Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi all
i stopped playing for a loooong time and now, thanks to some friends long-time-players, i started again a month ago
to celebrate end of the year (and also some "new" player like me and two friend of mine) we organised an "unconventional" game, a 4vs4 8000 point royal rumble (of death)

rules are simple: 4 player for side; each one build a standard conventional full operational 2000 point army (with no alliance permitted)
because alliance rules are slight restrictive for some codex (ie necrons) and to prevent a 6 people vs 2 un-funny game, or some other annoyance with reserves, we stated that every "side" is not a single detachment with allies, but composed by 4 different independent armies, each one with his full detachment allowance.
Of course is one side vs other side, so at the end we will sum up victory points, but for every other aspects is like we where 8 player, each one fighting 4 player and "deliberately choose of not fight" other 3 player.
Sorry if i'm not clear: english is not my native language and may have some difficulties explaining something not really clear and simple

The factions are
Imperial Side, composed by BA (me), Ultramarines, Imperial Fists and Imperial Guard
Xeno Side, a very unusual alliance of Necrons with Tau and Eldar (2 eldar armies)
because Necrons can't be allied with Eldar, and to prevent the 8th player to being excluded from the game just because he choose a "not mixable" codex, we have to bend some rules and lore

I'm looking for some strange tactics they could be use so we can counteract them.
what i really fear are some strange "exploit" in the Necrons+Eldar side: they are not supposed to fight along the same sides, so maybe there are some "unbalancing combo", an exploit, a cheat, or just something that mixed up could give a fight-tougher-than-supposed

maybe i'm just paranoid and i'm worrying for nothing, but i cant buy necrons and eldar and tau codex, and study them, even because i'm fairly new (i played only 4 game with 6th edition, and some other loooooong time ago maybe 2nd edition... BA and DA used the same codex named "angels of death" or something similar )

thank you for your patience, and if you could give me sone hints about what could be veeeeeery dangerous in this "unusual alliance", you can make our fight more enjoyable and less "o my god that's not supposed to happen" frustrating

and Thank You for your help, and may Santa bring you many plastic/resin/metal little soldiers and tanks

ps the game is set for next saturday, and if you are interested i could say you how that's worked
i would also discuss about our tactics here but at the moment we got no clear ideas... just the usual (ie BA for assault and IG for long range shoot )
and again sorry if some parts are not easy-to-comprehend...

You're doomed. Get some pizza and beer, relax and enjoy watching your buddies blow your armies to hell. All three of their codecii are better than any on the allied side, and in combination they'll be overwhelming.

Happy holidays!

Unfortunately Gitsplitta is right. Right now the Necron, Tau, and Eldar codexs are the top tier. Unless your vanilla SM buddies all happen to running bike lists with grav guns and beatstick chapter masters, and your IG friend brings 3 manticores and 3 vendettas, you guys might pull out a win with lucky rolls and equally unlucky rolls for your opponent. Maybe.

Don't expect to win if you see any of these-
Riptide
Flying Baked goods
Wave serpents
Seer council on bikes

You might have problems with balance because of who happens to be on each side (though it could be the opposite of what is "normal" if the imperial side is all competitive veterans and the xenos side is all casual newbies), but it won't have anything to do with allies. The allies matrix is determined entirely based on fluff reasons, it has nothing to do with balance issues with two armies being together. Ignoring it won't cause any (new) problems.

I didn't mean to be so unhelpful, sorry about that. But your up against it to be sure. The only thing that would make it worse is if their fourth was playing a Fateweaver flying circus list.

Personally, I think you guys should have gone with 2 vs 2 vs 2 vs 2.
Have a Xeno and Imperial on each team.
Would have made for much more balanced games.
As it is now... yeah, it doesn't look good for team humanity.

Maybe you could overcome the lack of balance using the fluff. Maybe you set the battle to be 4 vs 3, with the Necron player as a wildcard 'team' by himself. Set him up some obejctives, and have him fight his own battle against all comers.

So you have a giant board where 4 imperial armies face 3 xenos armies, then come turn 3, the Necron players army starts showing up, attempting to take his own mysterious objectives or something. He could have his whole force outflank from a random table edge, or immerge from a crater or suitable peice of central terrain.

Maybe the necrons objective is to assassinate a random character that only he knows about, or a particular objective is worth a bunch of points to him. idk, be creative and have fun. Sounds like it is going to be a bunch of friends having a laugh, why still to the rules?

Its only going to be painful for the Human side if the Xenos use specifically refined army's. However if you both field equally scruffy armies, you should be okay (tricky thing is, Tau/Eldar/Necrons can refine themselves much more comparatively atm).

Tau: O'Vesa star with 2 more riptides
Eldar: Wave Serpent spam
Eldar 2: Seer Council + Jetbike spam
Necron: Flyer spam

Have fun!

As long as your opponents don't bring the top tier lists their races can bring you should have an enjoyable time

 Gitsplitta wrote:
You're doomed. Get some pizza and beer, relax and enjoy watching your buddies blow your armies to hell. All three of their codecii are better than any on the allied side, and in combination they'll be overwhelming.

Ouch x_x
i had a previous (very dramatic) experience with tau+eldar allied. the "every unit destroyed in turn 3" things of dramatic experience

ok, they will eat us.
but this will be man vs food u_u

btw, the pro side is the 4 armies are not "friend", they are treated as convenience allied and thus target of psyk power and like. so, powers like imotekh lightning could hit tau and eldar armies too, and farseer offensive powers would hit them as well. Necron player is a newbie (and as far as i know he never played in 6th edition); Tau and Eldar are very experienced player
the con side is they had plenty of time to organise and build their armies so they work together and this will be a very coalized "faction". in our sides only 2 are experienced player while me and imperial fist are newbies (but i got 4 game on my curricula, last one i did sunday and i won )

the game are objective oriented, with five 1 point objective on the table and a 3 point relic; first blood removed (otherwise is automatically won by first player) and only one warlord for side is worth victory point. For some personal IRL reason maybe 2 player will be forced to enter game at turn 2 or 3, so they will be ongoing reserve
we will plan on NOT deep strike, and using fast moving (jump pack, land raider, bike) unit to seize the objective and hold on while IG will spam artillery weapon (dunno the name, sorry) and large blast template counting on a very packed deploy (a lot of models on the table)

as you pointed out, this is a game for fun; so losing is not a problem. being annihilated neither, as long as we have fun
so, fight with every things we have, minimizing loss and achieve some big scores could be fun; being removed completely from tabletop without hitting anyone in enemy side could be less funny :(

U desperately need orkses to make it more fun! Bring a couple of warp'eads and sag meks and it's gona be hilarious!

Yesterday was the day
8000 points imperial armies (IG, BA, UM and a little detachment of Iron Fist) was on the field with 8000 points xeno (Tau, Eldar, Necron)

however, i was sick and grounded to my bed with flu and fever :_(
a friend of mine took my BA army and gone to play; nobody was aware to what my army could do, and how to use it, and this created confusion on imperial side;
they started deploying at 11.30 am and at the end of 3rd turn, at 1.30 am (yes, 14 hours later) imperial side gave up with heavy losses.

they told me it was funny, but also very very very confusionary

btw, thanks for your advices; it could be better next time. I hope.

if it took 14hours for 3 turns then it sounds like your group needs better house rules for muliple players on a team.

My local gaming place has some simple unwritten rules that is used a lot for our 2v2 games. Fisrt, the ally matrix has no bearing on different players' armies. They fight seperatly with no sharing of abilities, but don't have any negatives. Second, everyone on a Team does each phase at the same time. So everyone on one side does all their armies individual movements together. Then when they move to the shooting phase they can all shoot at the same time. Usually the player being shot at will watch over the rolls and roll saves, but if he has a lot of units getting shot he can have another teammate that is not getting shot do some. Combat from assaults can have alot of armies locked in it, and the total casualties from each team is added up to find the winner.

Anyways, i am not an expert, but even if you had 4 players on a team then with all 4 acting at the same time it shouldn't take that much longer than a normal game.