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Hello,

I was just at my FLGS, and there was a match going on, two players (Dark Eldar/Chaos SM) vs two players (Knights/AdMech). I was blown away. I never knew you could do anything beyond 2 players. Where is the rules for extra players?

How do Friendly Aura's work? When a description reads "...cast on a friendly unit..." can you intemperate a teammate's army in that light?

Was this even legal or was it a thematic/open match?

If not legal, where is a good place to get a standard baseline for rules regarding doing this open play? I would love to do 4k matches (2k+2K).

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Hello,

I was just at my FLGS, and there was a match going on, two players (Dark Eldar/Chaos SM) vs two players (Knights/AdMech). I was blown away. I never knew you could do anything beyond 2 players. Where is the rules for extra players?

How do Friendly Aura's work? When a description reads "...cast on a friendly unit..." can you intemperate a teammate's army in that light?

Was this even legal or was it a thematic/open match?

If not legal, where is a good place to get a standard baseline for rules regarding doing this open play? I would love to do 4k matches (2k+2K).

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Page 270 of the BRB.

Be forewarned, it's a single page, the rules are poorly written and you'll need to pretty much make up everything as you go along. For multiplayer battles I'd reccomend Apocalypse over 40k.

Another word of warning, playing a 2v2 with 2k in each army is likely gonna take you multiple days of play, considering a single turn can take upwards of an hour.

I have played some 2on2 with 1.5k for each player, and it took about 6+/-1 hours. Deployment was about 1 hour, first turn took about 2 hours. This of course depends on the skill level of every player. Tournament players will probably only need 3 hours.
My experience was that it's quite easy to decimate the army of a player if both opposing players target it. My suggestion would be to go with one army from one team, then switch to another army from the opposing team, and so on.

2v2 can be fun but you need to house rule a lot of things before the game to make it work and set aside a lot of time. We generally have auras and abilities only apply to the army they are from even if the allied model qualifies for the buff.

One of the local clubs in my area frequently holds 2v2 doubles events.
As others have said, there isn't very much in the core rules to support it, so they use a number of house rules.
The commonly used house rules in my area are:

Each of the allies forces is constructed as an independent army, and they do not directly interact with each other. So aura abilities have no effect on your ally, even if they are the same faction. Psychic buff powers cannot target your allies units, etc.
They only count as the same army for the purpose of victory conditions, such as holding objectives.

While you cannot directly buff your ally, you are not limited by them either. Meaning that both players on a team could run the same unique character if they wished. Or both cast the same psychic power in a turn. Similarly space marines would get their doctrines, even if their ally is bringing some other faction.
These events are usually run at a little under 1000 points per player, and rule of two is in effect. However this applies per player. So each player could bring two of a unit, for a total of four across both sides of the army if they wished.

Both players on a team get a warlord. The mission rule 'Slay the Warlord' is read as 'Slay a Warlord'. Killing just one of the two warlords in the opposing team is good enough to count.

Both players on a team play through each phase of their turn simultaneously. Waiting for their partner to complete an action if it would conflict with what they would do next.

Each player has their own command point pool, not shared by their ally.

Your allies units do not protect your characters. If your character is the nearest of your units to an enemy unit, then it can be targeted by that unit even if one of your allies units is closer.
This one is somewhat controversial, and I can't see a particularly strong argument for it. So take it or leave it.

It runs fairly smoothly. I'd recommend starting with something like this as a baseline.

Same here, we run 2v2 and 2v1 games quite regularly, 1500 per army is what is doable within a day, 2000 is almost always too much unless all armies are pretty elitist. Anything with a model count higher than an average primaris marine army will most likely not finish the game within our 8 hours time window.

As for our house rules:
- Each side counts as one army, no extra rules limiting stratagems or auras. There are precious little cross-faction buffs anyways, and the few that exist are no more powerful than the basic synergy of two different armies filling each other weaknesses (IG and orks for example). Keep in mind that almost all our armies are mono-codex though, and very few armies are played by more than one player.
- Each stratagem and psychic power can be use once per turn per side, anything else would be unfair in a 2v1 game.
- Each player needs to adhere to the matched play and organized play rules, but not the entire army. For example, if you have two marine armies, each can have three detachments and up to three of any unit. This comes up rarely though.
- Battleforged CP once per army, each player gets a warlord trait and a free relic. One of the two warlords is the true leader and just that one is worth any VP - having two 'real' warlords is a problem in maelstrom games. In a 2v1 game the single player gets either gets another free relic and trait or the one of the two players doesn't get one.

No an actual rule, but avoid missions that split the deployment zone for just one team. The CA2018 2vs1 mission does this for example, as do some of the eternal war deplyoments) . It's always the right decision for the team with the non-split deployment to take everything they have and crush one of the deployment zones, effectively crushing one player out of the game within the first turn.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Hello,

I was just at my FLGS, and there was a match going on, two players (Dark Eldar/Chaos SM) vs two players (Knights/AdMech). I was blown away. I never knew you could do anything beyond 2 players. Where is the rules for extra players?

How do Friendly Aura's work? When a description reads "...cast on a friendly unit..." can you intemperate a teammate's army in that light?

No rule works like that though. All of them require some kind of keyword to be present on the target, even if it's just "IMPERIUM" or "CHAOS". The pretty much works out of the box, though it might cause balancing problems.

Was this even legal or was it a thematic/open match?

In CA2018 there is a 2vs1 mission which is called allies of convenience, explicitly allowing two armies like DE and CSM to team up, with silly stratagems like allowing to shoot into a combat that's fought by your expendable ally.

If not legal, where is a good place to get a standard baseline for rules regarding doing this open play? I would love to do 4k matches (2k+2K).

Any help is greatly appreciated!

As above, you should try running no more than 3k per side first. No only does it take more time to finish the game, but the increased lethality also prevents certain units from functioning.

So, 1500 is nice, but it really hampers elite armies, unless everyone is an elite army.

Maybe play off PL?

PL really is just points divided by 20 in most cases. The main difference is that lots of models are running around with lots of gear they'll never need.

I really don't see 1500 hurting elite armies in any meaningful way - you are not playing a solo game.
You are running with a team mate, you can get away with not having all your bases covered at 1500 more often, plus generating maximum CP is not as important.

Yeah, just communicate with your partner to make lists that compliment each other and shore up each other's weaknesses. Like Nidz and Tau, for example.

 Jidmah wrote:
PL really is just points divided by 20 in most cases. The main difference is that lots of models are running around with lots of gear they'll never need.

I really don't see 1500 hurting elite armies in any meaningful way - you are not playing a solo game.
You are running with a team mate, you can get away with not having all your bases covered at 1500 more often, plus generating maximum CP is not as important.

We find 1750 pt cap to be the sweet spot when running our 2v2's. As for running PL games, factions with the most number of units with upgrade options fare much stronger than those with sidegrade options. (i.e. SM vs necrons)

1500 pt and below, we find ourselves lacking in key punches which ends up dragging out the game (as the two armies don't synergize with each other) and 2k to be way too punishing, especially when run as a full IGOUGO.

We find that these games are "most balanced" with staggered turns - Team 1 Player 1, Team 2 player 2, Team 1 Player 3, Team 2 Player 4 pattern. But even with this, it's really easy to have the game turn into 'shoot the 4th person going first' before the player 4 can retaliate. 2k points worth of damage from player 1, + 2k points minus 2k points worth of damage from player 2 against player 3 onto a single player (so, looking at about 2.5k~3.5k points worth of damage onto a single 2k army) really tends to decide the game pretty quickly.

As others have mentioned, you pretty much have to make up your own rules for 3 players games.

I've personally do this with my boys playing 1v1v1. We each had 1000pts and in addition to having some objective, we earned points for killing enemy units, and double points from a specific opponent.
Player A gets double VPs against Player B
B gets double vs C
C gets double vs A

This helped prevent "teaming up" against a particular player. Player A could certainly go after player C to stop player C from getting more point off them, or to deny points from Player B, but player A doesn't get double points for doing so.
It made for some very dynamic situations during our games that were quite fun

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