Games Day: Bring Your Army! 
In addition to the pre-registered games, Games Day also features opportunities for you to bring your own armies and use them on GW's kick-ass scenery. 

Bring & Battles and Mega-Battles
These are Games Day events where you bring your own troops and duke it out with other participants. Now don’t start wetting yourself thinking about how you’re going to field a mighty 6,000 point army loaded up with all kinds of wargear and hoopy stuff like that. Most of these battles are limited to 200-750 points with at least one mandatory unit of Troops. Those size limits may dampen your ambition to prove how you are the overlord of all you survey, but they are a good exercise in streamlining your forces and using what you have to best effect. 

The Bring & Battles are the smaller events; typically, you’re allowed to bring 200 points worth of Troops or one vehicle with no upgrades. These games are like the pre-registered ones in that the scenery and mission are provided, and that you’ll be playing alongside four or five other guys.

The Mega-Battles are slightly larger events: usually each player gets to field a 750 point army following the Standard Missions Force Organization Chart (i.e. minimum of 1 HQ and 2 Troops). Again, not a whole lot of points to play around with, so you have to make the most of what you have. 

Unlike the pre-registered games, there’s no set time: you show up whenever and play for as long as you still have figures on the board. These games aren’t run as strictly as the pre-registered games and it’s also pretty much every man for himself (although the wise player quickly makes informal non-aggression pacts with the players immediately to the left and right). 

As an example, one year’s slugfest centered around the Chaos Marine special character Fabius Bile. In that scenario, you had to travel around the board and collect barrels full of toxic goo that Bile was planning to use to make more of his New Men. Of course, everyone else was trying to do the same thing, so it was an “every man for himself” situation to see who could get the most barrels off the board before their army was shot/hacked to pieces (and their barrels stolen) by others. 

I managed to get two barrels, which wasn’t bad (most people got one or two—this Eldar player at my table collected an unheard-of five!). When you were done playing, you turned in your barrels for free blister packs of discontinued miniatures. I wound up winning some 40K Ork figures, so I gave them to my friend Pat (who collects Blood Axes).

Open Gaming
Every year, Games Workshop is kind enough to include several tables (with scenery) for open gaming, where you can use your own army against a friend or someone you meet at Games Day. Unlike the pre-registered games and the Bring & Battles, open gaming is just like what you're used to when you go down to your local 40K shop and get into a pick-up game.

Open Gaming is included with the price of your admission ticket. GW provides the scenery; tables (of which there are many) are on a first-come, first-play basis. There’s a sign-up sheet as you enter the Open Gaming area, and all that the GW staff asks is that you limit your battles to two hours or less—so save the big battles for some other time, guys.

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© Copyright Kenton Kilgore June 2000
 

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