...what? Ya I am. The Australian Team Challenge (ATC) is basically the ETC but without the stupid restrictions (SCs allowed), BRB missions (including Draws) with Victory point differentials giving bonus points. It is a team match-up tournament with six teams from different states around Australia (New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia) with eight players each play one another over five rounds. The team match-up system works in that the losing team of a dice off puts forward two teams with the opposing team choosing one of their players to match-up against one of those two teams. The situation is reversed and continued until all members are paired up. Battle points are given for W/L/D (no minor or major) with bonus points for differences in VP. Each team is given 2, 1 or 0 points depending upon the total number of points accumulated by that team each round.
So, BRB + no restrictions is fine and brings it as close to 'real 40k' as possible but the team match-up system obviously skews it somewhat. This brings forward armies which are very rock-paper-scissors like or have good match-ups and bad match-ups (i.e. Daemons, Tyranids, Orks, Jumper BA, etc.) though balanced armies are obviously still a huge bonus as they can take on any match-up they are given.
Anyway, September 10th-11th I'll be going (it's 1750 points btw) for team NSW with Tyranids. You can find full tournament rules and army lists for each state at the ATC website and I'll be updating everything when I get back (Vince isn't coming so I cannot steal his smart phone - unless someone else let's me borrow theirs). A few of us would be interested to see your comments on the lists - remember Australia operates under a dominant comp paradigm except Western Australia (they are far away from everyone else and don't play comp much *wants to move*) and this is basically a no-comp event.
The organiser, Krefey, beat me with his Footdar at Event Horizon so I cannot avenge my loss there but it'll be good to catch-up/meet players from around the country that I don't see regularly or have only met via the Internet. And of course state bragging rights are what it's all about... Should be a fun weekend and it'll be interesting to see how each team proposes to deal with the match-up based scenarios.
So right now I'm finishing up my Termagants...well all 40 of them that are not yet done. One hopes I might be able to finish them this time around (it's been what, 13 months since I started painting them? lol) though right now I'm scrounging for fleshborer bitz in my bitz box since I'm converting Hormagaunts to leaping Gants!
