So, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I play WH40K with my three oldest sons, ages 14, 12, and 10. I play Space Marines and have an eclectic army made up of what was cheap on e-bay, my oldest plays a Tyranid army made up mostly of 1) what was cheap on e-bay plus 20 genestealers from the Space Hulk of the 1990's. My second son plays an ork army made up entirely of e-bay material, and my third son plays a Tau army that I started a few years back with a squad of fire warriors, expanded with a Tau Battleforce (which included a crisis suit, devilfish, fire warriors, and stealth suits) and some Kroot, and well, that's pretty much what he has.
As of today, the boys each only have about 750 points of units, and our lists are not tournament quality. They are, as I already said, based on what we could get.
We don't let that deter us, and so we're about to finish up a second tournament where we have round-robin battles: everyone has to battle everyone else, one time. That makes for six battles, and it makes for some really interesting ones. Today, we fought three battles, Space Marines vs. Tau, Tyranids vs. Orks, and Space Marines vs. Tyranids. Yesterday we had two battles: Space Marines vs Orks and Tau vs. Tyranids.
It's been a lot of fun, and we've videotaped battle reports of several of the battles (although not all). Even though we're having a good time, I'd like to do something more with it, but I don't know what. Our battles have been kind of a hybrid of the missions in the BRB - we lay out six objectives. For each objective you control at the end of the battle, you get a victory point. Linebreaker is worth 1 point, First Blood is 1 point, and Slay the Warlord (we each only have one HQ, so we count those as the "warlord") is 2 points.
Of the three boys, whichever one ends up with the highest VP total gets to pick out a unit, up to $30 in value, and I'll buy it for him. Second place of the boys gets to pick out a terrain feature from our FLGS, and the third place son gets to pick a White Dwarf mag and I'll buy that. Loads of fun.
Where can we go to improve on this? This was a good year for us financially, so they're getting a lot of WH40K stuff for Christmas. Everyone is getting an HQ (well, except for the Orks), and they're all getting a Heavy Support unit, too, plus more. I think after Christmas we'll all have at least 1500 points worth of units, although again, none of it is tailored to winning. The Christmas presents are geared towards getting them HQ options and a Heavy Support, filled in with a lot of, again, whatever was cheap on e-bay. (we believe in having fun at low cost)
Does anyone have suggestions for a tournament concept we could try or a site we could check for scenarios to play? I really liked the BOLS batrep pitting the Imperial Gua... I mean, Astra Militarum vs the Tau. Something like that would be a lot of fun, but I don't know how we could make it work with all four armies. Any ideas or suggestions I'll be happy to listen to.