Shiny and new! The ITC mission set has been updated for the mid point of the 2018 season based on all of your feedback!
So here we are, the new ITC missions fine tuned and refined based off of player feedback, play testing and loads of T.O. input! First of all, I must give a massive thank you to everyone that took time out of their busy schedules to answer my endless and incessant questions, lol. “Is this right? Would you word it like this? Do you think X or Y is better?” I’ve been a bit of a broken record, lately. Stopping co-workers in the middle of tasks to get their opinions and bugging the hell out of other organizers from all corners of the globe! But, I do so because the ITC has become more than we ever imagined and it impacts the play experience of many thousands of gamers all around the world, so we take it very seriously when we change anything.
What we’ve got is in my opinion a big improvement. We listened to what everyone said worked and kept it, what didn’t work and either dropped it or altered it. After trying it all out, I feel we’ve got the best mission pack we’ve ever written. And again, it wouldn’t be what it is without all of your feedback and participation. Let us know what you all think!
Updated ITC Champion’s Mission Pack
What’s Changed?
We heard what you all were saying and made the following changes as a result:
Formatting:
We’re adding in new score sheets that are more printer friendly based on feedback. These will be added to the mission pack soon.
We’re adding the 8th ed 40k deployment types into the pack for player convenience. Here’s our first draft to give you an idea of what to expect!
Primary Mission:
Mission 4 (the 2 objective mission) was VERY unpopular, lol. So, we ditched it. In it’s place we added in a mission that has 5 objectives and again, based on popular feedback, included 4 out of 5 player placed objectives. Why only 4 out of 5? Well, if you have an uneven number of objectives you invariably get a lopsided distribution which results in a disadvantage to one player which in a competitive setting is not fun. So, 1 objective goes dead center in the middle of the table. The other two give you the options to place 1 objective wheresoever you please, and the other in your opponent’s deployment zone. Why? Because what happens almost every time when you allow both objectives to be placed anywhere by both players is two objectives get placed as close to one another as possible in that player’s deployment zone. It just makes sense to do so in most cases as you can most easily control them both with minimal effort and maximum mutual unit support in this scenario. However, while efficient, that gets dull as in most cases the perception of variety or “player skill” in wise objective placement is actually just an illusion as you get the same pattern repeated table after table. So, we opted to make the bonus point for this mission kick in when you hold both objectives you placed!
What we found in practice is that this creates very interesting tactical choices. Do you place the objective close to the objective your opponent placed? If you have a balls-to-the-wall assault army, maybe you do as you’re going into the heart of your opponent’s army anyway! Do you have a board control army that wants to isolate objectives so you can scoop them up with a minimal investment of your own? Well, you can! Place your objective in their deployment zone as far from their objective as possible to make it difficult for your opponent to defend and perhaps that lone Scout squad that jumped on it will go unmolested. So far, we’ve loved this new mission and find it to be flexible, fun and–if you have a handle on it–for the bonus point to be relatively easy to pick up when compared to some of our other missions where the bonus point can be very challenging to get. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have!
We also swapped missions 5 and 6 to avoid having two 5 objective missions in a row and because mission 6 was the most popular, to make it the final mission in events that only play 5 rounds (which is most GT level events).
Secondary Missions:
We received the most constructive criticism on our secondary missions. While the primary earned a massive 89% approval rating, the secondaries were a bit all over the board. Some were loved, some hated. The common thread expressed throughout all of the feedback we got was, “we don’t like how the missions influence list building so much.” Well, fair enough. So, we made a concerted effort to re-sculpt the secondaries to cover almost all potential situations encountered on the tabletop to take away the incentive to craft your list in a way you would otherwise not have in order to try and game the system. To this end, we made the following modifications to simultaneously (we hope!) dissincentivize you from tailoring your list to avoid perceived penalties and allow you to take the units you like. Text in red is designer commentary to help explain some of the choices.
Secondary Missions:
Each player may score up to 4pts for each of the following Secondary Missions, for a total of 12 between the three they’ve chosen. These points can be scored at any time unless otherwise specified in the description.
*Secondaries marked with an asterisk may not earn more than one point for destroying any one unit. If such a unit would award points for multiple secondaries, you must decide which it scores at the time it is destroyed. For example, if you chose Marked for Death and Big Game Hunter, and Marked an enemy Rhino, you must decide which Secondary Mission you earn a single point for when you destroy it.
As requested, we made many of the secondaries non-stacking to avoid some units bleeding too many points and making them unappealing to play.
*Headhunter: 1pt for each enemy Character that is destroyed.
No change, you all told us you really liked this mission.
*Kingslayer: Choose an enemy model that is a Character.
- Earn 1 point for every 2 wounds of damage it loses, cumulatively.
- In the instance where a Character may regenerate wounds or resurrect during the course of the game, total wounds it loses over the course of the game are counted towards this mission.
- If the model selected has the Character and Vehicle or Monster keywords, you earn 1 point for every 4 wounds it loses instead of 1 for every 2.
- If the Character is also your opponent’s Warlord, earn 1 additional point if it is destroyed.
Again, no change. This was voted the 4th most popular secondary mission.
*Marked for Death: Choose 4 of your opponent’s units with a Power Level of 7+. Earn 1 pt for each of these units destroyed.
We added this one in to create a catch-all to cover gaps created by the other missions. Did you only take 3 characters, 3 vehicles, etc. to avoid giving up all 4 points on any given secondary? Well, clever girl, as the saying goes, but you probably didn’t avoid 4 units with Power Level 7+! Gotcha! This allows players to still have the option to go for those points even if you’ve done your best to min/max your list and conversely to not feel like you can only take 3 of something when you really want to take 4+. This one remains slightly fluid, if it turns out that PL 7+ isn’t the sweet spot, we will adjust. Let us know if we missed anything!
*Big Game Hunter: 1 point for every enemy model with the Monster or Vehicle keyword and 7+ wounds destroyed.
We downshifted from 10+ wounds to 7+ based on player feedback to include things like Carnifexes, Talos, Dreadnoughts, etc. that previously slipped between the cracks and created weird edge armies that could dip, duck, dive and dodge their way between secondaries.
*Titan Slayers: For every 8 wounds lost by enemy units with the Titanic keyword in total throughout the course of the game, earn 1 point.
Example: One enemy Titanic model loses 4 wounds turn 1, and a different enemy Titanic unit loses 12 wounds turn 2 for a total of 16 wounds lost in total to enemy Titanic models. You earn 2pts towards this objective.
No changes as this was a popular secondary mission.
The Reaper: For every 20 enemy models destroyed, earn 1 point.
One of the least popular secondary missions, lol! This simple change has been massively popular so far.
Recon: Have a unit at least partially in each table quarter at the end of your player turn. A unit may only count as being in one table quarter at a time for the purposes of this rule. 1pt per turn.
Again, no change as this was the 2nd most popular secondary mission.
Behind Enemy Lines: If at least one of your units is wholly in the enemy Deployment Zone at the start of your turn, earn 1 Point. A unit is wholly in if every model in the unit is at least partially in the enemy Deployment Zone.
We altered this one to be simultaneously easier to accomplish and easier to counter. We felt it was a subtle but important change to make.
The Butcher’s Bill: Destroy 2+ enemy units during a player turn to earn 1 Point.
The secondary mission formerly known as Death by a Thousand Cuts–which was not a popular secondary at all and had sort of a silly name–was altered to be both easier to accomplish while maintaining the same general idea of countering MSU armies and have a much cooler name at the insistence of the LVO judging staff!
Ground Control: Earn 1 point for each objective held at the end of the last Battle Round played.
By popular demand, we’ve included an end of game objective secondary option. So far, this has been MASSIVELY well received. Thanks for the idea!
Old School: Earn 1 point for the following:
- First Strike: An enemy unit is destroyed in the first Battle Round.
- Slay the Warlord: The enemy Warlord is destroyed at game’s end.
- Linebreaker: Have one of your models within your opponent’s deployment zone at the end of the game.
- Last Strike: An enemy unit is destroyed in the last Battle Round played.
The most popular secondary. As my pappy always said: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Nuff said.
Gang Busters:….
Almost no one liked it so we dropped it like a hot rock, lol.
So there we are! We feel these are some really solid improvements. Big thanks again to everyone that helped and if you notice similarities to the NOVA missions and theirs to ours that is 100% intentional! We work closely together and we’ve both taken a lot from one another’s mission packs as they have a lot in common already and we respect the ingenuity and thought they’ve put into theirs. The closer we all come to a common community mission pack, the better!
And before the comments section blows up with comments about how to counter Knight armies…you can still get max secondary points against Knights! So don’t fret on that account.
We can’t wait to see how this impacts the meta in (hopefully!) positive ways, keeps things fresh and gives you all the list building freedom and play experience you are looking for. Let us know what you think!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
Butcher’s Bill vs. Death By 1K Cuts is a tough balance. I feel like two kills is a bit too easy- any army with significant firepower should pretty easily be able to score two kills per turn, even if they aren’t trying very hard. I’m expecting that it will be an auto-pick for a lot of armies out there in the same way that Old School was because it’s very, very easy to score full (or nearly full) points on, but we shall see.
Marked for Death also feels a bit too easy for my tastes, but it does at least have a nontrivial requirement on it. Still, it can set up some pretty easy “well I guess I just kill things and earn 12pts” situations, so you’re gonna see it a lot.
The Reaper is a huge improvement. No more weird shenanigans with trying to shave units down to specific numbers of models.
Behind Enemy Lines is an interesting tweak; I felt like before it was pretty much just another, worser version of Recon, but now it has a distinctly different flavor. However, being the only objective in the game that scores at the _beginning_ of turn rather than end is gonna be weird, so I know it’s gonna throw a lot of players off.
Big Game Hunter definitely needed the change. While it’s unfortunate that basic Dreadnoughts and such get hurt by it, Talos and Carnifexes not giving up points was definitely a problem- especially since both of those armies were already extremely strong in the meta anyways.
I like the sound of the new primary mission as well; missions with odd numbers of objectives tend to be more dynamic due to it being more likely that one player holds more objectives, and player-placed objectives gives the generals a bit more influence over the game and reward good decision-making in the pregame steps. I think it will be a big improvement over “we each hold one every turn, nobody ever holds more.”
I think you’ll be surprised how hard it can be to kill two units in a turn, 4 turns. Often I find I only get 1, sometimes none but then in a few turns I get a bunch.
I typically play firepower armies (Eldar, Tau, Slaanesh CSM), so if I’m not killing two units per turn I’m probably losing the battle regardless. That’s obviously not true for all armies in the game, but for most shooting armies Butcher’s Bill will be pretty trivial to get full points on.
If models slain towards other objectives don’t count towards Butcher’s Bill, I can see where two might be a challenge for some armies.
If they do, then it seems trivially easy to complete against any army with 16 or more drops, provided that they don’t scoop.
I really like the updates mostly, but about this one I have one little conservation:
This makes me give out almost free 4 points every time I play my TAU.
If you calculated units like accompanying drones, 5 man battallion troops etc and play tested, I’m all fine with it but if not a secondary hurting a specific faction more than others might become another issue in the future maybe?
And if you come to the point to think this is an issue, maybe it could be fixed with something like min number of models, power level or something similar.
This one might need an asterix too.
Also about the asterix, does it also negat the first strike as that unit cant give more than one point? Or is that rule only an Asterix Exclusive rule. If so maybe better writing can clear it out.
Which mission are you talking about?
From context, I would have to assume he means Butcher’s Bill.
I assumed so. Yeah, T’au struggle in any Kill Point scenario as they have so many dang units, many of which are easy to kill.
Yes, my mistake. I was referring to Butchers Bill.
Also I have a new question Reece:
The asterix rule satates: *Secondaries marked with an asterisk may not earn more than one point for destroying any one unit.
Does this mean if there is a 24 wound Knight, I can get 4 points out of it for the first 16 wounds from King Slayer, and then 1 point when I deal the remaining 8 wounds from Titan Slayer (Or Big game hunter).
or does the intention to make sure you only generate points towards one asterix mission from one unit? (If so maybe better wording could help as now the asterix description only mentions points gained when destroying units but King Slayer and Titan Slayer generates points ona wound count.)
Out of good will, we assumed the intention was any wounds dealt should contribute to only one asterix mission.
Looks awesome, can’t wait to try them out!
hmmm. no more gang busters. perhaps my tyranid warriors list makes a comeback.
I mean, as long as you ran then in squads of 7 or smaller, they were just as viable before…
It’s the perception that has changed though now, which is what matters =)
even at 7 man unit they still have our 3 points that were easy to get. now they give out 0. still an improvement.
Very true!
I mean, yeah, giving up no points is better than giving up points, but my experience has been that players are generally very leery of selecting a secondary that they can’t get a full 4 on, and rightfully so.
They typically do go for max points.
Loving most of the changes, though I am slightly concerned by the reaper not having an asterisk.
Not entirely sure how it would be implemented but currently you could kill 4×20 model units and almost always score 8pts for marked for death and reaper. Feels like an extremely easy to score 8pts compared to the others. Unless I’ve misunderstood and you wouldn’t score marked for death on units you completely wipe out but also killed 20 models from as marked for death can’t score more than once and would already be scoring for Reaper.
Its early over in the UK so maybe I’m just making this more complicated than it needs to be, advise please!
Big game hunter was a much needed change, 9 Talos not giving up any points was a touch ridiculous.
Reaper is a running total of models so it is unavoidable to have it stack with other “kill stuff” objectives. In practice, it’s not been a big deal.
How does Reaper interact with rules that bring models back, like an Apothecary or Reanimation Protocols?
Thank god the wound thing got changed, those things with 7-9 were just odd for this.
Yeah, lots of folks felt that way.
Can you pull the black out of the deployment mapz, making the packet even more printer friendly?
We’re working on getting them in in an easy to read and print format.
Hey- you stated that you edited these missions to prevent stacking.
…Then you didn’t actually do that. Maybe you missed a sentence or two in your posting?
Additionally the PL 7+ completely shots GK in the foot as there are 0 infantry options that are PL 6 or lower outside of 3 bad HQs. (Basic Strike squad is PL 7- which admittedly should be PL 6 but I am not GW). Just pointing that out.
These are much better changes. Cheers!
It is in the official pack =)
And like I said, we are flexible on the PL limit if it turns out 7 isn’t the right number.
I mean is it possible to make missions that dont bone grey knights…the codex is destined to be so this edition it seems.
We don’t want to harm any armies really, so if we need to adjust the PL limit, we will if it feels like the right thing to do.
Well gunlines were buffed hard by this IMO. Before they were forced to take movement based secondaries by enemies that avoid kill based secondaries. With the way kill secondaries are now – you can quite easily just pick 2 or even 3 of them every game:
Marked
Butcher
Reaper/BGH/Titanslayer/Kingslayer
Cya headhunter. Nice knowing ya
Though it does change “I can’t take x because of it giving away points to y objective” because everything gives away points now, lol.
Reece, you often say “there’s only kill and move somewhere in a game like this”. However the “kill” part is waaay more luck based and “move” part is based on player skill. Before when you coudn’t take all 3 “kill objectives”, the better player won more often. Now, we might see less of the same names on top tables because they just didn’t roll well enough. But time will tell.
Not really. We have more board control secondaries and the same amount of kill stuff secondaries and the 2 objective mission is now 5, so if anything the missions have shifted more to board control.
Yes the number of secondaries changed in favor of “board control” but the “shoot stuff” secondaries became a lot easier and also almost always pickable. Before reaper was useless against a lot of armies, thousand cuts was rarelly seen while butcher seems like an auto-take, the added marked also seems very easy. Quality > Quantity
I’m not sure I’d call this a buff to any particular army, what it does do is make many armies actually give up secondaries and make secondaries possible to be fully scored.
When I went into the BAO, I had a hard time telling my opponents what secondaries to select other than headhunter, old school, and either recon/behind enemy lines. Because unless you were amazing, getting any of the others was nearly impossible. None of these objectives are shoot stuff, it’s kill stuff. Melee was pretty heavy in the BAO IMO and they didn’t really hurt because of it, there was nothing a shooting army did that they couldn’t for the most part.
By gunline – I mean an army that does not move out. Before it was impossible to win with that army because every “kill stuff” secondary except for 1k cuts could be denied and 1k cuts was too random/hard. Which forced them to take: old school(line breaker), recon, behind enemy lines as those were the 3 undeniable secondaries. Which made complete gunlines unplayable. Now butcher, marked are basically undeniable. Next most armies will give up Reaper/titanslayer/BGH. So you can win the game without moving from your deployment zone.
You really can’t, though. You can get 12pts on your secondaries, but that won’t win you the game if the enemy is holding more objectives than you every turn, which they will be if you’re stuck in your deployment zone (and there’s a pretty reasonable chance they’ll snag the bonus point in that scenario, too.)
“Pure” gunlines have never been viable in 8th, and they still won’t be with these changes.
Well a gunline should always get “kill more”. What’s the point of a gunline otherwise if not raw damage output.
Lots of shooting does not guarantee you kill more units than the opponent. Many gunlines have fragile/expendable components (Drones, Infantry Squads, etc) that will often get wiped out incidentally during a turn. So while the gunline might kill more of their opponent’s “active” units (say, a squad of Shining Spears and a Hemlock), losing three Infantry Squads in a turn will still mean the enemy has killed more units than them and thus scores the point.
I’m not saying that gunlines will dominate. I’m saying they got a lot better. And if the gunline is killing key units and the non-gunline is killing chaff to keep up with the kill count – the gunline player will control the game on later rounds anyway. Gunline playstyle is always “shoot everything important – > move to objectives”. So even if the non-gunline keeps up with the kill counts, the gunline will do the same with objectives later in the game.
This is all theory of course.
A gunline I think should have more firepower in our real world military setting, but it doesn’t in 40k. Gunline don’t work like you think they do.
If your static gunline doesn’t outshoot the mobile enemy force – you have a bad gunline and should re-think your list. Of course in case of eldar it’s always “super strong shooting or insanelly fast movement? Why not both, lol?”
QUERY – why 7PL ?
… the points levels are adjusted at least annually in Chapter Approved, but Power Level has not changed. Wouldn’t it be easier to say 140 points ? Are there any potential units creeping under this (I know Slams are 129 points, but I don’t know what that is in PL)?
Points are harder to operate, and easier to cheat on. Points may vary greatly between different loadouts, PL – as you’ve said – are constant.
Exactly. With points you have situations where if you add a storm bolter to a tank or something, it all of a sudden counts and vice versa. PL is just easier and allows for more flexibility in unit design.
As for 7, we found a lot of units that we felt should count did at that point.
I also like the power level 7, because it helps people from gaming the system of taking 6 models (or just one more than base, in general) to add extra power level for more reserves capacity during deployment. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but bravo!
It also poops on strategic bumps though, like taking a sixth Sister in any unit so that they can shoot out of the sixth port of a Repressor, as it pushes even the humble trashbag team up to 8 PL and turns them into a liability worth 4 to 5 points (Mark the girls and Repressor for 2, Butcher for 1, Kill one for 1, and potentially Kill more for 1). Take one less Sister, and they’re worth 1 less potential point. Is a basic bolter worth a 8.3% swing in secondaries? Of course not, so the sixth man becomes a major listbuilding consideration.
There will always be things like that, though- something that bumps your point cost, or Power Level, or model count across a critical threshhold. A list with 79 models in it will almost never have Reaper chosen, but adding a single additional model (even just a Cultist!) pushes it over the crest of that hill.
The key is to make those thresholds as non-problematic as possible. People aren’t typically taking units of six Sisters anyways, and the presence of Marked for Death does not radically change the viability of Sisters in general. Moreover, other armies are affected by it much more significantly (e.g. Grey Knights), so I don’t think it’s specifically problematic.
Exactly. With any arbitrary line in the sand, there will always be edge cases.
Marking for death on ork boy units is going to hurt if it can stack with reaper.
It is impossible to avoid overlap with Reaper and any “kill stuff” secondary. So, yeah, a big unit of boys (or any big unit) can give up multiple points.
I came here to post that these changes are FANTASTIC except that the new Marked for Death and BGH stacking with each other and Headhunter is going to be super overbearing. Then I reread and saw you guys actually already addressed that.
Bravo. At first glance, I can’t think of a single imperfection with these. This will make ITC tournaments 10x more fun. Especially happy to see Gangbusters replaced with better ideas that address the same root concern.
they said none of the secondaries really stack
And he said that he noticed that later…
Glad you like them =)
First things first: I am very happy with the changes and think you all have done a very comprehensive and thoughtful reconfiguration of the missions. I can’t wait to play!
However, near and dear to my heart, Celestine still hemmorhages secondary points with the new missions. Correct me if I’m wrong, but she is a weird edge case between head hunter and kingslayer that isn’t covered by the asterisk.
If you take Celestine + 2 Geminae, and assuming Celestine is your warlord, that is a single unit that awards 2 head hunter points (one for each geminae), 4 kingslayer points (7 wounds plus WL), and 1 old school point (slay the warlord, old school doesn’t have an asterisk and can be overlapped).
This isn’t even accounting for additional HH points awarded for the regenerative geminae, or Celestine regenerating wounds herself, in the non-warlord scenario.
There is no other unit in the game that gives up a *minimum* of 6 secondary points in a single kill….and as many as 10 secondary points if you account for the additional HH points, if she is your warlord, and if she ends up being your first strike or last strike kill.
There are no other * units * of characters in the game, so I understand that the mission language doesn’t accommodate this weird edge case. The easiest fix would be just to add an exclusion for the geminae for HH (much like GW had to do in the FAQ to state that the geminae cannot take relics). Doesn’t have to be in the main secondary description, just FAQ’d somewhere!
…help a sister out, here! 🙂
Thing is, just about everything now gives away points. So yes celestine might give away a bunch of points up front – everything else will do the same sooner or later anyway with stuff like butcher, marked and reaper, etc
“As requested, we made many of the secondaries non-stacking to avoid some units bleeding to many points and making them unappealing to play.”
While I appreciate that it will be harder to ‘game’ secondary point scoring with these modifications,
I am simply pointing out a unit that continues to bleed secondary points.
Pre-“battle brothers,” I understand that the weight of secondary points kinda helped balance out the fact that she could get thrown into any imperium detachment. Now, people have to invest significant points (and an entire detachment) to take her…and surprise, that prospect unappealing for many, solely based on the fact that she puts you at a disadvantage in secondary scoring in ITC.
It can always be re-evaluated when the codex comes out in a year’s time…!
Celestine is always a weird case. We had discussed treating her as simply a single “model” for the case of Kingslayer to avoid also bleeding infinite Headhunter points from her Geminae.
However, as you can’t stack kingslayer and headhunter and I believe she and her girls are one unit it wouldn’t work, anyway. But, I may be wrong, don’t have the book in front of me.
I’m not sure what verbage you are looking for in the book, but there is a single “Celestine” datasheet with separate name lines for Celestine and the Geminae Superia, making a single unit of 1-3 models, all with the character special rule.
Probably easiest to have a bespoke ruling on her, since it has no other applications to other models in the game and is difficult to shoehorn in with other unit/model distinctions.
I like your solution, treating her as a single model for the purposes of secondary points — the geminae would now award kingslayer points, but she would only give up a single HH point — which seems like a fair trade off.
…most importantly, it’s simple! less time to explain to opponents 🙂
Yeah, most likely it will require an addendum to explain how she interacts with the rule. Overall, a net positive for her but she can still give up Kingslayer for full points as can many other models.
Thanks for the feedback =)
There are technically a couple other similar cases in the game, although they rarely see play- Aun’va, the Tau named Ethereral, has a pair of bodyguards (both of which are characters), and I want to say there’s a Space Marine guy who is the same maybe?
The Aun’va is different! I had to look it up (thanks for the reference ^__^) but the ethereal guard have their own set of keywords and character is *not* one of them. The fact that the ethereal guard have their own keywords is different too, because there is only a single set of keywords on the Celestine datasheet.
I’m not aware of any similar unit within adeptus astartes…Azreal has a relic bearer, but the rules specifically state that it is ignored for all gaming purposes.
I think Chaplain Grimaldus used to work sort of like that with his Cenobite Servitors, but I’m pretty sure they’re separate Units now.
Doesn’t she already get around the Headhunter exploit though, since it says Destroyed and not Slain?
I don’t have the book in front of me, but when an individual model dies, it is slain, but when the last model in a unit dies, the unit is destroyed. Am I wrong in this assumption?
You do have to kill her twice to score anything.
Looked at another way she is pretty much the only thing in the game that you can kill and score nothing no matter what secondaries you chose. Only when you kill her the second time does anything stick – which the sisters player could avoid by positioning here conservatively when she comes back.
I am not saying you are wrong here but there is a lot going on with Celestine and I really think depending on how you play her it could go either way.
Actually, you could never kill Celestine and still max out HH and kingslayer points! Celestine absolutely gives up kingslayer points without dying, and the geminae give up head hunter points each time they die.
For example, let’s say Celestine starts with 2 geminae, and you do 10 mortal wounds to the unit. Both geminae take 2 wounds and die, awarding 2 head hunter points, and Celestine takes 6 wounds (leaving her with one wound), awarding 3 kingslayer points.
Next turn a geminae comes back, if you did another 3 mortal wounds to Celestine’s unit you’d get another head hunter point from the geminae, and 1/2 wounds needed for the final kingslayer point (which is still possible, assuming Celestine comes back).
It’s true that you have to kill her the second time to get a “slay the warlord” point or a head hunter point — but that’s also the case with Guilliman, or a knight that comes back with a single wound from the “our darkest hour” strategem.
Would it be possible with including the deployment types to add the measurements in for vanguard deployment?
Also great job on the new missions, looks to be an absolute treat to play.
Can do and thanks!
You may want to change “wholly in” on Behind Enemy Lines to “entirely within”.
“Within” and “wholly within” have very specific definitions when it comes to GW, with “wholly within” needing the whole model to be within the parameters, while “within” just needs the tip of the base to be within the parameters.
Your definition of “wholly in” is contradictory with GW’s definition of “wholly within”, which could be very confusing. Changing “wholly in” to “entirely within” would get the desired effect, and be consistent with GW’s wording (they use a variation of “entirely within” for their terrain rules).
We can look at adjusting verbiage.
The new Reaper adds a bit of bookkeeping – hopefully won’t cause too many issues. That said, I like that I won’t have to buy a Mortar for my Infantry Squads just to avoid giving away free points.
The other tweaks to the secondaries are great! Thanks for all your hard work!
It is not so bad when you do it at the end of the game. Subtract models on the table from total model count.
We felt the same way at first but in practice it isn’t a big deal.
Yeah, I think it’s one of those thigns that feels like it’s gonna be a lot of work, but actually won’t be very hard at all. It’s usually pretty easy to look at the models left on the table and figure out how much has died, especially since it is very, very rare for armies to generate new models these days.
Yeah, exactly. You can give it a good guess as you go to have an idea of where you’re at.
Hey looks awesome just one thing needs changed, big game hunter needs to include battlesuits, otherwise riptides wont count and that would really hurt
They have the Monster Keyword =)
So does the 1st floor LOS blocking rule still in effect for ITC champions?
Yeah, we still use that. I am working on an ITC terrain pack too, which will show recommended terrain layouts and how models interact with them.
Clarifying question…do secondaries with asterisks not stack with ANY other secondary objectives. Or do they only not stack with other objectives with an asterisk?
For example…if I kill two units that are marked for death in a turn, do they also grant a butcher’s bill point? Also, did one of those units was the warlord, does the marked for death point also stack with old school warlord?
The wording in the rule says “multiple secondaries”, but it sounds like what was intended was “multiple secondaries with an asterisk”?
They don’t stack with other secondaries that have an asterisk.
Reece,
These look great I appreciate the time spent explaining why changes were made and adapting the mission for your player base and showing a willingness to listen to criticism; for example, tossing out the gang buster objective and tossing mission 4 do to ITC player feedback.
My only concern is the Butcher Bill objective and here is my opinion on why: The Objective of the Butcher’s Bill Secondary seem to be a counter MSU armies.
The Problem is MSU armies have a counter in already. The Primary Objective of every game is Kill something, Kill more the your opponent. Which means this secondary is just doubling up the Primary Objective.
This is counter Intuitive to the Intent of this wave of changes because you are trying to remove stacking objective and in my opinion this one is just stacking a Primary with a secondary.
I believe a Secondary that is lacking is one that punishes multi detachment armies and I would recommend that that butchers bill changed to kill score a point for each unit destroyed in your opponents army that are from different detachment 1 point per detachment. So if you kill 1 unit from each detachment and your opponent had 3 detachments you score 3 points.
Just my 2 cents.
I think I understand what you’re trying to say here, but I would reccomend this for the anti-souping secondary
Khorne Cares Not: score 1 point if you kill atleast two units this turn who do not share all faction keywords
Of course this might be a bit too easy, so maybe two different faction keywords?
Good feedback, Amouse. However, MSU armies tend to be very good at scoring objectives and with lots of high objective missions and board control secondaries you could make the same argument in reverse, I think.
However, if it turns out this is going too far, we can adjust course. I think we’ll be OK though as in practice it worked out fine but we obviously can’t play every permutation of the game so we’ll see how it works out in reality.
As for the detachment thing, I think we cover it with the basic secondaries. I don’t see a way to include something that would only apply to taking multiple detachments that isn’t already covered in the existing secondaries.
Liking the look of these! I do need a clarification, though. For the new Reaper, do all the models need to be in the same unit, or is it just total models killed? I’m assuming the latter, but I want to be sure.
Total models destroyed in the other player’s army.
Cool, that’s what I thought. One thing that came up when I was practicing the new packet yesterday. How does Reaper work for things like Necron reanimation? If a model dies and then gets back up, does killing it a second time count towards the total? Or is it total models dead at the end of the game? Same question applies to Daemon summoning.
This all looks great. Nice job!
One question though. If someone is taking knights, and their opponent picks both titanslayer and BGH: Can they kill one questoris knight (24 wounds–> 3 titanslayer points), and then put 8 wounds on another knight (titanslayer 4th point), and then kill that same knight for a BGH point? Its kinda vague since one secondary is based on kills while the other is based on wounds inflicted. Given the popularity of IKs right now, seems like this can happen a lot…
thanks for the hard work!
Hey Rolling Thunder, glad you like them!
So the way that would work is you would decide when you destroy the knight if you want to count the kill for BGH. If so, none of its wounds count towards Titan Slayer.
Good question.
But titan slayer can be scored without having to kill the knight.
So rolling thunders point still stands – you kill knight 1 and score 3 titan slayer points.
Next turn you do 8 wounds to knight 2 and score your 4th titan slayer point.
In the next turn, are you saying you have to ignore that wounded knight, because it can’t now give up a bgh point?
you don’t have to choose immediately. Just choose at the end of the game what is worth more.
Looks good!
Thanks!
Awesome stuff, really like the look of these changes.
Question on Marked for Death. How will this work with stratagems that split a unit or combine units during the game, ex. Mob Up, Unleash the Lions, Tactical Flexibility, etc?
I wanted to echo this. I’m curious also how the combat squad rule plays in with this.
Loving it!
My only suggestion would be to change the bonus points you get for killing more enemy units in a turn than your opponent to killing more power level. Killing two shield drones shouldn’t count more than killing one knight 🙂
Love the changes.
1. More ways to score = eager to score, and subsequently places less interest on depriving your opponent of secondaries in the list build.
2. New mission is great! The old what’s yours is mine was the same game every time.
One question, when is the bonus scored for what’s yours is mine? Player turn or game turn?
Great changes overall, but knights just got one hell of a free pass
This was hard to find, to the point I had to ask on reddit. Can “Current ITC Rules” be added to the drop down under ITC to make it easier on people not in the know?
It is in the drop down, my friend =)
Quick question about marked for death. A stealth suit squad is PL 6, but if I take any drones for them, they become PL 7. After deployment, the drones break off and form a separate unit. Are the suits still PL 7? Would my opponent need to kill the drones as well to get the point?
How does “The Reaper” work with units that regenerate? For example, a chaos cultist unit being regenerated with “Tide of Traitors”, or Necrons standing back up?
The counter would stay where it was, and you’d get additional counters towards that objective for killing models from the unit a second time (or third, etc.).
I really like the changes. Glad to see gaming secondaries in list construction going away. Many armies could not benefit from doing so as well as others.
Have you given consideration to including some form of kill tally to the scoring sheets to assist in tracking reaper? Or have you found that to be not needed by most players?
I love the changes! I think this will help alot and I’m happy to see feedback being taken into account 🙂 One question on the * restrictions of stacked scoring. How does secondaries that track different metrics affect each other for scoring? Like titan slayer tracks wounds and big game hunter tracks destroyed models. Both those have * on them to avoid stacking but if I dealt the last 8 wounds and destroyed a titanic vehicle, would I generate 1 point for both secondaries?
You’d choose which it applied to once it was destroyed. Or, we may need to add in a sub-rule that if you start counting wounds on a Titan then it no longer counts for another secondary. Good question though, we will consider it and update the pack.
Butchers bill slaps Tau drones in the face hard. Often it’s pretty beneficial to bring one grav inhibitor drone or one guardian drone. It’s also almost impossible to hide them the entire game without them being out of position. So BAM 2 drones equate to a B.B. point. That seems harsh.
Kill Points is pretty rough on T’au in any situation. We can look at a possible exclusion on some units if it seems unfair. Let’s give it a go first though as the point of it is to counter MSU. However, as a T’au player myself with loads of Drones, I see the point.
Hey guys,
I greatly prefer the combined arms missions. Why aren’t those used more for tournaments? These changes do make me more likely to try these missions in casual play, though.
The Combined Arms missions were the older ITC missions that had been used; people found the randomness of the maelstrom missions to often be an unbalancing and unfun feature, so it was eventually retired in favor of the Champions missions.
We like them much more than GW’s card decks for sure. As a group, we thought a little bit of randomness might be a good thing. Guess the groupthink of tournaments really hates on the randomness.
These changes make the secondary missions seem more reasonable, so maybe we’ll make the switch.
Hey, if you prefer random, then roll with it! We’re not here to tell you want to do, just provide an alternative. One that has been vetted by thousands of other gamers. However, play what your group enjoys as ultimately the objective is to have fun.
True, but at the same time, we want some window into the competitive scene. Since the combined arms missions were still on your site, we figured SOMEONE somewhere was still using them. But after watching many reports, that never seemed to happen.
As noted above, some of the secondary missions were rated rather unpopular, and reaper in particular got some sideways glances from my group. I personally like these updates a lot, so I’ll try to get them to try them out!
Awesome! Hope you enjoy them.
We kept the Combined Arms missions up as sort of a legacy for those who enjoy using them.
Yeah, very rarely we get someone they preferring the older missions but almost every time it is the same story: the person in question is simply used to the older missions and may have not tried the new ones or only tried them once and had a bad experience.
Hi guys, these are great changes overall IMO. I’m not a top-table player but I’m probably better than “average” and play against some good opponents. We played the new mission 4 tonight and with the new secondaries and overall it’s great!
But like others have mentioned, we’re finding the wording of the Titanslayer, Kingslayer and BGH to be confusing when it applies to Knights. My opponent believed that he could get 8 from Titanslayer and Kingslayer on a single Knight, because the wording is such that you don’t have to “destroy” the knight to count the secondaries.
I can definitely see this causing issues, so hopefully gets and update soon, because other than that it seems pretty rock solid and I don’t have to give up 8 VPS without someone even having to kill a knight LOL.
Hey, glad to hear you like them! Yeah, I can add in some language to fix that dilemma as you are not the first to ask it.
Playing with units that score asterisked objectives not counting towards Butchers Bill if the asterisked objective is taken, it makes Butchers Bill a reasonable objective.
Playing without that caveat, it seems the only ways to fail to max Butchers Bill are to either play Knights or prevent the game from going four turns.
You’d be surprised how frequently you only kill 1 unit in a turn. YMMV of course, perhaps you play loads of MSU armies or with very little terrain, but frequently I find I only get 1 kill in a turn.