My best advice is...

If I had two pieces of advice to new tournament players the first would be always pack deodorant and jeans for any tournmanet. Jeans just in case some of your fellow gamers are socially adept enough that you wouldn’t mind spending an evening drinking with them in town and deodorant so those same gamers won’t mind drinking with you. If there is one piece of advice I’d like to be remembered for – it is that.

The other, and far more on table top performance related, is never post your list in the army list forum. Seriously it is perhaps the most counter productive exercise.

See both the problem and the benefit of an open forum is that everyone is able to put forward their view. This means it is often tough to distinguish between who is a really eager guy to give you comments, but doesn’t know crap and guys who know what they are talking about but are a little more reserved. So for someone soliciting genuine feedback to try and garner a deeper understanding of what is or is not effective it is impossible to distinguish between the posts which are going to help or hinder you.

I know a lot of the top players steadfastly refuse to provide comments on army list forums. Why because they typically get drowned out by either inexperienced commentators or by the original poster who hasn’t really looked for criticism but rather validation.

So if army list forums aren’t any good how do I fix things? What I recommend instead is that you read some of the other threads in the general discussion on what ever boards you frequent. Try and search for people who seem to have either had success with the army you intend to play or seem to think about the game in a similar fashion to yourself. Once you’ve identified those people PM them directly and engage in a direct discussion.

Now in this discussion you don’t need to accept everything they say in fact back and forth on both the pros and cons of choices and why you want the army to play a certain way will only make the other person more engaged in the discussion. But bear in mind these people might get a fair few of these PMs so don’t be offended if you get a luke warm response, either follow up or go looking for another opinion.