Hey everyone, Reecius here to discuss the impending changes coming as a result of the ITC community’s vote on how to define best in faction, and the new missions moving from beta to official.
We recently ran a poll based on popular feedback as to how to define the Best in Faction awards for the ITC. This was based on end of season feedback from the 2018 season. One of the most common points brought up was that Best in Faction awards should only be awarded to armies that are “pure” faction, meaning all detachments in the army come from the same faction. I had previously not been aware that this was a concern so started digging in and upon further research saw that it actually was a big deal to many players that felt competing for Best in Faction vs. another player only putting in some cases as few as 1/3 of their points into that faction wasn’t a fair competition.
So, after a considerable amount of thought and debate among the internal staff and in discussion with other TOs, we decided the only fair way to handle this was to put it to a community vote. Here is the result of that vote after about 1,500 ITC community members responded:
It was a blowout at an almost 4 to 1 ratio, the ITC Community members who cast their vote decided they wanted to have the Best in Faction award only go to those who’ve played a “pure” faction army. So, what does this mean:
- These changes take effect immediately. If you’re playing at an event this weekend and already have your list sorted out, no worries, we are allowing a 1 week grace period for events this weekend to allow for time to adjust but starting the week of April 8th, 2019, all events will be held to this standard.
- Events already reported this year will not be changed. Everyone so far has been competing under the same rules in good faith. People that took time away from work and family to go and compete for faction points did so under the rules at the time and as such, it would be unfair to go back and take that away from people. Likewise, if your goal is best in “Soup” factions (which are going to be pretty dang competitive, I bet) the scores you got for best in faction X will not apply to a soup category. It goes both ways.
- What is a “pure” faction army, anyway? Typically this will be based on the Codex in question plus any supplemental material. Example, if you play a Codex: Space Marines army and have a Forgeworld unit, a unit from the Vigilus supplement in your list–neither of which are in your Codex–but all have the correct keywords and are “Space Marines units” you’re good to go. As we currently don’t track down to the sub-faction level, you are free to have one detachment of Ultramarines, another of Salamanders/White Scars/etc. Same goes for an Astra Militarum army with a detachment of Cadians and another of Catachans, or Orks with multiple clans, etc. Armies such as Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Dark Angels have their own Codex and ITC faction category and as such, cannot mix with Space Marines without falling into the Imperial ITC faction. Same goes with Thousand Sons and Death Guard, etc. You can reference this handy chart to get a visualization of how we do things.
- New ITC Factions we will track points for: As we now are splitting things up a bit, we’ll need to track some new factions!
- Imperium (Imperial “soup” or mixed Imperial armies)
- Chaos (mixed Chaos armies)
- Aeldari (mixed Eldar armies)
- Forces of the Hive Mind (mixed Tyranid/GSC armies)
- Khorne (mixed Chaos armies with the Khorne unifying Keyword)
- Nurgle (mixed Chaos armies with the Nurgle unifying Keyword)
- Tzeentch (mixed Chaos armies with the Tzeentch unifying Keyword)
- Slaanesh (mixed Chaos armies with the Slaanesh unifying Keyword)
- What about summoned units? We are only going off of what’s on your list. Summoned units are ignored for the purposes of tracking ITC Best in Faction points. Yes, this includes a summoned Assassin using the stratagem.
- What about fortifications? Many fortifications lack specific faction keywords or have the unaligned faction keyword and thus will be ignored for our purposes.
- Are there any exceptions? In a game like 40k? There are always exceptions! Generally speaking if it is available to you in your Codex, Index or faction supplemental material, you’re good to go. Here are some specific Examples:
- Genestealer Cults may take a Brood Brothers detachment and still count as a “Pure” GSC army for our purposes.
- Your army will count for the Ynnari faction for our purposes if every detachment in your army is a Ynnari detachment under the restrictions outlined in the Ynnari rules.
- Adeptus Mechanicus may take one Imperial Knight in one Super Heavy Auxiliary detachment and retain their faction for ITC purposes.
- Note: this is a compromise decided among the ITC T.O.s to avoid situations where a player has an all or nearly all Knight army but then claims to be competing under the Adeptus Mechanicus ITC Faction which goes against the spirit of this new rule.
- Your army will count for a god specific Chaos faction if every detachment in your army is unified by the same god specific faction keyword.
My thoughts on this change:
This is a fairly substantial change but it is exciting, too! For most players, nothing will change. Just keep playing the army you want to play. The only difference being you may be getting points for a different category than you previously did. It’s clearly what the majority of participants want to see and my prediction is that for the very competitive subset of the ITC community you will see a move towards more “net-lists” so to speak as you can no longer win Best in Faction by just taking a splash of said faction in an otherwise pretty standard competitive list. But, as that is the smallest percentage of players the overall impact I think will be minimal for the average player’s experience (although it will likely get the most attention as that is how these things go). This also means the Best in Faction “soup” categories are going to be quite large and very competitive which also means more prestige in winning them!
What we will see also, is quite a few players that really like a specific faction shifting towards “pure” armies as their is an incentive to do so now, which means more variety on the tables. Combined with the changes to how scoring works at events, a player can play pure Space Wolves (or whichever faction) and go to an event, perform decently, say 3-2, and still get a really respectable amount of points towards their goal of winning best in faction! You won’t have to win events to win best in faction, just get out there and perform respectably knowing you are competing against other armies fairly. it took me a while to come around on it but I am very excited for it now!
ITC Missions Now Final for the Season:
- The ITC beta rules have been tested all month and are now becoming official with only minor modifications based on TO feedback. Again, if you are an ITC T.O., you want to join the Facebook group to be apart of these debates and discussions!
- The only real change was adding Bikes as a keyword choice in the Pick Your Poison mission.
- We will be streamlining the ITC documents to make them easier to navigate and rolling the Chess Clock rules into the guidelines per popular request.
Huge thanks to everyone for their input and to the ITC T.O.s for taking the time to help shape all of this to ensure we’re giving the ITC community the experience they want!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
Adeptus Mechanicus may take one Imperial Knight in one Super Heavy Auxiliary detachment and retain their faction for ITC purposes.
Note: this is a compromise decided among the ITC T.O.s to avoid situations where a player has an all or nearly all Knight army but then claims to be competing under the Adeptus Mechanicus ITC Faction which goes against the spirit of this new rule.
I’m not sure I follow this part. While I’m glad AdMech can still ally one Knight, I don’t see how a pure/mostly Knight list could count as AdMech since Knights don’t have the AdMech keyword.
It’s because you could take Knights out of their Codex and claim to be AdMech. The T.O.s debated it at length and decided the best compromise was this course of action.
Would these only aligned to be Mechanicus-aligned Knights and would they be able to take that household benefit? Or is this just a wide open 1 knight in a super heavy aux concession?
I think it’s a good compromise btw, just curious. It’s interesting because this doesn’t let someone use the House Trait (no adv + shoot for a Super Heavy Aux House Raven Knight) but they can still use the house relics/war lord traits/strategems.
The Codex and FAQ actually don’t require you to be a Mechanicus household which is a bit weird but hey.
And yeah, after a long discussion on it we all felt that made the most sense to just go with a single Knight.
Wonder if Renegade Knights count as it’s own codex.
Would mix Space Marines (like Dark Angel + Space Wolves) fall under Imperium or Adeptus Astartes?
If you have a Codex, you are your own faction more or less. So, Space Marines are from Codex: Space Marines, and Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Space Wolves are there own factions.
While I understand leaving the existing results, I feel that means that its effectively impossible for most people playing a pure faction the rest of the season to overcome the lead that has already been gained by people taking soup and winning or finishing strongly in events. Soup is simply better in almost all cases, and if people already have 4 strong wins in a faction, that’s pretty much GG. Not to say no one will overcome the lead, but for most factions that have strong “soup-ability” there’s almost no chance.
Time will tell on that one. I don’t necessarily agree given the fact that the scoring algorithm has changed and you can earn a lot more points than previously with a good to middling performance. Plus, necessity is the mother of invention and I bet you we see dedicated players of a “pure” faction surprising people and finding some killer combos now that there is an incentive to do so. As I always point out, I have done very well with pure Marines in big events and most people don’t think that that is possible. You just have to put your mind to it.
Also, remember, if someone was plying Imperial Soup, or whatever soup, and keep playing the same army, they won’t be tracking points for that faction any longer, but will be in the new larger soup factions. People playing pure will have 10 months to put up some decent scores and close the gap.
Further, everyone could have gone out and gotten points under the same rules in the same time period. If they did not, that is unfortunate, but everyone was running the same race under the same rules with the same opportunity to earn those points.
Likewise, if you want to go for a soup category win (which I think will be large categories and quite prestigious) all the points earned under “pure” factions won’t count. It cuts both ways.
It would have been ideal to get this done sooner but I wasn’t even aware of the issue until the end of the previous season. We acted on that information as quickly as we could with time to think it through and gather data.
How are you guys tracking this? Does this require us to use simplified format and upload into BCP for the score to count? Is it up to the TOs to verify everyone’s faction?
Same as always: it’s player reported. The TO should verify but mistakes are made. The community will regulate itself as it does now.
In time, as more people use the list uploader errors will occur less frequently.
Big Thanks for making the god specific factions! Exactly what I was wanting for my DG/Daemons.
Yeah, I was convinced to go with it by the other T.O.s
Looking forward to seeing the cool lists that come out of it!
I was expecting to have to go Chaos faction. I know having even more sub factions can be a pain in the ass, but I’m sure it will be appreciated.
Yeah, I was a little resistant to having even more factions to track but enough people wanted it that we decided to roll with it.
Will an assassin bought with the 1cp stratagem for a Dark Angels list count as a pure faction since it did not come from an attachment?
That is answered in the article.
How will Assassins be treated?
It’s covered under the summoned units section.
Will the final ITC mission packet keep the beta deployment (I hope not, it is by far the least enjoyable part of the current pack).
Yeah, it is. It was positively received. You’re actually the first negative reaction to it I have gotten.
Reecius! I am confused about one thing. Right now when I click through players in the ITC, I can see who the top ranked Crimson Fists player is, the list of all Crimson Fists players really. I can also do this for Space Wolves, Black Templars and Imperial Fists.
I don’t expect you to give a trophy out to the best Crimson Fists player, instead giving that to the best Adeptus Astartes player.
However on my message board I’m constantly pimping out the Crimson Fists rankings and giving players a reason to play their fluffy armies in competition. Even in losing they generate points.
I hope you aren’t planning to eliminate my ability to see the list of Crimson Fists players.
Here’s an example, the current list of Ultramarine Players. I just screen capped it so it’s just the top 18 or so, for 2019 thus far. https://imgur.com/a/FMeC692
So my request is, please don’t remove this really awesome feature I love using.
No worries, bro! Not taking that away at all. This is just for Best in Faction awards and categories in the ITC.
Awesome! thanks!
Here’s a better link to see current top Raven Guard and top Ultramarine players. My goal here isn’t for ITC to honor this but just keep the system relatively similar to how it is now, so that I can filter and find the best Crimson Fists players, by region and globally (which is how it works right now). https://imgur.com/gallery/FMeC692
Oh, I am sure in time we will track sub-factions, too as the ITC continues to grow.
And that link doesn’t go anywhere, friend.
It’s all good, you answered my question in the manner that I wanted so it’s all down on the farm, yo! Munching steaks here. Tenderloin. But whatevers up with that imgur link, i’ll just post it in this website field
Hopefully GW, sees this as a sign that lots of players like the idea of pure lists, and that it would be nice if there was some incentives in making pure lists (like extra battleforged CP eh? eh?)
Oh, trust me, they are aware =) It is one of the most commonly brought up topics not only here but on GW’s social media as well.
My big Question is how does one get on the hobby track points? I feel like i keep scoring these ren-man awards and not seeing them translate to that track.
Just be sure to have your TO submit hobby track scores. Many don’t know it’s a thing still, it takes time for people to become aware of it.
As a TO I still have no idea how the hobby track works. I’d be more than happy to use it if shown. Is there a guide somewhere I have missed or is this something which could be produced?
I’m old hat at running events on BCP now its just the hobby track I’ve no idea how its meant to be scored.
Thanks a lot for this guys, I’m really looking forward to how the events over the next couple months shake out for this.
Also HUGE thank you for thinking of the Chaos God for “Soup” factions – especially with the new CSM stuff that makes it great to be able to separate out Pure Tsons vs Tson with Demons vs just raw Chaos
Also really digging the new mission packet
You got it!
Question about the Chaos God Factions. For my list to qualify for “Slaanesh” what would I need to take? At least one Chaos Marines detachment all with Mark of Slaanesh and at least one Chaos Daemon detachment all with Allegiance Slaanesh?
If all my detachments were Chaos Daemons with Allegiance Slaanesh it would count as Chaos Daemons?
I would like a change to the objective placement relative to buildings. I think they have to be at least 2″ away from a building so that they can hold an objective inside of a building, but still be abled to be charged from the outside. Meaning that in order to hold it from within a building you have to be 1inch within of the wall.
With things like engineers and camping becoming more and more rampant, we should at least compensate by allowing some way to charge “objective holders”
I would have rather that it not be done mid season, for all the reasons discussed above.
Ideally yeah, we would have rolled it out sooner but as stated, it didn’t appear on my radar until the season had begun. And seeing how many people want it, waiting a year didn’t make sense over shifting gear early season.
Good thing we rolled it out just 2 months into a year long season then!
Since factions are being added, can we get adeptus titanicus. Having to play it under imperium with all the soup seems kinda lame.
Adeptus titanicus plays under “Agents of the Imperium” I think. Alongside Inquisition (still fieldable at 2K), Assassins, Sisters of Silence, Legion of the Damned, Starstriders, and other orphaned minor factions.
Thanks for the info, hopefully Reece confirms this. Don’t want to be doing scores wrong when I mess around with it. Really hope we can get our own faction to compete in
What happens if you take one of each assassin, does that loose you the “pure” list?
If you have an Assassin detachment in an Imperial army then it is no longer a pure army, no, you’d fall into the Imperium faction.
How do assassins fit into this?
So in theory a Tzeentch Daemons detachment and a BL detachment that was all mark if Tzeentch and Abaddon hq would count toward Tzeentch soup. Am I right?
Since factions are being added, can we get adeptus titanicus. Having to play it under imperium with all the soup seems kinda lame.
What about Assassins Primary will there be any consideration as they can not field 2000 points?
They are imperial agents which seems to include the inquisition based on the faction section.
But that’s the thing… Imperial Agents have been around since the beginning and is made out of those imperium factions without a codex and that are supposed to be attached to other imperium armies.
The Inquisition troops were exploded between officio assassinorum, ecclesiarchy, and Inquisition. And none of the imperial agents are factions that fit together, or can really build up to 2000 points except by spamming the same units…
But now if I want to field my original Inquisition force with Death Cult, Priests and Crusaders, the one that has a semblance of interest to field, well… it’s not a pure faction anymore!
I think there is a bit of confusion on the matter, so I’d like to hear an official answer on the subject from Reece-
Does this mean that if you combine multiple Agents of the Imperium factions together (e.g. Assassins and Sisters of Silence) in a single army, your force would still qualify as Agents of the Imperium, or would you be Imperial Soup at that point (because you had drawn from multiple “codices”)?
We do lump the smaller imperial factions into Imperial Agents. They’re so small and so few people play them it hasn’t been a priority to track it.
Fair enough, thanks. Just had a discussion with the other guy ranked in that faction, and neither of us were 100% sure how it worked. 😛
I’m still not entirely sure I understand how it works.
If I run 3 detachments:
Inquisition + Sisters of Silence + Assassins, can I score as “Imperial Agents”?
Yes, as all three of those are a single “faction” for ITC purposes.
1 week implementation seems pretty drastic. I’ve spent the last 2 months prepping for a GT and on the 12th based on the faction rules you had. Now suddenly I have no time to adjust my list to only be a single faction. One of the very few times I can actually make it out to a GT, and any score I get towards my faction bif choice will be effectively useless because there isn’t enough time to adjust.
I understand that the community is spoken, but I am not ad about the change. But the rush to implement it was excessive!
So we have complaints about both waiting too long and doing it too quickly.
With this new change my general army will now become Chaos as opposed to Thousand Sons or CSM. Is there the possibility to adjust my previous factions to Chaos
We’re leaving previous scores as is.
?
So just to make sure if I say have 4 Knights and a battalion of AdMech HQs and troops only would I count as soup under this new ruling?
Yes.
I understand the need for binary polls, but the third option of imposing a minimum points requirement hasn’t been voted on, and might give “pure faction” a run for its money if you launched another poll. It would also have the benefit of allowing a transitional period that might even out some of the discrepancies borne of soup lists counting for best in faction for the last few months. At least, something to consider for next season if not this one; there are, I believe, very solid arguments that allies are now for many players, especially competitive players, an important part of the game, even when trying to play their favourite factions. And, indeed, allies may still be necessary for certain factions to function in a truly competitive environment.
Second, though the thought of adding factions may be unpleasant, I think there should absolutely be an “Adeptus Astartes Soup” super faction for armies that take a selection from the different power armor books. There are enough Space Marine books and players to warrant a distinction from “Imperium.” I think the splitting of the Chaos powers is a really great move, and likewise, splitting off ‘pure Marines’ from Imperium would create a very diverse and competitive field.
I’m sure in time we will track down to the subclass level as the ITC continues to grow, we’re just not there yet.
And the point wasn’t to what degree allies/soup is allowed, the core issue was people asking for Best in Faction awards to be awarded to people only playing that faction, which is logical. If you prefer to play soup, go for it! It will just now be in the soup category is all.
Sorry, I may have over explained there.
My question is: given that an alternative option (like a minimum points requirement) has been suggested in nearly every discussion on the topic, including the last Signals episodes, would it not be prudent/fair, especially now that we know public sentiment leans so heavily towards a change, to vote between the pure option and the minimum points requirement?
My gut feeling is that it will be a much closer race XD
So gang busters no longer requires you to choose A unit to sore against? Just every model with 3 wounds or more counts toward it?
From multi-model units with 3+ wounds, yes.
I like that change
So gang busters no longer requires you to pick a unit to score against? Just every model you kill with 3W counts toward it? Seems very easy to score.
Love the way you guys handled it, especially with allowing ‘soup’ to essential be its own BIF!
Yeah, now people can play how they want and compete on an equal footing with one another.
So GSC can get allies from a seperate book but no one else can? I get that AM units are in the GSC book, but they get access to the entire AM codex and FW index at no penalty? Seems like that defeats the purpose of the entire situation. At least admech/knight got a restriction.
Yeh agreed that decision seems odd to me
I can see the argument kinda
But seems contradictory to the intent and not in line with the AdMech / OK decision
A penalty exists in the codex.
You get half CP and no unique traits.
The only things people are taking is HQs for orders or Vultures, but the issue with Vultures lies with the vulture, not with GSC taking them. It just so happens GSC has dogshit shooting and that’s a reliably source of it they don’t get otherwise.
It’s not from a different book, really. Brood Brothers is specifically allowed in their dex, and you can only take 1 detachment as outlined in the GSC dex. It’s clearly meant for the two to be allowed in the same army and it even specifies that they don’t lose their GSC faction when using them and the models can interact with one another via orders and look out sir, etc.
It’s the odd duck for sure but if you read the section in their book about it the devs intended for them to work together. The BBs also lose all of the guard goodies and can only be taken in a GSC army.
Interesting to note that Castellens arent in the Ad Mech codex however are allowed under this ruling?
Ie: I can take a Warden in the Ad Mech codex but not a Castellan however i can take a large knight and still maintain mono faction under this ruling?
How does the Anhrathe faction work? Since they have no HQ’s and characters, from what I see.
Someone had answered this previously and you can do it, although I am not certainly how exactly, off hand.
I really wish binary polls would go away. The fact is they don’t accurately consider the issue at hand. I wonder for example how many people who voted in this poll considered team events. The two large team events will essentially lock down pure faction wins for a handful of people as they don’t even need to win a majority of their games if the team places well. As with any two party system (joke intended, don’t freak out on me) the issue is more complicated then first glance would make them out to be. I don’t have a dog in this fight especially since I never got my 1st in faction from last season LOL. I just wish people were more thoughtful and not in such a hurry to pass knee jerk reactions that need more consideration. My guess going forward is we will see another binary choice poll attempting to fix the mess this is going to become when people realize ATC and ETC have effectively locked up 6 to 8 pure best in faction. Oh and that is not even considering all the bs we see out of England where magic hand written tournemants show up and alter faction scores.
Well, a few things here. For one, how do the team events lock anything down in the current environment? Hint: it’s a trick question.
Two, what best in faction 1st place (and you’re missing an important noun in that sentence) did you not get? The trophy? The placing?
Lastly: what’s a hand written tournament? A lot of what you said I think got lost in translation, buddy.
1 During ATC and ETC there will be pure faction lists on the teams that finish top 10 e.g. the nurgle don’t give up points list , gsc pure, different flavors of space marine, whatever other odd faction lists teams throw in for match ups. So those players go 2 and 4 but the team finishes high and they get a massive major score that no one can hope to match with a pure list in a solo event.
2 I never received my ynnari trophy but I only emailed once and I know it’s just on me to actually email in again but I don’t play for trophies hence the LOL.
3 Last season saw alot of faction ranking changing 2 weeks before LVO and peoples factions changing in tournemants that were six months old. When you looked up the events there was nothing in BCP and alot were hand tracked which at least seems shady given how people’s factions changed six months after the event. With so much autonomy these issues are almost impossible to police.
4 sorry for the questionable typing, trying to do this on my phone at work is tricky.
It just dawned on my that this is by codex right? So adding Red Corsairs next to Black Legion, you’re still just going Best Chaos Space Marines right? It’s not getting so specific to be just Black Legion?
Exactly.
To do the change so suddenly and mid stream seems silly. Mixed armies are actually the fluffiest way to exist in 40k. And I think it is hugely punishing on specific factions with weak codexes. A requirement for more then 50% of a faction would of been more fair. At least when the favourite codexs got new toys you could bring things to compliment your army, or compete with them and it leads to dynamic ever changing armies. This just takes the non hard core player further out of the occasion.Do I bring a shitty list to get some points, or bring an optimized list that everyone else is running this week? How does that contribute to the fun of playing?
Exactly what knight can I take as an admech player? I assume only what is in the admech book? So we can’t do something like a castellan or a set of three warglaves?
Any Knight.
so just to make sure if i have death guard and run a leviathan dreadnaught that is still ok
A quick ruling should be made on the new Ynnari. Any Eldar can take a Ynnari chatacter and chose not to change faction for a detachment per the White Dwarf OR they can charge a Detachment to Ynnari. Based on those new rules any Eldar should be able to use them and stay in faction if they choose not to change faction. (Why do it?) Because it gives some flexibility especially to Drukari and Harlequins.
Hello Reece,
I had a question in regards to the new ynnari rules and how they interact when you choose to stay a craftworld, Drukhari, Harlequin detachement when you include a Ynnari character. How would this now be ruled as a faction? Is it a Asuryani, Drukhari, Harlequin army still (meaning the ynnari character is the only thing not craftworld, drukhari or Harlequin) or would this make it an Aeldari army.
The reason I ask is because this new faction policy came out before the new index and the non Ynnari detachment inclusion of a ynnari character did not excist at the time.
Hope to hear from you soon!
Just a quick one guys, if I have a craftworld army and include the yncarn but still keep the detachment craftworld, will this count as a craft world force or Aldari.
Regards Bobolas