Games Workshop is supporting the International Tournament Circuit with big changes ahead — and it still going to remain free!
The Warhammer tournament scene has exploded over the years. Games Workshop knows this just as well as any one who attends tournaments. From the smaller local ones to massive, destination-style events like LVO, AdeptiCon, NOVA, and all the others. These tournaments collectively have become known as the ITC and there’s been yearly seasons for a while now. These have culminated in the Warhammer World Championships. It’s become quite a thing for the game and the entire tournament scene.
To help facilitate this growing scene Games Workshop has run an Approved TO Program for several years. It’s grown to nearly 2000 event organizers world wide. Logistically, managing this is become quite a task. And it’s only getting bigger over time. The good news is Games Workshop is making some changes in the ITC to make it easier for every one. And first up they made this statement:
To allay any concerns, Games Workshop is not placing the ITC behind a paywall. Hosting and participating in the ITC will remain free, forever.
That’s good news to hear! However, that’s just one part of the update from Games Workshop. If you’re a Tournament Player or Event Organizer you will want to read the full article with all the news from WarCom. That said, I’m going to hit some of the other highlights from the post as it’s quite a long one.
Warhammer ITC Updates
The next big news is the official seasonal timing has been modified. And moving forward the World Championships of Warhammer will signify the end of the current seasons and the start of the next one after the event.
“This year, the 2025 ITC season will be backdated to begin on the 25th of November 2024, ending after the conclusion of the World Championships of Warhammer in November 2025. If you participated in or ran an ITC event between the 25th of November and today, no action is required on your part. These events already counted for the 2024 season and will count for 2025 as well..
For next season and beyond, the ITC season will begin the day after the World Championships of Warhammer and end with the conclusion of the next World Championships.”
The Las Vegas Open was previously the start/end of the season. While it’s still going to remain extremely important the World Champions does seem to be a better fit for marking the Warhammer Season.
ITC Rankings & Event Sizes
Games Workshop is updating how the Rankings will work overall.
“We have dramatically expanded the number and reach of the ITC regions, in order to serve and represent players and organisers in regions that have historically been less active in Warhammer. The baseline focus of the ITC Rankings will now be country-based, with players able to further navigate within the rankings page to see Regional and Global rankings if desired.”
On top of the Rankings becoming country based this also will have a change to invites for the World Championships of Warhammer as they will be based on country standing, too.
“To reflect this, we will also award qualifying spots for the World Championships of Warhammer based upon country standings at the end of the season and at the midpoint (officially the 1st of June in 2025). The highest ranked players who are not yet qualified in each ITC ranked country will receive an invitation to participate in the next World Championships. “
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Another big change will be how GW is adjusting the ranking algorithms for event sizes.
“The largest events will still award the most points and smaller events will award less, but the distance in point allocations between the top and bottom has been reduced. Additionally, we want to incentivize events in the most common size ranges to grow where possible. Consequently, events between 20 and 64 players will see the biggest growth in point valuation with each additional attendee, as will events between 128 and 256 players.”
Basically, the smaller events won’t reward as many points while the larger events will reward more. Also, the most common size events will benefit from growth more than the larger events will. So if you’re a TO, the more players you have at your event the more points it’s worth for rankings.
Event Tokens & Official Format Templates
For Tournament Organizers out there you’ll be happy to know that your token requests be approved faster via automation. You just need to be a member of the Approved TO Program. You’ll still need to request and submit the event, but that process should happen much quicker.
As for Official Format Templates, those are for the TO’s benefits according to GW:
“You will also notice an increasing number of official event and scoring templates added to Best Coast Pairings. We use these standardised formats (drawn from the Tournament Companions where possible), as do many of our partners, and they provide ready-made settings and scorecards to accelerate a new or uncertain organiser’s journey. While they are not required for use in the ITC or otherwise, they should make it easier than ever before to quickly set up and run a Warhammer event in Best Coast Pairings. Please note, however, our goal is not to force the use of any one format, but to provide proven formats should you choose to use them. “
More Warhammer, More Often
There’s more changes as well. Like linking your “MyWarhammer” Account to Best Coast Pairings for starters. But again, I encourage you to read all the changes for yourself. This all seems like a net win for the ITC crowd and the tournament community as a whole. Even if you can’t attend the major events getting out and playing locally can have a big impact for your local Warhammer Community.
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Writer, Editor, Texas Native, and now Tex-Pat, Adam covers all things Tabletop Gaming. Which includes Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigmar, D&D, Board Games and everything else that involves dice, boards, cards and a table.
A hobbyist, player, and collector of miniatures and games, Adam’s current obsession are his Death and Chaos Armies for Age of Sigmar, his Blood Angels and Tyranids for 40k, an expanding collection of Marvel: Crisis Protocol minis, and his ever growing Arkham Horror: The Card Game Collection.
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