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!
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!
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.
Full Toronto Results are now available, including placings for all players. Note that individual sportsmanship and theme scores have been cleared to ensure anonymity in these scores.
Once again we’d like to thank everyone that attended and we look forward to coming back to Toronto later this year for a new event that we are working on. More details on that coming soon!
We are excited to announce that registration for this year’s
Astronomi-con Toronto is now open!
Visit the registration page here!
We’re excited to announce the first Toronto event of the year, taking place on April 30th and May 1st, 2016! We will once again be returning to the Best Western Plus in Milton Ontario. Registration information will be forthcoming.
This event will be the traditional 1500 point tournament.
At this time we are working on plans for a second Toronto event later in the year with somewhat different format. More details on this later in the year as we put it all together.
As Tournament Organizers, we are ultimately responsible for the way our events are run. This covers all aspects of the tournament, from something as simple as how many points each player is allowed to use when creating their armies, to what restrictions will be enforced such as disallowing multiples of the same formation or limiting Lords of War.
Some Tournament formats such as the ITC produce their own FAQ’s and impose their own limits on abilities and limits for their events.
Astronomi-con while generally very open to using existing units and rules sometimes has to put a few of its own ‘fixes’ in place to address rules oddities, or potentially abusive combinations.
As such we have two such items listed on our FAQ page.
One item gives new rules for the Lucius Drop Pod produced by ForgeWorld.
The second restricts the ability of units embarking in Allied transports and Independent Characters joining Allied units.
These changes have been made in the interests of fun thematic gaming and to downplay potentially abusive combinations.
As Imperial Guard players transition to the new Astra Militarum codex, while much may seem the same, many things have changed. I’ll be posting a series of articles about some of the units which have seen changes and hopefully provide some insights, tactics, and general information about how the unit has evolved.
Next up: Orders
Lots of new content from GW here in the past few weeks. Codex: Miltarum Tempestus which features units from the Schola Progrenium and Codex: Astra Militarum which details the forces of the Imperial Guard.
These new books present some content that we will be reviewing to see what things may need clarification in terms of how they will work at Astronomi-con.
Astra Militarum content under review:
Warlord Trait: Old Grudges – allows the player to choose one 40k Codex and the Warlord and his unit have preferred enemy from all units from that codex. Reviewing if preferred enemy should be set to one codex in advance for the course of the tournament.
Tank Commanders – how points for their tanks will be handled for Composition purposes.
Militarum Tempestus content under review:
Airborne Assault Formation – for the purposes of preparing reserves, how do units from this formation factor in.
Ground Assault Formation – Do Taurox Prime units in this formation count as Dedicated Transports, or as Fast Attack when scoring Composition.
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!
The Master of the Adeptus Administratum
Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard
Astronomi-con 