Played a tournament where everyone uses identical armies?

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"We are the sword of fire with which the Traitors shall be cut down."

Chess?  

No, can't say as I have.

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The thought did occur that we could perhaps arrange a competition with pre-ordained armies (perhaps one of IG and one of Orks and one of Marines) and people would then fight using the given army.

The only problem here being just how to design armies that are completely ballanced both internally and externally against the others.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

I was thinking more like only marines vs marines, exactly the same army composition... Ive been thinking this would be interesting as tactically both players would have the same types of options.

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"We are the sword of fire with which the Traitors shall be cut down."

Even if you got the same armies on the same terrain, luck (dice rolls) would still play a big part, and I am unsure how you can reduce that element.

Another alternative is for the organiser to place particular armies on given tables and to have everyone in pairs moving around the tables playing the different armies. People play only one army on each table, their pair playing the other army against a different opponent. The winners are the pair with the highest scores. I think you might also be able to use the swiss system to try to balance out the skill levels of the various players. Note it obviously requires people to use armies owned by someone else, so needs to be approached sympathetically.

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"Play up and play the game"

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

If you are going for equality, the easiest method would be to just play pairs of games. It doesnt matter what the armies are, but for example a Marine force on the North edge against an Ork force on the South edge, then repeat with identical starting conditions but switch forces for the second game.

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I was discussing this with FrogBear a couple of weeks ago. These two simplest ways I can think of.

Smoothed randomness
Each player has a deck of cards, numbered Ace through 6, 6 times. These are shuffled at the beginning of the game, and any time dice are needed, you flip over the corresponding number of cards. When all cards are exhausted, you shuffle up again, and continue. This has the benefit of still providing randomness, but reduces the large swings that can come into play.

No randomness
Before the game, a pre-generated list of 36/72 numbers (either smoothed, or completely random) is supplied. This can either be two separately generated lists or IMO preferably two identical lists (though this would cause the higher SR to immediately win 1st Init, and require a coin flip for tied SR). Whenever dice are needed, you just count off the numbers necessary. When you get to the end, you start back at the beginning. There would obviously be some meta-gaming inherent (I choose to fire only 3 of my 6 units, so I can keep that string of 5's and 6's for my second activation), but success or failure would be dependent on player management rather than randomness.

I wouldn't advocate either system as a replacement for randomness, but as an intellectual exercise, or a test of strategy with minimized randomness, I think it's achievable.

Interesting that most of brought up lucky dice rolls... I dont really have a problem with them :-)

Id say CS's idea is more like what I was after. How about a tourney where every match was played in such pairs of two games? Id say thatd be a nice way to do it.

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"We are the sword of fire with which the Traitors shall be cut down."

Essentially what I was advocating and it would be workable, but needs multiples of four competitors (so 4, 8, 12 etc). The main issue here would be pairing people up and trying to ensure that the conditions faced by each pair are as even as possible.

And as for 'lucky' dice rolling, I tend to extremes (usually lots of '1's - ask the others if you don't believe me ). But joking aside, certain rolls have much more impact on the game than others; the strategy roll for turn #2  and activations in general usually having more impact that armour saves, assault dice and firing in that order. Randomising a known set of numbers would help, but luck would still play a significant part in the game because the impact of the different rolls varies.

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"Play up and play the game"

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Sir Hemry Newbolt