This is your one-stop guide for all of the rules for this year’s Warhammer 40k Adepticon Tournament Rules. On March 26, 2020, there will be 300 Warhammer 40k players that will descend upon the first Super Major Tournament of the year, the Warhammer 40k Adepticon 2020 Tournament Championship.
This is your guide to Adepticon’s Warhammer 40k Championship Tournament
This is David at Nights at the Game Table and today we will review the Adepticon 2020 Championship missions. While Adepticon is an ITC event for reporting scores, the event will be using their own unique missions. These changes affect scoring, deployment and even game length as well as other rules of the game. Here at Nights at the Game Table, we will take a look at the Champions Missions for folks lucky enough to go.
Adepiticon’s 40k Tournament Championship List Construction:
The very first consideration an attendee will have to make is their list requirements.
The list is unchanging which is standard for most organized play events. However, players are further locked into their list with pregame options having to be listed and unchanging from game to game. The exception are rules that would allow a player to make or force a change during a game or options that can be random. For example, being forced to forget a psychic power or Shoulder the Mantle for Custodes. Pacts and Damnations for Chaos Knights would be an example for random.
This may encourage folks to take the “best” option for a generalized meta and their list design rather than focusing their army from game to game. This should help keep folks from forgetting what their rules are as they are mostly unchanging. This will also alleviate the disparity in how some pregame requirements and stratagems are written versus others from codex to codex leveling the playing field.
Adepiticon 2020 Championship Game Length:
The missions are played over 2 hours and 45 minutes but 15 of those minutes are dedicated to resolving battle order. Such as list exchange, terrain discussion, and placement, roll-off for determining deployment zone with alternating deployment and the roll-off to see who goes first with a +1 to go first and a seize roll after that. The winner may choose to go second but he can’t make that seize attempt. That’s plenty to do in 15 minutes but to make the mission even more tactical is the terrain placement on modified deployment maps. Each game is only played 5 rounds with a set time for each round. A judge can be called if the time for the rounds isn’t being met.
Adepiticon 2020 Championship Mission Overview:
All 4 missions have the same primary with a special bonus for the player going second. Primary mission scoring is at the start of your turn beginning the second battle round. It is cumulative for 6 points a turn. Hold 1 objective is 1 point and Holding a 2nd objective for another 2 points. If you hold more than your opponent at the beginning of your turn you can earn an additional 3 points. The player who went second has a chance to earn an extra point per objective held at the end of the game up to 3. Each mission has set objective placement.
All 4 missions have secondaries. Like the primary missions, these cannot be scored until the second round. Mission 2 will not affect secondaries until the end of the game.
All 4 missions have the same Tertiaries each worth 2 points that are modified from the big rule book. Modified Linebreaker requires 1 of your units to end the game wholly with your enemy’s deployment zone. Solo Blood is achieved in a battle round where you manage to kill a unit but your opponent does not. Slay the Warlord doesn’t actually need you to kill your opponent’s warlord but rather that your opponent’s warlord is not deployed on the board or even in a transport by the end of the game. An old fashion killing of your opponent’s warlord will still help achieve this.
Game 1: The Old Ways
There are 5 objectives to Take and Hold. The secondary for this mission is Measured Extermination. Score this during the second and subsequent battle rounds. Gain up to 4 points for killing up to 4 units. Some folks may be encouraged to hold off on their alpha strike but you have to consider how deadly the units you are leaving alive are and how few units some armies have. Being able to score these points in your opponent’s turn will help melee armies.
Of note is the larger deployment zone will put armies starting closer to the non-centered objectives. So how you place terrain will matter. Ideally, you can place the terrain so that when your units do grab an objective they aren’t shot off of it before they can score it the following turn. The modified deployment zones are 864 sq in. The standard size would have a deployment zone of 756 sq in.
Game 2: Strategic Advance
This mission has 6 objectives to Take and Hold. The secondary for this mission is Key Point which is scored at the end of the game. The choice of this is objective is hidden from your opponent. It may seem quite obvious for a slow-moving castle which objective they chose depending on placement. Are they deep into their corner or deployed more to 1 edge of their vanguard deployment?
Holding your objective by the end of the game nets you 4 victory points while denying your opponent 4. If you do manage to hold yours and they fail to keep their Key Point objective you would earn 8 points. Controlling both Key Points will earn one player 12 points.
The modified vanguard deployment will see a reduction in the deployment area. This will prevent units from holding all but one of the objectives from their deployment zone. You will go from the standard 845 sq into 576 sq in. This can be further reduced by the terrain placed in the deployment zones.
Game 3: Burn it down
The third Adepticon Mission also has 6 objectives for Take and Hold. The secondary scoring will reduce the number of objectives available for this primary. Scorched Earth allows the player to destroy an objective rather than score it for take and hold primary if it was outside of the controlling player’s deployment zone. Units attempting to do this will have to survive until the following turn after they manage to claim the objective.
The modified Dawn of War Deployment will mean a smaller No Man’s Land as the deployment is extended out to 15”. The increase from 864 sq in to 1080 sq in means that fast armies will have an easier time making it to their enemy’s deployment zone objective.
Game 4: Fortune Favors the Bold
This Adepticon Mission features 5 objectives placed along the diagonal between the deployment zones 14” apart. The bold part of this mission is having to come out of your deployment zones to score any of the objectives. When deciding to score for Take and Hold, the player can choose to lay claim to the objective. The objective will still count for take and hold objectives but until claimed by their opponent. Claimed objectives are worth 4 points at the end of the game up to a max of 12. Balancing claiming and holding objectives adds another dimension of strategy.
This deployment is a heavily modified spearhead deployment. It is the smallest of the deployment zones for the event just 540 sq in. Of note, at just under 17” the diagonal distance between the two deployment zones is also the shortest for the event.
Adepiticon 2020 Championship Differential Scoring:
This is explained at the beginning of the packet but is not the norm for scoring at most events. The score from every mission will the difference of victory points from the mission added to the winners base score of 20 and subtracted from the loser’s base score of 20. Max of 40 and a minimum of 0 every match.
This will make it look as if some players did much worse than the actual score of the game. If table one had a 20 point difference in their game and table 2 had a 25 point difference both tables will show the winners and losers having the same score. It still an interesting way of scoring as they winnow down to the top 16 players. If you do manage to table your opponent, “Wipe-out”, the winner must continue to play until he has a 20 point lead or gains as many points as possible if he didn’t already have a 20 point lead.
Not all the lists are posted yet but at a guess, I’ll pick an Imperial Player as there were several undefeated Grand Tournament players on the weekend of March 7th and 8th. If you’re looking for a review of that weekend’s meta click here. Or perhaps a Possessed Bomb will take the top spot Like Georg’s GT winning list.
The Champions missions, rules, and list submission examples can be found at Adepticon.org
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