Astronom-con 2020!

 

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!

Toronto Registration – Now Open!

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!

Open War! – Scoring

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!

On New Editions and 21st Century Changes

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!

Objective Markers

As part of The Imperium Besieged, players will be required to bring two objective markers which will be used in all of the scenarios.

These objective markers should be on bases between 40mm and 60mm in size.  Players are encouraged to create objectives which are thematic in nature and suit the army being played.

We hope to offer an award for Best Objectives at the event, which would be voted on by the players.

The Imperium Besieged – Registration

 

Registration for our upcoming event: The Imperium Besieged will open on Tuesday, June 7th at noon Eastern time.

The registration fee will be $100.00 CAD per player.

To ensure a balance between Imperium and non-Imperium players, the Imperium Faction will initially be capped at 25 players.

Players will include their Faction information at the time of registration.   They will also have the option to provide an Alternate Faction, should they be willing to switch to another Faction at a later time due to Faction registration imbalances.

The Subject of Scenarios

 

An interesting article by Brent from Bell of Lost Souls talking about Missions and what seems to be expected now at tournaments.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/08/brent-whats-wrong-with-book-missions.html

 

With the ruleset seemingly increasing each month, there are definitely a lot of rules to keep on top of.   This I feel is definitely a factor in how many tournaments put together their scenarios – basing them off of the book missions.   This helps keep things ‘familiar’ for players, and by extension the new codices and supplements should have been designed with these sorts of missions in mind.

Of course, Astronomi-con doesn’t quite follow this line of thinking with how we have been designing scenarios over the years.  Most of our scenarios are narrative based, being inspired by a cool set of terrain, or other areas of inspiration.  With this story-telling aspect at the core, it allows us to assign victory points which align with the story being played out by the two players.

I would encourage players to download and try one of our scenarios as a change of pace from playing a basic book mission in their next game.  You might just have a great story to tell afterwards!

New Scenarios

We’ve added a number of new v6 scenarios and in addition made some revisions to our existing ones.

Most of these will be used for our upcoming Toronto event, so it will be worthwhile to read them over, and also try them out.

We work very hard to cover all situations and clearly have them explain exactly what players are to do – but should any questions arise, or if you find any errors or omissions please send them our way for further clarification and fixes.

You can click the Scenarios link at the top of the page, or click here.