Hello, fellow Warhammer 40k fans! SaltyJohn from TFG Radio, and one of the Las Vegas Open Head Judges, here to bring you a preview of what’s to come this year in the ITC!
The 2018 season for the ITC was a great success. With more, and larger, events played than any year previously the ITC has proven it not only has an immense player base but that players want to compete in more and larger events across the world. From the London GT, to Adepticon, NOVA, and the Las Vegas Open more events are either breaking their records for attendees or reaching maximum capacity for their venues! It’s an exciting time for the competitive 40k community. The LVO “Warhammer Community” run Twitch stream had something around 100,000 unique viewers and at one point it had 13,000 viewers at one time! Like everything in life though there is room for improvement despite success. The ITC is no exception.
The ITC must evolve to reflect changes in the game, meta, and the overall competitive scene. I want to take this opportunity to highlight a few changes to the format and missions that we’ve been working on and hope to have ready for release in March.
The ITC Format
The format has been reworked based upon feedback from the community! One of the most common responses to the format has consistently been to rework how the points are accrued for winning events, especially by making the events point spread more equal. To that end here is a summary of some changes to the format. These Format changes apply to the ITC in general, not just Warhammer 40k. So if you compete in the ITC Age of Sigmar and Shadespire systems, this applies to you too! Another thing to look forward to is the ITC has Kill Teams arriving as a system soon as well. Lots of ways to compete in the ITC in the future!
- RTTs count for more! The ITC formula for points has been reworked to make the points spread closer together for the different sized events! It’s based more on a curve now, so the spread should be more close together, rather than a stair spread of points.
- The idea is to make these events both fun and meaningful for the ITC!
- Mid-sized GTs will also be more impactful now too!
- If you’re not at a giant event, you still will accrue a lot of points for winning these events.
- Huge events like LGT and the LVO will still count for more, but they won’t count for a grossly large amount anymore.
- The multiplier has been changed to scale up better, but you still don’t want to lose your first game! If you do though, you still get points for every game won.
- The points spread from 1st place to last place will be a smooth transition now, meaning if you get 10th place at a GT it won’t be such a dramatic drop off in points as it was last season.
The Missions
- March is set to be used as a Beta Test for the ITC Missions. Play the missions throughout March at your FLGs and tournaments, then we will compile your feedback from the TOs and Judges in order to set the missions for the rest of the season.
- The Primary Objectives for the Missions and the Bonuses are remaining the same per popular feedback.
- The Secondaries have a few changes, additions, and an old secondary returning! The way the asterisks and “stacking” secondaries worked was rewritten and reorganized to make it clearer. Below you will find the new WIP Secondaries:
- Gang Busters: For every 6 wounds inflicted on a unit that contains more than 1 model with 3 or more wounds, score 1 point. Units with the SWARM keyword do not count towards this mission.
- Pick Your Poison: Pick up to four keywords from the following list: psyker, fly, vehicle, monster, titanic. You cannot pick a keyword more than once. For each keyword you pick, nominate an enemy unit with that keyword. Score 1 point for each nominated unit that is destroyed.
- King of the Hill: At the end of the Battle Round the player who chose this secondary scores 1 point if they have two non-character, multimodel, units wholly within 6 inches of the center of the table. Units that score King of the Hill, cannot score Recon, Ground Control, or Engineers.
- Engineers: Select two non-character/non-fortification/non-artillery crew units from your army to be Engineers. Starting from Battle Round 2, if either of these units starts and ends your turn within 3” of an objective marker you control, and it did not make any attacks or manifest any psychic powers during your turn, earn 1 point at the end of that turn. These units may not score this objective if they join other units during the course of play or split into multiple units. Units chosen to be Engineers may never benefit from a rule that keeps them from being the target of attacks, Cloud of Flies, for example. They can benefit from terrain blocking Line of Sight to them.
- Deployment is going to be looked at as well. Many respondents to the ITC form stated players wanted to use the Chapter Approved 2018 Matched Play deployment. In response to this we are going to try a 50/50 approach. Half the Missions will use the old “you go, I go” deployment and half with use the “new” CA2018 deployment.
- Click here for the ITC Mission BETA Rules for March.
Chess Clock Rules
- Over the course of the 2018 ITC Season and the 2019 LVO several small changes to how the Chess Clock rules work appear necessary.
- The last turn limit will be reduced to 5 minutes per player instead of 10 per popular feedback.
The responses to the survey were great and gave us a good indicator of where the ITC participants would like to see the ITC go. The changes made to the ITC Format and ITC Missions were made to reflect that, then submitted for review to the ITC Tournament Organizers group. That group gave us great feedback and several revisions were made based upon their recommendations. Please remember to help us out in playtesting these changes and make sure to discuss your thoughts with your local TO/Judge so they can let us know.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
Love it. Thanks for putting in the work guys.
You’re welcome =)
Are these changes going to be in some written document somewhere? The mission pack and tournament rules on the website are still from last season.
Yes, they will be in a “beta” document for people to print for testing during the month of March.
Kingslayer vs monsters still unchanged. FeelsBadMan
I dnno. Something about shooting your Castellan once into a greater daemon to get 4 VP rubs me the wrong way.
I mean, what, do you think that Monsters and Vehicles should be immune to being chosen for Kingslayer? They already get the reduced rate for giving up VP on it.
Yes, unless they cost over 400 pts or something like a knight. Basically you should’nt be able to get 4 points turn 1 reliably by shooting your Castellan once into 1 target.
I am like 99% certain you only think there should be an exception for Knights because you don’t personally run a Knight.
I just ran a 1 knight admech list 30 minutes ago. I often run one in chaos too.
A castellan/reapers/lootas can kill a greater daemon in 1 turn more often than not. Knights require stuff like doom and full focus from the entire army due to being t8 2+ 3++ 24/28w.
Do you seriously not see the difference between T7 3++/5++ 16 wounds and T8 2+ 5++ 24/28 wounds? Do you know understand that a Castellan will almost always kill a Greater Daemon and will almost never kill another Castellan?
Also your theory is wrong because my “precious” Primarchs also fall on the 400+ pts requirement…
How does the +1 to go first interact with the alternate deployment method?
It does not. You don’t get a +1 to go first for finishing your deployment first as you’re not alternating deploying units.
Is it still a roll off to go first if you fully deployed first?
I would assume that’s the case, but I think it needs to be explicitly stated how firs turn is determined in the rules packet.
Looks great! I really like the choice to go for a 50/50 approach on deployment; it helps and hurts in equal measure. Thank you for tying these in with the Missions and not as yet another thing to roll for at the start of the game. Also, I really REALLY like King of the Hill. I’ll be excited to try it and/or play against it! Looks challenging, achievable, and interactive – which should be perfect.
However, Engineers has me very concerned. It seems to just have so many failure points. It can’t be turn 1, you have two units that, if they die, cause you to be unable to gain more points ever again. If you’re locked in combat, you can’t gain it because you’ll be forced into making attacks. There are some real units that this can work out for, but it seems like there’s a LOT of roadblocks to making it work. Testing will tell, I suppose.
Honestly, they both aren’t great. Heck, I’d say 3/4 aren’t great on first glance.
King of the hill is 6″ wholly within and has a TWO pretty specific unit requirement AND it’s at the end of battleround so if you’re first – you’re triple screwed. And you don’t know if you’ll go 1st or 2nd before picking it.
Engineers means your 2 units have to be untouched for basically the whole game. That’s gonna be pretty hard and probably means you’re already winning anyway.
Pick your poison is Marked that allows marking <7PL if the enemy has those keywords. So it'll usually be the same as marked more or less?
Gangbusters is like "hi custodes, (almost) every wound I do to your army gives me VP". Which is pretty crazy.
No, Engineers doesn’t mean they have to be alive all game, but as stated, you don’t pick it if your opponent can easily destroy them. No secondary should be a given.
As for Gang Busters we’re still working on the exact wording but yeah, Custodes in the current format give up very few points, it is a common complaint. The Custodes Jetbike army specifically was extremely difficult to counter with secondaries. This is a reaction to units like that, but as states, is still a WiP.
Eng: What do you mean? You get max 1 VP per BR. You can’t get it turn 1. So you have to get it for every turn except 1 – meaning they basically have to be alive on objectives the entire game. Sure, it sounds great if you’re facing an army with 0 no-LoS weapons and mobile units but those are bad armies to begin with.
The secondaries shouldn’t be achievable by every list archetype, against every list archetype, in every mission, with every deployment.
He does have a point, though: it literally takes the entire game’s length in order to get your points out of Engineers, every single time. That’s one of the reasons that people rarely select Behind Enemy Lines, and it’s the same thing at work here.
AP agreed with me. Someone hacked his account. Revoke his permissions on the website this instant or risk total annihilation.
(and then give them to me)
It does not literally take the full game’s length. The game is 6 battle rounds. You need to score it 4 times. You cannot score it turn 1. That leaves 5 battle rounds to score 4 times. Not literally the full game.
it might as well be the full game, very few armies have more than 2 units alive by round 5 than haven’t already won.
Tell that to Brandon Grant. You should watch his stream games from LVO, and listen to him on Best in Faction and Forge the Narrative. You cannot easily dismiss the opinion of the best 40k player in the world.
Yeah must admit that secondary is a true kick in the nuts to Custodes… I mean its a pretty much automatic 4 VP. I get trying to deal with an all biker list but is kill 6-8 Custodes models gain 4 vp. I mean compare to Titanslayer where you have to get 8 wounds on a T8 model. This is get 6 wounds on a T6 at best.
It can feel that way yeah, but, to be fair, Custodes are very hard to kill and anyone that plays a horde army feels the same way about the Reaper.
That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement but many armies have a secondary they feel is “automatic” like Kingslayer against Knights for example. You don’t even have to kill a knight to max it out, just hurt it.
Engineers was in play at NOVA last year and we liked it. This is a tweaked version of it (the same tweaks the NOVA dudes are doing) and it isn’t a mission you pick every game, but it can be very good when it is appropriate.
On the CA deployment missions, is there a alternative way of determining the person who goes first? The beta document only seems to replace the method of deployment in the ITC mission pack, and does not modify the method of choosing who goes first. Or is the intent that the person who deploys first fully, still must dice off with a +1 to go first?
No, it is intended to be played as written in CA.
“Half the Missions will use the old “you go, I go” deployment and half with use the “new” CA2018 deployment.”
Why?
Because a ton of people asked for the new deployment and ITC didn’t want to commit 100%
I get that it’s a trial but if you’re going to trial it, don’t half-ass it.
It isn’t half-assed in my opinion. I view it as adding diversity to the missions, two different deployment styles makes the mission set more diverse, rather than simply this or that.
Yeah, it’s not half-assed at all, it’s a compromise. We’ve been debating it a lot and with input from literally hundreds of TO’s and from the votes of ITC attendees it is pretty split down the middle as to which to use.
This way, everyone can try both and then we can vote at the end of March as to which we like the most.
I agree. I was one of the people asking for this, and I think the two different methods adds a diversity and a challenging layer. I am excited to try it out.
Yeah I like this approach.
If you look at how GW views their missions in 40k and AoS, they are part of a catalog of options. So 2018CA style deployment and missions are not intended to replace things, just add variety.
Taking that approach in ITC just makes sense too.
Also frankly more variety and a catalog of missions beyond 6 is good I think long term.
If the new scoring algorithm was run against last year’s data, what’s the impact on the top 10?
It changed somewhat but was largely the same names but in some cases in different order. Brandon still won (as he should have, he won a ton of big events but his margin of victory was MUCH smaller) and the rest shuffled a bit but not a ton. And honestly, it shouldn’t have. The top 10 reflects a group of players that all went to a lot of large, difficult events and did well and won many of them. They earned their spots and if the system changed that dramatically it would be a poor change. If you win numerous large events and aren’t in the top 10, something went wrong.
Where it made a huge difference was outside of the top 10. There was a lot of movement in the middle ranges and for players that were unable to go to a lot of large events. That is where it matters most as that is reflective of the largest number of players and their experiences.
The biggest difference for people this year will be the fact that the distribution of points is smoother between events and in your placing at events. You won’t drop off dramatically if you get less than 8th place now, and the difference between smaller and larger events is less pronounced by a lot. We worked very hard on it and I think it will be well received.
Thanks Reece! Knew you’d have it checked it out. Hope you and the team are recovered from LVO and taking a few well earned days off.
Thanks! Yeah, we ran it through numerous tests to make sure we weren’t screwing things up, lol
Love it. Great job to the FLG crew and the judges.
When is that ITC Patreon going live? 3/4 of the games I play in my basement are ITC and I don’t mind chipping in a few bucks at all for a living rule set.
Thanks!
The Patreon will be up and live by next week if not sooner!
Did you mean the “BIKER” keyword when you wrote “jet bike” on the list of keywords for Pick Your Poison? There is no “jet bike” keyword as far as I can tell.
Good catch.
Nice catch! Thank you.
Where will the new scoring system for itc points for tournaments be up? The current page still has old system
Yes, we’re still hammering it out but should have it ready to rock in the next 2-4 days I would say.
Looks great, Thanks guys!
I am eager to try the new deployment system because it probably leads to friendlier deployment gameplay. I can see myself telling my opponent, “I am going to put everything down quickly all at once to speed things up, then make slight adjustments here and there so characters are placed right and etc.” Should be fine since you aren’t adjusting after seeing opponent add new deployment, but doing all your own deployment at once. Would make deployment less stressful and faster.
It appears to me the way it is written that the CA mission type deployment strongly favors whoever won the initial roll off. They choose the deployment type, the deployment zone and then deploy last. They have a pretty strong advantage at that point. They can choose the most favorable deployment for their list or the worst for their opponent. Facing a gun line and your melee, choose basic or Frontal and see where they deploy. If your gunline choose Hammer and Anvil and again see how they deploy so you can put all your guns in the right place. Is that really how we want to run that? Seems like the one roll can almost decide the game in some cases.
I assume that “determines” deployment type is still a random roll as per the BRB for matched play. It just means who rolls the die for deployment type.
Yes, picking deployment zone, making opponent blind deploy, and then counter-deploying is strong. But your opponent then chooses going first or second, who is also a big deal. I like it.
Yes, deployment is a random die roll.
If the intent was to roll the deployment type and 1st to deploy gets default 1st turn sans seize then sounds great, if choose deployment type and then roll off for first that is not balanced in any way
“The players roll off and the winner determines which of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle (see the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook) and picks one of the deployment zones for their army. Their opponent uses the other deployment zone. The player who did not pick their deployment zone then deploys their entire army first. Their opponent then deploys their entire army. A player’s models must be set up wholly within their deployment zone.
The player who finished setting up their army first chooses who takes the first turn. If they decide to take the first turn, their opponent can roll a dice: on a 6 they seize the initiative, and they get the first turn instead.”
DId they mean to include the means of determining who goes first in that CA deployment method (because it is listed separately from deployment)?
Yes.
50/50 deployment is great, I like having some diversity in missions. I honestly do not think one deployment method is objectively better than the the other.
It is funny that you added “non artillery crew” to engineers. My favorite thing was using grot crews as engineers with index orks.
The non-artillery crew was a mistake, it’s been removed.
Isn’t the intent of engineers to have a unit that can be targeted normally with shooting? Artillery crew have pseudo character protection with their gun.
“Units chosen to be Engineers may never benefit from a rule that keeps them from being the target of attacks, Cloud of Flies, for example. They can benefit from terrain blocking Line of Sight to them.”
Are there changes coming to Faction scoring. For example an army that has say 1500pts of mixed nurgle units and 500pts of Chaos Space Marines shouldn’t be scoring as CSM due to there not being a Faction for “Nurgle”
For King of the Hill. Is it a unit that started the game at size > 1 or is currently size > 1?
This is my question. Am I no longer able to score if the unit started with five guys, and has been reduced to one guy?
I assume it is started with but there will always be that guy.
Pick Your Poison says you can’t pick the same keyword more than once. Should it also require you to pick separate Units for each Keyword you choose? As written here, it looks like you could choose a Flyrant as three of your selections, one each for Fly, Monster, and Psyker, and pick up three Points off that one Model.
They are supposed to be separate units as well.
My biggest gripe is Regen/Reanimation abilities being ignored or even punished by the functionality of secondaries. These abilities should make your opponent work harder to achieve their objectives, not make it easier.
GW’s W40K is more popular than ever – the ITC scoring collection is simply the way results CAN be collected. GW are selling a record number of models and books as they are cool, not necessarily for use in ITC missions. In 2017/8 only 7.7k players entered ITC – yet there were over a million different customers.
Why have you IGNORED the CA2018 missions that are better than anything written before?
Why have you IGNORED the points drop in OFFICIAL GW tournaments to 1750 ? These in 2019 will be the USA, Australia and Warhammer World; with more countries coming in 2020.
Why are you allowing so many versions of the game to be compiled into one scoring system? Having different terrain rules with unofficial chess-clocks at three, different detachment limits, at others all negates the entire system. There can be no best in the world from these results.
I dnno, I like it much better than some of the trash GW came up with. 1 objective null zone mission. Yeah, that sounds super tactical and fair for every army.
ITC missions are completely optional. Ask your TO’s to play Chapter Approved if they want, or run your own event and do so. No one is holding a gun to your head. That is the great thing about the ITC, you can literally play ANY format you want and still count.
Also, stop vaccinating your children! It will make them start playing Infinity!
lololol, oh my goodness, I shouldn’t be laughing so hard at this but I can’t help it….lol
I am actually angrier at this than I am at the real one.
I pronounce this the most whimsical jest of the season
Oh Rob, lol, you are persistent if nothing else.
You made a lot of noise in that post but so much of it was just that. You don’t know as much as you think you do, buddy. I say that not as an insult either, just some friendly advice.
Anyway, you’re free to your opinions of course but your facts are lacking.
I don’t know if I can believe anything you say you wrote NOTHING in all caps. Do you even CARE about 40k?
OMG, you are RIGHT! I am WRONG! The SHAAAMEE!!! =P
This is all art.
Maybe we just don’t THINK that the CA2018 missions are better than what has already been IMPLEMENTED by the people at Frontline. Maybe, the fact that people are USING the ITC missions instead of the CA missions is not because of some DIRE conspiracy but instead their OWN preferences, because the ITC itself does not SPECIFY what missions are to be used in tournaments and yet most tournaments still choose not to use the OFFICIAL missions printed by Games WORKSHOP.
Also you may want to have a look into your CAPS LOCK and possibly your PERSONAL BIASES as both of them seem to be malfunctioning on an IRREGULAR but consistent basis.
Rob Butcher caps lock screams can’t melt ITC dreams
You’re a poet, sir =P
This is so wrong, on so many levels.
Hey first off, amen for the point curve idea (hope it works out smoothly) secondly Engineers just as a read after I got off work from the hospital reads a bit awkward wording wise.
Question about Gangbusters, how would this work with a “unit” of say artillery weapons say orks. who you can buy a unit of 3? I think but they operate separately Not saying they have 6, but a unit like it… I’m assuming each of the original unit.
Lastly… you’re in the beta time kind of thing. Have you considered making marked for death after deploy has happened? it’s awkward when you have people put two of your three marked for death units in reserve then they just drop em in turn 3 away from things… like how did your guy as a warlord know to mark em for death if they were “in the webway” or “warp” and then why would your opponent know?
Hey.
You boys looking into team makeup rules being locked down this year or nah.
My piggies are coming for that trophy this year and I don’t need any surprise teams popping up like a knock-off Gucchi store in downtown San Fran.
Is there a doc somewhere with the full text of the updated chess clock rules?
In general i like the changes a lot. However from a necron perspective the new gangbusters rule is extremely penalizing to wraiths and destroyers I.e. two of the best necron units. As it’s worded, the rule stacks with reanimation protocols so if a model resurrects then it gives out even more VP if killed a second time, even though the unit may never get wiped. Which could make an odd situation where the necron player would rather the model didn’t resurrect, or else the wraith or destroyers could be ‘farmed’ for VP. Given those models are hardly dominating competitive play it seems to be a bit of an unnecessary penalty?
Nice job. I’m really grateful for all the effort you guys at Frontline are putting into ITC.
That said there is one thing that concern me. For the long time I was loud that ITC is better than ETC style missions, mainly because of less randomness involved in missions (no cards) but with the upcoming change(that is more likely to occur than not) to implement deck building part things may change. ITC makes you build army in a way that will make harder for your opponent to score points against it, while ETC style is putting more focus on making sure that you can score points. You obviously have to prevent your opponent from scoring, but this happens more on game lvl instead list building. And I think there is bigger warieti in lists that appear here as many units that gve points in itc and thus are not used, see the light of the table here. This is my biggest concern with ITC style missions. Meta gets stale after initial period, and is refreshed once gw releases something impactfull.
Have you tought about this approach? More missions like recon and maybe less focus on killing stuff of your opponent? I’m not saying to eliminate kill missions whatsoever, but ratio of them to recon style could change.