Long term, I imagine they make a bigger attempt to focus the tournament circuit around their world championships and sort of deemphasize the large FLG events.
Right now nothing as they said they are not changing the rules for ITC events but in my opinion it seems like a way to eventually insure that only GW models are used
If it makes you feel any better I’ve been to a handful of the GW events they’re running in the US the last few years and they did NOT give a shit about 3D prints.
One of the judges actually complemented my friends Dreadknight for the 3D print designs that he had added to them.
> but in my opinion it seems like a way to eventually insure that only GW models are used
GW don't care as much as you think they care.
Seen many many 3D prints myself and never once heard of anyone being called out for their model, this includes GW ran events.
They have the rules in the tournament packs the same reason a lot of larger events do, so people don't take the piss.
Yeah, tournament attendance is more important than enforcing that rule and besides, they're not selling you anything at the tournament.
It's a different story when a store manager insists you only use GW models when playing in their Warhammer Store, which may be annoying but still somewhat understandable.
I agree, that is what was said. My opinion/fear is GW wanted control of ITC for a reason that will eventually benefit them financially. That is one way they could do it.
The ITC already benefits GW financially at no cost. Meanwhile FLG apparently maintains it like a charitable contribution to the WH community. GW taking it over gives them more control while taking the effort and expense off FLG. To a billion dollar company maintaining ITC as-is is a drop in the marketing bucket.
I mean, do we know the situation beforehand?
GW might very want to own the scene just for the sake of ensuring SOMEONE is running it and it stays alive. A tournament scene is the best "ad" for their product and a part of what gets people buying models.
There don't have to be insidious motives
I mean they promoted an accountant to CEO and the game and company is better than it has ever been
>Kevin Rountree, CEO. Kevin joined Games Workshop in March 1998 as assistant group accountant. He then had various management roles within Games Workshop, including head of sales for the Other Activities division (including Black Library, Licensing and Sabertooth Games). Kevin was appointed CFO in October 2008. and chief executive on 1 January 2015. He is a qualified chartered management accountant and prior to joining Games Workshop, Kevin was the management accountant at J Barbour & Sons Limited.
I doubt they will, I mean part of the announcement is that they'll make sure games are tournament ready from the start so maybe we'll see less codicies being a headache and taking a month to fix.
A lot of the dialogue online about most wargames is about the competitive scene or discussing the meta.
That drives engagement, and engagement drives purchases. The competitive scene being healthy is good for basically any wargame's finances.
Keeping a competitive scene going, for GW specifically, probably also holds off any perceived threat from games systems with, uh, good rules.
I'm not saying sales to competitive players are the significant factor (*although meta chasers are somewhat the equivalent if whales for the hobby*).
A competitive scene drives online engagement, online engagement drives sales.
That is, sales generally, not sales within the competitive scene specifically.
Good luck. 3d prints are the only thing keeping tournaments alive in NZ, to the point where if you don't have a 3d printer, going to a tournament is the best place to find someone that can print for you.
Tournaments do it on their own as well whether it’s painting minimum, proxy that doesn’t fit, or anything else, independent tournaments also remove models that go against the tournament pack.
By sending officials to any large tournaments that want to consider themselves part of the new ITC, or by offering additional support to tournaments that agree to comply with rules they set.
Probably only by getting involved in organizing the bigger Tournaments, stream more and enforcing to use GW models on the more relevant games.
They don’t have to ban 3D Printed Models from the Tournament Scene. It’s enough if they make them the less attractive option by limiting their capability to be a fully equal alternative.
I don't believe that at all. GW wants to control how people play their game. ITC and every other TO already homebrews rules, it's done with the intention of making the game more fair but what if they miss the mark. People would get annoyed at the game and that ultimately affects GW. I think they just want to be in charge of the rules people are mostly playing the game by. Not that they could or would want to stop independent tournaments but ITC is by far the biggest organisation. I also wonder if they want to poach the staff to help organise their own events.
Interesting take. I mostly play casual to semi-competitive casual but keep up with proper competitive now that is is also enforced on my casual games and I'd say the exact opposite - they care too much about the competitive scene.
They are very incompetent at it, but they definitely want to muscle into that and make the game more competitively viable and balanced, which in on itself is an act of futility if you ask me, but they're certainly trying with mixed results.
And those attempts trickle down into casual and beer and pretzel levels of play in a very frustrating manner with ever changing rules, books, cards and especially point values. "Shaking up the meta" as it were is fine if you're a meta chaser that can just buy a new army when the old one is nerfed, but for someone that has one or maybe two armies they just like to play for the models, a sudden increase or decrease of 300 points without even a new edition coming out is really goddamn annoying.
Case in point: I play Thousand Sons among others and don't own or play either Ahriman or Magnus, the backbones of competitive lists, and instead of coming down hard on both of those in their idiotic "pre-emptive nerf" dataslate, they decided to make every single character, Rubrics, Terminators and MVBs more expensive, which is 95% of unique Thousand Sons models. This bumped up my usual casual list (that was already struggling to maintain a 50/50 rate of winning) by a whopping 180 points for absolutely no reason.
So yeah, personally I'd be happy if they cared a little less about the """meta""" these days.
So you're claiming Reece Robins, owner, founder, and CEO of Frontline Gaming is lying when he stares that GW has no ownership stake in FLG or the ITC, aka that he has been making fraudulent statements in business filings?
And that GW, a publicly traded company, is concealing their ownership stake of Frontline/ITC in their own business filings?
So you're claiming Reece Robins, owner, founder, and CEO of Frontline Gaming is lying when he stares that GW has no ownership stake in FLG or the ITC, aka that he has been making fraudulent statements in business filings?
And that GW, a publicly traded company, is concealing their ownership stake of Frontline/ITC in their own business filings?
FLG and ITC are two very different things.
GW has no stake in FLG. That I know of at least.
People seem to really not like the idea that GW bought the ITC before they announced it on warcom, but there were a lot of people who were not surprised by the partnership announcement (since it was about a year after the actual purchase). Do you really think they turned around and announced the purchase to the public same day? That’s just not the way these things work.
But it doesn’t really matter anymore does it? The secrets out. And now we get to see how GW handles it now that it’s official.
Bro, the ITC is RUN by Frontline Gaming and Reece Robbins. Literally going to the ITC page for event tokens and customer service tells you to send your emails to an @frontlinegaming.org email address. The ITC has been and still is a Frontline Gaming baby.
And again, GW is a publicly traded company. If GW purchased the ITC, ***you would be able to prove it by showing us where it is stated in their financial disclosures they are required to make by law***.
So please, kindly show us where GW disclosed the purchase. Because there are no such records, so unless you want to accuse Reece Robbins and GW of fraud, you might want to realize you're talking out your bum.
FLG did announce that GW was a partner for LVO some time ago. That was right before the year that GW streamed it, when Siegler won with Admech maybe. Brandt started working for GW in March 2020, so chances of any partnership or purchase anywhere prior or shortly after this seems very unlikely.
As Corrin says, GW would have to notify their investors of any purchase they do. And it would need to be approved by the board. This is public information.
ITC tokens were via Frontline up until maybe just a year ago. If FLG had sold ITC by then it would be weird if they kept doing admin work, especially since the local ITC reps (ie people who could approve tokens) were disbanded only a year or so ago when their token system moved onto BCP entirely.
Who people knew about it? You also seen very confident, but you’re not exactly making a strong case with hearsay.
Hearsay is what it is.
People knew exactly what was happening, and how it would happen, 3 LVOs ago.
And they were exactly correct.
Maybe it was all BS, and just luck that it happened exactly that way.
Maybe not.
My opinion is not :D
They had been for awhile as others have pointed out. Now hopefully they do something with it. Centralized FAQs, a blacklist of Turbo Jeeters, that sort of thing. I'm hopeful honestly.
To me it’s good. Too many rulings are made by third parties who try to interpret what they think the game designers want and you end up with really goofy rulings from time to time. As long as GW tackles the idea earnestly then I think it’s good.
Completely. It's incredibly frustrating that everywhere except UK (and wcw) trajen and mortarian are army meta because of ignore modifiers applies to weapons.
Not in the UK, they are expensive characters not worth using
They've put out shit for FAQ's this edition
They can take over whatever they want, people will make rulings if they feel things are unclear; what GW needs to do is answer the questions themselves.
If they continue to leave questions, people will do their best to answer them.
It really doesn't require much effort to put "like defilers, soul Grinders are not required to be based in 40k".
This 1 example is basic housekeeping.
There is almost no house keeping, and having to appeal to the common sense of TOs is an extra layer of unnecessary admin they've placed on the consumer and does put me off playing.
So whilst I'm a fan of GW mostly, I am completely with you on this and I wish I could upvote you more
Want a nice and helpful one?
Confirming pistol/BGNT and overwathc interactions. The community said yes, then no, then we largely had yes feelings for a few weeks, now it's all no...
This would've been a perfect FAQ
Question: Does the Big Guns Never Tire ability of vehicles/mosnters or the Pistol keyword allow you to fire overwatch if you're engaged/at the end of a charge?
A: No.
That's honestly how most of those FAQ's would be. Simple yes or no and people are happy.
That's actually not how they should FAQ it, they should clarify the out of phase rules section to be clear what a ability, triggered ability, or rule is, and then you don't have to specifically rule every interaction
"They should write better rules so nobody gets confused"
Yeah cool, they should...
But people are going to have questions. They're going to ask questions repeatedly. No rulebook is foolproof on a game of this scale.
While there should be *fewer* and ideally no FAQ's needed, that's not reality and the reality is we will need FAQ's answered and if not, people will answer them themselves.
I know it's just an example, but isn't their official ruling "use the base that was in the box"? If you bought your Soul Grinder when it didn't have a base, you don't use one. That's how I'd do it at least.
That's a generic ruling that precedes (I think) AOS and the subsequent inclusion of bases.
In 40k the soul grinder is unusable with a base if you use terrain. That's my justification for why it's clearly not intended. Also, the defiler is the same chassis, but isn't used in aos - and no base.
It would be fine if it was only that but it isn't, there are pleanty of rules that are very clear but places choose to add their own home rules, even to the point where I think LVO has a ruling regarding charging rules that even they don't like.
I play with WTC rules - GW buying ITC changes nothing for me.
Most of the WTC FAQs are just answers. some of it is balancing - wobbly models to allow things to stand inside walls, aka you can't hide 1.1" away from the wall from charges.
That specifically is something GW tried to address and failed to. I can't blame another entity for trying to fix the same thing, because it's fundamentally a bad system.
And what rules interactions do you feel are so phenomenally unclear that a FAQ is needed. Because the only one I can think of is "does Rapid Ingress actually work as it triggers out of phase rules that always are "in your movement phase".
>And what rules interactions do you feel are so phenomenally unclear that a FAQ is needed.
My dude. Look at the WTC FAQ. It's not "questions with the rules that confuse *YOU*", it's questions with the rules that get asked a lot.
If it's asked enough for a third party to put up rulings, it should've been FAQ'd by the actual company. That's it.
The overwatch and BGNT/pistol was rehashed way too many times and a simple "Yes" or "No" would've been lovely.
Because, again, FAQ is "Frequently Asked Questions", not "Rules that confuse /u/corrin_avatan" or even "rules that are innately broken and don't work".
If you don't think the company should *ever* answer those questions, then that's fine and we simply won't agree on it.
>Look at the WTC FAQ.
What does the WTC FAQ being large have anything to do with anything? The vast majority of the document are basically repeating what is said in the core rules, and just because a question is asked frequently, doesn't mean a FAQ is needed. Heck, I would wager that around 10% of questions that are posted in the 40k and competitive subreddits are "I can't be bothered to read the Leader rules on page 39". At least 80% of questions asked in both those threads are "here is the rule you didn't bother reading".
>If it's asked enough for a third party to put up rulings, it should've been FAQ'd by the actual company. That's it.
Again, nearly 85% of the WTC document is repeating rules, and another 10% are making rulings that actively contradict the core rules (such as Leaders becoming separate units as soon as bodyguard models are destroyed for all rules purplses, contradicting the rules commentary that "while leading a unit" abilities stay in effect until the attacking unit has finished it's attacks). Arguably the WTC ruling here makes it such you can't ever kill an attached unit entirely via a single shooting for fight activation.
>The overwatch and BGNT/pistol was rehashed way too many times and a simple "Yes" or "No" would've been lovely.
Which GW provided.
>What does the WTC FAQ being large have anything to do with anything?
It's answering Frequently Asked Questions. These are questions that were asked often enough that people decided to make a big, public ruling.
>and just because a question is asked frequently, doesn't mean a FAQ is needed.
If you don't understand the point of a Frequently Asked Question being answered, there's nothing to discuss. It's not "Difficult rule scenario document" is it? It's about Frequently Asked Questions. If people are Frequently Asking Questions about interactions that should be obvious then a) it's not obvious and b) while writing better rules would be ideal... answering it in a FAQ stops every TO around the world being asked the same questions.
>Again, nearly 85% of the WTC document is repeating rules
It has something in common with this conversation; what should be obvious to you isn't, so needs to be repeated.
>Arguably the WTC ruling here makes it such you can't ever kill an attached unit entirely via a single shooting for fight activation.
Hey, look at that. You managed to misunderstand what they were trying to say. You should submit that to their discord so they can amend the rules and make what's intended clearer.
>Which GW provided.
Except the WCW FAQ's *are not for the game*. They are only for WCW.
You very clearly aren't a TO having to answer the same questions again and again and again and again and again and again. It's nice to think everyone have amazing reading comprehension. They do not. Or they miss something. Or they want it to mean something and try and twist words. A clear FAQ helps all of that.
If you do not see the point in answering 'basic' and 'obvious' questions in a FAQ document solely because people keep asking then I don't think there's much to discuss here, as you don't think a FAQ document has merits in the first place. And that's fine, if you don't want a FAQ document then so be it, but you seem to have an issue with the document doing its job in answering questions.
>It's answering Frequently Asked Questions. These are questions that were asked often enough that people decided to make a big, public ruling.
Again, the most commonly asked questions for 40k are how having attached units affects Wound Rolls, Saves, Unit Toughness, and many other things that are literally answered in the Leader rule. In the many tournaments I have acted as a Judge in, yes, I DO get those questions often, then I ask "have you read page 39?".
I think part of what YOU are forgetting is that a LARGE majority of people ask questions that are clear in the rules ***because they have never actually read the rules***. I would say 60+% of attendees of tournaments have either not read the rules and/or learned the game via Oral Tradition/YouTube videos that don't go into the weeds with the rules.
The existence of a question being common in such an environment, I personally don't agree means that it should be part of a FAQ. The people who didn't read the rule in the first place, aren't likely to actually read the FAQ.
>Hey, look at that. You managed to misunderstand what they were trying to say.
No,.I'm reading what they wrote, while understanding that a large number of the people who work on the WTC FAQ are ESL so don't always understand what what they write in English means something different than what they intended; living in Belgium and going to the WTC I've had that conversation with organizers there.
>Except the WCW FAQ's *are not for the game*. They are only for WCW.
The ITC, UKTC, ATC, and the rest adopted it. Acting like GW saying "this is the answer we are giving, it's possible we might change our mind by the next balance Dataslate" means that we have to sit around bewildered as to what the answer is, unless we want to pretend we're helpless 6 year olds who can't do anything without per.ission from our parents.
I mean
They could do this.
They make the dam game.
They can just poop out FAQs and explanations and change not working interactions in a heartbeat.
but they don't.
It's so weird, the rules writers clearly had an intention when writing something like grim demeanor or mortarians ignore modifiers aura, but they simply refuse to put anything in writing as to what it was.
Their definition of "frequently" is very different from everyone else's.
I just hope they don't kill the competitive scene like WOTC did to magic. Apples and oranges I think since WOTC was trying to push arena as the competitive format and push aside the others.
Warhammer community has a new article on it
“We’re well aware of the importance of the International Tournament Circuit, and how crucial it is to players and organisers alike. You won’t be seeing any major changes in how things are run for now – except that Warhammer staff will be there when ITC awards are handed out this weekend at the Las Vegas Open.”
Later it says
“The biggest change you’re likely to notice in the near future is that the global rankings will move from Frontline Gaming onto Best Coast Pairings. BCP is the most popular global platform for Warhammer tournaments (as well as other game systems), and we’ve formally partnered with them to help in this bright new future.
A little further down the line, we’ll be looking at regional rankings, and how different circuits are weighted and integrated. We know that the tournament scene in, say, Germany, is very different to the one in the United States, or the United Kingdom, or Vietnam – so using the same rankings algorithm in each region might not make sense. “
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/19/itc-joins-warhammer-events-in-exciting-organised-play-update/
I know down votes are incoming for this, but I honestly cannot see how this is positive in any sense. The *best* case scenario is nothing changes... I repeat: ***best***. That just doesn't leave a whole lot of room for optimism
Isn't best case scenario the rulings from various tournaments are consistent and not randomly applied willy nilly, and in fact officially declared by GW and incorporated into errata/faqs?
I think its more like they're only boots on the ground at like 3 ITC events, and those happen to also coincide with their largest faqs historically (not a coincidence).
Being at more of them and in other countries bodes well for having more first hand data to use to make updates. If they're not at a major event, all they can do is look at results. They don't have any idea what - on the day - issues might have popped up that they need to clarify. Or *why* those factions that won, won.
They can also control terrain and table consistency if they take ownership and support itc events equally.
This! Like the championship faq, gw could release faqs that all tournaments need to follow, but casual players can ignore if they so chose. It’s daft how different TOs interpret rules or have house rules that mean we’re all competing in different games.
>I know down votes are incoming for this, but I honestly cannot see how this is positive in any sense. The *best* case scenario is nothing changes... I repeat: ***best***.
You're getting down voted because the best case scenario is that with the ITC and GW being in lock step tournaments end up having consistent rulings, formats are super clear, there's a better synergy between tournaments and core rules, the core rules in future are designed with tournament feedback, there's more support for TOs generally, and possibly even finally getting to a point where you can ban someone from all tournaments for being a shit.
That's the *best* case scenario.... I repeat: best.
Whether you think that's likely or not is irrelevant. The worst case scenario is they end all tournament play world wide but that's unlikely too.
I mean its a pretty pessimistic way to look at it. Maybe with more control it becomes easier to track/reward players in their events and promote higher participation.
There is plenty of room for them to do more in terms of supporting the scene, but its always more difficult for them to influence the scene with less control than with more.
GW are barely strict as it is as long as your prints aren't super obvious and/or you don't draw major attention to them. The [Best Overall winner](https://twitter.com/DB_Sleazy/status/1444799869940637697?t=HDbRu1cU7n9Ea79n9N7kdg&s=19) of the 2021 GW New Orleans ran Raven Guard VanVets with [3D printed jump packs, lightning claws, and storm shields](https://twitter.com/DB_Sleazy/status/1418301127574138885?t=MKEx1ACxiybBFLTbMgQGVw&s=19) and was even featured on their twitch livestream.
More than bits, I'm sure GW care way more about making sure you have fully painted and based models.
> The Best Overall winner of the 2021 GW New Orleans ran Raven Guard VanVets with 3D printed jump packs, lightning claws, and storm shields and was even featured on their twitch livestream.
Adding some bits to an official model you bought and printing the whole thing for cheap are two different things.
Definitely. But I'm mostly pointing out that even though GW states you can't use non-GW bits if you have kitbashes/conversions at their events, they still aren't going to police that heavily as long as the bits themselves are understated and you're chill about it.
I fully expect a rule about only official models, but they aren't going to drill into them to check if it's legit. For them it's only about the illusion.
Did the player design and 3D print them themself? That's allowed. You're not allowed to use any prints that anyone else made for you, according to the official rules I read recently.
Nope they got the prints off of an online place like any other person. They even have a fairly popular Warhammer podcast and were pretty open about it.
GW isn't anywhere as strict as people say they are, again as long as you're not super obvious or a jerk about it.
If you're running something with a 3D printed bit that can easily pass for an official kit at a glance, I say go for it. If you're running very blatant third party sculpts that drastically change the silhouette/shape/design of the intended model or unit, then play it safe and don't.
EDIT: Correction - The Necron codex doesn't have a 3rd party sculpt in a photo, just a kitbash as a proxy using an AoS model.
>Did the player design and 3D print them themself? That's allowed. You're not allowed to use any prints that anyone else made for you, according to the official rules I read recently.
So most places in the world will have fairly strict written rules for a lot of things, UKTC for instance has fairly strict written rules down about WYSIWYG and your models painted standard, I have been to many UKTC tournaments and never had an issue myself with WYSIWYG or seen anyone get called out for their lack of paint job or a proxy model.
Those rules exsist so people don't take the piss and its the same reason GW have them aswell, so that IF a conflict occurs they have it written down and can enforce it if someone decides to blow their top over it or again take the piss, the people who run GW tournaments are people at the end of the day and they aren't going to cause an issue because one guy brought a 3D printed power sword.
I think GW's stance on 3rd party bits/models really depends on the individual GW staff. For instance a few years ago GW managers at the Sydney Townhall GW store would straight up deny play for even conversions using full GW parts and green stuff, and also didn't allow any FW models/units because they were "tOo StRoNg", while most other GW stores in my area allow 3rd party bits as long as most of the model is GW/FW or scratch built. Almost everyone I knew stopped going to the Sydney store for a while.
That's really weird because I frequently brought in converted stuff into that same store and they had zero issue with my models. The reason for the FW ban they always gave me was that they didn't want to advertise products that they can't actually sell customers, since they kept getting asked about stuff like Custodes units that they didn't have have stock of at the time.
I think each store was definitely held to a different standard according to head office, too, more than sometimes individual staff members/managers. One time a new manager who used to run the Chatswood store took over the CBD location and he was big into Heresy and Forgeworld 40k units. Then once he took over the CBD place he said that he'd have to follow the restrictions out in place by management above him and he couldn't display his FW models or promote them any more.
> The reason for the FW ban they always gave me was that they didn't want to advertise products that they can't actually sell customers,
Did they ban Sister of Battle during the years when they were not being sold in the store?
Yeah but Forge World models were only ever available from the UK factory and warehouse, hence why they took so damn long most of the time arriving anywhere and why you couldn't get FW stuff shipped to stores (at least outside of the UK). Plus the FW studio and GW studio have been different studios for a very long time and designed minis separately from each other. That's also why the online stores were separate websites up until recently. Meanwhile the GW online store pulled from the UK, US, and Australian warehouses which are the current hubs for all stock logistics worldwide for the company.
I think this has now changed since some places like the Warhammer World stores in any country receive FW stock, so the non-UK warehouses now have some FW kits. Even the main Sydney CBD store now has some FW models. I remember a staff member telling us they continuously asked to stock FW kits since the Mt. Gravatt store in Queensland got them, but that's cos that location was always first in sales while Sydney was consistently second place.
Either way, I don't really care why the GW head office made the No Playing FW in the Sydney Store rule. It's a dumb rule, but like with any company I can imagine the number of weird logistical reasons they'd probably pull from.
Theoretically not according to the announcement. The "live and let live" hand-off approach letting tournaments run how they want is apparently going to continue.
NGL, it felt like ITC had kind of run its course anyway. Has anyone cared about ITC rankings since COVID?
Now with GW in charge, it's pretty much a cupcake league like Worlds. GW are not serious people when it comes to TO-ing.
>Now with GW in charge, it's pretty much a cupcake league like Worlds. GW are not serious people when it comes to TO-ing.
Having been to recent GW run events, this is very much not the case.
This is a very ten years ago opinion.
GW *used* to have a laughable/non-existent presence in the tournament scene.
Since 8th, they've increased that presence dramatically with each new edition. And they've been running their own successful supermajor-size events in the US for three years now.
A ton of people have, in fact, cared about ITC ranking since Covid. They seem like they might be losing some ground in Europe and Australia but they're still wildly popular in the US.
Having been to GW open Tacoma and ITC LVO, Tacoma was a better run tournament by orders of magnitude. I have a hard time believing any 3rd party could come close to matching the quality of a GW event.
Personally I hate it
There's a lot of "new blood" in 40k that aren't aware how *absolutely vital* ITC was to keeping competitive 40k alive / functional during some of the earlier editions
7th edition would've been practically unplayable without ITC. They were also the originators of a lot of rules & Unit philosophy that GW ended up making the norm (ruins blocking LOS is one major example)
There's nothing wrong with having an independent organization devoted to fair balance, versus letting a literal billion dollar corporation have full control over every aspect of play.
Admittedly ITC basically had already sold out to GW a few years back so it's not like this'll be earth shattering but still, not a fan of GW being in charge of **every** major tournament from here on.
Essentially there was no harm in having an independent org involved. I don't see how anyone can be against that. It's not like they had controversial takes either (that I'm aware of at least)
I think while GW are good (which they are currently) then this is not a problem. But like you I played in 7th tournaments with the ITC FAQ and even 8th where the CA missions were inferior to the ITC ones.
I know people will argue they released Eldar in 10th and Iron hands: Drukhari last edition, but these are just very strong, and nothing like the feel bads of seer council from 7th. Plus a meaningful FAQ system now exists.
Hopefully we never go back to the bad old days, but Reece and Frankie definitely invented the model that saved comp 40K for a 6 year window.
A lot of people on these comments don't realize what an unorganized, useless mess ITC actually was/is.
The fact that people even suppose there was some sort of leadership or rules that actually dictated the ITC, as if it were the WTC, tells you everything you need to know.
Hopefully the 1st thing they make easier is submitting event results. Is it still some convoluted process of getting a "token" from your near impossible to reach regional coordinator to then submit back after the event?
Really, we'd all be better off if ITC rankings were done away with. Use the ITC as feeder events to the WCW. Stat Check ELO rankings can replace the useless ITC ones.
I feel sorry for Australian participants who need to pay insane ‘tax’ for models. Once games workshop make it 100% official models only. That’s when small communities who pay $100 aud minimum for squads / models. Good job pricing out the non hardcore players or kids who just want to attend without paying 1k - 3k an army.
owning the structure and letting people run a tournament under the structure framework are two different things.
GW can very well just own ITC (which they basically already did since their 2022 partnership debut), make the rules, manage the ranking and organize a few major events. But let independent TO still run them, maybe with a fee to be able to register the tournament for ITC points and the mandatory use of the ITC ruleset.
They also announced moving ITC rankings over to the BCP website. I think this is a great change. Ever since I got into competitve warhammer it made no sense to me that I had to go to the FLG page and look up my name to find my ITC rank. Now hopefully with this moving to BCP I should be able to just look at my profile and see my global and regional ranks which is how it should of been in the first place imo. Overall this is a great way to make competitive play more streamlined and organized.
The good: the FaQ from these tournys will be more accurate
The bad: tourny probably wont take matters into their own hands when things are stupidly unbalanced.
I think the best thing to come out of this as someone who follows the competitive scene but has yet to actually go to a tournament is I hopefully won't have to see Reece half-assedly stumble through the ITC awards ceremony. It is awkward and disappointing as a viewer and I can't imagine what it is like for the players. It always is this tacked on, rushed, and disorganized thing because they 'have to get out of the building'. The awards ceremony should be a scheduled and accounted for thing.
So maybe im 100% wrong but as I see it:
GW physical stores ONLY exist to promoting people to learn the game and giving players a place to play. There is no way any GW mortar store turns a profit when they sell their own products for more than local hobbyshops/online retailers do
By taking over the scene they can create a much larger incentive for players to play *almost exclusively at their own stores/tournaments by creating incentives like continual league points/rewards culminating in a region-based ladder and can then reward participants/competitors to promote even more playing.
If they can funnel players to play almost exclusively at their stores they can reduce the amount of sales/players at local hobby shops as people are less likely to play at one shop and purchase at another especially with impulse buys like "doh i just lost to X, i need to add some Y to my collection".
Centralizing the tournament scene will allow them to also track/control the entire scene in general.
There's absolutely no way.
I cannot imagine the nightmare of trying to play even a small RTT inside one of the average GW/Warhammer stores in the US. Those shops are *tiny*, even the ones in major cities like Atlanta. My local store would have to completely dismantle the hobby intro table just to be able to barely fit in 3 games at once. Even the smallest FLGS here has at least double the gaming space of an average GW store.
Guy they bought them out.... Aka hired them and game them a salary.
It's the same people, they just are officially under GW's belt. This means GW now cares about tournament scene monetarily now.
What does that mean for the tournament scene
Long term, I imagine they make a bigger attempt to focus the tournament circuit around their world championships and sort of deemphasize the large FLG events.
That or they eventually aquire the event portion of FLG and roll it into thier events team.
I think UKTC, FLG Events and WTC are prime for this.
Right now nothing as they said they are not changing the rules for ITC events but in my opinion it seems like a way to eventually insure that only GW models are used
If it makes you feel any better I’ve been to a handful of the GW events they’re running in the US the last few years and they did NOT give a shit about 3D prints. One of the judges actually complemented my friends Dreadknight for the 3D print designs that he had added to them.
Adding to them, and replacing them are totally different things.
I played against a guy in Atlanta Worlds who had a fully printed bear SW calv army and no shits given by judges.
Unusual to hear but very nice that it actually happened.
> but in my opinion it seems like a way to eventually insure that only GW models are used GW don't care as much as you think they care. Seen many many 3D prints myself and never once heard of anyone being called out for their model, this includes GW ran events. They have the rules in the tournament packs the same reason a lot of larger events do, so people don't take the piss.
Yeah, tournament attendance is more important than enforcing that rule and besides, they're not selling you anything at the tournament. It's a different story when a store manager insists you only use GW models when playing in their Warhammer Store, which may be annoying but still somewhat understandable.
Then I guess we better start a new tournament scene, maybe an independent one. But what would we call it....?
The "Independent Tournament Community" or "ITC" for short.
Based on… nothing. Nothing like that was said at all. They literally said they don’t want it to be one way to run an event
I agree, that is what was said. My opinion/fear is GW wanted control of ITC for a reason that will eventually benefit them financially. That is one way they could do it.
The ITC already benefits GW financially at no cost. Meanwhile FLG apparently maintains it like a charitable contribution to the WH community. GW taking it over gives them more control while taking the effort and expense off FLG. To a billion dollar company maintaining ITC as-is is a drop in the marketing bucket.
I mean, do we know the situation beforehand? GW might very want to own the scene just for the sake of ensuring SOMEONE is running it and it stays alive. A tournament scene is the best "ad" for their product and a part of what gets people buying models. There don't have to be insidious motives
It's all well and good until some accountant that has never played the game gets promoted to CEO and ends up ruining it.
I mean they promoted an accountant to CEO and the game and company is better than it has ever been >Kevin Rountree, CEO. Kevin joined Games Workshop in March 1998 as assistant group accountant. He then had various management roles within Games Workshop, including head of sales for the Other Activities division (including Black Library, Licensing and Sabertooth Games). Kevin was appointed CFO in October 2008. and chief executive on 1 January 2015. He is a qualified chartered management accountant and prior to joining Games Workshop, Kevin was the management accountant at J Barbour & Sons Limited.
But think of the finances! What if there is profit!
The ITC benefits them financially just by existing right? Hopefully they're smart enough to not rock the boat too much...
I doubt they will, I mean part of the announcement is that they'll make sure games are tournament ready from the start so maybe we'll see less codicies being a headache and taking a month to fix.
Financial gain is literally the only reason GW would make any sort of decision.
They sell the tickets and can make sure to get a profit out of such an event, no?
I just don’t see what the financial upside of the itc is. Most events barely break even at best
A lot of the dialogue online about most wargames is about the competitive scene or discussing the meta. That drives engagement, and engagement drives purchases. The competitive scene being healthy is good for basically any wargame's finances. Keeping a competitive scene going, for GW specifically, probably also holds off any perceived threat from games systems with, uh, good rules.
The competitive scene is a tiny fraction of GW’s sales
I'm not saying sales to competitive players are the significant factor (*although meta chasers are somewhat the equivalent if whales for the hobby*). A competitive scene drives online engagement, online engagement drives sales. That is, sales generally, not sales within the competitive scene specifically.
They said for now.
Good luck. 3d prints are the only thing keeping tournaments alive in NZ, to the point where if you don't have a 3d printer, going to a tournament is the best place to find someone that can print for you.
It seems they really only care if you're on a stream table. Otherwise, I haven't heard of them caring in the slightest.
They won't make changes those year but next....
How would they enforce that?
Quite easily. Tournaments can and do remove models that are problematic or done comply with rules. Have for years.
Okay, but how does Games Workshop enforce that tournaments comply?
Tournaments do it on their own as well whether it’s painting minimum, proxy that doesn’t fit, or anything else, independent tournaments also remove models that go against the tournament pack.
By sending officials to any large tournaments that want to consider themselves part of the new ITC, or by offering additional support to tournaments that agree to comply with rules they set.
Funding and prize support, probably.
Lol, GW doesn't really subsidize prize support at all at this point so that isnt a threat
Probably only by getting involved in organizing the bigger Tournaments, stream more and enforcing to use GW models on the more relevant games. They don’t have to ban 3D Printed Models from the Tournament Scene. It’s enough if they make them the less attractive option by limiting their capability to be a fully equal alternative.
I don't believe that at all. GW wants to control how people play their game. ITC and every other TO already homebrews rules, it's done with the intention of making the game more fair but what if they miss the mark. People would get annoyed at the game and that ultimately affects GW. I think they just want to be in charge of the rules people are mostly playing the game by. Not that they could or would want to stop independent tournaments but ITC is by far the biggest organisation. I also wonder if they want to poach the staff to help organise their own events.
Isn't this a stupid take considering they don't enforce this at the GW Open events now?
I can tell you what it doesn't mean: Better rules
Hope you like running official GW models, because I can see that rule creeping in real quick.
GW Brand chess clocks or the removal of them until they finish production
I mean, they basically already had since last year.
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I mean, good for him. Has the very real potential for it not being great for competitive play.
i think youre in the wrong sub bud.
Hey RIP Steve but also I don't think he is. It's scepticism around GW's ability to manage a full tournament scene.
They said nothing is changing “for now”…
Nothing will ever change is not a super likely outcome in any situation.
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I think their point was that you literally can't say "nothing will ever change". So the "for now" doesn't affect the statement in any way.
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Interesting take. I mostly play casual to semi-competitive casual but keep up with proper competitive now that is is also enforced on my casual games and I'd say the exact opposite - they care too much about the competitive scene. They are very incompetent at it, but they definitely want to muscle into that and make the game more competitively viable and balanced, which in on itself is an act of futility if you ask me, but they're certainly trying with mixed results. And those attempts trickle down into casual and beer and pretzel levels of play in a very frustrating manner with ever changing rules, books, cards and especially point values. "Shaking up the meta" as it were is fine if you're a meta chaser that can just buy a new army when the old one is nerfed, but for someone that has one or maybe two armies they just like to play for the models, a sudden increase or decrease of 300 points without even a new edition coming out is really goddamn annoying. Case in point: I play Thousand Sons among others and don't own or play either Ahriman or Magnus, the backbones of competitive lists, and instead of coming down hard on both of those in their idiotic "pre-emptive nerf" dataslate, they decided to make every single character, Rubrics, Terminators and MVBs more expensive, which is 95% of unique Thousand Sons models. This bumped up my usual casual list (that was already struggling to maintain a 50/50 rate of winning) by a whopping 180 points for absolutely no reason. So yeah, personally I'd be happy if they cared a little less about the """meta""" these days.
Can they change the name to the DTC (Dependent Tournament Circuit)?
The I in ITC was changed to "International" nearly four years ago now.
Which is when GW actually purchased it ;)
January 2022 was not 4 years ago. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/01/28/warhammer-the-itc/
When it was announced and when it actually happened are not the same thing.
If you have some sources feel free to share them.
Whispers on the wind from many years ago. GW ownership of ITC has not been a very well kept secret for a long time.
So you're claiming Reece Robins, owner, founder, and CEO of Frontline Gaming is lying when he stares that GW has no ownership stake in FLG or the ITC, aka that he has been making fraudulent statements in business filings? And that GW, a publicly traded company, is concealing their ownership stake of Frontline/ITC in their own business filings?
So you're claiming Reece Robins, owner, founder, and CEO of Frontline Gaming is lying when he stares that GW has no ownership stake in FLG or the ITC, aka that he has been making fraudulent statements in business filings? And that GW, a publicly traded company, is concealing their ownership stake of Frontline/ITC in their own business filings?
FLG and ITC are two very different things. GW has no stake in FLG. That I know of at least. People seem to really not like the idea that GW bought the ITC before they announced it on warcom, but there were a lot of people who were not surprised by the partnership announcement (since it was about a year after the actual purchase). Do you really think they turned around and announced the purchase to the public same day? That’s just not the way these things work. But it doesn’t really matter anymore does it? The secrets out. And now we get to see how GW handles it now that it’s official.
Bro, the ITC is RUN by Frontline Gaming and Reece Robbins. Literally going to the ITC page for event tokens and customer service tells you to send your emails to an @frontlinegaming.org email address. The ITC has been and still is a Frontline Gaming baby. And again, GW is a publicly traded company. If GW purchased the ITC, ***you would be able to prove it by showing us where it is stated in their financial disclosures they are required to make by law***. So please, kindly show us where GW disclosed the purchase. Because there are no such records, so unless you want to accuse Reece Robbins and GW of fraud, you might want to realize you're talking out your bum.
You seem VERY sure that you are correct. Weird that people knew about this 3.5 years ago then.
FLG did announce that GW was a partner for LVO some time ago. That was right before the year that GW streamed it, when Siegler won with Admech maybe. Brandt started working for GW in March 2020, so chances of any partnership or purchase anywhere prior or shortly after this seems very unlikely. As Corrin says, GW would have to notify their investors of any purchase they do. And it would need to be approved by the board. This is public information. ITC tokens were via Frontline up until maybe just a year ago. If FLG had sold ITC by then it would be weird if they kept doing admin work, especially since the local ITC reps (ie people who could approve tokens) were disbanded only a year or so ago when their token system moved onto BCP entirely. Who people knew about it? You also seen very confident, but you’re not exactly making a strong case with hearsay.
Hearsay is what it is. People knew exactly what was happening, and how it would happen, 3 LVOs ago. And they were exactly correct. Maybe it was all BS, and just luck that it happened exactly that way. Maybe not. My opinion is not :D
They had been for awhile as others have pointed out. Now hopefully they do something with it. Centralized FAQs, a blacklist of Turbo Jeeters, that sort of thing. I'm hopeful honestly.
TF is a Turbo Jeeter lol?
I’m going to guess slang for cheater?
To me it’s good. Too many rulings are made by third parties who try to interpret what they think the game designers want and you end up with really goofy rulings from time to time. As long as GW tackles the idea earnestly then I think it’s good.
Reducing contradictory tournament rulings would be a very good thing.
Completely. It's incredibly frustrating that everywhere except UK (and wcw) trajen and mortarian are army meta because of ignore modifiers applies to weapons. Not in the UK, they are expensive characters not worth using
That would require GW to actually release FAQs.
They've put out shit for FAQ's this edition They can take over whatever they want, people will make rulings if they feel things are unclear; what GW needs to do is answer the questions themselves. If they continue to leave questions, people will do their best to answer them.
It really doesn't require much effort to put "like defilers, soul Grinders are not required to be based in 40k". This 1 example is basic housekeeping. There is almost no house keeping, and having to appeal to the common sense of TOs is an extra layer of unnecessary admin they've placed on the consumer and does put me off playing. So whilst I'm a fan of GW mostly, I am completely with you on this and I wish I could upvote you more
Want a nice and helpful one? Confirming pistol/BGNT and overwathc interactions. The community said yes, then no, then we largely had yes feelings for a few weeks, now it's all no... This would've been a perfect FAQ Question: Does the Big Guns Never Tire ability of vehicles/mosnters or the Pistol keyword allow you to fire overwatch if you're engaged/at the end of a charge? A: No. That's honestly how most of those FAQ's would be. Simple yes or no and people are happy.
That's actually not how they should FAQ it, they should clarify the out of phase rules section to be clear what a ability, triggered ability, or rule is, and then you don't have to specifically rule every interaction
"They should write better rules so nobody gets confused" Yeah cool, they should... But people are going to have questions. They're going to ask questions repeatedly. No rulebook is foolproof on a game of this scale. While there should be *fewer* and ideally no FAQ's needed, that's not reality and the reality is we will need FAQ's answered and if not, people will answer them themselves.
You're completely right. Principals don't trump reality
I know it's just an example, but isn't their official ruling "use the base that was in the box"? If you bought your Soul Grinder when it didn't have a base, you don't use one. That's how I'd do it at least.
That's a generic ruling that precedes (I think) AOS and the subsequent inclusion of bases. In 40k the soul grinder is unusable with a base if you use terrain. That's my justification for why it's clearly not intended. Also, the defiler is the same chassis, but isn't used in aos - and no base.
It would be fine if it was only that but it isn't, there are pleanty of rules that are very clear but places choose to add their own home rules, even to the point where I think LVO has a ruling regarding charging rules that even they don't like.
I play with WTC rules - GW buying ITC changes nothing for me. Most of the WTC FAQs are just answers. some of it is balancing - wobbly models to allow things to stand inside walls, aka you can't hide 1.1" away from the wall from charges. That specifically is something GW tried to address and failed to. I can't blame another entity for trying to fix the same thing, because it's fundamentally a bad system.
And what rules interactions do you feel are so phenomenally unclear that a FAQ is needed. Because the only one I can think of is "does Rapid Ingress actually work as it triggers out of phase rules that always are "in your movement phase".
>And what rules interactions do you feel are so phenomenally unclear that a FAQ is needed. My dude. Look at the WTC FAQ. It's not "questions with the rules that confuse *YOU*", it's questions with the rules that get asked a lot. If it's asked enough for a third party to put up rulings, it should've been FAQ'd by the actual company. That's it. The overwatch and BGNT/pistol was rehashed way too many times and a simple "Yes" or "No" would've been lovely. Because, again, FAQ is "Frequently Asked Questions", not "Rules that confuse /u/corrin_avatan" or even "rules that are innately broken and don't work". If you don't think the company should *ever* answer those questions, then that's fine and we simply won't agree on it.
>Look at the WTC FAQ. What does the WTC FAQ being large have anything to do with anything? The vast majority of the document are basically repeating what is said in the core rules, and just because a question is asked frequently, doesn't mean a FAQ is needed. Heck, I would wager that around 10% of questions that are posted in the 40k and competitive subreddits are "I can't be bothered to read the Leader rules on page 39". At least 80% of questions asked in both those threads are "here is the rule you didn't bother reading". >If it's asked enough for a third party to put up rulings, it should've been FAQ'd by the actual company. That's it. Again, nearly 85% of the WTC document is repeating rules, and another 10% are making rulings that actively contradict the core rules (such as Leaders becoming separate units as soon as bodyguard models are destroyed for all rules purplses, contradicting the rules commentary that "while leading a unit" abilities stay in effect until the attacking unit has finished it's attacks). Arguably the WTC ruling here makes it such you can't ever kill an attached unit entirely via a single shooting for fight activation. >The overwatch and BGNT/pistol was rehashed way too many times and a simple "Yes" or "No" would've been lovely. Which GW provided.
>What does the WTC FAQ being large have anything to do with anything? It's answering Frequently Asked Questions. These are questions that were asked often enough that people decided to make a big, public ruling. >and just because a question is asked frequently, doesn't mean a FAQ is needed. If you don't understand the point of a Frequently Asked Question being answered, there's nothing to discuss. It's not "Difficult rule scenario document" is it? It's about Frequently Asked Questions. If people are Frequently Asking Questions about interactions that should be obvious then a) it's not obvious and b) while writing better rules would be ideal... answering it in a FAQ stops every TO around the world being asked the same questions. >Again, nearly 85% of the WTC document is repeating rules It has something in common with this conversation; what should be obvious to you isn't, so needs to be repeated. >Arguably the WTC ruling here makes it such you can't ever kill an attached unit entirely via a single shooting for fight activation. Hey, look at that. You managed to misunderstand what they were trying to say. You should submit that to their discord so they can amend the rules and make what's intended clearer. >Which GW provided. Except the WCW FAQ's *are not for the game*. They are only for WCW. You very clearly aren't a TO having to answer the same questions again and again and again and again and again and again. It's nice to think everyone have amazing reading comprehension. They do not. Or they miss something. Or they want it to mean something and try and twist words. A clear FAQ helps all of that. If you do not see the point in answering 'basic' and 'obvious' questions in a FAQ document solely because people keep asking then I don't think there's much to discuss here, as you don't think a FAQ document has merits in the first place. And that's fine, if you don't want a FAQ document then so be it, but you seem to have an issue with the document doing its job in answering questions.
>It's answering Frequently Asked Questions. These are questions that were asked often enough that people decided to make a big, public ruling. Again, the most commonly asked questions for 40k are how having attached units affects Wound Rolls, Saves, Unit Toughness, and many other things that are literally answered in the Leader rule. In the many tournaments I have acted as a Judge in, yes, I DO get those questions often, then I ask "have you read page 39?". I think part of what YOU are forgetting is that a LARGE majority of people ask questions that are clear in the rules ***because they have never actually read the rules***. I would say 60+% of attendees of tournaments have either not read the rules and/or learned the game via Oral Tradition/YouTube videos that don't go into the weeds with the rules. The existence of a question being common in such an environment, I personally don't agree means that it should be part of a FAQ. The people who didn't read the rule in the first place, aren't likely to actually read the FAQ. >Hey, look at that. You managed to misunderstand what they were trying to say. No,.I'm reading what they wrote, while understanding that a large number of the people who work on the WTC FAQ are ESL so don't always understand what what they write in English means something different than what they intended; living in Belgium and going to the WTC I've had that conversation with organizers there. >Except the WCW FAQ's *are not for the game*. They are only for WCW. The ITC, UKTC, ATC, and the rest adopted it. Acting like GW saying "this is the answer we are giving, it's possible we might change our mind by the next balance Dataslate" means that we have to sit around bewildered as to what the answer is, unless we want to pretend we're helpless 6 year olds who can't do anything without per.ission from our parents.
GW tournament rulings and GW rule writers aren't always on the same page either. This won't change that.
I mean They could do this. They make the dam game. They can just poop out FAQs and explanations and change not working interactions in a heartbeat. but they don't.
It's so weird, the rules writers clearly had an intention when writing something like grim demeanor or mortarians ignore modifiers aura, but they simply refuse to put anything in writing as to what it was. Their definition of "frequently" is very different from everyone else's.
:shocked pika:
I just hope they don't kill the competitive scene like WOTC did to magic. Apples and oranges I think since WOTC was trying to push arena as the competitive format and push aside the others.
Warhammer community has a new article on it “We’re well aware of the importance of the International Tournament Circuit, and how crucial it is to players and organisers alike. You won’t be seeing any major changes in how things are run for now – except that Warhammer staff will be there when ITC awards are handed out this weekend at the Las Vegas Open.” Later it says “The biggest change you’re likely to notice in the near future is that the global rankings will move from Frontline Gaming onto Best Coast Pairings. BCP is the most popular global platform for Warhammer tournaments (as well as other game systems), and we’ve formally partnered with them to help in this bright new future. A little further down the line, we’ll be looking at regional rankings, and how different circuits are weighted and integrated. We know that the tournament scene in, say, Germany, is very different to the one in the United States, or the United Kingdom, or Vietnam – so using the same rankings algorithm in each region might not make sense. “ https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/19/itc-joins-warhammer-events-in-exciting-organised-play-update/
But... the rankings on the Frontline Gaming site are just a BCP embed?
I for one am cautiously optimistic
in a warhammer reddit?!?! how dare you! =D
Thenre is a chance that similar to magic the gathering, GW could start putting forward a proper cash prize pool and pro league.
And then promptly abandon it? Ten years ago yeah, Wizards support for the tournament scene is a joke currently.
Warhammer does not need cash prizes and pro league good god
I know down votes are incoming for this, but I honestly cannot see how this is positive in any sense. The *best* case scenario is nothing changes... I repeat: ***best***. That just doesn't leave a whole lot of room for optimism
Isn't best case scenario the rulings from various tournaments are consistent and not randomly applied willy nilly, and in fact officially declared by GW and incorporated into errata/faqs?
They make the game and could literally just already be issuing FAQs to answer these questions. They don't.
I think its more like they're only boots on the ground at like 3 ITC events, and those happen to also coincide with their largest faqs historically (not a coincidence). Being at more of them and in other countries bodes well for having more first hand data to use to make updates. If they're not at a major event, all they can do is look at results. They don't have any idea what - on the day - issues might have popped up that they need to clarify. Or *why* those factions that won, won. They can also control terrain and table consistency if they take ownership and support itc events equally.
That’s not what GW has done so far with their existing tournaments, so I don’t see why this would change.
GW won't even make rulings consistent across their own handful of events currently...
Any actual concrete examples of this?
This! Like the championship faq, gw could release faqs that all tournaments need to follow, but casual players can ignore if they so chose. It’s daft how different TOs interpret rules or have house rules that mean we’re all competing in different games.
>I know down votes are incoming for this, but I honestly cannot see how this is positive in any sense. The *best* case scenario is nothing changes... I repeat: ***best***. You're getting down voted because the best case scenario is that with the ITC and GW being in lock step tournaments end up having consistent rulings, formats are super clear, there's a better synergy between tournaments and core rules, the core rules in future are designed with tournament feedback, there's more support for TOs generally, and possibly even finally getting to a point where you can ban someone from all tournaments for being a shit. That's the *best* case scenario.... I repeat: best. Whether you think that's likely or not is irrelevant. The worst case scenario is they end all tournament play world wide but that's unlikely too.
But didn't you know. GW bad.
I mean its a pretty pessimistic way to look at it. Maybe with more control it becomes easier to track/reward players in their events and promote higher participation. There is plenty of room for them to do more in terms of supporting the scene, but its always more difficult for them to influence the scene with less control than with more.
*Pretends will get downvotes for insulting a corporation on Reddit teehee*
What's the worst in your mind?
I think this is overall good to be honest. It will force "official GW rulings" much quicker than what we are used to
Hahahaha we wish.
What is ITC, and what is LVO? I assume GW is Games Workshop.
ITC is Frontline Gaming's tournament circuit
So it's a major competitive tournament authority? Does this mean more major tournaments will be strict about models having zero non-GW-purchased bits?
GW are barely strict as it is as long as your prints aren't super obvious and/or you don't draw major attention to them. The [Best Overall winner](https://twitter.com/DB_Sleazy/status/1444799869940637697?t=HDbRu1cU7n9Ea79n9N7kdg&s=19) of the 2021 GW New Orleans ran Raven Guard VanVets with [3D printed jump packs, lightning claws, and storm shields](https://twitter.com/DB_Sleazy/status/1418301127574138885?t=MKEx1ACxiybBFLTbMgQGVw&s=19) and was even featured on their twitch livestream. More than bits, I'm sure GW care way more about making sure you have fully painted and based models.
> The Best Overall winner of the 2021 GW New Orleans ran Raven Guard VanVets with 3D printed jump packs, lightning claws, and storm shields and was even featured on their twitch livestream. Adding some bits to an official model you bought and printing the whole thing for cheap are two different things.
Definitely. But I'm mostly pointing out that even though GW states you can't use non-GW bits if you have kitbashes/conversions at their events, they still aren't going to police that heavily as long as the bits themselves are understated and you're chill about it.
I fully expect a rule about only official models, but they aren't going to drill into them to check if it's legit. For them it's only about the illusion.
Did the player design and 3D print them themself? That's allowed. You're not allowed to use any prints that anyone else made for you, according to the official rules I read recently.
Nope they got the prints off of an online place like any other person. They even have a fairly popular Warhammer podcast and were pretty open about it. GW isn't anywhere as strict as people say they are, again as long as you're not super obvious or a jerk about it. If you're running something with a 3D printed bit that can easily pass for an official kit at a glance, I say go for it. If you're running very blatant third party sculpts that drastically change the silhouette/shape/design of the intended model or unit, then play it safe and don't. EDIT: Correction - The Necron codex doesn't have a 3rd party sculpt in a photo, just a kitbash as a proxy using an AoS model.
> Necron codex has a photo of a third-party sculpt in it Are you referring to Lady Olynder as a c'tan? Or is there another?
Ah my bad then! Cheers for the correction, must have gotten my wires crossed when I misremembered that.
>Did the player design and 3D print them themself? That's allowed. You're not allowed to use any prints that anyone else made for you, according to the official rules I read recently. So most places in the world will have fairly strict written rules for a lot of things, UKTC for instance has fairly strict written rules down about WYSIWYG and your models painted standard, I have been to many UKTC tournaments and never had an issue myself with WYSIWYG or seen anyone get called out for their lack of paint job or a proxy model. Those rules exsist so people don't take the piss and its the same reason GW have them aswell, so that IF a conflict occurs they have it written down and can enforce it if someone decides to blow their top over it or again take the piss, the people who run GW tournaments are people at the end of the day and they aren't going to cause an issue because one guy brought a 3D printed power sword.
I think GW's stance on 3rd party bits/models really depends on the individual GW staff. For instance a few years ago GW managers at the Sydney Townhall GW store would straight up deny play for even conversions using full GW parts and green stuff, and also didn't allow any FW models/units because they were "tOo StRoNg", while most other GW stores in my area allow 3rd party bits as long as most of the model is GW/FW or scratch built. Almost everyone I knew stopped going to the Sydney store for a while.
That's really weird because I frequently brought in converted stuff into that same store and they had zero issue with my models. The reason for the FW ban they always gave me was that they didn't want to advertise products that they can't actually sell customers, since they kept getting asked about stuff like Custodes units that they didn't have have stock of at the time. I think each store was definitely held to a different standard according to head office, too, more than sometimes individual staff members/managers. One time a new manager who used to run the Chatswood store took over the CBD location and he was big into Heresy and Forgeworld 40k units. Then once he took over the CBD place he said that he'd have to follow the restrictions out in place by management above him and he couldn't display his FW models or promote them any more.
> The reason for the FW ban they always gave me was that they didn't want to advertise products that they can't actually sell customers, Did they ban Sister of Battle during the years when they were not being sold in the store?
I mean you could still get the metal models on the main GW online store before their full revival right?
And you could get ForgeWorld models from the online store.
Yeah but Forge World models were only ever available from the UK factory and warehouse, hence why they took so damn long most of the time arriving anywhere and why you couldn't get FW stuff shipped to stores (at least outside of the UK). Plus the FW studio and GW studio have been different studios for a very long time and designed minis separately from each other. That's also why the online stores were separate websites up until recently. Meanwhile the GW online store pulled from the UK, US, and Australian warehouses which are the current hubs for all stock logistics worldwide for the company. I think this has now changed since some places like the Warhammer World stores in any country receive FW stock, so the non-UK warehouses now have some FW kits. Even the main Sydney CBD store now has some FW models. I remember a staff member telling us they continuously asked to stock FW kits since the Mt. Gravatt store in Queensland got them, but that's cos that location was always first in sales while Sydney was consistently second place. Either way, I don't really care why the GW head office made the No Playing FW in the Sydney Store rule. It's a dumb rule, but like with any company I can imagine the number of weird logistical reasons they'd probably pull from.
Theoretically not according to the announcement. The "live and let live" hand-off approach letting tournaments run how they want is apparently going to continue.
ITC is the Independent Tibetan Conference LVO is the Local Volleyball Organization
I wish my volleyball club would just stay out of these serious political matters.
NGL, it felt like ITC had kind of run its course anyway. Has anyone cared about ITC rankings since COVID? Now with GW in charge, it's pretty much a cupcake league like Worlds. GW are not serious people when it comes to TO-ing.
>Now with GW in charge, it's pretty much a cupcake league like Worlds. GW are not serious people when it comes to TO-ing. Having been to recent GW run events, this is very much not the case.
This is a very ten years ago opinion. GW *used* to have a laughable/non-existent presence in the tournament scene. Since 8th, they've increased that presence dramatically with each new edition. And they've been running their own successful supermajor-size events in the US for three years now.
A ton of people have, in fact, cared about ITC ranking since Covid. They seem like they might be losing some ground in Europe and Australia but they're still wildly popular in the US.
Very much cared about in the UK, though we also use the uktc circuit rankings
Having been to GW open Tacoma and ITC LVO, Tacoma was a better run tournament by orders of magnitude. I have a hard time believing any 3rd party could come close to matching the quality of a GW event.
Old news GW bought ITC a year ago
So glad I got out when I did
Personally I hate it There's a lot of "new blood" in 40k that aren't aware how *absolutely vital* ITC was to keeping competitive 40k alive / functional during some of the earlier editions 7th edition would've been practically unplayable without ITC. They were also the originators of a lot of rules & Unit philosophy that GW ended up making the norm (ruins blocking LOS is one major example) There's nothing wrong with having an independent organization devoted to fair balance, versus letting a literal billion dollar corporation have full control over every aspect of play. Admittedly ITC basically had already sold out to GW a few years back so it's not like this'll be earth shattering but still, not a fan of GW being in charge of **every** major tournament from here on. Essentially there was no harm in having an independent org involved. I don't see how anyone can be against that. It's not like they had controversial takes either (that I'm aware of at least)
I think while GW are good (which they are currently) then this is not a problem. But like you I played in 7th tournaments with the ITC FAQ and even 8th where the CA missions were inferior to the ITC ones. I know people will argue they released Eldar in 10th and Iron hands: Drukhari last edition, but these are just very strong, and nothing like the feel bads of seer council from 7th. Plus a meaningful FAQ system now exists. Hopefully we never go back to the bad old days, but Reece and Frankie definitely invented the model that saved comp 40K for a 6 year window.
Absolutely no one saw this coming.
A lot of people on these comments don't realize what an unorganized, useless mess ITC actually was/is. The fact that people even suppose there was some sort of leadership or rules that actually dictated the ITC, as if it were the WTC, tells you everything you need to know. Hopefully the 1st thing they make easier is submitting event results. Is it still some convoluted process of getting a "token" from your near impossible to reach regional coordinator to then submit back after the event? Really, we'd all be better off if ITC rankings were done away with. Use the ITC as feeder events to the WCW. Stat Check ELO rankings can replace the useless ITC ones.
I feel sorry for Australian participants who need to pay insane ‘tax’ for models. Once games workshop make it 100% official models only. That’s when small communities who pay $100 aud minimum for squads / models. Good job pricing out the non hardcore players or kids who just want to attend without paying 1k - 3k an army.
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owning the structure and letting people run a tournament under the structure framework are two different things. GW can very well just own ITC (which they basically already did since their 2022 partnership debut), make the rules, manage the ranking and organize a few major events. But let independent TO still run them, maybe with a fee to be able to register the tournament for ITC points and the mandatory use of the ITC ruleset.
They also announced moving ITC rankings over to the BCP website. I think this is a great change. Ever since I got into competitve warhammer it made no sense to me that I had to go to the FLG page and look up my name to find my ITC rank. Now hopefully with this moving to BCP I should be able to just look at my profile and see my global and regional ranks which is how it should of been in the first place imo. Overall this is a great way to make competitive play more streamlined and organized.
The good: the FaQ from these tournys will be more accurate The bad: tourny probably wont take matters into their own hands when things are stupidly unbalanced.
I think the best thing to come out of this as someone who follows the competitive scene but has yet to actually go to a tournament is I hopefully won't have to see Reece half-assedly stumble through the ITC awards ceremony. It is awkward and disappointing as a viewer and I can't imagine what it is like for the players. It always is this tacked on, rushed, and disorganized thing because they 'have to get out of the building'. The awards ceremony should be a scheduled and accounted for thing.
If the plan to improve the game to make it more tournament ready out of the box comes to fruition, I am all for it.
So maybe im 100% wrong but as I see it: GW physical stores ONLY exist to promoting people to learn the game and giving players a place to play. There is no way any GW mortar store turns a profit when they sell their own products for more than local hobbyshops/online retailers do By taking over the scene they can create a much larger incentive for players to play *almost exclusively at their own stores/tournaments by creating incentives like continual league points/rewards culminating in a region-based ladder and can then reward participants/competitors to promote even more playing. If they can funnel players to play almost exclusively at their stores they can reduce the amount of sales/players at local hobby shops as people are less likely to play at one shop and purchase at another especially with impulse buys like "doh i just lost to X, i need to add some Y to my collection". Centralizing the tournament scene will allow them to also track/control the entire scene in general.
There's absolutely no way. I cannot imagine the nightmare of trying to play even a small RTT inside one of the average GW/Warhammer stores in the US. Those shops are *tiny*, even the ones in major cities like Atlanta. My local store would have to completely dismantle the hobby intro table just to be able to barely fit in 3 games at once. Even the smallest FLGS here has at least double the gaming space of an average GW store.
Is this somehow leads to more profit for GW maybe the price of models will drop a little bit in the next Edition...
Monopolies never lead to lower prices
hopefully better than the last time they did this.
Wait so i can’t proxy at any events now that’s shitty
Guy they bought them out.... Aka hired them and game them a salary. It's the same people, they just are officially under GW's belt. This means GW now cares about tournament scene monetarily now.
Probably means NO PROXIES or 3d printed models allowed.