4 player initiative and player order rules?

[decay]

While playing Malifaux 4 player I found that 2vs2 is the way to go. But how do you handle the player order during initiative? If everybody draws initiative and both players from Team A have the higher cards I think that would be quite an advantage for this team.

[jonahmaul]

If you're playing 2 v 2 I would just do one flip for each team.  Last time we played 2 v 2 we said that each team had to alternate their activations too so person A couldn't activate all their models before person B activated any.  Things such as how you'll do initiative, one control hand per team/person, whether you have to alternate activations etc. should all be decide beforehand.

 

In the 3 and 4 way scenarios that are available in the schemes and strat deck we had each player flip cards and then the highest got to choose whether they would go first and if they didn't then the next highest would get to choose and so on.  So it went in card order but if you forfeited activating first you went to the bottom of the queue.

[Rob Lo]

If you're just making up your own house rules 2v2, go with whatever feels right. I'd guess 1 flip for each team would be easiest/fastest (which I would always favor in multiplayer games). As for within one team, who activates first, alternate activations or freeform can both work, they just lead to different styles of strategy, where one choice may favor various crews more than the other.

 

If you've really got no feel for what you'd like and just need a starting off point, you could just go with the Tag Team format rule from the newly released Alternate M2E Tournament Format:

 

Teams flip for initiative and alternate Activating models as if each team were a single player. However, each

player has complete control over the models which they selected for their original 25 Soulstone Crew in all

aspects including Cheating Fate and using Soulstones. When it is a team’s turn to Activate a model, they

must choose which player’s model they are Activating.