Early on, the decision was made that the combined army had to adhere to a single force org chart, rather than each player having to adhere. That meant that 1 player could, conceivably, take all the heavy and elite slots while the other player takes troops and HQ. Seems simple enough, right?
Not so fast! One team was running all Tau. On the other team, one player was running IG, the other Marines (me). Since I regularly use reserve units, my teammate, Aaron, decided - hey, let's use the IG Astropath so that the marines get a +1 on Reserve Rolls. This began a massive debate about what should be allowed and what should be unallowed in team games, that is, how should army-wide special abilities and game rules affect a mixed team? Should the Astropath's ability affect Space Marine allies? Can guardsmen climb into an empty Rhino? Can a lone SM Captain join a squad of guardsmen?
If all four player are playing different armies, you can make some global calls about this at the beginning of the game: everything goes, nothing goes, or pick and choose. However in our situation, we have a mixed team with a homogenous team. The all-Tau force doesn't have to consider questions like this. We can safely assume the Shades' Fire Warriors can climb into Erik's Devilfish. It would seem ridiculous to disallow this just because the players are different. Disallowing this would be the same as having a player assist you in playing your own whole army and then deciding that the models that he was controlling couldn't interact with your models in a beneficial way because they were controlled by a different player.
It seemed counterintuitive to the Tau team that SM's and Guard should be able to use each others' abilities, leadership, independent characters, or transports. And it should be pointed out that the SM+Guard team have an ability the Tau team does not have: the ability to make up for the other ones' shortcomings (not that marines have shortcomings) when building our army list. We can build a force of tough-as-nails marine infantry combined with hordes of cheap guard tanks. The question then becomes, does this strategic benefit outweight the tactical ability losses our combined teams suffer?
Here's what we went with: The Tau-team (Shades and Erik) get the army-wide and team-wide benefits of leadership, independent characters, troop transports, as well as special abilities like markerlights and such. The SM-Guard team (Shannon and Aaron), have the opportunity to build a more strategically viable army list thanks to the wider array of unit options and the ability to shore up each others' weaknesses. The SM-Guard team are denied army-wide abilities, shared leadership, trading independent characters, and shared transports.
I still don't know what is balanced, but I DO know that come end of the game, if I win, I want to know it was because I outplayed the other team. I don't want anyone, myself included, to think "if the SM hadn't gotten the astropath ability, they wouldn't have won." So we play as conservatively as possible within the accepted framework (shared force org chart), and if we win, no one can accuse us of breaking the system.
For future games, I think it is best if each team maintains its own independent force org chart. However with a smallish 1500 points per side, its difficult to field tactically viable full force org charts at only 750 points. The table winds up flooded with troops and no one has any heavy choices.
What do you think? Should mixed armies sharing a force org chart be able to share each others' tactical abilities as if they were the same army? Should team-ups contrary to the fluff be permitted (tau+SM)? Is there any way to guarantee game balance in team games?
In my experience, it is always better to decide these questions in advance of the game. Once the dice are rolling, someone is going to be left with a sour taste in their mouth as either they feel they are denied something they ought to have had, or they feel that the other player is breaking the rules. Just talk it out in advance, and if you can't come to an acceptable consensus, don't play. It's that simple.
And don't bother wishing Aaron and I luck. We shouldn't need it. BWAHAHAHA!
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