfulness in Wargaming

Hi Everybody (Hi Dr. Nick!)

As I was packing my bag up last night, ready for Britcon next weekend, I started thinking about what bits and bobs I needed to take with me, after I'd got the obvious rulebook, codex, figures and so on.

Image Courtesy of: TerraFormTheMoon.com

So over the weekend, as I'm packing, I remember a situation arose a while ago during a game vs Angryman's Tyranids where he had forgotten that one of his Tervigons had cast Feel No Pain on one of his units. At this time, he was just getting to grips with the new Tyranid codex, and I was still as clueless as ever, I just nodded and agreed with what he had said.

So then I thought - What else do I commonly forget during games? And how do I rectify this?

Must-Remember Rules
We're all guilty of doing this at some point "OH noes! I forgot those guys always have a Cover save!" or something along those lines.

Back when I was playing Warhammer Fantasy, I used to print off and bring a "Cheat Sheet" with me to games. This would have bits and bobs on it that I would always forget during games, like remembering that Blessing of the Lady is a 6+ Ward Save, which units can and can't have it, etc.

Markers on Units
Sometimes, with the amount of shooting that's going on in a game of 40k, I find myself forgetting what I have and haven't shot with.

My old system would be to place a dice next to the unit, but I would find myself forgetting in games why the dice was there, picking it up and then rolling it. Then asking whoever I was playing "Have I shot with those guys?".

An idea I had was just to buy a set of dice that are a specific colour and only use those as "Shot" markers. But then I had the brainwave last night to make a set of markers to put next to the unit to remember. All I'm intending on doing is getting some spare Square WHFB bases (so they're easily distinguished) gluing some old weapons onto it, and putting them next to the units that have shot.

It's simple, but it should be enough to jog my memory after a busy day of gaming at a tournament.

Gaming Utensils
There's always one person at a tournament, that when you play them, they've lost their tape measure. I've got no issues with borrowing things to people, I just find 1 tape measure gets left lying around the tables and time gets wasted trying to find it. Bringing a spare tape measure and dice always helps speed the process up.

Combi-Weapons
Admittedly, I rarely use these, but in my current list I'm running my Warboss with a Kombi-Skorcha and I find it's more to help my opponent. I'm intending on magnetising a Skorcha to the Warboss, which can then be removed once the weapon has been fired.

Or failing that, gluing a flamer to a base and moving this around with the Warboss. (Depending on time before Saturday!)

"What does that do again?"
The most common one for me, especially since I've been using my Imperial Guard army recently is the effect of Psychic Powers or Orders. Rather than continually skip to an from pages in the Codex, I'm going to start printing out an "Order Reference Sheet" and making some tokens that I can place next to the units that have recieved orders.

Conclusion
So that's my bit of what I forget during games, or what I really need to keep reminding myself, so I don't waste the 2 hours of alloted tournament game time, when playing an opponent.

The aim is that for each army I want to produce some custom counters to remember the effects of certain things, like Guard Orders, Ork Kombi-Weapons, etc.

What do you guys find you forget during games, especially under the pressure of a tournament environment? Or after a night of extremely heavy drinking?

SB