40k has been on the market for awhile, and in that time, there have been tons of competitors. Some (such as WMH and X-Wing) have become more mainstream and heavy competitors, while others such as VOID or Stargrunt II faded away into obscurity for assorted reasons (IKOR's accounting cooking the books, Jon Tuffley not using "Point Values" for his systems, etc), but a general constant is they've all used a different turn order.
Warmachine and Hordes are still pure IGOUGO, barring any special "out of turn" abilities (Countercharge, Arcane Vortex, Bullet Dodger, etc), but those are generally not integral to the core rules. In that regard, it's not too different from 40k. Its main difference is that rather than separate "move", "magic", "shoot" and "melee" phases, it uses activations. This is a partial improvement to 40k, because rather than having to go over each unit one-by-one to move, then one-by-one to shoot, then one-by-one to assault, you do everything you need to do with a unit, then move onto the next.
Some games use "I Phase you Phase", which partially eliminated downtime between players but brings up the issue of artificially dividing the game into phases, rather than the game flowing more fluidly.
Then there are the "alternating activation" systems. Some (Stargrunt 2) are "activate one unit", some (Epic) are "one unit + one additional unit", while others (Bolt Action) use a "die bag" mechanic to determine who activates next. Generally, the issues with Activation systems happen when one side has *more* units than the other, getting the option to "pass" their turn by moving junk units around. Furthermore, when combined with certain options (Officers allowing units around them to immediately activate), and the game can easily converge towards becoming IGOUGO with window dressing anyway! However, they have the potential to solve both issues with GW's phase-based IGOUGO: Excessive downtime between both players, and having to "activate" (as in do anything with) a unit multiple times.
Given the numerous competitors out there, how come GW has stuck with its same turn structure for 40k, and AOS (with the comedic aspect of allowing "Double Turns" on top!)? I'm actually curious how much of it is designer inertia, versus executive meddling.
MagicJuggler wrote: Intent: With 8th using Age of Sigmar rules for the Fight Sub-Phase, 40k has become a game of "I-go-you-go" with an alternating activation game-within-a-game, and so I've been in at least several other discussions about how to just make 40k Alternate altogether. So I figured I would join in and go for an Alternating Activation system that had relatively minimal bookkeeping, had a relatively streamlined set of actions you could do, and would most importantly keep the game fast-paced and fun, rewarding clever tactical play over everything else! The rules as written are fairly edition-agnostic, though the removal of Initiative makes it easier to use this system for 8th. As usual, comments and criticisms are appreciated.
What I'm looking for: Folks to help playtest, give counter-suggestions, look for potential problems in the system, etc. Also, ways to help "Flesh Out" the "army-specific" special rules. I've had a fair bit of time to "hammer out" (ha!) the rules due to sickness but I'm sure there are assorted editorial gaffes in the system too. Originally the rules were that "Retaining the Initiative" let you only activate a "second" unit (as opposed to having a larger activation with gradually increasing CP costs), and it didn't allow for Interrupting an Interrupt. These were adjusted to add even more "risk management"/generalship to the game, as you must decide when to feint, when to do an all-out attack, how to keep units supporting each other, etc.
Alternating Activationhammer 40k:
In Alternating Activationhammer, you have 3 Phases: The Strategy Phase, the Action Phase, and the Resolution Phase.
The Strategy Phase
Spoiler:
In the Strategy Phase, both players must do the following:
-Determine how many Command Points they have for the turn.
A key note on Command Points:CP are not used for die rerolls, autopassing Morale, etc. Rather than being a fixed resource for the entire game, they replenish at the start of the turn. Currently, I'm imagining you get 1 CP per turn, plus 1 for every 500 points of game, though this may be adjusted based on your army. They're used less for "Fate manipulation", and for "coordinating your army." Depending on what new Stratagems the Codexes add, some CP options may make it into this rewrite too.
-Resolve any Maintenance effects (this is a catchall, for whether you want to add "damage over time", warp charge, etc).
-Take Morale checks: A morale check is done on 2d6, subject to Leadership modifiers (-1 for each round of attacks the unit has suffered). If the unit fails its Leadership check, you must place an Action token on it as it is "shaken." If it fails by twice its Leadership value, it is *broken*, meaning it must use 2 actions each turn to retreat towards "safety" (usually defined as your deployment edge), until it regroups successfully in the Resolution Phase
-Each player should roll-off to determine the "Initiative", meaning the order in which players activate their units. The winner select s the order in which all players activate their units.
The Action Phase:
Spoiler:
In the Action Phase, each player alternates between Activating their units until no player is left with any units that may be Activated.
A key note on Movement and close combat: This system does not have the 1" rule. This is intentional. Rather, different melee weapons have different ranges on them (which does default to 1" for most cases, but can be made longer for certain items such as Hunting Lances, Lash Whips or Warscythes). You *can* move within this melee range, but doing so provokes a "Free Strike", where the model makes a single auto-hitting melee attack against the model in question. If in melee range of your opponent, you are Engaged.
Engaged: While Engaged with one or more enemy units, you may only direct attacks against those units. An Engaged unit may not shoot, with the exception of Assault or Pistol weapons.
Activating a Unit: When it is a player's turn to activate one of their units, they nominate one unit, which must perform either 1 or 2 actions (to a maximum of 2). It costs 1 CP to Activate a unit that has already taken a single Action.
Actions: Every unit may perform up to two Actions per turn. Of those actions, only one of them may be used for Shooting. It is generally recommended to place tokens next to units to determine which units have "acted", with Shooting being a different color than actions that did not involve Shooting. (Note: This can be subject to change.) The Actions include:
-Defend: You add a Defense Token to your unit. "Defense" is a catchall for Smoke Launchers, Jink, Go to Ground, Ion Shields, or many other assorted defensive maneuvers. A unit may have up to *one* Defense Token on it; when shooting at a unit that has a Defense Token, cut the number of successful hits you land on that unit in half. Should you have a "remainder" leftover, roll a separate 4+ to see if it rounds up or down.
-Advance: The unit discards a Defense Token if it has one, and may move up to its Move stat; if the unit is Engaged with an enemy unit, it must move in a manner to avoid being Engaged by that unit. At the start of the Advance, you may *declare* a target enemy unit (or units). At the end of your move, you may either attack with an Assault Weapon, or two melee weapons (divide attacks among them) or pistols in any combination; if attacking with melee weapons/pistols, you can make a 3" step which does not trigger Free Strike.
--Note: An Advance that ends in at least one melee or pistol attack is defined as a Charge. An advance where a unit starts off Engaged with another enemy, but is no longer in melee at the end is defined as Disengaging. Although you cannot Disengage then Charge the same enemy unit, you can Disengage one enemy unit in order to charge another.
-Combat: You make declare a target enemy unit (or units), then make an attack against said unit. A unit may attack with any combination of melee, psychic, or shooting attacks in a Combat action (though remember that only one Action per turn may allow Shooting). If this is a melee or pistol attack, you can make a 3" step as well, ignoring Free Strikes; if no enemies are around after a melee attack, you may follow up with a 3" Consolidate. Unlike Advance, you do not discard a Defense Token. Shooting with a Heavy Weapon is a single action that requires 2 Action Points for Infantry/Cavalry/Jump Infantry. (Alternately, a BS Penalty for only using one Action?)
Interrupts: After your opponent declares a target as part of an action, you may attempt an Interrupt, either before your opponent moves or before your opponent attacks (but not both). With an Interrupt, the select a single unit to perform one (and only one) Action; Interrupting costs 1 CP if the unit that was Interrupting had already performed a prior Action that turn, cumulative with any other CP costs.
Interrupting an Interrupt: You may Interrupt an Interrupt that Declared a Target, by spending a CP (in addition to any other CP costs); these Interrupts can be Interrupted in turn, but the CP cost increments by 1 for each subsequent Interrupt. Interrupts are placed in a ‘stack’ and resolved from the most recent Interrupt. A unit may not Interrupt if it is being Interrupted by any other unit in the stack (Designer Note: From testing, I find the best way to keep track of an Interrupt stack is to place a die next to each unit in the stack. Once all Interrupts are declared, resolve them one at a time; remove a die and replace it with an action token, until all actions are resolved).
What Happens if I can't attack my declared target? If a unit cannot attack its originally declared target (because it moved out of range/line of sight, your opponent moved another unit in the way blocking LOS, a barrage scattered, a Warp Spider jump went awry, etc), one of two things happen. If the unit was Interrupting, the attack is "wasted". However, if it was the original activating unit, it may optionally declare a new target (On the fence as to whether this should cost a CP), potentially triggering another Interrupt Stack.
Retaining the Initiative: Once you have finished performing an Activation, the next opponent gets to Activate a second unit. However, you may choose to Activate a second unit by spending 1 CP. You may activate a third unit by spending 2 CP, a fourth unit by spending 3 CP, etc. These costs *are* cumulative, and are in addition to any other costs (bringing in units from Reserve, activating units that previously took only one action, etc). This means activating 5 units at once will cost 10 CP (1+2+3+4).
Bringing in units from Reserves: There is no cap on how many units in your army may come in from Reserves. However, Activating a unit in Reserves costs 1 CP in addition to any other CP cost. (Note: Certain items, such as Teleport Homers, could bring in "some" units per turn without this CP cost). This represents the additional logistical and command overhead needed to coordinate reinforcements.
Priority Target: You may subtract 1 from the CP cost of any Activation or Interrupt if the end result is to attack an enemy Superheavy with the Interrupting/Activated unit that turn.
The Resolution Phase:
Spoiler:
In the Resolution Phase, you must do the following:
-Tally VP for objectives.
-Roll for any units that are retreating to Regroup. This is a single unmodified Leadership test.
Misc Notes:
Spoiler:
General: These rules were intentionally made very loose to enable some pretty open-ended stuff: Advance was written in a very loose way, to either allow for "Run & Gun" shenanigans, "Hit and Run" melee (Be it Shining Spears or Death Cult Assassins), and to promote a more "fluid" melee as a whole. Defend is meant to be useful for "Digging in", but the actual implementation of Defense Tokens is currently up in the air; I may just settle for "+1 Toughness versus Shooting per Defense Token" or something simple like that if it comes to that.
Unit Types: Individual unit types might have a few restrictions or permutations on the Actions. As an example, Flyers need to perform at least one Advance Action per turn, but ignore the CP cost for being activated a second time if their second action is a move.
Disruption: Another thing that may be worth considering is the ability for certain weapons to place "junk" Action Points on enemy units, effectively giving them one less Action to work with that turn. As an example: If you hit an enemy vehicle with a variable number of Haywire attacks, roll a D6, adding +1 for each "Hit" you scored with that unit's Haywire attacks. If you exceed the Toughness of that vehicle, it gains an extra "Action Point". "Sniper" weapons can do something similar to enemy Infantry.
Army-Specific Notes:
Spoiler:
Ad-mech: Transonic Weapons use their primary profile during a Combat action, and the secondary profile in an Advance. Servitors have Mind-Lock: It costs 1 additional CP to Activate or Interrupt with a unit of Servitors that does not have a friendly Adeptus Mechanicus unit within 3" of them (or embarked on the same transport).
Chaos Daemons: Beasts of Nurgle subtract 1 from the CP cost to Charge as an Interrupt Action. A Daemon Icon may bring in one Daemon unit of the same Alignment from Reserve for no CP.
Dark Angels: Dark Angels may only be Shaken. They subtract 1 CP from the cost to Interrupt an Activated unit that is attempting to Charge.
Eldar: Laser Lances/Star Lances/Zephyrdale use their main profile during an Advance, and the secondary profile otherwise. I imagine Ynnari would get a mechanism where they replenish CP in-game (or remove single actions) as they lose units, but recommendations are always appreciated.
Genestealer Cults: TBD.
Imperial Guard: Need time to think about this, but I imagine Orders would be rather useful for "working around" the system as a whole. Hunting Lances may only be used for a Charge.
Orks: When an Ork unit successfully pulls off a Melee attack, you may reduce the cost cost of Retaining the Initiative by 1 CP. Waaaagh!
Tau: Supporting Fire means the Tau subtract 1 CP from the cost to Interrupt for Engage attacks that involve shooting.
Tyranids: Tyranids outside Synapse range must spend at least 1 Action on their Instinctual Behavior action. IB: Feed units must move towards the closest enemy unit, IB: Lurk units must Defend, and IB: Hunt units must shoot the closest enemy unit.
That is a lot of work that you have put in.
I share your concerns and wish that GW would hire people with the intellect to produce good game systems.
Three ways to play should include a sort of plug and play advanced system that people can choose from.
Why not?
And alternate activations should be one choice.
I like orders assigned also with chits face down like overwatch and so on.
Maybe a command point mechanic to get to change orders when a unit is activated.
But it seems from reading this and other sites that many people don't really want a strategy war game anymore.
Seems the vocal masses want a collectible card game with 3d cards.
So I play my cards then you play yours and repeat.
That said there is nothing stopping a different activation mechanic even for a card game.
And no reason not to offer one besides lack of interest, lack of intellect and ability, and as you suggest expected lack of profitability for doing the requisite work.
Gonna have to pay smart people a lot of hours to fix the mess they have made even now after the numarines Girlyman Reboot.
Or let dedicated volunteers like you do it for them.
My suspicion is that this is where GW is at.
Past management offloaded game design to hobbyists with the guts to stick it out.
The Model Workshop era.
Now they are back to being a game company but the game and perhaps more crucially their target demographic has changed.
If they want to retain the interest of serious people then they will eventually have to advance into something, well, more advanced.
Given the rapid expanse of interest in games in general these past few years especially RPGs and mini games like star wars the growing market is becoming more sophisticated. More saavy. People want to play good games. As plastics get cheaper and easier to design and produce, the systems will likely become a topic for more in depth comparative analysis.
I expect that eventually your voice will be heard or at least your interests in a better turn mechanic recognized.
I hope so anyways.
As for how to do it best, well you have given this much more thought and I will have to think about what you have offered already before I will be able to judge.
MagicJuggler wrote: I do However, it is still a curious thing that there are 3 other threads on 40k turn structure on the front of the Proposed Rules section.
Yeah. I agree. I should have noted those as well.
Please note my amended initial post...
Noting a similar explosion in cover and terrain threads and comments,
I collected terrain and cover ideas into a broad poll to gauge opinion.
Maybe try something like that with activations?
I play Dropzone Commander, which uses activations. Units are, however, activated by their detachment, and an army has 3 to 5 detachments in it to activate. I pick my UCM Armored Detachment, and it has a couple of tank squads in it, my tank squads go one by one, then my picks his unit.
IGOUGO is pretty nice, all things considered. It's straighforward and easy to understand, and makes it much easier to plot things like unit buffs and such.
I would recommend keeping the IGOUGO nature, and shifting the movement phase to the end of the turn.
It's definitely on the archaic side, but I think there is such a large portion of the gaming populace for 40K who don't care that I don't see it changing any time soon.
I play 2nd ed. with unique activation rules and that particular game group will be playing 8th ed. in a similar fashion at some point. It simply makes the game 10x more interesting.
A lot of the meta/net/supercomp guys will be against it because it removes the planned alpha-strikes, etc. from the game. It thoroughly undoes a ton of Mathhammer.
Elbows wrote: It's definitely on the archaic side, but I think there is such a large portion of the gaming populace for 40K who don't care that I don't see it changing any time soon.
I play 2nd ed. with unique activation rules and that particular game group will be playing 8th ed. in a similar fashion at some point. It simply makes the game 10x more interesting.
A lot of the meta/net/supercomp guys will be against it because it removes the planned alpha-strikes, etc. from the game. It thoroughly undoes a ton of Mathhammer.
Removing "pre-planned" alphastrikes where once you commit to a plan, it can more-or-less go on autopilot barring the odd disruption seems like it would improve the game as a whole. I dunno about you, but that mindset of "my netlist isn't able to alphastrike" seems a bit...off.
I don't think a large part of the gaming population prefers 40k as IGOUGO. I think a large part of the gaming population prefers official rules.
Right now the vast majority of the people who play 40k want an official rule book that tells them how the game works and they want to follow those rules and learn how to play within the rules. If a year down the line GW released a "New way to play" supplement that rebuilt the game as alternating phases and/or alternating activations I think players would experiment and we would find more and more people shifting towards the more tactical version of the game (if the mechanics of those systems are all otherwise considered equal).
I think GW hasn't changed yet because despite all the progress of 8th they still have people dedicated to the outdated systems in place. Consider.... JRPG video games. Random battles because you are walking. Slow as dirt turn based combat. Up until very recently JRPGs have been in a rut of 30 years developing games off the same mechanics that were developed in the 80s. They were stagnant in their innovation and stalwartly refused to move into the modern era of game play. GW is still in that boat even though it looks like SquareEnix has actually managed to start to move on.
I guess DZC's detachment-activation system can be a reasonable way to handle the main weakness of alternating activation, which is "what happens if one player has a lot more units to activate?"
As long as each player has the same number of detachments (plus or minus one, maybe) they still basically take the same number of turns.
I guess one could argue that there's no difference between getting more single unit turns, or having more units that act within an equal number of turns. But I think the first scenario feels more "off" because it causes the game to suddenly shift gears: you were responding to each other one unit at a time until one of you ran out of units, and suddenly the other player just got to go on a rampage unopposed.
Where as, say, three large detachments alternating with three smaller detachments at least still get the same number of opportunities to react (three), and the only difference is what they're reacting with.
"Pre-planned" anything in "Eternal War 40K" is what desperately needs changing if this game is to be played in an actually tactical way. And there are a lot of different ways to achieve this goal. But unfortunately that is not what majority of this community wants, so people like us are "stuck" to our small, like minded local groups...
As to OP question, I think this is mostly for practicality of large model count game as a comercial endavour. You need to remember, that GW can't just cut off those potential customers, who would have troubles with added book-keeping, complication or tactical depth. "Grand alphastrike plans" are appealing mostly because they are very easy to prepare in a cosy armchair and perform automaticaly on the tabletop, giving people false sense of strategic proficiency. I remember my first WTF moment after returning to 40K, when I saw how perfectly winnable matchup of 7th ed has been conceded after not drawing a "pre-planned around" psychic power because this "general" had no ability to improvise on the fly...
ross-128 wrote: I guess DZC's detachment-activation system can be a reasonable way to handle the main weakness of alternating activation, which is "what happens if one player has a lot more units to activate?"
As long as each player has the same number of detachments (plus or minus one, maybe) they still basically take the same number of turns.
I guess one could argue that there's no difference between getting more single unit turns, or having more units that act within an equal number of turns. But I think the first scenario feels more "off" because it causes the game to suddenly shift gears: you were responding to each other one unit at a time until one of you ran out of units, and suddenly the other player just got to go on a rampage unopposed.
Where as, say, three large detachments alternating with three smaller detachments at least still get the same number of opportunities to react (three), and the only difference is what they're reacting with.
It might be an idea worth experimenting with, to divide armies not into rigid detachments, but establishing the best common denominator for both armies at the start of the game and then activate such small batches of units at once. The idea behind it is that both players activate roughly even point values at once, so there is a rough ballance between advantage of MSU and concentrated firepower approaches to list building, which is the biggest issue with alternating activations in a game with both grots and IKs... (To expand on this example, Orks vs IKs would be like three knights vs three subdivisions of an Ork force).
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: I play Dropzone Commander, which uses activations. Units are, however, activated by their detachment, and an army has 3 to 5 detachments in it to activate. I pick my UCM Armored Detachment, and it has a couple of tank squads in it, my tank squads go one by one, then my picks his unit.
IGOUGO is pretty nice, all things considered. It's straighforward and easy to understand, and makes it much easier to plot things like unit buffs and such.
I would recommend keeping the IGOUGO nature, and shifting the movement phase to the end of the turn.
It think if you are going for alternating for a 40k game scale by "detachment" would be the way to go. The problem is it would to some extent require a re-design of the game. As big expensive units essentially break this system (things like 10 paladins). I think if your were trying to do this from current you would need to say "break your army into ~500 point chunks (as close as possible) each of these is a detachment." Even then super heavies break this somewhat as they might be 2 detachments worth of points. It is also possible for people to stack detachments etc.
Any other method essentially is a huge buff to MSU, and you end up with people taking cheap "pass" activations to force the opponent to expose themselves first, then striking when the opponent has no response left with their heavy hitters.
ross-128 wrote: I guess DZC's detachment-activation system can be a reasonable way to handle the main weakness of alternating activation, which is "what happens if one player has a lot more units to activate?"
As long as each player has the same number of detachments (plus or minus one, maybe) they still basically take the same number of turns.
I guess one could argue that there's no difference between getting more single unit turns, or having more units that act within an equal number of turns. But I think the first scenario feels more "off" because it causes the game to suddenly shift gears: you were responding to each other one unit at a time until one of you ran out of units, and suddenly the other player just got to go on a rampage unopposed.
Where as, say, three large detachments alternating with three smaller detachments at least still get the same number of opportunities to react (three), and the only difference is what they're reacting with.
It might be an idea worth experimenting with, to divide armies not into rigid detachments, but establishing the best common denominator for both armies at the start of the game and then activate such small batches of units at once. The idea behind it is that both players activate roughly even point values at once, so there is a rough ballance between advantage of MSU and concentrated firepower approaches to list building, which is the biggest issue with alternating activations in a game with both grots and IKs... (To expand on this example, Orks vs IKs would be like three knights vs three subdivisions of an Ork force).
Yup more or less, other wise you get those 3 knights against an imperial army that takes 10 acolytes (80 points) and passes activations until a knights have all gone, then moves in all its firepower to take them out.
What I was aiming for in my system was a "two actions" one, where a mix of actions, half-actions, interrupts and counter-interrupts could mitigate alphastrikes by making MSU consecutive activations artithmetically expensive, while putting more emphasis on melee over shooting. I do have a fair bit of tweaking to do, especially regarding "how many command points" units should have, but for the time being it is a fairly simple system.
Isn't "detachment activation" what Apocalypse tried doing, out of curiosity?
Bolt Action is a bit random, although you do get to choose who activates if your token/die is pulled. I know there's already a Gates of 40k rules version pretty far along on the proposed rules.
Something which a little more control would better suite 40k, but there has to be a cost or risk.
Say, maybe like Warmaster? Except if you fail to activate a unit, it doesn't lose its actions?
Either way, as much as I like this new edition, you feel now strained the game is with My-Army-Your-Army systems, especially now that terrain is less effective, and there's no incoming fire mitigation like go to ground.
Vertrucio wrote: Bolt Action is a bit random, although you do get to choose who activates if your token/die is pulled. I know there's already a Gates of 40k rules version pretty far along on the proposed rules.
Something which a little more control would better suite 40k, but there has to be a cost or risk.
Say, maybe like Warmaster? Except if you fail to activate a unit, it doesn't lose its actions?
Either way, as much as I like this new edition, you feel now strained the game is with My-Army-Your-Army systems, especially now that terrain is less effective, and there's no incoming fire mitigation like go to ground.
The issue I find with Bolt Action or Gates or Konflict is twofold: First, the randomness doesn't scale, and the more units per side, the more possiblility of larger activations. Second, you can combo random turns with officers or double-activating units for larger activations, making the game more akin to IgoUgo.
With Epic, failing to activate or retain the initiative is uncommon enough yet consequential enough that randomly getting bad rolls *hurts*.
When 8th announced Command Points, I was intrigued. However, I then found it annoying that it was less about "coordinating" your army, and more about activating assorted MOBA action bombs. Neff white quoted my rewrite, but I reworked Command Points as a "resource mechanic" (akin to WMH) to eliminate the randomness of activation systems. Having said resource mechanic be shared for "half activations", counter-Interrupts, consecutive actions, or bringing units from reserves. Naturally, this means while you *can* do something like a 101st Airborne drop, the results will be far less coordinated than normal. Incremental costs make massive turns excessively impractical, except if you want to gamble on an all-out attack.
After that, I figured a two-action system lets me reduce the total number of types of actions (no need for shoot vs sustained fire, vs march & shoot, vs triple march, or so), while being vaguely XCOM-esque. It also means that besides Reaction Fire, you still have access to Reaction moves and Reaction defense. The "2 actions for activation, 1 for interrupt" penalizes overwatch-camping as it means less actions and command points over your turn.
Adding the ability to interrupt interrupts also lets you model the fact units don't act in isolation, but work as mutually supporting cogs in a greater war-machine. Adding a "resolution stack" . The beauty of this system is I found rather than slowing the game to a crawl, it *sped* things up immensely, since interrupts eat into your army's overall actions and command points per turn. When I playtested it, one general "maneuver" worth doing was "leapfrogging". Squad A would advance under the support of B, and "hold" an area. If the enemy attempted to shoot, they could reposition into cover, or let a Heavy team support.
It still needs tweaking of course. I will add "eligible to attack" as an interrupt requirement, and I need to decide on a more concrete CP mechanism rather than "point levels." I might add optional rules for allowing you to spend CP to activate two or more units as though they were the same unit, though I imagine that would only be for smaller Disgaea-esque skirmish games, dood.
I think we could achieve the best of both worlds as it were by simply changing the phase order, since moving the movement phase to be the last phase would make predictive and tactical position far more important than it is, and allow the enemy to react before being decimated by fire.
Alternating activations negatively affect the scalability of the game and a flexibility of army consist.
1st and 2nd edition Epic were I go, you go within phases (I move all my Charging detachments, then you do all yours. I move all my Advancing units, then you. I fire with all my Fist Fire units, then you do yours, etc), and Epic Armageddon is alternate activation with a leadership test to activate and a chance to retain the initiative and activate two detachments one after the other to mix things up a bit.
I go, you go lets you carry out a coordinated plan with multiple units - that's why War Machine and Infinity (and Malifaux?) do it.
Personally - my favorite turn structure was in babylon 5.
Each unit had an initiative value and you rolled a d20 and added that to it for each unit. Once initiative was determined for all units - the highest initiative unit went first and proceeded down.
It made a lot of sense - fast ships had high inititive values. Battleships values were very low. Stuff in the middle came down to a dice roll. Obviosuly this would add another step. So for 40k - maybe just skip the dice roll. Units go based on their initiative value. It would be a lot better than Igougo.
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: Alternating activations negatively affect the scalability of the game and a flexibility of army consist.
The same argument is made for IGOUGO simply because of "I move my entire army and alphastrike you, you move what's left of your army." Alternation is potentially more scalable if you add a proper interruption system and non-randomize the turn order.
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AndrewGPaul wrote: I go, you go lets you carry out a coordinated plan with multiple units - that's why War Machine and Infinity (and Malifaux?) do it.
This isn't exclusive to IGOUGO, unless you mean it makes mass alphastrikes easier.
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nou wrote: "Grand alphastrike plans" are appealing mostly because they are very easy to prepare in a cosy armchair and perform automaticaly on the tabletop, giving people false sense of strategic proficiency.
But what do you mean my strategy only works if my opponent sits there and does nothing? Nonsense, I am a better strategist and I only lose when you bring cheese!
IGOUGO makes it simple and straightforward. Activations complicate the game, regardless of if it's more balanced. This results in longer games, and over-complication costs players. At most I'd do concurrent assault and shooting phases, simply meaning that both sides attack at the same time. A unit that dies thus cans till do damage the turn it dies.
AndrewGPaul wrote: 1st and 2nd edition Epic were I go, you go within phases (I move all my Charging detachments, then you do all yours. I move all my Advancing units, then you. I fire with all my Fist Fire units, then you do yours, etc), and Epic Armageddon is alternate activation with a leadership test to activate and a chance to retain the initiative and activate two detachments one after the other to mix things up a bit.
I go, you go lets you carry out a coordinated plan with multiple units - that's why War Machine and Infinity (and Malifaux?) do it.
Malifaux is not IGOUGO, it is alternating model activations. Which largely works due to small number of models, but it has had some issues with certain builds being able to out activate opponents and force them into the open then kill them. This is less of an issue in 40k due to weapon ranges, but still would matter to an extent. It is why I would opt for a groups of units style activation if you wanted to break from the IGOUGO. A system where units were broken into detachments of as close as possible to 500 points, and each of those activated at the same time would cut down on alpha strike. It could be gamed to some extent with super large and powerful units (a 1000 point unit would allow for basically taking 2 activations at once, but those units are few and far between, and typically not very good, the biggest issue here would be things like terminators in land raiders)
Alternating activations negatively affect the scalability of the game and a flexibility of army consist.
These things can be fixed with creative rules writing. For lots of folks who have played alternating activation games - the possibility of 'more units on one side' or whatever is heavily outweighed by 'I don't have to spend an hour on Tinder while you're moving and shooting and assaulting with your entire army'.
I like a combined alternating activation in phases, the number of units in play determines who goes first in each phase.
Movement Phase: Player with more units goes first.
Psychic Phase: Player with fewer units goes first.
Shooting Phase: Player with fewer units goes first.
Assault Phase: Player with fewer units goes first.
If you have the same number of units then roll off.
Drager wrote: I like a combined alternating activation in phases, the number of units in play determines who goes first in each phase.
Movement Phase: Player with more units goes first.
Psychic Phase: Player with fewer units goes first.
Shooting Phase: Player with fewer units goes first.
Assault Phase: Player with fewer units goes first.
If you have the same number of units then roll off.
Doing any activations like this in 40k tends to be bad because people can run 3 giant things and go first most of the time.
Drager wrote: I like a combined alternating activation in phases, the number of units in play determines who goes first in each phase.
Movement Phase: Player with more units goes first.
Psychic Phase: Player with fewer units goes first.
Shooting Phase: Player with fewer units goes first.
Assault Phase: Player with fewer units goes first.
If you have the same number of units then roll off.
Doing any activations like this in 40k tends to be bad because people can run 3 giant things and go first most of the time.
They only get to use one giant thing first though and they have to let their opponent move after seeing their positioning, it's far less extreme than the same thing in IGOUGO. This iwll often lead to them doing a lot of damage with one giant thing, then losing another one.
I have to wonder if it's a "grass is greener" thing.
I've played both with varying phase order. I can say I find IGOUGO much more fun, faster, and less arcane.
Of all the games I played, I felt the best set up was PanzerBlitz. It was IGoUGo, and the phase order went Shoot, Air, Move, CAT.
Really, the key to limiting the value of first move and preventing devastating alpha-strikes is to ensure the enemy gets to react to your movement before you shoot them. Just shifting the movement phase means that units that shoot won't be in optimal positions unless your opponent was willing to let you have that optimal position, which weakens alpha-strikes and shooting in general a whole lot.
OTOH, I think the alpha-strike problem is actually indicative of another problem with 40k: namely that troops are too fast, the battlefield is too small, and our weapons are too powerful. Unit speed needs to be reduced, and general offensive output, especially CQC output, needs to be massively reduced.
How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.
How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.
With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.
I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.
As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.
I’m one of the contributors for Gates of 40K. The aim for the conversion was not to just rid ourselves of the horribly outdated IGOUGO system of 40K but to also involve both players at all times. This is what the Warlord family of games (Antares, Bolt Action and Konflikt ’47) does so well with their Action/Reaction system.
GW makes excellent models but their rules are lacking. Instead of watching your opponent do their entire thing while waiting for the few spots that GW threw a bone at you in the form of Command Points, you can instead react to their moves with firefights, running for cover, going down, ambushes, etc.
We’ve played over a score of games averaging at about the 1500 point level and found there isn’t a better game out there that let’s us use our models in such an engaging way.
OTOH, I think the alpha-strike problem is actually indicative of another problem with 40k: namely that troops are too fast, the battlefield is too small, and our weapons are too powerful. Unit speed needs to be reduced, and general offensive output, especially CQC output, needs to be massively reduced.
The main drawback of this approach, which makes it not valid for wider audience is that it makes games A LOT longer and simple battle lines become totally invalid. Under your raw propositions two battle line armies would just throw dice longer and probably end up with totally random (so usually close call) results, regardless of players skill. You have to rewrite winning conditions for this to work as intended.
But this is very close to what has been my solution to alpha strikes and first turn advantage for my 7th ed "customisation" and worked well for more than a year and close to a 100 games so far. Increased survivability (a lot - completely rewriten saves, covers and AP), rewriting other "all or nothing" mechanics/weapons and droping end game objectives and tabling auto-win in favour of "pseudo enlargement" of the table resulting from using sensible, Maelstrom based "you have to be in all those places" scenarios (resulting in something more akin to tabletop version of Dawn of War than pre-maelstrom 40K). This still makes battle line armies invalid, but introduces a lot of tactical, in-game thinking.
Getting back to main topic - as OP himself noted, alternating activation systems tend to devolve into "concealed IGOUGO", because IGOUGO is simply the edge case of alternating activation (one huge activation per side) and any non-trully-parallel resolution system is just a half-measure with problems of it's own. If I were to try to write a complete system from scratch I personally would go with alternating phases with simultanous resolution, but this would result in a completely different game than 40K ever was. The biggest problem with parallel systems though is finding some way to make "concealed movement" happen with infantry based games (this is why starship/aerial games can be better in this regard, it is more plausible to put "manouver tables" in place).
You know, I do think a lot of 40k's alpha strike problems probably could be resolved by re-scaling it to 15mm or 10mm.
By cutting the scale by 1/2 to 1/3 across the board we'd have far fewer weapons that provide full-table coverage (basically everything that's in the 48"+ range, even though on the low end of that range it only really happens in the center of the table), far fewer units with enough movement to cross no-man's land in a single turn, etc.
Models would be easier to fit on the table, we'd be able to place more terrain, it'd basically be the equivalent of playing on a table that is 2x-3x as large, but without having to climb on said table to reach the center.
Downside is it would require re-tooling the entire model range, so it's probably not a *practical* solution.
ross-128 wrote: You know, I do think a lot of 40k's alpha strike problems probably could be resolved by re-scaling it to 15mm or 10mm.
By cutting the scale by 1/2 to 1/3 across the board we'd have far fewer weapons that provide full-table coverage (basically everything that's in the 48"+ range, even though on the low end of that range it only really happens in the center of the table), far fewer units with enough movement to cross no-man's land in a single turn, etc.
Models would be easier to fit on the table, we'd be able to place more terrain, it'd basically be the equivalent of playing on a table that is 2x-3x as large, but without having to climb on said table to reach the center.
Downside is it would require re-tooling the entire model range, so it's probably not a *practical* solution.
Not if you leave things like Deep Strike and Drop Pods in place... It's not WWII or Napoleonic "ground troops advancing" type of game for such solution to work so easily... Even leaving "entire range of models is now obsolete" kind of problems aside.
How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.
With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.
I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.
As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.
I haven't seen that issue so much on DZC, Bolt Action, etc. Limiting an activation to a small subset of a force as compared to the entire army will almost always make sure that you don't get an alpha strike issue.
It absolutey is an issue with igougo - you get to do nothing to react to the entire firepower of your opponents army. If you had a turn after they shot something, you could preempt their next activation and try to at least make it less powerful.
(and how is it more complicated? Chess and checkers use alternating activation)
How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.
With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.
I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.
As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.
I haven't seen that issue so much on DZC, Bolt Action, etc. Limiting an activation to a small subset of a force as compared to the entire army will almost always make sure that you don't get an alpha strike issue.
It absolutey is an issue with igougo - you get to do nothing to react to the entire firepower of your opponents army. If you had a turn after they shot something, you could preempt their next activation and try to at least make it less powerful.
(and how is it more complicated? Chess and checkers use alternating activation)
Chess and checkers are both tedious and boring.
Anyway, I have seen this occur in DZC. Stacking a bunch of tanks into one battlegroup can get you a very powerful activation, and if you get first activation you can stand to blow a lot of things up. In fact, putting an AA gun squad and a large tank squad into an armored battlegroup is a pretty good way to ensure you can take a chunk of the enemy army out if you have first activation on section turn. Drop your group on turn 1, and if they dropped too you can hammer them with your tanks before they can do anything, and if they didn't drop you can shoot them down with your AA, and then hammer them with your tanks. There is a limiter on how much you can blow up based on how big your battlegroup is, but it still pretty much is the same sort of thing as IGoUGo. It definitely occurs less, though, because there's a strong incentive to have a lot of battlegroups and not make one big one.
And IGoUGo doesn't inherently prevent reaction to the enemy army's firepower. As long as you can move before you can shoot, there's effectively no reaction to be had. Switching to alternating activations will solve nothing of the underlying problem as long as a unit can maneuver to an optimal firing position and then shoot before the opposition gets to react.
The only way to actually address the issue is to change the operation order to allow the opponent to react to a unit's movement before that unit gets to fire. Otherwise, alternating activations achieves the exact same effect as IGoUGo, just dressed up nicely so you feel less bad about it.
And this is one reason I like IGoUGo, with Shooting occurring before Moving: This ensures that the entire enemy army, not just one unit, gets a chance to get out of the way. Another way of doing it that I like is P1Move, P2Move, P1Shoot, P2Shoot, which works well too, since it still gives the opponent a chance to move out of the way [and the latter method punishes aggression significantly less]
I'm generally a big fan of bolt actions basic system. I'll definitely have to check out the ongoing conversion mentioned for 40k. At home I already made a d8 based system based around it, and it's what we use. I find it makes everything from setting up onwards more engaging, and breaks up the turn sequence so you don't get so much down time when nothing exciting is happening.
That said, I've found it's been hard to replicate some things in 40k using BA as a base. Notably ongoing effects(not too bad, we found a workaround), and especially handling melee fights.
If a middle ground were to be found I'd say it's some form of alternating activation either on a unit level or phase level. I mov,e you move, I shoot, you shoot, etc...
How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.
With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.
I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.
As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.
I haven't seen that issue so much on DZC, Bolt Action, etc. Limiting an activation to a small subset of a force as compared to the entire army will almost always make sure that you don't get an alpha strike issue.
It absolutey is an issue with igougo - you get to do nothing to react to the entire firepower of your opponents army. If you had a turn after they shot something, you could preempt their next activation and try to at least make it less powerful.
(and how is it more complicated? Chess and checkers use alternating activation)
Chess and checkers are both tedious and boring.
Whatever your opinion of how fun they are, the response was to your idea that alternating activations is somehow more complex. My five year old handles alternating activations in checkers pretty well.
Anyway, I have seen this occur in DZC. Stacking a bunch of tanks into one battlegroup can get you a very powerful activation, and if you get first activation you can stand to blow a lot of things up. In fact, putting an AA gun squad and a large tank squad into an armored battlegroup is a pretty good way to ensure you can take a chunk of the enemy army out if you have first activation on section turn. Drop your group on turn 1, and if they dropped too you can hammer them with your tanks before they can do anything, and if they didn't drop you can shoot them down with your AA, and then hammer them with your tanks. There is a limiter on how much you can blow up based on how big your battlegroup is, but it still pretty much is the same sort of thing as IGoUGo. It definitely occurs less, though, because there's a strong incentive to have a lot of battlegroups and not make one big one.
It sounds like a rare case, or perhaps just a bad opponent. Dzc Battlegroups are built to not have a stacked firepower group. Either way, that's cool that you have one powerful activation, but you'd be letting yourself down for the rest of the turn. Doesn't seem like it'd hold up at all.
And IGoUGo doesn't inherently prevent reaction to the enemy army's firepower. As long as you can move before you can shoot, there's effectively no reaction to be had. Switching to alternating activations will solve nothing of the underlying problem as long as a unit can maneuver to an optimal firing position and then shoot before the opposition gets to react.
One unit could move and then shoot... But then I get the opportunity to move a unit and shoot and remove some of your firepower. An opportunity I don't get in the current 40k system. I'm pretty sure I already said that?
The only way to actually address the issue is to change the operation order to allow the opponent to react to a unit's movement before that unit gets to fire. Otherwise, alternating activations achieves the exact same effect as IGoUGo, just dressed up nicely so you feel less bad about it.
And this is one reason I like IGoUGo, with Shooting occurring before Moving: This ensures that the entire enemy army, not just one unit, gets a chance to get out of the way. Another way of doing it that I like is P1Move, P2Move, P1Shoot, P2Shoot, which works well too, since it still gives the opponent a chance to move out of the way [and the latter method punishes aggression significantly less]
Its certainly not the only way - seems more like slapping a partial fix on a broken system. For the reasons outlined above alternating activations are pretty well superior.
How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.
With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.
I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.
As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.
I haven't seen that issue so much on DZC, Bolt Action, etc. Limiting an activation to a small subset of a force as compared to the entire army will almost always make sure that you don't get an alpha strike issue.
It absolutey is an issue with igougo - you get to do nothing to react to the entire firepower of your opponents army. If you had a turn after they shot something, you could preempt their next activation and try to at least make it less powerful.
(and how is it more complicated? Chess and checkers use alternating activation)
Chess and checkers are both tedious and boring.
Whatever your opinion of how fun they are, the response was to your idea that alternating activations is somehow more complex. My five year old handles alternating activations in checkers pretty well.
Anyway, I have seen this occur in DZC. Stacking a bunch of tanks into one battlegroup can get you a very powerful activation, and if you get first activation you can stand to blow a lot of things up. In fact, putting an AA gun squad and a large tank squad into an armored battlegroup is a pretty good way to ensure you can take a chunk of the enemy army out if you have first activation on section turn. Drop your group on turn 1, and if they dropped too you can hammer them with your tanks before they can do anything, and if they didn't drop you can shoot them down with your AA, and then hammer them with your tanks. There is a limiter on how much you can blow up based on how big your battlegroup is, but it still pretty much is the same sort of thing as IGoUGo. It definitely occurs less, though, because there's a strong incentive to have a lot of battlegroups and not make one big one.
It sounds like a rare case, or perhaps just a bad opponent. Dzc Battlegroups are built to not have a stacked firepower group. Either way, that's cool that you have one powerful activation, but you'd be letting yourself down for the rest of the turn. Doesn't seem like it'd hold up at all.
And IGoUGo doesn't inherently prevent reaction to the enemy army's firepower. As long as you can move before you can shoot, there's effectively no reaction to be had. Switching to alternating activations will solve nothing of the underlying problem as long as a unit can maneuver to an optimal firing position and then shoot before the opposition gets to react.
One unit could move and then shoot... But then I get the opportunity to move a unit and shoot and remove some of your firepower. An opportunity I don't get in the current 40k system. I'm pretty sure I already said that?
The only way to actually address the issue is to change the operation order to allow the opponent to react to a unit's movement before that unit gets to fire. Otherwise, alternating activations achieves the exact same effect as IGoUGo, just dressed up nicely so you feel less bad about it.
And this is one reason I like IGoUGo, with Shooting occurring before Moving: This ensures that the entire enemy army, not just one unit, gets a chance to get out of the way. Another way of doing it that I like is P1Move, P2Move, P1Shoot, P2Shoot, which works well too, since it still gives the opponent a chance to move out of the way [and the latter method punishes aggression significantly less]
Its certainly not the only way - seems more like slapping a partial fix on a broken system. For the reasons outlined above alternating activations are pretty well superior.
Checkers and chess isn't even alternating activations, anyway. I can "activate" my queen repeatedly and never once use a rook. The fundamental strategy there is actually quite different.
It's not hard to stack a DZC battlegroup in Clash and Skirmish sized games. However, it's success, much like a first-turn strike list in earlier editions of 40k, is dependent on winning a roll-off, which is far from guaranteed.
And with regards to P1 moves and shoots a unit, then P2 moves and shoots a unit, it really is just IGoUGo dressed up to make you feel less bad about it. It really does make fairly little difference. You don't actually get to react tactically to whatever I just did anymore than if I used all my units, you take your hit and then retaliate. Sure, it might slow down the degradation of your force, but it doesn't actually the ability to see the enemy strategy and react to it before/as is executed.
Checkers and chess isn't even alternating activations, anyway. I can "activate" my queen repeatedly and never once use a rook. The fundamental strategy there is actually quite different.
it's still alternating activations
And with regards to P1 moves and shoots a unit, then P2 moves and shoots a unit, it really is just IGoUGo dressed up to make you feel less bad about it. It really does make fairly little difference.
That's not true though.
You don't actually get to react tactically to whatever I just did anymore than if I used all my units, you take your hit and then retaliate.
I definitely wouldn't oversell the merits of it. All alternating does is reduce the size of the first-turn advantage, by reducing the size of the first turn.
However, going raw unit-by-unit definitely wouldn't work well in 40k because on the one hand you have huge stuff like Knights and Baneblades, who can still alpha-strike, then on the other side you have infantry Guard lists with dozens of individual guardsman squads and a bazillion independent characters, who can easily beta-strike by sticking a bunch of stuff in reserves (where it is safe from being shot) and then dropping all of it on the board after their opponent has run out of moves.
Activating in chunks can create a compromise between the two (one guy moves a Knight, the other moves about a Knight's worth of assorted guardsman models), which doesn't restrict alpha-striking quite as much but also partially avoids the runaway turn problem. The difficulty there is defining the chunks.
Checkers and chess isn't even alternating activations, anyway. I can "activate" my queen repeatedly and never once use a rook. The fundamental strategy there is actually quite different.
it's still alternating activations
And with regards to P1 moves and shoots a unit, then P2 moves and shoots a unit, it really is just IGoUGo dressed up to make you feel less bad about it. It really does make fairly little difference.
That's not true though.
You don't actually get to react tactically to whatever I just did anymore than if I used all my units, you take your hit and then retaliate.
I already explained this.
By the logic that Checkers is Alternating Activations, so is IGoUGo, because I'm taking an activation and then you are. Checkers and chess are in no way alternating activations.
And yes, I heard your explanation, and it isn't correct. I shoot your tanks dead with my tanks, then you shoot my artillery with your artillery, then I shoot your infantry with my infantry doesn't add reactive capability. It just makes you feel less bad about going second, since you got to shoot with your artillery. Your tanks have no choice here but to die, and your other units have no real choice but to trade fire as they can, just like returning fire with what's left of your army after a IGoUGo alpha-strike.
Reactive capability would be: I telegraph intent to engage your tanks with my tanks. You have a choice to move them away, at the expense of giving up board control or move another unit to encourage my tanks to not attack your tanks and leave your tanks in place, or just leave them there and hope they live. If I move and shoot together without allowing you a word edgewise, there is no additional reactive tactical counterplay. The only "reaction" is "well, you killed my tanks, so I'm going to kill your artillery, which is precicely identical to the effective counterplay options of an IGoUGo system where movement precedes firing and no interrupt occurs between.
And with regards to P1 moves and shoots a unit, then P2 moves and shoots a unit, it really is just IGoUGo dressed up to make you feel less bad about it. It really does make fairly little difference. You don't actually get to react tactically to whatever I just did anymore than if I used all my units, you take your hit and then retaliate. Sure, it might slow down the degradation of your force, but it doesn't actually the ability to see the enemy strategy and react to it before/as is executed.
You have one fundamental flaw in your logic here. Take this series:
- I activate my entire army, part of your army dies; you activate the rest, smaller part of my army dies. Repeat untill player two runs out of units, player one pretty much always wins.
- I activate one detachment, small part of your army dies; you activate your detachment, probably same chunk of my army dies. Player one still has (smaller) advantage.
- I activate one unit, only small part of one of your units die; you retaliate with a full strenght unit and we are again at even level. Player one has slight advantage.
- I activate one model, probably nothing dies; you activate one model, probably not more than one of my models die if any. Things happen pretty much in parallel this way so no one has any significant advantage.
Of course in any of scenarios above I don't get to react to any particular activation before it is resolved, but somewhere around a single unit activated it becomes irrelevant if forces are large enough. I don't get to react with targeted unit, but I can then make meaningfull decisions with the rest of my entire army. At this level your postulated "time to react" is pretty much irrelevant in game of anticipation of enemy moves ahead. Interrupts and reactions are important only in small unit/model count games with units/models not durable enough to last more than a turn of shooting at them, because such games hinge on things actively avoiding being shot at. Alpha strike IGOUGO40K is effectively a single model count game with not enough durability and no reaction mechanics whatsoever. Alternatively look at Battletech or IK:Renegade - those are (in their smallest form) single model count games with enough durability to accomodate tactical decisions and don't have alpha strike problems.
To illustrate it in one other way: if a single activation can lead to randomly determined destruction of 0-5% of enemy force, then reacting to enemy fire isn't necessary to create ballanced game. Of course it will lack your postulated "tailored reaction" but both sides can win based on ability to maximise their oportunities of inflicting damage while minimising possible loses. If a single activation can take out guaranteed 30-50% of enemy force, then no amount of reaction (unless such reaction guarantees no losses at all) makes no difference, such game is stupidly deadly and has huge first turn advantage.
ross-128 wrote: I definitely wouldn't oversell the merits of it. All alternating does is reduce the size of the first-turn advantage, by reducing the size of the first turn.
However, going raw unit-by-unit definitely wouldn't work well in 40k because on the one hand you have huge stuff like Knights and Baneblades, who can still alpha-strike, then on the other side you have infantry Guard lists with dozens of individual guardsman squads and a bazillion independent characters, who can easily beta-strike by sticking a bunch of stuff in reserves (where it is safe from being shot) and then dropping all of it on the board after their opponent has run out of moves.
Activating in chunks can create a compromise between the two (one guy moves a Knight, the other moves about a Knight's worth of assorted guardsman models), which doesn't restrict alpha-striking quite as much but also partially avoids the runaway turn problem. The difficulty there is defining the chunks.
The beta strike scenario where a player can drop in after their opponent runs out of moves is why I added the "Reserves cost Command Points" clause to my homebrew. The logic I was going for was you can have big activations, react to your foe, or play the reserve game, but you only have so many points to do all three. It's basically Warmahordes Focus/Fury, only to meddle with activations and Reserves instead of "boosting"/buying extra actions.
The main kludge I put was that it costs less CP to interrupt or target Super-Heavies, since red tape has a funny way of disappearing when your enemy breaks out the big guns. I suppose the remaining stuff would be less related to the activation system per se, so much as making super-heavies the unwieldy behemoths they are, rather than a system where a Baneblade can Tokyo Drift and shoot all its guns from a tank tread
I believe the best system is one where you can pre-empt your foe if you out-bid your foe, and where there is no downtime. Whatever happens, you should have the *option* to enable a counter play.
By the logic that Checkers is Alternating Activations, so is IGoUGo, because I'm taking an activation and then you are. Checkers and chess are in no way alternating activations.
And yes, I heard your explanation, and it isn't correct. I shoot your tanks dead with my tanks, then you shoot my artillery with your artillery, then I shoot your infantry with my infantry doesn't add reactive capability. It just makes you feel less bad about going second, since you got to shoot with your artillery. Your tanks have no choice here but to die, and your other units have no real choice but to trade fire as they can, just like returning fire with what's left of your army after a IGoUGo alpha-strike.
Reactive capability would be: I telegraph intent to engage your tanks with my tanks. You have a choice to move them away, at the expense of giving up board control or move another unit to encourage my tanks to not attack your tanks and leave your tanks in place, or just leave them there and hope they live. If I move and shoot together without allowing you a word edgewise, there is no additional reactive tactical counterplay. The only "reaction" is "well, you killed my tanks, so I'm going to kill your artillery, which is precicely identical to the effective counterplay options of an IGoUGo system where movement precedes firing and no interrupt occurs between.
It just doesn't seem like you are using the same definitions as most war gamers or have much experience with alternative activation games besides a few corner case dzc games. Sorry.
I won't lie, I'm pretty amazed anyone can even try (note: "try") to defend IGOUGO as a reasonable option for a wargame. That's pretty incredible to me.
By the logic that Checkers is Alternating Activations, so is IGoUGo, because I'm taking an activation and then you are. Checkers and chess are in no way alternating activations.
And yes, I heard your explanation, and it isn't correct. I shoot your tanks dead with my tanks, then you shoot my artillery with your artillery, then I shoot your infantry with my infantry doesn't add reactive capability. It just makes you feel less bad about going second, since you got to shoot with your artillery. Your tanks have no choice here but to die, and your other units have no real choice but to trade fire as they can, just like returning fire with what's left of your army after a IGoUGo alpha-strike.
Reactive capability would be: I telegraph intent to engage your tanks with my tanks. You have a choice to move them away, at the expense of giving up board control or move another unit to encourage my tanks to not attack your tanks and leave your tanks in place, or just leave them there and hope they live. If I move and shoot together without allowing you a word edgewise, there is no additional reactive tactical counterplay. The only "reaction" is "well, you killed my tanks, so I'm going to kill your artillery, which is precicely identical to the effective counterplay options of an IGoUGo system where movement precedes firing and no interrupt occurs between.
It just doesn't seem like you are using the same definitions as most war gamers or have much experience with alternative activation games besides a few corner case dzc games. Sorry.
So, I play DZC, I have some limited experience with Dystopian Wars, and I play Tobruk and Conflict of Heroes.
DZC works with Battlegroup Activations, and that's what I'm assuming you're proposing. I select a group of units, squad by squad they move and shoot in any order, then you select a group move and shoot with those units, and we repeat. No group can be activated twice, and once all groups have been activated the round is over, all groups are refreshed, and we roll for initiative again
Torbuk is pretty cool. I move all my units, then you move all your units, then you select 1 unit to shoot and it becomes exhausted, then I select 1 unit to shoot and it becomes exhausted, then I select 1 unit to shoot, then your select 1 unit to shoot, etc. until all units are exhausted, then the round ends, units are refreshed, and we start again with I move all units.
Conflict of Heroes works where I chose a unit, and do a single thing [move or shoot] with it. Then you chose a unit, and do a single thing [move or shoot] with it. Then I get to do another thing with my unit, then you get to do another thing. Once my unit runs out of things to do, it become exhausted and I select a new unit to do things with. Once all my units and all your units are exhausted, the round ends, all units refreshed and we start again.
Dystopian Wars works like DZC, where I chose a squadron, it moves then it shoots in that order, then you chose a squadron to move and shoot, and we repeat until all squadrons have moved and shot.
The key elements that I'm considering to be part of your alternating activation proposal are:
I get to use a group, then you get to use a group. The group can be anywhere from one model to a third of the army.
Each time I get to use a group, it gets to move and fire before you get to chose a group.
Once a group has been used, it cannot be used again until all of my and all of your groups have been used.
I am in specific opposition to the second clause, which isn't actually an element of alternating activations. As you can see, both Tobruk and Conflict of Heroes use alternatic activations and allow a reaction between a unit moving and firing.
However, I believe that the specific change of inserting opponent's actions between my units' opportunities to move and shoot work better using an IGoUGo system, since it allows your units to react to all potential threats to them, as opposed to the first one presented.
There's one additional thing, and reason I like IGoUGo: it's fast. Conflict of Heroes take absolutely forever to play one turn, even if they'res only 5 units on each side, and gets fairly unwieldly, especially when there's a lot of units.
One more thing I like: declare all attacks before any are resolved. This is also unwieldly, though. At some point the game does have to be playable.
auticus wrote: I prefer alternating activation. You activate a unit from move to shoot to charge to fight.
Battleshock at the very end.
Much more interactive.
Magic the Gathering and other card games are highly interactive despite using the same sort of My Turn, Your Turn style that Warhammer 40k uses. You get the same break down of phases, the same "I attack with EVERYTHING" zerg rush, the same 1st turn advantage with resources, and yet the games are generally considered to be FULL of interaction.
40k can easily survive on Turns. It just needs more things like the Stratagems and Fight activations to add actual reactions and decision making to the game. Choosing when to reroll or what unit should get a defense/attack buff or maybe even having a reaction that can NEGATE an attack for CP can all add reaction potential to the game and make it more interactive without changing the Turn system.
Magic the Gathering is a very bad example to use. It's a very, very different game. Besides the whole card thing, each card has very little stats, a defined rule, there's no ranges, and a simple goal. MTG is its own beast.
This entire army goes system's problems is highlighted with the inclusion of the Seize Initiative roll in some missions, which my group has started calling the Ruin the Game Roll.
Changing the game's phases is a valid way to do things, and could work. However, thematically 40k is space fantasy where armored space knights charge with guns blazing at enemies. So the current phases fit thematically.
I was really hoping 8th would go alternate somehow, igougo is one of my biggest issues with 40k and the reason ive held off starting so long.
Bolt Action, with all its flaws, is one of the most enjoyable rulesets ive tried and it keeps players in the game at all time, it even offers some response type activations during the opponents turn!
That said, Bolt action is best played without randomly drawing dice but simply alternate consistently.
If GW offer a new way to play 8th that feature alternating activation ill play that solely since everything about it is more enjoyable IMO.
AndrewGPaul wrote: I go, you go lets you carry out a coordinated plan with multiple units - that's why War Machine and Infinity (and Malifaux?) do it.
This isn't exclusive to IGOUGO, unless you mean it makes mass alphastrikes easier.
If your game is based around multiple-unit synergies and complex plans, the I go, you go lets you arrange those. Warmachine, for example is all about using one unit to boost the abilities of a second, then a third weakens the enemy, a fourth softens them up and then the second unit finally charges in and kills the enemy. The game was designed around those sort of combination attacks, so adding an activation option that makes it impossible to pull them off was never going to happen.
Personally, I rather like games where the turn sequence is undefined and potentially can be cut short - Song of Blades and Heroes, for example, or Too Fat Lardies games, or World of Twilight.
Naturally but we're discussing the Turn mechanic specifically and I've mentioned numerous similarities between the two that support the Turn mechanic as a gaming function.
Same as 40k, and stats are merely stats, irrelevant to the turn sequence. D&D has tons and tons of stats more than 40k has and still uses turn structures along with some editions featuring that All Characters Go then All Enemies Go.
As does Warhammer and actually most competitive cards have such complex and confusing rules that they need to FAQ a carefully defined order of events with even more rules lawyering than 40k. We have defined rules but with less competitive play or need for spelling out exactly when everything occurs.
Again not necessarily required given the average rolls and since damage can be prevented or shuffled around many of the best cards simply ignore your health to begin with and apply blanket effects, and with reactions or counters MORE OFTEN modifying the values of stats on the fly, it has a sense of uncertainty. Plus what are draw cards and shuffling otherwise?
I am a fan of Bolt Action and I like their activation method:
I have a command dice for each unit of my army.
My opponent has the same and we each have different colour dice.
They all go in a bag and we do a blind pull and activate each unit.
That way we can then apply the "order" and run all phases for that unit.
It does seem to promote fielding more units however.
What IS good is that some more critical to activate units can have a chance of being able to do something rather than have an entire army able to wipe it out.
I find 8th edition is so incredibly close to Bolt Action (killed models = -1 to moral check, act much like "pins") and keeping track of Moving / Advancing / Falling Back that order dice would be helpful.
Heck, we are using Command points to steal who goes first in alternating melee, it is a natural change.
"After all charging units have fought, the players alternate choosing eligible units to fight with (starting with the player whose turn it is) until all eligible units on both sides have fought once each.
I am not a big fan of a whole army going at once, it is a huge advantage to going first that I think needs mitigating.
I find it has the added bonus of keeping both players busy with little wait time.
I will say I don't like random activation very much, because a streak can quickly ruin the game one way or the other.
Edit:
Regarding the MTG thing, the fundamental difference between MTG and 40k is that MTG is a game of escalation, while 40k is a game of attrition. This is a very, very important difference.
On the first turn of MTG, both players have a hand of seven cards and no lands. The only thing you can do on your first turn of MTG is play a land or other zero-cost card (which, outside of lands, are quite rare and tend to either be weak or dependent on other cards already having been played). Thus, MTG's first-turn advantage is small because you can hardly do anything on your first turn.
On the first turn of 40k, you have your entire army at your disposal. Your forces will never be stronger than they were on the first turn. As a result, the first-turn advantage in 40k is massive: you can launch the most powerful attack you will ever be able to launch, and you can decimate the enemy army before they get to take any action. This is greatly amplified in 8th, where increased movement ranges, the removal of difficult terrain, universal shoot-and-charge, reliable deep-strike, and universal move-and-shoot combine to ensure that bringing the full might of your army to bear on the first turn is trivial on a 4x6 table.
Regardless of any of the pros and cons of various activation schemes, one thing that I see as being important is that the less you are able to do in a single turn, the less having the first turn matters. First-turn advantage can never be entirely eliminated in a turn-based game (because "doing nothing in the first turn" just means you have second turn), even chess requires players to play several games while trading first-turn precisely because any single game could potentially be decided by the first-turn advantage still present in chess. It can, however, be mitigated so that it is only a deciding factor in very, very close games.
IGOUGO can be kept if there were some more mitigation of alpha strikes. They used to have things like Gone to Ground, and cover used to do more.
One thing though is that I'm noticing people are playing with poor terrain overall. I'll have to look and see what the guidelines are, but I see a lot of games without well defined cover points to use at all.
So doesn't everyone think points are really important for balance? That the game needs balance to be fun n fair? Well then let's take two evenly matched army's then let's let one fire all its stuff at the other then now that the other side has been potentially severally weakened it gets to fire back, doing likely less damage. Yeah! Fair!
I think not - it's also boring and disheartening.
My group play as follows:
Alternate deployment of units.
Roll off, winner(player 1) goes first.
P1 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P2 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P1 picks a unit to shoot.
P2 picks a unit to shoot.
So on until no more units wish to shoot.
P1 picks a charger.
P2 picks a charger.
So on until no more units wish to charge.
Complete assaults starting with chargers, p1 then p2, alternating as by the base rules.
Complete moral phase.
Turn 2, roll off again to see who is player 1 and 2, draws are won by the player who wasnt p1 last turn.
Zognob Gorgoff wrote: So doesn't everyone think points are really important for balance? That the game needs balance to be fun n fair? Well then let's take two evenly matched army's then let's let one fire all its stuff at the other then now that the other side has been potentially severally weakened it gets to fire back, doing likely less damage. Yeah! Fair!
I think not - it's also boring and disheartening.
My group play as follows:
Alternate deployment of units.
Roll off, winner(player 1) goes first.
P1 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P2 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P1 picks a unit to shoot.
P2 picks a unit to shoot.
So on until no more units wish to shoot.
P1 picks a charger.
P2 picks a charger.
So on until no more units wish to charge.
Complete assaults starting with chargers, p1 then p2, alternating as by the base rules.
Complete moral phase.
Turn 2, roll off again to see who is player 1 and 2, draws are won by the player who wasnt p1 last turn.
This works well in both AoS n 40k.
Wouldn't that give advantage to the person that moved last?
Vertrucio wrote:IGOUGO can be kept if there were some more mitigation of alpha strikes. They used to have things like Gone to Ground, and cover used to do more.
One thing though is that I'm noticing people are playing with poor terrain overall. I'll have to look and see what the guidelines are, but I see a lot of games without well defined cover points to use at all.
NenkotaMoon wrote:More terrain. I always see near empty tables in many reports.
Indeed, mass Deep Strike or Barrage aside, complex and dense terrain is great alpha-strike remedy. It always puzzled me how "planet bowling ball" is often considered a valid terrain...
But this is one of those things in 40K that weren't ever designed to be the way they are, but instead are "community standard" resulted from three decades of accumulated history. When I started in '94 there were only three clubs in Warsaw and they had very little terrain available. Hills and forests were standard, because they were universal for both 40K and WHFB, and because WHFB was first, it's typical terrain layout "sneaked" into 40K. My first ever tournament had like one large or two small hills per table and that's it - it was pitifull amount even at 750 2nd ed points small games level. When Necromunda premiered in '95, we weren't able to build a decent table for it using even all available stuff. There were no ready-made kits available back then and painted styrofoam bunkers made from moulds used in appliance packaging were considered "high end dioramas". And this "tradition" of scarce terrain preavailed to this day, changing forms a little when plastic kits became available. Now, with all that laser cutting and kickstarter boom things start to change a bit, because decent amount of terrain can be both cheap and ready-made. But common desire to have "fast setup" tournament style pick-up games, combined with "universal TT den" style of FLGS makes complex tables still a rarity - there isn't even a single diorama-style table in my local club. Best tables I see on the web (Warhammer World put aside) are usualy house tables, not club or tournament ones. Making my own, fully 3D modular terrain set so I could finally play on table interesting enough was one of my first projects when I returned to this hobby 2 years ago.
ross-128 wrote: On the first turn of 40k, you have your entire army at your disposal. Your forces will never be stronger than they were on the first turn. As a result, the first-turn advantage in 40k is massive: you can launch the most powerful attack you will ever be able to launch, and you can decimate the enemy army before they get to take any action. This is greatly amplified in 8th, where increased movement ranges, the removal of difficult terrain, universal shoot-and-charge, reliable deep-strike, and universal move-and-shoot combine to ensure that bringing the full might of your army to bear on the first turn is trivial on a 4x6 table.
This only applies when your entire army is shooty with like 36" or more range on every model, more if the enemy setup back line, and assumes you have LOS to every enemy model of import that has selectively decided to not hide behind a building despite being permitted to move and fire along with the cover saves that benefit bunkered positions and denies the inclusion of assault specialists that cannot make that 1st turn charge. The thing about attrition is it's not equal for all factions. Some get stronger as the game goes on because they shoot off more than they lose while others don't care if they lose half their army in the first few turns because once they get into close combat you're toast.
1st turn advantage is massive even in Magic because it means you have 1 more land than the opponent on every one of your turns. You're casting 4 mana spells when they have nothing bigger than 3 on the field. You're attacking with those creatures first too. It puts one player on the offense and the other struggles to defend while trying to catch up and overtake the initiative through a decent enough reversal or bomb card. You might not have an entire army to play with turn 1 but don't think that makes going first irrelevant. It's HUGE, especially when you near turn 5 or 6 and you're the first one to play your game-winning mass devastation card that finishes your combo or seals the game in your favor. The tables would easily be flipped if your opponent had gone first instead.
NenkotaMoon wrote: More terrain. I always see near empty tables in many reports.
Terrain can only mitigate so much however. One of the reasons Warp Spiders were so insanely powerful in 7th was due to being able to mass Deep Strike in and Battle Focus to targets, then jump to cover, all in the (pardon the pun) blink of an eye. If you tried to shoot them with your guys, they would then Flickerjump out of LOS (meaning that extra terrain made their alphastrike *more* dangerous), before doing another round of move-shoot-Battle Focus (or move, shoot, and assault a weakened unit as a Hit&Run booster). And of course, terrain protects not versus Earthshakers or Smart Missiles.
Actually i don't hate IGOUGO phases. Surely, it makes no sense as far as accuratly representing a firefight, and you still stumble on the alphastrike cancer, and makes for very less dynamism.
However, i personnaly feel that it helps focusing on your tactics and strategy with more planning and cunning on a large scale as opposed to Bolt Action for example, where the more dynamic approch leads to a more unit per unit way of playing. What's more, other system might replace the alphastrike issue with, in BA again you can cheat on it by spamming units in order to get dice quickier and make your worthy units act first. Both are interesring in my opinion of soft player and i would be quite a defender of 40k's current turn morphology. Which does not mean a few tweaks could be applied, especially, once more, concerning the alphastrike.
NenkotaMoon wrote: More terrain. I always see near empty tables in many reports.
Terrain can only mitigate so much however. One of the reasons Warp Spiders were so insanely powerful in 7th was due to being able to mass Deep Strike in and Battle Focus to targets, then jump to cover, all in the (pardon the pun) blink of an eye. If you tried to shoot them with your guys, they would then Flickerjump out of LOS (meaning that extra terrain made their alphastrike *more* dangerous), before doing another round of move-shoot-Battle Focus (or move, shoot, and assault a weakened unit as a Hit&Run booster). And of course, terrain protects not versus Earthshakers or Smart Missiles.
NenkotaMoon wrote: More terrain. I always see near empty tables in many reports.
Terrain can only mitigate so much however. One of the reasons Warp Spiders were so insanely powerful in 7th was due to being able to mass Deep Strike in and Battle Focus to targets, then jump to cover, all in the (pardon the pun) blink of an eye. If you tried to shoot them with your guys, they would then Flickerjump out of LOS (meaning that extra terrain made their alphastrike *more* dangerous), before doing another round of move-shoot-Battle Focus (or move, shoot, and assault a weakened unit as a Hit&Run booster). And of course, terrain protects not versus Earthshakers or Smart Missiles.
So one tree on the table fixes that, got it.
You mince my words. Terrain is a band-aid for a flawed terrain structure. Try playing Infinity on a "one tree" table and the game will grind into an ARO-fest for example. Ditto 40k. Sure, it mitigates being alpha-striked by slow-static gunlines, but mobile alphastrikes care less. Look at MkII eKaya or eLylyth as a classic example of being able to get the drop on your foe as well; neither cared much about terrain or smoke either, FWIW.
MTG is a bad example because your turns in MTG are very limited by the amount of mana. Turns are often quick, with only the final few rounds of the game potentially taking a bit long and never NEVER anywhere near as long as a single players turn in WH. In addition when one player acts in MTG the other player gets to make tactical choices about how they will block or not, if they will cast instants etc etc...
WH is too large and cumbersome for any of that to be true. You have no limiting resource that dictates how much you can do in a single turn to keep the game flowing quickly. Their are no reactions for the opponent to make.
And to be clear, the issue isn't just scale. It's a fundamental issue with what the game is about. MTG is a game about resource management with a random resource generator that you build yourself. Warhammer doesn't have you allocating resources turn by turn. There is no randomness to your options each turn.
IGOUGO requires a fundamentally different structure to stay engaging for both players. 40k has speed up with 8th, but ti's still not really engaging. My opponents individual movements don't matter. Only where they end up. Shooting overwatch is still primarily an exercise in futility where nothing significant happens. You spend large chunks of time just rolling saves. It's assault where things actually start becoming lively and it's in large part to the alternating activation nature of the phase.
OP! Tsk-Tsk. Presumption that IGOUGO is a negative feature, and further presumption that there is a better replacement! You're seeking an echo chamber... er... er.
Anyhow, the simplest alternative is, well, alternating unit activations. My unit activates, gets a "Depletion Counter", and can't activate again until it's depletion counter is removed at the end of the game turn. Now your unit activates, gets a DC, and can't activate again. When I run out of units, you can finish up with any unit that doesn't have a DC on it. It allows preemptive alpha-strike lists from few-unit builds, and allows reactive beta-strike lists from many-unit builds. Both have pros and cons. The system can be gamed and counter-gamed.
The unconsidered issue, I think, is that when you pull back on the effectiveness of alpha strike, you naturally strengthen defensive play. If there's little value in committing your resources to a devastating blow, then why not wait until your opponent exposes themselves... tee hee... and then take advantage... tee hee.
People don't want to play against defensive gunlines, but they don't like being crushed by unstoppable avalanches either. It's a tough balancing act. I want a game where some kind of defensive strategy is possible. It doesn't need to be the whole thing, but full-on aggression games are less interesting to me than games with some parry-riposte.
To that end, IGOUGO allows me to
STRATEGICALLY build an army with disposable elements [parry]
with powerful backup [riposte]
to weather the aggressive [alpha strike] nature of many armies,
which leaves them exposed and vulnerable [Win condition: Attrition / Favourable exchange of resources].
I adapt my strategy to allow the tactics I wish to play. There are no armies in which you CAN'T take disposable units. But they're inefficient, and aren't the bestest-best-best units in my codex! Of course they aren't. But they do open up alternative tactics to just pure agro.
I would expect that alternating activation, with all else kept from 8th edition, would result in a couple turns of positioning before piece trades began over turns 3-4, with final gambits enacted on turns 5 onwards. I think it would be a more tactical game, with greater depth, but it would also slow the game down greatly and all but eliminate assault armies as they could be picked apart one unit at a time. You'd typically need to make a unit vulnerable during approach and then you get whacked. That would be my expectation, anyway.
There are games -no tabletop wargames afaik- which "solve" the issue of first player A having an advantage over second player B by using ABBAABBAAB etc. as turn order.
While you cannot copy paste this straight onto 40k, I wonder if it could work as a foundation.
It increases downtime between your turns even more, which sucks.
However it is way fairer than ABABAB and players probably prefer going second if you play an odd number of turns, cause player B would have the first double strike as well as the last turn. If you have en even number of battlerounds player A would go last with a single turn.
If it is too devastating to have an entire army shoot you twice (CC armies would gladly go second btw.) then you could go for alternating detachment activation.
Say matched play required that you play with the same number of points AND the same number of detachments, which I would guesstimate at 1 per 500 points to be a decent first try.
Each detachment can't have more than 1/(number of detachments-1) of the total points in it.
Four detachments means no detachment with more than 1/3 of the total points in it. I recommend reworking detachments in 8th anyway.
Activation would then work by first player activating an entire detachment and going through the entire turn with it as if it was his/her entire army. Then the second player would do this with two of his/her detachments at the same time. Mark activated detachments with a counter.
When a player can't activate two detachments anymore, because there is only one left remove all activation counters from all of that player's detachments and activate the one which hadn't had a counter and one of those you just removed the counters from.
When a player can't activate two detachments anymore because all have been activated simply remove all counters and activate two detachments.
When a player can't activate two detachments because there is only one left simply activate that single detachment every time it is that player's turn to activate. It is not activated twice to compensate. So watch out.
Disclaimer:
This is a first draft of an idea. Don't dismiss it right away. If you have improvements to offer, please do so. Thank you!
Insectum7 wrote: I'm in the IGOUGO boat as well. The sweeping, multi-unit actions are fun to plan for.
I don't believe that's something that's exclusive to IGOUGO though. The key is making a mechanic that allows such things, especially as planned maneuvers rather than something both players innately get (or as may usually be the case, the player with the first turn advantage).
1CP: Nominate a unit, until the beginning of its next turn, whenever a model from this unit would be removed as a casualty, that model may immediately shoot as if it where the shooting phase or fight as if it were the fight phase. Then, remove the model as a casualty.
That way, all-in alpha strikes still work, but a key element of the defenders' army can still retaliate, blunting the overall power of the strike.
It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.
They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.
Unit1126PLL wrote: It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.
They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.
Anyone who works for squaresoft professionally makes games that still have dumb ass random encounters while walking through a dungeon despite it being an outdated mechanic from almost 40 years ago.
Lance845 wrote: MTG is a bad example because your turns in MTG are very limited by the amount of mana. Turns are often quick, with only the final few rounds of the game potentially taking a bit long and never NEVER anywhere near as long as a single players turn in WH. In addition when one player acts in MTG the other player gets to make tactical choices about how they will block or not, if they will cast instants etc etc...
WH is too large and cumbersome for any of that to be true. You have no limiting resource that dictates how much you can do in a single turn to keep the game flowing quickly. Their are no reactions for the opponent to make.
And to be clear, the issue isn't just scale. It's a fundamental issue with what the game is about. MTG is a game about resource management with a random resource generator that you build yourself. Warhammer doesn't have you allocating resources turn by turn. There is no randomness to your options each turn.
IGOUGO requires a fundamentally different structure to stay engaging for both players.
Yes. Its called 'player preference.' There isn't much more to it than that. It isn't about 'archaic' or 'quality' rules, its simply about what individuals prefer. And maybe a little about attention span and empathy. Tuning out because it isn't your turn in a two player game (or group RPGs/board games) is very bizarre to me.
Unit1126PLL wrote: It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.
They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.
Anyone who works for squaresoft professionally makes games that still have dumb ass random encounters while walking through a dungeon despite it being an outdated mechanic from almost 40 years ago.
I dont see the relevence.
You know what's really outdated? Moving miniatures around on a board and rolling dice, instead of using a PC, or even more modern: a mobile phone. I fail to see how a game mechanic can be "outdated".
Unit1126PLL wrote: It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.
They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.
Anyone who works for squaresoft professionally makes games that still have dumb ass random encounters while walking through a dungeon despite it being an outdated mechanic from almost 40 years ago.
I dont see the relevence.
You know what's really outdated? Moving miniatures around on a board and rolling dice, instead of using a PC, or even more modern: a mobile phone. I fail to see how a game mechanic can be "outdated".
Easy. Game design like any other kind of design, constantly evolves. We could have water radiators on our cars where we pour water right in as they overheat. But those designs are inferior and outdated. Random encounters were a necessity due to processing power and design philosphy of the day. Resource restrictions are gone. Weve moved on to more engaging encounters and better design.
Waiting and watching is worse the larger the game and yet used in a game that insists on getting bigger and bigger. Time to move on to better design philosphies.
1CP: Nominate a unit, until the beginning of its next turn, whenever a model from this unit would be removed as a casualty, that model may immediately shoot as if it where the shooting phase or fight as if it were the fight phase. Then, remove the model as a casualty.
That way, all-in alpha strikes still work, but a key element of the defenders' army can still retaliate, blunting the overall power of the strike.
I rather like this idea, but I would add one change: have models with damage tables execute this attack as though they were undamaged. A knight getting to retaliate at BS5+ isn't going to offset the loss nearly enough. Overall though it's clean and would go a long way I think.
I'm a firm believer in the superiority of alternating unit activation and similar systems. Unfortunately there's a lingering perception that such systems are inherently more complicated, (untrue -they allow for more complex play, but not neccessarily a more complicated game system). IGOUGO was the convention for a long time, and as with anything that's so long established, there will always be those loathe to move away from it.
Yes. Its called 'player preference.' There isn't much more to it than that. It isn't about 'archaic' or 'quality' rules, its simply about what individuals prefer.
So nothing can be objectively better? New ways of doing things, progress, can't happen?
And maybe a little about attention span and empathy. Tuning out because it isn't your turn in a two player game (or group RPGs/board games) is very bizarre to me.
Don't you think it's a symptom of the game? Even the most 'empathic' person could tune out while someone rolls a million dice with reroll from an IG shooting phase.
Zognob Gorgoff wrote: So doesn't everyone think points are really important for balance? That the game needs balance to be fun n fair? Well then let's take two evenly matched army's then let's let one fire all its stuff at the other then now that the other side has been potentially severally weakened it gets to fire back, doing likely less damage. Yeah! Fair!
I think not - it's also boring and disheartening.
My group play as follows:
Alternate deployment of units.
Roll off, winner(player 1) goes first.
P1 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P2 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P1 picks a unit to shoot.
P2 picks a unit to shoot.
So on until no more units wish to shoot.
P1 picks a charger.
P2 picks a charger.
So on until no more units wish to charge.
Complete assaults starting with chargers, p1 then p2, alternating as by the base rules.
Complete moral phase.
Turn 2, roll off again to see who is player 1 and 2, draws are won by the player who wasnt p1 last turn.
This works well in both AoS n 40k.
I think that this looks good.
Now if we house rule cover and terrain and hour start using templates again,
Then we may have a decent wargame.
1CP: Nominate a unit, until the beginning of its next turn, whenever a model from this unit would be removed as a casualty, that model may immediately shoot as if it where the shooting phase or fight as if it were the fight phase. Then, remove the model as a casualty.
That way, all-in alpha strikes still work, but a key element of the defenders' army can still retaliate, blunting the overall power of the strike.
Why not a rule that any unit that is shot at can simultaneously shoot back to represent a simultaneous firefight.
Each time that a single unit is attacked in this way, returned fire is made at a -1 cumulative.
So when attacked by a third unit then return fire is at -2. And so on...
Insectum7 wrote: I'm in the IGOUGO boat as well. The sweeping, multi-unit actions are fun to plan for.
I don't believe that's something that's exclusive to IGOUGO though. The key is making a mechanic that allows such things, especially as planned maneuvers rather than something both players innately get (or as may usually be the case, the player with the first turn advantage).
Thats fair, although I haven't personally experienced it as far as I recall. But I'll also admit that I havent played that many non igougo systems. Battletech and Epic Armageddon come to mind.
But I'm comfortable with IGOUGO, I dont think its inherently a bad system. In practice I also feel that it might be faster, too, all else being the same.
Lance845 wrote: Easy. Game design like any other kind of design, constantly evolves. We could have water radiators on our cars where we pour water right in as they overheat. But those designs are inferior and outdated. Random encounters were a necessity due to processing power and design philosphy of the day. Resource restrictions are gone. Weve moved on to more engaging encounters and better design.
Waiting and watching is worse the larger the game and yet used in a game that insists on getting bigger and bigger. Time to move on to better design philosphies.
No... game mechanics that are terrible don't stick around for ages and the "random encounter" JRPG genre has a tremendous amount of followers. The mechanic has stuck around because of its intelligent design. Casual players can skip most of the content or use consumables to make it easy, bypassing most of the hidden sidetracks and going straight for the objectives that are often both easier to overcome and simpler to find than any sidequest content. Hardcore completionists meanwhile must brave additional hazards along the way if they're to fully explore each dungeon. In fact, good RPGs are balanced around this fact since players like to challenge themselves according to how low of a level they can clear the game at, relying only on the stat boosting shop items to get the minimum required attributes to mathematically be capable of clearing the content ahead. Yet to accommodate all types and prevent players from ever becoming "stuck", they are able to grind as much as needed, doing sidequests and achieving great loot, to make the game even easier than it already is. Meanwhile, challenge content exists in places such as deep in the dungeons full of random encounters with maps specifically designed to confuse the player and create backtracking to force them to MAP the area out if they wish to arrive at the next save point without blowing through a stack of recovery consumables. Random encounters aid in all of this, granting spots to powerlevel, spots to farm gold or consumables, spots to find crafting materials for better gear, challenges to wear down the player's resources and force them to rethink what they're doing, all of that. Fixed cinematic encounters give a game the feeling of playing on rails, like Call of Duty, and there are many, MANY people who will trash that mechanic in favor of the RNG fights. Even RPGs that have much side content but only allow each fight once become a completionist's dream, like the D&D-based ones, but in doing so also lose some of the unpredictability of fights with their ability to save almost anywhere and scout ahead to see what needs to be prepared for with a simple reload.
Ongoing game mechanics aren't necessarily obsolete and newer failures of an attempt at evolution are not inherently superior. Some would argue that 3D is the evolution of gaming yet many STILL PREFER the old side-scrolling 2D mechanics of Castlevania or Metroid, to the point that an entire genre exists for those games that sells extremely well just as the RPGs. Yet these new games that copy-paste the old cookie cutter tropes, provide no challenge, and are dissected into multi-DLC purchases and merely attempts by prominent corporations to drain you of your income in exchange for rather mediocre products. Eye candy is not the wave of the future, it's just the caffeinated sugar of game "mechanics" that addicts the weak like Coca Cola, fast food, and candy.
greatbigtree wrote: OP! Tsk-Tsk. Presumption that IGOUGO is a negative feature, and further presumption that there is a better replacement!
The presumption is because it is true. IGOUGO is a terrible mechanic in a game like 40k, and the only reason for keeping it is GW's failure to understand good game design and stubborn insistence on keeping the core elements of a 1980s fantasy game intact.
The unconsidered issue, I think, is that when you pull back on the effectiveness of alpha strike, you naturally strengthen defensive play. If there's little value in committing your resources to a devastating blow, then why not wait until your opponent exposes themselves... tee hee... and then take advantage... tee hee.
Actually it's the exact opposite, because the best alpha strike armies tend to be static gunlines that skip investing in speed or melee ability or anything else besides long-ranged firepower. Think IG Basilisk/Manticore spam, Tau MCs in 7th, etc. In an IGOUGO system the gunline is guaranteed to deliver its alpha strike without disruption, it out-ranges anything but another gunline and gets to activate its entire alpha strike while all you can do is sit there and roll saves. In an alternating activation system it's possible to get in and disrupt the gunline while it activates one unit at a time, significantly reducing the power of the alpha strike.
and all but eliminate assault armies as they could be picked apart one unit at a time
Again, it's the exact opposite. Most melee units can't get into combat until the second turn (and first turn charges suck from a game design point of view), which means spending at least one turn exposed to enemy fire before charging. With an IGOUGO system you're forced to activate your whole army, put those melee units in a vulnerable position in preparation for a charge next turn, and hope they survive your opponent's full shooting power. With an alternating activation system you can deploy your melee units out of LOS, activate them as your last units at the end of the first turn after your opponent has already activated their primary shooting threats, and then activate them first at the start of the second turn and jump directly into combat before your opponent can activate more than a single unit to shoot at them.
Lance845 wrote: Easy. Game design like any other kind of design, constantly evolves. We could have water radiators on our cars where we pour water right in as they overheat. But those designs are inferior and outdated. Random encounters were a necessity due to processing power and design philosphy of the day. Resource restrictions are gone. Weve moved on to more engaging encounters and better design.
Waiting and watching is worse the larger the game and yet used in a game that insists on getting bigger and bigger. Time to move on to better design philosphies.
No... game mechanics that are terrible don't stick around for ages and the "random encounter" JRPG genre has a tremendous amount of followers. The mechanic has stuck around because of its intelligent design. Casual players can skip most of the content or use consumables to make it easy, bypassing most of the hidden sidetracks and going straight for the objectives that are often both easier to overcome and simpler to find than any sidequest content. Hardcore completionists meanwhile must brave additional hazards along the way if they're to fully explore each dungeon. In fact, good RPGs are balanced around this fact since players like to challenge themselves according to how low of a level they can clear the game at, relying only on the stat boosting shop items to get the minimum required attributes to mathematically be capable of clearing the content ahead. Yet to accommodate all types and prevent players from ever becoming "stuck", they are able to grind as much as needed, doing sidequests and achieving great loot, to make the game even easier than it already is. Meanwhile, challenge content exists in places such as deep in the dungeons full of random encounters with maps specifically designed to confuse the player and create backtracking to force them to MAP the area out if they wish to arrive at the next save point without blowing through a stack of recovery consumables. Random encounters aid in all of this, granting spots to powerlevel, spots to farm gold or consumables, spots to find crafting materials for better gear, challenges to wear down the player's resources and force them to rethink what they're doing, all of that. Fixed cinematic encounters give a game the feeling of playing on rails, like Call of Duty, and there are many, MANY people who will trash that mechanic in favor of the RNG fights. Even RPGs that have much side content but only allow each fight once become a completionist's dream, like the D&D-based ones, but in doing so also lose some of the unpredictability of fights with their ability to save almost anywhere and scout ahead to see what needs to be prepared for with a simple reload.
This is a massive load of bull. It hasn't stuck around for decades because it's good. It stuck around for decades because it's lazy. The latest FF game ditched it for the most part for a good reason. grinding random loot from random encounters is an artificial time sink. It's complete crap from a game play perspective.
Want to know the definition of game play? A series of interesting choices. Shoots and Ladders. Not a game. You have no choices. You make none. You roll the dice, you move to the spot. You do what it says. The first person to randomly reach the end wins. Random Encounters are not a choice. It's a slog. Getting through one room to the next is not a combat puzzle the way each room in a Legend of Zelda is. Or a God of War. Most of the fights don't require power ups or items or resources. In fact, since back in the super nintendo days there has been an auto fight option that let the game swing away and win the combat for you. Wasn't it just a couple years ago that they made a FF game where you literally had your entire party built around preprogramed criteria to fight on their own? Thats not game play and thus it's not even really a game, because the vast majority of it is wandering into your next FMV.
With MTG you have interesting choices. You have resources. Do you spend them all on your turn or hold onto some to spend on instant and counters on your opponents? Do you have none of those cards in your hand but keep some mana free as a feint? How do you assign your blockers? Your turn and your opponents are full of interesting choices.
This is not true in 40k. IGOUGO40k is 2 people taking turns swinging sledge hammers at each other. Where and how the opponent moves doesn't matter. You can't do anything about it anyway. When and how they shoot doesn't matter. You only get to roll your saves and you have no choice in whether or not you do that. When and how your opponent charges into melee doesn't matter. You roll your overwatch because you have to and chances are it won't do anything anyway. The new fight phase is interesting though, because you have interesting choices in who you activate and when. Alternating selections of units to fight to maximize your impact and minimize theirs. A leg up over here to take a hit over there. THAT is a series of interesting choices.
Ongoing game mechanics aren't necessarily obsolete and newer failures of an attempt at evolution are not inherently superior. Some would argue that 3D is the evolution of gaming yet many STILL PREFER the old side-scrolling 2D mechanics of Castlevania or Metroid, to the point that an entire genre exists for those games that sells extremely well just as the RPGs.
I didn't say new was inherently good and old was inherently bad. I said in THIS CASE the older IS bad. IGOUGO is an old, outdated, mechanic from a time when the game was very different in scale and scope and no longer fits. And it's sledge hammer swinging game play is dull and uninteresting and removes what could be a lot of interesting game play.
Yet these new games that copy-paste the old cookie cutter tropes, provide no challenge, and are dissected into multi-DLC purchases and merely attempts by prominent corporations to drain you of your income in exchange for rather mediocre products. Eye candy is not the wave of the future, it's just the caffeinated sugar of game "mechanics" that addicts the weak like Coca Cola, fast food, and candy.
I don't even know what your trying to say with this part. Are you arguing that newer games are bad because of their monetization structure? Or advertising? What exactly does that have to do with mechanics and gameplay?
It means that using the shiny new hype isn't inherently superior too old stuff.
Limiting alpha strike potential is a problem in 40k design but it isn't solved by alternating activation. In fact alternating activiation would favour huge deathstars. Unless you say the opponents army has to entirely go before a unit activates again. At that point it's backll to IGOUGO.
What I really want to see used more is larger tables for any game above 1500 points. depending on deployment type on a 6x4 table It can be impossible to be far away from your opponent altogether.
There is also LoS blocking terrain. Anyone that tells you it isn't an effective alpha strike mitigater hasn't tried it.
barrage-like weapons are few and far between.
About the only type of wargame IGOUGO is truly fitting in is one at a strategic level, and even then there are usually reactions available to the non-active player.
The killer for the system is the feeling players get that when a significant amount of their forces are shot to death before they can return fire, take cover or run away. That rarely happens in real firefights, unless you catch the enemy with their pants down and their asses hanging out. So it provides a type of play that is both jarringly unrealistic and very frustrating.
Earth127 wrote: In fact alternating activiation would favour huge deathstars.
This is a popular myth about alternating activation systems, but it isn't true. If you actually play games with alternating activation you'll find that yes, large death star type units have an advantage in getting to activate a lot of power at once and seize a key opportunity, but they also have some massive drawbacks. There's a lot of power in the ability to activate "extra" units, whether in the form of expendable cannon fodder, units located away from the most important fight, etc, and delay committing to an action until your opponent has committed to their own. A MSU army will activate less power at once, but it will have the ability to run circles around that single death star. For example, you start the game with everything hidden behind cover. You activate your cannon fodder, your opponent is forced to activate their death star early because they have nothing else and can only throw it at your cannon fodder. Now you activate your real units, move to ideal positions, and deliver a crippling blow while your opponent has to sit there and watch.
Unless you say the opponents army has to entirely go before a unit activates again. At that point it's backll to IGOUGO.
Except it isn't, because when you finish up your units all at once it's usually going to be a handful of activations made at the end of an interesting sequence. You're rarely sitting there for 30 minutes watching helplessly as your opponent does whatever they want, and if you are it's because you over-invested in a single death star instead of taking a more balanced force. Most of the time it's a lot more interactive and interesting than IGOUGO.
What I really want to see used more is larger tables for any game above 1500 points. depending on deployment type on a 6x4 table It can be impossible to be far away from your opponent altogether.
The problem is that large tables are not practical. A 6x4 table is about the limit of what you can comfortably reach across, any larger and it's just too hard to move models/measure distances/etc. And a 6x4 table is also at the limit of what most people have available, designing the game around an assumption of a larger table means that the vast majority of games won't be played as intended.
I must admit I don't have experience with wargames outside of W40K, my other tabletop gaming experience is mostly coop/DnD where the line is a lot blurier.
I think that's where the golden zone is tough more flexible rules. Keep IGOUGO base structure but provide more rules and meaningfull interaction for the opponent( key reason I like Strength from death even if it broke 7th 40k due to being alone).
Earth127 wrote: I must admit I don't have experience with wargames outside of W40K, my other tabletop gaming experience is mostly coop/DnD where the line is a lot blurier.
I think that's where the golden zone is tough more flexible rules. Keep IGOUGO base structure but provide more rules and meaningfull interaction for the opponent( key reason I like Strength from death even if it broke 7th 40k due to being alone).
It sounds like you want alternating activations here.
Earth127 wrote: It means that using the shiny new hype isn't inherently superior too old stuff.
Limiting alpha strike potential is a problem in 40k design but it isn't solved by alternating activation. In fact alternating activiation would favour huge deathstars. Unless you say the opponents army has to entirely go before a unit activates again.
I have never seen anyone suggest a system for alternating unit activation that allowed the same unit to be activated over and over again.You alternate until everyone has gone. There are no deathstar activations because deathstars require multiple units working in tandum. With each unit activating alone it's damage output is limited to what one unit can do.
At that point it's backll to IGOUGO.
Wut?
What I really want to see used more is larger tables for any game above 1500 points. depending on deployment type on a 6x4 table It can be impossible to be far away from your opponent altogether.
There is also LoS blocking terrain. Anyone that tells you it isn't an effective alpha strike mitigater hasn't tried it.
barrage-like weapons are few and far between.
Earth127 wrote: It means that using the shiny new hype isn't inherently superior too old stuff.
Limiting alpha strike potential is a problem in 40k design but it isn't solved by alternating activation. In fact alternating activiation would favour huge deathstars. Unless you say the opponents army has to entirely go before a unit activates again.
I have never seen anyone suggest a system for alternating unit activation that allowed the same unit to be activated over and over again.You alternate until everyone has gone. There are no deathstar activations because deathstars require multiple units working in tandum. With each unit activating alone it's damage output is limited to what one unit can do.
Infinity makes it so you can activate one unit as many times as you want but most folks that actually play it don't see an issue.
Who needs death stars? Magnus and 3 Knights. You finish your turn in 4 activations, having shot 2000 points worth of death while your enemy is still busy finishing off the rest of his turn to catch up to the buttkicking he just received.
Fewer models activate quicker and frontload their payload just like a 1st turn barrage. Only now you're suffering that 1st turn barrage EVERY TURN. Should have just kept the single turn advantage instead of giving your enemy's Titan the advantage constantly.
Speaking of Titans, I play a single Lord of War. That's my army. The game is back to IGOUGO.
Alternating activations are inherently in favor of more elite armies. That's WHY we have IGOUGO..... give the Orks a chance! They want to frontload all their spammy death sometimes too!
If that truly is a problem, and it never has been in alternating activations games I've played, then either a) you don't play that person or b) you take the Bolt Action route and make it random alternating activations with a dice bag.
Arkaine wrote: Who needs death stars? Magnus and 3 Knights. You finish your turn in 4 activations, having shot 2000 points worth of death while your enemy is still busy finishing off the rest of his turn to catch up to the buttkicking he just received.
Fewer models activate quicker and frontload their payload just like a 1st turn barrage. Only now you're suffering that 1st turn barrage EVERY TURN. Should have just kept the single turn advantage instead of giving your enemy's Titan the advantage constantly.
Speaking of Titans, I play a single Lord of War. That's my army. The game is back to IGOUGO.
Alternating activations are inherently in favor of more elite armies. That's WHY we have IGOUGO..... give the Orks a chance! They want to frontload all their spammy death sometimes too!
Again, if you actually play games with alternating activations it doesn't work like that. Putting your entire army in a single activation means you get outmaneuvered and exploited because you have zero ability to stall and wait for your opponent to commit before committing your own forces. In games like this there's a ton of pressure to make sure that you have enough activations, often to the point that people include cheap MSU units for the sole purpose of gaining additional activations.
Arkaine wrote: Who needs death stars? Magnus and 3 Knights. You finish your turn in 4 activations, having shot 2000 points worth of death while your enemy is still busy finishing off the rest of his turn to catch up to the buttkicking he just received.
There are advantages and disadvantages to having larger more powerful units with less activations and smaller less powerful units with more activations. The smaller units will have greater over all mobility. In that yes, your 4 guys will activate and each activation will have a big impact and what little they can see and interact with, while the more activations guy can strategize around that. Feed those power houses targets while getting other units ready to come out and strike after they have already acted and can no longer react to anything you are doing.
To throw in another counter point, lets pretend the rest of what I said doesn't exist, what the hell is the difference between alternating unit activation and IGOUGO with that happening RIGHT NOW?
Someone with a dozen units vs magnus and 3 knights. Magnus and 3 knights have less deployments so chances are they go first. Except now instead of one acting and then you getting to respond all 4 get to act at once and lay down their 2k points of death before you get to move, or shoot, or buff, or anything. The situation you propose is WORSE with IGOUGO.
Fewer models activate quicker and frontload their payload just like a 1st turn barrage. Only now you're suffering that 1st turn barrage EVERY TURN. Should have just kept the single turn advantage instead of giving your enemy's Titan the advantage constantly.
Again. This is what is happening now. EVERY TURN. Except in the other version you get to act in between activations. Are are you thinking that turns don't exist? Depending on the system used if player 1 has 4 activations and player 2 has 12 then a single turn would go 1212121222222222 or it would have tokens for each unit thrown into a dice bag and the pwerson with less activations would be less likely to get a activation drawn from the bag. Or any number of other systems. These an panicy responses that are not thinking the systems through. There is no issue you can invent for alternating activations and "deathstars" that isn't compounded and made worse by IGOUGO.
Speaking of Titans, I play a single Lord of War. That's my army. The game is back to IGOUGO.
Sure. Maybe? Again, the system may have you acting randomly in the middle of the other players turn.
Alternating activations are inherently in favor of more elite armies. That's WHY we have IGOUGO..... give the Orks a chance! They want to frontload all their spammy death sometimes too!
No they are not. They are in direct favor of neither. They actual favor the most an army with a nice mix of heavy hitters and smaller more mobile units. You need to keep on your feet but drop the hammer where it needs to be dropped. Again, these are nonsensical panicy complaints that don't hold up under any actual scrutiny.
Lance845 wrote: Someone with a dozen units vs magnus and 3 knights. Magnus and 3 knights have less deployments so chances are they go first. Except now instead of one acting and then you getting to respond all 4 get to act at once and lay down their 2k points of death before you get to move, or shoot, or buff, or anything. The situation you propose is WORSE with IGOUGO.
Again. This is what is happening now. EVERY TURN. Except in the other version you get to act in between activations. Are are you thinking that turns don't exist? Depending on the system used if player 1 has 4 activations and player 2 has 12 then a single turn would go 1212121222222222 or it would have tokens for each unit thrown into a dice bag and the pwerson with less activations would be less likely to get a activation drawn from the bag. Or any number of other systems. These an panicy responses that are not thinking the systems through. There is no issue you can invent for alternating activations and "deathstars" that isn't compounded and made worse by IGOUGO.
No, it's not what we have now. This is why I feel you are NOT thinking through the steps. Despite your ridicule, it's actually your stance that isn't holding up to scrutiny. You are failing to look past the 1st turn which is why I know you have never even tried to play Warhammer 40k as an alternating activation game. If you had, these obvious flaws would have stood out to you in your theorycrafting.
In an IGOUGO system, allowing four giant monsters to go first and then responding means they shoot 2000 pts at you, you shoot 2000 pts at them, they shoot whatever's left at you, etc.
In an alternating system, the four monsters will shoot their 2000 pts before you do EVERY SINGLE TURN, which makes similar to an IGOUGO except the monsters have the advantage every single time.
Alternating elite armies don't need to roll for who goes first. They always "go first" and they will always finish their activations before you get your full turn. In your 12121212222222222 example, the enemy ALWAYS shoots before half your army, every single game turn. Your proposed system makes elite armies have the inherent advantage of Initiative, acting faster than your army can regardless of who began activating the first unit. Did you win the roll to go first or seize? That's nice, I'm still going to drop 2000 pts of death before you do much of anything. It doesn't matter if an elite army loses the first turn roll, they'll activate more quickly than you do and effectively get their turn in before you do anyway. If I bring a single Titan as my list, regardless of who went first or second, I will shoot ALL 2000 points of my army before you activate a second unit. This is horrible for horde armies and only benefits strong elite armies.
Since I bet you still can't see how it's different to what we have now, let's shift back to IGOUGO. Horde armies like Orks now have a slim chance through rolls to actually shoot all 2000 pts of their list before your elite titan list even moves at all, the titans get to retaliate yet look at the difference in activation speed for that turn! Then they get another opportunity to do it on turn 2, again before your Titans stomp them in. Once again, you have an activation speed advantage because most of your units aren't always going last on every single turn.
Since you guys love to bring up other game systems, lets take a look at Infinity for sure! I can bring a single heavy beast of an Avatar, my entire list let's say, and you have similarly point troops. With alternating activations, I can pump my entire army's strength into every single activation until I run out of orders. I'm going to be outshooting you easily because you can't catch up to my damage per activation.
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Lance845 wrote: To throw in another counter point, lets pretend the rest of what I said doesn't exist, what the hell is the difference between alternating unit activation and IGOUGO with that happening RIGHT NOW?
The difference is that right now Hordes are permitted to act without a handicap in speed. They can exercise their full turn before you even get yours, whereas in alternating activations an elite army will always exercise their full turn before your entire army gets to go. You are ALWAYS stuck playing last in an activation switchoff if you have more units. Can you use that to tactically plan or run circles around the opposition? Sure. You can do the exact same thing in an IGOUGO system, only better since your buffing Chaos Lord, Sorcerer, and Khorne Berserkers move at the SAME TIME.
The difference between existing 40k and your version of 40k is that currently horde armies have a chance to go before elite armies if they roll well. But in your alternating version of 40k, the elite armies always finish up their turn before you do. Or to put it another way... your version of 40k is like telling all elite armies that they have the Always Goes First player special rule. Screw dice rolling for turns! Current 40k that only happens HALF the time, not 100% of the time like what you want to do.
Your Infinity example is wrong. You get activations equal to your unit count, you just get to allocate them as you like. Your hypothetical one unit list will get one activation per turn and then sit idle for the rest of the turn.
Also, Infinity is not alternating activations, it's IGOUGO with reactuons.
Peregrine wrote: Your Infinity example is wrong. You get activations equal to your unit count, you just get to allocate them as you like. Your hypothetical one unit list will get one activation per turn and then sit idle for the rest of the turn.
Also, Infinity is not alternating activations, it's IGOUGO with reactuons.
That's the whole bloody point... that Infinity as an alternating activation system would be insane. Thanks for keeping up with the crowd.
Lance845 wrote: Someone with a dozen units vs magnus and 3 knights. Magnus and 3 knights have less deployments so chances are they go first. Except now instead of one acting and then you getting to respond all 4 get to act at once and lay down their 2k points of death before you get to move, or shoot, or buff, or anything. The situation you propose is WORSE with IGOUGO.
Again. This is what is happening now. EVERY TURN. Except in the other version you get to act in between activations. Are are you thinking that turns don't exist? Depending on the system used if player 1 has 4 activations and player 2 has 12 then a single turn would go 1212121222222222 or it would have tokens for each unit thrown into a dice bag and the pwerson with less activations would be less likely to get a activation drawn from the bag. Or any number of other systems. These an panicy responses that are not thinking the systems through. There is no issue you can invent for alternating activations and "deathstars" that isn't compounded and made worse by IGOUGO.
No, it's not what we have now. This is why I feel you are NOT thinking through the steps. Despite your ridicule, it's actually your stance that isn't holding up to scrutiny. You are failing to look past the 1st turn which is why I know you have never even tried to play Warhammer 40k as an alternating activation game. If you had, these obvious flaws would have stood out to you in your theorycrafting.
And more. Also, Just an FYI. My Bachelors Degree from the University of Advancing Technology is in Game Design.
Not only have I been participating in discussion on these mechanics I have been testing them FOR YEARS with a degree based on the building, testing, and refining of game mechanics. It's not simply theory crafting. I have implemented it myself. Tested it myself. Refined it myself.
In an IGOUGO system, allowing four giant monsters to go first and then responding means they shoot 2000 pts at you, you shoot 2000 pts at them, they shoot whatever's left at you, etc. In an alternating system, the four monsters will shoot their 2000 pts before you do EVERY SINGLE TURN, which makes similar to an IGOUGO except the monsters have the advantage every single time.
In IGOUGO first player shoots 2k points. Second player shoots 2k-losses. In alternating activations first player shoots 1 units point value. Second player shoots 1 units points value (MAYBE minus losses if that is the unit they activate).
Alternating elite armies don't need to roll for who goes first. They always "go first" and they will always finish their activations before you get your full turn.
Who goes first is based on the mechanics of the system. Off of 8ths system? yes. The lower unit army would most likely go first. By Bolt Actions system? Very unlikely that they would go first or second or 3rd for that matter. But they could, It's basically random.
In your 12121212222222222 example, the enemy ALWAYS shoots before half your army, every single game turn. Your proposed system makes elite armies have the inherent advantage of Initiative, acting faster than your army can regardless of who began activating the first unit. Did you win the roll to go first or seize? That's nice, I'm still going to drop 2000 pts of death before you do much of anything. It doesn't matter if an elite army loses the first turn roll, they'll activate more quickly than you do and effectively get their turn in before you do anyway. If I bring a single Titan as my list, regardless of who went first or second, I will shoot ALL 2000 points of my army before you activate a second unit. This is horrible for horde armies and only benefits strong elite armies.
This is just false. What If my first activation is tying up one of your guys in melee? What if my guys are all scattered around at different ranges in los blocking terrain. You have to move your guys to get into a position to get a single unit in los. Or target the units I leave out to bait you with. Once your activations are spent my other more critical units can run rampant. I don't think YOU have ever played these types of games. YOUR theory crafting seems to be a lot of nonsense.
Since I bet you still can't see how it's different to what we have now, let's shift back to IGOUGO. Horde armies like Orks now have a slim chance through rolls to actually shoot all 2000 pts of their list before your elite titan list even moves at all, the titans get to retaliate yet look at the difference in activation speed for that turn! Then they get another opportunity to do it on turn 2, again before your Titans stomp them in. Once again, you have an activation speed advantage because most of your units aren't always going last on every single turn.
Witht he current system the orks have a slim chance to go full bore with 2k points. Otherwise it's 2k- loss. Then the titan attacks with 2k points. Then it's orks with 2k minus 2 rounds of losses.
]Since you guys love to bring up other game systems, lets take a look at Infinity for sure! I can bring a single heavy beast of an Avatar, my entire list let's say, and you have similarly point troops. With alternating activations, I can pump my entire army's strength into every single activation until I run out of orders. I'm going to be outshooting you easily because you can't catch up to my damage per activation.
I am less familiar with infinity then I am other systems. So I cannot comment overly much on inifinity. Except to say that it is my undertsanding that infinity is based on very small squads and it's rules probably don't and cannot encompass what 40k brings to the table. So... bad system for an example?
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Lance845 wrote: To throw in another counter point, lets pretend the rest of what I said doesn't exist, what the hell is the difference between alternating unit activation and IGOUGO with that happening RIGHT NOW?
The difference is that right now Hordes are permitted to act without a handicap in speed. They can exercise their full turn before you even get yours, whereas in alternating activations an elite army will always exercise their full turn before your entire army gets to go. You are ALWAYS stuck playing last in an activation switchoff if you have more units. Can you use that to tactically plan or run circles around the opposition? Sure. You can do the exact same thing in an IGOUGO system, only better since your buffing Chaos Lord, Sorcerer, and Khorne Berserkers move at the SAME TIME.
You don't seem to understand the advantage that the flexibility more activations offers brings to the table. There is a reason MSU is common in many game systems. It's powerful to be able to adjust and react. Your calling one of the biggest advantages and disadvantage. Madness.
Peregrine wrote: Your Infinity example is wrong. You get activations equal to your unit count, you just get to allocate them as you like. Your hypothetical one unit list will get one activation per turn and then sit idle for the rest of the turn.
Also, Infinity is not alternating activations, it's IGOUGO with reactuons.
As usual, you are so literal, that the point goes over your head... So one less extreme example - take one unit comprising 70% of your army strenght and three units comprising 10% each. You get four activations a turn and can use as much as 280% of nominal army strenght each turn...
Lance845 wrote: And more. Also, Just an FYI. My Bachelors Degree from the University of Advancing Technology is in Game Design.
Then we are both graduates of the same one building office in the middle of sweltering Arizona. Did they stick you in the apartments near the mall too or did you find your own local housing? You remember the mall, right? The GW store, the food court near the movie theater, the giant screens and stair seating... personally I liked the pool at the apartments they housed me at. Oh and Fry's Electronics... that place puts Best Buy to shame. Or heck, the nice carpeted interior with the kids near the cafeteria eternally playing Smash Brothers on that corner screen... across from which was the auditorium where I won the Star Fox 64 tournament by being the best aerial battler.
Please don't think you're the only person to have attended UAT or studied Game Design... class of 2007.
Lance845 wrote: This is just false. What If my first activation is tying up one of your guys in melee? What if my guys are all scattered around at different ranges in los blocking terrain. You have to move your guys to get into a position to get a single unit in los. Or target the units I leave out to bait you with. Once your activations are spent my other more critical units can run rampant. I don't think YOU have ever played these types of games. YOUR theory crafting seems to be a lot of nonsense.
You can already do such shenanigans in the current system, it's not false because you haven't contradicted any of my points nor claimed your own facts. If I have a SINGLE activation, I will eternally go before your 2nd activation regardless of what sort of system you come up to determine who goes first or second each turn. In that regard, it's identical to IGOUGO only -I always get first turn-.
Sheesh, you are oblivious to the end and eager to sound like you know anything about game design when UAT only stole our class homework and sold them to other companies. I came up with chicken scratch one morning because I didn't remember to do the assignment. That fat, bald, orange bearded Jedi-nerd of a teacher gave me a 95% for it.
Also, on a Titan example - if said Titan have some form of split fire rule for each of it's weapons, then it is effectively a number of simultanous activations. And indeed will go with full strengh before entire (or entire minus one unit) opposing army each turn, having huge advantage over any MSU army in non Maelstrom type of scenario.
From what I read from both Peregrine and Lance arguments, is that you both make some silent assumptions about relative strenghts and sizes of available units and scenarios played, based on systems, that do not have power discrepancies as huge as possible in 40K. It is entirely possible to play 40K-esue alternative activations game based on ~3rd ed set of units, but it is impossible to do so with 7th-8th ed set of units...
Earth127 wrote: I must admit I don't have experience with wargames outside of W40K, my other tabletop gaming experience is mostly coop/DnD where the line is a lot blurier.
I think that's where the golden zone is tough more flexible rules. Keep IGOUGO base structure but provide more rules and meaningfull interaction for the opponent( key reason I like Strength from death even if it broke 7th 40k due to being alone).
It sounds like you want alternating activations here.
Not entirely. I want more armies capable of essentially using "trap card" esque abilities. like the reactions you can take in dnd. Universally they are limited to non-existent but if you so chosse you can build a crap ton of them.
But whatever system you choose it has to be well designed.
You don't seem to understand the advantage that the flexibility more activations offers brings to the table. There is a reason MSU is common in many game systems. It's powerful to be able to adjust and react. Your calling one of the biggest advantages and disadvantage. Madness.
Wrong, MSU is great because of flexibility in unit choices, positioning, and loadout. You can easily have 20 plasma gunners or four teams of 5 plasma gunners in 40k as well. I'm not knocking that advantage anywhere because it doesn't pertain to the initiative aspect of alternating activations. It doesn't matter if you went MSU, your opponent has fewer activations and so will be finishing before you do. You can try to make use of your MSU advantage... but you can do the same thing in 40k!!! Just without always giving your opponent the rights to first turn every turn.
Peregrine wrote: Your Infinity example is wrong. You get activations equal to your unit count, you just get to allocate them as you like. Your hypothetical one unit list will get one activation per turn and then sit idle for the rest of the turn.
Also, Infinity is not alternating activations, it's IGOUGO with reactuons.
As usual, you are so literal, that the point goes over your head... So one less extreme example - take one unit comprising 70% of your army strenght and three units comprising 10% each. You get four activations a turn and can use as much as 280% of nominal army strenght each turn...
I dont think anyone would want alternating activations for 40k where you could activate the same unit multiple times, so why go you keep talking about it?
GW already did a game with alternating activations back in what, 1998? Epic Armageddon was fine.
Lance845 wrote: And more. Also, Just an FYI. My Bachelors Degree from the University of Advancing Technology is in Game Design.
Then we are both graduates of the same one building office in the middle of sweltering Arizona. Did they stick you in the apartments near the mall too or did you find your own local housing? You remember the mall, right? The GW store, the food court near the movie theater, the giant screens and stair seating... personally I liked the pool at the apartments they housed me at. Oh and Fry's Electronics... that place puts Best Buy to shame. Or heck, the nice carpeted interior with the kids near the cafeteria eternally playing Smash Brothers on that corner screen... across from which was the auditorium where I won the Star Fox 64 tournament by being the best aerial battler.
Please don't think you're the only person to have attended UAT or studied Game Design... class of 2007.
I don't think I am. I am simply pointing out that your assertions that I am just some butt hole sitting around having never played these systems is false. Test the game systems. I tweak them. I make new ones. My "fan 8th" project was abandon only because actual 8th was shaping up to do a lot of what I was trying to do anyway. No reason to reinvent the wheel.
Lance845 wrote: This is just false. What If my first activation is tying up one of your guys in melee? What if my guys are all scattered around at different ranges in los blocking terrain. You have to move your guys to get into a position to get a single unit in los. Or target the units I leave out to bait you with. Once your activations are spent my other more critical units can run rampant. I don't think YOU have ever played these types of games. YOUR theory crafting seems to be a lot of nonsense.
You can already do such shenanigans in the current system, it's not false because you haven't contradicted any of my points nor claimed your own facts. If I have a SINGLE activation, I will eternally go before your 2nd activation regardless of what sort of system you come up to determine who goes first or second each turn. In that regard, it's identical to IGOUGO only -I always get first turn-.
Sheesh, you are oblivious to the end and eager to sound like you know anything about game design when UAT only stole our class homework and sold them to other companies. I came up with chicken scratch one morning because I didn't remember to do the assignment. That fat, bald, orange bearded Jedi-nerd of a teacher gave me a 95% for it.
School in general is a joke in the USA. But Game Design as a cohesive study is in it's infancy. Anyone who is teaching it is trying to figure out how best to teach the skills and doing mostly a crap job of it. I learned more reading through a few books and doing my own tests then I ever did paying for that fething piece of paper.
Why don't we go off a mostly complete system. Look at the Beyond the Gates of 40k Thread. Tell me where the major problems are in there. It's alternating activations with reactions as interupts.
Lance845 wrote: Why don't we go off a mostly complete system. Look at the Beyond the Gates of 40k Thread. Tell me where the major problems are in there. It's alternating activations with reactions as interupts.
I'll have to catch up on reading it first. That looks like a full rule set, complete with tablet of contents, tons of pages, likely unique interactions to uncover... I'll make that a project for this week.
But frankly, D&D is probably my favorite example of an alternating activation system (not technically but hear me out). The number one problem with alternating activation is assuming all units are equal. This was a problem in old editions where monsters only received a single action and were simply overwhelmed by the party's combos of ability interaction. The sum of their parts returned a whole that was greater than the threat of the monster and so monsters had to be obscenely lethal to even stand a miniscule chance of defeating the party. Later editions fixed that by giving Monsters what is effectively either split fire or multiple activations in a turn so they can perform extra needed actions and threaten more of your own forces. A single action there isn't enough because party synergy while a single Titan activating in 40k is pleeeennty strong due to harsher attrition.
But the number one thing I like about that system is that it's not alternating activations according to player turn. It's according to Initiative. Faster targets can move faster, act quicker, get more done. Slower targets go last and balance can place the more lethal enemies at the slower end of the spectrum. JRPGs do the same, often having ordered lists based on Agility while the boss is insanely slow and often getting a fraction of the number of turns your party receives. Often if the boss is quick, there is a way to slow it down to a crawl to regain the advantage of overwhelming it with more damage per activation than it can match, or as RPGs go more healing per activation than it can damage.
Why the tangent? Because if 40k were to move to an alternating activation system, the number one way to avoid everything we've been arguing about is to bring back Initiative or some equivalent speed stat. Titans would be slow and often go last while speedy Orks and Slaanesh daemonettes and Eldar are often going before much of the slower tanks and behemoths on the field. Alternating activation is an aspect of Attack Wing, which is why I don't disagree with it as a principle! But similarly, the exact method of activating units is based on a speed stat. In that particular case it also reverses each turn. Units that are the first to move are the last to shoot. Units that are last to move are first to shoot. Since the turns are planned and executed simultaneously, it's not so much a choosing form of alternating activation but demonstrates the balance of a speed mechanic to keep elite fighters from simply always being better at everything always.
Now I know I know, "where's the choice in all this?" If you want choice, add ways to interrupt or force a unit to the top of the list. Spend a CP to make this unit activate next regardless of initiative order. That sort of thing. You really shouldn't have many CP as a 1 unit army. But I'm a firm believer that if you want what is effectively simultaneous turns then there needs to be a balancing mechanic that acknowledges that this Goblin is not that same as that Dragon over there and in no way should they be treated likewise. Getting to activate a 50 pt that needs to go to buff some other unit then having you activate your 750 pt mega tyrant and annihilating said unit is not balance.
Lance845 wrote: Why don't we go off a mostly complete system. Look at the Beyond the Gates of 40k Thread. Tell me where the major problems are in there. It's alternating activations with reactions as interupts.
I'll have to catch up on reading it first. That looks like a full rule set, complete with tablet of contents, tons of pages, likely unique interactions to uncover... I'll make that a project for this week.
Tons of pages is 16. 9 of which are the actual rules (really about 7 1/2 considering the spaces) and a table of contents before you get to terrain and other miscellaneous nonsense thats not needed to gauge the core rules.
But frankly, D&D is probably my favorite example of an alternating activation system. The number one problem with alternating activation is assuming all units are equal. This was a problem in old editions where monsters only received a single action and were simply overwhelmed by the party's combos of ability interaction. The sum of their parts returned a whole that was greater than the threat of the monster and so monsters had to be obscenely lethal to even stand a miniscule chance of defeating the party. Later editions fixed that by giving Monsters what is effectively either split fire or multiple activations in a turn so they can perform extra needed actions and threaten more of your own forces. A single action there isn't enough because party synergy while a single Titan activating in 40k is pleeeennty strong due to harsher attrition.
But the number one thing I like about that system is that it's not alternating activations according to player turn. It's according to Initiative. Faster targets can move faster, act quicker, get more done. Slower targets go last and balance can place the more lethal enemies at the slower end of the spectrum. JRPGs do the same, often having ordered lists based on Agility while the boss is insanely slow and often getting a fraction of the number of turns your party receives. Often if the boss is quick, there is a way to slow it down to a crawl to regain the advantage of overwhelming it with more damage per activation than it can match, or as RPGs go more healing per activation than it can damage.
1) it's not needed to have all activations be equal. That is a false requirement.
2)DnD is not an alternating activation system. Or even a type of game that can even be comparable. The point of DnDs combat is not to put enemies on an equal footing. It's to create an interesting encounter for the players to always dominate. That system is built from the ground up for an entirely different type of experience that has no comparison what so ever with a miniature war game. If your comparison for alternating activation in 40k is DNDs combat system then you are coming into the discussion with incredible misconceptions on what those systems are meant to do.
Why the tangent? Because if 40k were to move to an alternating activation system, the number one way to avoid everything we've been arguing about is to bring back Initiative or some equivalent speed stat. Titans would be slow and often go last while speedy Orks and Slaanesh daemonettes and Eldar are often going before much of the slower tanks and behemoths on the field. Alternating activation is an aspect of Attack Wing, which is why I don't disagree with it as a principle! But similarly, the exact method of activating units is based on a speed stat. In that particular case it also reverses each turn. Units that are the first to move are the last to shoot. Units that are last to move are first to shoot. Since the turns are planned and executed simultaneously, it's not so much a choosing form of alternating activation but demonstrates the balance of a speed mechanic to keep elite fighters from simply always being better at everything always.
I disagree that that is needed either. In fact i think an initiative/speed stat would FURTHER unbalance the game by making generally slower armies get wrecked by generally faster armies and ruining the major advantages of a alternating activation system. Namely that units are trading blows and adding in the tactical depth and picking and choosing who you activate and when and trying to play that against what you think your enemies will be activating and why.
Now I know I know, "where's the choice in all this?" If you want choice, add ways to interrupt or force a unit to the top of the list. Spend a CP to make this unit activate next regardless of initiative order. That sort of thing. You really shouldn't have many CP as a 1 unit army. But I'm a firm believer that if you want what is effectively simultaneous turns then there needs to be a balancing mechanic that acknowledges that this Goblin is not that same as that Dragon over there and in no way should they be treated likewise. Getting to activate a 50 pt that needs to go to buff some other unit then having you activate your 750 pt mega tyrant and annihilating said unit is not balance.
Im sort of sick of this. Command points are not the is all catch all way to fix issues in the core mechanics. They are a limited resource to add interesting options to a already balanced play field. You shouldn't be required to use a limited resource to patch a broken whole in the core mechanics. Command points are not the fix. The game needs to work first. Then you add in command points to be interesting options.
You keep comparing 1 unit to another instead of one force against another. What an entire army can do with 12 activations is very different from what a equal cost unit can do with 4. There is a kind of balance with that.
Lance845 wrote: 1) it's not needed to have all activations be equal. That is a false requirement.
2)DnD is not an alternating activation system. Or even a type of game that can even be comparable. The point of DnDs combat is not to put enemies on an equal footing. It's to create an interesting encounter for the players to always dominate. That system is built from the ground up for an entirely different type of experience that has no comparison what so ever with a miniature war game. If your comparison for alternating activation in 40k is DNDs combat system then you are coming into the discussion with incredible misconceptions on what those systems are meant to do.
I take it you've never played the miniatures war game Chainmail. A D&D-based war game. Like 40k, actually. But what isn't like 40k these days... they stole their system from BattleTech.
Lance845 wrote: I disagree that that is needed either. In fact i think an initiative/speed stat would FURTHER unbalance the game by making generally slower armies get wrecked by generally faster armies and ruining the major advantages of a alternating activation system. Namely that units are trading blows and adding in the tactical depth and picking and choosing who you activate and when and trying to play that against what you think your enemies will be activating and why.
Seems to work fine in Warhammer Fantasy. Aside from the BS Always Strikes First elf death star shenanigans, normal armies acting and trading blows according to speed tends to work out quite well. Strong greatsword knights act last and slaughter just about anything but not before the fast and squishy horde armies go to try and thin them out first.
Also, we can disagree on what's "necessary" all you'd like but I'm pointing out positive solutions to correcting the previously mentioned issues involved with alternating activation systems. If you still don't agree that there even ARE issues (like the supposed game system is perfect huh?) then I can understand why you may disagree that solutions to them are required.
Peregrine wrote: Your Infinity example is wrong. You get activations equal to your unit count, you just get to allocate them as you like. Your hypothetical one unit list will get one activation per turn and then sit idle for the rest of the turn.
Also, Infinity is not alternating activations, it's IGOUGO with reactuons.
As usual, you are so literal, that the point goes over your head... So one less extreme example - take one unit comprising 70% of your army strenght and three units comprising 10% each. You get four activations a turn and can use as much as 280% of nominal army strenght each turn...
I dont think anyone would want alternating activations for 40k where you could activate the same unit multiple times, so why go you keep talking about it?
GW already did a game with alternating activations back in what, 1998? Epic Armageddon was fine.
That comment was meant specifically for Peregrine, not advocating on repeated activations in 40K...
And Epic Armageddon worked, because it had power discrepancies between activations (formations) around 5:1 - 10:1. Stock 40K (GW only) has power discrepancies of single activations that can be 20:1 and can be as huge as 80:1 if you include Forge World Titans and bigger superheavies...
Lance845 wrote: You keep comparing 1 unit to another instead of one force against another. What an entire army can do with 12 activations is very different from what a equal cost unit can do with 4. There is a kind of balance with that.
And yet I've never seen it in Warhammer. Plenty of times I've watched my Titan go first and delete a huge chunk of the enemy army, including the only threats to my existence on the table, yet I've never watched an enemy zerg threaten such an army in return. Unless all their units went first and opened up a large alpha strike on me. Which they won't in an alternating activation system.
Lance845 wrote: 1) it's not needed to have all activations be equal. That is a false requirement.
2)DnD is not an alternating activation system. Or even a type of game that can even be comparable. The point of DnDs combat is not to put enemies on an equal footing. It's to create an interesting encounter for the players to always dominate. That system is built from the ground up for an entirely different type of experience that has no comparison what so ever with a miniature war game. If your comparison for alternating activation in 40k is DNDs combat system then you are coming into the discussion with incredible misconceptions on what those systems are meant to do.
I take it you've never played the miniatures war game Chainmail. A D&D-based war game. Like 40k, actually. But what isn't like 40k these days... they stole their system from BattleTech.
Lance845 wrote: I disagree that that is needed either. In fact i think an initiative/speed stat would FURTHER unbalance the game by making generally slower armies get wrecked by generally faster armies and ruining the major advantages of a alternating activation system. Namely that units are trading blows and adding in the tactical depth and picking and choosing who you activate and when and trying to play that against what you think your enemies will be activating and why.
Seems to work fine in Warhammer Fantasy. Aside from the BS Always Strikes First elf death star shenanigans, normal armies acting and trading blows according to speed tends to work out quite well. Strong greatsword knights act last and slaughter just about anything but not before the fast and squishy horde armies go to try and thin them out first.
Also, we can disagree on what's "necessary" all you'd like but I'm pointing out positive solutions to correcting the previously mentioned issues involved with alternating activation systems. If you still don't agree that there even ARE issues (like the supposed game system is perfect huh?) then I can understand why you may disagree that solutions to them are required.
No I never played chainmail. Chainmail doesn't exist anymore for a reason. Same as original flavor dnd. they were bad games.
A system using it and being successful with it does not make it necessary. You are pointing out problems in a theoretical structure instead of an actual codified system of rules. There are good and bad IGOUGO. (MTG is a good IGOUGO) There are good and bad alternating activations.
Lance845 wrote: You are pointing out problems in a theoretical structure instead of an actual codified system of rules.
Well you're giving us a theoretical structure instead of an actual game. I've also been pointing out ways to make a working alternating activation system that surpasses the one earlier proposed by targeting and eliminating the flaws in the system while also presenting the reasons IGOUGO is a better system for 40k given the earlier proposed rules. I'm not a miracle worker and I can only work within the scope of the project.
So if you keep pushing your version of a 40k game, I'll keep pointing out the flaws in it. If you want that not to happen, present an ideal concept without said flaws.
(also Chainmail doesn't exist because no one plays miniature wargames enough to satisfy Hasbro)
Chainmail was crap. 40k 7th was crap 6th was crap 5th was crap.
I go back to my statements on Gameplay. Besides building your list, how many actually interesting choices are there in 8th 40kIGOUGO structure.
When and how you spend your CP? Maybe? When and how you deploy? If that even has much of an option?
Which units you pile all of your shots into to focus fire and wipe the enemy off the board?
Every unit you activate in an alternating activation system is it's own interesting choice. You choose who and when. And who and when impacts your opponents next choice. And their choice impacts yours. There is more actual gameplay in the first 20 minutes of alternating activation 40k then there is in 2 hours of IGOUGO.
I see only more unproven, untested theoretical structures and a whole lot of hyperbolic conviction regarding a subjective stance.
Maybe our terms differ in usage? I at least tried to point out the factual reasons why the proposed system fails. Even if you have other proposed systems, from what I've seen of your opinions in this thread, what's to say they're any better?
So my fan 8th which has an actual change log as every iteration was tested, and beyond the gates of 40k which is heavily based on using 40ks units in a actual published system are both untested and unproven theoretical structures?
Don't know what to tell you. More games on the market use alternating activations over IGOUGO because more people want actual game play and a quick interactive turn structure. Who would have thought?
It's hard to discuss with people who don't seem to have much or any experience with alternating activations of any kind.
The "bbbbbbbut I can activate MY ONE SUPERPOWER and then it's the same as IGoUGo!" Is absolutely easily refuted with a simple dice bag system that is extremely well liked and used in the very popular Bolt Action. Lots of these fake scenarios just seem like problems that nobody has ever had.
I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.
Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.
Lance845 wrote: So my fan 8th which has an actual change log as every iteration was tested, and beyond the gates of 40k which is heavily based on using 40ks units in a actual published system are both untested and unproven theoretical structures?
Don't know what to tell you. More games on the market use alternating activations over IGOUGO because more people want actual game play and a quick interactive turn structure. Who would have thought?
Citation? Or is it just your gut feeling? All the card games, all the RPGs, all the board games, just about everything from WizKids or Fantasy Flight or Wizards (HeroClix/AttackWing), none of them use this system that you say is more popular than one player turn after another. This is because people want a simple and casual game that isn't overly complicated on meta rules, hence what we have on 8th edition, which has taken a large step backward in depth to give us better army interactions.
mugginns wrote: It's hard to discuss with people who don't seem to have much or any experience with alternating activations of any kind.
The "bbbbbbbut I can activate MY ONE SUPERPOWER and then it's the same as IGoUGo!" Is absolutely easily refuted with a simple dice bag system that is extremely well liked and used in the very popular Bolt Action. Lots of these fake scenarios just seem like problems that nobody has ever had.
Do you go to court and expect your opponent's attorney to argue your case for you as well? Expecting others to make your arguments for you makes about as much sense as asking the guy who is suing you for legal advice. It's hard to discuss anything with people who leave facts out of the paragraphs and merely spout "I hate this", "That sucks", "This was crap", "This is the best ever", "More games use what I like over everything else" without a shred of reasoning behind them. As if we're all supposed to be psychic and understand the glory that is your mind and its machinations, intricate though they must be, and anyone who doesn't immediately accept what's been stated as hyperbolic fact must be not understanding anything about the source material you're drawing inspiration from.
Lance845 wrote: So my fan 8th which has an actual change log as every iteration was tested, and beyond the gates of 40k which is heavily based on using 40ks units in a actual published system are both untested and unproven theoretical structures?
Don't know what to tell you. More games on the market use alternating activations over IGOUGO because more people want actual game play and a quick interactive turn structure. Who would have thought?
Citation? Or is it just your gut feeling? All the card games, all the RPGs, all the board games, just about everything from WizKids or Fantasy Flight or Wizards (HeroClix/AttackWing), none of them use this system that you say is more popular than one player turn after another. This is because people want a simple and casual game that isn't overly complicated on meta rules, hence what we have on 8th edition, which has taken a large step backward in depth to give us better army interactions.
mugginns wrote: It's hard to discuss with people who don't seem to have much or any experience with alternating activations of any kind.
The "bbbbbbbut I can activate MY ONE SUPERPOWER and then it's the same as IGoUGo!" Is absolutely easily refuted with a simple dice bag system that is extremely well liked and used in the very popular Bolt Action. Lots of these fake scenarios just seem like problems that nobody has ever had.
Do you go to court and expect your opponent's attorney to argue your case for you as well? Expecting others to make your arguments for you makes about as much sense as asking the guy who is suing you for legal advice. It's hard to discuss anything with people who leave facts out of the paragraphs and merely spout "I hate this", "That sucks", "This was crap", "This is the best ever", "More games use what I like over everything else" without a shred of reasoning behind them. As if we're all supposed to be psychic and understand the glory that is your mind and its machinations, intricate though they must be, and anyone who doesn't immediately accept what's been stated as hyperbolic fact must be not understanding anything about the source material you're drawing inspiration from.
What over complication with "meta rules"? Heroscape used alternating unit activations. A significantly more simple game then any other miniature war game I have ever played.
But you see, you clearly don't understand. You make snap judgements with no basis in the reality of all the games that have been running for years and years using these systems. You claim all these problems WILL crop up. They HAVE to. It's and INHERENT part of these mechanics that make them clearly inferior to IGOUGO.
And yet they don't show up in any of those other games. They are not problems. It's all just in your head and you are sticking to your guns that these problems must be.
You ignore the points I made about gameplay being a drag in IGOUGO. About the tactical and strategic depth that alternating activations adds to the game. You ignore that the systems I posted to you HAVE been tested and DO function and instead ask me to make a list of all the games that use alternating activations.
Sure here are some purely minature war games.
Bolt Action
Knoflict 47
BTGoA
Heroscape
Xwing
Star Trek
SW Armada
War Hammer Disk Wars
Rune Wars
Dog Fight
Dust Tactics
Battletech
Oh yeah... Epic 40k.
Most of the games on that list have pretty recent releases. Like... in the last 5 years. And it's nowhere near a comprehensive list.
Why don't you provide me with a list of games that have come out in the last few years that are IGOUGO?
Unit1126PLL wrote: I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.
Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.
Awesome. I love changes to the game that reduce options and murder fluffy armies.
Lance845 wrote: Why don't you provide me with a list of games that have come out in the last few years that are IGOUGO?
I'Il get your started. 40k for some reason.
Warmachine Mk3, and Kings of War off the top of my head. Trying to think of other notable ones atm, but I'm drawing a blank. Either way, I do believe it's disingenious to say "it's up to the player to build a balanced army" because that has been used to sweep over system issues. As mentioned, the Bolt Action random draw system can definitely converge towards being akin to IGOUGO, either if one player has a disproportionate larger number of units, or both players have large numbers of units combined with a large number of Officers to activate everyone around them, as though they were Fire Emblem Dancers.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.
Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.
Awesome. I love changes to the game that reduce options and murder fluffy armies.
I feel you on the Baneblade situation. I know there's a lot of hate for such armies because of the general hamfistedness of adding flyers and superheavies to "standard" 40k, but from your posts, you seem like a pretty chill guy to game with and the Concordians sound like a fun matchup.
Anyway, I recently replayed through Universe At War and was entertained by the concept of the Hierarchy. As an army, they're pretty much unlike any RTS force in pretty much any other game. Rather than having a base, workers building refineries to harvest Vespene Gas, building barracks, etc, they instead start with a giant Defiler-like Walker, that can build sub-components which function as RTS building analogues, all while it's a dangerous fighter in its own right. The Hierarchy Endgame was basically akin to running a Knight army, as you had 3 super-walkers that were one part mobile base, one part superweapon. (And amusingly enough, you had to destroy all subcomponents on said walker before you could target their core)
I wonder if you could kludge the activation system some for super-heavies in a similar way. At the risk of making it *too* granular, I imagine something like a Baneblade or Knight could be "split" so its activations go to multiple "subcomponents" which can be targeted in turn (as let's be honest, there's always *that* part of us that watched Star Trek and enjoyed "target their engines") or so.
Most my Warstack testing has been "marine scale combat", and the vehicle rules are still rather nebulous. I am trying to make tanks feel tough but ponderous, but I'm also trying to strike a balance between "sensible" and "streamlined."
Unit1126PLL wrote: I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.
Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.
Awesome. I love changes to the game that reduce options and murder fluffy armies.
I feel you on the Baneblade situation. I know there's a lot of hate for such armies because of the general hamfistedness of adding flyers and superheavies to "standard" 40k, but from your posts, you seem like a pretty chill guy to game with and the Concordians sound like a fun matchup.
Anyway, I recently replayed through Universe At War and was entertained by the concept of the Hierarchy. As an army, they're pretty much unlike any RTS force in pretty much any other game. Rather than having a base, workers building refineries to harvest Vespene Gas, building barracks, etc, they instead start with a giant Defiler-like Walker, that can build sub-components which function as RTS building analogues, all while it's a dangerous fighter in its own right. The Hierarchy Endgame was basically akin to running a Knight army, as you had 3 super-walkers that were one part mobile base, one part superweapon.
I wonder if you could kludge the activation system some for super-heavies in a similar way. At the risk of making it *too* granular, I imagine something like a Baneblade or Knight could be "split" so its activations go to multiple "subcomponents" which can be targeted in turn (as let's be honest, there's always *that* part of us that watched Star Trek and enjoyed "target their engines") or so.
Most my Warstack testing has been "marine scale combat", and the vehicle rules are still rather nebulous. I am trying to make tanks feel tough but ponderous, but I'm also trying to strike a balance between "sensible" and "streamlined."
What you propose is a viable solution of the same sort as "formation activations", in other words - block activations of roughly same pont size and damage output - but in the opposite direction. Instead of grouping smaller entities into single, larger ones, your approach divides large individuals into separate ones. This could in fact lead to a wildly different playstyles between IKs /Titans (less mobility but much more resilience) and MSU style armies while keeping them both valid. I like it. But it would require a ground-up rework of unit classes and would probably result in pretty much 7th ed scale of complexity of ruleset, as it would require different resolution methods for infantry squads, small vechicles and superheavies.
@Lance: your designed systems cannot be treated as "playtested" in the same sense as commercial systems are playtested. Number of iterations one can make himself doesn't ever get close to what whole communities of players can achieve. I played close to a 100 games of incrementally (and massively) reworked 7th ed, but I'll never claim that it has been playtested outside of the forces and table setups I play with. Being both the creator and playtester one is simply not equipped well enough to "break things", as you unconciously make a huge deal of silent assumptions and don't go outside of your habits far enough to see the whole picture. No one is and claiming otherwise is purely false sense of grandeur. Systems as complex and sandbox as tabletop wargames fall under Gödel's incompleteness theorems - you'll always encounter "bugs and contradictions" that need "most important rule of roll-off" to temporarily resolve and then need to be included in the ruleset permanently, resulting in rules bloat. Large bulk of this thread is focused on your inability to admit, that large power-output units are problem that has to be adressed in alternative activation systems, just like alpha strikes have to be adressed in high damage output IGOUGO systems...
Lance845 wrote: So my fan 8th which has an actual change log as every iteration was tested, and beyond the gates of 40k which is heavily based on using 40ks units in a actual published system are both untested and unproven theoretical structures?
Don't know what to tell you. More games on the market use alternating activations over IGOUGO because more people want actual game play and a quick interactive turn structure. Who would have thought?
Citation? Or is it just your gut feeling? All the card games, all the RPGs, all the board games, just about everything from WizKids or Fantasy Flight or Wizards (HeroClix/AttackWing), none of them use this system that you say is more popular than one player turn after another. This is because people want a simple and casual game that isn't overly complicated on meta rules, hence what we have on 8th edition, which has taken a large step backward in depth to give us better army interactions.
mugginns wrote: It's hard to discuss with people who don't seem to have much or any experience with alternating activations of any kind.
The "bbbbbbbut I can activate MY ONE SUPERPOWER and then it's the same as IGoUGo!" Is absolutely easily refuted with a simple dice bag system that is extremely well liked and used in the very popular Bolt Action. Lots of these fake scenarios just seem like problems that nobody has ever had.
Do you go to court and expect your opponent's attorney to argue your case for you as well? Expecting others to make your arguments for you makes about as much sense as asking the guy who is suing you for legal advice. It's hard to discuss anything with people who leave facts out of the paragraphs and merely spout "I hate this", "That sucks", "This was crap", "This is the best ever", "More games use what I like over everything else" without a shred of reasoning behind them. As if we're all supposed to be psychic and understand the glory that is your mind and its machinations, intricate though they must be, and anyone who doesn't immediately accept what's been stated as hyperbolic fact must be not understanding anything about the source material you're drawing inspiration from.
People have been posting well thought out detailed posts through the whole thread - this is basically just ignoring facts for a cool post you wanted to make. I suggest you read back through. Many of the theory only "well this is what will happen!!!" posts were talked about multiple times on pages one and two.
I have found that playing on a decent sized game board that encourages movement and is full of terrain eliminates the alpha strike. (up to 1K on 4x6, up to 2k on 6x8, up to 6K on 6x12).
We have played around with Variations and the "best" that disrupts the official rules the least is to make each phase IgoUgo instead of each turn..
When it comes time to move its I move one unit, you move one unit. Which gives the "advantage" to the party with the most units. (Which normally means weaker, easier to kill units) and balanced is maintained.
Slows down the overall game a tad but no one has 20-30 minutes of waiting on the ork horde to move either.
I haven’t got a degree in Games Design nor do my three buddies but we mashed up a system because we wanted to use our GW models in a much more interesting and engaging way.
Our ‘Gates of 40K’ isn’t perfect but after many revisions we’ve come to a point where it works great. Random unit activations via blind draw and the reaction system work in tandem to keep both players involved at all times.
Some have mentioned fielding multiple MSU to game the blind draw but in our experience that hasn’t been an issue. Granted, we usually run scenarios with lists to play them out, but if two complete strangers played any of the games that feature this mechanic all it takes is for one of them to be TFG and I’m sure any and all dickery will occur. True for any system.
Another issue some have is with the randomness of unit activations and/or run of activations for one side or the other. I see this as a feature not a bug. Sometimes initiative is with you and you’re able to dictate the flow of battle, sometimes it’s with your opponent.
Either way, it’s balanced because at no point are you sitting around watching and waiting for your opponent to finish his entire army’s moves. Any of your units with LOS to his activating units can react and interrupt where needed.
Deathstars are not a thing because of the Action/Reaction system. At most you can activate 2 units alongside a Character activation. Once again, whatever you or your opponent choose to do with them can be reacted to by other units.
The constant back and forth, presenting decisions of what to activate, when to stall, where to react makes for a game so different from standard 40K that I can see why some would find it difficult to adjust to.
As I said, Gates of 40K isn’t perfect so suggestions on how to polish it up are always welcome.
Lance845 wrote: Why don't you provide me with a list of games that have come out in the last few years that are IGOUGO?
Il get your started. 40k for some reason.
Xwing and Star Trek are off the table on your list since they operate on initiative order, not alternating activations, which I commented on being preferable to your system yet here you are pointing them out in your own defense. They have the inherent balance mechanic of units that move last shoot first, which is spectacular and allows slower units the tactical advantage while speedy pros have the shooting advantage. It's more than possible for my entire army to go before yours if my guys are faster and the only thing that alternates is whose turn it is (initiative token). Which, oddly enough, makes it more of an IGOUGO game than an alternating activation game.
HeroClix however is on my list and is one of country's top games at every major gaming convention, and wouldn't you know it... it still operates on a action-based IGOUGO turn structure with $15,000 cash prizes at just one of their tourneys, pretty popular.
WarmaHordes (Warmachine and Hordes) remain top 5 war games, two from the same company, and feature that IGOUGO turn structure, activating all his models before his opponent gets to. A lot of 40k players abandoned ship to go play this until the company started pulling GW moves.
Infinity is praised as the best tactical/reaction-based and realistic game system around yet sports that same IGOUGO activate my army before you do turn sequence, launching its newest edition in recent years because it's actually being successful and standing the test of time. A lot of our 40k players actually abandoned ship to go play this and still are. I even have an Ariadna army myself.
You forgot GW's other game! Age of Sigmar also sports an IGOUGO turn sequence except during the combat phase, but 40k does the same thing now too with its Fight phase. It's a good compromise to Initiative's removal from the game and prevents the Fantasy shenanigans of Elves annihilating you before you even blink.
And hey, let's mention that superior Flames of War ruleset that recently gave birth to Team Yankee! A game that's actually sucked the life and soul out of my community as everyone finds it to be a better version of 40k. Meh, feth that, not enough dragon-planes and cult zombies. But wouldn't you know... it's IGOUGO... <_<
Oh and none of these games are dead in the water either. They've all received updates and new models recently. Oh and let's give a hand to our honorable mention, which while no longer being the popularity storm it once was, has spawned two online video games, promotes the finest of American passtimes, and remains possibly the ONLY remotely balanced game GW has ever made. Give up? It's BLOODBOWL!!! It's back and better than ever with shiny new models and a slowly growing following, despite still being IGOUGO. Wonder if the new version of Necromunda will be the same way?
Oh and to be nice, I only mentioned the war games this time around. Let's not forget all the card games, RPGs, and board games I mentioned earlier that also use alternating TURN sequences. Such a thing just isn't going the way of the dodo yet. In fact, the alternating activation games seem to either be grossly unpopular or quite few in number because they just aren't making it big in the spotlights like these others are.
Something being popular doesn't exactly make it more fun or enjoyable. 40K has been hugely popular for years...and if I'm honest, as much as I enjoy the game/models/lore - from a design standpoint it's one of the worst ones out there.
IGOUGO is popular because it's easy...and in turn is much easier to create. Again, doesn't make it a good design decision. I feel like you're defending a position based on popularity and sales/prize support - not really addressing why you think it actually works and is engaging as a game mechanic.
Elbows wrote: Something being popular doesn't exactly make it more fun or enjoyable. 40K has been hugely popular for years...and if I'm honest, as much as I enjoy the game/models/lore - from a design standpoint it's one of the worst ones out there.
IGOUGO is popular because it's easy...and in turn is much easier to create. Again, doesn't make it a good design decision. I feel like you're defending a position based on popularity and sales/prize support - not really addressing why you think it actually works and is engaging as a game mechanic.
So you're trying to argue there's no correlation between 'well-designed' and 'popular'? Alright, fair enough, but in that case, a 'well-designed' game isn't actually a very good one, as a game must have something more than a written ruleset - it has to have 'players'. If the most technically perfect game that all others aspire to be and has a completely flawless execution method and is designed by game-development deities has 0 players, one might argue it's not a game at all; it's just words on a page.
Elbows wrote: Something being popular doesn't exactly make it more fun or enjoyable. 40K has been hugely popular for years...and if I'm honest, as much as I enjoy the game/models/lore - from a design standpoint it's one of the worst ones out there.
IGOUGO is popular because it's easy...and in turn is much easier to create. Again, doesn't make it a good design decision. I feel like you're defending a position based on popularity and sales/prize support - not really addressing why you think it actually works and is engaging as a game mechanic.
So you're trying to argue there's no correlation between 'well-designed' and 'popular'? Alright, fair enough, but in that case, a 'well-designed' game isn't actually a very good one, as a game must have something more than a written ruleset - it has to have 'players'. If the most technically perfect game that all others aspire to be and has a completely flawless execution method and is designed by game-development deities has 0 players, one might argue it's not a game at all; it's just words on a page.
I was going to post something similar but you did it before I even read his comment.
Elbow: I'm not defending the position on popularity. I enjoy all of those games and their structures. I find them to be preferable and superior to the other proposed rules and lacking many of the flaws I've already pointed out. I also am not going to repeat myself -- I spent the past few pages addressing why I think it actually works and is engaging as a game mechanic. Go read it.
Considering my quoted opponent merely listed a bunch of a games with NO explanations, I think I've improved on the process.
Games Workshop products have never, ever, been popular because of their game mechanics. In the 25 years I've been playing GW games, I've enjoyed them because they're cool, and yes back in the 90's had far more nerdy geekdom involved. But even the games I loved best, like Necromunda and Warhammer Quest had some pretty crap rules. The saving grace here was the ridiculous amount of content and the support for the game - the "feel" of the game was damn cool.
We're not discussing commercial success of 40K in this thread, we're discussing the archaic and boring IGOUGO turn structure.
40K has never been a success because of its rules - it's a success because of the lore and the cool models. No one ever played a demo game and thought "whoa, that's a fantastic, brilliant game design..." they thought "damn, those Space Marines are pretty cool...".
That's not really relevant to this thread is it?
The one connection you could make is that an IGOUGO game is more open to the dreaded "mathhammer" and thus is far more likely to end up as a tournament game (something 40K was never intended for - as stated numerous times in the early versions of the game). If you're gunning for tournament wins you obviously want meta/netlisting alpha-striking math...and not a genuinely fluid, chaotic game which you can't beat into submission with math.
You see the same thing in any game which becomes a tournament game. Magic, X-Wing etc. are all based on mathhammer-esque tournament lists etc. So, I will concede that the IGOUGO structure may make a game more popular as a tournament game. But the rules are not what draw people into the 40K "universe" as it were.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.
Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.
Awesome. I love changes to the game that reduce options and murder fluffy armies.
3 Baneblades isn't a fluffy army. Also, it's still an option. It's just an option you suffer the consequences for.
@Lance: your designed systems cannot be treated as "playtested" in the same sense as commercial systems are playtested. Number of iterations one can make himself doesn't ever get close to what whole communities of players can achieve. I played close to a 100 games of incrementally (and massively) reworked 7th ed, but I'll never claim that it has been playtested outside of the forces and table setups I play with. Being both the creator and playtester one is simply not equipped well enough to "break things", as you unconciously make a huge deal of silent assumptions and don't go outside of your habits far enough to see the whole picture. No one is and claiming otherwise is purely false sense of grandeur. Systems as complex and sandbox as tabletop wargames fall under Gödel's incompleteness theorems - you'll always encounter "bugs and contradictions" that need "most important rule of roll-off" to temporarily resolve and then need to be included in the ruleset permanently, resulting in rules bloat. Large bulk of this thread is focused on your inability to admit, that large power-output units are problem that has to be adressed in alternative activation systems, just like alpha strikes have to be adressed in high damage output IGOUGO systems...
I agree. I wasn't the only tester. I had other people from Dakka and about 6 or 7 players from 2 LFGS that were giving the game a whirl. I purosfully even saught out a TFG because I knew he would try to break it.
I don't admit it because I don't think it's that big of an issue. The mechanics themselves often mitigates their over all impact.
You see the same thing in any game which becomes a tournament game. Magic, X-Wing etc. are all based on mathhammer-esque tournament lists etc. So, I will concede that the IGOUGO structure may make a game more popular as a tournament game. But the rules are not what draw people into the 40K "universe" as it were.
I agree. Which is why I am not arguing on the basis of popularity. I spent the past several pages supporting my reasons regarding the mechanics themselves. Mentioning popularity merely denotes that I'm not the only one that finds them to be quite favorable.
If as the quality of a game increases, the popularity decreases, then as has been said before... you're looking at a calculus problem where the limit approaches 0. I don't find that to be a good game at all.
Every gamer falls somewhere along the spectrum I suppose. If there exist people who think a homebrew game that only 2 people can stand playing is the best game ever then more power to them. It's simply a testament of how unique each individual is that they seek games that are more and more niche to fine tune their experience to match their preferred areas of enjoyment. I guess that's why "crappy rules" are so popular. They appeal to the most people overall by giving everyone something to connect with but never truly focusing on one particular group's extremely eccentric notions of balance and fun.
Games Workshop products have never, ever, been popular because of their game mechanics. In the 25 years I've been playing GW games, I've enjoyed them because they're cool, and yes back in the 90's had far more nerdy geekdom involved. But even the games I loved best, like Necromunda and Warhammer Quest had some pretty crap rules. The saving grace here was the ridiculous amount of content and the support for the game - the "feel" of the game was damn cool.
We're not discussing commercial success of 40K in this thread, we're discussing the archaic and boring IGOUGO turn structure.
40K has never been a success because of its rules - it's a success because of the lore and the cool models. No one ever played a demo game and thought "whoa, that's a fantastic, brilliant game design..." they thought "damn, those Space Marines are pretty cool...".
That's not really relevant to this thread is it?
The one connection you could make is that an IGOUGO game is more open to the dreaded "mathhammer" and thus is far more likely to end up as a tournament game (something 40K was never intended for - as stated numerous times in the early versions of the game). If you're gunning for tournament wins you obviously want meta/netlisting alpha-striking math...and not a genuinely fluid, chaotic game which you can't beat into submission with math.
You see the same thing in any game which becomes a tournament game. Magic, X-Wing etc. are all based on mathhammer-esque tournament lists etc. So, I will concede that the IGOUGO structure may make a game more popular as a tournament game. But the rules are not what draw people into the 40K "universe" as it were.
This. FF as a video game series has been running off the same principle. As video games they are crap. As interactive anime story books with drudgery between each new snippet of the story they excel. Mechanically they are garbage but it doesn't stop them from being popular.
8th is the best we have seen in a LONG LONG time from GW, but that doesn't quite make it good.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.
Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.
Awesome. I love changes to the game that reduce options and murder fluffy armies.
3 Baneblades isn't a fluffy army. Also, it's still an option. It's just an option you suffer the consequences for.
And yes, but it's disingenuous to say "Well, it's more interactive!" and then make me wait while my enemy activates most of his 50 units so I can activate 3. I get to sit there and roll saves, just like I do now.
Games Workshop products have never, ever, been popular because of their game mechanics. In the 25 years I've been playing GW games, I've enjoyed them because they're cool, and yes back in the 90's had far more nerdy geekdom involved. But even the games I loved best, like Necromunda and Warhammer Quest had some pretty crap rules. The saving grace here was the ridiculous amount of content and the support for the game - the "feel" of the game was damn cool.
We're not discussing commercial success of 40K in this thread, we're discussing the archaic and boring IGOUGO turn structure.
40K has never been a success because of its rules - it's a success because of the lore and the cool models. No one ever played a demo game and thought "whoa, that's a fantastic, brilliant game design..." they thought "damn, those Space Marines are pretty cool...".
That's not really relevant to this thread is it?
I'd argue it's exactly relevant to the thread. The models and background are cool, and the game is easy to play. Those combined make it a popular and successful game/product. Because the game is easy to understand and play, it's good design, simply because it effectively does what it needs to do.
I've never liked the IGOUGO turn system. At certain points it leaves a person feeling like they can do nothing while their army gets wiped out. It can also leave a person bored if the opponent has a large army with little for them to do but remove models.
But, my first tabletop game was Battletech which relies on an initiative system closer to what X-Wing uses now, which colors my considerations. And in Battletech, no matter how much damage you do during a Phase of a turn, it will not negate my unit from retaliating in kind. Damage results only apply at the end of the Phase which balanced out the Initative factor.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.
Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.
Awesome. I love changes to the game that reduce options and murder fluffy armies.
3 Baneblades isn't a fluffy army. Also, it's still an option. It's just an option you suffer the consequences for.
And yes, but it's disingenuous to say "Well, it's more interactive!" and then make me wait while my enemy activates most of his 50 units so I can activate 3. I get to sit there and roll saves, just like I do now.
Or use reactions to act in response however you would want to act. (System depending)
It's disingenuous to argue that a situation you place yourself in is weaker and that that is the fault of the system as opposed to you. In 7th ed 40k I could build a tyranid list that had no synapse because OOE was a HQ option. If I brought that list and then complained that I was constantly rolling and failing my IB tests and had no control over my army whos fault would that be? I should be playing the game by utilizing the systems I have available to me. If I dig myself into a hole because GW has poor unit scaling that is on me for playing with GWs bad rules and then using them in the worst way possible.
If you WANT to take 3 super heavies into a fight with alternating activations you do so understanding the mechanics and what that means. That is on you. The game is not at fault because you dug yourself into a hole with your list.
Games Workshop products have never, ever, been popular because of their game mechanics. In the 25 years I've been playing GW games, I've enjoyed them because they're cool, and yes back in the 90's had far more nerdy geekdom involved. But even the games I loved best, like Necromunda and Warhammer Quest had some pretty crap rules. The saving grace here was the ridiculous amount of content and the support for the game - the "feel" of the game was damn cool.
We're not discussing commercial success of 40K in this thread, we're discussing the archaic and boring IGOUGO turn structure.
40K has never been a success because of its rules - it's a success because of the lore and the cool models. No one ever played a demo game and thought "whoa, that's a fantastic, brilliant game design..." they thought "damn, those Space Marines are pretty cool...".
That's not really relevant to this thread is it?
I'd argue it's exactly relevant to the thread. The models and background are cool, and the game is easy to play. Those combined make it a popular and successful game/product. Because the game is easy to understand and play, it's good design, simply because it effectively does what it needs to do.
5th 6th and 7th are not simple and easy to play and yet have always been popular. Anyone who thinks 7th was a good design needs to be knocked upside their head Flintstones style until they get their head strait.
This. FF as a video game series has been running off the same principle. As video games they are crap. As interactive anime story books with drudgery between each new snippet of the story they excel. Mechanically they are garbage but it doesn't stop them from being popular.
I haven't even played most of them, and I know they've changed the mechanics around a lot- most mechanics in FF aren't consistent from game to game, particularly when they switched from turn based to phased turns in real time.
The later part is pure subjective nonsense, whether you like them or not.
This. FF as a video game series has been running off the same principle. As video games they are crap. As interactive anime story books with drudgery between each new snippet of the story they excel. Mechanically they are garbage but it doesn't stop them from being popular.
I haven't even played most of them, and I know they've changed the mechanics around a lot- most mechanics in FF aren't consistent from game to game, particularly when they switched from turn based to phased turns in real time.
The later part is pure subjective nonsense, whether you like them or not.
When they went to phase based they made it so you only controlled a single character in the party. The other 2 were NPCs that acted on preset conditions. Definition of game play: A series of interesting choices. You loose control over 2/3rds of what little choices you were making in the "game" while those choices were mostly uninteresting auto swings anyway... well... to what extent is that a game?
Unit1126PLL wrote: I'd argue it's exactly relevant to the thread. The models and background are cool, and the game is easy to play. Those combined make it a popular and successful game/product. Because the game is easy to understand and play, it's good design, simply because it effectively does what it needs to do.
5th 6th and 7th are not simple and easy to play and yet have always been popular. Anyone who thinks 7th was a good design needs to be knocked upside their head Flintstones style until they get their head strait.
Agreed. Indeed, I don't think any of the previous editions were ever "easy to play", considering the size of the books and the necessity for human involvement in the rules to get them to work. When you consider all the arguments that got in to the wording of the rules for 5th, 6th, and 7th, that is a good indication of just how "easy" it was to play those editions.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I'd argue it's exactly relevant to the thread. The models and background are cool, and the game is easy to play. Those combined make it a popular and successful game/product. Because the game is easy to understand and play, it's good design, simply because it effectively does what it needs to do.
5th 6th and 7th are not simple and easy to play and yet have always been popular. Anyone who thinks 7th was a good design needs to be knocked upside their head Flintstones style until they get their head strait.
Agreed. Indeed, I don't think any of the previous editions were ever "easy to play", considering the size of the books and the necessity for human involvement in the rules to get them to work. When you consider all the arguments that got in to the wording of the rules for 5th, 6th, and 7th, that is a good indication of just how "easy" it was to play those editions.
Also has YMDC ever been an unpopular part of this forum? There is a reason for it's high traffic. The rules are so poorly written and designed that the community has had to build it's own support structure to figure out wtf is going on just so the game COULD be played.
5th 6th and 7th are not simple and easy to play and yet have always been popular. Anyone who thinks 7th was a good design needs to be knocked upside their head Flintstones style until they get their head strait.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the problems with 7th were the Codexes, not the core rules. 7th was just as simple to pick up as previous editions, the only exception being the USR bloat.
5th 6th and 7th are not simple and easy to play and yet have always been popular. Anyone who thinks 7th was a good design needs to be knocked upside their head Flintstones style until they get their head strait.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the problems with 7th were the Codexes, not the core rules. 7th was just as simple to pick up as previous editions, the only exception being the USR bloat.
I disagree. All the different unit types were bad. Especially having to remember what made each one special. Was it really needed to have jump and jetpack be 2 different things? The vehicle rules were bad. The disparity between MC and vehicles. Random tables.... all the random tables. Having 5 different resolution methods just to deal some damage is ridiculous.
USRs were a problem, but they were not even the biggest problem. It was the sheer complication.
Elbows wrote: The one connection you could make is that an IGOUGO game is more open to the dreaded "mathhammer" and thus is far more likely to end up as a tournament game (something 40K was never intended for - as stated numerous times in the early versions of the game). If you're gunning for tournament wins you obviously want meta/netlisting alpha-striking math...and not a genuinely fluid, chaotic game which you can't beat into submission with math.
And yet I also showed examples of how the proposed alternating activation system we were arguing about for pages was more prone to math-hammer alpha strikes than the IGOUGO version of the same system. But rather than conceding the point as correct, people have merely gone on to throw more and more convolution and alternate loophole bandaids that can circumvent the issue rather than acknowledging that there was an issue to begin with (quite the opposite in fact, I had to argue for quite some time with someone believing the issue didn't even EXIST). I say that circumvents instead of solves because that's all convolution tends to do. The ruleset becomes so broken that you need to include a thousand exceptions to the rules, to the point that it often becomes more complicated to play than 40k already is, which is horrible when rules lawyers attack anything long enough. The problem still exists, you've merely made it harder to exploit at this time, perhaps even impossibly so. But with the right shift of balance, the right mix of abilities, it can be back in full force. We saw this often with the previous edition granting formation rules that broke basic tenets of the game. THOSE RULES EXISTED FOR A REASON!!!
Automatically Appended Next Post: As UAT is primarily about video game design, that's the area of expertise I relate with. Programming is all about exceptions to rules but the BEST programming occurs when no exceptions are necessary. When the system runs smoothly without needing to flow through half a dozen loop tests, it's considered efficient. Designers and programmers both look for ways to eliminate unnecessary bloat to their programs and rules, to streamline them without reducing the tactical decision making or fun elements that drive them, and often the biggest reason that something gets cut from the release is because it would be too much of an obnoxious tedium to try to make it work with the existing system.
The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, you have discussed how half a dozen different systems of alternate activation seperately deal with specific issues of IGOUGO.
It reminds of a poll a while back on this forum (about USR vs bespoke or 3 ways to play idea, I think can't remember) And the conclusion was that the most people still choose GW's system (30% voted GW's system whereas any competitor had 15-20). Yet in the actual thread people were constantly wailing on Gw'sq system there wasn't a good replacementfound. I believe in the same logic here, I don't think there is a specific kind of alternate actvation that as a whole beats out IGOUGO.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The answer to OP first question in the thread name might very well be the existence of the second question.
mugginns wrote: The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.
New games aren't what was being discussed, nor is the activation system in general, which I approve of! In fact, if you bothered to read anything I write rather than throw out these one liners after skimming through the first two sentences, you'll have noticed where I said alternating activations can be done well, though I much prefer the iniative-oriented ones for they alleviate the states problems. Simply put, however, the presented version was not in fact "done well" and carried an obvious flaw that was repeatedly swept under the rug... as you're doing even now.
This prompted some to begin linking or citing other games that don't have this issue. That's well and good for OTHER games but unless you'd like to discuss a way to implement them HERE for 40k then it's rather pointless to bring them up at all. It simply shows that other designers are less braindead when it comes to balance.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Earth127 wrote: The answer to OP first question in the thread name might very well be the existence of the second question.
The thread title questions may as well be "What is the meaning to Life?" for all the variation in answers you'll receive. Yet while some (myself) are open to discussing alternatives, when presented in a CLEAR and CONCISE manner, others (???) would prefer to declare that this system is broken and can never be repaired while ACTIVELY repairing their own system's loopholes each time a new flaw is mentioned.
Earth127 wrote: No, you have discussed how half a dozen different systems of alternate activation seperately deal with specific issues of IGOUGO.
It reminds of a poll a while back on this forum (about USR vs bespoke or 3 ways to play idea, I think can't remember) And the conclusion was that the most people still choose GW's system (30% voted GW's system whereas any competitor had 15-20). Yet in the actual thread people were constantly wailing on Gw'sq system there wasn't a good replacementfound. I believe in the same logic here, I don't think there is a specific kind of alternate actvation that as a whole beats out IGOUGO.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The answer to OP first question in the thread name might very well be the existence of the second question.
Imagine that, a gw game forum prefers gw rules by a slim minority lol.
Post 2017/08/13 16:15:59 Subject: Why is 40k still IGOUGO with phases anyway? And what is the ideal replacement?
mugginns wrote:
The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.
New games aren't what was being discussed, nor is the activation system in general, which I approve of! In fact, if you bothered to read anything I write rather than throw out these one liners after skimming through the first two sentences, you'll have noticed where I said alternating activations can be done well, though I much prefer the iniative-oriented ones for they alleviate the states problems. Simply put, however, the presented version was not in fact "done well" and carried an obvious flaw that was repeatedly swept under the rug... as you're doing even now.
This prompted some to begin linking or citing other games that don't have this issue. That's well and good for OTHER games but unless you'd like to discuss a way to implement them HERE for 40k then it's rather pointless to bring them up at all. It simply shows that other designers are less braindead when it comes to balance.
Various alternatives have been presented because someone says "well what about this one army that I played against once six years ago? Your proposal INVALIDATES THAT LIST."
i really don't know what you're on about now - if you like alternating activations, then we agree. If you still think IGoUGo is better, why not bring up insane corner cases there too? Your opponent puts down 600 models on the table and insists on measuring and moving them individually. His turn takes two hours. How is that fun? System invalidated.
mugginns wrote: Imagine that, a gw game forum prefers gw rules by a slim minority lol.
50% to 100% more votes is a slim minority. -mugginns2017
I'm guessing you're not aware that having more choices thins out voting density. Kind of like how having more than the Democratic and Republican parties can siphon off voters from one or both of them. Which is actually the intended purpose of most of those third+ candidates.
mugginns wrote:
The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.
Most people dismiss my experience that more LOS blocking terrain hinders shooty armies whille IG artilery that ignore LOS become even more OP.
Yet my consistent experience when increasing terrain density is more fun games. If one fringe exception breaks a system that works 99% of the time maybe the exception should be adressed and not the system
I haven't stated a corner case. I remarked that I think Deathstars might become too powerfull/ break the system and Peregrine countered saying that isn't what happens in practice in other games.
mugginns wrote: The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.
Ok. So what constitutes debunked to you? What would everyone need to show that these things are not problems? ::rolls eyes::
mugginns wrote: The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.
Ok. So what constitutes debunked to you? What would everyone need to show that these things are not problems? ::rolls eyes::
For example, you can start with showing how exactly an army of three IKs/WKs against low-power hordes or mid-strenght elite army on a standard ITC table don't have an inherent advantage of early activation of 100% of it's firepower in each and every game? On an ITC table you cannot hide your entire army behind LOS blocking terrain, so no matter who goes first, if you don't wipe out one IK/WK with your first activated unit, IKs/WKs practically start the game with net point advantage... For the ease of debunking let assume for a moment, that every roll in said game returns expected value of damage/saves succeded (to rid out luck factor) and that both armies are completely present on the table at the start of first turn (no reserves). IK/WK/superheavy armies are perfectly battle forged and legal under both 7th and 8th 40K rulesets. This is not a border edge case, but a common matchup during 7th ed... We are NOT discussing "alternating activation systems" as a whole, we are discussing "alternating activation 40K" with the whole spectrum of curently available models/units.
mugginns wrote: Most people define majority as more than half.
Have you ever seen Presidential election majorities? 49% is pretty common. Any time you have 2 choices, the majority will be in the 50%+ range. If you have 8 million choices.... good luck getting a majority higher than 10%.
All this theory and speculation about alternating activation is ridiculous. We have actual games that do alternating activation, and they do not have the supposed death star problem. For example, Armada has the most basic version of the system and it recently had to get a balance errata to nerf MSU a bit because the sheer value of having additional activations was dominating the meta. "Death star" lists like dual ISDs are terrible because of their low activation count, lists with more activations can fly circles around them despite the dual ISD list being able to activate half their point value in each of two activations. The alpha strike value is far outweighed by the value of being able to time your activations effectively and delay until your opponent commits.
mugginns wrote: Most people define majority as more than half.
Have you ever seen Presidential election majorities? 49% is pretty common. Any time you have 2 choices, the majority will be in the 50%+ range. If you have 8 million choices.... good luck getting a majority higher than 10%.
If this is really, actually, a problem, then you add in other stuff to your alternating activation system. Random dice bag, initiative, whatever. Been stated countless times already. Next?
mugginns wrote: If this is really, actually, a problem, then you add in other stuff to your alternating activation system. Random dice bag, initiative, whatever. Been stated countless times already. Next?
But again, no one is being explicit about those things because they fear being pointed as wrong or something. I proposed the initiative system MYSELF and got it shot to pieces by the same person who argued that these problems don't even EXIST. That's why we're still arguing these points, these corner situations as you call them, so many pages later. Because what you find a reasonable answer... others don't.
I'm not sure how a dice bag with only 1 dice in it would work though. I'm always up for hearing better systems and poking holes in any flaws they may have to improve them.
If you have four units and I have fifteen, I have a better chance of activating first because you chose to bring a list with very few activations. Initiative is used in xwing and its fine.
If you don't find the solutions (again, solutions that many wargamers are now using with great success) reasonable then perhaps a discussion just can't be had.
mugginns wrote: The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.
Ok. So what constitutes debunked to you? What would everyone need to show that these things are not problems? ::rolls eyes::
For example, you can start with showing how exactly an army of three IKs/WKs against low-power hordes or mid-strenght elite army on a standard ITC table don't have an inherent advantage of early activation of 100% of it's firepower in each and every game? On an ITC table you cannot hide your entire army behind LOS blocking terrain, so no matter who goes first, if you don't wipe out one IK/WK with your first activated unit, IKs/WKs practically start the game with net point advantage... For the ease of debunking let assume for a moment, that every roll in said game returns expected value of damage/saves succeded (to rid out luck factor) and that both armies are completely present on the table at the start of first turn (no reserves). IK/WK/superheavy armies are perfectly battle forged and legal under both 7th and 8th 40K rulesets. This is not a border edge case, but a common matchup during 7th ed... We are NOT discussing "alternating activation systems" as a whole, we are discussing "alternating activation 40K" with the whole spectrum of curently available models/units.
At worst, it turns the game into almost normal 40k. That's what you're complaining about. An edge case that turns the game back into normal 40k. Outside the edge case it's an improvement....at the edge case it's a wash. Why does it matter then?
mugginns wrote: The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.
Ok. So what constitutes debunked to you? What would everyone need to show that these things are not problems? ::rolls eyes::
For example, you can start with showing how exactly an army of three IKs/WKs against low-power hordes or mid-strenght elite army on a standard ITC table don't have an inherent advantage of early activation of 100% of it's firepower in each and every game? On an ITC table you cannot hide your entire army behind LOS blocking terrain, so no matter who goes first, if you don't wipe out one IK/WK with your first activated unit, IKs/WKs practically start the game with net point advantage... For the ease of debunking let assume for a moment, that every roll in said game returns expected value of damage/saves succeded (to rid out luck factor) and that both armies are completely present on the table at the start of first turn (no reserves). IK/WK/superheavy armies are perfectly battle forged and legal under both 7th and 8th 40K rulesets. This is not a border edge case, but a common matchup during 7th ed... We are NOT discussing "alternating activation systems" as a whole, we are discussing "alternating activation 40K" with the whole spectrum of curently available models/units.
what a rediculous set up. Not a lot of los blocking terrain and, while using all the units of 40k and playing 40k, no reserves or deepstrikes. Pft.
With reserves its easy. How many targets can each one actually shoot? 3? Maybe 4 if they go all out guns. Mostly high dmg but lower hits?
Enjoy shooting at 3 blobs of 30 hormagaunts. With venomthrope support. The first one to activate gets charged. Now the other models caanot shoot at that unit anymore. After your s3cond activation deepstrike a trygon with genestealers. Charge and rip apart either one of the 2 that already activated. When after your 3rd do it again. I can garantee that at the very least 2 of your 3 models have dropped below 1/2 health and begun to degrade in effectivness. I stil have the rest of my turn to prep for the next round of combat. Taking positions. Grabing objectives. Doing whatever i want.
On turn 2 you step one guy out of combat. Half my major hitters that i even bothered to list are still in combat. I guess you can shoot those hormagaunts though!
Again. Your lack of flexibility cripples you. You commit early and i can exploit that. Targets use melee to protect themselves. Because what are you going to do about it? Deepstrikers can enter at liesure with no risk of retaliation. How many hormagaunts can a IK actually kill in shooting at start of game? Enjoy that. I am sure it was worth the points.
Something valid to consider when looking at polls and threads on popularity of particular games and rule mechanics - GW has long dominated the wargaming scene, with their excellent model ranges and marketing (if not their rules). That is to say that a considerable percentage of gamers, particularly younger ones, have only played GW games. That is to say that a considerable percentage of gamers have no familiarity of game systems that are not IGOUGO.
Here is the list i just made. Everything comes stock.
3 malathropes for hqs
3 units of 20 GENESTEALERS
3 UNITS OF Hormagaunts, 2 30 models 1 29 models.
2 trygons
1 trygon prime.
1999 points. Your "alpha strike" would be compleyely negated shooting at hormagaunts and the real threats would eat you alive because you are incapable of reacting properly
argonak wrote: At worst, it turns the game into almost normal 40k. That's what you're complaining about. An edge case that turns the game back into normal 40k. Outside the edge case it's an improvement....at the edge case it's a wash. Why does it matter then?
Not so! It doesn't turn the game into 40k because 40k doesn't make your Imperial Knights always activate first. There's a dice roll involved for turn sequence. Horde armies can sometimes go before they do. The so-called edge case turns the game into 40k where elite armies act quicker than horde armies and therefore simulates them always going first. Could you imagine 40k if simply by the virtue of bringing a knight list you automatically Sieze the Initiative? Every time?
mugginns wrote: Most people define majority as more than half.
Have you ever seen Presidential election majorities? 49% is pretty common. Any time you have 2 choices, the majority will be in the 50%+ range. If you have 8 million choices.... good luck getting a majority higher than 10%.
If this is really, actually, a problem, then you add in other stuff to your alternating activation system. Random dice bag, initiative, whatever. Been stated countless times already. Next?
Each of those solutions invalidates some part of current model/unit range of 40K while promoting other part. No random dice bag on planet bowling ball? Superheavies FTW. With dice bag? Pure luck in drawing your activations soon enough not to be wiped out before you do anything. Initiative? Depends on activation structure - if it's "all moves first, all shooting later in reverse order" then it's sensible if things are ballanced. If it's "entire activation before next initiative orded" then initiative becomes the only truly relevant stat in the game. Etc...
Any form of time quantification in game systems creates some form of bias, that has to be accounted for. if you design your game from ground up, you can keep said bias in check. What is problematic with 40K is that it has a huge line of existing models with HUGE powerl level discrepancies. You have to account for all of that and produce a system as inclusive as possible. Simple answers like "deathstars don't belong in 40K proper" or "Titans have no place outside of Apocalypse" or "you like cheap hordes? then put them on moving trays or GTFO" aren't answers at all...
Somewhere on pages 1-3 of this thread there are some nice and sensible solutions to many of those "inclusion" problems, but none of them are straightforward implementations of either alternating activations or IGOUGO...
argonak wrote: At worst, it turns the game into almost normal 40k. That's what you're complaining about. An edge case that turns the game back into normal 40k. Outside the edge case it's an improvement....at the edge case it's a wash. Why does it matter then?
Not so! It doesn't turn the game into 40k because 40k doesn't make your Imperial Knights always activate first. There's a dice roll involved for turn sequence. Horde armies can sometimes go before they do. The so-called edge case turns the game into 40k where elite armies act quicker than horde armies and therefore simulates them always going first. Could you imagine 40k if simply by the virtue of bringing a knight list you automatically Sieze the Initiative? Every time?
Most scenarios out of the rulebook allow the player with fewer deployments to go first.
mugginns wrote: Most people define majority as more than half.
Have you ever seen Presidential election majorities? 49% is pretty common. Any time you have 2 choices, the majority will be in the 50%+ range. If you have 8 million choices.... good luck getting a majority higher than 10%.
If this is really, actually, a problem, then you add in other stuff to your alternating activation system. Random dice bag, initiative, whatever. Been stated countless times already. Next?
Each of those solutions invalidates some part of current model/unit range of 40K while promoting other part. No random dice bag on planet bowling ball? Superheavies FTW. With dice bag? Pure luck in drawing your activations soon enough not to be wiped out before you do anything. Initiative? Depends on activation structure - if it's "all moves first, all shooting later in reverse order" then it's sensible if things are ballanced. If it's "entire activation before next initiative orded" then initiative becomes the only truly relevant stat in the game. Etc...
Any form of time quantification in game systems creates some form of bias, that has to be accounted for. if you design your game from ground up, you can keep said bias in check. What is problematic with 40K is that it has a huge line of existing models with HUGE powerl level discrepancies. You have to account for all of that and produce a system as inclusive as possible. Simple answers like "deathstars don't belong in 40K proper" or "Titans have no place outside of Apocalypse" or "you like cheap hordes? then put them on moving trays or GTFO" aren't answers at all...
Somewhere on pages 1-3 of this thread there are some nice and sensible solutions to many of those "inclusion" problems, but none of them are straightforward implementations of either alternating activations or IGOUGO...
There are a lot of assumptions and hyperbole in this quote.
mugginns wrote: The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.
Ok. So what constitutes debunked to you? What would everyone need to show that these things are not problems? ::rolls eyes::
For example, you can start with showing how exactly an army of three IKs/WKs against low-power hordes or mid-strenght elite army on a standard ITC table don't have an inherent advantage of early activation of 100% of it's firepower in each and every game? On an ITC table you cannot hide your entire army behind LOS blocking terrain, so no matter who goes first, if you don't wipe out one IK/WK with your first activated unit, IKs/WKs practically start the game with net point advantage... For the ease of debunking let assume for a moment, that every roll in said game returns expected value of damage/saves succeded (to rid out luck factor) and that both armies are completely present on the table at the start of first turn (no reserves). IK/WK/superheavy armies are perfectly battle forged and legal under both 7th and 8th 40K rulesets. This is not a border edge case, but a common matchup during 7th ed... We are NOT discussing "alternating activation systems" as a whole, we are discussing "alternating activation 40K" with the whole spectrum of curently available models/units.
what a rediculous set up. Not a lot of los blocking terrain and, while using all the units of 40k and playing 40k, no reserves or deepstrikes. Pft.
With reserves its easy. How many targets can each one actually shoot? 3? Maybe 4 if they go all out guns. Mostly high dmg but lower hits?
Enjoy shooting at 3 blobs of 30 hormagaunts. With venomthrope support. The first one to activate gets charged. Now the other models caanot shoot at that unit anymore. After your s3cond activation deepstrike a trygon with genestealers. Charge and rip apart either one of the 2 that already activated. When after your 3rd do it again. I can garantee that at the very least 2 of your 3 models have dropped below 1/2 health and begun to degrade in effectivness. I stil have the rest of my turn to prep for the next round of combat. Taking positions. Grabing objectives. Doing whatever i want.
On turn 2 you step one guy out of combat. Half my major hitters that i even bothered to list are still in combat. I guess you can shoot those hormagaunts though!
Again. Your lack of flexibility cripples you. You commit early and i can exploit that. Targets use melee to protect themselves. Because what are you going to do about it? Deepstrikers can enter at liesure with no risk of retaliation. How many hormagaunts can a IK actually kill in shooting at start of game? Enjoy that. I am sure it was worth the points.
Congratiulations, you just went AROUND the question... I didn't ask you "how to beat this hypothetical list". You just showed that you can try and build a list to account for IKs/WKs inherent first shoot advantage in my example, bypassing it using reserves and alpha-strike Trygons as an example in a thread about how alternating activations help to get rid of alpha strike problem... And how exactly are you activating Trygons and genestealers at the same time? Right after you unload your Genestealers from Trygon activation they get obliterated by third Knight activation... Or am I missing something obvious? And ~2000pts is 5 WKs, not three. If we can cross-tailor, then I can exchange one knight for as many legal 20pts khymerae units I can and play the waiting game against you (you have 6 possible activations before commiting Trygons) and then unleashing 400pts of fire power with every knight activation. All I need is one more spare unit than you - we now have close to same number of activations but if there are units worh 20pts and 400pts in the same game, then as you can see your entire "alternating activations is best" devolves to "who can stall longer before unleashing main guns"... My solution to this, as wrote many pages earlier, would be to use Epic style formation "block activations" of roughly same point value (or of much, much smaller power/cost discrepancies than 20:1).
This "ridiculous setup" was specifically set this way because there will be A LOT of games not involving armies with mass deep strike/reserves tailored against those IKs/WKs. Amuse me with writing lists with same "hide in reserves and deep strike assault" principle for Harlequins or Ad Mech...
After all your arguments I don't really see any "inherently better for 40K" in alternating activations. All I see is change in what is optimal strategy to game the system from a set of similiarily dumb and unrealistic choices. That is hardly any improvement.
argonak wrote: At worst, it turns the game into almost normal 40k. That's what you're complaining about. An edge case that turns the game back into normal 40k. Outside the edge case it's an improvement....at the edge case it's a wash. Why does it matter then?
Not so! It doesn't turn the game into 40k because 40k doesn't make your Imperial Knights always activate first. There's a dice roll involved for turn sequence. Horde armies can sometimes go before they do. The so-called edge case turns the game into 40k where elite armies act quicker than horde armies and therefore simulates them always going first. Could you imagine 40k if simply by the virtue of bringing a knight list you automatically Sieze the Initiative? Every time?
Most scenarios out of the rulebook allow the player with fewer deployments to go first.
mugginns wrote: Most people define majority as more than half.
Have you ever seen Presidential election majorities? 49% is pretty common. Any time you have 2 choices, the majority will be in the 50%+ range. If you have 8 million choices.... good luck getting a majority higher than 10%.
If this is really, actually, a problem, then you add in other stuff to your alternating activation system. Random dice bag, initiative, whatever. Been stated countless times already. Next?
Each of those solutions invalidates some part of current model/unit range of 40K while promoting other part. No random dice bag on planet bowling ball? Superheavies FTW. With dice bag? Pure luck in drawing your activations soon enough not to be wiped out before you do anything. Initiative? Depends on activation structure - if it's "all moves first, all shooting later in reverse order" then it's sensible if things are ballanced. If it's "entire activation before next initiative orded" then initiative becomes the only truly relevant stat in the game. Etc...
Any form of time quantification in game systems creates some form of bias, that has to be accounted for. if you design your game from ground up, you can keep said bias in check. What is problematic with 40K is that it has a huge line of existing models with HUGE powerl level discrepancies. You have to account for all of that and produce a system as inclusive as possible. Simple answers like "deathstars don't belong in 40K proper" or "Titans have no place outside of Apocalypse" or "you like cheap hordes? then put them on moving trays or GTFO" aren't answers at all...
Somewhere on pages 1-3 of this thread there are some nice and sensible solutions to many of those "inclusion" problems, but none of them are straightforward implementations of either alternating activations or IGOUGO...
There are a lot of assumptions and hyperbole in this quote.
There are exactly zero assumptions, only more fundamental level of game design goal made clear and a simple fact of power discrepancies pointed out.
mugginns wrote: The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.
No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.
Ok. So what constitutes debunked to you? What would everyone need to show that these things are not problems? ::rolls eyes::
For example, you can start with showing how exactly an army of three IKs/WKs against low-power hordes or mid-strenght elite army on a standard ITC table don't have an inherent advantage of early activation of 100% of it's firepower in each and every game? On an ITC table you cannot hide your entire army behind LOS blocking terrain, so no matter who goes first, if you don't wipe out one IK/WK with your first activated unit, IKs/WKs practically start the game with net point advantage... For the ease of debunking let assume for a moment, that every roll in said game returns expected value of damage/saves succeded (to rid out luck factor) and that both armies are completely present on the table at the start of first turn (no reserves). IK/WK/superheavy armies are perfectly battle forged and legal under both 7th and 8th 40K rulesets. This is not a border edge case, but a common matchup during 7th ed... We are NOT discussing "alternating activation systems" as a whole, we are discussing "alternating activation 40K" with the whole spectrum of curently available models/units.
what a rediculous set up. Not a lot of los blocking terrain and, while using all the units of 40k and playing 40k, no reserves or deepstrikes. Pft.
With reserves its easy. How many targets can each one actually shoot? 3? Maybe 4 if they go all out guns. Mostly high dmg but lower hits?
Enjoy shooting at 3 blobs of 30 hormagaunts. With venomthrope support. The first one to activate gets charged. Now the other models caanot shoot at that unit anymore. After your s3cond activation deepstrike a trygon with genestealers. Charge and rip apart either one of the 2 that already activated. When after your 3rd do it again. I can garantee that at the very least 2 of your 3 models have dropped below 1/2 health and begun to degrade in effectivness. I stil have the rest of my turn to prep for the next round of combat. Taking positions. Grabing objectives. Doing whatever i want.
On turn 2 you step one guy out of combat. Half my major hitters that i even bothered to list are still in combat. I guess you can shoot those hormagaunts though!
Again. Your lack of flexibility cripples you. You commit early and i can exploit that. Targets use melee to protect themselves. Because what are you going to do about it? Deepstrikers can enter at liesure with no risk of retaliation. How many hormagaunts can a IK actually kill in shooting at start of game? Enjoy that. I am sure it was worth the points.
Congratiulations, you just went AROUND the question... I didn't ask you "how to beat this hypothetical list". You just showed that you can try and build a list to account for IKs/WKs inherent first shoot advantage in my example, bypassing it using reserves and alpha-strike Trygons as an example in a thread about how alternating activations help to get rid of alpha strike problem... And how exactly are you activating Trygons and genestealers at the same time? Right after you unload your Genestealers from Trygon activation they get obliterated by third Knight activation... Or am I missing something obvious? And ~2000pts is 5 WKs, not three. If we can cross-tailor, then I can exchange one knight for as many legal 20pts khymerae units I can and play the waiting game against you (you have 6 possible activations before commiting Trygons) and then unleashing 400pts of fire power with every knight activation. All I need is one more spare unit than you - we now have close to same number of activations but if there are units worh 20pts and 400pts in the same game, then as you can see your entire "alternating activations is best" devolves to "who can stall longer before unleashing main guns"... My solution to this, as wrote many pages earlier, would be to use Epic style formation "block activations" of roughly same point value (or of much, much smaller power/cost discrepancies than 20:1).
This "ridiculous setup" was specifically set this way because there will be A LOT of games not involving armies with mass deep strike/reserves tailored against those IKs/WKs. Amuse me with writing lists with same "hide in reserves and deep strike assault" principle for Harlequins or Ad Mech...
After all your arguments I don't really see any "inherently better for 40K" in alternating activations. All I see is change in what is optimal strategy to game the system from a set of similiarily dumb and unrealistic choices. That is hardly any improvement.
argonak wrote: At worst, it turns the game into almost normal 40k. That's what you're complaining about. An edge case that turns the game back into normal 40k. Outside the edge case it's an improvement....at the edge case it's a wash. Why does it matter then?
Not so! It doesn't turn the game into 40k because 40k doesn't make your Imperial Knights always activate first. There's a dice roll involved for turn sequence. Horde armies can sometimes go before they do. The so-called edge case turns the game into 40k where elite armies act quicker than horde armies and therefore simulates them always going first. Could you imagine 40k if simply by the virtue of bringing a knight list you automatically Sieze the Initiative? Every time?
Most scenarios out of the rulebook allow the player with fewer deployments to go first.
mugginns wrote: Most people define majority as more than half.
Have you ever seen Presidential election majorities? 49% is pretty common. Any time you have 2 choices, the majority will be in the 50%+ range. If you have 8 million choices.... good luck getting a majority higher than 10%.
If this is really, actually, a problem, then you add in other stuff to your alternating activation system. Random dice bag, initiative, whatever. Been stated countless times already. Next?
Each of those solutions invalidates some part of current model/unit range of 40K while promoting other part. No random dice bag on planet bowling ball? Superheavies FTW. With dice bag? Pure luck in drawing your activations soon enough not to be wiped out before you do anything. Initiative? Depends on activation structure - if it's "all moves first, all shooting later in reverse order" then it's sensible if things are ballanced. If it's "entire activation before next initiative orded" then initiative becomes the only truly relevant stat in the game. Etc...
Any form of time quantification in game systems creates some form of bias, that has to be accounted for. if you design your game from ground up, you can keep said bias in check. What is problematic with 40K is that it has a huge line of existing models with HUGE powerl level discrepancies. You have to account for all of that and produce a system as inclusive as possible. Simple answers like "deathstars don't belong in 40K proper" or "Titans have no place outside of Apocalypse" or "you like cheap hordes? then put them on moving trays or GTFO" aren't answers at all...
Somewhere on pages 1-3 of this thread there are some nice and sensible solutions to many of those "inclusion" problems, but none of them are straightforward implementations of either alternating activations or IGOUGO...
There are a lot of assumptions and hyperbole in this quote.
There are exactly zero assumptions, only more fundamental level of game design goal made clear and a simple fact of power discrepancies pointed out.
Yes! You can buy cheap units and play a waiting game. You can add more units to add more flexibility. Or have more units that actually do something to have both activations and impact. THATS the point. Note: I didnt bring msu. I bought all full sized units. I could easily have bought 9 units of 10 hormagaunts to further mitigate your shooting and maximize my activations. I did not.
You are missing something. In each of the systems i have seen that propose alternating activations there are rules that allow a couple units to activate together. Units within 3" of a character can activate both the unit and the character as an example. With 8ths auras its needed to keep the auras active. Also deepstriker and their cargo (drop pod and the marines inside/trygon and their tunnel occupants). Its the only way to keep those units viable.
Im not "alpha striking" trygons. Because if you had more units you would actually be able to do something about them in between each one arriving. Its only an "alpha strike" because you built a gak list that cannot react to anyone. I didnt go AROUND your proposition. I built a perfectly legal list that would function well in an alternating activation system amongst a large variety of lists. You didnt.
Automatically Appended Next Post: You asked how i could possibly negate your "alpha strike of shooting 2k points in 3 activations". I showed it.
argonak wrote: At worst, it turns the game into almost normal 40k. That's what you're complaining about. An edge case that turns the game back into normal 40k. Outside the edge case it's an improvement....at the edge case it's a wash. Why does it matter then?
Not so! It doesn't turn the game into 40k because 40k doesn't make your Imperial Knights always activate first. There's a dice roll involved for turn sequence. Horde armies can sometimes go before they do. The so-called edge case turns the game into 40k where elite armies act quicker than horde armies and therefore simulates them always going first. Could you imagine 40k if simply by the virtue of bringing a knight list you automatically Sieze the Initiative? Every time?
Well obviously 40k doesn't make you activate anything, your whole army goes first if you have the first turn. And like you said its just a stupid 1/6 dice roll to seize, with a reroll if you play that way. So what? Right now the knight has a 70% chance of going first, even if you reroll.
If we're using the bolt action system, then in an army with 3 drops versus one with 10, your knight has a 3/13 chance to get the first draw.
How is this worse than 40k where the person who goes first goes with his ENTIRE army? It would be BETTER.
You asked how i could possibly negate your "alpha strike of shooting 2k points in 3 activations". I showed it.
No, I wrote an abstract scenario, open enough so that many, many currently playable and valid 40K lists fall under it and you bypassed it by showing how to beat it with some specific list. This is NOT adressing an issue with the system. By your logic, there was absolutely nothing wrong with 7th ed deathstars or superheavies because spammable D-weapon Wraithguard and Stomp existed... And I'm still waiting for this Harlequins or AdMech lists that beat those Knights... Remember, one positive example doesn't prove definite statements, one counter-argument is enough to disprove such statements - logic 101... And you try to defend position, that alternating activations are inherently superior to IGOUGO in every way, which is simply false. My Khymera example is not some new revelation, I perfectly understand how alternating activation systems work, what their limitations are and how they are exploitable (depending of course on entirety of a given system) - you changed my scenario when you wrote your answer and I just replied with an example on how to beat your reserves solution in one sentence.
Alternating activations are not flawless and "be all end all" solution to every imaginable problem. And they are not some mythical "higher form of fun" - they suit you, you like them, many do, many don't. There are other valid ways of creating tactical games, many mentioned by Arkaine. IGOUGO systems as a whole have exactly one unavoidable (psychological) flaw - increase of waiting time between activity with increase of game size (which I personally don't mind). Things like alpha strike immunity or meaningfull decisions are perfectly attainable within IGOUGO boundaries by carefully setting game parameters (just to give one GW made example - low gang level Necromunda is perfectly immune to alpha strikes because of low damage output and is full of meanigfull movement/hiding/priorities decisions; it doesn't even have inherent first turn advantage on crowded enough terrain. It is so ballanced in this regard, that it can even stall indefinately). Low damage output, shooting only IGOUGO with simultanous resolution and initiative switching have only slight advantage for reactive player each turn. Alternating activations remove that single "waiting endlessly" flaw (and this is their main feature) but create their own inherent problems. Those might not be an issue for you, but might be for others.
First, i wont be putting together an admech or harelquinn list. I do not play those armies. I have fought 1 players admech twice. I am not familiar enough with them to do their lists justice.
Second, i never said it was the is all to end all best system. I said it was better then what 40k has now.
Third, there are bigger problems with 40ksigougo then down time. It degrades tactical game play and interesting choices. It favors actual alpha strikes. It makes first turn first player a significantly larger advantage.
argonak wrote: At worst, it turns the game into almost normal 40k. That's what you're complaining about. An edge case that turns the game back into normal 40k. Outside the edge case it's an improvement....at the edge case it's a wash. Why does it matter then?
Not so! It doesn't turn the game into 40k because 40k doesn't make your Imperial Knights always activate first. There's a dice roll involved for turn sequence. Horde armies can sometimes go before they do. The so-called edge case turns the game into 40k where elite armies act quicker than horde armies and therefore simulates them always going first. Could you imagine 40k if simply by the virtue of bringing a knight list you automatically Sieze the Initiative? Every time?
Well obviously 40k doesn't make you activate anything, your whole army goes first if you have the first turn. And like you said its just a stupid 1/6 dice roll to seize, with a reroll if you play that way. So what? Right now the knight has a 70% chance of going first, even if you reroll.
If we're using the bolt action system, then in an army with 3 drops versus one with 10, your knight has a 3/13 chance to get the first draw.
How is this worse than 40k where the person who goes first goes with his ENTIRE army? It would be BETTER.
I'm growing quite tired of repeating myself when this was all explained pages ago. You're failing to look past the first turn. A person who wins the roll off goes first in an IGOUGO system. This only happens some of the time, and gives hordes a chance to go first as well. Knights don't have a 70% chance of going first because the go first for faster deployment was changed.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/08/09/new-matched-play-rules-in-chapter-approved-aug-9gw-homepage-post-1/
A chance is merely a chance but grants a chance nonetheless. It's worse than 40k because, like I've explained for what must be the fifth time in this thread, the elite army will finish their activations before your army EVERY SINGLE TURN. Not only if they win the roll off, not only if the seize the initiative, but EVERY SINGLE TIME.
As I'm growing increasingly annoyed at restating things for people who haven't read the topic, I'll start ignoring those who continue with that.
Why not just play one of the myriad of games that have alternating actions if that's your thing? It's like saying Monopoly would be fun if it was more like clue. In that case, just play clue.
I remember when Warzone came out, and people were hard-selling the initiative based turn activation. They said it was so much better than IGOUGO that it would dethrone 40K as the fan favorite game. I wish I could track down those people and ask how that's doing for them.
IGOUGO is still around because it's the simplest way of handling turn sequence, it's what people have been used to for decades of 40K and even longer with other systems, and there hasn't been an alternative good enough to dethrone it.
mugginns wrote: It's pretty crazy to pick that hill to die on. Something actually illogical and based on a corner case scenario.
It's pretty crazy to call someone dying on a hill. But that's just me. Especially when it's merely that you disagree with their argument to the point that it obliterates your mind and renders you incapable of responding with little more than veiled insults.
Perfectly logical, happens every game, corner case is another way of saying "only matters when being powergamed" which I suppose renders most of the FAQs that already exist meaningless. As it doesn't surprise me that so many of the proponents for such a system seem utterly unequipped to actually discuss the merits of a system and fall back to Shooting Phase any time flaws are mentioned, I think you've selected a perfect "hill to die on". The conversation dies here and with it any chance for your rebuttal.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
SideshowLucifer wrote:Why not just play one of the myriad of games that have alternating actions if that's your thing? It's like saying Monopoly would be fun if it was more like clue. In that case, just play clue.
Just Tony wrote:IGOUGO is still around because it's the simplest way of handling turn sequence, it's what people have been used to for decades of 40K and even longer with other systems, and there hasn't been an alternative good enough to dethrone it.
Insectum7 wrote:I've said it before and I'll say it again, the problems with 7th were the Codexes, not the core rules. 7th was just as simple to pick up as previous editions, the only exception being the USR bloat.
There were many problems with the codices in 7th Edition, but that doesn't mean that there weren't problems with the core rules of the Edition started interacting with the Unit Types and USRs that they did not address for two years.
If you want to take things as literally as they are provided, there were problems with the interaction between Super-Heavy Shooting/Power of the Machine Spirit and the new Shooting Sequence. There were issues on when a Flying Monstrous Creature started being considered a Jump Creature. Then there was the chronic issue of the Independent Character instructing you to look at another USR to define an interaction and that other USR didn't say anything about Independent Characters.
The Core Rules may have worked out fine, but they failed before you were halfway through the Unit Types, a rather core part of the game. GW's inability to properly communicate how exceptions should be processed is just bad.
This doesn't begin to go over the problems with IGOUGO, but there were other exceptions listed in the rules which were inserted because of the IGOUGO nature of the game that I never had in Battletech, such as the restriction against Charging for units arriving from Reserves or the inclusion of the Overwatch mechanic.
Lance845 wrote:I disagree. All the different unit types were bad. Especially having to remember what made each one special. Was it really needed to have jump and jetpack be 2 different things?
To be fair, there are a LOT of differences in how Jet Pack and Jump units operate, and have since 5th Edition.
Just Tony wrote:IGOUGO is still around because it's the simplest way of handling turn sequence, it's what people have been used to for decades of 40K and even longer with other systems, and there hasn't been an alternative good enough to dethrone it.
IGOUGO is still around because the longest running TT game uses it, and they have been reluctant to change so drastically. If they are still buying it, then it must still work, right? Only, it only works because we aren't willing to vote against it ourselves.
SideshowLucifer wrote: Why not just play one of the myriad of games that have alternating actions if that's your thing? It's like saying Monopoly would be fun if it was more like clue. In that case, just play clue.
40k is more than it's rules (which have traditionally been pretty bad since... 3rd?). GW make great models. They have stupid but fun lore. The armies are incredibly interesting with a lot of flavor and scope. Tyranid and orks and SM and Tau. It's a fun universe to play in. It's a fun bunch of model kits to build and to paint.
Many people WANT to play within the setting with the models, but also want more tactical depth from the game itself.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just Tony wrote: I remember when Warzone came out, and people were hard-selling the initiative based turn activation. They said it was so much better than IGOUGO that it would dethrone 40K as the fan favorite game. I wish I could track down those people and ask how that's doing for them.
IGOUGO is still around because it's the simplest way of handling turn sequence, it's what people have been used to for decades of 40K and even longer with other systems, and there hasn't been an alternative good enough to dethrone it.
As above 40k is more than it's rule set. The idea that something is going to come along and dethrone 40k because of a rule set is nonsense. You need the PR machine. The support. The models need to not just look good, but come together well with all their options and poseability. They need to be fun to build and paint. GW, in a lot of cases, has the best models on the market (and also some of the worst... WTF bending leg Hierophant/fine cast!).
They would need to release with 7-10 factions ready to go. Not 2 with a slow increase. 40k has had so long to build up all that it is and all that it offers. It can afford to have a crappier rule set.
Lance845 wrote:I disagree. All the different unit types were bad. Especially having to remember what made each one special. Was it really needed to have jump and jetpack be 2 different things?
To be fair, there are a LOT of differences in how Jet Pack and Jump units operate, and have since 5th Edition.
Yeah but was it really NEEDED? Was the added complexity of those differences worth the pay off in the actual game? I really don't think so.
Just Tony wrote:IGOUGO is still around because it's the simplest way of handling turn sequence, it's what people have been used to for decades of 40K and even longer with other systems, and there hasn't been an alternative good enough to dethrone it.
IGOUGO is still around because the longest running TT game uses it, and they have been reluctant to change so drastically. If they are still buying it, then it must still work, right? Only, it only works because we aren't willing to vote against it ourselves.
SideshowLucifer wrote: Why not just play one of the myriad of games that have alternating actions if that's your thing? It's like saying Monopoly would be fun if it was more like clue. In that case, just play clue.
Ok, then why aren't we playing Rogue Trader anymore?
mugginns wrote: It's pretty crazy to pick that hill to die on. Something actually illogical and based on a corner case scenario.
It's pretty crazy to call someone dying on a hill. But that's just me. Especially when it's merely that you disagree with their argument to the point that it obliterates your mind and renders you incapable of responding with little more than veiled insults.
Perfectly logical, happens every game, corner case is another way of saying "only matters when being powergamed" which I suppose renders most of the FAQs that already exist meaningless. As it doesn't surprise me that so many of the proponents for such a system seem utterly unequipped to actually discuss the merits of a system and fall back to Shooting Phase any time flaws are mentioned, I think you've selected a perfect "hill to die on". The conversation dies here and with it any chance for your rebuttal.
Lance845 wrote: First, i wont be putting together an admech or harelquinn list. I do not play those armies. I have fought 1 players admech twice. I am not familiar enough with them to do their lists justice.
Second, i never said it was the is all to end all best system. I said it was better then what 40k has now.
Third, there are bigger problems with 40ksigougo then down time. It degrades tactical game play and interesting choices. It favors actual alpha strikes. It makes first turn first player a significantly larger advantage.
After a good night sleep one more thing about your Trygon "solution" - it's just more of the same problem I've been pointing out for a couple of pages. Your Trygon+Genestealers combo is 300pts singular activation I can only react to passively (I cannot preemptively shoot deep striking unit and if I remember correctly, reactions in your system are a bit penalized, yes?) or "trick" via gaming the game and stalling with lots of thrash khymerae-like units. You didn't beat IKs/WKs by alternating nature of your system, but via instagib nature of your reserves and you did it at listbuilding stage. Your list does exactly the same in IGOUGO - it kills me outright if you go first or kill me just right after if you go second, because of exactly same reserves play advantage. There is nothing in your solution, that screams "alternating activation is superior".
So let me reiterate one last time what my entire activity in this thread is about - alternating activations DO NOT help with overly killy nature of 40K, which is the main reason why alpha strikes can happen in the first place. Currently 40K has it's power scaled so that most powerfull units/combos can return more than their point value in a single volley and "up to the teeth" games of 8th end within two turns (damage output around 70%-80% of total points per turn) and even the "properly ballanced game" is designed to last about 5 turns (damage output around 30% of value per turn). What alternating activations do, in principle, is dividing this power output into smaller chunks, "smoothing out" decay rate throughout the turn and increase interaction frequency, but don't really change the outcome of an optimally played game. This same argument can be made without involving IKs, but using entirely very killy MSU units - if we play symetrical forces but each activation can always erase one unit at a time, then first player always wins with one unit left, no matter the "pawn removing strategy" of defending player (with smart counter-activations it just takes more turns to lose). Different in-game gimmicks just obscure such fundamental nature of high-power output games.
Now imagine, that power output is set far lower, like 10% per turn and you can take full advantage of movement/cover/los blockers to lower this damage defensively or multiply a bit offensively by flanking/outmanouvering/bottle necking/concentrating fire. This is when interesting tactical choices start to happen and the game can no longer be won at listbulding stage. This is what most skirmish games play like (there are often turns without any oportunity to inflict any damage and you must concentrate on movement play). And I agree, that with such modifiable damage output game, alternating activations do indeed increase number of possible interesting strategies.
Is this finally a clear enough explanation of what I'm arguing about?
So let me reiterate one last time what my entire activity in this thread is about - alternating activations DO NOT help with overly killy nature of 40K, which is the main reason why alpha strikes can happen in the first place. Currently 40K has it's power scaled so that most powerfull units/combos can return more than their point value in a single volley and "up to the teeth" games of 8th end within two turns (damage output around 70%-80% of total points per turn) and even the "properly ballanced game" is designed to last about 5 turns (damage output around 30% of value per turn). What alternating activations do, in principle, is dividing this power output into smaller chunks, "smoothing out" decay rate throughout the turn and increase interaction frequency, but don't really change the outcome of an optimally played game. This same argument can be made without involving IKs, but using entirely very killy MSU units - if we play symetrical forces but each activation can always erase one unit at a time, then first player always wins with one unit left, no matter the "pawn removing strategy" of defending player (with smart counter-activations it just takes more turns to lose). Different in-game gimmicks just obscure such fundamental nature of high-power output games.
Now imagine, that power output is set far lower, like 10% per turn and you can take full advantage of movement/cover/los blockers to lower this damage defensively or multiply a bit offensively by flanking/outmanouvering/bottle necking/concentrating fire. This is when interesting tactical choices start to happen and the game can no longer be won at listbulding stage. This is what most skirmish games play like (there are often turns without any oportunity to inflict any damage and you must concentrate on movement play). And I agree, that with such modifiable damage output game, alternating activations do indeed increase number of possible interesting strategies.
Is this finally a clear enough explanation of what I'm arguing about?
What if we got rid of three ik lists or whatever - just put them out of the equation, as they're rare (I've never played one) and players could figure out what to do with their models.
And then, I tell you I've played plenty of AA games with elite armies (say, nine activations) and nonelite (20+) and the problem you're describing doesn't happen.
Would that be enough to use a system where a) you're not sitting for hours doing nothing with no interaction, b) you have more Tactical choice (what to activate, when, targets, etc) and c) you have a better chance at a more balanced game (less chance of alpha strike, less chance of bottom of turn six objective grab with nothing you can do)
Just to shove my two cents in here- we've never liked IGOUGO, so when Dan and I put together our games system, we went with a VERY simple alternate activation system with units performing actions in any order - move/move, fire/move, fire/fire, move fire etc.
As for the fact it buffs MSU armies, you build that into the lists themselves - for example, the Holy Soviet Army is a rolling firestorm of bug clunky tanks and conscript squads, whereas the Atlantic Alliance rely on the flexibility given by splitting into two man fireteams and try to inflict death by a thousand cuts on a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut!
The Soviet player has the advantage of higher numbers and more firepower - the Alliance player has the advantage of having more small units and therefore more tactical flexibility and agility.
Lance845 wrote: First, i wont be putting together an admech or harelquinn list. I do not play those armies. I have fought 1 players admech twice. I am not familiar enough with them to do their lists justice.
Second, i never said it was the is all to end all best system. I said it was better then what 40k has now.
Third, there are bigger problems with 40ksigougo then down time. It degrades tactical game play and interesting choices. It favors actual alpha strikes. It makes first turn first player a significantly larger advantage.
After a good night sleep one more thing about your Trygon "solution" - it's just more of the same problem I've been pointing out for a couple of pages. Your Trygon+Genestealers combo is 300pts singular activation I can only react to passively (I cannot preemptively shoot deep striking unit and if I remember correctly, reactions in your system are a bit penalized, yes?) or "trick" via gaming the game and stalling with lots of thrash khymerae-like units. You didn't beat IKs/WKs by alternating nature of your system, but via instagib nature of your reserves and you did it at listbuilding stage. Your list does exactly the same in IGOUGO - it kills me outright if you go first or kill me just right after if you go second, because of exactly same reserves play advantage. There is nothing in your solution, that screams "alternating activation is superior".
So let me reiterate one last time what my entire activity in this thread is about - alternating activations DO NOT help with overly killy nature of 40K, which is the main reason why alpha strikes can happen in the first place. Currently 40K has it's power scaled so that most powerfull units/combos can return more than their point value in a single volley and "up to the teeth" games of 8th end within two turns (damage output around 70%-80% of total points per turn) and even the "properly ballanced game" is designed to last about 5 turns (damage output around 30% of value per turn). What alternating activations do, in principle, is dividing this power output into smaller chunks, "smoothing out" decay rate throughout the turn and increase interaction frequency, but don't really change the outcome of an optimally played game. This same argument can be made without involving IKs, but using entirely very killy MSU units - if we play symetrical forces but each activation can always erase one unit at a time, then first player always wins with one unit left, no matter the "pawn removing strategy" of defending player (with smart counter-activations it just takes more turns to lose). Different in-game gimmicks just obscure such fundamental nature of high-power output games.
Now imagine, that power output is set far lower, like 10% per turn and you can take full advantage of movement/cover/los blockers to lower this damage defensively or multiply a bit offensively by flanking/outmanouvering/bottle necking/concentrating fire. This is when interesting tactical choices start to happen and the game can no longer be won at listbulding stage. This is what most skirmish games play like (there are often turns without any oportunity to inflict any damage and you must concentrate on movement play). And I agree, that with such modifiable damage output game, alternating activations do indeed increase number of possible interesting strategies.
Is this finally a clear enough explanation of what I'm arguing about?
If we are talking about the BTGo40k that Mithras001 was making, no. One of the orders is "ambush" which essentially has your unit buckle down and hold off to do a reaction. (BTW any unit that has not been issued an order yet CAN do a reaction in response to whatever the enemy is doing, but it's generally only part of what a full order can be, but it's an interrupt on the opponents turn and it eats up their own activation). One of which is stand and shoot. Essentially an over watch at full BS. If you know someone has deepstrikers it would be Intelligent to utilize a couple units as protectors and use them to cover your other units. If you had a list with 12 units like mine, you could have held 6 on Ambush around the field in preparation for my deepstrikers while 6 dealt with what I had. Or better, just 4, allowing your 8 units to put up a fight with my 6 on the field and having at minimum 1 unit covering every 2 others.
With BTGo40k, any unit that gets a wound allocated to it in a single round of shooting gets a pin. Basically the unit is under fire. Not only would you have been able to react to both the GS and the Trygon you very likely would have applied pins to them reducing their effectiveness (each pin is a -1 to hit using a d12 system) not only likely killing off some genestealers, but also reducing their effectivness on their arrival.
I didn't have to worry about doing any of that though. Why would I? With the dumb ass list you bought I could out maneuver you at every step. But if you did bring that 12 unit list instead of just 3, my list would have made for a really interesting game with a lot of twists and turns on how you and I were interacting with each other. Even if I went first. Where am I sending my blob of hormagaunts/Malanthrope? I don't have as clear targets anymore. I don't get to act at leisure while your just as mobile. My deepstrikers are still a powerful tool but now your 12 units on the field leave you far more flexible at the beginning of the game vs my 6 and my initial activations put me at a disadvantage.
Does this help clear up what WE have been talking about? You have been so concerned about what impact the powerful units are going to have. What a single activation can do. We have said over and over that that is not how this actually works out. It's not the few powerful activations, it's having MORE activations that often gets crazy powerful. Not because you stand around waiting it out. But because you can have more tools at your disposal.
If you bring a bunch of 20 point single model units, especially with 40k now having mass split fire, your number of activations will drastically dwindle with every turn. You want a good number of units with a bit of lasting power to have any kind of actual impact in the game. If you bring nothing but a few giant hammer units you will get outmaneuvered. What actually works best in this system, is have a good mix between some heavy hitters and a bunch of smaller light scout units and some middle ground tac squads that actually probably do most of the heavy lifting.
Are you seeing the bigger picture yet?
I understand how killy 40k is. How often in 40k do you actually see a single unit 1 shot an entire other unit? It's not a 1 unit vs 1 unit thing that causes hole units to disappear. It's The entire army focus firing on a single unit until it's gone (or will be after moral) and then hitting the next one with whatever units remain. Alternating activations with reactions at least allow those units being focus fired to DO something while they are being shot at.
So your not actually upset about alternating activation systems. In fact you agree that it's a more tactical more interactive game structure. You just think that 40ks units are not really suited for it because of the extreme damage output and general lack of durability?
So let me reiterate one last time what my entire activity in this thread is about - alternating activations DO NOT help with overly killy nature of 40K, which is the main reason why alpha strikes can happen in the first place. Currently 40K has it's power scaled so that most powerfull units/combos can return more than their point value in a single volley and "up to the teeth" games of 8th end within two turns (damage output around 70%-80% of total points per turn) and even the "properly ballanced game" is designed to last about 5 turns (damage output around 30% of value per turn). What alternating activations do, in principle, is dividing this power output into smaller chunks, "smoothing out" decay rate throughout the turn and increase interaction frequency, but don't really change the outcome of an optimally played game. This same argument can be made without involving IKs, but using entirely very killy MSU units - if we play symetrical forces but each activation can always erase one unit at a time, then first player always wins with one unit left, no matter the "pawn removing strategy" of defending player (with smart counter-activations it just takes more turns to lose). Different in-game gimmicks just obscure such fundamental nature of high-power output games.
Now imagine, that power output is set far lower, like 10% per turn and you can take full advantage of movement/cover/los blockers to lower this damage defensively or multiply a bit offensively by flanking/outmanouvering/bottle necking/concentrating fire. This is when interesting tactical choices start to happen and the game can no longer be won at listbulding stage. This is what most skirmish games play like (there are often turns without any oportunity to inflict any damage and you must concentrate on movement play). And I agree, that with such modifiable damage output game, alternating activations do indeed increase number of possible interesting strategies.
Is this finally a clear enough explanation of what I'm arguing about?
What if we got rid of three ik lists or whatever - just put them out of the equation, as they're rare (I've never played one) and players could figure out what to do with their models.
And then, I tell you I've played plenty of AA games with elite armies (say, nine activations) and nonelite (20+) and the problem you're describing doesn't happen.
Would that be enough to use a system where a) you're not sitting for hours doing nothing with no interaction, b) you have more Tactical choice (what to activate, when, targets, etc) and c) you have a better chance at a more balanced game (less chance of alpha strike, less chance of bottom of turn six objective grab with nothing you can do)
Yep. Let's just throw my army away because you've never played it.
Lance845 wrote:I disagree. All the different unit types were bad. Especially having to remember what made each one special. Was it really needed to have jump and jetpack be 2 different things?
To be fair, there are a LOT of differences in how Jet Pack and Jump units operate, and have since 5th Edition.
Yeah but was it really NEEDED? Was the added complexity of those differences worth the pay off in the actual game? I really don't think so.
Defined "needed". It would be more fair to say that they were both needed more than other concepts. Jet Bike, for instance, was literally a Jet Pack Bike, and would have been far better used in that manner. Skimmers were Jet Pack Vehicles, aside from the Flat Out boost and Jink.
The different movement types were beneficial to making a difference in the game between a Crisis Suit and an Assault Marine. The fact that it also allowed them to change Necron Destroyers from Jet Bikes to a slower type but the same mobility is also an advantage.
So, "needed" is more about how much diversity is desired in the game and how much you want to use Unit Type to define those changes.
NenkotaMoon wrote:
Malalice always has my vote. Both my Chaos Marines and custom Black Templar-style Chapter were based on his concept.
Unit1126PLL wrote:This thread is funny.
"Adopt a change to IGOUGO because its the FUTURE and without it you will DIE!"
"Yeah but I like IGOUGO and plenty of fun and engaging games still use it."
"BUT IT IS NOT THE FUTURE! DIE HERETIC!"
And then there is another group saying, "IGOUGO has always sucked. It doesn't matter if it is past or future, it sucked then, and it sucks now." I brought up a system that is almost as old as Warhammer that does not use IGOUGO at all. The mechanic I prefer was never the problem, but the fact that it was more of a simulation with an in depth damage and tracking system which was the problem.
So your not actually upset about alternating activation systems. In fact you agree that it's a more tactical more interactive game structure. You just think that 40ks units are not really suited for it because of the extreme damage output and general lack of durability?
I never was "upset" with those systems I was (am) upset with definite statements about superiority in every/any context/goal. I agree, that it is more interactive (but not inherently more tactical, that depends on exact details of particular IGOUGO and AA systems) and yes, you got that last part about damage output and durability right at last - both IGOUGO and AA structures are totally indpependent from content you put into them. 40K content is so hard to handle and playerbase so all over the place, that no system will ever satisfy everyone (just read Unit1126PL responses here, he's not a sole fan of big tanks/robots that EXIST in this game). Your particular AA solution/GtGo40K just handle YOUR preferred type of armies better and do "strange" things to other. Hey, even simple Maelstrom scoring each turn upsets a whole deal of players who do not like to think along the way and want pre-planned strategies to work out-of-the-box in every single game they play...
So let me reiterate one last time what my entire activity in this thread is about - alternating activations DO NOT help with overly killy nature of 40K, which is the main reason why alpha strikes can happen in the first place. Currently 40K has it's power scaled so that most powerfull units/combos can return more than their point value in a single volley and "up to the teeth" games of 8th end within two turns (damage output around 70%-80% of total points per turn) and even the "properly ballanced game" is designed to last about 5 turns (damage output around 30% of value per turn). What alternating activations do, in principle, is dividing this power output into smaller chunks, "smoothing out" decay rate throughout the turn and increase interaction frequency, but don't really change the outcome of an optimally played game. This same argument can be made without involving IKs, but using entirely very killy MSU units - if we play symetrical forces but each activation can always erase one unit at a time, then first player always wins with one unit left, no matter the "pawn removing strategy" of defending player (with smart counter-activations it just takes more turns to lose). Different in-game gimmicks just obscure such fundamental nature of high-power output games.
Now imagine, that power output is set far lower, like 10% per turn and you can take full advantage of movement/cover/los blockers to lower this damage defensively or multiply a bit offensively by flanking/outmanouvering/bottle necking/concentrating fire. This is when interesting tactical choices start to happen and the game can no longer be won at listbulding stage. This is what most skirmish games play like (there are often turns without any oportunity to inflict any damage and you must concentrate on movement play). And I agree, that with such modifiable damage output game, alternating activations do indeed increase number of possible interesting strategies.
Is this finally a clear enough explanation of what I'm arguing about?
What if we got rid of three ik lists or whatever - just put them out of the equation, as they're rare (I've never played one) and players could figure out what to do with their models.
And then, I tell you I've played plenty of AA games with elite armies (say, nine activations) and nonelite (20+) and the problem you're describing doesn't happen.
Would that be enough to use a system where a) you're not sitting for hours doing nothing with no interaction, b) you have more Tactical choice (what to activate, when, targets, etc) and c) you have a better chance at a more balanced game (less chance of alpha strike, less chance of bottom of turn six objective grab with nothing you can do)
Yep. Let's just throw my army away because you've never played it.
Awesome plan. Great game. Best design.
Lets say you play alternating activation stuff and you find it fun and tactical and less time is spent on your cellphone waiting for your opponent - would you then still cling to the old ways because "well I have this list that almost nobody else plays, and well I don't think it'll work with a new system..."
I am not a game dev, I can't humblebrag about a game design degree or whatever that other dude did, but I'm sure they could figure it out.
So your not actually upset about alternating activation systems. In fact you agree that it's a more tactical more interactive game structure. You just think that 40ks units are not really suited for it because of the extreme damage output and general lack of durability?
I never was "upset" with those systems I was (am) upset with definite statements about superiority in every/any context/goal. I agree, that it is more interactive (but not inherently more tactical, that depends on exact details of particular IGOUGO and AA systems) and yes, you got that last part about damage output and durability right at last - both IGOUGO and AA structures are totally indpependent from content you put into them. 40K content is so hard to handle and playerbase so all over the place, that no system will ever satisfy everyone (just read Unit1126PL responses here, he's not a sole fan of big tanks/robots that EXIST in this game). Your particular AA solution/GtGo40K just handle YOUR preferred type of armies better and do "strange" things to other. Hey, even simple Maelstrom scoring each turn upsets a whole deal of players who do not like to think along the way and want pre-planned strategies to work out-of-the-box in every single game they play...
Cool, at the very least you and I seem to have reached some understanding here.
Let me explain my stance real fast for the sake of clarity. I am not making any definitive statement about any generic broad mechanic. IGOUGO works really well in systems where there is quick turn around and counter play. (Magic the Gathering). I AM making a definitive statement about 40ks mechanics where there is no counter play. Where turns are not quick. And where the tactical decisions are so few and far between that they basically don't exist. There is a little bit about where you place your models to be in range of x and out of range of y. But.... they cannot do anything about it. So it's less about an interesting decision of risk and reward with one player playing against the other and all about how to maximize your effectiveness with obvious plays that boil down to the math of it. The exception to this is do you or don't you deny that particular power (if you even have the option) and who you activate and when during melee (if there are enough units tied up in melee for this to even come up).
40ks content CAN be hard to handle. There are outriders because it covers such a large range of points and power. 8th could really use something like the FoC of 30k. 8ths FoCs are so all encompassing... it's crazy. And not interesting. There are players who really enjoy the swinging sledge hammers at each other style of game play of 8th. There are players who really enjoy bringing all titans and knights and want to just lay down all their fire power as some kind of strategy. Fine. Good. Play 40k as it is. Go back to ANY edition for your favorite style of doing that. That exists. Suggesting that there could actually be another way to play 40k doesn't remove the ways that have already existed. They are still there. 8th doesn't remove 7th. Some people still play 7th because they don't like 8th. Great! Good on them. Do what you like.
If tomorrow 40k announced that there were releasing a book of New Ways to Play that took all the same datasheets but provided a new framework that was alternating activations instead of IGOUGO the players would pick the way they like to play and play. The same way they do with open, narrative, or matched. It wouldn't REMOVE IGOUGO. It would simply provide another style of game play. Im all for that. I made a thread soon after 8th dropped saying how disappointed I was that "3 ways to play" amounted to different missions and 2 styles of building a list. Not actually playing differently, just list building. It was a real bummer.
I don't give a gak that IGOUGO exists. But I also don't understand why AA doesn't. Especially for how 40k is built, basically ANY other set up would be more tactical. And the lack of tactical depth is 40ks biggest problem. Yeah, some people suggested bringing back initiative. Except I don't want orks and necrons to always get trounced by everyone because they are slower to react. And I don't want to win because I always act first as Nids.
Elbows wrote: I won't lie, I'm pretty amazed anyone can even try (note: "try") to defend IGOUGO as a reasonable option for a wargame. That's pretty incredible to me.
This.
There are basically two arguments I could make in favor of full-turn structure:
-40k would probably take a lot of work to incorporate alternating activations
-without proper mitigation, swarm/horde/msu lists can mess with alternating activation lists
The first is conservative and lazy; the second implies a lack of foresight. Both are realistically looking at potential problems rather than actual issues.
Anything to decrease stretches of downtime will tend to make the game more engaging games and decrease the potential for alpha strike nonsense or being able to execute stupid combos without your opponent being able to react.
So let me reiterate one last time what my entire activity in this thread is about - alternating activations DO NOT help with overly killy nature of 40K, which is the main reason why alpha strikes can happen in the first place. Currently 40K has it's power scaled so that most powerfull units/combos can return more than their point value in a single volley and "up to the teeth" games of 8th end within two turns (damage output around 70%-80% of total points per turn) and even the "properly ballanced game" is designed to last about 5 turns (damage output around 30% of value per turn). What alternating activations do, in principle, is dividing this power output into smaller chunks, "smoothing out" decay rate throughout the turn and increase interaction frequency, but don't really change the outcome of an optimally played game. This same argument can be made without involving IKs, but using entirely very killy MSU units - if we play symetrical forces but each activation can always erase one unit at a time, then first player always wins with one unit left, no matter the "pawn removing strategy" of defending player (with smart counter-activations it just takes more turns to lose). Different in-game gimmicks just obscure such fundamental nature of high-power output games.
Now imagine, that power output is set far lower, like 10% per turn and you can take full advantage of movement/cover/los blockers to lower this damage defensively or multiply a bit offensively by flanking/outmanouvering/bottle necking/concentrating fire. This is when interesting tactical choices start to happen and the game can no longer be won at listbulding stage. This is what most skirmish games play like (there are often turns without any oportunity to inflict any damage and you must concentrate on movement play). And I agree, that with such modifiable damage output game, alternating activations do indeed increase number of possible interesting strategies.
Is this finally a clear enough explanation of what I'm arguing about?
What if we got rid of three ik lists or whatever - just put them out of the equation, as they're rare (I've never played one) and players could figure out what to do with their models.
And then, I tell you I've played plenty of AA games with elite armies (say, nine activations) and nonelite (20+) and the problem you're describing doesn't happen.
Would that be enough to use a system where a) you're not sitting for hours doing nothing with no interaction, b) you have more Tactical choice (what to activate, when, targets, etc) and c) you have a better chance at a more balanced game (less chance of alpha strike, less chance of bottom of turn six objective grab with nothing you can do)
Yep. Let's just throw my army away because you've never played it.
Awesome plan. Great game. Best design.
Lets say you play alternating activation stuff and you find it fun and tactical and less time is spent on your cellphone waiting for your opponent - would you then still cling to the old ways because "well I have this list that almost nobody else plays, and well I don't think it'll work with a new system..."
I am not a game dev, I can't humblebrag about a game design degree or whatever that other dude did, but I'm sure they could figure it out.
I think the thing you're attributing to me here is that I have 'free time' to be on my cellphone or whatever while my opponent is doing stuff.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
For moving, I often ask them if what they are doing is the most tactical move, to try to help them. If it's a competitive game, I try to get into their mind as to why they'd make a move (if it is different than the one I predicted) because that can be a clue as to which units they're afraid of / want to kill - their target priority is not always what I would suspect it to be against my own army. If they are beating me, I try to watch their movement even more closely because movement is the most tactical phase (shooting is just target selection and rolling dice, after all), and I clearly have something to learn. If they are acting differently in the movement phase than I've predicted, it's because I don't understand something about their army, or more alarmingly, my own.
So I'm not really 'free' in the movement phase.
In shooting, same thing. I watch them. I watch their target priority, give them hints and tips, try to figure out why they targeted what they did and see if I can learn from any of it. I watch their dice rolls, try to calculate a likely number of saves ahead of time so I can save time by getting an approximate number of dice ready. I try to make plans for the next turn based on what shooting damage they are doing, what they are shooting at, and how I expect assaults to go.
I'm not really 'free' in the shooting phase.
In the charge & fight phases - well, if you don't understand why I'd be active in the phases of the opponents turn where I literally get to shoot and stab things and roll my own dice, I don't know what to tell you.
So no, I don't really see trouble with the IGOUGO because their turn gives me time to pick and calculate my options - rarely do I form a plan for how the game is going to go, anticipate the opponent's moves perfectly, and have the plan go off flawlessly. If that happened often, yeah, probably I'd be on my phone because at that point the army runs itself. Fortunately, though I'm bad enough (or my opponents are good enough, or my army list is bad enough, or my opponent's army lists are good enough) that I find the game challenging, and my opponents turn is an opportunity to think through some of the challenges.
What you consider time to calculate, I consider boring down time, more often than not. Most of the time, you can kinda play 40k on autopilot (heavy weapons target high priorities; anti infantry targets whatever's the best soft target; you charge fights you think you can win). Maybe my opponent will make a smart move I wouldn't have thought of, or maybe they'll do something dumb that I can take advantage of. Either way, there's generally no way in which their un/impressive play would be more interesting or engaging if I need to wait instead of being able to counter.
So your not actually upset about alternating activation systems. In fact you agree that it's a more tactical more interactive game structure. You just think that 40ks units are not really suited for it because of the extreme damage output and general lack of durability?
I never was "upset" with those systems I was (am) upset with definite statements about superiority in every/any context/goal. I agree, that it is more interactive (but not inherently more tactical, that depends on exact details of particular IGOUGO and AA systems) and yes, you got that last part about damage output and durability right at last - both IGOUGO and AA structures are totally indpependent from content you put into them. 40K content is so hard to handle and playerbase so all over the place, that no system will ever satisfy everyone (just read Unit1126PL responses here, he's not a sole fan of big tanks/robots that EXIST in this game). Your particular AA solution/GtGo40K just handle YOUR preferred type of armies better and do "strange" things to other. Hey, even simple Maelstrom scoring each turn upsets a whole deal of players who do not like to think along the way and want pre-planned strategies to work out-of-the-box in every single game they play...
Cool, at the very least you and I seem to have reached some understanding here.
Let me explain my stance real fast for the sake of clarity. I am not making any definitive statement about any generic broad mechanic. IGOUGO works really well in systems where there is quick turn around and counter play. (Magic the Gathering). I AM making a definitive statement about 40ks mechanics where there is no counter play. Where turns are not quick. And where the tactical decisions are so few and far between that they basically don't exist. There is a little bit about where you place your models to be in range of x and out of range of y. But.... they cannot do anything about it. So it's less about an interesting decision of risk and reward with one player playing against the other and all about how to maximize your effectiveness with obvious plays that boil down to the math of it. The exception to this is do you or don't you deny that particular power (if you even have the option) and who you activate and when during melee (if there are enough units tied up in melee for this to even come up).
40ks content CAN be hard to handle. There are outriders because it covers such a large range of points and power. 8th could really use something like the FoC of 30k. 8ths FoCs are so all encompassing... it's crazy. And not interesting. There are players who really enjoy the swinging sledge hammers at each other style of game play of 8th. There are players who really enjoy bringing all titans and knights and want to just lay down all their fire power as some kind of strategy. Fine. Good. Play 40k as it is. Go back to ANY edition for your favorite style of doing that. That exists. Suggesting that there could actually be another way to play 40k doesn't remove the ways that have already existed. They are still there. 8th doesn't remove 7th. Some people still play 7th because they don't like 8th. Great! Good on them. Do what you like.
If tomorrow 40k announced that there were releasing a book of New Ways to Play that took all the same datasheets but provided a new framework that was alternating activations instead of IGOUGO the players would pick the way they like to play and play. The same way they do with open, narrative, or matched. It wouldn't REMOVE IGOUGO. It would simply provide another style of game play. Im all for that. I made a thread soon after 8th dropped saying how disappointed I was that "3 ways to play" amounted to different missions and 2 styles of building a list. Not actually playing differently, just list building. It was a real bummer.
I don't give a gak that IGOUGO exists. But I also don't understand why AA doesn't. Especially for how 40k is built, basically ANY other set up would be more tactical. And the lack of tactical depth is 40ks biggest problem. Yeah, some people suggested bringing back initiative. Except I don't want orks and necrons to always get trounced by everyone because they are slower to react. And I don't want to win because I always act first as Nids.
Yes, we finally do have understanding of our positions.
One last observation for you to chew on - by all your own attempts at making 40K work as AA you probably know by now, that "taking all the same datasheets and providing a new framework" don't work all that well, so it would require double amount of ruleswriting from GW and I don't think that this will ever happen. Technicalities and financial viability aside, you also underestimate psychological and sociological layers of 40K - even such small shift as introducing two ways to calculate army value in 8th created a huge rift and upset the community about the very existence of free choice in this regard, because what 40K community craves the most is a singular officialism (officialdom? What is that a proper word for it?). While oldhammer do certainly exist it is a niche and sticking to old editions is usually temporary as it hinges around having others to play with. There were A LOT of 7th ed reworks in the past two years here on dakka alone, but not even one gained speed, because they were not official. We now have Shadow War and Necromunda return announcement suddenly sprouting enthusiasm about a game, that was available for free as "oldmunda" for the last two decades and was very hard to get new people into, because it was not "officially supported anymore".
Sadly for you, your only way on getting AA version of 40K in any concievable future is not only to write it yourself (or bootstrap on BtGo40K), but also personally rising large enough community around it to actually play it on regular basis, because there are tons of non-core-rules related reasons to stick with IGOUGO official way of things. Take a lesson from this thread and do not start "converting" people by attacking their personal way of having fun as being obsolete/outdated/stupid/not proper/whatever. Be inclusive, not exclusive and try to harder to understand what actually motivates people to do what they freely choose to do.
[Sidenote: new Necromunda might be good news for you, because it is rumoured to be AA, so you could build practical interest in AA with little effort through official GW game playable at GW stores. Logical next step would be rewriting Shadow War kill teams for new "AA engine" (if GW won't do it) and then stepping up from there to full AA40K.]
Unit1126PLL wrote: Yep. Let's just throw my army away because you've never played it.
Awesome plan. Great game. Best design.
Your list is fairly typical in New Jersey and large tournaments. People will bring the Lords of War because 40k is an attrition game and they are more difficult to remove than a pack of infantry. The infantry lose shots with every casualty. If some people don't play them that's their local meta's problem. A guy here runs the Forge World titans in normal games and one brought a warlord to our megabattle. Other parts of the country may have less internet, less players, less powergamers, or simply less money. Canada at least has an excuse with the nearest town being an hour away from your own but I have over 20 densely populated cities within 5 miles of me.
Are you all still talking about alternating individual units?
Are you deliberately ignoring my suggestion of alternating detachment activation?
just curious...
Well, I am afraid that current detachments are too large for it to really be an impact. You'd have to shrink detachments down. Which would be a fine solution.
GW's own Epic 40k did exactly this. Your standard sized army had 3-5 detachments, and you alternated activations. It worked great. If it had been a new game I think it would have succeeded, but the old Space Marine players rejected it out of hand because it lacked the nearly idiotic level of granularity the previous edition had. I frankly loved Epic 40k, and thought it was one of the best systems GW ever made. My friends and I were disappointed that BFG lacked alternating activations, and we immediately ported it in and it worked great too.
I've played many other games with alternating activations, and it really helps make for a more fluid and enjoyable experience. The best part is that one player doesn't spend half an hour just rolling saves while his army gets shot.
I had stated that detachments would need some rework. If my initial post is too convoluted to understand or I simply suck at explaining there is always the option of improvement.
Guess I gotta start working on more than that first draft.
The more I read here it appears to be obvious that both camps are somewhat right.
IGOUGO is stupidly simple therefor idiot-proof. Everybody gets instantly how it works.
AA provides more detailed and less swingy turns with basically no downtime.
If those things could be combined we could call it www.
win-win-warhammer.
There are plenty of alternating activation games I have enjoyed. I just don't see many of them last very long due to how complex the system usually gets for new players. The ones that do last, usually are a much smaller scale than 40k is.
I love the interaction that Infinity has when it isn't your turn, but that would never work on a large scale game. Just like the old days of the Overwatch command, you would get units who just stay in cover and refuse to move because whoever moves first gets blasted to pieces.
I'll be the first to admit, I don't count 40k as being deep strategically or tactically, but it is fun (some editions). I would love a smaller model based game rather than units that uses alternating activations with a lot of terrain and buildings where each model is basically a character.
Yes, we finally do have understanding of our positions.
One last observation for you to chew on - by all your own attempts at making 40K work as AA you probably know by now, that "taking all the same datasheets and providing a new framework" don't work all that well, so it would require double amount of ruleswriting from GW and I don't think that this will ever happen. Technicalities and financial viability aside, you also underestimate psychological and sociological layers of 40K - even such small shift as introducing two ways to calculate army value in 8th created a huge rift and upset the community about the very existence of free choice in this regard, because what 40K community craves the most is a singular officialism (officialdom? What is that a proper word for it?). While oldhammer do certainly exist it is a niche and sticking to old editions is usually temporary as it hinges around having others to play with. There were A LOT of 7th ed reworks in the past two years here on dakka alone, but not even one gained speed, because they were not official. We now have Shadow War and Necromunda return announcement suddenly sprouting enthusiasm about a game, that was available for free as "oldmunda" for the last two decades and was very hard to get new people into, because it was not "officially supported anymore".
Sadly for you, your only way on getting AA version of 40K in any concievable future is not only to write it yourself (or bootstrap on BtGo40K), but also personally rising large enough community around it to actually play it on regular basis, because there are tons of non-core-rules related reasons to stick with IGOUGO official way of things. Take a lesson from this thread and do not start "converting" people by attacking their personal way of having fun as being obsolete/outdated/stupid/not proper/whatever. Be inclusive, not exclusive and try to harder to understand what actually motivates people to do what they freely choose to do.
[Sidenote: new Necromunda might be good news for you, because it is rumoured to be AA, so you could build practical interest in AA with little effort through official GW game playable at GW stores. Logical next step would be rewriting Shadow War kill teams for new "AA engine" (if GW won't do it) and then stepping up from there to full AA40K.]
I agree that the community has become very divisive over something as inconsequential as points vs power. I also agree that the community would become equally divisive about AA vs IGOUGO. It's true that what the mass community wants is official rules, AND that it does take some tweaks to certain rules to make the units fit (though it's actually very little in general with the BTGo40k and even then it's primarily army wide rules (and mostly in interacting with pins).
I don't care if the entire community decides to play or not. I am interested in having the most fun possible with my own time. I have about 4-6 people I play with regularly who have all really enjoyed AA. We have played 8th as AA with only about 3 or 4 rules to make it work. We have played more games that way then regular 8th. When we teach new players we teach them the real game, then we ask if they want to try AA. The bulk have shifted to playing our way. If I can share with the community the way we play and anyone ends up having more fun because of it, great.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I really wish GWs 3 ways to play was 1) a smaller scale skirmish game with FOC that did not include titanic units and a hard limit to the number of vehicles allowed. 2) Regular scale 40k 3) apocalypse scale 40k.
They could have included alterations to activation methods and turn structures in each version making them usable at each level with just a little work but basically favoring different activation methods to better fit the scale.
That would have been my dream. I didn't really think we would get it, but I did hope.
SideshowLucifer wrote: There are plenty of alternating activation games I have enjoyed. I just don't see many of them last very long due to how complex the system usually gets for new players. The ones that do last, usually are a much smaller scale than 40k is.
I love the interaction that Infinity has when it isn't your turn, but that would never work on a large scale game. Just like the old days of the Overwatch command, you would get units who just stay in cover and refuse to move because whoever moves first gets blasted to pieces.
I'll be the first to admit, I don't count 40k as being deep strategically or tactically, but it is fun (some editions). I would love a smaller model based game rather than units that uses alternating activations with a lot of terrain and buildings where each model is basically a character.
Infinity works at its scale, but doesn't scale upwards beyond that simply due to the nature of AROs. Since you can get multiple models interrupting a single Ordered model, the system does encourage excessive cover-hugging, and if you're playing on Planet Bowling Ball, your opponent gets (your number of actions x their number of models) worth of AROs, since AROs as written are "free actions."
I feel if there is going to be a scalable system, it would be one where actions and reactions eat into the same pool of available actions.
SideshowLucifer wrote: There are plenty of alternating activation games I have enjoyed. I just don't see many of them last very long due to how complex the system usually gets for new players.
What is complex about 'I move a thing and use its actions then you move a thing and uses its actions until we're finished'.
SideshowLucifer wrote: There are plenty of alternating activation games I have enjoyed. I just don't see many of them last very long due to how complex the system usually gets for new players.
What is complex about 'I move a thing and use its actions then you move a thing and uses its actions until we're finished'.
Mechanically its not that much more complex, but it A: takes longer to complete a turn, and B: Is harder to coordinate your units because your actions are continually interrupted by enemy actions. Which can be frustrating for some.
It may be more "realistic", but Imo the play experience is less fluid. It can become more fluid with experience, but it's less immediately exciting, and less accessible.
And yet X-Wing has no problems being accessible to new players, despite using an alternating activation system that is even more complicated than the most basic concept.
Peregrine wrote: And yet X-Wing has no problems being accessible to new players, despite using an alternating activation system that is even more complicated than the most basic concept.
Its not that AA instantly makes a game inaccessible, but it can be another layer on top of what is there. From what I see, X-wing has a much lower model count and zero terrain. Arguably, it might barely function as a game without alternating activations.
SideshowLucifer wrote: There are plenty of alternating activation games I have enjoyed. I just don't see many of them last very long due to how complex the system usually gets for new players.
What is complex about 'I move a thing and use its actions then you move a thing and uses its actions until we're finished'.
Mechanically its not that much more complex, but it A: takes longer to complete a turn, and B: Is harder to coordinate your units because your actions are continually interrupted by enemy actions. Which can be frustrating for some.
It may be more "realistic", but Imo the play experience is less fluid. It can become more fluid with experience, but it's less immediately exciting, and less accessible.
I don't really see how it would take longer to complete a turn, to be honest. If we're doing AA, you do a thing, then I do a thing, etc. We are passing the turn and things are moving. With IGOUGO, you get to move, roll dice, then make more decisions, ponder, etc.
B is really just 'more strategy and decisions' which I don't see as complicating things.
Peregrine wrote: And yet X-Wing has no problems being accessible to new players, despite using an alternating activation system that is even more complicated than the most basic concept.
And yet X-Wing has essentially nothing in common with 40k and can only even be classified as the same type of game in the loosest possible fashion. Everything from the scale to the mechanics are completely different.
I love threads like this, because they inevitably boil down to a continuous feadback loop of "but x rule works great in y game," followed by the inevitable "but y game is completely different from this game". And it continues from there. Fact of the matter is alternate turns would require a complete foundation up reworking of 40k until it was a game that only vaguely resembles the game in its current form. I respect anyone like the OP's attempts to do this, but ultimately the success of such an en-devour is doubtful and you would be better off just making a brand new system allowing you to use the same models in. 40k in 8th has flaws, some of which a TO can easily fix. The way turns work is not a "flaw", it is a fundamental game mechanic, and what the game would look like without said game mechanic is impossible to say for certain without extensive rewrites and testing that requires more then a couple of guys in their garage to balance properly.
Well, I do know for me alternating activation would slow the game down a little bit because I would no longer be able to mass-roll a couple dozen copy-pasted units at the same time. Although that technically isn't something that you're supposed to do anyway, and it's a situation specific to a few armies running particular builds.
However, it would probably feel faster to the opponent anyway because they don't have to wait it out while I roll hundreds of dice. So the slight increase in overall time would only matter from a scheduling perspective.
mugginns wrote: Something they could have done with 8th Edition, a ground up reworking of the game.
Which in a lot of ways they did do, and regardless in the case of this thread is something they chose not to do. If you hate I go you go enough, don't play 40k, but arguing whether or not it would have been better with alternating activation's because it works in X game that involves 10 models on the table at any 1 time is asinine.
mugginns wrote: Something they could have done with 8th Edition, a ground up reworking of the game.
Which in a lot of ways they did do, and regardless in the case of this thread is something they chose not to do. If you hate I go you go enough, don't play 40k, but arguing whether or not it would have been better with alternating activation's because it works in X game that involves 10 models on the table at any 1 time is asinine.
I do agree that the topic is only academic, anyway, because most 40k players will only play by the rules given by GW, not house rules or homebrew etc.
However, your idea that alternating activations only works in small group level games is entirely incorrect.
SideshowLucifer wrote: There are plenty of alternating activation games I have enjoyed. I just don't see many of them last very long due to how complex the system usually gets for new players.
What is complex about 'I move a thing and use its actions then you move a thing and uses its actions until we're finished'.
Mechanically its not that much more complex, but it A: takes longer to complete a turn, and B: Is harder to coordinate your units because your actions are continually interrupted by enemy actions. Which can be frustrating for some.
It may be more "realistic", but Imo the play experience is less fluid. It can become more fluid with experience, but it's less immediately exciting, and less accessible.
I don't really see how it would take longer to complete a turn, to be honest. If we're doing AA, you do a thing, then I do a thing, etc. We are passing the turn and things are moving. With IGOUGO, you get to move, roll dice, then make more decisions, ponder, etc.
B is really just 'more strategy and decisions' which I don't see as complicating things.
I might say that both your points make my point. More 'strategy and decisions' takes more time. More thinking is more complicated. Less thinking, easier.
Igougo I make a basic plan at the beginning of my turn, and react to the dice for execution. AA I make a framework of a plan and its continually interrupted by the enemy, for which I have to continually adjust. Its not bad as a mechanic, but Id argue its less relaxed and fun.
mugginns wrote: Something they could have done with 8th Edition, a ground up reworking of the game.
Which in a lot of ways they did do, and regardless in the case of this thread is something they chose not to do. If you hate I go you go enough, don't play 40k, but arguing whether or not it would have been better with alternating activation's because it works in X game that involves 10 models on the table at any 1 time is asinine.
I do agree that the topic is only academic, anyway, because most 40k players will only play by the rules given by GW, not house rules or homebrew etc.
However, your idea that alternating activations only works in small group level games is entirely incorrect.
I didn't say it only works in small group games. The point I was trying to make is over the second half of this thread it had descended into people throwing out examples of games where it works, almost none of them with mechanics or scale remotely similar to how 40k is played. I am sure if either a sizeable community run group the likes of 9th age or GW themselves put their minds to it an alternating activation 40k would work. But this thread has descended into bad examples then refuted by someone else for being a bad example then refuted by someone else pointing out that it COULD work though. Not very productive.
Besides I think the reason a lot of people are pissed about this is that first strike has been the OP trend of early 8th and the counters haven't come as fast as most would like. GW is about to introduce a bunch of changes to help towards fixing this, and even without those changes I can already see the trend starting to come down a bit. As first strike becomes less reliable it will stop taking tournaments, and once it stops taking tournaments its only going to get used by that dick at the store who wants to drop a bunch of inexperienced players, and those guys will rightfully get shunned.
I've been thinking about trying to do alternating activations, and while I don't think it'd work better than alternating phases (LotR) or cutting the turn to one 'phase' (Warmachine) I'm thinking if you wanted to do it in 40k you'd need some control on the number of "activations" available to an army. You'd have some entity (call it a "command group") composed of a number of units, and an army would have a minimum/maximum number of command groups at a given points level, and then you could alternate activating groups without worrying about one side abusing model count to get too many/too few activations, or requiring players to divide the armies evenly at the table.
You could also replace the "detachment" structure with command groups to limit spamming/skew, like what would happen if the meta-detachments from 7th were used for intelligent purposes instead of to give people free stuff easily. You might, for instance, categorize command groups as "Command" (character(s), possibly with bodyguard unit, gives command points), "Core" (general units, not necessarily just Troops but keeping a lid on things like full-Devastator armies, likely with the option for another character), "Auxiliary" (medium armour, unrestricted specialized units), and "Support" (superheavies, artillery, heavy tanks, flyers), then require a certain number of other groups before you could take Auxiliary/Support choices.
mugginns wrote: Something they could have done with 8th Edition, a ground up reworking of the game.
Which in a lot of ways they did do, and regardless in the case of this thread is something they chose not to do. If you hate I go you go enough, don't play 40k, but arguing whether or not it would have been better with alternating activation's because it works in X game that involves 10 models on the table at any 1 time is asinine.
I do agree that the topic is only academic, anyway, because most 40k players will only play by the rules given by GW, not house rules or homebrew etc.
However, your idea that alternating activations only works in small group level games is entirely incorrect.
I didn't say it only works in small group games. The point I was trying to make is over the second half of this thread it had descended into people throwing out examples of games where it works, almost none of them with mechanics or scale remotely similar to how 40k is played. I am sure if either a sizeable community run group the likes of 9th age or GW themselves put their minds to it an alternating activation 40k would work. But this thread has descended into bad examples then refuted by someone else for being a bad example then refuted by someone else pointing out that it COULD work though. Not very productive.
Besides I think the reason a lot of people are pissed about this is that first strike has been the OP trend of early 8th and the counters haven't come as fast as most would like. GW is about to introduce a bunch of changes to help towards fixing this, and even without those changes I can already see the trend starting to come down a bit. As first strike becomes less reliable it will stop taking tournaments, and once it stops taking tournaments its only going to get used by that dick at the store who wants to drop a bunch of inexperienced players, and those guys will rightfully get shunned.
The alpha-strike trend is supported more by a number of terribly-written units (Heldrakes, Manticores) and uncounterable Deep Strike than it is by the action structure. Alternating activations wouldn't really fix that problem.
tripchimeras wrote: But this thread has descended into bad examples then refuted by someone else for being a bad example then refuted by someone else pointing out that it COULD work though. Not very productive.
Some of the examples, like rare army list types etc, are bad, but plenty of examples of AA games brought up would scale just fine for 40k.
I confess I'd be willing to give AA a go if it was implemented well, I think.
The problem is that I'm not sure it can be implemented well, or at least any better than existing 40k, which is a mess (and deliberately so).
The game is an awful mess because GW wants people to have a 'bring whatever you want' army, and I think that's neat. It allows for fluffy and cool combinations, including things like 3 Baneblades versus 1750 points of pure conscripts (with HQs, etc etc of course). It does have the effect of making a horrible mess, though, and I'm not sure the way to fix it is to go to AA. In fact, I think the way to fix it is to remove options, but that is even less appealing to me than making the game less of a mess, so let's leave it a mess :3
The idea with this is that players make big sweeping unit advancements, and their opponent then makes their movements in response. Shooting is combined at the same step as close combat (since shooting and charging tends to be mutually exclusive). You get a little more granularity in the combat resolution systems and still have to be tactical about which units you choose to fire in which orders, but it's interspersed with what your opponent is doing during their step.
The above seems like it would be simple to implement without having to make any drastic changes to the rules.
I've played 40k as if it were alternative activation, where each player works through each phase simultaneously one unit at a time. This was years ago, and some of what I have to say may not apply to 8th edition.
While I am sure it's something I could have gotten used to, it was less enjoyable for a few reasons:
1) There's lots of models, it's harder to keep track of what has / has not been activated when you are going back and forth.
2) Movement was more dynamic and this made games go longer. I could move to within range of an opponent only to have him move back out of range. There was more dodging than assaulting and games ended with most of each army still on the table.
3) I had the sense sequencing was this really important aspect to what we were doing - i.e. moving the right unit at the right time. But it was very complicated because of the number of models on the board. For example, if I wanted to get a squad of CSMs out of the way to a Vindicator could get into position for a shot, it usually meant something else needed to move first. I always felt stymied at the start of a turn, and it was the same feeling on turn one as on turn seven.
4) It was very hard to line up for an assault because something is always ready to shoot at you. Assault was almost completely avoidable since your opponent had time to react. Think of it as overwatch plus, where the threats you really want to charge have a chance to shoot before you can get to them. For example: I would line up a squad of bikers at about 5 inches during the movement phase, and it would set them up to take fire from 3 other squads before they could pull off the charge. I could move up a daemon prince to where he's right in front of a target unit and they could shoot him down with plasma before the assault phase arrived.
My take is there would need to be an overhaul to movement, shooting and assault for AA to work. Shooting would need to come after assault to keep it fair. Backwards movement would need to be capped to half speed to prevent excessive defense on both sides. Even then, there would likely need to be more than 7 turns in a game because there is so much more defensive movement. The cover system would need to change dramatically, at the very least to include taking cover behind over troops. I would likely want to see rules prohibiting superheavies from moving / shooting until everything else has.
There was one other side to this, which may not seem important until you have tried it, and that's unit caps. In an AA system, it's very easy to use a large unit to break up activations of smaller units in other phases. For example, a large squad of Ork boys spread out over the table can split your opponent's army in half and just sit there. The impact on the game can be too much, I would rather see a squad cap of 10 models to prevent something like this from happening.
Yes, we finally do have understanding of our positions.
One last observation for you to chew on - by all your own attempts at making 40K work as AA you probably know by now, that "taking all the same datasheets and providing a new framework" don't work all that well, so it would require double amount of ruleswriting from GW and I don't think that this will ever happen. Technicalities and financial viability aside, you also underestimate psychological and sociological layers of 40K - even such small shift as introducing two ways to calculate army value in 8th created a huge rift and upset the community about the very existence of free choice in this regard, because what 40K community craves the most is a singular officialism (officialdom? What is that a proper word for it?). While oldhammer do certainly exist it is a niche and sticking to old editions is usually temporary as it hinges around having others to play with. There were A LOT of 7th ed reworks in the past two years here on dakka alone, but not even one gained speed, because they were not official. We now have Shadow War and Necromunda return announcement suddenly sprouting enthusiasm about a game, that was available for free as "oldmunda" for the last two decades and was very hard to get new people into, because it was not "officially supported anymore".
Sadly for you, your only way on getting AA version of 40K in any concievable future is not only to write it yourself (or bootstrap on BtGo40K), but also personally rising large enough community around it to actually play it on regular basis, because there are tons of non-core-rules related reasons to stick with IGOUGO official way of things. Take a lesson from this thread and do not start "converting" people by attacking their personal way of having fun as being obsolete/outdated/stupid/not proper/whatever. Be inclusive, not exclusive and try to harder to understand what actually motivates people to do what they freely choose to do.
[Sidenote: new Necromunda might be good news for you, because it is rumoured to be AA, so you could build practical interest in AA with little effort through official GW game playable at GW stores. Logical next step would be rewriting Shadow War kill teams for new "AA engine" (if GW won't do it) and then stepping up from there to full AA40K.]
I agree that the community has become very divisive over something as inconsequential as points vs power. I also agree that the community would become equally divisive about AA vs IGOUGO. It's true that what the mass community wants is official rules, AND that it does take some tweaks to certain rules to make the units fit (though it's actually very little in general with the BTGo40k and even then it's primarily army wide rules (and mostly in interacting with pins).
I don't care if the entire community decides to play or not. I am interested in having the most fun possible with my own time. I have about 4-6 people I play with regularly who have all really enjoyed AA. We have played 8th as AA with only about 3 or 4 rules to make it work. We have played more games that way then regular 8th. When we teach new players we teach them the real game, then we ask if they want to try AA. The bulk have shifted to playing our way. If I can share with the community the way we play and anyone ends up having more fun because of it, great.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I really wish GWs 3 ways to play was 1) a smaller scale skirmish game with FOC that did not include titanic units and a hard limit to the number of vehicles allowed. 2) Regular scale 40k 3) apocalypse scale 40k.
They could have included alterations to activation methods and turn structures in each version making them usable at each level with just a little work but basically favoring different activation methods to better fit the scale.
That would have been my dream. I didn't really think we would get it, but I did hope.
I wrote an alternating activation system for AOS that I wanted to use in my campaign events. A lot of the guys really liked it. A lot of the guys hated it with a fiery passion because they built their armies around exploiting AOS double turns and my system invalidated that. I've had people wish cancer on me for writing comp and houserules. So I applaud your efforts and will just say this based on a couple of decades of houseruling: don't try to present it to the community at large because the community at large is not interested in houseruling and many will be outright hostile towards you for the attempt.
If its not official - it might as well not even exist.
The simplest version of AA that I have found to work works like this.
-An activation works exactly like a game turn now. You move, psychic, shoot, charge. If your having trouble keeping track of who activated and who hasn't place a chit or dice next to each activated unit.
- Heroic intervention extended to activations.: I.E. If you activate a unit within 3" of a character the character can activate with the unit.
-Tau Markerlights last until the end of the turn instead of phase.
-Units fight in melee when they activate.
-A unit that starts it's activation in melee can either fall back (all the same restrictions and what not as now) or fight.
-Psychic powers last until the casting units next activation.
-Transports: You either activate the vehicle or the unit inside. If you activate the unit inside it disembarks and acts. If you activate the transport you cannot activate the unit inside on this turn. If a unit can shoot while in the transport, the unit shoots at the same time as the transport.
-Transports that deep strike: When they deploy they activate together, similar to the character rule.
-Necron RP activate when the unit granting the RP activate. I.E. Warriors will trigger their own RP on their activation while a Ghost Ark will trigger one on it's activation and a Res Orb will trigger with the overlord,
That basically works for the vast majority of the game. Adjust any outlier units to taste in ways that make sense.
It's not perfect. But it's functional and makes the game far more engaging.
Lance845 wrote: The simplest version of AA that I have found to work works like this.
-An activation works exactly like a game turn now. You move, psychic, shoot, charge. If your having trouble keeping track of who activated and who hasn't place a chit or dice next to each activated unit.
- Heroic intervention extended to activations.: I.E. If you activate a unit within 3" of a character the character can activate with the unit.
-Tau Markerlights last until the end of the turn instead of phase.
-Units fight in melee when they activate.
-A unit that starts it's activation in melee can either fall back (all the same restrictions and what not as now) or fight.
-Psychic powers last until the casting units next activation.
-Transports: You either activate the vehicle or the unit inside. If you activate the unit inside it disembarks and acts. If you activate the transport you cannot activate the unit inside on this turn. If a unit can shoot while in the transport, the unit shoots at the same time as the transport.
-Transports that deep strike: When they deploy they activate together, similar to the character rule.
-Necron RP activate when the unit granting the RP activate. I.E. Warriors will trigger their own RP on their activation while a Ghost Ark will trigger one on it's activation and a Res Orb will trigger with the overlord,
That basically works for the vast majority of the game. Adjust any outlier units to taste in ways that make sense.
It's not perfect. But it's functional and makes the game far more engaging.
A question that I'm honest about:
Would having, say, 6 units inside of a Stormlord offer too much flexibility, do you think? they can shoot out at the same time as the transport and be 1 activation if you want to, or they can disembark individually and give you 7 activations for the lot. Does that increased flexibility to be able to swap between "MSU" and "Deathstar" for activation purposes have any meaningful impact? If not, awesome! If it does, maybe that's acceptable?
Lance845 wrote: The simplest version of AA that I have found to work works like this.
-An activation works exactly like a game turn now. You move, psychic, shoot, charge. If your having trouble keeping track of who activated and who hasn't place a chit or dice next to each activated unit.
- Heroic intervention extended to activations.: I.E. If you activate a unit within 3" of a character the character can activate with the unit.
-Tau Markerlights last until the end of the turn instead of phase.
-Units fight in melee when they activate.
-A unit that starts it's activation in melee can either fall back (all the same restrictions and what not as now) or fight.
-Psychic powers last until the casting units next activation.
-Transports: You either activate the vehicle or the unit inside. If you activate the unit inside it disembarks and acts. If you activate the transport you cannot activate the unit inside on this turn. If a unit can shoot while in the transport, the unit shoots at the same time as the transport.
-Transports that deep strike: When they deploy they activate together, similar to the character rule.
-Necron RP activate when the unit granting the RP activate. I.E. Warriors will trigger their own RP on their activation while a Ghost Ark will trigger one on it's activation and a Res Orb will trigger with the overlord,
That basically works for the vast majority of the game. Adjust any outlier units to taste in ways that make sense.
It's not perfect. But it's functional and makes the game far more engaging.
A question that I'm honest about:
Would having, say, 6 units inside of a Stormlord offer too much flexibility, do you think? they can shoot out at the same time as the transport and be 1 activation if you want to, or they can disembark individually and give you 7 activations for the lot. Does that increased flexibility to be able to swap between "MSU" and "Deathstar" for activation purposes have any meaningful impact? If not, awesome! If it does, maybe that's acceptable?
As has been pointed out, often with alternating activations, 1 really powerful activation gets negated easily. The other guy just runs circles around you because you commit early and are unable to react to the changing battlefield.
If you deploy, you are deploying 1 at a time. Which means you vehicle is sitting still for 6 activations while people pile out of it one unit at a time (unless one of those units is a character, at which point 1 unit and 1 character can activate at the same time). All the while the other guy is able to respond to that.
I don't really see an imbalance there. You either keep them all piled up inside the vehicle and have a power house activation but loose flexibility or you take your time disembarking which would hand flexibility to the other player for a pretty long stretch of time.
Lance845 wrote: The simplest version of AA that I have found to work works like this.
-An activation works exactly like a game turn now. You move, psychic, shoot, charge. If your having trouble keeping track of who activated and who hasn't place a chit or dice next to each activated unit.
- Heroic intervention extended to activations.: I.E. If you activate a unit within 3" of a character the character can activate with the unit.
-Tau Markerlights last until the end of the turn instead of phase.
-Units fight in melee when they activate.
-A unit that starts it's activation in melee can either fall back (all the same restrictions and what not as now) or fight.
-Psychic powers last until the casting units next activation.
-Transports: You either activate the vehicle or the unit inside. If you activate the unit inside it disembarks and acts. If you activate the transport you cannot activate the unit inside on this turn. If a unit can shoot while in the transport, the unit shoots at the same time as the transport.
-Transports that deep strike: When they deploy they activate together, similar to the character rule.
-Necron RP activate when the unit granting the RP activate. I.E. Warriors will trigger their own RP on their activation while a Ghost Ark will trigger one on it's activation and a Res Orb will trigger with the overlord,
That basically works for the vast majority of the game. Adjust any outlier units to taste in ways that make sense.
It's not perfect. But it's functional and makes the game far more engaging.
A question that I'm honest about:
Would having, say, 6 units inside of a Stormlord offer too much flexibility, do you think? they can shoot out at the same time as the transport and be 1 activation if you want to, or they can disembark individually and give you 7 activations for the lot. Does that increased flexibility to be able to swap between "MSU" and "Deathstar" for activation purposes have any meaningful impact? If not, awesome! If it does, maybe that's acceptable?
As has been pointed out, often with alternating activations, 1 really powerful activation gets negated easily. The other guy just runs circles around you because you commit early and are unable to react to the changing battlefield.
If you deploy, you are deploying 1 at a time. Which means you vehicle is sitting still for 7 activations while people pile out of it one unit at a time (unless one of those units is a character, at which point 1 unit and 1 character can activate at the same time). All the while the other guy is able to respond to that.
I don't really see an imbalance there. You either keep them all piled up inside the vehicle and have a power house activation but loose flexibility or you take your time disembarking which would hand flexibility to the other player for a pretty long stretch of time.
The second one is the one I'm worried about. Aren't throwaway activations that force your opponent to activate his big stuff while you dick around and do nothing meaningful a problem?
Lance845 wrote: The simplest version of AA that I have found to work works like this.
-An activation works exactly like a game turn now. You move, psychic, shoot, charge. If your having trouble keeping track of who activated and who hasn't place a chit or dice next to each activated unit.
- Heroic intervention extended to activations.: I.E. If you activate a unit within 3" of a character the character can activate with the unit.
-Tau Markerlights last until the end of the turn instead of phase.
-Units fight in melee when they activate.
-A unit that starts it's activation in melee can either fall back (all the same restrictions and what not as now) or fight.
-Psychic powers last until the casting units next activation.
-Transports: You either activate the vehicle or the unit inside. If you activate the unit inside it disembarks and acts. If you activate the transport you cannot activate the unit inside on this turn. If a unit can shoot while in the transport, the unit shoots at the same time as the transport.
-Transports that deep strike: When they deploy they activate together, similar to the character rule.
-Necron RP activate when the unit granting the RP activate. I.E. Warriors will trigger their own RP on their activation while a Ghost Ark will trigger one on it's activation and a Res Orb will trigger with the overlord,
That basically works for the vast majority of the game. Adjust any outlier units to taste in ways that make sense.
It's not perfect. But it's functional and makes the game far more engaging.
A question that I'm honest about:
Would having, say, 6 units inside of a Stormlord offer too much flexibility, do you think? they can shoot out at the same time as the transport and be 1 activation if you want to, or they can disembark individually and give you 7 activations for the lot. Does that increased flexibility to be able to swap between "MSU" and "Deathstar" for activation purposes have any meaningful impact? If not, awesome! If it does, maybe that's acceptable?
As has been pointed out, often with alternating activations, 1 really powerful activation gets negated easily. The other guy just runs circles around you because you commit early and are unable to react to the changing battlefield.
If you deploy, you are deploying 1 at a time. Which means you vehicle is sitting still for 7 activations while people pile out of it one unit at a time (unless one of those units is a character, at which point 1 unit and 1 character can activate at the same time). All the while the other guy is able to respond to that.
I don't really see an imbalance there. You either keep them all piled up inside the vehicle and have a power house activation but loose flexibility or you take your time disembarking which would hand flexibility to the other player for a pretty long stretch of time.
The second one is the one I'm worried about. Aren't throwaway activations that force your opponent to activate his big stuff while you dick around and do nothing meaningful a problem?
Let's pretend that situation is going on. Every time you pull out say.. some 20 point single model unit, a couple things can occur. 1) those 20 point single model units are going to get destroyed horribly and quickly. How many points do you want to invest in throw away units so that you can wait out your opponent on turn 1 and maybe turn 2?How much of an advantage is that really going to get you over the course of the whole game? 2) everyone is going to focus on your immobile big stuff and wear them down before they even get a chance to act. So what if you have a bunch of 20 point single model units? By the time your tank moves it will be at half health and degrading. Good. I hope all those minor activations were worth it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: AA Actually promotes a pretty solid mix smaller flexible units with a good amount of activations and a few heavy hitters to lay the smack down where and when needed.
Incredibly small ineffectual activations can buy you time, but it's time the enemy can use while your having no meaningful impact because they are too small to matter.
When the units are too small to matter that strategy won't hold up because they won't last. Those units will get destroyed quickly and then what?
Lance845 wrote: The simplest version of AA that I have found to work works like this.
-An activation works exactly like a game turn now. You move, psychic, shoot, charge. If your having trouble keeping track of who activated and who hasn't place a chit or dice next to each activated unit.
- Heroic intervention extended to activations.: I.E. If you activate a unit within 3" of a character the character can activate with the unit.
-Tau Markerlights last until the end of the turn instead of phase.
-Units fight in melee when they activate.
-A unit that starts it's activation in melee can either fall back (all the same restrictions and what not as now) or fight.
-Psychic powers last until the casting units next activation.
-Transports: You either activate the vehicle or the unit inside. If you activate the unit inside it disembarks and acts. If you activate the transport you cannot activate the unit inside on this turn. If a unit can shoot while in the transport, the unit shoots at the same time as the transport.
-Transports that deep strike: When they deploy they activate together, similar to the character rule.
-Necron RP activate when the unit granting the RP activate. I.E. Warriors will trigger their own RP on their activation while a Ghost Ark will trigger one on it's activation and a Res Orb will trigger with the overlord,
That basically works for the vast majority of the game. Adjust any outlier units to taste in ways that make sense.
It's not perfect. But it's functional and makes the game far more engaging.
A question that I'm honest about:
Would having, say, 6 units inside of a Stormlord offer too much flexibility, do you think? they can shoot out at the same time as the transport and be 1 activation if you want to, or they can disembark individually and give you 7 activations for the lot. Does that increased flexibility to be able to swap between "MSU" and "Deathstar" for activation purposes have any meaningful impact? If not, awesome! If it does, maybe that's acceptable?
As has been pointed out, often with alternating activations, 1 really powerful activation gets negated easily. The other guy just runs circles around you because you commit early and are unable to react to the changing battlefield.
If you deploy, you are deploying 1 at a time. Which means you vehicle is sitting still for 7 activations while people pile out of it one unit at a time (unless one of those units is a character, at which point 1 unit and 1 character can activate at the same time). All the while the other guy is able to respond to that.
I don't really see an imbalance there. You either keep them all piled up inside the vehicle and have a power house activation but loose flexibility or you take your time disembarking which would hand flexibility to the other player for a pretty long stretch of time.
The second one is the one I'm worried about. Aren't throwaway activations that force your opponent to activate his big stuff while you dick around and do nothing meaningful a problem?
Let's pretend that situation is going on. Every time you pull out say.. some 20 point single model unit, a couple things can occur. 1) those 20 point single model units are going to get destroyed horribly and quickly. How many points do you want to invest in throw away units so that you can wait out your opponent on turn 1 and maybe turn 2?How much of an advantage is that really going to get you over the course of the whole game? 2) everyone is going to focus on your immobile big stuff and wear them down before they even get a chance to act. So what if you have a bunch of 20 point single model units? By the time your tank moves it will be at half health and degrading. Good. I hope all those minor activations were worth it.
So essentially having a bunch of throwaway activations isn't a problem - alright, fair enough (it's worth noting that you could do it with 8 point units though). Earlier in the thread someone said that MSU spam was a common problem in AA games.
So essentially having a bunch of throwaway activations isn't a problem - alright, fair enough (it's worth noting that you could do it with 8 point units though). Earlier in the thread someone said that MSU spam was a common problem in AA games.
It is and can be depending on the actual system.
40k is so damn lethal though that it actually kind of takes care of that on it's own. In games where everyone is so much more durable MSU will survive most of the game so that waiting it out strategy can carry you through the entire game. But in 40k 1 20 model (mid sized) unit of termagants can probably kill of 3-4 single model units in a single activation depending on what exactly we are talking about here.
So... on your first turn you ate up a bunch of time and by turn 2 you have lost a pretty solid chunk of your activations to a stiff breeze.
So essentially having a bunch of throwaway activations isn't a problem - alright, fair enough (it's worth noting that you could do it with 8 point units though). Earlier in the thread someone said that MSU spam was a common problem in AA games.
It is and can be depending on the actual system.
40k is so damn lethal though that it actually kind of takes care of that on it's own. In games where everyone is so much more durable MSU will survive most of the game so that waiting it out strategy can carry you through the entire game. But in 40k 1 20 model (mid sized) unit of termagants can probably kill of 3-4 single model units in a single activation depending on what exactly we are talking about here.
So... on your first turn you ate up a bunch of time and by turn 2 you have lost a pretty solid chunk of your activations to a stiff breeze.
So... then are deathstars a problem? 3 Baneblades can wipe out a good chunk of the opponents army before it gets to move, if they're only 3 activations to the opponents ~10 or whatever.
So essentially having a bunch of throwaway activations isn't a problem - alright, fair enough (it's worth noting that you could do it with 8 point units though). Earlier in the thread someone said that MSU spam was a common problem in AA games.
It is and can be depending on the actual system.
40k is so damn lethal though that it actually kind of takes care of that on it's own. In games where everyone is so much more durable MSU will survive most of the game so that waiting it out strategy can carry you through the entire game. But in 40k 1 20 model (mid sized) unit of termagants can probably kill of 3-4 single model units in a single activation depending on what exactly we are talking about here.
So... on your first turn you ate up a bunch of time and by turn 2 you have lost a pretty solid chunk of your activations to a stiff breeze.
So... then are deathstars a problem? 3 Baneblades can wipe out a good chunk of the opponents army before it gets to move, if they're only 3 activations to the opponents ~10 or whatever.
Lance845 wrote: Here is the list i just made. Everything comes stock.
3 malathropes for hqs
3 units of 20 GENESTEALERS
3 UNITS OF Hormagaunts, 2 30 models 1 29 models.
2 trygons
1 trygon prime.
1999 points. Your "alpha strike" would be compleyely negated shooting at hormagaunts and the real threats would eat you alive because you are incapable of reacting properly
A single baneblade stock has 2d6 + d3 + 8 shots (avg 14.5 shots). If they move vs those hormagaunts they will be hitting on 6s. If they don't they will still only be hitting on 5s. How many hormagaunts do you think they will kill before the trygons and genestealers start showing up and ripping chunks off them? Do you think 1 trygon, 7 attacks hitting on 3s, wounding on 5s, ap-3 d6dmg could reasonably deal 6 wounds to a baneblade on it's own? Add in 20 rending claw genestealers. x 3 (except one of the trygons is a prime). This is a fight on marble world with no terrain (which is actually in the baneblades favor). The Baneblades wouldn't last past turn 3. The nids MIGHT, I emphasize, MIGHT loose a unit or 2.
So essentially having a bunch of throwaway activations isn't a problem - alright, fair enough (it's worth noting that you could do it with 8 point units though). Earlier in the thread someone said that MSU spam was a common problem in AA games.
It is and can be depending on the actual system.
40k is so damn lethal though that it actually kind of takes care of that on it's own. In games where everyone is so much more durable MSU will survive most of the game so that waiting it out strategy can carry you through the entire game. But in 40k 1 20 model (mid sized) unit of termagants can probably kill of 3-4 single model units in a single activation depending on what exactly we are talking about here.
So... on your first turn you ate up a bunch of time and by turn 2 you have lost a pretty solid chunk of your activations to a stiff breeze.
So... then are deathstars a problem? 3 Baneblades can wipe out a good chunk of the opponents army before it gets to move, if they're only 3 activations to the opponents ~10 or whatever.
Lance845 wrote: Here is the list i just made. Everything comes stock.
3 malathropes for hqs
3 units of 20 GENESTEALERS
3 UNITS OF Hormagaunts, 2 30 models 1 29 models.
2 trygons
1 trygon prime.
1999 points. Your "alpha strike" would be compleyely negated shooting at hormagaunts and the real threats would eat you alive because you are incapable of reacting properly
A single baneblade stock has 2d6 + d3 + 8 shots (avg 14.5 shots). If they move vs those hormagaunts they will be hitting on 6s. If they don't they will still only be hitting on 5s. How many hormagaunts do you think they will kill before the trygons and genestealers start showing up and ripping chunks off them? Do you think 1 trygon, 7 attacks hitting on 3s, wounding on 5s, ap-3 d6dmg could reasonably deal 6 wounds to a baneblade on it's own? Add in 20 rending claw genestealers. x 3 (except one of the trygons is a prime). This is a fight are marble world with no terrain. The Baneblades wouldn't last past turn 3. The nids MIGHT, I emphasize, MIGHT loose a unit or 2.
Yes, but that's true in current modern 40k as well, so your point doesn't support or address mine at all?
Automatically Appended Next Post: I don't see how "Some armies are REALLY GOOD at killing baneblades" is a counter to "Wouldn't 3 baneblades in an AA system cripple or kill a few units before they could move?"
The difference is in current 40k, your 3 baneblades would be firing all at once. They can all 3 back out of combat with my trygons, turn their attention onto a single trygon (the prime probably to start) and turn it into paste. then widdle down the next without the nids having any chance to respond.
Your baneblade in AA would need to activate, back out, shoot at what it can because the others are tied up in combat, and then get recharged by me when I activate either the trygon or the genestealers next.
The end result is a pretty clear answer to your question.
Are Deathstars a problem? What happens with 3 Bane Blades who are all super killy?
They get out manuevered. If you have terrain you use it. You feed them targets to distract from real threats and then when they have no ability to respond you crush them.
Edit:
Ah, yes. They COULD cripple or kill off a unit when they activate. Maybe a couple. You know your opponents list before you deploy. Set up and maneuver your guys to deal with it. You will need to sacrifice some pawns to take the king but thats much more interesting.
Lance845 wrote: The difference is in current 40k, your 3 baneblades would be firing all at once. They can all 3 back out of combat with my trygons, turn their attention onto a single trygon (the prime probably to start) and turn it into paste. then widdle down the next without the nids having any chance to respond.
Your baneblade in AA would need to activate, back out, shoot at what it can because the others are tied up in combat, and then get recharged by me when I activate either the trygon or the genestealers next.
The end result is a pretty clear answer to your question.
Are Deathstars a problem? What happens with 3 Bane Blades who are all super killy?
They get out manuevered. If you have terrain you use it. You feed them targets to distract from real threats and then when they have no ability to respond you crush them.
Why would they back out? They can fire just fine in combat and fight at the end as well.
And I think you can use terrain just fine in the current 40k to protect your units, no? If 'outmaneuvering' deathstars is how you deal with them, then you maneuver. The way it works in current 40k, you have a good chance to go before them and move everything into cover. The way it would work in your system is you move one thing into cover, a Baneblade blasts another, you move another thing into cover, a Baneblade blasts a second thing, you move a third thing into cover, and a Baneblade blasts a third thing. Essentially I've gotten to go with my entire army after you moved only 3 units, and you got to go first.
Lance845 wrote: The difference is in current 40k, your 3 baneblades would be firing all at once. They can all 3 back out of combat with my trygons, turn their attention onto a single trygon (the prime probably to start) and turn it into paste. then widdle down the next without the nids having any chance to respond.
Your baneblade in AA would need to activate, back out, shoot at what it can because the others are tied up in combat, and then get recharged by me when I activate either the trygon or the genestealers next.
The end result is a pretty clear answer to your question.
Are Deathstars a problem? What happens with 3 Bane Blades who are all super killy?
They get out manuevered. If you have terrain you use it. You feed them targets to distract from real threats and then when they have no ability to respond you crush them.
Why would they back out? They can fire just fine in combat and fight at the end as well.
And I think you can use terrain just fine in the current 40k to protect your units, no? If 'outmaneuvering' deathstars is how you deal with them, then you maneuver. The way it works in current 40k, you have a good chance to go before them and move everything into cover. The way it would work in your system is you move one thing into cover, a Baneblade blasts another, you move another thing into cover, a Baneblade blasts a second thing, you move a third thing into cover, and a Baneblade blasts a third thing. Essentially I've gotten to go with my entire army after you moved only 3 units, and you got to go first.
Im confused about what actual point your trying to make. 1) they cant bring their big guns to bare against the targets they would be most effective against while in melee with those targets. Thats why they would back out.
I didnt say you could not do it in current 40k. What point are you trying to make? That in the match up of nids vs baneblades the fight goes similarly in igougo vs aa?
The idea with this is that players make big sweeping unit advancements, and their opponent then makes their movements in response. Shooting is combined at the same step as close combat (since shooting and charging tends to be mutually exclusive). You get a little more granularity in the combat resolution systems and still have to be tactical about which units you choose to fire in which orders, but it's interspersed with what your opponent is doing during their step.
The above seems like it would be simple to implement without having to make any drastic changes to the rules.
One of the things I like about the Battletech Phased Turn structure is that damage doesn't apply till the end of the play.
For example, Tau and Marines blast at each other for a turn, but models (and their guns) aren't removed from play until the end of the Phase. One doesn't need special rules of "it can swing even if it dies" in those cases.
That's interesting. The only thing I could see being an issue with that type of system though would be that it would re-emphasize the alphastrike and put even more emphasis on incredibly long-range weapons, or non-LOS weapons. I do admittedly want to find a Battletech group in NY so I can learn it.
Mitochondria wrote: Because GW is pretty gak at anything other than ripping off others' IP, copyrighting made up words, losing in court, and overpricing their gak.
I'm not a huge fan of GW in most ways, but this kind of post does beg the question - why are you even on a 40K based forum? Seems like you're aggravating yourself for no reason.
While the alpha-strike would still be present with Battletech's style of damage resolution, it does introduce the interesting twist of allowing both the first and second player to alpha-strike at the same time because, for all intents and purposes, their damage is resolved simultaneously. So, in that way at least, it makes it so that turn order only matters for the purpose of movement.
Of course doing that creates a bit of an odd situation for the second player: it's possible to end up with units that you know are very likely to die when the damage allocated to them resolves, which can affect what you do with them. For example, using them as the target for an ability that requires you to sacrifice a model, overcharging their plasma weapons, or casting without regard for Perils because you know that unit is going to die during the damage phase anyway.
Though I suppose the degree of randomness in unresolved damage will keep the level of certainty low most of the time, unless a unit is the target of some serious overkill. On the other hand, in allocating his shots your opponent will presumably be overkilling his targets, because he is seeking some level of certainty that they will die for his own reasons.
Mitochondria wrote: Because GW is pretty gak at anything other than ripping off others' IP, copyrighting made up words, losing in court, and overpricing their gak.
I'm not a huge fan of GW in most ways, but this kind of post does beg the question - why are you even on a 40K based forum? Seems like you're aggravating yourself for no reason.
I didn't see him complaining about 40K anywhere. Only the company that controls it.
Lance845 wrote: Isn't battle tech generally played on a much smaller scale with significantly more durable "units"?
Yes. On top of that shots are resolved simultaneously. So even if you take out a mech it will fire back this turn.
It seems to me that the large scale field with much more being in/out of range coupled with the vastly more lethal mechanics changes the games at a very fundamental level that might make 40k unsuitable to mechwarriors turn structure without some pretty sever rebalancing/restructuring.
Lance845 wrote:Isn't battle tech generally played on a much smaller scale with significantly more durable "units"?
The standard game is, yes. It is far more simulator oriented than abstract. However, there is the Alpha Strike/Battleforce version which is far more abstract, where the mechs have armor closer to a Character's or Monstrous Creature's Wounds. This is intended for more Company v Company and larger engagements that are seen in the storylines rather than the Lance v Lance the more traditional game has as its target size.
Lance845 wrote:It seems to me that the large scale field with much more being in/out of range coupled with the vastly more lethal mechanics changes the games at a very fundamental level that might make 40k unsuitable to mechwarriors turn structure without some pretty sever rebalancing/restructuring.
Not really. If a 'Mech has ammunition, one hit against it can cause the unit to be written off after the end of the phase. The only things that would need to be rebalanced and restructured are those few abilities which care about when the model dying before it can Fight in that Phase. Indeed, it is far more compatible with 8th Edition than 7th Edition due to the dropping of the Initiative stat.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
MagicJuggler wrote: That's interesting. The only thing I could see being an issue with that type of system though would be that it would re-emphasize the alphastrike and put even more emphasis on incredibly long-range weapons, or non-LOS weapons. I do admittedly want to find a Battletech group in NY so I can learn it.
Actually the alpha strike, while still very good (and sometimes VERY painful to pull off when the ammo cooks off) loses its punch when compared to 40K, as the target you just struck can still alpha atrike you back. Heck, it may convince them TO alpha strike you back if he already knows the unit is going to die any way (heat doesn't bother a dead 'Mech too much).
---------------------
As a side note, within the Phase, it is an alternating activation, with the person who won the initiative deciding who moves first, and it is a proportional move, with someone who has a 2 model advantage activating 2 models when the opponent moves 1.
It may be old, but it is a turn set up which avoids a lot of problems that people have complained about in 40K.
I will refrain from stating whether the scenario I described is a good thing or a bad thing, as honestly it could probably be seen either way. On the one hand, you get to squeeze some use out of units that are going to die. On the other hand, you may find yourself using them in ways that would be unrealistic if you didn't already know they were going to die.
argonak wrote: I'd really like to try a straight alternating activation translation of 40k. Activate one unit, run it all the way through, then your opponent goes.
There has been some people making a "Bolter Action" version of the game, and I think they have posted in the Proposed Rules. You may want to look them up and bring them up to your group to try out.
I was really hoping in 8th they would have used a more advanced version of iniativie and activiation. Such as, whatever model has the highest inaitative goes first per step; akin to the melee system, but for shooting only.
Both teams move, the first player moves all their stuff, the second player moves all their stuff. The shooting phase kicks in. Initiative step 10, all models with that number shoot. Such as, the person whos turn it it, activates one of these models/units. Then the other player (if they have anything at that step) and once all units with that number have gone, move to the next step of initiative. And so on and so forth until step 0 is reached.
This has the wonderful ability to mostly hamper the, "I got first turn and I blow you off the board" gameplay. More importantly it adds a new layer of strategy and army building. Infantry would always be faster than vehicles and things like speeder would be faster than tanks and so forth. And with a 10 step system (no reason it must be at that number just a place holder), you can add granularity. Predator tanks would be a step above a Leman Russ, and you could make vehicles and tanks heavier or lighter based on statlines and speed.
Its a super simple, and more importantly fast system.
Thats how my board game is going to work when I bother to properly make it!
Tsol wrote: I was really hoping in 8th they would have used a more advanced version of iniativie and activiation. Such as, whatever model has the highest inaitative goes first per step; akin to the melee system, but for shooting only.
Both teams move, the first player moves all their stuff, the second player moves all their stuff. The shooting phase kicks in. Initiative step 10, all models with that number shoot. Such as, the person whos turn it it, activates one of these models/units. Then the other player (if they have anything at that step) and once all units with that number have gone, move to the next step of initiative. And so on and so forth until step 0 is reached.
This has the wonderful ability to mostly hamper the, "I got first turn and I blow you off the board" gameplay. More importantly it adds a new layer of strategy and army building. Infantry would always be faster than vehicles and things like speeder would be faster than tanks and so forth. And with a 10 step system (no reason it must be at that number just a place holder), you can add granularity. Predator tanks would be a step above a Leman Russ, and you could make vehicles and tanks heavier or lighter based on statlines and speed.
Its a super simple, and more importantly fast system.
Thats how my board game is going to work when I bother to properly make it!
You are going to run into 2 major problems.
1) If the not Tau goes first then the Tau will use their move to take some steps back out of the first players range while still keeping the enemy within their own range. If first team moves then the other drastically favors longer range gun lines. Not to mention the second playing having preference for utilizing LoS blocking terrain while moving to negate the first players use of it.
2) If you are going to base your initiatives off traditional initiative values then you are fething over Orks and Necrons and Making Eldar and Nids the undisputed masters with their high initiatives they will be acting with almost their entire army first every time.
I was just swapping pints last night with a friend who was a big battle tech player back in the day (played in tournaments, etc.). I've played it a few dozen times myself. We were both talking about how much we liked the turn structure of the game, and it goes well beyond just the alternating but simultaneous turn structure of the game.
Specifically, during the shooting phase, players would alternate declaring targets for their shooting. Then, after all targets were assigned, the shots were resolved and damage applied simultaneously.
Having to declare firing targets (didn't 3rd edition do this? I can't recall now...) adds a significant level of skill and risk calculation to the game. The game shifts fundamentally from being a risk optimization exercise (i.e., shoot at the biggest / most pressing threat on the board sequentially until it's been neutered enough, then switch to the next target) to a game of making strategic gambits. How much fire do you do toss at the big threat to have a good enough probability of taking it out? If you put too much fire on it, you risk wasting shots. It also tends to make the gameplay more tense and dynamic.
Back when I was playing 3rd/4th edition, my group designed a set of custom skirmish / advanced rules for warhammer that brought this kind of mechanic back into play - and our games were a lot more exciting AND deep strategically. They were less about math-optimizing the most efficient attack order (which, lets be honest, isn't really all that exciting) and more about making big sweeping tough calls.
The idea of having shooting occur simultaneously with damage applying simultaneously would resolve the alpha strike issue nicely, in that both players can now simultaneously be alpha striking. Of course, declaring targets requires using numbered tokens to keep it all straight, especially in a competitive setting. But I don't see any reason why a similar system couldn't be adopted for WH40K.
Mezmorki wrote: I was just swapping pints last night with a friend who was a big battle tech player back in the day (played in tournaments, etc.). I've played it a few dozen times myself. We were both talking about how much we liked the turn structure of the game, and it goes well beyond just the alternating but simultaneous turn structure of the game.
Specifically, during the shooting phase, players would alternate declaring targets for their shooting. Then, after all targets were assigned, the shots were resolved and damage applied simultaneously.
Having to declare firing targets (didn't 3rd edition do this? I can't recall now...) adds a significant level of skill and risk calculation to the game. The game shifts fundamentally from being a risk optimization exercise (i.e., shoot at the biggest / most pressing threat on the board sequentially until it's been neutered enough, then switch to the next target) to a game of making strategic gambits. How much fire do you do toss at the big threat to have a good enough probability of taking it out? If you put too much fire on it, you risk wasting shots. It also tends to make the gameplay more tense and dynamic.
Back when I was playing 3rd/4th edition, my group designed a set of custom skirmish / advanced rules for warhammer that brought this kind of mechanic back into play - and our games were a lot more exciting AND deep strategically. They were less about math-optimizing the most efficient attack order (which, lets be honest, isn't really all that exciting) and more about making big sweeping tough calls.
The idea of having shooting occur simultaneously with damage applying simultaneously would resolve the alpha strike issue nicely, in that both players can now simultaneously be alpha striking. Of course, declaring targets requires using numbered tokens to keep it all straight, especially in a competitive setting. But I don't see any reason why a similar system couldn't be adopted for WH40K.
You start to touch on why it wouldn't work. The sheer scale of the thing. Not only would you need a ton of numbered tokens to keep track of who was targetting what, but you would need some way of marking how many of what guns within a unit were targeting what. It's easy enough when my 30 termagants with devourers are shooting 10 models each at 3 targets, but what about a stormsurge that has 10+ weapons each better or worse then the others at hitting specific targets? What if that 10+ weapon stormsurge is shooting 3 targets? How do you indicate which weapons were declared to be going where?
At the start of each turn, determine initiative (roll 2d6). The player roles highest can choose to go first or second.
Movement Phase The player going first moves a unit, then the other player moves a unit. Alternate moving units until all units have moved. Units can advance as part of their movement.
Psychic Phase The player going first chooses a psyker unit to make an psychic power. Alternate between players until all psyckers have been used.
Shooting - Declare Targets Phase The player going first chooses a unit and declares the target(s) it wishes to shoot at. Then the other player declares a target for one of their units. Alternate declaring targets until all units have declared a target or declined to fire.
Shooting - Resolve Shots Phase All shooting is resolved simultaneously. The order doesn't matter, so do what's most expedient. Typically have one side (the first player) resolve all of their shots, and then switch to the other player.
Charge Phase Starting with the first player, select a unit and declare a target for then to charge, moving them into melee range (and charged unit making overwatch fire as normal). Then the other player may select a unit to charge. Alternate charging units until all units have charged or declined to charge.
Fight Phase Starting with the first player, players alternate selecting units that charged and declaring their intended target(s) / distribution of attacks. All charge attacks are resolved simultaneously. After all attacks from charging units have been resolved, players alternate declaring targets for non-charging units. All of these attacks are resolved simultaneously.
You start to touch on why it wouldn't work. The sheer scale of the thing. Not only would you need a ton of numbered tokens to keep track of who was targetting what, but you would need some way of marking how many of what guns within a unit were targeting what. It's easy enough when my 30 termagants with devourers are shooting 10 models each at 3 targets, but what about a stormsurge that has 10+ weapons each better or worse then the others at hitting specific targets? What if that 10+ weapon stormsurge is shooting 3 targets? How do you indicate which weapons were declared to be going where?
You might have to restrict the extent to which you can split fire for a unit. Coming from 4th edition 40K (where there wasn't any split fire at all) and being new to 8th edition, I don't how how often or wide spread people split their fire within a squad. For simplicity sake, you might cap squads to only being able to split fire between two separate targets at the max.
Playing battle tech, while you only had 4-6 mechs per side, each mech might have 4-5 weapon systems on it, which could all be independently targeted. Some how we managed to keep all that straight without needing tokens or other elaborate methods.
EDIT: If you skipped the target declaration phase, you could have units pick a target and fire in one step. Then you'd simply need toy keep track of how many wounds a unit received so at the end of the shooting phase you can remove them.
Again, this probably works better at a smaller skirmish scale (less than 1,000 points) compared to a big 2,000 point game.
EDIT 2: As far as kiting goes (e.g. backtracking with Tau to get out of range) I don't see that as a big problem, especially if you're playing any sort of objective based scenario. There is only so much board you can fall back across and if you keep walking away from an objective point you're going to lose the overall objective of the mission.
However, it is still a curious thing that there are 3 other threads on 
it's still alternating activations
