General Discussion about ITC Format

Well, it feels great to back and among the hobby after a long hiatus. School is finally over, a new job is on the horizon, and life couldn't be better.

I love playing at the tournament level and wish I could participate more, which I plan to in the near future. I recently attended the Storm of Silence GT in Spokane, WA at the Gamer's Haven. If you haven't been I highly recommend. At the tournament were great players, the French Overlord was in attendance and took Best General. Tasty Taste was there rocking the only Dark Angel army, and it was nasty good.

I had an awesome time with a great group of guys, so why do I need to write this article about ITC? Because nothing is perfect, and I'd like to add my voice to the crescendo of the evolving tournament scene.

Do you remember when maelstrom missions first arrived? It seemed most people in my area hated the randomness of them; if you couldn't buy the cards (or find them) you had to roll on a overly large table of random objectives that could swing the game completely in your opponents favor. I was having flashbacks to the Daemon boon tables. Je*us Chr*st, not again!? The ITC tried to tone down the randomness of this by making it one portion of the overall game, and even create a table of various tactical objectives.

Undoubtedly, this reduced the time and arbitrariness of the whole system. Before, if I picked a tacitcal objective that required me to cast psychic powers to get a point, and I had no psykers I was: literally, screwed. Those were done away with in the ITC format of maelstrom missions, bravo! Love it; however, how it still doesn't address the main issue. Randomness.

For example, if you are Player A and your opponent is Player B, Player A having objectives 1+2 in their deployment zone and Player B with objectives 3+4 in theirs, what happens when Player B rolls to hold objectives 3+4 in their zone, and you roll the same? You have to cross the length or width (depending on deployment) to have a chance, while they have to do nothing. See what I'm getting at? It's a rudimentary example, but it illustrates the point.

We all want a fair game, and this takes care of, in my opinion a huge flaw in competitve 40k. Maelstrom missions, even under the ITC format are still too random. Some might argue that this type of randomness would favor diverse allies with abundant flexilibility, but you and I both know that quite a few armies lack that capacity; while others have it in abundance. It is merely, an opinion, but the fact that the 40k community can have these discussions without being butt hurt is great!

Recommendation, have the objectives already deployed on the table. Have the tactical objectives balanced, so that if Player A has to capture objective 3 in the enemies deployment zone, Player B has to capture objective 2 in Player As. Simple, fair, balanced...