Winning this weekend's GT

With the Lone Wolf Grand Tournament this Saturday I wanted to take a quick look at what it will take for me to win this weekend.

Every GT is different, mainly the scoring portion, or how they distribute the points. Here is how the LoneWolf is breaking down the scoring:

Battle: Probably the most important score in the GT, and the one a player has the most control over. It is a game that is to be won, you earn battle points in 2 ways. 1. By winning your games, and 2, getting the battle objectives. At the upcoming Lone Wolf, while a win is worth 16, the objectives are worth 4. So if I draw a game but get every objective, I'll have more battle points than a guy who wins all 5 but doesn't get the objectives.
To win overall, a player would have to get at least a record of 3-1-1. But only then if they were really helped out on the sportsmanship and painting aspects. For us average to below average painters/sportsmen, a record of 4-0-1 (1 draw) is probably the absolute minimum we can get to win. Maybe 4-1 if you pulled 3 of 5 of the objectives.
So out of max 100 this weekend, 4 wins, 1 draw and 3 objectives = 84 points.
This is my goal.

Sportsmanship: Almost as controversial as comp scoring, and many times you can see the 2 tied together. At the Lone Wolf they are actually tied together. You either get a good mark or a bad mark. To win, you must get 5 good marks. Which will be the default, so as long as you aren't stepping on his balls or hitting on his girlfriend, or both, you should be able to get that.
Getting a couple of favorite opponent votes are helpful, but not required.
Max Sports/Comp score this weekend is 80. 64 is base and that can go down with bad marks, even a single one can cost you 4 points, same as an objective. A player shooting for overall, cannot get a single bad mark. For a player to draw more than 2 favorite opponents has got to be really lucky. Pulling 1 is not unheard of and actually probable.
Goal for this weekend, 65 pionts. (1 fav opponent, 0 bad marks)

Painting: Your army has got to score at least a decent amount in painting. You cannot give up 40 points and hope to win. There are too many good players who paint too well to give up a ton of points here. I don't know what the checklist will be, so here I'm just guessing. I know at least a couple of guys will score the full 80 points for appearance. My Skaven army does not stand out, but parts of it are painted very nice and clean and with some good detail. Very few conversions, and no center piece.
Goal for this weekend is 55 out of 80. (I hope)
That is a lot points (25) to give up, but there isn't a lot I can do about it. The army is, what it is. If I score higher, its just icing on the cake. Less than that, I hope not but possible.
I don't care for GT's that give the Overall to the best painter by giving them 30-40 more points over an avg painter, but have seen it in the past.

JR Ewing points. Max of 10 points. If you were late getting your list in, you lost 1 point per day it was late. -1 point for every game your late showing up for, and -1 point if you don't finish your game on time.
Goal: 9 of 10. There will be one opponent who just plays really, really slow.

This would give me a total of 213 out of a possible 270 points. If I can do that, I think I have a shot of winning.

Other things that need to happen:
Army matchups. Out of the 64 paid players there are only a few armies I really have a tough time with. VC, Tomb Kings, Brettonians and Slayers. There are 14 of those armies total. And only 1 slayer army. The others I can beat or draw at least. The Slayers I think are a loss for my army. Just a horrible matchup.
If I can face only 1 of the other 13 and avoid the 1 slayer army, I should be ok.

Luck of the Roll: If the dice play just average with me, and give me a couple of breaks on those critical rolls, I should be ok.

Stamina: It takes a certain level of physical endurance to play 5 games in 2 days. I tend to stand a lot and talk. So by game 5 I am usually exhausted and have a hard time concentrating. The key for me is to pace myself on Saturday and get a good nights rest Saturday night.

So hopefully next week, I'll be posting battle reports about my Best Overall. If painting plays a huge roll in it, I'll hopefully posting about my Best General award.

If I get bad matchups, or my dice decide to take the weekend off, then I'll hopefully be telling you about what a great time I had.

No matter what, I feel the Indy GT circuit is a must attend for any serious Warhammer player out there. It is just too cool, too much fun, and too great an event to pass up.

Hope to see everyone there Friday night or Saturday.

Ben