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Idea struck me as an interesting take on "fairness", and it came from the Swedes, but not from their table-top groups.

For a Warhammer 40K tournament, the comp system would be the following:


--------During any match, you may choose to play as your opponents army. If they refuse, they forfeit the round.--------

That's it. No armies get extra or fewer points, no units are banned, hell you could even use rule-book missions if you wanted to (I wouldn't use all of them, but still). Whatever the missions would be, they would be posted well in advance of game day, so lists can be as well prepared as possible.

ALL relevant rules must be provided for every unit in your roster, in the form of a quick-check guide\card\pamphlet\etc. This must include a complete stat line, any USR's (rule description NOT required), and any unique special rules (full description of in-game effect IS required).

Now the issue I see coming up is that someone intentionally builds a piss-poor list, and just plans on switching to his opponents superior army. As such, a meta of building the worst lists possible evolves, and you start seeing players battling over who can make the best of a terrible list. Seems like an interesting challenge, but might not make for an entertaining tournament. This is the only area outside of rules clarification I would envision a TO be allowed to overrule the choice.

If a choice is made to play as your opponents army, and a TO deems YOUR army to be purposely built as inferior, he may deny the change. Things that can qualify as purposely inferior should be rather obvious to most. Examples include things like taking useless upgrades just to spend points, buying expensive characters that unlock army abilities, but not using the unlockables, putting allies together that hinder rather than help, creating a serious lack of a certain fundamental army tactic (i.e, you have NO weapons or abilities to tackle armour 12+), taking absolute bare minimum troop choices and leaving them stark naked in min squad sizes, taking long ranged weapons in a unit decked out for close combat, etc.

Point values for the army would need to be met, and all regular restrictions in army lists apply. To help encourage people NOT to switch armies, bonus tournament points can be given to battles where opponents do not switch, or something along those lines.

Thoughts?

Hell no. I have spent way too much time and money on my army to allow someone else to touch it. And I'm not going to be having very much fun if I have to hand it over to my opponent and play with their army (which I may or may not be familiar with). If I wanted to play the army they brought then I wouldn't have built mine instead.

Of course the weakness with this systems is that if you get a poor match up you just ask for the other guys army or he loses.

it seems untenable to me.

The two above + you don`t want to let some slob or kid play your army means that this is a really terrible idea

No way I'd ever attend for the reasons given above.

 Aipoch wrote:

Now the issue I see coming up is that someone intentionally builds a piss-poor list, and just plans on switching to his opponents superior army. As such, a meta of building the worst lists possible evolves, and you start seeing players battling over who can make the best of a terrible list. Seems like an interesting challenge, but might not make for an entertaining tournament. This is the only area outside of rules clarification I would envision a TO be allowed to overrule the choice.

If a choice is made to play as your opponents army, and a TO deems YOUR army to be purposely built as inferior, he may deny the change. Things that can qualify as purposely inferior should be rather obvious to most. Examples include things like taking useless upgrades just to spend points, buying expensive characters that unlock army abilities, but not using the unlockables, putting allies together that hinder rather than help, creating a serious lack of a certain fundamental army tactic (i.e, you have NO weapons or abilities to tackle armour 12+), taking absolute bare minimum troop choices and leaving them stark naked in min squad sizes, taking long ranged weapons in a unit decked out for close combat, etc.

...
Thoughts?

Sir, I've been internetting for many years, and that may be one of the wackiest ideas I've ever read. ;-)

As a funny one-off tournament between friends where the purpose is specifically to build a bad army and swap - then yes it could be a lot of fun. But trying to use it as a system of balancing the game and keeping everyone fair - it is a very flawed idea for all the reasons others have given above.

Also - consider that your selling point is that nothing is banned - so you can take any crazy unit you want - buuuuuut you won't get to play with it.

Also, having the TOs run around and try to decide who is swapping fairly and who is building "unfairly" crappy lists just shifts the idea of comp from spotting OP units and lists to looking for UnderP units and lists. Add onto that that now the TO has to judge "intent". Did that guy take that many tac squads because he's building a balanced list or because he's trying to shaft his opponent? What one person considers a balanced take-all-comers list, the next person might consider an utter pile of garbage - and you'll end up with a lot of upset people with every call the TO makes.

Basically you would have to create a detailed army composition guide - only in reverse. In the end, it would be far easier to create a normal comp then to enforce this idea.

I did this one time for one of my 3rd Ed Tournaments. It was fine and everyone had fun.

I also played in a 5th Ed tournament that assigned armies at random for the first two rounds and then you played you own army as normal the third round and it was fun. I had never used Tau or DE before. It was a new experience.

Whilst I could tailor a army with models that I am unconcerned about (my Orks or Tyranids) I would be hesitant about using an opponents army in case I dropped something.....

Our gaming group did this one weekend in 4th or 5th edition. It became a challenge of who could make the worst list.

The guy who won it made a Chaos SM list composed of almost all demons. At that time they needed a banner to be summoned. Well his list had no banners so nothing but his HQ was on the board. He always asked to play his opponents list and auto won every game. After the first round we stopped due to the waste of time.

It doesn't work in practice.

I played in a small local tournament once that had the last game be an army switch. It was a surprise that nobody knew about so it was cool.

It was a fun little twist but definitely not something to have as standard practice because you'll get into so many problems with it.

I think the key is either you're in or you're out and make it a swap 2 out of 3 games so that people don't nerf their list too much.

The only way this could work is in a small, close group, and you ask each player to bring a list they have previously designed and used. For example, run an 1850 event in January, then run an 1850 swap 'em in February with identical lists.

Ok, this is what I am taking to the tournament:

Farsight
Tau Commander suits - all upgrades but no guns

18x Suits w/max equipment + marker drones, but no guns

30x Marker Drones


Ok, now let's change armies or you auto-lose.

 jy2 wrote:
Ok, this is what I am taking to the tournament:

Farsight
Tau Commander suits - all upgrades but no guns

18x Suits w/max equipment + marker drones, but no guns

30x Marker Drones


Ok, now let's change armies or you auto-lose.

Exactly. The new game would be to see who can make the worst possible army. No games of 40K would actually get played; it would just be a race to see who can gain the most by demanding the switch.

 jy2 wrote:
Ok, this is what I am taking to the tournament:

Farsight
Tau Commander suits - all upgrades but no guns

18x Suits w/max equipment + marker drones, but no guns

30x Marker Drones


Ok, now let's change armies or you auto-lose.

Except by reading the OP you would see that the idea is that the TO would see that and disqualify you from being allowed to request a switch with that army.

The only way I could see a system like this working is if there was only a randomised chance that you could swap lists.

Say 1/6 or maybe 1/3. You would have to have more chance of playing your own army otherwise what's the point in making a decent army list at all.

Hopefully the small chance of having to play against your own army would mean you make it at least fun to play against.

All that being said I think the problem of letting some other person touch all of your painstakingly painted models would be enough to make this never happen except between good friends.

demyztikx wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
Ok, this is what I am taking to the tournament:

Farsight
Tau Commander suits - all upgrades but no guns

18x Suits w/max equipment + marker drones, but no guns

30x Marker Drones


Ok, now let's change armies or you auto-lose.

Except by reading the OP you would see that the idea is that the TO would see that and disqualify you from being allowed to request a switch with that army.

You could easily bring a terrible army, but one that passes as "average" for the codex it's from. I could bring a Dante-wing army with just Dante and Sanguinary Guard, and who's to say that I don't actually think that's good enough to bring?

Not only does it not provide you with a more clear system than traditional comp. It actually creates more problems as I could show up with a highly synergistic army or an army that only functions in certain mission types and demand my opponents army. Not to mention I have plenty of lists on this website alone which the poster believes is a tournament winning list but is in reality a hodge podge of models with no forethought.

Even if you managed to work it all out I would never play in such a tournament unless it was my friends and family. I have spent too much time and money buying, assembling, and painting my armies to let some other guy drop my fateweaver model when he decides to zoom it around making bird noises...btw likely to be a 30+ year old.

demyztikx wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
Ok, this is what I am taking to the tournament:

Farsight
Tau Commander suits - all upgrades but no guns

18x Suits w/max equipment + marker drones, but no guns

30x Marker Drones


Ok, now let's change armies or you auto-lose.

Except by reading the OP you would see that the idea is that the TO would see that and disqualify you from being allowed to request a switch with that army.

Exactly. If the TO is going to dictate if the army is acceptable or not, why not just skip all the dancing around with army swapping and have him pre-screen the armies. If he thinks you're exploiting the rules he tells you to try again. It's no less arbitrary.