Objective Secured

With all my posting about the Australasian Team Championships (or ATC for short in case you missed it earlier!) I thought I should take a moment to explain the match up process and what it adds to the team event. Its the same process used at the European Team Challenge (or ETC) which was my first taste of the mini game that is match ups.

The format for both the aforementioned events is 8 players per team. The teams are paired by the TO and allocated 8 tables to play on.

Both teams have a captain who is in charge of this process and make the decisions for the team during it though they may consult with the team as well. Both captains will at this point nominate a “champion” in secret. These are typically written down and validated at the end of the process.

Both captains will roll a dice with the highest roll being the winner. The winner can elect to put up first or make his opposing captain go first.

The captain who is putting up first selects one of his players (not the champion though) as the put up. The opposing captain now selects a player from his own team to play the game. The player who was put up first now gets to select the table the game is played on.

Once this process is complete the “put up” is done by the other captain with the first now getting to choose who plays.

This goes back and forth until its just the 2 champions left and they play each other on the last table left.

Lets take a practical example…

Team 1 has the following 8 players – Eldar, Orks, Tau, White Scars, Daemons, Grey Knights, Dark Eldar and Skitarii

Team 2 has – Eldar, Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Imperial Knights and Daemonkin

They are playing on tables numbered 1 to 8.

Team 1 selects their Orks as their secret Champion while Team 2 selects their daemonkin.

Both captains roll off and Team 1 wins. They elect that team 2 will put up first.

Team 2 selects their Imperial Knights as the first put up. Team 1 Counters with their Eldar list and the Knights player selects table 2.

Team 1 now puts up their Daemons and Team 2 counters with Dark Angels. The daemons pick table 8.

T2 put up their Chaos Marines and T1 counters with Grey knights. Table 5 is selected.

T1 put up Tau and T2 counters with Space Wolves. Table 4

T2 put up Eldar and T1 counter with Daemons. Table 1

T1 put up Skitarii and T2 counter with Blood Angels. Table 3

T2 now must put up their Daemons as they are the only 1 left. T1 counter with their only remaining list – White Scars. Table 7.

Now the remaining lists – the champions –  T1 Orks vs T2 Daemonkin face off on Table 6.

Now as you can see this process can (and is!) massively complex depending on the exact make up of the lists in question. Where an Eldar list with lots of wraithguard and the ability to get them into range of the Imperial Knights might be a good match up, a list running lots of guardians won’t be!

The goal is obviously to try and maximise the chances of you winning each game through manipulating this process so that your players get the best games they can. The key is preparing the team before hand. Getting players to assess their chances against each list in the opponents teams is vital to planning. The captains typically only have 10-15 minutes to complete this process but unless you are prepared and know roughly what each player thinks they can achieve against the opposing team(s) then it can take much longer.

The most simple allocation for players to give a captain is the traffic light scorecard. This process is when a player rates a potential game a red (likely to lose), yellow (close game or draw) or green (likely to win). Assuming each player completes this basic score card for every enemy list, the captain can then decide who to put up and who to use as a counter based on the lists remaining to him and what his opposing captain has left as well.

I will say that in my experience, the traffic light scorecard is flawed as it only gives the vaguest of information for the captain to assess. It will do in a pinch and it can combine very well with more complex match up score cards if you really want to get serious. The trick is for players to take a step back and be honest with themselves. We all like to think we can win any game but sometimes, the list we run will just be beaten by another despite any claimed skill – the proverbial rock/paper/scissors.

The same basic process for 8 player team events can also be applied to a smaller team (I have seen this run with 4 players a team) but doing so requires the champion be removed as part of the process.

I hope this has shed some light on this event format for those who have not had the chance to experience it for themselves. If you are a TO and have a hankering to give this a try – feel free to send me an email or get in touch – I am more than happy to share the scoring system for the event and answer any questions you might have.

Have you played at a team event? did it follow this format or something else? Let me know in the comments!