Warhammer 40K: Tacticus | Tournament Arena Guide and Tips

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Tournament Arena is here in Warhammer 40K: Tacticus, and with it comes some pretty great rewards. Remember, it is free, after all, so you might as well give it a shot and claim any free experience and goodies you can get. Rewards include Blackstone, energy, tons of coins, XP books, raid passes, character shards, and more. 

If you’ve never played Tournament Arena in Tacticus, it can be slightly confusing since Snowprint doesn’t really do a good job of explaining exactly how it works, but lucky for you, we’ve put together a quick guide on how to crush your opponents and what to expect. Here’s the 411 on this limited-time game mode. 

How to Play Tournament Arena

A few days before it’s active, you’ll see a new section at the top of the battle tab. Once it’s live, head on in and take a look around, but don’t start a ranked match just yet. Like most events, there’s a leaderboard, a progression bar with chests, and rewards. You can think of it like Arena, but instead of facing an AI, you’re fighting another player in real-time.

You’ll use characters according to their rarity and rank. Check out the following table so you know what rank you should focus on getting your team to, along with what level their skills should be. We don’t suggest going into a match with characters that aren’t fully maxed out, as you’ll be at a severe disadvantage. If your characters are under-leveled, see if there are any Tacticus codes you can use to buy energy or items and power them up.

The easiest way to explain the above table is to forget your character’s rarity and instead focus on their upgrade rank. For example, a Rare Re’vas that has an upgrade rank of Iron I will not be able to be picked if you plan to fight at the rare tier. That said, a Rare Re’vas that is Silver I can be used at the Common or Uncommon fighting levels. If you’re just starting out, don’t bother with Uncommon even if you have the characters for it; stick to Common for your first Tournament Arena.

Rulesets for Tournament Arena

There are different rule sets to spice the tournaments up. The rules vary from Tournament Arena to Tournament Arena, but you can familiarize yourself with them ahead of time to prepare yourself. There are three different rulesets right now: Conquest, Power-Ups, and Draft Power-Ups. Each game mode plays till 5 points are won by either you or your opponent. 

Conquest

In Conquest, you pick five characters to play with ahead of time. On each map, there are 3 points that you must hold. You can capture them by ending one of your character’s turns on the hex. Leaving the hex doesn’t give the point up until an enemy captures it. Each captured hex gives one point meaning you must kill a minimum of two enemy characters and hold all 3 points to win. Killing a summon does not count as a point.

Power-Ups

In Power-Ups, you also pick five characters ahead of time to fight with. Around the map, different power-ups will spawn that provide the character that ends their movement on the tile with a bonus. The bonus ranges from extra hits to armor to double damage. You can click the power-up to see what the bonus will be if you’re unfamiliar with it. Kill the five enemy characters to win; summons do not count. 

Draft Power-Ups

This game mode is extremely similar to Power-Ups but with a slight twist. Instead of picking five, you pick seven and start the match with three. As the match progresses, you’ll spawn in two more from your draft pool. The rules and power-ups are still the same; the only difference is the drafting mechanic. 

There is a potential game-breaking bug that has yet to be fixed you should be aware of. If you move onto a hex that will summon a character next turn, the hex will move to an adjacent space. If that space also holds a power-up, your character will not spawn in, and you will almost certainly lose the match. This is a very rare line of events to happen, but just be aware of it and play accordingly if a hex is near a power-up.

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Other Defeat Conditions

If you and your opponent do not move anyone for five full turns, the game ends, and the player that passed initially will be awarded a loss. If you retreat, that is also a loss, obviously, but you will receive no points for your redemption pool (see below for more details). Any sort of disconnects or crashes are also losses, as there’s no way for Snowprint to differentiate between a real crash and someone abusing the system. 

Tips for Tournament Arena in Tacticus

Even if you have played Tournament Arena before, it helps to play a few casual matches first to get back in the groove of things. Casual costs nothing but also rewards nothing. Ranked matches require tickets, and, like Arena, you’ll get one every 1 hour and 20 minutes up to a maximum of 12. You should never have 12 tickets since you won’t be able to refresh and get more, so always check back and play a few.

As for team comps, you’re going to want to check the meta. It helps to see what other people are playing too. Characters that are good in Arena are going to be good in Tournament Arena, so try out your Arena comp and see how it does. Characters like Calandis, Re’vas, Ulf, Archimatos, Sho, Celestine, and the like are all great picks. 

If you do lose a battle, don’t worry, you can still get some of the tickets back. The Redemption Pool is where your potential tickets go, minus one. So if you lost a Common match that would’ve rewarded 7, 6 would be added to your Redemption Pool. You can spend Blackstone, which is not recommended, or you can watch ads to get them back. We highly recommend saving your ad watches for this, as the Tournament Arena rewards can be pretty good the higher up you go.