On Saturday I'm hosting a friendly tournament where each player brings a skirmish mission of their choice, which then comprise the pool of available missions for the tournament.

If I end up running more of these friendly tournaments in the future, I want to have more unique ways of breaking the standard tournament structure mold so I thought we could brainstorm.

Ideas:

• Be Unique
  • ​Each unique figure in your list that does not appear in anyone else's list gets some bonus. Either added health, starts the game focused, or something good but not outrageously broken. Hopefully that would create some kind of mindgame for list building. Also you could throw on that if you have a unique figure that is in someone else's list, that figure gets some sort of setback, like they start the game stunned or bleeding.
• Single Faction
  • ​Everyone must field a list from faction X.
• Team Tournament
  • Either play the team game on the special 4 player hoth map, or simply run a regular tournament and combine the scores of players who are on teams.
• Heroic Tournament
  • Each list must consist of only unique characters. The Heroic Effort card is not allowed (otherwise everyone would pick Rebels).
• Super Heroic Tournament.
  • Same as above but each team is limited to 4 activations at most.
• Epic Tournament
  • ​Each army consists of 60 points rather than 40. First to 60 points wins. Either use the regular maps, or just the 4 player map, where each player splits their forces between the two opposite facing deployment zones.

Do any of the above sound fun? or awful? Do you have any ideas to shake up the tournament format in a fun and casual way?

I'm always up for anything that shakes a game up. I haven't played any real twist on IA though, more for X-Wing. I'd definltey be interested to try these - especially Heroic or Super Heroic. Has anyone else got any ideas?

• Heroic Tournament
  • Each list must consist of only unique characters. The Heroic Effort card is not allowed (otherwise everyone would pick Rebels).

Everyone would still pick Rebels. They have a massive number of 21 different uniques, priced at anything between 2 and 16 points, offering unparalleled flexibility.

Imps have seven total, two or arguably three of which are fairly useless without line troops they could support.

Mercs have five.

Anyway, I'd love to play in a doubles tournament, though that would probably need at least one more multiplayer map after Jabba's Realm for variety.

• Heroic Tournament
  • Each list must consist of only unique characters. The Heroic Effort card is not allowed (otherwise everyone would pick Rebels).

Everyone would still pick Rebels. They have a massive number of 21 different uniques, priced at anything between 2 and 16 points, offering unparalleled flexibility.

Imps have seven total, two or arguably three of which are fairly useless without line troops they could support.

Mercs have five.

Anyway, I'd love to play in a doubles tournament, though that would probably need at least one more multiplayer map after Jabba's Realm for variety.

Could mix the heroic tournament with the Be Unique rules.

• Heroic Tournament
  • Each list must consist of only unique characters. The Heroic Effort card is not allowed (otherwise everyone would pick Rebels).

Everyone would still pick Rebels. They have a massive number of 21 different uniques, priced at anything between 2 and 16 points, offering unparalleled flexibility.

Imps have seven total, two or arguably three of which are fairly useless without line troops they could support.

Mercs have five.

Anyway, I'd love to play in a doubles tournament, though that would probably need at least one more multiplayer map after Jabba's Realm for variety.

Could mix the heroic tournament with the Be Unique rules.

With the amount of combinations you can do with 21 different uniques in a 40pt Rebel list, Rebel players would still get most of the bonuses, while chances are that any Merc and Imp players would have fairly similar if not identical lists due to having so ridiculously few workable choices.

What if you did the heroic tournament AND allowed mixed teams? Just bring only unique figures, but from any faction. I can see my Leia + Vader + Boba list already...

Edit:

Even better - Family Reunion (with Uncle Gideon):

Darth Vader with Combat Suit

Leia

Luke

Gideon

Heroic Effort (every player gets this by default in this version)

I think just playing different maps would be different enough, if you really want to put some thought into it, you could create your own maps from say the core set, or whatever people have most, and even create your own scenarios.

I rarely play the tournament maps, unless I'm at a tournament. There are some really great maps already created. Some of the scenarios are skewed towards one type of play, but with a little finesse and changing a word or two on rules, you could get several balanced maps, that maybe weren't played as much.

What if you did the heroic tournament AND allowed mixed teams? Just bring only unique figures, but from any faction. I can see my Leia + Vader + Boba list already...

Edit:

Even better - Family Reunion (with Uncle Gideon):

Darth Vader with Combat Suit

Leia

Luke

Gideon

Heroic Effort (every player gets this by default in this version)

I like this idea. This could be expanded on by combining it with the Be Unique idea that punishes figures that more than one people brought and rewards figures that only one person brought.

Or you could get really funky and have no prepared lists before the event and have a character draft of sorts. So each character will only appear once across all lists. Draft until you can no longer fit unique characters in your list, or something like that.

I really like the Be Unique idea. You could extent it to non-uniques as well. So if I field rTuskens, and no one else does, then one of them starts with a positive condition. Or maybe both?

I've got an idea, bring an army for your opponent to use. You play a different army each time, but always against the same one. Opponent should create the command deck, but that could add some time.

Epic Tournament is the most straightforward. Hope to try that for casual play sometime.

I don't think we have enough (unique) unit diversity for many of the other modes yet. Maybe in a couple years the Empire will have more uniques. (It's not like Sorin does much without non-uniques to back him up anyway.)

What about

Paradox:

Any deployment cards in your list that has a match in your opponents list are immediately defeated.