6000 to 8000pts battle rules/limits advice needed.

Hey fellow Ogres

Story short, im having a plan about inviting some friends for a mega alliance battle this summer, and thinking were gonna need some special rules/limits to keep it a bit more simple and speed it up abit. we are going to be 6 to 8 people and im looking for 2000 pts each.

possible armies:

"good"
Empire
Dwarfs
2x high elfs

"evil"
Warriors of chaos
Orcs and Goblins
Vampire Counts
Skavens

And Ogres ofcourse 


i´ve thougth about :

Lords as normal
Heroes as normal + special char. allowed.
Core  as normal
Special % as normal no duplicates
Rare % as normal no duplicates

I dont want it to turn into mega gunline from the "good side Dwarfs,high elfs, empire" and i want to try and get people to play there fluff stuff so it wont be a hardcore tourne list.

Max unit size 40 for infantry.

Max unit size MF 9.

Magic items:
No Crown of command, rune maw ( need some advice about the other races "spoilers" to keep it more balanced )

Magic phase: 3d6 dispell side get highest and lowest.
Max 5 dices pr spell or dispell
2 dispell scrolls pr side can only use one  pr turn.

alliance rules:
 they way i see it here the good side got the edge here i really would like it to be more the same, was thinking about.

you can only used generals inspiring presense within your own army, but Bsb reroll is shared with the alliance.

More will follow when i come up with more and hopefully som input from you guys and advice would be a great help.

While I've never played more than a 5000 point battle, I have observed that once you go past 32-35 hundred points any notion of trying to balance the game are very hard to keep in line and agree on. I would simply allow special characters of any level since some of them require an exceedingly large game to be used, additionally it only feels right that a massive force would be led by a legend from one or more of the races and not some no name general from the sticks so to speak.

I really wouldn't say that the good side has any discernible advantage here, try just using the storm of magic rules, though not the spells, and split the dice up before any casting is attempted. I'd remove the duplicates restriction on special and rare, its a fun game let people take fun lists Also I saw the new dwarf book yesterday, deploy them opposite the skaven

Depending on how cool your gaming group is, you should be more or less OK with a general 'don't be silly' rule.

If you can, see if you can get everyone's lists up relatively early and revealed at the same time, and ask around online if anyone sees anything particularly nasty (Nurgle Daemon Prince comes to mind)



Modified by BB on 09/02/14
(Watch the language!)

I have done a lot of large games over the years, mostly 1v1 or 2v2.  I have a couple suggestions that we used in our games:

1- Magic:
At higher points, its easy for the magic phase to degenerate into 6 dice or nothing idiocy and wizards are not as useful (or too powerful).  What we do in large games is use the Storm of Magic dice pool (4d6, defender gets the higher of the two rolls, max pool is 24) and limit the dispel scrolls to one per side.  This way, multiple wizards get some use and the game tends to revolve around lots of small spells with about half of them getting through.

2-Monsters and Cannons:
Basically, you need to have a gentlemen's agreement to keep things reasonable on both sides.  Too many monsters or too many cannons can lead to unfun situations, so pre game agreed upon limits are a good idea.

3-Deployment:
Deployment in large games can take forever and you will often overthink it.  We have used three methods, all with descent success.  Method one is hidden deployment, with a sheet between you blocking view and both sides deploying at the same time.  Method two is "chunk" where each side deploys about 25% at a time with the first side to deploy a chunk getting +1 to go first.  Method three is deploying by type, alternating players with the first player deploying getting the +1 (War Machines First, then Core, Then Special, Then Rare, Then Characters) to go first.  Whatever method you use, you want it to be fast and you want a nice table spanning battle line.  Nothing is lamer than one side castling in a corner in a huge point game.

I think that the best bet for a large game is keeping it simple, and using a little common sense.

For starters, disregarding the recent changes GW have implemented to their official tournaments, because having Scrolls of Binding as Special at 5k+ could see some really sickening combinations (2,500 points owrth of K'daai Destroyers anyone!?).

Also, we tend to play it so the Magic "pool" is kept individual, so you can't share dice beyond those that are generated by the pool itself.

Lastly, restricting Rare to no duplicates shouldn't really be necessary, as long as your group are sensible and not looking to play cheese/WAAC

JJ

thanks alot guys this is pure gold 

If you aren't able to use the Runemaw banner then HE shouldn't be able to use the banner of the world dragon, skaven shouldn't get the storm banner or whatever it's called, etc. It's only fair.

Magic should be played as normal for each army since all of you will have around 2k per person.
On that note it's hard to include any decent special characters at that point level and hard to spam the nasty/cheesy stuff so you shouldn't have to make any more restrictions involving list comp.

Just have everyone write their lists, post it here and we can see if it's fairly balanced or cheesy for you.

-GL

Here are 2 links to a couple 6K games I just got done playing recently. I found that for magic it was nice just playing with the normal dice rules.  It was fun to let combats actually decide most fights instead of magic dominating as it sometimes does.  But big games are a blast to play. Ours took about 6ish hours to play a full 6 turns.



Hope you have fun with yours and hope to see a report and pics of it.....

Here are 2 links to a couple 6K games I just got done playing recently. I found that for magic it was nice just playing with the normal dice rules.  It was fun to let combats actually decide most fights instead of magic dominating as it sometimes does.  But big games are a blast to play. Ours took about 6ish hours to play a full 6 turns.

Hope you have fun with yours and hope to see a report and pics of it.....

wow this is cool, i think ill watch it now

If you want something soft and dont want to re-invent anything, just go for Swedish comp : ) It is by far perfect and it is yet just another comp system - yet, it allows you to bring anything but at a cost. Eg. Runemaw is not as hard if you can only put it in smaller units : )
A 4-5 dice cap for casting spells might be good to keep people from 6-dicing spells which tend to be a bit dull... unless you play dwarf where this is your only option (!)


Homemade restrictions tend to be very unbalanced and I would go for overall restrictions and common sense gaming - I mean, you are all friends meeting up so you should be able to adjust.

Enjoy!

If you want something soft and dont want to re-invent anything, just go for Swedish comp

I believe swedish comp only works at around 2.4k games. I do not believe they scale up to 6-8k!

My suggestions:

1) deploy in bulk and have more magic dice as Phazael suggested.
2) No magic items. This keeps it way simpler, but still fun. Which of my 4 slaughtermasters had hellheart again? Which of my 3 Tyrants had the greedy fist?
3) Double the terrain. And have large terrain. If you are worried about excessive hording and gun-line shenanigans, then you don't have enough terrain.
4) Try as hard as you can to enforce WYSWYG. Don't let peeps say this block of 40 skeleton archers are actually swordmasters. This is especially true for unit upgrades. You don't want to get into a situation where all your ogre units have ironfists on the model, but one unit couldn't afford to get it. Or you forgot which irongut unit didn't have a musician. Either all units of a certain type get the same upgrades, or its obvious from the models.

Swedish does indeed only work for games around 2400 pt (2000-2800 or so), but as I understood the initial issue there will be multiple players on each side fielding 2000 pt each : )

For a swedish comp game at 2000 pt you can readily adjust the comp pool to 280 - it has worked well in my hands at least.

you guys are the best 

there will be multiple players on each side fielding 2000 pt each, ill have a look at the Swedish Comp. Rules to see if they could work.