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Hey guys,

Have any good experiences with 2v2? If so, how have you run it?

Due to my gaming friends group only meeting up for 40k once a month (pre-Covid, less so now), and there being at least 6 people and one table and only time for two games (ish), it's fairly common for us to do doubles games. Not a lot changes, each player gets a Warlord (as they might have built a strategy around the trait), and thus the opponents could score Slay the Warlord twice (might have to tweek this in 9th). In terms of buffs, auras etc. the partner counted as "friendly" but otherwise abide by faction keywords. Each player uses about 1000pts so it ends up being 2000pts per side.

Another way would be for two players to bring 2000pts armies, and each have an "assistant" (assign certain units to that player's control), which would make a more cohesive force and a more balanced game, but IMHO people would rather play with their own tiny plastic soldiers.

 Quanar wrote:
Due to my gaming friends group only meeting up for 40k once a month (pre-Covid, less so now), and there being at least 6 people and one table and only time for two games (ish), it's fairly common for us to do doubles games. Not a lot changes, each player gets a Warlord (as they might have built a strategy around the trait), and thus the opponents could score Slay the Warlord twice (might have to tweek this in 9th). In terms of buffs, auras etc. the partner counted as "friendly" but otherwise abide by faction keywords. Each player uses about 1000pts so it ends up being 2000pts per side.

Another way would be for two players to bring 2000pts armies, and each have an "assistant" (assign certain units to that player's control), which would make a more cohesive force and a more balanced game, but IMHO people would rather play with their own tiny plastic soldiers.

This, used to do the same. We'd draw names out the hat for the teams, write individual 1k lists and then function as 2 friendly forces with 2 warlords etc. Separate cp pools as well.

Only issues we found was with acts of faith, since my team mate kept finishing off the units I softened so never triggered the miracle dice.

Playing two bigger armies made up of each player's forces comes with one big downside:

There will be situations where you can't continue with your turn because the player who's units you want to interact with is busy on the other side.

An alternative to this would be to play alongside on two tables next to each other where holding objectives influences the other table.

Could range from simple things like the objectives count for "Hold more", or more exotic ones like "activating" zones of difficult terrain or "light cover shields".

2v2 is pretty easy as its basically just a normal game with more people.

when you get to free for alls is when you have to really come up with some decent house rules.

We will commonly do a 3v3 or a 2v1 if we dont have enough players for 2 seperate tables.

In general, playing two 1vs1 games is usually more fun than playing a 2vs2 as the time it takes to play such a game tends to explode.

That said, just have each player muster an army of 500, 1000 or 1500 independently from each other. Once the game starts, they become one army and all allied models are considered friendly models and otherwise act according to their keywords.
If you are running a game of 4x1500, make sure your table is large enough for onslaught missions.
When you run a game like this, the rules don't have a lot of things that need to be clarified
1) Warlords. Many armies have rules which absolutely require your army to have a warlord, so everyone should definitely get one. Nominate one of the two to be the "actual" warlord for mission objective purposes.
2) "Only one per army" units. While you can always spin a narrative about someone's evil clone, I suggest keeping them limited to one per side. You really don't want to face Magnus the Red twice..
3) CP. There sadly is no perfect solution IMO. Either each side has a shared pool and generates 1 per battleround, which tends to lead to discussions over who gets to use the points. Or you have each player get their own pool and each generates 1 VP, which then leads to a massive inflation of stratagems used.

When building armies, players need to keep in mind that each power and stratagems can only be used once per phase, but other than that, you can basically mix and match players with pre-build armies.

Appreciate the replies, thanks fellas