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Nothing specific until Friday. Most important parts in yellow.

- Added in Super Major officially.
- Decided on the new deployment type.
- Adding in 3 new missions to the existing 6, these will deviate from the main 6 to provide some variety.
- Officially recognizing Chapter Approved missions as ITC missions for those that want to use them.
- Refining the bonus point for ITC missions and secondaries.

Nice.

If the scoring systems allow to differentiate between the mission packs, we could start gathering some real data.

I'm interested to see how the US scene react to potentially having to use some CA missions, the inner cynic tells me that as they're optional many groups will just stick to the same missions they're used to for the shorter tournaments.

As longs as the BAO, LVO and SoCal use ITC homebrew missions the general ITC scene will not shift.

They'll have to adopt the official rules and actually play the official version of 40k for me to invest in the ITC again in the future...

 Ishagu wrote:
As longs as the BAO, LVO and SoCal use ITC homebrew missions the general ITC scene will not shift.

They'll have to adopt the official rules and actually play the official version of 40k for me to invest in the ITC again in the future...

Indeed, ITC already doesnt care what missions you run at your tournament. The small tournament scene will generally follow the big tournament scene in what they do. If they stick to ITC missions then CA won't catch on much.

I'll wait and see what they do with rebalancing secondaries but I fear that the same list warping issues will remain.

 Ordana wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
As longs as the BAO, LVO and SoCal use ITC homebrew missions the general ITC scene will not shift.

They'll have to adopt the official rules and actually play the official version of 40k for me to invest in the ITC again in the future...

Indeed, ITC already doesnt care what missions you run at your tournament. The small tournament scene will generally follow the big tournament scene in what they do. If they stick to ITC missions then CA won't catch on much.

I'll wait and see what they do with rebalancing secondaries but I fear that the same list warping issues will remain.

I was listening to the chapter tactics podcast where they were discussing possible changes tot he mission packs and there were quite a few points raised that made me raise an eyebrow. For the most part a lot of what they said made sense, but the comment about not wanting to take any trukks for an ork army because it gave away the gangbuster secondary too easily shows why the secondaries have some issues. Trukks were never breaking the meta anyway, so why design objectives that punishes them further to the point where they're a non-option?

There was some opposition to the idea of numbered objectives even if they did adopt some maelstrom version, but again that to me speaks of being unwilling to play in a situation where you're forced to react, it's almost like the resistance is to anything that is tactical rather than a higher level strategic choice, i.e. list building.

I'm slightly confused about the officially recognising CA missions as ITC. A very common retort when people say they don't like ITC because of the missions is for someone to reply that ITC doesn't require you to use the official ITC mission pack. So what does this change actually mean in practice? I don't think we'll start seeing people using the CA missions more extensively unless the big ITC tournaments start using them or people get fed up with the way the ITC missions work and start moving of their own accord, which I think is unlikely.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
As longs as the BAO, LVO and SoCal use ITC homebrew missions the general ITC scene will not shift.

They'll have to adopt the official rules and actually play the official version of 40k for me to invest in the ITC again in the future...

Indeed, ITC already doesnt care what missions you run at your tournament. The small tournament scene will generally follow the big tournament scene in what they do. If they stick to ITC missions then CA won't catch on much.

I'll wait and see what they do with rebalancing secondaries but I fear that the same list warping issues will remain.

I was listening to the chapter tactics podcast where they were discussing possible changes tot he mission packs and there were quite a few points raised that made me raise an eyebrow. For the most part a lot of what they said made sense, but the comment about not wanting to take any trukks for an ork army because it gave away the gangbuster secondary too easily shows why the secondaries have some issues. Trukks were never breaking the meta anyway, so why design objectives that punishes them further to the point where they're a non-option?

There was some opposition to the idea of numbered objectives even if they did adopt some maelstrom version, but again that to me speaks of being unwilling to play in a situation where you're forced to react, it's almost like the resistance is to anything that is tactical rather than a higher level strategic choice, i.e. list building.

I also listened to that podcast and, TBH, most of the objections I found to be either misinformed or just flat-out weird. The objection to numbered objectives, for example, was that the player in question didn't own any numbered objectives. Also, they admitted they didn't understand how the Maelstrom objectives worked, which makes the discussions about the suitability of the various different types of missions kind of pointless. Overall, it's worrying how ingrained the ITC way of thinking is with many of the top tournament player. The Trukk example is a very good one because the reaction wasn't "yeah, that's pretty bad, maybe we really need to take a look at the whole concept of the secondaries", it was more "meh, sucks for that Ork player".

It's a start. But yeah as long as A) It's optional and B) the big events still use the custom missions, it's going to be a trickle-down effect that CA missions aren't suitable. I mean technically ITC already would let you use the CA missions if you wanted to, they don't dictate the missions just give you the choice of their own "better balanced" ones. But since tournament players are often "monkey see, monkey do" they will use whatever LVO or SoCal Open or whatever uses.

The secondaries are still the biggest issue and really need to be taken away since that, more than the missions themselves, is what skews the meta and creates its own because of how they work. That's the biggest problem of all the one where FLG really gets arrogant in thinking about.

Slipspace wrote:
I'm slightly confused about the officially recognising CA missions as ITC. A very common retort when people say they don't like ITC because of the missions is for someone to reply that ITC doesn't require you to use the official ITC mission pack. So what does this change actually mean in practice? I don't think we'll start seeing people using the CA missions more extensively unless the big ITC tournaments start using them or people get fed up with the way the ITC missions work and start moving of their own accord, which I think is unlikely.

I also listened to that podcast and, TBH, most of the objections I found to be either misinformed or just flat-out weird. The objection to numbered objectives, for example, was that the player in question didn't own any numbered objectives. Also, they admitted they didn't understand how the Maelstrom objectives worked, which makes the discussions about the suitability of the various different types of missions kind of pointless. Overall, it's worrying how ingrained the ITC way of thinking is with many of the top tournament player. The Trukk example is a very good one because the reaction wasn't "yeah, that's pretty bad, maybe we really need to take a look at the whole concept of the secondaries", it was more "meh, sucks for that Ork player".

They said that by including CA missions in ITC pack just makes it more official in some peoples mind. It doesnt change anything in practice.

The numbered objectives was more related to if the mission required scoring based on numbers as per Maelstrom

As for the Trukk example, Reece has addressed that the secondaries definitely catch some edge cases i.e. tyranid warriors and gang busters and they will try to address it in this update.

Wayniac wrote:
It's a start. But yeah as long as A) It's optional and B) the big events still use the custom missions, it's going to be a trickle-down effect that CA missions aren't suitable. I mean technically ITC already would let you use the CA missions if you wanted to, they don't dictate the missions just give you the choice of their own "better balanced" ones. But since tournament players are often "monkey see, monkey do" they will use whatever LVO or SoCal Open or whatever uses.

The secondaries are still the biggest issue and really need to be taken away since that, more than the missions themselves, is what skews the meta and creates its own because of how they work. That's the biggest problem of all the one where FLG really gets arrogant in thinking about.

It's also the secondaries that gives armies some goal other than 'annhilate exactly 90% of your opponent's forces in two turns so you can spend the next 4 racking up objective points.'

There's issues with every mission packet, not just ITCs.

ITC needs to drop the kill a unit kill more units objective. It will encourage actually moving around the table.

Also it's a leftover rule from bygone editions where units couldn't split fire when shooting and some of the ITC rules people had feel nada about MSU armies because they mathematicaly could not kill all the units with their elite death star builds. Howevwe they knew their deathstar wouldn't die, so they would eventually kill some/multiple units. It's a rules issue that is completely made up by the ITC and has nothing to do with the core actual rules of 40k which are pointed and based around MSU being a valid playstyle, not one that by default hemorrhages points to the other player.

Except for Kill Point/ Annihilation type missions.

6th 7th you had to TAC list build for Missions as well as opponents.

 Smirrors wrote:


As for the Trukk example, Reece has addressed that the secondaries definitely catch some edge cases i.e. tyranid warriors and gang busters and they will try to address it in this update.

Which still doesn't address the problem that it's the entire style of the mission structure, with secondary objectives being what they are, that causes these problems. You might remove one such set of problems by tweaking the objectives so now Trukks, or Tyranid Warriors aren't punished so much, but history suggests that'll just introduce another set of problem units that you can't use. I think this is a fundamental problem with the ITC approach to mission structure and at the moment all I'm hearing from the ITC crew is discussion about fiddling around the edges, not looking at the real issues.

Slipspace wrote:

 Smirrors wrote:


As for the Trukk example, Reece has addressed that the secondaries definitely catch some edge cases i.e. tyranid warriors and gang busters and they will try to address it in this update.

Which still doesn't address the problem that it's the entire style of the mission structure, with secondary objectives being what they are, that causes these problems. You might remove one such set of problems by tweaking the objectives so now Trukks, or Tyranid Warriors aren't punished so much, but history suggests that'll just introduce another set of problem units that you can't use. I think this is a fundamental problem with the ITC approach to mission structure and at the moment all I'm hearing from the ITC crew is discussion about fiddling around the edges, not looking at the real issues.

Judging from how they talk they don't seem to think there ARE any real issues.

 Smirrors wrote:
As for the Trukk example, Reece has addressed that the secondaries definitely catch some edge cases i.e. tyranid warriors and gang busters and they will try to address it in this update.

I wonder if he is being as accurate here as when he made his comments about Stompas or Grey Knights...

And did anyone else read Daedalus' first bullet point as Super Mario difficulty?

 Dysartes wrote:


And did anyone else read Daedalus' first bullet point as Super Mario difficulty?

Nintendo hard!

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:


And did anyone else read Daedalus' first bullet point as Super Mario difficulty?

Nintendo hard!

Imperial Guardsmen defeating Orks by in melee by jumping on their heads...

 Dysartes wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:


And did anyone else read Daedalus' first bullet point as Super Mario difficulty?

Nintendo hard!

Imperial Guardsmen defeating Orks by in melee by jumping on their heads...

That would be cool

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2020/02/14/40k-itc-champions-missions-are-updated/

New missions are up.

I really like the new secondaries. Forcing you to pick one move and one kill hopefully makes the game way more dynamic.

It looks hard to create a list that really denies kill points (killing 20 wounds of models for reaper or marked for death on 100 points or more makes it really hard to game).

I like all of the place your own objective missions as well.

I think this is a great start and am looking forward to what better players than I have to say about it.

It's a bit better sure, especially for the new deployment rules, but as expected they haven't really changed anything significant, just shifted a few things around.

Spoletta wrote:
It's a bit better sure, especially for the new deployment rules, but as expected they haven't really changed anything significant, just shifted a few things around.

Exactly. I suspect we'll see a few weeks of interesting lists and experimentation, then someone will figure out what the best formula is and exploit the system once again. I think the more rules you introduce and the more complication that exists the more likely it is somebody breaks your system whereas the ITC guys seem to think the opposite: if only we add more rules and more restrictions it won't be broken this time.

Slipspace wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
It's a bit better sure, especially for the new deployment rules, but as expected they haven't really changed anything significant, just shifted a few things around.

Exactly. I suspect we'll see a few weeks of interesting lists and experimentation, then someone will figure out what the best formula is and exploit the system once again. I think the more rules you introduce and the more complication that exists the more likely it is somebody breaks your system whereas the ITC guys seem to think the opposite: if only we add more rules and more restrictions it won't be broken this time.

More restrictions reduces variables. It isn't the most elegant solution, but this is a pretty complex game. I don't think it changes the game for IH much.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
It's a bit better sure, especially for the new deployment rules, but as expected they haven't really changed anything significant, just shifted a few things around.

Exactly. I suspect we'll see a few weeks of interesting lists and experimentation, then someone will figure out what the best formula is and exploit the system once again. I think the more rules you introduce and the more complication that exists the more likely it is somebody breaks your system whereas the ITC guys seem to think the opposite: if only we add more rules and more restrictions it won't be broken this time.

More restrictions reduces variables. It isn't the most elegant solution, but this is a pretty complex game. I don't think it changes the game for IH much.

Will anything short of an errata to some of the ih rules? I don't even see points changes affecting ih. Any unit gw nerfs will just be replaced by the next best thing, and said nerf will hurt the less offending chapters (and possibly csm as well if they come after fw dreads).

Yea points wont fix marines.

Needs to be big FAQ. If GW cant take steps to get it under control in March it might be a good time to go on hiatus.