This Week in the ITC: Competitive Doldrums

Hello Warhammer 40k players! SaltyJohn from TFG Radio here to talk about the current state of the ITC, and it’s not great.

This past weekend we had a lot happen in Competitive 40k. Adepticon and the absolute dominance of Harlequins, pretty much everywhere anyone played 6+ Voidweavers in a list. When you couple these two with the dominance of the Tau and Custode releases we almost need to create a new tier for Harlequins, putting them two whole rows above Tau and Custodes. Yes, Tau and Custodes are still overpowered, verging on broken, codices but Harlequins are so far above them they need a category all their own. But that’s not anything new, right? At this point, if you follow any discussions online about competitive events in 40k you’ll already be aware of the Harlequin problem. What’s been discussed less is the decline of Adepticon.

Adepticon used to be a must-attend event in the 40k world, but that no longer seems to be the case. While other events have seen a return to pre-Covid numbers Adepticon has declined. The 40k Championship event used to sell out almost instantly, you had to be on their site the second ticket sales went live to have a chance of getting a ticket, this year it didn’t even sell out. The Adepticon Team Tournament, once the premier team event in the world would similarly sell out instantly. You needed to have that cursor hovering perfectly and press that mouse click with precision to get one of the 200 team spots. This year, there were only 80.

What is contributing to this massive drop in attendance at what was once an event that many in the 40k community considered an absolute must to attend? Well, you can make the argument the state of the game kept people away, but if that were the case the event would have sold out still but simply suffered massive attrition, which isn’t the case. There have been issues players have complained about for a long time. The Adepticon terrain has been notoriously bad for a decade, with players jokingly referring to some tables as planet bowling ball. The terrain was addressed at one point this year when organizers let the players know the terrain was a few editions out of date, so the players should be sure to discuss the terrain with their opponents beforehand and figure it out.

Another factor for the team event could be the missions. The Team event missions are riddled with special rules and surprises for players. From missions where no reserves are allowed at all, meaning you would have to deploy your drop pods during deployment, to missions where you must reserve your warlord and more. These kinds of missions were once the norm in competitive play, which was one of the things that led the ITC to make their own missions back in the beginning, but it’s just not what players expect anymore. When you combine these two factors with the fact that there are so many large tournaments now it might be that players are simply no longer willing to spend the money to go to an event with poor terrain and wonky missions.

With Frontline Gaming putting on 150+ player events almost bi-monthly and GW putting on their US Open events, coupled with other big-time events like WargamesCon, Flying Monkey Con, and numerous local GT sized events every weekend around the world the competition for players’ money and attendance is a real thing now. What players expect from an event has also grown, and when you’re not starved for choice, they seem to be pickier now.

Ok. Now let’s talk Harlequins and, more importantly, how Competitive 40k should be balanced. There’s been a lot of talk on various websites/blogs/youtube lately about balancing 40k or bringing back Comp, which is a terrible idea, and while this graphic is a bit out of date it does serve to support this point regarding how things should be balanced.

This graphic, and the state of 40k throughout 9th, is the direct result of nerfing through point increase on the popular unit(s) regardless of the viability of a faction instead of decreasing points on inefficient units to boost their use over, or in conjunction with, the units being spammed. The current balancing paradigm seems to be:

1. Identify what is being used a lot in competitive lists.

2. Increase the points on it.

The first part is important, and the second might sometimes be necessary. However, it has led to some poor results. For example, Volkite Contemptor dreads. Yes, they were everywhere, but increasing the point cost on them it made Marine lists of all types go from mid-tier to near bottom tier overnight. Imperial Knights, and Chaos Knights, were doing much better competitively after the first rules adjustment. Then Magaera’s got a point bump and they dropped out of the meta almost entirely. What I hope GW will consider, is instead of automatically increasing the points cost of popular units, assessing if a points drop elsewhere would make the lists more diverse. In other words don’t punish the things that are good, incentivize taking things that were otherwise too expensive to consider taking. In the example of both Marines and IK/CK the increased cost of a few key units made the entire book no longer competitive. Whereas if some units had received point drops, increasing their efficiency per point then a more diverse meta within each book competitively would begin to form.

This doesn’t address the issue of codex releases that are skewed into abhorrent levels of overpowered out of the gate. What it does do though, is return the meta to a healthier place overall, so the OP nature of a book can be mitigated to a degree by the meta overall. As long as the balancing meted out by GW is done with an eye to boosting, not just nerfing, then the overall health of the meta could be brought up to a point that new books are not so overpowered. I don’t think, even with playtesting, there is any way to fully make sure a new codex does not have some unbalanced element(s) but if the overall meta is healthier it could be less impactful. Hopefully, this all gets sorted out sooner rather than later because the health of the game overall isn’t great.

And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!