Not sure if it's right place to ask, but are there any? I remember reading something on topic some time ago, but I've never checked related links. Now it seems like my local gaming group is finally keen enough on trying this game a bit more, I'm starting to wonder if I can make it more attractive for them since we are used to gathering together at once and mostly playing 2x2 or 2x1 or something (40k is the main game in the group). Sure we can houserule something up, but my guess is that someone already tried that and maybe managed to suggest a ruleset that avoids some of the more or less obvious pitfalls of making such ungodly combos between different factions. I would appreciate any pointers towards whatever material on the topic there is.
There were rules to play 2Vs2 back in ITS7 I think, and it was called something like Joint Operations. The problem is that there really were not an agreement at the community level about what was more balanced. My take was that you would play A1, B1, A2 and B2, with smoke and other templates not carrying over from one player to the next, the only thing that would go between players of the same team being the Repeaters and AROs, and sharing the pool of Command Tokens (but for the 5th one granted by Advanced Command, which would belong only to the player with the skill). As for the points, the most used option was for each player to have an individual army of half points and SWC, so for example a 300pts 6SWC would be 150pts and 3SWC for each player.
Seems simple enough, and generally makes sense. There are some tricky moments which I think can be ruled in a rather straightforward manner, but I still would like to hear some opinions. Lieutenant and LoL Seems simple enough, just have one per player and only pull models of that player into LoL if his Lt bites the dust. There's a consideration though, with A1, B1, A2, B2 etc. turn order you effectively have to face only half the alpha potential before your side can do something about it while defensive measures you can use are roughly the same. At the same time, if Lt is down, you only get half the reward for it, essentially. So it seems that you either get an Lt per player and reduce the impact of the mechanic, or you keep a single Lt per side. Implications of the latter option are kinda hard to see for me though. Reserves Again, do you allow 1 reserve piece per player, increasing the weight of this rule, or do you go with "1 per side" rule? I also wanted to bring Strategos concerns here, but it seems to me that once you choose your ruling on reserves in general, this one becomes easier. Buffs How do you go about Supportware and things like Albedo? Seems somewhat logical to housrule the first one into "until the beginning of the next user's active turn", and second one into "until the end of the fourth Turn of the match" (assuming 2v2). These questions become even more interesting when we get into the territory of playing matches along the lines of "2 players with 200/4 vs 1 player with 400/8", plus even things like turn order begin to beg for some thoughtful attention.
Since you’re giving the rules the middle finger, then I’d advice you to go all in and make a spectacle of it, instead of trying to play something ITS’ish, that isn’t ITS. Cook up a scenario based on the players/factions e.g. what happens, when an Aleph faction is discovered on a nomad ship, and the beacon they were out to investigate suddenly proves to be alien, and a bunch of shasvasti and onyx forces blast through the hull. Maybe bring in a fifth player to be a games master to spawn unknown events or control alien beasts or victims of cyber zombie plague. Setup your board in ways to allow one side to dominate, while giving the opponent twice the points. Make it a low-gravity cloud city where I’ll-equipped models can fall to their doom. Make the board a derelict space hulk from Weyland-Yutani complete with face hugging xenomorphs and have a free for all shootout, while the little critters slither about and try to kill you (they could be neutral camo markers, and one might be a small child or a cat, so you can’t just declare discover/shoot, but need to be certain). Maybe only line troopers have been deployed (a core fireteam?). You can get a lot of fun out of the game rules by going a little outside the box. You just need to consider two steps; first, what would make a really cool scene. Second, what will it take to make that scene into a good game. And don’t be afraid to mess up balance a bit, just play for the fun of it.
@regelridderen I'm just trying to accommodate my gaming group with its social quirks into Infinity while dealing as little of that unavoidable damage to gameplay as possible. Not that I'm opposed to your general idea - like I said, we can always come up with some house rules of variable craziness depending on what we are trying to accomplish. But I though that maybe some people here had an experience with doing one of the possible non-standard things - organizing a "normal-ish" match with more than 2 players (I'm aiming for 4 when it's not 2). Frankly, I don't think people in my group are very interested in some gimmicky scenarios right now, but we may try someday (if anything, there are some pretty well-documented we can use, failing coming up with something on our own). As for this thread, I'm just trying to research one of the possibilities.
Sorry, if I came off a bit harsh, that wasn’t the point :) If just going for a quick solution, I’d go for xagroths A1,B1,A2,B2 order - it is the simplest solution, not allowing any unintended synergies.
