Having someone to experience the highs and lows of a game with helps keep things light hearted. For me it is more difficult to get wrapped up in the tactics and stress of the competition. It seems easier to swallow those bad dice rolls when you are laughing alongside someone else you know.
But at the same time as the friendship makes the tournament more easy going, the list combos make the touranment dirty - in a good way! When you field (2) 1000 point lists you open yourself up to all kinds of crazy things. I may or may not know individuals who would think about fielding 36 fiends of chaos at 2000 points. I have also seen dual C'tan combo lists carry the day. It the doubles tournament it is certainly easier to relax, but you simply have to bring a beardy combo list.... but thats part of the fun, right?
When you start combining armies you can get some very interesting synergies. Last year at Bolscon I fielded a wraithwall at 1000 points. I took:
An avatar
3 wraithlords with flamers and wraithswords
A unit of 10 wraithguard
and a unit of jetbikes.
My partner, Big Al, fielded a Tyranid force consisting of also primarily monstrous creatures. A whole lot of psykers. Our plan was simple - to use the Tyranid psykers to keep my big fatties from succumbing to wraithsight. The other though was to keep our opponents to busy and overwhelmed with monstrous creatures, capitalizing on the lack of fire our opponents might have after buying their 4 total troops choices. Our glaring week points was that Big Al provided the only long ranged weaponry we took:
A pair of units of gaunts
A pair of units of hive guard
Hive Tyrant
Big Bad Mama Bug
Our plan and combo worked well and we suffered our only slight loss to the hands of daemons after some fiends ate our only fire support. We faired quite well against a Tau/Space Marine alliance, and against a dual space wolf terminator list. In the end, Big Al and I finished up taking 2nd best general in the Wargames Con Doubles tournament and we were quite pleased and surprised.
For this year, my partner in crime from last year has declined to return to Wargames Con. So I plan on partnering up with Big D for our fourth doubles tournament pairing. In the last major doubles tournament where I played with Big D we ran a dual lash chaos, and heavy tank IG. We did pretty well and tied for third place at the 2nd Big Waagh.
But, now we find ourselves looking toward this summer and trying to plan our lists. We need the time to paint up the armies and maybe even test them once or twice. I am willing to field either my Imperial Guard, My Eldar (WraithWall or Seer Council), or build a new army - Grey Knights for the double list (I have some Tau - but they are pretty much out). Big D has too many armies to list and he is very ready to also build a new 1000 point army for the event. So, here we find ourselves trying to come up with a new combo to build toward.
What should we take? Any ideas from the rumors from Grey Knights? Any dastardly combos you guys have seen? We will keep you all apprised as we go forth on how are lists and models develop!