ITC Champion’s Missions Draft

Reecius

7 years ago

Hey everyone, here’s the ITC Champion’s Missions working draft. We plan on using these for the SoCal Open per the attendees’ requests.

Please remember, these are in DRAFT format and are subject to change, may have typos and are still being polished!

That out of the way, we are posting these now, prior to being finalized to get some player feedback and to run a type of open beta as we want them to be as solid as possible for the SoCal Open. We’ve been play-testing them quite a bit and so far, they have been well received by a wide variety of tournament players. So, bear in mind, these missions are designed for a balanced tournament play experience and are more complex than our ITC Simplified and Combined Arms missions.

8th ed requires a new approach to mission design. As things are so lethal in this edition, and games can swing suddenly, our old missions designs simply didn’t function that well for tournament play, anymore. You could have a game that was extremely close until the very end, but results in a 19-0 score, which doesn’t reflect the fun of the game at all. Also, first turn is quite powerful and as such, building in a counter to that is important.

These missions do require a bit of bookkeeping, but we’ve cooked up a score tracker to make that easier for you. The idea with the score tracker is to circle or cross off each point as you get, in an ongoing tally, then to add the running total at the end of each Battle Round for the Primary Missions, and at the end of the game for the Secondary Missions. You then add both scores for each player’s total score and the player with the higher score wins.

We will retain the 1,000/500/0 tournament points for a win, tie and loss (although in this system, a tie will be very uncommon) for the purposes of stratifying the field and overall rankings, with accumulated Battle Points further stratifying each W/L/D bracket. For example, if you went 3-2 at an event, you’d be ranked in order among all other players who went 3-2 based on your accumulated Battle Points round by round from highest to lowest.

These missions are all somewhat similar and that is done intentionally. The variety comes in objective number, placement and specific scoring parameters plus the random deployment, but to avoid missions that cause big swings in outcome due to their nature (such as the Relic) we chose to keep them all somewhat similar. For that reason, players that very much enjoy wildly varied missions, or scenario driven missions may not find as much to love in them. However, for the player that finds entertainment in trying to focus on playing their best game and overcoming their opponent, we think these will be very appealing.

We borrowed some great mission ideas from many bright minds who’ve produced some great mission sets such as NOVA Open, Renegade Open, Games Workshop’s missions, Malifaux, etc. And, we were lucky enough to get some great feedback and constructive criticism from some excellent players. Thanks to everyone that helped so far or just bounced ideas back and forth with me over the past months! We also want to thank all of you who play-test these and provide feedback here in advance.

Mission Design Concepts:

An emphasis was intentionally placed on going second to help counter the power of first turn in current 8th ed 40k.
- The player going second in these missions get a big advantage in the ability to counter the first turn player’s moves and knowing exactly what they need to do to max their turn score, possibly denying points and getting the last chance at earning points.
All random maelstrom elements were removed, players now choose their secondary missions based on the mission, deployment and their opponent’s army.
- Secondary Missions are intentionally difficult to get. While some may be situationally easier to achieve, a max score on secondary will not always be possible.
- Secondary Missions were chosen to counter common build archetypes in the meta. If your opponent is spamming characters, choose Headhunter. If your opponent has a mechanized army, choose Big Game Hunter; if you feel more confident going for board control, choose Recon, etc.
- Many of the Secondary Missions intentionally overlap. For example, if you find yourself facing an Imperial Knight army, choosing Titan Slayer and Big Game Hunter would be a solid choice as you would be able to achieve both, simultaneously.
- The Secondary Missions also allow you to earn points for damaging powerful units. An example of this would be choosing Kingslayer, and targeting Magnus. You may not destroy him during the course of the game, but doing enough damage to him can still earn you points.
Each mission seeks to achieve a balance between destroying enemy units, and board control.
- The goal was to build in checks and balances between benefiting MSU and low unit count armies while also providing tools to counter the other.
- Each missions also offers up a bonus point, which can be scored each player turn but is not easy to achieve. In testing, we’ve found a player may only ever score the mission bonus point once or twice if at all. Again, this is intentional.
An incentive to finish games to conclusion is built in to the missions as you can only achieve a maximum score if you go all 6 rounds.
- In order to keep scoring fair between rounds, all ITC Champion’s Missions are capped at 6 rounds total. This works not only to keep scoring parameters equal between each mission, but because objectives are not scored at the end of the game, but turn by turn.
- In tournaments where there are less rounds than needed for a Swiss style, undefeated player this will be especially important as battle points will determine the overall victor. Slow playing is hurting oneself.
  - Most RTTs fall in to this category as a typical 3 round event only provides enough rounds of play to determine a Swiss style champion for 8 players.
  - In missions with enough rounds to have a Swiss style champion, this will be less relevant but still important for tie breaking.
- It is incumbent upon both players to manage their time and if one player is indeed playing slowly, for their opponent to politely make them aware of this and to call a judge if needed.
  - A great tool to assist here is writing down when your player turn ended while recording your Player Turn score. This allows each player to track how long their player turn took.
- If one player chooses to concede before the game has come to a natural conclusion, they automatically score 0 points (which is a big deal in this format as you keep all of your points earned, even if you lose), and their opponent would earn their current score and would be assumed to earn 4pts per turn for the remainder of the Battle Rounds left in the game on the Primary Mission and earn the maximum number of possible Secondary Mission points theoretically left to them.
  - For example, if it were round 3 and the winning player had chosen Recon but had not yet scored any points, they would earn 3 total points for that mission as they would theoretically have 3 more turns to earn those points had the game continued.
  - Due to the importance of players playing games out, and the fact that these missions are intended to be played in a competitive format, a player that concedes more than once would earn an administrative thumbs down on sportsmanship for each game they concede. In ITC format events, this will essentially mean the player cannot win any prize support and will eventually be removed from the event. Now, this isn’t meant to be overly mean, just to show folks that in order to keep things fair for everyone, you need to finish your games, even if you’re getting beaten. And, you never know, you may come back to win it!
  - There are situations where both players may “talk through” the final round of their game instead of playing it out in order to save time, rolling only the vital rolls in order to determine critical events. This is fine and does not constitute a concession but only counts on the 6th turn of the game.
- If one player is tabled, they keep their points earned up until that point, and their opponent earns points in the same fashion as outlined above.
Random Deployments means a wider variety of tactical opportunities and provides variety in each mission.
- With essentially 36 possible deployment and mission combinations, each game will be unique, forcing players to adapt and avoiding set-piece mission/deployment tactics.

We’ve put a lot of time and energy in to these, but we’d love to hear from you! If you all could be so kind as to give them a whirl and let us know what you like, don’t like, if you spot any typos, or perhaps what was simply unclear, we’d be very grateful! Do you like the scoring tracker? Do you see any ways to make it easier to use or better? Help us to give you the best possible mission sets for a fun and fair 8th ed tournament scene.

For the SoCal Open specifically, we will be accepting any and all feedback up until Tuesday, October 17th at which time they will get locked in place. For those of you coming to that event, be confident that the missions will largely be what you read, here. We may alter them slightly but don’t expect major changes unless we spot a massive problem. We may change details and the order in which they appear, but plan on playing these 6.

The Mission Tracker is universal and can be applied to each mission. As stated, you circle or check off each point as you get it.

For example, if you get 2 points in your first player turn, you circle the 1 and 2. If at the end of the Battle Round you scored another point, you circle the 3. For the turn 1 running total, you then write in a 3. If after the second turn you picked up another 4 points total, your running total would then read 7, and so forth.
For Secondary Missions, you circle each point as you earn it.
At the end of the game, you add your Primary and Secondary Mission Scores together and the player with the higher score wins.