What is Table Top Simulator?

Greeting Try Hards,

It's been a few minutes since I had something for you. I got caught up in prepping for a tournament and then had some family medical issues keeping me busy. I'm back now and ready to talk to you about a topic in competitive 40k I find interesting and important. Have you ever heard of Tabletop Simulator?

Warhammer 40k is an expansive (and expensive) hobby. Not only do we get to play a fun tabletop wargame filled with strategy, tactics, and a bit of luck, but we get to spend time building and painting amazing model kits. As a kid I remember building scale model kits. I had a few cars, a few airplanes, but my favorite was a scale replica of the USS Constitution sailing warship. My late grandfather and I put that together when I was a kid and I remember the pride of seeing it sitting on his mantle for most of my childhood. I digress though, my apologies, I love painting my models, I find it relaxing and therapeutic. I also love just playing a game of warhammer with my buddies, drinking beers and hanging out. The main aspect of 40k I enjoy the most however, is competitive gaming. I love going to tournaments, and I love the stress of multiple games, chess clocks, and the feeling of being mentally exhausted after a two day tournament. I love having tactical discussions with other masters of my faction, and I love theorycrafting combos and strategies to beat the top lists in the meta.

The biggest hurdle for me lately when it comes to competitive 40k is that I am really struggling with practice and preparation for events. There are many reasons for this. Number one, Covid 19 has changed the landscape of some of my friendly local game stores. The biggest one no longer has playing space. Another now charges people for going into the gaming area, and I have yet to see anyone playing 40k (mostly MTG). A new store recently opened in my area, but their 40k group is mostly newer players, and they can't really help me prepare for major competitive events. The second reason finding good 40k practice is tough for me is that I don't have hours that make it convenient to pack up my models, drive 30 minutes to play, set up the table, have a 3+ hour game, pack up, drive home, etc. I can't devote 6+ hours and that much time away from home responsibilities on a regular basis, it's just not sustainable. Number three, is just simply finding like minded players who are seeking the same experience. It is not helpful for me to show up to play against a random person and bring my tweaked tournament list against their fluffy list they have been playing for years with sup optimal unit choices. It's not going to be fun for the casual player, and not effective practice for me. Finding the right players to practice, strategize, and just hang out with is the number one thing I love about competitive 40k.

Tabletop Simulator is an inexpensive computer program available on STEAM. It is a sandbox simulation of a table that was originally created as a way to play various board and card games electronically with friends. In the past few years, countless hours of community effort have developed all the tools needed to play a true fully functional game of 40k at home on the computer. This opens up a world of possibilities for both competitive and casual gamers. I can now practice deploying my army, I can practice specific matchups, I can test models and units out before I invest in the money to buy and time to paint them. I can create tables in seconds. I don't have to worry about packing and transporting my models and have fear about damaging them. I can practice various secondaries, and most importantly, speed up practice games with movement, measurement, and dice rolling all being done electronically, and stats and rules being tooltips on the models eliminating searching through books for information. All of this can be done on my home computer at whatever time is convenient for me. I sometimes find matches with friends in Australia, or the UK, or the West Coast, there's always someone looking to play.

If you have never heard of Tabletop Simulator, or TTS for short, you are welcome to the world I have just opened up for you. If you have heard of it, but did not consider it worth the time, I implore you to try it out. And for anyone who has looked at it but was daunted by understanding the program, you are in luck. The biggest downside to Warhammer 40k on TTS, is that there are no clear instructions or a guide to taking the simulator and turning it into 40k games. The great thing about this problem is that it is easily fixed. There is a free program called discord, which is like an online message board that allows for voice chatting. TTS actually has its own discord where there are tons of videos and documents explaining how to use the program, how to get your models in the game and coded, as well as other players to play against, they even have their own online league.TTS has streamlined 40k to the point that it is an invaluable practice tool for competitive gamers. Access to all the models/factions/armies in the game to play with and against allows for the ultimate tool in prepping for a tournament.

If you are looking for TTS opponents, or just searching for a good online 40k community, I also invite you to check us out on Discord https://discord.gg/hzVgX6XU Try Hard Wargaming has our own discord page. Our discord is free to join, with no obligations, we simply want to establish a community of like minded competitive wargamers. We have tons of discussions, both text and voice, about competitive 40k topics like mission changes, FAQ’s, list building, meta strategies, rules questions, army tactics, hobbying, and just general 40k knowledge. We also have a bunch of members who use TTS to practice and would love more opponents to play with. I will even be willing to teach and instruct people how to set up TTS, how to build armies in TTS, and how to play 40k on TTS, just hop on and ask for Brandon, I'm in and out most of the day. We are currently wrapping up our first Try Hard Online TTS tournament where we play one game a week for 5 weeks. We recently had some discussions about the upcoming changes to primary and secondary missions headed to us in Chapter Approved 2022, looks really spicy.

Thanks for taking the time to read my musings. I hope to see you on TTS or in the Try Hard Wargaming Discord.

-Brandon, “The Butcher”-