Established in Winnipeg in 2001, Astronomi-con has grown to become the largest independently run multi-city Warhammer 40,000 Tournament in North America. Events take place in Winnipeg, Toronto, and Vancouver Canada as well as Dallas Texas which draw like-minded hobbyists from across North America to participate in tournaments with unique scenarios that celebrate and reward all aspects of the Games Workshop hobby!
We are extremely excited to announce that there will be an Astronomi-con Winnipeg event in 2020!
Things have fallen into place quickly so, we apologize for the short notice, but I know many have been waiting eagerly for the return of our events and we hope you all will be able to join us on the 11th &12th of January!
For 8th edition we’ve thrown caution to the wind and have embraced the narrative story-telling aspects we’ve always been known for and have translated that into a new narrative style event which has been well received.
Registration is now open and can be found: here
We are also excited to announce that the event will be held at the Royal Canadian Legion – St. James Branch #4. which should be a great space complete with on-site food and drinks – and parking!
2020 also marks the 20th year of Astronomi-con! There will be plenty of things to look back on and share from all of the events we’ve held over the years – more on that in the near future!
We couldn’t be happier about the year ahead and we hope you’ll join us in what’s shaping up to be a huge amount of fun on the battlefields of the 41st millennium!
With the shift to a narrative event, and away from a ‘competitive’ one, we have had the chance to make a lot of changes. One that we tussled with a lot was appearance scoring.
As you know – in the past Christian and I would spend a lot of time going over armies, painstakingly scoring them according to a rubric and trying to give folks feedback. This was nice in that we got to enjoy people’s armies, but it had some downsides. First, it took a LOT of time. Second, no matter how careful we were, there were always some folks (generally only a few) who simply were never happy with their scores. We’d try and explain to them that getting really high painting scores was hard, etc. but while most people were very reasonable, there were always some folks who weren’t happy. What’s more, they weren’t even always being unreasonable. Sometimes we were just too pressed for time and missed things. We tried really hard, but we’re human, and we make mistakes.
Another thing that came up, and this was a bit of a sore point, is that we weren’t playing against the army and so would have a different ‘experience’ of it than those playing. An unfinished model or squad at the very back of a display board we might not catch, but it might be very obvious to someone playing against the army. When we missed things like that scores were wrong and we’d have to try and correct them. Tough stuff.
With the event no longer being a ‘tournament’ we decided to try a different style of appearance scoring. In this iteration, each player will be scored on a much simpler rubric of 0-5, with the rubric right on the scoresheet. And they will be scored by their opponent during play, ensuring that all models played with are seen and really impressive models don’t get missed. With 5 games a possible maximum total of 25 points for appearance is possible and with a simpler rubric we hope that the scores will also be more accurate. This will add to each player’s ‘Best in Faction’ scores, rewarding players for putting in time and effort on their armies.
Remember, please score honestly and by the rubric. Don’t just give everyone fives, please. There are some armies out there that deserve all fives (looking at you Jonathan) but they are likely quite rare.
See you on the weekend!
One thing that is going to be different in our new v8 Narrative events is the concept of ‘Narrative Objectives’.
These are new, and I can hear everyone saying to themselves, okay – so what the heck is a ‘Narrative Objective’ anyway? How do I use it and what do they mean?
In the past, we had points and objectives to create a win, a loss and a draw and you could earn additional ‘battle points’ by fulfilling certain secondary objectives. Narrative objectives have replaced these. They are similar in some ways, different in others.
In the past, if you earned some ‘secondary objectives’ you just added on a couple points. Done and done, good for you, slightly better swiss score. Let me be clear though, that is NOT how the Narrative objectives work.
Each scenario will have FIVE Narrative Objectives. Some will be relatively easy to accomplish, other might be harder. It is always possible to get all five, but it is not always possible for each player to get all five, although in many cases, both players could score some of them during a game.
The big difference between secondary objectives and narrative objectives is that the latter are first of all, inspired directly by the ‘story’ of the scenario. They literally are narrative. They might encourage you to have your commander do something or be someplace at some point during the game. You might need to make use of a given scenario stratagem or have something (good or bad) happen to your army during the course of the game.
Second, the Narrative Objectives aren’t just ‘points’. They do add to narrative points, but in addition they tell us, the organizers, cool things that happened DURING the battle. As such, if you achieve Narrative Objective A, which is to have your Warlord standing at a given objective at the end of the game, then make sure to check the box on the score sheet for A, not just any one of the boxes. Yes, we do have a reason for this and we hope you’ll enjoy it, but it’s a secret for now.
See you all in Milton on the weekend!
We are pleased to open registrations for this fall’s Astronomi-con Toronto event!
Our event format has changed from previous years, to a more narrative themed event. Event details can be found under the Event Rules menu section of the website.
Our schedule for the weekend also has changed so be sure to check that as well to help plan your Astro weekend.
We will be contacting all registered players for some additional information about their armies for narrative purposes, so be sure to provide a contact e-mail address when registering in the Special Instructions section if your preferred e-mail address for correspondence is different than that of the PayPal account you registered with!
As we’ve hinted at over the past number of months, we’ve been working on an updated event format for 8th edition. One focused on the things we have always taken great pride in – story-driven games of Warhammer 40,000.
We have made a lot of changes which we hope will give players a very enjoyable Narrative 40k experience.
The foremost change is to drop the ‘Tournament’ label. Our signature events will no longer follow the ‘Swiss’ Tournament style. Ours will now be promoted as Narrative Events. Players will be paired-up across factions to better support narrative play.
We’re also moving away from the conventional Matched Play Points format into new territory – Power Level will be the new standard for army selection – with a few restrictions to help ensure fairness.
Players will represent their army’s Faction and compete with other members of their Faction for a Best in Faction award. However, they will never directly face each other across the table, due to the narrative nature of game pairings.
Scenarios will continue to be one of the things that makes our events unique. With 8th edition, we have the opportunity to revisit all of our scenarios and give them some much needed streamlining – but also added twists with things like Stratagems, Warlord Traits, and Battlezones! Scenarios will also have their own Narrative Objectives for players to try and achieve in addition to the Primary Objective. All in the name of good storytelling!
We’ve listened to our players asking for larger battles, and we expect armies to have a little more going for them with a 90 PL cap. To help ensure that players get complete games in, we’ve brought the time limit for each round up to three hours. Without the need to determine swiss-pairings each round, we’ll be able to have player pairings posted in a fraction of the time it required in the past. So less time waiting and more time gaming!
We’re also making a change to the number of games. For our upcoming Toronto event we will be doing five games – Three on the Saturday, and two on the Sunday – this will hopefully allow players (and us organizers) to wrap up the event at a more reasonable time to allow everyone to be present for awards and better allow us to tear-down in a reasonable time-frame to give us all a chance to visit over dinner and drinks afterwards.
While we still have plenty of work ahead of us to have everything ready for September, we wanted to share our new format with you all so you can be better prepared for what’s ahead. We are excited for what’s ahead and hope that everyone will try and approach our new format with an open mind and an expectation of a fun weekend of what we hope will be the best the hobby can offer!
Christian and I had a deep heart to heart on Astro this past weekend. We talked and schemed and thought hard about the game’s past and the game’s future and the possibilities provided by 8th edition.
We have come up with some very exciting new ideas.
When Astronomi-con was first begun, we were in many ways a ‘standard’ Rogue Trader Tournament event. One of the very first ones in fact. However even at that very first event in 2001, we did some things that were completely different and ground breaking and that no one else did.
One thing was that, instead of trying to ‘make every game the same’ which was the standard from GW on down at the time, we realized that we simply did not have the resources to have matching terrain for 20 odd tables. Really only GW could do that. So instead, since the terrain would never be ‘the same’ we decided instead to embrace the differences. Make every table different, not only the terrain – but the actual scenarios that went with it too. This would give each and every person a truly unique tournament experience. Yes, it sacrificed some ‘balance’ but the more we thought about it – well games were never perfectly balanced anyway. Some armies have always been more powerful than others and there has always been a certain amount of ‘rock paper scissors’ with some army interactions, where army A could beat army B almost every time but army B would beat army C which would then, surprisingly, beat army A every time. We couldn’t make 40k play like Chess. It wasn’t designed that way. Instead – we chose to embrace those differences and try as much as possible to keep the game and the event ‘fair and fun’ while understanding that perfect balance was not something that was possible.
So – different terrain, different scenarios. Transparent scoring systems (almost unheard of at the time). Converted models. Forgeworld (also close to unheard of at the time). When it came along we allowed VDR – something no one else ever did that we know of. We allowed flyers when they were FW only, the rules were clunky and pretty much no one else did. We embraced difference.
That is our legacy.
Now the world of 40k has changed. There are now specific rules for ‘matched play’ and very specific expectations of the word ‘tournament.’ But there is also Open Play and Narrative play.
So – we are going to take a chance and again lead the way. The Astronomi-con ‘Tournament’ will now be the Astronomi-con Narrative Event weekend.
Okay – that seems a change that may startle, but take a deep breath and bear with us here. In many ways, Astro will not change. There will still be awards, points, scoring for the things that we have done in the past. We will change some of how that works of course, but 8th required that anyway.
We’ve tried a number of things recently and have had some very good success with them both conceptually and at our Narrative event at JimCon. We will be looking at ‘narrative’ match ups rather than pure ‘who kicked butt’ swiss systems. So that the whole eldar on eldar, guard on guard, marine on marine thing will be reduced or eliminated.
Scenarios will become even more engaging with Stratagems for each scenario making CPs even more important than ever. There will be scoring for Army Narrative – how well the army tells its ‘story’ within the 40k Universe (this will replace ‘theme’).
Awards will still exist – although we are looking more toward ‘Best Faction’ so that the person you are playing against will never be someone you are competing against. Instead the Necron players will be striving to do well as a team, with the one who does the best taking home the trophy (as an example).
We plan on using Power Level for army building, rather than matched play points, but there will be a hybrid system so that summoned critters are not ‘free’ etc. in order to keep things fair and fun.
The end result will be something truly new. Not a ‘tournament’ in the sense that LVO is – but something different, exciting and – we hope, huge fun and rewarding for every single attendee, win lose or draw.
We hope you’ll enjoy it – certainly we are SUPER excited about it. More to come as the work continues.
Mike M. and Christian A.
Astronomi-con Co-Organizers
We’ve released the Scoring rubric for the upcoming Open War! event at JimCon 7 on Saturday, November 18th.
As primarily a narrative event, we wanted to ensure that all aspects of the hobby were well represented – and thanks to player feedback from previous events we’ve posted scoring guidlines for our attendees to ensure all participating are able to score their opponents accurately.
We’re looking forward to a great day of 40k and hope you can join in on the fun!
We’re excited to formally announce our upcoming event Astronomi-con: Open War!
This will be a one-day three-game narrative style event, taking place Saturday November 18th as part of Winnipeg’s JimCon 7 tabletop gaming convention.
Registration is only $10.00 plus your JimCon membership fee. We encourage those planning on attending to go for the JimCon Weekend pass (Fri-Sun) and to experience even more of what JimCon has to offer!
Space for this event is extremely limited, so we encourage you to register as soon as possible to secure your spot at what we hope will be a fun-filled day of narrative-style 40k gaming!
Thanks to everyone that participated and supported this year’s event! It was a great weekend of enjoying our great hobby.
Special thanks go to Nick Itsou for all of his assistance in coordinating the setup and tear-down of the venue.
Additional thanks go to all that sponsored terrain tables. Sharing your personal terrain collection in support of the event is most appreciated. This year’s event had the most Best Terrain entries in the history of Astronomi-con. We expect that this trend will continue and look forward to seeing what you all come up with in the future!
A big thank you also to Dominic Manchisi for housing our terrain depot collection.
Phoenix Games was once again a great supporter of this year’s event, offering up terrain and table toppers. We thank Bill for his ongoing generous support of our event, and hope you get a chance to visit his store in Kitchener and mention the event.
As we conclude this event we look forward to a new edition this summer, with an eye on updating Astronomi-con and looking to bring you new and exciting narrative battles in the 41st Millennium!
Full results for Toronto can be found on the Results page.
And so it begins…
Games Workshop has announced the 8th edition of 40k. Unsurprisingly it draws somewhat on their experiences with their (eventually) successful experiences re-booting Fantasy Battle into Age of Sigmar.
And, of course, a lot of people are losing their minds, preparing to rage-quit etc. etc.
One of the first things I did was read their FAQ on the new edition to get some kind of idea what they were going to do. The second thing I did was think on what this could mean – for our events, for the hobby, for my own efforts etc. The third thing I did was to call Christian – the fellow with whom I run Astro.
So – what does this mean?
Well, let’s take a (capsule) look at what GW has said. The game will be changing. This is a major rules changes that necessitates old Codex books going by the wayside. So – very strong game changes not just ‘tweaks’. GW is also breaking the hobby out into ‘Free Play’ (throw models down and shoot stuff – much like the old unbound, I expect), ‘Narrative play’ (build your forces in themes and campaigns from the 40k universe) and what amounts to Competitive or Tournament play.
I don’t expect Free Play to amount to much. By and large players like some structure. This might be okay for teaching folks, but I wouldn’t expect to see much more of it than that.
Competitive/Tournament style play – this is interesting stuff. GW is taking back the competitive scene from outsiders such as the ETC and ITC crowds. They will have their own lists designed for competitive play, likely limit over the top combos etc. This is very much going to change that side of the hobby. I expect a lot of the ‘broken’ stuff to get taken out. Those playing versus play are likely going to have to really learn how to play their armies. Broken combos will get fixed lickety split. Many very good tourney players will welcome this as it will really emphasize skill. – That is – if it turns out this way. This one – the execution is going to be very important. However GW has promised to look to the community for changes and feedback. It may take them time to get it right – but I think their hearts and minds are in the right place. They will get there – and the hobby will benefit from it.
For Astro, of course, well we’ve always been about Narrative play even while we put the aegis of a ‘tournament’ over it. From the very first Astro the crazy scenarios and the fact that people didn’t all play the same scenario meant that the ‘tourney’ style play we did was a very different experience from more conventional events. I think, at first, even we ourselves didn’t realize how much. Yet a lot of people embraced our vision.
For us – the organizers of Astronomi-con – we have a really unique opportunity. Christian and I are going to go ‘back to the drawing board’ with Astro. We are going to carefully outline our philosophies and, in the light of an entirely new system – we are going to create from Astro – which began as a ‘v3’ tournament long ago – an entirely new creation focused on narrative play, enjoyable times and crazy fun. We will still support our core philosophies of keeping everything above board and out front, crazy fun narrative story based scenarios and having people play armies which are as evocative of the 41st Millennium as we can manage. Within those bounds – we are going to do our best to create something new, cool, and hopefully totally unique – and fun as heck out of the new edition.
Change need not be a bad thing. With all change comes opportunity and this one looks to have a great deal of wonderful opportunity for event organizers like ourselves who have long had a hard time balancing the narrative and competitive aspects of play. With them neatly separated by the rules set, we can focus on what we do best and really try to create new adventures, battles, and wars in the 41st millennium.
Welcome to the New Age. Cadia has fallen. Biel Tan broken. A Primarch has risen and daemon princes stalk the stars. We’re going to take that stage, dress it up and bring your armies to it!
The Master of the Adeptus Administratum
Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard
Astronomi-con 