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.
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