Team vs Team Tournament in Sydney

[Lone_Pathfinder]

Hi all, I'm planning to TO a multi-player tournament and I am hoping to get some feedback from those that have experienced this before. Appreciate your feedback. Here are the plans:

Team A of 2 players vs Team B of 2 players in the sequence of A1; B1; A2; B2. Sequence in the teams for player 1 & 2 are up to the team to sort out.
Deployment, A1, B1, A2, B2 & A1, B1, A2, B2 (reserve units). Strategos only works against one army of player's choice selected during opponent's deployment.
Each player has a full 200 point army (Lieutenant, 4 Command Tokens etc).

Command Tokens: (Trying to synergise the armies and make their cooperation realistic)
Two armies from the same faction get to share an extra command token. Mixed combinations of vanilla or sectorials from the same faction gain this bonus. Good synergy.
Two armies of different racial or Cube factions (CA, Tohaa, Aleph or Human) loose a random command token (randomised between the two armies). Bad synergy.
Two armies of the same racial or Cube factions working together do not gain or loose a command token. This is basically limited to human factions working together (excluding Aleph, if you want to call them human). Medium synergy.

In case one army goes in to Retreat!:
For two command tokens one unit can move from one army to the other army.

Encouraging TAGs in 200 point armies for variety, but not demanding their presence:
One or more TAGs generate 1 additional regular order. Only 1.

Time limitations must be applied, these are long games:
Timed two games per day of ITS style, three rounds each. Deployment and game turns are timed. All AROs have to be declared in less than 1 minute by both opponents. 10 minutes each player for deployment; 10 minutes for all reserves combined. 15 minutes for each player in the first turn; 15 minutes for each player in the second turn; 10 minutes for each player in the third turn! That's 3.5 hours per game.

Any units not deployed in time start at the board edge of the deployment zone as models. All orders not spent during game turn are lost. This is going to be a bit stress-full, so use small armies and not too many Hackers (probably).

First game starts at 10am. 45 minute lunch, 15 minutes to move tables. Second game starts at 2:30. Day 1 ends at 6pm, day 2 ends at 7pm.

[Claudius Sol]

Everything seems acceptable. Here are my differences:

- I wouldn't use faction synergies for affecting Command Tokens. That limits player flexibility => no beuno. I'd have both sides share their 4 command tokens. Sun Tze's ability can only proc once per team, so 5 command tokens is still the max. I'd also consider enforcing "character restrictions" in that AVA for personalities is shared across the whole team. Prevents things such as double Phoenix and double Achilles or double Sforza, etc.

- I'd also throw out the bit about TAGs generating an additional regular order. I'd limit it to 1 Irregular order that must be spent on a TAG. Providing a regular order is a bit much, given how useful those are in N3.

- I'd probably try staggering the turn times. Instead of a straight 15 minutes at all times, give more time during round 1, and degrade as more models are allowed to die. Could get complicated this way, though.

Good luck!

[Scorch]

2v2 800 points per side crazyness?!

[Claudius Sol]

2v2 800 points per side crazyness?!

400 points a side. 800 points total.

[Lone_Pathfinder]

Everything seems acceptable. Here are my differences:

- I wouldn't use faction synergies for affecting Command Tokens. That limits player flexibility => no beuno. I'd have both sides share their 4 command tokens. Sun Tze's ability can only proc once per team, so 5 command tokens is still the max. I'd also consider enforcing "character restrictions" in that AVA for personalities is shared across the whole team. Prevents things such as double Phoenix and double Achilles or double Sforza, etc.

- I'd also throw out the bit about TAGs generating an additional regular order. I'd limit it to 1 Irregular order that must be spent on a TAG. Providing a regular order is a bit much, given how useful those are in N3.

- I'd probably try staggering the turn times. Instead of a straight 15 minutes at all times, give more time during round 1, and degrade as more models are allowed to die. Could get complicated this way, though.

Good luck!

Hey thanks for the response. Have you ruin a doubles tourney before? How did it go?

I'll definitely need to restrict characters.

I think that the regular order for TAG(s) is not overly beneficial because in 200 point armies it is difficult to put TAG in and maintain 10 orders. And I want to encourage small lists.

I'll have a think about command tokens. I do want each player to feel like the have complete control of a complete army list.

[Claudius Sol]

I didn't run a doubles tournament, so to speak.

I played in the doubles tournament at GenCon. I think there were only 8 teams, so it was a pretty short tournament (3 rounds). It was an N2 tournament, so command tokens weren't a thing yet. I played JSA alongside EnduroJoe's Ariadna. We placed first.

The format was rather simple: all rounds were annihilation, IIRC.
200 points per player (so 4 SWC per player, too).
Rounds were timed, but not individual turns.
It was a Player 1A -> Player 2A -> Player 1B -> Player 2B format, so no one team got a massive alpha strike.
Joe and I threw classifieds to the wind, opting to just "have fun with it". Turns out we had too much fun.

Hmm... thinking back on it, I remember only seeing one TAG and it was an Iguana, so not exactly an expensive one. Though, you'll want to be careful of the guy who wants to bring an Avatar and a bunch of order monkeys. Let's say the TAG will grant you an additional order so long as you have an order pool of less than 8? 9? You'll have to do that fine tuning, I suppose, as you'll likely know your meta better than I do.