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I'd like your thoughts on this initial idea, and some tweaks if possible:

I've thought of doing a local tourney in which you don't have to show your opponent your list, don't have to tell them what is deepstriking, reserving, in which vehicle, etc. Sort of a "fog of war" idea.

Of course the immediate concern is: "but it'd be so easy to cheat!". Yes, it would require much more oversight. My thought is to have each player write down what they're doing with each unit, and if units look similar but have different wargear, to explicitly describe which unit is which. The judges would go to each player before deployment, verify they've written everything down, and could be called upon at any time by a player to verify any questions as to wargear/deployment method.

I'm a little in love with this idea, as in a battle you wouldn't know what's in a transport, or how the enemy was planning on taking the battlefield. Thoughts? Recommendations?

I think it is an interesting idea, but don't think it would work in practice. To do this right I think you would need a judge at every table for the entirety of every game.

I think if you were going to do it you would need things like unit cards or something, write down what the unit is and what gear it has on the card, and put the card in the transport, put down if they are deepstriking etc. Then when the time comes reveal the card.

I like the card idea! Anyone else have thoughts on this?

I think it's a bad idea. You're going to spend so much extra effort on trying to avoid cheating and WYSIWYG issues that you're not going to have anything left for the actual game.

Sounds better as a one off style of gameplay than for a tournament. Unless there are very few players and many judges.

 Eldarain wrote:
Sounds better as a one off style of gameplay than for a tournament. Unless there are very few players and many judges.

Yeah my thought had been to get multiple people to judge, rather than just the standard single TO.

 Homeskillet wrote:
Yeah my thought had been to get multiple people to judge, rather than just the standard single TO.

Good luck finding that many people who are willing to spend a day running a tournament instead of playing in it.

The game is not balanced around secrecy... if armies who deepstrike or use transports get to be 'hidden' then can armies based around foot troopers model 'cloaks' on them so you can't see what they are holding or weapons they are using until they fire them?

Giving specific units and armies such a massive advantage would make the game unplayable. Considering 'secret lists' has been the wet dream of cheaters for almost 20 years, it really has no business existing because even if someone doesn't cheat, the massive advantage and unbalancing of the game they receive might as well be cheating.

Wow, I'm surprised at the amount of negative feedback on this idea. Thanks for the input all.

Taking the cheating out of it, you are adding in another time consuming mechanic. Your 1500-1850 llist should take between 2-2.5 hours per round (maybe to finish 4-5 turns). If you are adding in all this bookkeeping, be prepared to have either have rounds at 3 hours each or to have people only finish 3-4 turns.

Even if you only run a 20 person tournament, you will need at least 12 Judges. 1 for each table, and 2 to actually run the event.

As others have said it's an interesting idea but the logistics of it make it impractical to do on a large scale. This might be something better suited to a weekend game between a few friends.

The only way for it to be 'fair' is if every model in the game was replaced with a 'blind token', Including infantry and such and the contents of the blind token would be on the underside of the token. Then the only way tokens would be 'revealed' would be through interaction or a default minimal visual range or special gear. Just because I see a ork trukk doesn't mean I know it is an ork trukk with shoota boyz. Just because I see shoota boys doesn't mean I can see a Nob with a PK. Now if those shoota boys 'shoot' you with 'shootas' then you can probably assume what they are.

I just don't think it adds any form of balance, tactical enhancements or experience to the game... and is too hard to police along with forcing everyone to keep their models physically hidden in a box up until game time. Also, at a tourney, it is lost as I see a dude with an army, I can remember what he has.

It might only work in a narrative campaign where you are doing some RPing of intelligence and such and people could 'reload' with different units between games to keep the 'shroud of unknown' viable. of course, that means using tokens and all that would be part of a narrative, non-competitive simulation so people would be given an incentive not to cheat and help keep the storytelling going. That is the difference between RPGing and Munchkining.

This could be fine in a one-off game in a small group that all know each other well.

This would be a nightmare to run in a tournament open to the public.