Astronomi-con – Thoughts For The Future

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