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Hello folks

I don`t know if this has been discussed before but I had many situations where I wanted to play with my friend and at the point where we exchanged our lists, one of us had a sad face most of the time because the other one bought a new model or tried something crazy which we can`t counter with our current list, like heavy flier, many superheavies and so on. Of course you could argue with each other beforehand what is ok and what not, but I always thought why not introduce some kind of side deck?

The way this works is that you write your normal list for 1500 or 1850 points but you also have a small side list worth around 300-500 points with units that you can exchange before the battle starts but after you have seen the list of your enemy. You don`t know your enemies side list and if he uses it or not.

Do you think that would be a good idea to be able to react to different situations so that you don`t have to "waste" time knowing that you most likely will not win the match? I don`t know if that would be a good idea for tournaments too...

No



To me a big problem is that players don't use all comers lists any more

Not in the least.

As Oldmike said, this would remove the strategy of building an appropriate list and just make it "ok I'm facing this, so I swap this" which in turn lowers diversity.

It is a cool idea in theory (and one that I have pondered over myself) but there just isn't a practically way of doing it without it resulting in basically list tailoring

With caveats, the idea of sideboards is perfectly fine and workable.

Warmachine/Hordes has various formats with a thing called the ‘Active Duty Roster’ for some of the casters which amounts to a sideboard to your main army, comprising (iirc) 20% of the points value of your list that you can swap out. It works out quite nicely, and gives lists quite a bit of flexibility. The thing is though, Warmachine/Hordes is better suited to the use of sideboards with how the points values are structured in the game. Unit costings are not hypergranulated like in 40k – units will typically cost 16-20 points (game sizes are about 75pts for example) rather than 113 and don’t have the level of micromanagement and option loadouts that is all so common in GW games – your iron fang pikemen will always be equipped the same way, squad sizes will either be max, or min sized, there is none of the malarkey of millions of potential weapon and equipment up/down/sidegrades. In other words, its quite easy to ‘define’ what the sideboard will comprise and to work it into the format. Its easy to ‘take out’ 20pts of stuff, and ‘put back in’ 20pts of stuff. How would it work in 40k?even with 500pts.What are you taking out? What will you put in? What goes out? What options change? With the high level of granularity of 40k unit costings as well as the unit customisations, it gets awkward at best and frankly, its probably not worth it. So yes, the idea of a sideboard could work, but the underlying structure of the game would need to change as well to accommodate it. Further issue stems from the ‘blind’ nature of the sideboard. That could just as easily cause the same problems its trying to solve

Potential counter point: What if its your approach that is wrong? How about you change how you approach your games rather than using ‘sideboard’ band-aids. Right now, the problems you are facing seem to stem from the fact that you are approaching your games of 40k as ‘blind match ups’ and then struggling when these collide. You don’t know what you are facing, and this is problematic. Sideboards, says you, offer a potential solution as you swap stuff out after trading lists. Well, whilst not wrong, how about not approaching the game as a blind match up in the first place? It solves the issue by removing the issue in the first place. Rather than ‘blind match ups’, and then struggling to compensate after you’ve seen the lists, why not discuss the lists up front? Why not organise ahead of time in terms of (a) what you’d both like to bring, (B) what, potentially you’d both like to face, and essentially, seek to work together to organise a fair match up ahead of time before you bring your stuff to the store? I mean, we’re in the future now. We have texts and facebooks, and its never been easier to communicate and organise. Seems sensible to me to be proactive and do some of this stuff.

In a competitive setting, absolutely.

For casual and normal games? No.

Personally, I dislike the idea of "Side-boards/side-decks", or "Dual Army" formats. Part of that is because I feel TAC is still mostly "doable" for most intents and purposes; you may have some challenge against a few "skew" lists, but a well-rounded army will not be a complete cakewalk in most circumstances.

The other part of it also feeling-related, that I always took issue with how Warmahordes had the rule prohibiting "duplication" of Special Characters/Units. Which led to skubfights about "But what about Mercenaries? Half their army is nothing but Character Units anyway," to which the trolls pipe in and go "They're not a real army anyway. They don't count," as though releasing lots of expensive minis and rulebooks for them makes them not real.

One thing I *do* like the idea of in "theory", is "Special Mission Loadouts" for certain units. 40k has a lot of "cute" upgrades that by themselves are "nice-to-have" but can rapidly eat up points like there's no tomorrow. While you can easily argue for giving all your Rhinos Dozer Blades, there are many "small" upgrades that could be nice but are usually too "edge-case" situational to really justify their cost (When was the last time you saw a Guard player mass-equip Fire Barrels?).

The idea would be that each unit has a choice of three "Special Loadouts", and after army creation but before the game starts, you select which "Loadout" your unit gets.

A hypothetical example might be a Scout Squad having the option for Mag-Grapnels (May ignore all costs for vertical movement in Ruins), Pioneering Kits (May place a Tank Trap/Barricade/Minefield within 2" of the squad at deployment), or Defensive Grenades. Or something roughly along those lines, balance permitting.

The idea being that certain loadouts are not just for "the enemy you're facing", but the battlefield as well (The Mag Grapnels would be more useful for Cityfight scenarios, the Pioneering Kits for sparse terrain, etc).

Sideboard would be a nice idea, but for 40K could be difficult to implement; your sideboard choices may still not be a help for the coming battle.

I would suggest if you can get it to work that the sideboard units MUST start in reserves - representing requisitons/calls to HQ to get the replacement units to the battlefield. Practically, this could aid in diminishing the impact of any list tailoring occuring as part of the sideboarding.

 MagicJuggler wrote:


The other part of it also feeling-related, that I always took issue with how Warmahordes had the rule prohibiting "duplication" of Special Characters/Units. Which led to skubfights about "But what about Mercenaries? Half their army is nothing but Character Units anyway," to which the trolls pipe in and go "They're not a real army anyway. They don't count," as though releasing lots of expensive minis and rulebooks for them makes them not real.

I might be reading your post wrong, but I think I might need to correct you on something - it's mk3 now, and character restrictions have been removed from warmachine/hordes. Mercenaries/minions have also been rejigged in terms of how they are built - no more contracts for a start.

And mercenaries are not a real army. rather they're a selection of very nicely themed and designed sub-factions.

Deadnight wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:


The other part of it also feeling-related, that I always took issue with how Warmahordes had the rule prohibiting "duplication" of Special Characters/Units. Which led to skubfights about "But what about Mercenaries? Half their army is nothing but Character Units anyway," to which the trolls pipe in and go "They're not a real army anyway. They don't count," as though releasing lots of expensive minis and rulebooks for them makes them not real.

I might be reading your post wrong, but I think I might need to correct you on something - it's mk3 now, and character restrictions have been removed from warmachine/hordes. Mercenaries/minions have also been rejigged in terms of how they are built - no more contracts for a start.

And mercenaries are not a real army. rather they're a selection of very nicely themed and designed sub-factions.

I should have put more emphasis on "had"

When I get the time, I'm going to have a more in-depth look at Mk3.

Sideboards would be nice if 40k wasn't a precarious balance (in the sense of a house of cards) of hard counters. If for example you could swap out your Troops choices or some low power formation component, that might work since it would allow flexibility without massive swings in the army composition.

Meh? The way the game is balanced some armies would benefit hugely, some wouldn't care, and you wouldn't really solve anything.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Meh? The way the game is balanced some armies would benefit hugely, some wouldn't care, and you wouldn't really solve anything.

I'd suggest the ones that wouldn't care are mainly the ones who don't need the additional power.

 malamis wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Meh? The way the game is balanced some armies would benefit hugely, some wouldn't care, and you wouldn't really solve anything.

I'd suggest the ones that wouldn't care are mainly the ones who don't need the additional power.

And some that would care hugely are ones that don't need the additional power either. Imagine if you could tailor your special weapons in a Space Marine army before every game.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 malamis wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Meh? The way the game is balanced some armies would benefit hugely, some wouldn't care, and you wouldn't really solve anything.

I'd suggest the ones that wouldn't care are mainly the ones who don't need the additional power.

And some that would care hugely are ones that don't need the additional power either. Imagine if you could tailor your special weapons in a Space Marine army before every game.

You mean on a Tactical or Scout Squad? Is there some situation you *wouldn't* be taking grav already?

 malamis wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 malamis wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Meh? The way the game is balanced some armies would benefit hugely, some wouldn't care, and you wouldn't really solve anything.

I'd suggest the ones that wouldn't care are mainly the ones who don't need the additional power.

And some that would care hugely are ones that don't need the additional power either. Imagine if you could tailor your special weapons in a Space Marine army before every game.

You mean on a Tactical or Scout Squad? Is there some situation you *wouldn't* be taking grav already?

If I could sideboard? Plenty. Grav is OP and generally useful, not the perfect answer to all problems.

I like the idea of a Side Deck. It would make a lot more units much more viable since they're made as direct counters (Some assassins comes to mind). However I'd say that it should never be more than 20% of your entire army that you can swap out, and no wargear changes (so you can't just build a Havoc Squad and have them juggle weapons rather than having to buy a whole new squad with different weapons).

Thanks for all the ideas and the input you provided. I have to say that I don`t think that a sidedeck would be list tailoring that much. Maybe you have some kind of backupplan in your side deck lets say only anti air units but besides that, you still don`t know if you should put a melta or a plasma dude in your side deck or anti air or long range anti tank or or or... I guess you know what I mean.

I agree with the difficulties on how to implement it into current 40k. Could you do a whole formation in a side deck? Only a Cad? only single units? and so on.

But in todays meta I don`t think that you can really do an TAC list. Unless you have a huge amount of Strength: D weapons which simply don`t care, as they will obliterate everything regarding of the unit type. I don`t think that you can build a TAC list that can do Eldar, 5 hive Tyrants, Mass Grav-Electrodisplacements or Captain Smashfucker and so on, all at once. You will most likely build your list around one of these concepts ans hope that you don`t run into your counter on a tournament.

As for speaking with your enemy beforehand, well yeah I tried that with my friend, many many many times but It never worked out. You will start with 1% of banned or towned down stuff and will end up with 50% while you still don`t have any good matches.

As of right now you are either in Bracket A (Eldar, Tau, Space Marines), which are the strongest codexes, Bracket B (Necrons, Khorne Demonkin, Mechanicus, Dark Angels, Demons) which can play in Bracket A if they are lucky or you are in Bracket C with everyone else who can`t really compete at all, especially not with a TAC list. If you and your friend are in the same bracket, then everything is nice, but if you are in Bracket A and he is in C well then you can`t even forge the narrative that hard most of the times.

Fauk wrote:
Thanks for all the ideas and the input you provided. I have to say that I don`t think that a sidedeck would be list tailoring that much. Maybe you have some kind of backupplan in your side deck lets say only anti air units but besides that, you still don`t know if you should put a melta or a plasma dude in your side deck or anti air or long range anti tank or or or... I guess you know what I mean. .

So even if you allowed this ( which would be very bad ) you run int of the issue is who uses the side board first ? If i show up with a bunch of flyers and you didn't have AA and you subbed in AA with your sideboard , do i get to sub in my aircraft for tanks since you just converted them to anti air ? So now you have zero use for AA ( AKA wasted points ) and now my tanks are running amok across the lines

 malamis wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 malamis wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Meh? The way the game is balanced some armies would benefit hugely, some wouldn't care, and you wouldn't really solve anything.

I'd suggest the ones that wouldn't care are mainly the ones who don't need the additional power.

And some that would care hugely are ones that don't need the additional power either. Imagine if you could tailor your special weapons in a Space Marine army before every game.

You mean on a Tactical or Scout Squad? Is there some situation you *wouldn't* be taking grav already?

low armor hoard armies. against those I'd rather have a flamer.

No. It's bad enough keeping lists straight without adding options.

kambien wrote:

Fauk wrote:
Thanks for all the ideas and the input you provided. I have to say that I don`t think that a sidedeck would be list tailoring that much. Maybe you have some kind of backupplan in your side deck lets say only anti air units but besides that, you still don`t know if you should put a melta or a plasma dude in your side deck or anti air or long range anti tank or or or... I guess you know what I mean. .

So even if you allowed this ( which would be very bad ) you run int of the issue is who uses the side board first ? If i show up with a bunch of flyers and you didn't have AA and you subbed in AA with your sideboard , do i get to sub in my aircraft for tanks since you just converted them to anti air ? So now you have zero use for AA ( AKA wasted points ) and now my tanks are running amok across the lines[/quote ]

I take it you've never really played MtG. Both players have the opportunity to sub their sideboard at the same time. The bigger issue is that Magic has three games per round and both players are able to sideboard after the conclusion of the first game, wouldn't work for a longer game like 40k...although if you allow it as a declared part of your army list and usage of the sideboard models as a declaration at the start of any game it would encourage some people to hustle and finish their games so early finishers can't come a-scouting to see what everyone else is playing.
Win or lose my Wolves usually finish quickly and while it doesn't have a sideboard option the tournamets hosted in my area offer a bit of flexibility.
Warlord traits, Psychic Disciplines, Independent Character deployment and Dedicated Transport deployment can all be changed in some ways, not huge changes like trading up who has it as a dedicated transport but choosing not to deploy inside the Rhino or deploying the Rune Priest with the bike choosing Divination and hanging with the Long Fangs instead of that same Priest getting Pyromancy and cruising with the TWC. Any early info I can get on opponents will change things.

I have used this and it's fun. If we weren't making scenarios with tailored lists for the scenario this would be our default format.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

kambien wrote:

Fauk wrote:
Thanks for all the ideas and the input you provided. I have to say that I don`t think that a sidedeck would be list tailoring that much. Maybe you have some kind of backupplan in your side deck lets say only anti air units but besides that, you still don`t know if you should put a melta or a plasma dude in your side deck or anti air or long range anti tank or or or... I guess you know what I mean. .

So even if you allowed this ( which would be very bad ) you run int of the issue is who uses the side board first ? If i show up with a bunch of flyers and you didn't have AA and you subbed in AA with your sideboard , do i get to sub in my aircraft for tanks since you just converted them to anti air ? So now you have zero use for AA ( AKA wasted points ) and now my tanks are running amok across the lines

You would be selecting sideboard based on your opponents MAIN list. At least when we have played. It goes like this:

a) both players hand out main list. Say 1500 in 1850(we used this).
b) you then look out your sideboard and decide which you want to use
c) both players reveal sideboards.