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Many of us have noticed commentary about how the rulesets for big tournaments (ITC, adepticon, others) can have pretty huge impact on unit selection and the overall meta for the event. I have 3 main questions:

1. What shortcomings are there in the GW matched play ruleset that these alternatives fix? I assume it's to get rid of the RNG of shuffled objective cards.
2. What are the big aspects of the ITC (and other tournament rulesets) that should influence your list-building? for example, ITC encourages heavy weapons in guardsmen infantry squads to keep the model count <10 to prevent reaper
3. Do the standard GW rules generally favor certain factions/army types?

I'm curious about everyone's opinions on the different rules being used out there. Do you all use those rules for casual games too? Or just for tournaments and tournament practice?

Not simply list building and meta, but also how you think during the game.

Random objectives are just terrible for most competitive games. e.g. You pull all objectives on the other side of the table - your opponents pulls objectives all on their side, too. They're going to have a much easier time. Especially if they get a D3 objective and roll a 3 - if you never get a D3 then that's two more objectives you have to score and you only get so many cards.

Taking units of 9 isn't a golden rule, but if you can make things harder for your opponent you should.

I don't know that the GW rules favor particular armies. Maybe some units like fast deepstrikers that can jump from objective to objective.

Not sure if GW rules favour them, but a lot of tournament variants buff board control and large, CP-farming detachments more so than they already are.

Combining Maelstrom/EW Missions and thus always having Maelstrom favours armies that can spread across the board.

Having the ability to "counter" First Blood as lots of "First Strike", etc.. variants do makes the +1 (and auto-first turn for BRB missions) less of an issue and weak units included just for CP farming and/or Maelstrom-objective holding less of a liability.

In Warhammer World tournaments, the occasional straight-up Kill Points or Relic mission, without houseruling the CA approved first turn variant to them, can help things like pure Custodes or Imperial Knight armies, etc.. a bit, near-guaranteeing first turn and taking a significant lead for the game-win in that particular context just by killing a Nurgling or two. Inversely, they struggle when Maelstrom comes up. But in formats like ITC, etc.., they don't even have the few missions/game styles that favour them.

Don't want to hijack this thread but it's sort of relevant:

Do ITC rules actually change the rules of the core game and/or individual units? I know they impliment beta rules and have their own missions but is that it?

 mrhappyface wrote:
Don't want to hijack this thread but it's sort of relevant:

Do ITC rules actually change the rules of the core game and/or individual units? I know they impliment beta rules and have their own missions but is that it?

The beta rules come from GW. GW gives the beta rules to the tournament community to have them act as playtesters.

Other than that, the missions are the only difference.

What makes ITC missions better than GW missions is the variety. You can win by focusing purely on objectives, or kills, or both. Whatever suits your playstyle and is a weakness in your opponent's list.

1 point per player turn if you killed at least 1 unit.
1 point per player turn if you control at least 1 objective.
1 point at the end of the game turn if you control more objectives than your opponent.
1 point at the end of the game turn if you killed more units than your opponent.

three secondary objectives you pick before the game starts, capping at 4 points each.

Example: Recon - score 1 point at the end of your turn if you have 1 unit in each table quarter. A unit can only belong to 1 table quarter at a time.

So if you have a strong board presence you can get 4 points. Which is useful if you're facing custodes and don't have the power to kill them. So you can actually play strategically and avoid them, control objectives, board presence, and still win, even though you can't physically kill them.

Consider how the last major GW tournament was dominated by Orks. Just push a large number of choppy bodies on objectives and win. Pretty 1 dimensional. Or Kill points - bring a bunch of durable units and deny killpoints. Also 1 dimensional.

 Marmatag wrote:

Other than that, the missions are the only difference.

Nitpick, but there is an actual game rule changed in ITC: Ruins.

They ignore holes and windows on the ground floor of ruins for the purposes of drawing line of sight.

 mrhappyface wrote:
Don't want to hijack this thread but it's sort of relevant:

Do ITC rules actually change the rules of the core game and/or individual units? I know they impliment beta rules and have their own missions but is that it?

Missions are what most immediately and directly determines the winner or loser of a given game. Of every single game in fact. It doesn't get more core than that.

Changes, say, to how shooting works or banning psykers or not using the CP/Stratagem mechanic or changing terrain rules (as ITC does), or any other thing you could do outside of missions has a comparably far more negligible impact on who wins and who loses and is by definition "less core" and more peripheral.

Speaking of rules, Can anyone tell me if ITC or GW put a limit on how many strategium can be used in a turn? I have gone to a couple of ITC and been argued both ways but cant find anything that says it limited 1 strategium per phase.

Blueguy203 wrote:
Speaking of rules, Can anyone tell me if ITC or GW put a limit on how many strategium can be used in a turn? I have gone to a couple of ITC and been argued both ways but cant find anything that says it limited 1 strategium per phase.

Think that's in the basic matched play rules, you can only use a particular stratagem once per phase. No limit to how many (different) ones though.

I play in lots of tournaments in the UK and I avoid the ITC ones like the plague, fortunately, they are a minority. I find their missions and comp far worse than the standard comp most UK tournament organisers employ. The big tournaments here tend to play one Eternal War and one Maelstrom mission simultaneously, with all D3s for victory points set to 2 and all d6's for the same set to 4. There is also a rule that you can discard an impossible objective and redraw, so if you opponents army is infantry only and you draw Big Game Hunter you can discard and redraw.

Using the actual maelstrom rules also adds the redraw a card stratagem as a real choice to use in play.

The bonus point / secondary missions in ITC Champions missions instantly make the game more balanced, because both players get to pick what they want/need to do based on knowledge of their opponent's army.

jaxor1983 wrote:
The bonus point / secondary missions in ITC Champions missions instantly make the game more balanced, because both players get to pick what they want/need to do based on knowledge of their opponent's army.

I don't think that is true and I haven't seen it play out that way in practice. Rather they seem to skew the build choices in a different and, to me, far less intuitive way as rather than building for a wide range of possibilities you have pre-knowledge of your goals. Some builds are just straight better at those objectives than others, either at scoring them or denying them or both. The game doesn't feel any more balanced with the way the ITC missions are structured, the results don't look more balanced, just different. The more common formats in the UK reward building more reactive lists, when you don't know your secondaries precisely, but you do know them in a broad sense this can be played to as well. Is either more balanced? Probably not. The ITC version has a lot more busywork and plays slower though, combined with highly unintuitive restrictions I'd rather not play it. I just don't think it is very well designed.

 Marmatag wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
Don't want to hijack this thread but it's sort of relevant:

Do ITC rules actually change the rules of the core game and/or individual units? I know they impliment beta rules and have their own missions but is that it?

The beta rules come from GW. GW gives the beta rules to the tournament community to have them act as playtesters.

Other than that, the missions are the only difference.

What makes ITC missions better than GW missions is the variety. You can win by focusing purely on objectives, or kills, or both. Whatever suits your playstyle and is a weakness in your opponent's list.

1 point per player turn if you killed at least 1 unit.
1 point per player turn if you control at least 1 objective.
1 point at the end of the game turn if you control more objectives than your opponent.
1 point at the end of the game turn if you killed more units than your opponent.

three secondary objectives you pick before the game starts, capping at 4 points each.

Example: Recon - score 1 point at the end of your turn if you have 1 unit in each table quarter. A unit can only belong to 1 table quarter at a time.

So if you have a strong board presence you can get 4 points. Which is useful if you're facing custodes and don't have the power to kill them. So you can actually play strategically and avoid them, control objectives, board presence, and still win, even though you can't physically kill them.

Consider how the last major GW tournament was dominated by Orks. Just push a large number of choppy bodies on objectives and win. Pretty 1 dimensional. Or Kill points - bring a bunch of durable units and deny killpoints. Also 1 dimensional.

This is a great summary of ITC... could someone do the same for other major tournament variants? I might propose a change to my local group... so far it sounds like ITC is preferred?

My biggest beef with ITC and GW tournies is the total lack of deployment variety. It's the same dang setup and fire at each other nonsense that favors the gun lines too much.

I'd also like GW to add a universal strategem for reserving a unit that comes off your table edge for 1 CP for 8 PL or less, 2 CP for 9 PL or more to better balance out the alpha strike nonsense you have to deal with.

Like a perfect Tourney should have a variety of mission, not just one kind. I like the blended mission types in ITC, especially in the latest iteration. They just need to tweek the deployment so it's not a static gun line in every dang round.

Blueguy203 wrote:
Speaking of rules, Can anyone tell me if ITC or GW put a limit on how many strategium can be used in a turn? I have gone to a couple of ITC and been argued both ways but cant find anything that says it limited 1 strategium per phase.

Any individual stratagem can only be used once per phase as per usual. This is a GW matched play rule.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MacPhail wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
Don't want to hijack this thread but it's sort of relevant:

Do ITC rules actually change the rules of the core game and/or individual units? I know they impliment beta rules and have their own missions but is that it?

The beta rules come from GW. GW gives the beta rules to the tournament community to have them act as playtesters.

Other than that, the missions are the only difference.

What makes ITC missions better than GW missions is the variety. You can win by focusing purely on objectives, or kills, or both. Whatever suits your playstyle and is a weakness in your opponent's list.

1 point per player turn if you killed at least 1 unit.
1 point per player turn if you control at least 1 objective.
1 point at the end of the game turn if you control more objectives than your opponent.
1 point at the end of the game turn if you killed more units than your opponent.

three secondary objectives you pick before the game starts, capping at 4 points each.

Example: Recon - score 1 point at the end of your turn if you have 1 unit in each table quarter. A unit can only belong to 1 table quarter at a time.

So if you have a strong board presence you can get 4 points. Which is useful if you're facing custodes and don't have the power to kill them. So you can actually play strategically and avoid them, control objectives, board presence, and still win, even though you can't physically kill them.

Consider how the last major GW tournament was dominated by Orks. Just push a large number of choppy bodies on objectives and win. Pretty 1 dimensional. Or Kill points - bring a bunch of durable units and deny killpoints. Also 1 dimensional.

This is a great summary of ITC... could someone do the same for other major tournament variants? I might propose a change to my local group... so far it sounds like ITC is preferred?

Here is the fully ITC mission pack. The variety and difference comes from the number of objectives. Because these are for tournaments, the assumption is that your terrain is symmetric. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ltQMdeDqYRXOhvdYT3dtUSji3AISvZRM8gDlhOXDaF8/edit

I wouldn't bother with Adepticon's missions. That whole system had its flaws revealed in a major way in the last tournament.

zerosignal wrote:

Blueguy203 wrote:
Speaking of rules, Can anyone tell me if ITC or GW put a limit on how many strategium can be used in a turn? I have gone to a couple of ITC and been argued both ways but cant find anything that says it limited 1 strategium per phase.

Think that's in the basic matched play rules, you can only use a particular stratagem once per phase. No limit to how many (different) ones though.

Yes, that is what i thought too. I could not find on any FAQ or Erreta that states there is a limit to how many (different) stratigiums we can use in a phase, only that we can use 1 of each during each phase.

Stux wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Other than that, the missions are the only difference.

Nitpick, but there is an actual game rule changed in ITC: Ruins.

They ignore holes and windows on the ground floor of ruins for the purposes of drawing line of sight.

Thanks - I forgot about that one. I've been playing ITC exclusively for so long, just take this for granted.

Essentially this rule is mandatory or you can't get cover in any form of imperial ruins supplied by GW.

Here's my issue with the entire competitive scene. There are no competitive rules for Warhammer 40K. None have been provided by GW. Tournament Organizers are the ones that set the competitive rules for 40K.

AoS, on the other hand, does actually have a competitive ruleset introduced in the General's Handbook. So, with a few small exceptions, I would expect Tournament Organizers to follow the rules in the General's Handbook making picking "units of the month" and "armies of the month" less of a thing (if a thing at all).

If 40K is ever going to be truly a competitive format, GW needs to lay down some rules for tournament play that Tournament Organizers need to follow (again, with the possibility of a few small exceptions here and there, but not many).

SG

Here's the list of ITC secondaries summarized with my opinions from personal experience below:

Headhunter: 1pt for each enemy Character that is destroyed.
Autotake. Most armies have 4 characters.
Kingslayer: Choose enemy Character. Earn 1 point for every 2 wounds of damage it loses. If Vehicle or Monster, earn 1 point for every 4 wounds it loses.
Frequently chosen. This is only worth taking on a Character with 8 wounds or a vehicle/monster with 12.
The Reaper: Earn a point for every enemy unit that is destroyed that began the game with 10+ models. If a unit begins the game with 20+ models, you earn 2 points if it is destroyed.
Rarely chosen. Most lists are built avoiding it.
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.
Frequently chosen. This is usually picked out of lack of a better choice. It's primary drawback is it takes 4 turns to complete meaning you rarely get 4 points from it due to time limit and 4th turn unit counts.
Big Game Hunter: 1 point for every enemy model with 10 or more wounds that is destroyed.
Autotake. Most lists satisfy this. Even if they only have 3 it's a better choice versus others such as Recon/Gang Busters
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.
Never chosen. It's not applicable in the majority of lists. How many models have 32 wounds to allow max points?
Behind Enemy Lines: 1 point if at the end of your player turn you have 2 or more of your units at least partially within 12” of your opponent’s rear most and longest board edge.
Never chosen. It doesn't lend well to my armies. I see its validity to some lists, but again, like Recon, requires 4 turns for max points.
Death by a Thousand Cuts: Earn 1 point for every 3 enemy units destroyed in a Battle Round.
Frequently Chosen. I feel this objective has the best spirit of the game. It requires you to make tactical choices when finishing off enemy units and you don't get rewarded for doing things you're going to do anyway.
Gang Busters: Choose enemy unit. Earn 1 point for the following:
---Each enemy model in the chosen unit destroyed that started the game with 5 or more wounds.
---Every two enemy models in the chosen unit destroyed that started the game with 3 to 4 wounds.
Never chosen. I've not seen anyone in any tournament pick this one yet. How many units in 40k even satisfy this objective, let alone give up 4 points?
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.
Autotake. You're going to do these things anyway. You might as well get 4 points for them.

Drager wrote:
I play in lots of tournaments in the UK and I avoid the ITC ones like the plague, fortunately, they are a minority. I find their missions and comp far worse than the standard comp most UK tournament organisers employ. The big tournaments here tend to play one Eternal War and one Maelstrom mission simultaneously, with all D3s for victory points set to 2 and all d6's for the same set to 4. There is also a rule that you can discard an impossible objective and redraw, so if you opponents army is infantry only and you draw Big Game Hunter you can discard and redraw.

Using the actual maelstrom rules also adds the redraw a card stratagem as a real choice to use in play.

Making the random VPs fixed doesn't address the absurdly random possibility of objectives where one person can literally do nothing and score while the other has to do things their list wasn't built to do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sfshilo wrote:
My biggest beef with ITC and GW tournies is the total lack of deployment variety. It's the same dang setup and fire at each other nonsense that favors the gun lines too much.

Most of the deployments for ITC are rolled on the table. If you're just setting up and shooting then you're not playing the mission and you will lose unless you're horribly outgunned.

The format you choose depends on what you expect from the game. ITC could be good if you are looking for ultra symmetric matches, but is the one that warps the game the most. It heavily favors some builds (alpha strikes and gunlines mostly) while defacto removing a lot of units from the game because they would bleed secondaries. Out of all the formats is the less "40K" out there, and i would never play it, but if you need a ruleset for an ultra strict tournament with big prices, then ITC could be a necessary evil. I would suggest against it for regular games at the store.

Standard BRB missions suck. Period. Never use those.

CA missions are gold, probably the best missions for casual/competitive environments and 100% "40K". It shows the highest diversity in lists and is the most balanced ruleset if you don't have extremely competitive players (you can break it if you work really hard at it, which makes it not good for national level competitions). Be warned though that they are made with 5+ turn games in mind, so if you are playing at 2000 points you should expect games to last 3 hours each. If you don't have that much time for a single game, play at 1500.

 deviantduck wrote:
Here's the list of ITC secondaries summarized with my opinions from personal experience below:

Headhunter: 1pt for each enemy Character that is destroyed.
Autotake. Most armies have 4 characters.
Kingslayer: Choose enemy Character. Earn 1 point for every 2 wounds of damage it loses. If Vehicle or Monster, earn 1 point for every 4 wounds it loses.
Frequently chosen. This is only worth taking on a Character with 8 wounds or a vehicle/monster with 12.
The Reaper: Earn a point for every enemy unit that is destroyed that began the game with 10+ models. If a unit begins the game with 20+ models, you earn 2 points if it is destroyed.
Rarely chosen. Most lists are built avoiding it.
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.
Frequently chosen. This is usually picked out of lack of a better choice. It's primary drawback is it takes 4 turns to complete meaning you rarely get 4 points from it due to time limit and 4th turn unit counts.
Big Game Hunter: 1 point for every enemy model with 10 or more wounds that is destroyed.
Autotake. Most lists satisfy this. Even if they only have 3 it's a better choice versus others such as Recon/Gang Busters
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.
Never chosen. It's not applicable in the majority of lists. How many models have 32 wounds to allow max points?
Behind Enemy Lines: 1 point if at the end of your player turn you have 2 or more of your units at least partially within 12” of your opponent’s rear most and longest board edge.
Never chosen. It doesn't lend well to my armies. I see its validity to some lists, but again, like Recon, requires 4 turns for max points.
Death by a Thousand Cuts: Earn 1 point for every 3 enemy units destroyed in a Battle Round.
Frequently Chosen. I feel this objective has the best spirit of the game. It requires you to make tactical choices when finishing off enemy units and you don't get rewarded for doing things you're going to do anyway.
Gang Busters: Choose enemy unit. Earn 1 point for the following:
---Each enemy model in the chosen unit destroyed that started the game with 5 or more wounds.
---Every two enemy models in the chosen unit destroyed that started the game with 3 to 4 wounds.
Never chosen. I've not seen anyone in any tournament pick this one yet. How many units in 40k even satisfy this objective, let alone give up 4 points?
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.
Autotake. You're going to do these things anyway. You might as well get 4 points for them.

Wow this is not my experience, at all. The only one that I would say is a "never take" is gangbusters. I recently took recon & linebreaker at the final table in a tournament because my opponent was playing a lower model count army. Got 8 points out of them.

 deviantduck wrote:


Headhunter: 1pt for each enemy Character that is destroyed.
Autotake. Most armies have 4 characters.

Characters are hard to get to. Don't count on it being easy.

Kingslayer: Choose enemy Character. Earn 1 point for every 2 wounds of damage it loses. If Vehicle or Monster, earn 1 point for every 4 wounds it loses.
Frequently chosen. This is only worth taking on a Character with 8 wounds or a vehicle/monster with 12.

Character Monster or Character vehicle. Very uncommon.

The Reaper: Earn a point for every enemy unit that is destroyed that began the game with 10+ models. If a unit begins the game with 20+ models, you earn 2 points if it is destroyed.
Rarely chosen. Most lists are built avoiding it.

Many lists need to take chaff, which are minimum 10. Eldar are one of the few that can dodge this easily.

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.
Never chosen. It's not applicable in the majority of lists. How many models have 32 wounds to allow max points?

But will work great if IK comes back into favor.

Death by a Thousand Cuts: Earn 1 point for every 3 enemy units destroyed in a Battle Round.
Frequently Chosen. I feel this objective has the best spirit of the game. It requires you to make tactical choices when finishing off enemy units and you don't get rewarded for doing things you're going to do anyway.

Very much agree - if even plays against itself in the 'Kill More' scoring and planning out future turns.

Since you're talking about maximizing your points Death by a Thousand cuts is a hard option to pick. If you go against an elite army you may not have enough target units even if you table them (my GK army only has 11 units@2k points). Unless your opponent has multiple single wound small units you may have trouble destroying 3 units in a turn.

I usually go Head Hunter, King Slayer, Big Game Hunter or, old school.

It's very list/game dependant and I like them a lot. I like it when players make choices and dice do not.

The reason I often choose kingslayer is because I see a lot of Pasks out there, and he's a good 3 points. I often take an easy 3 over a 4 I have to really work for.

I also choose headhunter a lot because I have a lot of units with Fly so character sniping is pretty easy.

Sorry if I derailed the thread. I was mainly posting for those unfamiliar with the ITC Champs secondaries.

I've only played one tourney that used CA missions. They seemed somewhat fun, but the TO was inconsistent in scoring. They have a lot of objectives that score cumulative points and can be difficult when people quit or if you table your opponent. On person tabled his opponent and got 19 VPs because the game ended on 3, and another's opponent conceded and they let him have all the cumulative points for 39 VPs. It was a bit of a cluster, but I did like the missions.

Did I read that correctly earlier, Euros play maelstrom (with modified VPs) competitively?

Gang Busters sounds like it punishes using squadrons of Killa Kans or Broadsides too much.

Gangbusters is autotake if opponent is running units like Hiveguard or some Ogyrn.

 Vankraken wrote:
Gang Busters sounds like it punishes using squadrons of Killa Kans or Broadsides too much.

It's a single unit. So if I take units of 2 or 3 kans you'll only ever get 2 or 3 points. Same for broadsides.

It isn't as bad as people make it out to be. There just aren't a lot of units in that bracket that see use regularly.

 Commissar_Rex wrote:
Many of us have noticed commentary about how the rulesets for big tournaments (ITC, adepticon, others) can have pretty huge impact on unit selection and the overall meta for the event. I have 3 main questions:

1. What shortcomings are there in the GW matched play ruleset that these alternatives fix? I assume it's to get rid of the RNG of shuffled objective cards.
2. What are the big aspects of the ITC (and other tournament rulesets) that should influence your list-building? for example, ITC encourages heavy weapons in guardsmen infantry squads to keep the model count <10 to prevent reaper
3. Do the standard GW rules generally favor certain factions/army types?

I'm curious about everyone's opinions on the different rules being used out there. Do you all use those rules for casual games too? Or just for tournaments and tournament practice?

I don't play tournaments, so bear that in mind. Personally I the ITC format rules. If you are going to have a event, whether competitive or not, you use the rules as presented in the rulebook, CA and codexes. You don't house rule them for your own perceived idea of balance. Saying that though, we do swap First Blood out in favour of First Strike for fairness.

 Vankraken wrote:
Gang Busters sounds like it punishes using squadrons of Killa Kans or Broadsides too much.

That's what some of us dislike about the ITC secondaries. They play a big part in influencing list building where you start to design lists to minimize the possible secondaries you give up and any list with to many easy secondaries becomes unviable regardless of how good the list itself is.