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I just want to see how this goes over on the community at large and something I have thinking about. Now, there is a good chance this has already been mentioned but I haven't seen it before. What do people think about basically borrowing the idea from Magic: The Gathering and having a side board of units that you can exchange out to fit your opponent during a tournament? It could be as simple of switch out the heavy weapons on a unit to flamers if you are facing a horde type enemy to exchanging a couple of units as long as it keeps everything in the same point value. To balance this, you also restrict the point value to which someone can have on their side-board like for a 1500 tournament, you can only have a side-board of 250 points so it still requires someone to build a solid list but the ability to tweak things a bit depending on the situation. Another restriction is that it must come from the codices that are in your main list, no hiding a whole different ally in your side-board to spring on someone suddenly. I feel it would help lists that have a harder time making a TAC list like SM, IG and Eldar can.

What do people think of this idea? Viable with amount of brain storming of adding to the community or something that would just cause a whole bunch of shenanigans that we don't want to deal with? Has anyone and their local gaming group ever try this ever?

If I'm not mistaken, WM/H does something like this for their tournies. Someone can correct me/add on to that, but I think its a good idea overall.

I mean, they'd still have to actually balance 40k for it to work well, but its a good idea in theory.

 Blacksails wrote:
If I'm not mistaken, WM/H does something like this for their tournies. Someone can correct me/add on to that, but I think its a good idea overall.

I mean, they'd still have to actually balance 40k for it to work well, but its a good idea in theory.

Well, couldn't help to balance things just a bit with allowing people to take other units than trying to build TAC lists. From what I have seen, some of the balance issues could be fixed if we weren't trying to make TAC all the time or trying to make Deathstars. I have seen many times people will say that the unit is good in this situation but to take in a regular competitive tournament list it's not viable because the unit has a limited situation-based usefulness. It would make it worth taking those units, would it not?

I don't play tournaments (I don't think I could if I wanted to in Northern Ireland, anyway), but I really like this idea.

I have been considering mentioning it to my local group and seeing if we could just run a tournament based around this side-board idea and see how it works out.

Sideboard is a great idea, let me know if you find a way to balance it.

The only issue I could see is that it allows a bit of list tailoring. Maybe if you were allowed to only swap one unit as well. Otherwise I could see someone using 250 points to max out on meltas easy if a Imperial Knight showed up.

It also might be a bit tricky if the swap out means your list has to be the exact same points, if you make it less than or equal points it would make that easier to manage. Ex. swapping a lascannon in a Tactical squad to be a HB should be ok imo.

But it sounds pretty cool. Would you make the 250 sideboard pts up with full squads or Individual models?

Also would you need to swap the entire squad out with the sideboard squad or can you just take some models out and swap them (like the example above)?

 flukezor wrote:
It also might be a bit tricky if the swap out means your list has to be the exact same points, if you make it less than or equal points it would make that easier to manage. Ex. swapping a lascannon in a Tactical squad to be a HB should be ok imo.

But it sounds pretty cool. Would you make the 250 sideboard pts up with full squads or Individual models?

Also would you need to swap the entire squad out with the sideboard squad or can you just take some models out and swap them (like the example above)?

See that is something that would have to be worked out to see how well it works. For some of my Interceptor Squads normally they would be bringing Psycannons but if I faced someone like Orks or Nids, I would just want to trade out the psycannons for Incinerators so does the cost of the weapon swap be included or does the whole "new" Interceptor squad be included in that point cost, that is something that would need more data to see what is fair to most if not all armies. Some tweaks are just an item for some armies but for others they would need whole units which means the ones that need smaller tweaks could fit more on their side-board. Laying it out like that, now that I think of it, it would seem that you would have to pay for the whole unit just to keep it fair.

 Envihon wrote:

 flukezor wrote:
It also might be a bit tricky if the swap out means your list has to be the exact same points, if you make it less than or equal points it would make that easier to manage. Ex. swapping a lascannon in a Tactical squad to be a HB should be ok imo.

But it sounds pretty cool. Would you make the 250 sideboard pts up with full squads or Individual models?

Also would you need to swap the entire squad out with the sideboard squad or can you just take some models out and swap them (like the example above)?

See that is something that would have to be worked out to see how well it works. For some of my Interceptor Squads normally they would be bringing Psycannons but if I faced someone like Orks or Nids, I would just want to trade out the psycannons for Incinerators so does the cost of the weapon swap be included or does the whole "new" Interceptor squad be included in that point cost, that is something that would need more data to see what is fair to most if not all armies. Some tweaks are just an item for some armies but for others they would need whole units which means the ones that need smaller tweaks could fit more on their side-board. Laying it out like that, now that I think of it, it would seem that you would have to pay for the whole unit just to keep it fair.

I agree with that, I think the fairest way would be replacement Units rather than replacement Models. Otherwise there is too much leeway for points boosting shenanigans I feel. People would find a way. I suppose then the rule of thumb would be if you want to have a Unit on the sideboard make sure its less points than the one in your army, else you will go over the limit and need to drop or swap out something else to make it legal again.

Warmachine uses alternate lists, you can't share named characters in them which should be incredibly easy in comparison to 40k.

The best suggestion for this I've seen is that you'd essentially bring a 2000 point "master" list. Each round, you'd get 15 mins before the game to see your opponents 200 point "master" list, and select 1500 points from your list to play in that round. Note that you can't change the composition of any entry on that master list when selecting your 1500 points.

The point of this being that if you want to make the most points efficient squads/vehicles, you can, but your 1500 point list is probably not going to be very flexible.

It's nice because it encourages you to have sub-optimal units that have odd choices just to make them similar in points cost to each other, granting you tactical flexibility, and reducing the probability of running into hard counters.

I haven't played such a game in 40k but I did in LotR SBG.

You had an x pts main force and 3 y pts additional forces. Depending on the mission or your enemy main force you could choose which one you wanted.
It was a great idea. Matchups were way better because you could always prepare for what your enemy had. And it's hard to call it a list tailoring since your enemy could also do that.

These are all great ideas that are definitely worth trying. I brought it up to my local gaming group and we are working on a system to try and make it work. Some of them are a bit reserved about the idea thinking that it won't help to bring sub-optimal units into play more and that the armies that dominate the game will only be helped by this and the other armies will continue to be left in the dust.

We did a tournament where you brought a 1500 point list with two 250 point sidebars, where each matchup you got to pick which sidebar you brought. It worked out well and was a lot of fun.

wraithbalor wrote:
We did a tournament where you brought a 1500 point list with two 250 point sidebars, where each matchup you got to pick which sidebar you brought. It worked out well and was a lot of fun.

That is awesome news that people have tried it. So were low tier armies able to over come their disadvantages or were top tier armies still dominating?