Octoberfest 2022 Analysis and Predictions

 Welcome back to the Vault! October is here and that means it will soon be time for Octoberfest; First Founding's annual autumnal 40K tournament. Personal circumstances mean I won't be playing this time round but I have promised to provide the usual pre-event analysis and predictions! So let's indulge in some PunditHammer!

There are 30 attendees who are bringing 20 different factions between them. For the purposes of this analysis I've decided to cover each Space Marine chapter as a different faction since each has a different supplement to provide variety to how they play (and lets face it a Dark Angel is not the same as an Ultramarine).

If we roll these numbers up into "Super Factions" we have:

• Imperial: 14 players (of which 7 are Space Marines)
• Chaos: 9 players
• Xenos: 7 players

This is a really good sign of the health of our local meta; there is a lot of variety in armies, meaning hopefully a variety of gaming experiences for players. I know some of our regular attendees will be bringing their long term forces (always great to see Jack's Orks, Matt's Custodes and VC's Ravenguard Successors) and there will be a number of shiny new armies to see as well!

There are some interesting surprises in the armies. Seven Knight Players overall, including five(!) Chaos Knights. Looking back at last year's selections that's a massive jump where we only had a single Knight player in attendance. I hope people are bringing plenty of big guns as that's a lot of armour to take out.

It's great to see some Astra Militarum players on the table as well as we didn't see any at Octoberfest last year. I wonder if the venerable Guard Codex still has any teeth to it?

There are fascinating choices in terms of what is missing/has a low presence. I was expecting to see more Chaos Space Marine and Tyranid players, especially given the relative strengths of their books. I was also perhaps expecting to see more Eldar (of all flavours), again given how good they seem to be (and have the flexibility to suit Octoberfest's unusual format.

Octoberfest is known for quirky mission rules, and this year's event is no exception. The event comprises three Tempest of War games with two modifications:

• Nephilim Command Point rules: i.e. start with 6 not 12 and you must pay for the usually free first Relic and Warlord Trait if you want to take them.
• Predeclared Deployment Zones, Primary Missions and Mission Rules (Twists).

So everyone will play the same base mission set up, but draw their secondaries from their deck as per usual Tempest games.

Mission 1 is Dawn of War / Take and Hold / Supply Lines. This is a Hold One/Hold Two/Hold More on Objectives for the Primary (in a 5 Objective game), and you must Hold your own Objective to receive your CP each Command Phase. A nice and easy to understand Primary to kick the day off!

Mission 2 is Sweeping Engagement / Burn and Raze / Hidden Supplies. This is a Hold One/Hold More on Objectives (in a 6 Objective game), with a lovely kicker; you can attempt an Action (which starts at the beginning of your movement phase and completes at the end of your turn) to destroy an Objective outside of your deployment zone. Each such completed Action scores 5 Primary points at the end of the game.  This becomes an interesting choice of "when" do you attempt to raze objectives; it will potentially limit both you and your opponent for mid gaming scoring for Primary and hamper certain Secondaries as well!

Mission 3 is Search and Destroy / Claim the Battlefield / Vox Static. This is Hold One/Hold Two on Primary on Objectives (in a 5 Objective Game) with a baked in "Raise the Banners" style twist; Infantry or Objective Secured units can attempt an action to "claim" an objective. Each such claimed objective is worth 2VP per turn, although enemy units can clear such a claim by controlling the objective in any phase.  Vox Static is there to tweak the nose of anyone wanting to use a re-roll (2 CP for a single re-roll makes for a much more interesting decision!)

Clearly a successful force will need to be able to move onto, and hold objectives!

The Secondary Objective deck contains a mix of cards essentially based around:

• Kill some particular stuff
• Do an Action in a particular location
• Get units into particular locations, onto particular objectives or prevent your opponent from doing so

And so a successful force will need a balance of mobility, killing power and capability to complete actions in addition to holding objectives. The random nature of the cards may force some interesting decisions as well; you can only hold a certain number of cards in your hand, and you can only draw so many each turn. You therefore need to be scoring at a particular tempo to cycle cards through (or discarding difficult/unachievable cards) to ensure a decent score through the game; you can't just build a massive hand of cards and try to cash them all in at the game end!

So which factions do I think will do well?

Knights are looking good; they have an excellent mix of shooting/melee, are fast (looking at you Karnivores), and have Ob Sec. Oh and everything is a big stompy robot so tough to shift.

There are various other factions which can build into the mission criteria; all ObSec Necrons; Grey Knights with deep strike and teleport tricks (ditto Thousand Sons), speedy Ork units. Space Marines have some solid choices here as well with Ravenwing, Ob Sec Deathwing and so on.

I think the Chaos Space Marines may do well as they are Creations of Bile; if you want to charge them off objectives, they will get to twat you back with fight on death. Extra Strength and Movement is super useful as well.

Some of the more traditionally "slower" armies may suffer in this format (thinking Death Guard and Astra Militarum), but again the mission format may be built into. Ob Sec deep striking Terminators plus Drones/Blight Haulers for Death Guard? Scions backing up the usual Guard tanks (or just lots of speedy Move Move Move ordered Infantry squads)? 

Given the unusual format it is hard to tell who will do well. My top 3 predictions:

1) Chaos Knights; having played against them they seem to have all the right tools.

2) Aeldari; they can go everywhere and do everything!

3) Chaos Space Marines; mainly because there's some strong choices in the codex, but also because this is what I would have played!

What I would love to see win is an army properly teched into the format (i.e. potentially mitigating the random nature of the cards, and thinking about how they are going to score those varied secondaries). Lots of the armies can do it and it would be great to see some unusual unit choices. 

I'll do a follow up post and we'll see if my analysis of the format has any actual bearing on the reality of the day!

THE END!