Like it, hate it, or apathetic, many of us enjoy sharing our opinions (or simply venting) in regards to the random initiative of AoS. In the spirit of breaking up the larger general thread into its respective topics, I figured I would make one for this.

So what do you think? Do you have any ideas you believe would improve things? Have any interesting experiences to share?

Remember to keep it polite, a difference of opinion is not an excuse to attack the gaming preferences of someone else. And remember that good or bad the experiences of other people are valid events that they went through.

There is nothing IMO that makes double turn "better". It is a mechanic that exists to allow for extreme swingy moments to happen in a game, to give anyone a chance to come back and win due to how devastating it is.

When I win via the double turn, I feel dirty. When I lose via the double turn, I feel as if I might as well be playing craps or some other game to get the same experience without having to spend a grand on pretty models to go with it.

Whenever it is complained about, the common rebuttal is that you have to "plan around it", but to date, five years into the game, I have not seen a good video or explanation on what "plan around it" means short of "make sure you take bubble wrap troops so when you get double turned charge, the only thing that is getting charged are crap troops you don't care about"

The other side of double turn that I hate is the standing there for two whole turns doing absolutely nothing but removing models.

I require interaction during my games. I don't like straight IGOUGO as it is. Double turn amplified that by 100.

It is one of three reasons that I won't touch AOS again until it is removed, as I have given up on house rules since I live in a very anti-house rule tournament-standard region. If it flies at Adepticon or LVO, it has to be the way its done where I am as well.

I would take a traditional IGOUGO over Double Turn.

I would prefer a system more like LOTR or even Warcry.

I would love an alt activation system, as that is my favorite form of activation as it is the most interactive and you don't stand there for an entire turn taking it on the chin just removing models. It also makes alpha strikes not a thing since you can't just win by shoving your army down your opponent's throat while he just stands there unable to do anything.

I have found that having one player deploy their entire army first in exchange for getting first turn, followed by alternating activations, works quite well. And it does not require any other rules to be changed.

Get rid of double turns, hate them. Even though my armies benefit the most from them, compared to other armies. They ruin more games than they save in my experience. I agree with Auticus' reasons for disliking double turns. I don't know how I would feel about Alternate Activations in AoS, but I haven't played around with the concept yet so I can't say much to it.

I've yet to hear anyone outline solid tactics to counter/prepare for a double turn which are not general good tactics. One I've often heard is people say you need to screen good units with bad/chaff units - which is just basic good tactics.


The other aspect that no one can get around nor deny is that the double turn means one person has to sit through two whole turns of the game with nothing to do but react to the other players actions and roll saves and remove models. Even with the alternating close combat aspect of the game (a neat feature!) they still cannot start/escape or force any new close combat events; they are still reacting to one player.



In a game where (for years) one turn can dramatically change the game; the chance of one player getting two turns in a row is obscenely powerful.




It's also my casual observation that its very rare to lose the game if you get a double turn first. Typically if they happen anywhere but near the very end of the game, chances are its going to swing a win toward the player who gets a double turn first.


Personally I think it generates so much contention and debate with players; that it will always result in a boring/bad experience for the person on the receiving end - that its the kimd of feature best moved to Open play and taken out of matched.





I'd also make the argument that a good few I've seen defending it seem to defend it from the point of view that its "unique" to the game. Others seem to defend it because they dislike any "attack" on AoS which I think brings through some of the drama taht surrounded the game; especially onliny.

Honestly I think a lot of the people that defend it do so because they like the game period and will defend any part of that game if they feel someone is challenging its awesomeness.

AOS could have had IGOUGO, alt activations, or any other type of activation and many of those people would defend each and everyone of those just as hard.

I think that does come to be a part of it; especially when those people have had the luck of the dice not to be on the receiving end of many/any doubleturns. Or if their playgroup is very casual/low skill and this a doubleturn doesn't "hurt" as much because their opponent isn't actually taking full advantage of it.


Heck it might even be that they enjoy the game more when a doubleturn hits them because their generally weaker regular opponent(s) actually manage to put up a half decent threat as a result.

Meanwhile if they were to play a player of comparable (to them) or higher skill they might well start to see how "abusive" the mechanic can be.










It's things like this which can complicate gathering bulk feedback from gamers. Esp for real world games because you can't see every match or use data analysis machines to spot patterns. With a computergame you can harvest all this data; you can sift through and see patterns that even good players won't spot; because you can see far more of the data and its 100% accurate too.

With wargames two people of the same skill can report widely different experiences based on their regular opponents.

I think a strong element of defense comes from players that have a weaker army* going up against stronger ones; getting a double turn lets them snag a win once in a while when they otherwise would not.

*I do not mean to imply this is the player's fault, due to the state of AoS balance it could very much be out of their control.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Honestly I think a lot of the people that defend it do so because they like the game period and will defend any part of that game if they feel someone is challenging its awesomeness.

AOS could have had IGOUGO, alt activations, or any other type of activation and many of those people would defend each and everyone of those just as hard.

I do believe there is an element of that. But I also feel that when leveling criticism many people (and I have certainly fallen into this) phrase things in a manner that provokes that mindset to some degree by unintentionally coming across as 'attacking' the game as a whole.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I think a strong element of defense comes from players that have a weaker army* going up against stronger ones; getting a double turn lets them snag a win once in a while when they otherwise would not.

*I do not mean to imply this is the player's fault, due to the state of AoS balance it could very much be out of their control.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Honestly I think a lot of the people that defend it do so because they like the game period and will defend any part of that game if they feel someone is challenging its awesomeness.

AOS could have had IGOUGO, alt activations, or any other type of activation and many of those people would defend each and everyone of those just as hard.

I do believe there is an element of that. But I also feel that when leveling criticism many people (and I have certainly fallen into this) phrase things in a manner that provokes that mindset to some degree by unintentionally coming across as 'attacking' the game as a whole.

Here's something to chew on...

https://aos-tactics.com/2017/01/08/how-to-optimise-for-the-double-turn/

Anyone who defends double turns needs to play a game against a strong Slaanesh or Skaven Skryre shooting, and eat a double turn on the first game round. Then see if they still defend it. You will either lose because your army doesn't exist any more, or you just have no chance of of coming back on objective score if your army can even fight back.

Also @Seriqolm, yes. That article says what everyone else has said in this thread that the supposed counters to a double turn is to just use sound tactical play like screening and zoning and avoiding enemy damage. Posting that is pointless.

My counter is; if the double turn is good, why do we not see it anywhere else? Why did GW not put it in 40k? Would chess be more tactical with random initiative? Is there any other game out there that has had success using such a mechanic?

I like the rule when the dice roll in my favor.
I hate the rule when the dice roll in my opponents favor.
IGOUGO & then simply rolling off to see who controls the 1st endless spell works just fine for me.
I'm fine with Alternating Activation.

So I ask my opponent what they prefer & play it that way.

GW didn't put Initiative roll/double turns in 40k because 40k is a shooting heavy game. Comparatively, AoS has less shooting and thus the impact of a double turn should be less. The impact it has in AoS would be far less than it would in 40k without a doubt.

 auticus wrote:

When I win via the double turn, I feel dirty.

Why?

 auticus wrote:
The other side of double turn that I hate is the standing there for two whole turns doing absolutely nothing but removing models.

How are you doing absolutely nothing?

 Thadin wrote:
Anyone who defends double turns needs to play a game against a strong Slaanesh or Skaven Skryre shooting, and eat a double turn on the first game round.

Well, in my Fyreslayer experience, Slaanesh is a hard matchup even in ideal situations. The Skryre shooting list I feel my Fyreslayers could take in stride and jack them once they are in charge range. YMMV with other armies.

 Thadin wrote:
Then see if they still defend it.

I will/would. You win some, you lose some. There have always been bad matchups/hard counters in Warhammer. Those two armies aren’t all there is. One is falling out of fashion and the other was never really a thing.

 Thadin wrote:
You will either lose because your army doesn't exist any more, or you just have no chance of of coming back on objective score if your army can even fight back.

Thats assuming everything goes the Slaanesh/Skryre players way. They can make mistakes in deployment. They can forget to use a key ability or fail to get off a spell in the Hero phase, still muff the movement phase, still roll poorly in the shooting phase, not have range/LoS for shooting, fail charges, have a poor showing with hit/wound rolls and combat phase target priority. Any and all of the above can happen to various degrees and combinations. Its not a forgone conclusion.

 Thadin wrote:
Also @Seriqolm, Posting that is pointless.

Conversely, and no offense intended, so is posting a perfect nightmare scenario of Slaanesh/Shooty rats. You can dislike the mechanic without either of those two armies on the board.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Why did GW not put it in 40k?

Shooting is much more prevalent I suppose.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Is there any other game out there that has had success using such a mechanic?

Couldn’t honestly say tbh. AoS is all I really have time for. The Game of Thrones game is tempting me though.


I like the double turn. It adds a variation to the game that previous Warhammer never had. Every game can feel different, even when playing the same opponent multiple times.

And really, the most effective usage of winning the priority roll for me was always maneuvering to react to my opponents actions in the previous turn and gearing up for the next turn. Making sure my auras were in range, getting spells/prayers off, grabbing objs, making sure my best units were in the best possible spot etc etc. Just using that extra turn to tidy up and prep for the next turn. Learning how to do that was a game changer for me. Hell, getting too aggressive with the priority roll win lost me more games than I care to admit.

Learning to be a bit more nuanced with taking the priority roll win probably won me more games then the careless rush to smash face that most people lament when complaining about losing the priority roll. And I think thats what alot of the people who are consistently winning games/tourneys do. Sure, if the alpha strike is there, I’m taking it, but I’d be doing that in an IGOUGO game as well.

In terms of prepping for being on the losing end of a priority roll, that was another thing I had to learn. For a long time, I’d just want to kill my way to the win and get caught with my pants down, my army ill positioned. After some painful lessons, I started to calm the feth down and focus on objectives, solely. Once again I’d over commit, though. For example: if there were 3 objectives, I’d try to grab all 3 at once and try to rack up points before my opponent could get them. Of course that would again leave me scattered and promptly punished. Even if I won a priority roll, my dudes were too scattered to put a hurting on my opponent, unless they also made some mistakes.

Right now, while I’m no big tourney winner, I’ve definitely learned to keep things tight and stay focused and thats worked wonders for me in how I’ve dealt with losing the priority roll.. There is really no silver bullet answer that I can give to anyone who dislikes the priority roll and is looking for an answer to “How do you prep for losing the priority roll” . There’s just too many variable at play and its very situational. Anything I’d say would just be a cliche.

With that said, I wouldn’t burn my armies if they dropped the priority roll in AoS 3rd. I do believe the game would lose a crucial piece of what makes it unique and consistently intriguing to me, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world, I suspect.

Anecdotal, but I’ve never encountered a dislike of the priority roll out in the wild. Only online for what its worth. Frankly surprised that its still so divisive.

People constantly ask if this is still a thing, and my own view is it really does not add anything I think is valuable when I have play.
Mostly seems to throw off play and stops some genuinely interesting tactics from being a thing.

 Thadin wrote:
Anyone who defends double turns needs to play a game against a strong Slaanesh or Skaven Skryre shooting, and eat a double turn on the first game round. Then see if they still defend it. You will either lose because your army doesn't exist any more, or you just have no chance of of coming back on objective score if your army can even fight back.

Also @Seriqolm, yes. That article says what everyone else has said in this thread that the supposed counters to a double turn is to just use sound tactical play like screening and zoning and avoiding enemy damage. Posting that is pointless.

Exactly - the doubleturn introduces a mechanic which does not create any new tactical options nor thinking within the game. In fact the only "new" tactic that I think it creates is the benefit of holding back and not advancing toward the enemy - since if there's greater distance between you you might force an opponent with a double turn to waste the first turn just moving close enough to do anything. The thing is that would be great if the game had 30 turns. But the game has typically 6 turns at most with often only needing 5 or so to actually get to a point where the win/loss is locked in.
So as a result holding back a turn on the chance of a double turn is actually very damaging. It would easily leave whoever held back relying fully on getting their own double turn to make up for the loss of ground; objectives and board control that they'd be giving up.



Ergo the only new and unique counter tactic, holding back, is impractical to the point of being detrimental to use in most typical game situations. All the rest of the tactics - screening etc.. - are all regular tactics that are good to use in the game without double turns being a thing. Also if the game relies upon the doubleturn because it has a stronger element of close combat, this is going to likely fall apart given that as GW expands most army model ranges, the number and variety of ranged weapons is most likely to increase. Some armies might retian ranged as purely an elite option; but you can bet many will start to get a greater functional portion of ranged units.

Holding back in case of a double does not work because if the double will not be advantageous the opponent can simply... not take it.

Why?

Because I vastly prefer games where I win due to out maneuver, and solid game play, not because I won a random roll off to get to go twice in a row and blow them off the table with magic and ranged attacks etc first that they do nothing but stand there and watch and take it without the ability to do ANYTHING about it. Or even better, getting to spam summon twice in a row on them so I can (and have) doubled my army size. There is nothing tactical about that.

Its literally the monty python scene with the guy running at you from a mile away screaming and the guards standing there staring at him until he gets up on them and hacks them down.

How are you doing absolutely nothing?

You're removing models. Thats what you're doing. You can't do anything else. You can't move, you can't shoot back, you can't do anything but watch your opponent go through two whole hero, movement, and shooting phases while you stand there with thumbs up the butt.

Anecdotal, but I’ve never encountered a dislike of the priority roll out in the wild. Only online for what its worth. Frankly surprised that its still so divisive.

It was the only house rule that I got a majority of people that liked and gave positive feedback during our events for when I removed double turn, and when I introduced alternate activation.

Its all anecdotal of course, and only GW could tell you if its positive or not from their polls that they don't share with anyone.

Its certainly enough to drive people out, and the games where those people landed on have overwhelmingly discussed the double turn as one of those reasons (from my anecdotal experience).

The only thing you might get is alternate control of an Endless Spell

However anyone using a predatory Endless Spell knows to cast it well into the enemy lines, so at best you just get to move it away from your army for a turn rather than turn it to attack your opponent. Plus there's a good few of them that are not predatory and thus won't switch sides; or which are like the Ossiarch Spells and don't swap sides.

Which is something I think many of us knew (certainly, many of us said as much) when the rules dropped; predatory endless spells will only be used when they have little to no chance of coming back to hurt the casting player. Because outside those circumstances the risk:reward simply favors casting a regular spell instead. GW seems to have realized this (see: Bonereapers and Seraphon) and I would not be surprised to see the next GHB have changes to how they work in matched play along with, potentially, how random initiative works as well. (Though I would not be surprised to see no such changes, either.)

Well if GHB 2020, the Corona Edition has a removal of complete double turn, that would be one massive positive step for me to consider playing it again. I'm not going to hold my breath though, that has become a sacred cow.

I’m honestly impartial to it.

From one side, it can dramatically swing a fight depending on the situation.

From another, it has also managed to benefit me at times too.
Using a dwarf army, nothing is fast.
Having the enemy close the gap for me does make things a lot easier as I can generally get the charges then.

Also have to remember that double turns for 1 player are impossible to get twice in a row, so if someone gets a double turn against you, there’s then a 50% chance you get to follow it up with the same.

To me it’s all the same though.
Barring big tournaments against pure META lists, I’ve never had a dramatic loss due to a double turn though.
I’ve had a few fights swing and then swing back again.



Also, I love some of the view points.

“Anyone who thinks X or Y is wrong”
That’s an opinion and one that frankly adds nothing.

“Everyone thinks X or Y”
No, you cannot speak for everyone.

“They are defending GW no matter what”
No, this does not make their point invalid while validating you’re own.
It’s makes you look childish as you are applying a strawman to avoid points.


People need to realise that having a positive or negative point about the game isn’t attacking or defending them.
It’s simply someone’s opinion.
I’ve never met anyone that agrees with everything or nothing that GW does (although, some are very close)

I think the biggest problem with the Double Turn is that, as auticus said, you're basically sitting there twiddling your thumbs while your opponent beats the crap out of you twice in a row. With how deadly AOS is and how many armies can be devastating enough in a single turn, let alone two, that's where the issue comes in. I get the reason it was added, it's a neat little thing but in a game like AOS it doesn't work in the way they want and I feel at this point it should be set as an optional rule (similar to the "ignore battleline" rule, is that even still around?) so you can use it or not use it. It wouldn't matter that much as most likely whatever the big tournaments use will be adopted as the standard, but there would at least be the option and it would be better received in my experience than an actual "unofficial" house rule.

Right now though the issue is that when it happens, most of the time whoever gets it wins because their army is already killy and now is twice as killy because they get to do all the stuff that they do twice without their opponent being able to do anything but take it.

I will say that I have seen a few people like auticus has mentioned, who rabidly defend AOS and GW as the bestest most greatest thing of all time and anyone who dislikes even a part of it is a hater who needs to stop playing because the game is perfect. They are rare and naturally more rabid on the internet but they exist out there and are worse than the people who just hate GW because 99% of the time those people have been burned by GW in the years past or saw how GW was and see what they become. The fanboys usually have never played anything but GW games and immediately dismiss/disparage any other game and will come to the defense of everything GW does.

I havent' seen: "anyone who thinks x or y is wrong", nor have i seen "everyone thinks x or y", and

"They are defending GW no matter what" is a permutation of what I said:

"Honestly I think a lot of the people that defend it do so because they like the game period and will defend any part of that game if they feel someone is challenging its awesomeness."

Because there ARE people that will defend whatever their game of choice is no matter what, thats not a strawman, thats reality for a lot of people. There ARE people that in this case would defend whatever activation method GW chose to use because at their root they simply don't care enough but don't want to see their game of choice being attacked, or perceived to be attacked.

I don't see anyone here feeling that someone is attacking them from defending the game.

So I'm not really sure where this response came from. At least from where I was, I didn't see any of those things above being said.

 auticus wrote:
I havent' seen: "anyone who thinks x or y is wrong", nor have i seen "everyone thinks x or y", and

"They are defending GW no matter what" is a permutation of what I said:

"Honestly I think a lot of the people that defend it do so because they like the game period and will defend any part of that game if they feel someone is challenging its awesomeness."

Because there ARE people that will defend whatever their game of choice is no matter what, thats not a strawman, thats reality for a lot of people. There ARE people that in this case would defend whatever activation method GW chose to use because at their root they simply don't care enough but don't want to see their game of choice being attacked, or perceived to be attacked.

I don't see anyone here feeling that someone is attacking them from defending the game.

So I'm not really sure where this response came from. At least from where I was, I didn't see any of those things above being said.

I didn’t specify in this exact thread, but I’m quite happy to bet they will be posted on this thread at some stage.

There are also unicorns and magical elves, I can’t show you them, but take my word for it.

See the issue?

I’ve seen even the die hard AoS fans get pissed from time to time because of a judgment call by GW.
I’ve yet to see anyone on here actually talk as you described.

The usual reaction from someone not jumping on the bandwagon to hate every 5 minutes is the old “white knight” that people make them out as.
That I have seen several times on here.
Someone can’t counter a point so simply calls them a white knight, stating they will defend them no matter what.
However, each time I’ve seen the above I’ve also seen them ignore any valid points or reasoning too.

More Tips from Reddit..

https://www.reddit.com/r/ageofsigmar/comments/enx5e4/tips_for_handling_double_turn/


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Thadin wrote:
Anyone who defends double turns needs to play a game against a strong Slaanesh or Skaven Skryre shooting, and eat a double turn on the first game round. Then see if they still defend it. You will either lose because your army doesn't exist any more, or you just have no chance of of coming back on objective score if your army can even fight back.

Also @Seriqolm, yes. That article says what everyone else has said in this thread that the supposed counters to a double turn is to just use sound tactical play like screening and zoning and avoiding enemy damage. Posting that is pointless.

Really seems like this is a pointless thread then if even articles about the double turn aren't even discussed properly. If its sound tactical advice then it would also pertain to the double turn as that is a core part of the game so not pointless at all. Is this going to be a Dakka love in of Auticus and friends repeating themselves like they do in every thread about the game? I could write his and many others post for them as they are so repetitive.

RE: tactics one of the hardet things for me to get into is the whole verbiage. Like bubble wrap, daisy chain (if you can even still do that with things being wholly within more) nd the like. I've been involved in GW games since 1995 and its only within the last few years I've ever heard these terms, and before that was in Warmahordes where everything was much more tactical. It's the things like that which always confuse me because they've never been a thing in warhammer that I can remember but now all of a sudden everyone is doing and pushing them.

Wayniac wrote:
RE: tactics one of the hardet things for me to get into is the whole verbiage. Like bubble wrap, daisy chain (if you can even still do that with things being wholly within more) nd the like. I've been involved in GW games since 1995 and its only within the last few years I've ever heard these terms, and before that was in Warmahordes where everything was much more tactical. It's the things like that which always confuse me because they've never been a thing in warhammer that I can remember but now all of a sudden everyone is doing and pushing them.

Why not learn what these things are and maybe you be a better player? There are always new tactical approaches to new games that were not there before, I play Historicals and there are some tactical moves you can only do in say L'art de la Guerre but not transfer to say DBM but the games are based on the same format just in those games no-one has named the manoeuver.

Seriqolm wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
RE: tactics one of the hardet things for me to get into is the whole verbiage. Like bubble wrap, daisy chain (if you can even still do that with things being wholly within more) nd the like. I've been involved in GW games since 1995 and its only within the last few years I've ever heard these terms, and before that was in Warmahordes where everything was much more tactical. It's the things like that which always confuse me because they've never been a thing in warhammer that I can remember but now all of a sudden everyone is doing and pushing them.

Why not learn what these things are and maybe you be a better player? There are always new tactical approaches to new games that were not there before, I play Historicals and there are some tactical moves you can only do in say L'art de la Guerre but not transfer to say DBM but the games are based on the same format just in those games no-one has named the manoeuver.

Right, I'm just saying it's the most challenging part because it's a whole new style of gaming compared to what I was used to from years ago. I'm using this quarantine/lockdown/end of the world stuff to really take a step back and decide what I want out of the game because I've really just flitted around with things and never done much.

The double turn though, to veer back to the topic, is just an odd mechanic period because of how polarizing it is. I don't hate it but I definitely thing it doesn't need to be a core rule becaue often no amount of tactics can handle your opponent getting two turns in a row to do whatever to you while you just have to take it. Most people in my area forget it (legitimately) and we just do alternating turns. When we do remember the initiative every turn thing, we normally realize how it usually makes or breaks the game.

Jackal90 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I havent' seen: "anyone who thinks x or y is wrong", nor have i seen "everyone thinks x or y", and

"They are defending GW no matter what" is a permutation of what I said:

"Honestly I think a lot of the people that defend it do so because they like the game period and will defend any part of that game if they feel someone is challenging its awesomeness."

Because there ARE people that will defend whatever their game of choice is no matter what, thats not a strawman, thats reality for a lot of people. There ARE people that in this case would defend whatever activation method GW chose to use because at their root they simply don't care enough but don't want to see their game of choice being attacked, or perceived to be attacked.

I don't see anyone here feeling that someone is attacking them from defending the game.

So I'm not really sure where this response came from. At least from where I was, I didn't see any of those things above being said.

I didn’t specify in this exact thread, but I’m quite happy to bet they will be posted on this thread at some stage.

There are also unicorns and magical elves, I can’t show you them, but take my word for it.

See the issue?

I’ve seen even the die hard AoS fans get pissed from time to time because of a judgment call by GW.
I’ve yet to see anyone on here actually talk as you described.

The usual reaction from someone not jumping on the bandwagon to hate every 5 minutes is the old “white knight” that people make them out as.
That I have seen several times on here.
Someone can’t counter a point so simply calls them a white knight, stating they will defend them no matter what.
However, each time I’ve seen the above I’ve also seen them ignore any valid points or reasoning too.

Cool fair enough. The way I had read it you were rebuffing someone or someones for posting something like that at present.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

If its sound tactical advice then it would also pertain to the double turn as that is a core part of the game so not pointless at all.

While I can appreciate where you are coming from, the sound tactical advice in the two sources provided are identical to just sound tactical advice to playing the game without the double turn.

So "you just have to prep for the double turn" is the same as "you just have to prep to play the game in general without the double turn". There is nothing special you do to prepare for the double turn other than play like you'd play the game without the double turn.

That does not negate or take away the fact that its a hugely swingy mechanic that has massive impact on the game that results in one player standing there for two whole turns doing nothing but removing models without any course of counter play.

Wayniac wrote:

Seriqolm wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
RE: tactics one of the hardet things for me to get into is the whole verbiage. Like bubble wrap, daisy chain (if you can even still do that with things being wholly within more) nd the like. I've been involved in GW games since 1995 and its only within the last few years I've ever heard these terms, and before that was in Warmahordes where everything was much more tactical. It's the things like that which always confuse me because they've never been a thing in warhammer that I can remember but now all of a sudden everyone is doing and pushing them.

Why not learn what these things are and maybe you be a better player? There are always new tactical approaches to new games that were not there before, I play Historicals and there are some tactical moves you can only do in say L'art de la Guerre but not transfer to say DBM but the games are based on the same format just in those games no-one has named the manoeuver.

Right, I'm just saying it's the most challenging part because it's a whole new style of gaming compared to what I was used to from years ago. I'm using this quarantine/lockdown/end of the world stuff to really take a step back and decide what I want out of the game because I've really just flitted around with things and never done much.

The double turn though, to veer back to the topic, is just an odd mechanic period because of how polarizing it is. I don't hate it but I definitely thing it doesn't need to be a core rule becaue often no amount of tactics can handle your opponent getting two turns in a row to do whatever to you while you just have to take it. Most people in my area forget it (legitimately) and we just do alternating turns. When we do remember the initiative every turn thing, we normally realize how it usually makes or breaks the game.

Its a new game with new ideas so understanding them is the sensible approach. I also play a bit of Malifaux and that as we know is alternate activations and I really don't get that as the gangs need to be built with synergy and abilities but stringing those abilities together is a tough thing when your opponent can see what you are doing and just stop the chain in one move. So originally when I played M2E I gave up because of this but with the new edition I've decided to try and learn how you deal with the vagaries of alt.activation and give it another shot, thats all I can do as its a successful game so there must be tactics I don't understand.

This leads to the fact that all of these systems have problems in Bolt Action you can have one player have many more goes just by having a bigger army or the luck of the draw and drawing all their dice in succession, I've seen it happen does that mean its a broken system? you either learn to deal with the problems inherent in the system or stop playing but many just seem to want to bash/dismiss any attempts to do this.

It comes down to what you tolerate and what you want out of a game.

I play warlords of Erehwon, which uses the Bolt Action system. I've never once had an issue with its activation system. Yes bigger armies get more activations. So what? I don't see that as game breaking.

Its no where near as swingy or impactful as a double turn in AOS is.

Part of that is because in warlords / bolt action its alt activation in a sense so you can respond and it truly is random.

In AOS its literally one person doing magic, movement, shooting, and summoning twice in a row *with their whole army* with no possible counter play. Whereas in Warlords your opponent may get a few activations in before you can respond, its only a few activations in. Not an entire army's worth. Twice over. For me my tolerance states a few activations more than me is fine, but two whole army activations twice over most definitely not fine.

Is that right or wrong?

For me its very wrong. Thats because my tolerance level for uninteractive game play is very very low. For other people they may not mind so much.

Does double turn make for a bad game?

For me yes. Because thats not what I want out of a game at all, I want interactive game play with counter play and I want the game to be more than maxing my math via list building, maxing out on pay to win summoning, and getting lucky on a swingy double turn dice roll.

That is all of course my opinion and preference and why I use "for me" to precede my statement. Other people love it to death.

Are they wrong for loving it to death? Nope not at all. We like what we like.

There is no way to circumvent the double turn. Its going to happen. THe only thing you can do is make sure you are doing what you'd do if you weren't dealing with double turn. Play with chaffe. Play with bubble wrap. Max your mortal wound output the best you can. Max your pay to win summoning the best you can. And try to influence who gets the first double turn by having just one drop army.

If thats the game you love, thats the game you love.

Nope, but it will happen.
Sadly just about every AoS discussion breaks down to that point regardless of the actual topic.
More so when the topic is generally about the game mechanics.


In regards to double turns, it can be helped a lot by denial units and placement.
I’ve found anything that always strikes first to make a good bodyguard and deterrent to charges.
No one will charge a key unit if they know most of their unit will die and do barely anything.

Placement is also the big factor.
Using chaff screens and terrain is another key point that so many people ignore.
This is a big part of the reason I always take a flying unit or hero.

The risk of double turns just means you have to play a bit more reserved instead of gung ho charges.

 auticus wrote:
It comes down to what you tolerate and what you want out of a game.

I play warlords of Erehwon, which uses the Bolt Action system. I've never once had an issue with its activation system. Yes bigger armies get more activations. So what? I don't see that as game breaking.

Its no where near as swingy or impactful as a double turn in AOS is.

Part of that is because in warlords / bolt action its alt activation in a sense so you can respond and it truly is random.

In AOS its literally one person doing magic, movement, shooting, and summoning twice in a row *with their whole army* with no possible counter play. Whereas in Warlords your opponent may get a few activations in before you can respond, its only a few activations in. Not an entire army's worth. Twice over. For me my tolerance states a few activations more than me is fine, but two whole army activations twice over most definitely not fine.

Is that right or wrong?

For me its very wrong. Thats because my tolerance level for uninteractive game play is very very low. For other people they may not mind so much.

Does double turn make for a bad game?

For me yes. Because thats not what I want out of a game at all, I want interactive game play with counter play and I want the game to be more than maxing my math via list building, maxing out on pay to win summoning, and getting lucky on a swingy double turn dice roll.

That is all of course my opinion and preference and why I use "for me" to precede my statement. Other people love it to death.

Are they wrong for loving it to death? Nope not at all. We like what we like.

There is no way to circumvent the double turn. Its going to happen. THe only thing you can do is make sure you are doing what you'd do if you weren't dealing with double turn. Play with chaffe. Play with bubble wrap. Max your mortal wound output the best you can. Max your pay to win summoning the best you can. And try to influence who gets the first double turn by having just one drop army.

If thats the game you love, thats the game you love.

We know what you think about it, you've said so many times I think its inprinted on every dakkanaut mind thats reads your posts the point is you do not even accept that others think its not as bad as you say and the game is played from garage to tournament level and is getting more popular with this so called "disaster of the double turn". And activating 5 units one after the other can have a dramatic effect on a game of Bolt Action, I've seen it happen, if they lose a couple of units the chance of it happening again is higher the next turn as they have even less dice in the bag, I've seen reserves that never come in or too late to be effective, terrible dice rolls that (I was the one rolling the dice, lol) and many other things but I don't see players moaning about that in Bolt Action or many other wargames. All games have the elements that need to be accounted for, AoS and the double turn is no different, so sound tactics takes into account the double turn thats just common sense. Your precious alt.activation has problems as I've stated as well and the praise of alt.activation in these boards is close to being meme as the people spouting it really don't understand its no better than IGOUGO or random activation just another way to build a wargame.

Where does the love thing come from? where did I say anytyhing of the sort? I'm just trying to interject a bit or reasoning to the usual disfest of a game you don't even play but seem to "love" being miserable about.

you do not even accept that others think its not as bad as you say

Ah yes here it comes the inflammatory posts. Cool.

So ... there are about 100 different examples proving that wrong, some in this very thread.

That is all of course my opinion and preference and why I use "for me" to precede my statement. Other people love it to death.

Are they wrong for loving it to death? Nope not at all. We like what we like.

If thats the game you love, thats the game you love.

So there you have the rebuttal to "you do not even accept that others think its not as bad as you say". I have said dozens upon dozens of times that others love it, like it, accept it, etc.

And activating 5 units one after the other can have a dramatic effect on a game of Bolt Action,

AoS and the double turn is no different,

For me its a simple matter of math. Now I have never seen 5 units go one after another in Warlords, the most I have seen are 3. That doesn't mean 5 can't happen but it certainly seems to be an outlier.

Pretending that 5 was common, there is still a world of difference between 5 units activating and the whole army activating twice before someone can respond. Thats basic math. If an army has ... say... 12 elements in it (my last slaanesh army) then I get to activate 24 elements in my army while you stand there with thumbs.

24 elements activating before you is a very very large contrast to 5 units activating before a player can respond.

Now whether or not you feel 5 units activating is roughly equivalent to taking 24 units activating I suppose will be personal preference and thresholds and all that. For me, that is a gross disparity and a huge negative.

Your precious alt.activation has problems as I've stated as well and the praise of alt.activation in these boards is close to being meme as the people spouting it really don't understand its no better than IGOUGO or random activation just another way to build a wargame.

You start your post off slagging me for my inability to understand that others have a preference different from mine (that I have already resonded to) and then you aggressively post that alt activation is no "better" than IGO or random activation.

See there you are wrong because what is "better" will be up to the preference of the person. To you it may all be the same. To me double turn is really really bad.

you've said so many times I think its inprinted on every dakkanaut mind thats reads your posts

Yes sir. its called a discussion forum.

For one - I don't start these threads. I participate in the threads that I find interesting.

For two - it is highly unreasonable to try to shut down conversation because you don't like what someone has to say.

For three - everyone has a differing degree of how long they've been on these boards or what they have read. I think it is highly illogical and unreasonable to have the soft rule that you post your opinion once, and then forever more STFU.

you don't even play but seem to "love" being miserable about.

Yeah lol. Thats the unfortunate side effect of having sunk 20 years and about 10 grand into armies and running events that I'd like to continue to use my stuff and want to provide the other viewpoint other than the sunny everything is awesome viewpoint that is thrown at the devs every day. Had I not sunk 20 years and 10 grand into warhammer, and I just showed up on the scene brand new and saw AOS, you'd never even know who an Auticus was because I would never have picked it up and went on my way because the game would have had nothing to attract me.

I mean auticus is synonymous with AoS is bad, summoning ruins everything, and the double turn ruined wargaming for an entire generation of players. Not sure why you always post about AoS though?

I would say Bolt Action random activation has the potential to swing the number of activations from one turn to the next in a way very similar to double turn.

I have 12 units my enemy has 5. I went with MSU with small squads and cheap non-vet tanks. My foe went with vets and large squads. I'm TFG. We alternate a couple activations and then my enemy concludes their activation and I activate 7 more units. The turn concludes and I then activate 8 units and my enemy finally activates several units. Is this not exactly the same as a double turn?

Because he WANTS to like AoS.

Not sure why you always post about AoS though?

Hmm well if you were to look in my history you'll see I post in Warmachine once in a while, Legion, 40k occasionally, and I have a whole thread on Conquest in the other forums, plus video content for that game I post on.

I'd definitely say that thats definitely way off the mark that I always post about AOS. I mostly bypass the new threads here entirely and I never create new threads in the AOS forums other than asking about warcry a while back.

Now I have to ask... where are the hyperbole police that tried to ride me like a pony a few months ago when the hyperbole comes equally from the other side?

Is this not exactly the same as a double turn?

In your exact scenario you have 8 more activations than your opponent. Is that the exact same thing as double turn, where I laid out a real example of having 12 units in my last army and get 24 activations before you get to respond? I mean... its exactly the same as in saying that both scenarios have a person getting more activations. Thats about where it being the same ends though. Because 24 activations is 3x the amount of activations you sit through in your extreme bolt thrower example of 8 more activations than your opponent (and again I've never seen that having played that game and Warlords, but I will admit that it *could* happen but its certainly again an OUTLIER whereas having 12 units in an AOS army and getting double turn 24 activations is a common scenario so you're throwing an outlier example that is still 1/3 of the effecetiveness of a normal AOS double turn activation and claiming its roughly the same)

Because he WANTS to like AoS.

^^

Ninth you rascal. You created a topic that is known to be the world over a divisive topic and now that i've posted in it, it has become the "throw auticus out and set him on fire" topic. hahaha (tongue in cheek my dude i'm just messing with you)

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Because he WANTS to like AoS.

I want to like brussel sprouts but I've accepted that ain't gonna happen.... I'm off to a Christmas dinner forum and bang on about how bad brussel sprouts are ad infinitum!


But Ninth isn't this thread a discussion about the relative merits for and against the Initiative roll and the answer as always is probably somewhere in the middle but lets have fun getting there, yes? but if listen many a poster *cough* Auticus *cough* its over by their first post cause its BaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaD!

 auticus wrote:
Because I vastly prefer games where I win due to out maneuver, and solid game play, not because I won a random roll off to get to go twice in a row and blow them off the table with magic and ranged attacks etc first that they do nothing but stand there and watch and take it without the ability to do ANYTHING about it. Or even better, getting to spam summon twice in a row on them so I can (and have) doubled my army size. There is nothing tactical about that.

And the rules for the priority roll offers a choice. You can choose to go for a second time, or opt for the other player to go. Saying you get a case of the feel bads because you won the priority and then proceeded to use it to decimate you opponent seems like you think that it isn't a choice.

And what army is blowing other armies off the table with magic, ranged and summoning all in one package? Maybe Tzeentch, but what other army can dominate in every phase of the game like that?
Genuinely curious.

 auticus wrote:
You're removing models. Thats what you're doing. You can't do anything else. You can't move, you can't shoot back, you can't do anything but watch your opponent go through two whole hero, movement, and shooting phases while you stand there with thumbs up the butt.

But the combat phase allows you some ability to mitigate the damage. You still get to attack back, pile in and use certain command abilities. What you put up your butt is your business though, just don't shake hands after the game.

Honesly, I feel like alot of the priority roll detractors seem to give up once they lose the priority roll.

 auticus wrote:
It was the only house rule that I got a majority of people that liked and gave positive feedback during our events for when I removed double turn, and when I introduced alternate activation.

Confused. In one post, you say that your local doesn't like house rules. A few posts later, you say they like the house rule about doing away with the priority roll (believable, as its not entirely game breaking) but then you say they also accepted the alternate activation(not so believable). Alt activation changes up so much of the game that I have a hard time thinking that a hyper competitive dude that swears by Adepticon/LVO tourney packets will try to relearn how to play his army with alt activation for a pickup game or some seasonal campaign. Not saying it isn't possible, but it seems like a big stretch to me.

 auticus wrote:
Its all anecdotal of course, and only GW could tell you if its positive or not from their polls that they don't share with anyone.

Yep. It would be interesting if they released those poll results. But I think that's so far gone at this point that they'll never release it.

 auticus wrote:
Its certainly enough to drive people out, and the games where those people landed on have overwhelmingly discussed the double turn as one of those reasons (from my anecdotal experience).

I can believe that. Attrition happens in every game for a variety of reasons.

Yep and I will continue to bang on about it when a thread is posted asking for what we think about things on a certain topic that I find interesting.

So if you see a double turn thread, or a free summoning thread, or a balance thread... best not read it then or put me on mute.

Nels - to keep things civil with you - since you and I already played the bait and attack game a while back, I'm not interested in continuing the round the table circular discussion with you that we already went through months ago. I get it. You are trying to pick my opinion apart and then prove that its illogical and find all the fallacies that you can with it. Thats great. You win, I'm not going to go into a back and forth with you again.

23/30 of your last posts were about AOS. You're right you never complain about summoning, the double turn, or how AoS ruined 20+ years of wargaming and an entire generation of wargamers. I don't know how I managed to get that wrong.

Fortunately most people just ignore your comments and the thread continues...

The double turn is in the rules for AOS. AOS is a top seller for arguably the largest producer of miniatures and table top games. Apparently enough people are ok with the double turn they continue buying miniatures and going to tournaments. Profits drive decisions in business.

I don't like the Double Turn, but I think it's about the only way to negate the huge advantage of going first in turn one. Owning turn one is such a huge advantage in 40k that it's almost an automatic game winner, especially with tournament competitive armies.

In AoS, owning turn one isn't going to (necessarily) win you the game, because the double turn exists.

IMO the double turn is no worse a rule than the IGOUGO system as a whole. Both ideas are bad and I'd love if Warhammer in general moved to a unit activation system.

 Jjohnso11 wrote:
23/30 of your last posts were about AOS. You're right you never complain about summoning, the double turn, or how AoS ruined 20+ years of wargaming and an entire generation of wargamers. I don't know how I managed to get that wrong.

Fortunately most people just ignore your comments and the thread continues...

The double turn is in the rules for AOS. AOS is a top seller for arguably the largest producer of miniatures and table top games. Apparently enough people are ok with the double turn they continue buying miniatures and going to tournaments. Profits drive decisions in business.

You're definitely the hero that everyone needs right now. I'm glad you were here to put me in my place.

Something else to consider is that people continue buying miniatures for gw games because it has the world's largest built in playerbase, so they know their investment is very safe, as opposed to other games where they have to struggle to find games. Its already been stated a great.many.times that rules quality and balance are one of the least impactful things that the gw-fanverse prioritizes. That being said, and apparently the case from months and years of being told that balance and rules quality aren't really prioritized in someone's desire to play, and the pretty models, lore, art, and massive player base are... it stands to reason that the rules could be almost anything at all and that great big tournament scene you love so much would continue without a hiccup, not because of the love of the rules, but because of the love of the massive playerbase and community. If the double turn went away tomorrow and was replaced with any form of activation system you can think of, from card based to dice based unit activation to igougo... the gw playerverse would shrug their collective shoulders. Some may lament the loss of the unique double turn, but it would ultimately not lose anyone in the process. They would continue to play business as usual.

I think there are factions that double turns can practically win or lose the game depending how they swing while there are also factions that it really has little effect on them.

My army (Warrior and Knight heavy S2D) is not all that bothered by the double turn. Even without it, I am going to choose to go second more often than not as almost nothing in my army is going to get into combat or even cover all that much ground Round 1. Going first just means losing a lot more charge attempts and definitely getting shot up more. Double turns basically make my army seem faster than it is, and it is also part of the reason I chuckle when people think OSR weakness is their speed. Neither my nor any OSR army I have seen worry all that much about our slowness. The stuff that has to get charges have speed to over the distance, and the stuff that can't cover the distance don't really need to win the charge anyways. Melee attacks are always alternating and losing first choice isn't usually that devastating.

At the same time, my common opponent plays DoT and KO. Both armies seem to be devastated from double turns used against them as it greatly reduces how they can react and they can't take nearly the amount of punishment my army can. So he absolutely distastes double turns. I think sometime he puts all his eggs into one basket which with a double turn can really allow me put the screws to him. Especially since I am not above double, double attacking with Spurred by Chaos or the Varanguard's once per game double attack.

So I think there is some ability to mitigate double turns via army list construction depending on how much said faction has options. That said, I do think double turns can't really be adjusted for on the tabletop outside of Archaon knowing who is going first. I also think that for something that is a single dice roll it has too much power to tip the scales. So I don't think it is a very good mechanic even if I am not all that bothered by its existence. I certainly wouldn't bemoan it going way.

Since it was brought up, I will mention that I really like Bolt Action's random activate since it isn't completely random. It was well understood that a 1000-1250 point Bolt Action army should have at least 10 units to have some control over activation. At the same time, once a player got over 16 units they were probably diluting their army too much for the sake of dice and would suffer for it as they realistically only had a couple of effective units that would largely be 'Pinned' out after the first or second round. Age of Sigmar's double turn is both far more blunt and players have almost most no control over which is a problem.

I honestly don’t care either way for the double turn. In early days, when AoS sucked and there was no “meat” to the armies, just random units thrown on a board with no true army synergy, it was overly powerful and shouldn’t have existed. Now, it’s a part of the game that some love, some hate, some are indifferent. I mark myself in the indifferent category. I see the double turn as “mid-game seizing initiative”. In case of tie or win, it stays with the current first turn player. The round two player HAS to score higher to seize. Concept wise, it’s fine. In game it hurts many players. But yeah, I don’t mind playing it and I also wouldn’t care if it disappeared tomorrow.

There are some missions that seem built around the Initiative roll off, while others are just suited to being in a normal IGOUGO format.

Off the some of the dome-piece, there's Relocation Orb. The player going first gets 1 point for control, second player in the Round gets 3 instead.

I think it's another key thing to look at, not just in terms of army lethality, but how missions get structured with the mechanic in mind. Some missions, you get the double turn on and get two rounds of magic and shooting murder and charges of your choice plus full scoring. If everything in the game was built around the potential of two turns in a row, I wouldn't mind it as much but there's been far too many times when my games have ended on turn one. Even when it's in my favor, that's a trash game and unsatisfying for me.

I still play the game, but would much prefer it without it.

Honestly the doubleturn to me is like the "you get a +1 attack if you've got a beard" kind of rules. I very much agree if hte game was ground up built around it it would be better, but the game isn't. The game is built pretty much without the doubleturn being part of the game and then the doubleturn potential is thrown in on top.

We can tell this because the game doesn't rely on the double turn happening. Many players might never have seen a doubleturn if the dice don't give them one. Or they might only see it once in a blue moon.

Eh...I view the double-turn as akin to the armies which have access to any kind of "make an attack before removing" or "you activate before the other guy in combat" stuff.

There's a bit more happening there, of course, but I've never really had any army(meaning that actually belongs to me) outside of my Wanderers that benefits extremely heavily or just gets wrecked from the double-turn.

Should I make a "complain about Auticus complaining" thread because seriously...

I despise the double turn and have seen too many games broken because of it.

We started playing without it but as people wanted to play more "proper AoS" we use it now.

Double turn combined with that mission were you burn the objetives (And you can burn yours without being there) is a sickening experience. I played a 2vs2 game were I (playing ogres) and my friend (playing stormcasts) losts agaisnt idoneth and legions of nagash because they gave us first turn, we didn't moved to "prepare" for a possible double turn, they had double turn, reached our lines, burnt our 2 of our objetives and 3 of theirs. We literally lost that game in 30 without even playing.

We started again and played other that was much more closer but at the end of the day:

Feth the double turn, being unique is not by itself a virtue, so AoS doesn't gain anything positive by being unique for having the double turn mechanic.

And feth whole armies having "Always strike first" habilities. That was one of the biggest balancing factors of AoS and GW started an arms raced about what faction can manipulate the combat phase flow the best to win. If you don't do it you just suck, unless you shoot like a madman.

Going first on AoS is not as big of a problem as it is in 40k where whole armies can shoot from across the table and remove 2/3 of the opponent army. In AoS shooting is much more limited and some armeis are VERY fast but you can always deploy to avoid that.

 nels1031 wrote:
And what army is blowing other armies off the table with magic, ranged and summoning all in one package? Maybe Tzeentch, but what other army can dominate in every phase of the game like that?\

Seraphon and OBR come to mind. Skaven don't even need the summoning.

I wish my local meta would take my advice for playing against Skaven so I can take all the dirty tools I want with them. However, until they learn to not take First round first turn against me, those toys stay away because even my lists I tone down with less powerful choices and optimization a double turn with Skaven is a disaster for the other player, irregardless of what round it happens on.

Irregardless, some armies capitalize on a double turn better than others, and some to such an excessive extent it was obvious they weren't designed with the mechanic in mind.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Seraphon and OBR come to mind. Skaven don't even need the summoning.

Corona has prevented me from playing the new Seraphon, I never worried about it before this newer tome. My OBR exposure has been somewhat limited. Skaven I felt like my Fyreslayers (heavy on hearthzerkers) just eat their shooting for breakfast, and my tunneled Hearthguard could jack up whatever they want next turn in return.

 Galas wrote:

And feth whole armies having "Always strike first" habilities. That was one of the biggest balancing factors of AoS and GW started an arms raced about what faction can manipulate the combat phase flow the best to win. If you don't do it you just suck, unless you shoot like a madman.

Thats something we can agree on. The whole “activation wars” is a needless slow down and complication for some.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Something else to consider is that people continue buying miniatures for gw games because it has the world's largest built in playerbase, so they know their investment is very safe, as opposed to other games where they have to struggle to find games. Its already been stated a great.many.times that rules quality and balance are one of the least impactful things that the gw-fanverse prioritizes. That being said, and apparently the case from months and years of being told that balance and rules quality aren't really prioritized in someone's desire to play, and the pretty models, lore, art, and massive player base are... it stands to reason that the rules could be almost anything at all and that great big tournament scene you love so much would continue without a hiccup, not because of the love of the rules, but because of the love of the massive playerbase and community. If the double turn went away tomorrow and was replaced with any form of activation system you can think of, from card based to dice based unit activation to igougo... the gw playerverse would shrug their collective shoulders. Some may lament the loss of the unique double turn, but it would ultimately not lose anyone in the process. They would continue to play business as usual.

While I think there is some element of truth to the “safe investment’ thing, I don’t think thats all there is.

I think the slow death of WHFB(commercially) and the reception to the disastrous launch of AoS also kind of refutes this point about how fanboys will tolerate everything GW feeds them. AoS without GHB1 would’ve died on the vine, imo.

 Overread wrote:
The only thing you might get is alternate control of an Endless Spell

However anyone using a predatory Endless Spell knows to cast it well into the enemy lines, so at best you just get to move it away from your army for a turn rather than turn it to attack your opponent.

Sure, that's the ideal.
But in reality I've zero qualms about dropping/moving one where ever it'll do me the most good.

I rarely see Endless Spells in the wild, but when I do they are exclusively the ones who's behaviour can be exactly predicted. Eg Balewind Vortex, Cogs, Bridge.

Endless Spells in general need a full rework. I find the rules given to Bonereapers and Seraphon a bit insulting. It's like they know ESs are generally awful (with a few notable exceptions), and instead of actually to fix them they just make them usable for the newest tomes.

It's not surprising, just pretty frustrating.

My Gitz have made good use of every one of their faction specific spells.
Heck, the Malevolent Moon & Mork's Mushroom are one 1/2 of why I play the Gitz in the 1st place (the other 1/2 being Squigs).

I think the slow death of WHFB(commercially) and the reception to the disastrous launch of AoS also kind of refutes this point about how fanboys will tolerate everything GW feeds them. AoS without GHB1 would’ve died on the vine, imo.

There was but one aspect as to why AOS was dying before GHB1. It didn't have "official" points. No one could wrap their heads around how to create a list without having points as structure to their game.

Once the points were put back into the game, it went back to business as normal.

In regards to double turn, the vast majority of people I know or have read online that like AOS view the double turn as meh and if it was removed they wouldn't care either way. Only a very few absolutely love it to pieces.

So at least in regards to double-turn, its removal would have negligible impact on the player base in terms of losing players. You would, however, gain a bunch back.

Additionally and again... its not that gw fanboys will tolerate anything, its that their primary reason for choosing gw games in the first place is the massive community. That has been gleaned several times over by polls here, facebook, twitter, and other places where people ask a variation of the question "how can you people continune to play GW games if the rules and balance are bad" - and no I don't start those threads lol.

But I read the results with interest and many of them have a pattern of "the balance and the rules arent' what interest me as much, its that the community is huge and I can always get in a game, where other games that might be better have no players and you have to drive three hours to get a game"

Which is why I have the opinion that I do in that regard.

ccs wrote:
My Gitz have made good use of every one of their faction specific spells.
Heck, the Malevolent Moon & Mork's Mushroom are one 1/2 of why I play the Gitz in the 1st place (the other 1/2 being Squigs).

I'm not too familiar with the Gitz allegiance spells. My main armies are Ogors and Legions, so I'm stuck with the generic ones :(

The best takeaway from this thread is that DakkaDakka remains a terrible venue for talking about Age of Sigmar.

 Ventus wrote:
The best takeaway from this thread is that DakkaDakka remains a terrible venue for talking about Age of Sigmar.

For those only interested in superficial discussion yeah, the toxic overtones are not worth sifting through since the nuance will not be what they are looking for.

I seem to recall a recent double turn thread on the TGA, the most positive place for AOS evah... having some people not named Auticus discussing their disdain for double turn as well.

You guys do realise that people are critical/negative on TGA right? It's not some kind of strange place where anyone being negative gets taken out back and reconditioned by the secret police.

 auticus wrote:
I seem to recall a recent double turn thread on the TGA, the most positive place for AOS evah... having some people not named Auticus discussing their disdain for double turn as well.

It is not at all like it was when they banned you, totally reasonable now.


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 Overread wrote:
You guys do realise that people are critical/negative on TGA right? It's not some kind of strange place where anyone being negative gets taken out back and reconditioned by the secret police.

And dakka isn't a horrible toxic place where all free thought is shouted down by tourney-worshipping donkey-caves, but it is still fun to joke about it

 Overread wrote:
You guys do realise that people are critical/negative on TGA right? It's not some kind of strange place where anyone being negative gets taken out back and reconditioned by the secret police.

It was rainbow land for a long time lol. If its not that right now then cool. I don't go there very often and its been a while. It USED to be a place where posting criticism of the game was on the list of rules that could get you banned.

You can even post about whfb on TGA now, and most people are cool with it. What a crazy time to be alive!

To quote darth vader...

"Impressive. Most impressive."

VBS wrote:
You can even post about whfb on TGA now, and most people are cool with it. What a crazy time to be alive!

With Old World coming back from GW chances are in the future it will likely get its own Old World subsection as well if that game takes off well.

 Ventus wrote:
The best takeaway from this thread is that DakkaDakka remains a terrible venue for talking about Age of Sigmar.

Sure it's a bad venue, if you want a rah rah circlejerk rather than actual discussion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
You guys do realise that people are critical/negative on TGA right? It's not some kind of strange place where anyone being negative gets taken out back and reconditioned by the secret police.

There was a time when there was a no negativity policy in place where they wanted only positive pro-GW comments. I know this because Ben Curry, the owner of TGA, personally messaged me once to ask me to tone down the negative comments because it sounded like I "hated the game and hate GW" because I was very critical of their design choices. Auticus was banned for it. They've relaxed a bit.

They relaxed because the honeymoon phase ended and you can't have a standing and competitive game were everything is positive.

I mean they let Icegoat be there for a couple of weeks before banning him and hes a by-the-book negative troll.

It felt like something that was tossed in to make the game feel 'different', something they could use to market AoS as having something unique to other, far better balanced wargames. If the game had much tighter balance then maybe I could see, at a very hard push, why maybe there's an element of having to plan around it... but that isn't AoS, when things like Slaanesh and the like exist, where as many times as the weaker army can snatch victory through a double turn, you can get tabled by the army that had already wiped out most of your stuff. It's completely redundant at best and at worst you're bored, having to sit there and wait for someone to play another turn whilst you twiddle your thumbs.

If it makes it into third edition I'll be very surprised, especially with the way GW's recent rulesets have been slipping in alternating activations in various forms . As has been said, the only real defenders I've ever seen tend to be the people who'll defend literally anything about AoS/GW and will no doubt do an about turn to declare it's removal as the best decision ever once it gets announced.

But yeah TGA's actually not a 'total' hugbox anymore. It's still brimming with far more GW White Knights than anywhere else on the internet (which is saying something) and any critical talking point will see you doggy piled by a share of them, but at least you probably won't get banned for it.

I suspect the whole reason for the double turn was to give that "snatch victory from defeat" vibe, just they forgot that it also means you can turn a victory into a complete route with it too.

Yeah. Knowing that one of their design point was easy entry and a game that anyone could master and do well in without having to get good with rules as that was a complaint about whfb (having to get good with the rules and navigate the rules gotchas), the double turn to me screams "it doesn't matter how bad you're getting piled on, if you get the double turn you can win".

Which is also why I think its defended so much.

And honestly - I'm fine with the double turn -- if it was a scenario rule that wasn't in every scenario 100% 24/7. It could be something cool to have in once in a while.

Or if there was the beginner style rules (the four page rules) and then an "advanced" AOS. A lot of games I grew up with in the 80s and played after had a basic version of the game and an advanced version of the game.

It is fun as a unique thing that happens in scenarios designed to accommodate it.

Wayniac wrote:
I suspect the whole reason for the double turn was to give that "snatch victory from defeat" vibe, just they forgot that it also means you can turn a victory into a complete route with it too.

Could also be done as a way to mitigate turn 1 damage.
If you lose out on first turn you have the chance of a double to get back on your feet.
Plenty of armies now have alpha strike capabilities which can cause a fair bit of damage.

Jackal90 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
I suspect the whole reason for the double turn was to give that "snatch victory from defeat" vibe, just they forgot that it also means you can turn a victory into a complete route with it too.

Could also be done as a way to mitigate turn 1 damage.
If you lose out on first turn you have the chance of a double to get back on your feet.
Plenty of armies now have alpha strike capabilities which can cause a fair bit of damage.

The problem with every argument that suggests the doubleturn lets you get advantage on a losing situation, is that nothing in the mechanic actually relies on the current game state.

You could be against a super fast army that can make an alphastrike and hit you hard in the first turn. Just as you could be against a very slow army that's not even in range after one turn.
It's the same for "turning a loss into a win" arguments in that it can also turn a win into an outright win or an even battle into a win.


Because the doubleturn is random and that random element is based purely upon a dice roll; there's no part of the actual game state contributing to the chance of it happening. It is in itself a source of gross imbalance rather than an agent of increasing game balance. The only element that might adjust balance is the choice of the player who rolls the dice in deciding if they take it or not and the vast majority of players will take the path that gives them the best potential chance for a win.




If the doubleturn pinged if, say, the point difference in fielded units was greater than 50% of the games point value. Eg if a 2K game if the difference in points on the table between you and your opponent was equal too or greater than 1K points - then the player with the least points gets a doubleturn. Then perhaps at least it would be taking steps toward trying to at least work with the current game state. Though honestly I'd argue that such a system would be a pain to put into practice game-wise if you had to add up the points at the end of every single round.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I was just speculating as to why it might exist in the game.

I still remain on the bench with it though.

Only time I’ve seen a dramatic impact is with meta lists in low point games.
In 1k games a double turn can be lethal for a magic or shooting heavy army.

Seen skryre lists nearly wipe half an army on a double turn in a 1k game recently.
While they did roll well, it’s still a lot of damage.

Yep. I'd also wager that we'll see more ranged units start to appear in more armies. Right now a lot of armies are really small on model range; so as GW likely expands them we'll see more and more ranged weapons appear. That might well start to show more cracks.

Of course GW could start to say "Ok so close combat alternates lets make ranged alternate" or even shift to alternate activation where a "double activation" per turn wouldn't be too bad (you'd just activate two units one after the other rather than a whole army)

It’s badly needed.
Before some armies literally couldn’t do a thing.
I’ve been in games before against khorne armies that had to just ignore my mage sat on a balewind lol.

Glad they changed that too.

Like i said, once they remove double turn as a thing and replace it with pretty much anything else, I'd definitely be more interested in the game.

If they injected alternate activation of some type (look at Middle Earth) I'd be all in.

I wish they could have just taken the LOTR game's rules and make that AOS. It's one of the best rules they've done.

As much as I dislike the double turn, unit-by-unit activation would require a thorough re-write of the ruleset and factions.

I know you say that a lot but I don't think it needs an extensive re-write of everything. I've done it, it worked great with it as-is.

I could agree it could use some tweaking but I don't think it would need an extensive rewrite of everything.

In fact the two changes I was using with alt activation and with summoning leading to a sudden death victory condition if you over did it made the game pretty much awesome from my perspective. There was a lot that I liked beyond those two issues for me.

Assuming you alternate by unit and also by phase (as in, all phases work like the combat phase)...

Movement changes a lot. For example:

A shooting unit could move forward to get into range, only to have the target unit move back out of range, short-range shooters are less valuable, changing the balance.

Small, cheap units that can be activated to force the opponent to use up their activations before important units are moved become more valuable, changing the balance.

If a unit runs enemy units can now move to 'hide' behind that unit safe in the knowledge they cannot be charged by it, making one's own units potential fortifications for the enemy.

A large, fast moving unit could go first and run forward in a massive line, locking the enemy into position while allowing other friendly units to move about the board as they wish. Flying units can do similar, by jumping into the middle of the enemy line before support elements have been able to move up behind the unit they are meant to support. This dramatically affects not only balance but the entire dynamic of the movement phase.

My Nurgle army needs to advance as one solid line, without room for enemies to get between units, which also makes narrative sense. Unit-by-unit means I could move one unit up, then an opponent could jump into the gap before I can create that solid line. The entire makeup and strategy of my army build would need to be re-worked, since unit-by-unit destroys its concept.

That is a notable amount of balance changes and/or exploits which need to be addressed without even getting past the movement phase.


Personally I prefer alternating by phase instead of by unit, which still creates some issues (including some of the above) but avoids most of them and still preserves a similar gameplay experience.

I dont really know if theres that much of a balance issue, compared to where the game is now. Different units become the best and worst, but I'm not convinced the overall balance is significantly worse.

 auticus wrote:
Like i said, once they remove double turn as a thing and replace it with pretty much anything else, I'd definitely be more interested in the game.

If they injected alternate activation of some type (look at Middle Earth) I'd be all in.

I’d be fine with it removed but I’d quite happily drop it if alternate activation came in.
Really not a fan of it as it can slow games down dramatically.

Wayniac wrote:
I wish they could have just taken the LOTR game's rules and make that AOS. It's one of the best rules they've done.

You're not wrong.

Has anyone written a comprehensive modification for AoS that makes it alternating activation?

If you do it so every phase is like the fight phase that's going to be the easiest. Though I think in theory I prefer to do everything for each unit all in one go. It does take a little more modification for certain abilities though.

I guess because the games’ balance is already a burning train wreck, the balance shifts caused by alt activation dont really impact my opinion. Having done it for three years against power players i can also say the balance of the game was roughly the same. There was no gross imbalancing issues that came up thst wasnt anything you dont already deal with in aos 24/7.

The only ones that i can see sensitive to this are people that have built armies that take advantage of double turn or who really like elite small armies because those would have a disadvantage in board control over larger armies. And i know people hate buying new things to get back to optimal. Thats reasonable.

Also ive been doing alt activation in many games for many years and have not noticed any significant uptick in time.

That same complaint was levied when i put in alt activation to aos (the time) and we pretty solidly refuted that over an entire summer of playing where some would use alt activation and some would use standard turns and both types of games took nearly the same amount of time pretty much always.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yes i have a complete alt activation set of rules ive published on here before.

My Nurgle army is hardly meta, alt activation still destroys it. Without the ability to properly position all my units at once in the movement phase the entire concept falls apart.

I am guessing that you have not had anyone try to really exploit the alt activation rules. Take for example, a Slaanesh army. A unit of 10 seekers, deployed in a long line strung across the board. Movement phase, they activate first and run their 20+ inches, forming a 37" wall of movement obstruction that locks down the opponent unless they can fly. Bring two such units, or a 20-man, and the entirety of a 6 ft table can be blocked easily. The Slaanesh player is handed massive board control, if it is a scenario where the objectives are centrally located they now have double-turn level advantage.

Which goes back to my original point; if the replacement system is not actually better then GW does not gain by changing it.

Now that WHFB has been announced, and I am no longer boycotting AoS. I would like to say that the Double Turn is one of the main things from keeping me from playing this game.

This rule is so bad it hurts.

If they did alternating Sub Phases, then it could work. But having two turns in a row?

I played nurgle two seasons in a row. It didnt destroy my army. Yes ive had power gamers exploit it. The end result was no worse than any other version of the game that they exploit. I will say yes with alt activation you lose the ability to easily manage your wombo combo buffing because you cant do your whole turn at once and have to make some tough choices but thats to me something that i loved about it, because there is a noticeable dearth of tough choices in aos.

I also dont understand the hypothetical slaanesh example. If they string out i dont see how that gains them a massive advsntage in alt activation. You can magic, shoot, and charge them same as if they strung out normally in a normal game. What about alt activation is giving them some double turn level exploit that has no counter other than flying?

Why does that not happen in other games with alt activation?

Movement phase of turn 1, the speakers activate first and run across the board to make a line in front of the enemy deployment zone. Since units cannot move within 3" of an enemy model, the enemy player is now trapped in their own deployment zone for the entire round. Even if they activate first they get to move one unit before it happens, in order to block that play they would need to do something similar.

But that was just an example. The end result is that unit-by-unit creates as many problems as it solves. Better to go hybrid: first player does their hero, then the second, first player does their movement, then the second, shooting phase alternates like the combat phase, first player does their charge phase, then the other, then combat and battleshock. Still requires adjustment but does not open up as many cans of worms.

How can they not just declare a charge and charge them? In the system i created if you were going to do that, id just activate a combat unit to charge and fight them the very next activation. Theyd then be charged by a second unit if they were still around on my next activation. I dont see this as a real problem. The slaanesh player would have sacrificed a unit to hold me back a couple activations. Thats fine. I still get to react and fight them in return.

They can do the same thing with normal phases as well with almost the same result. Theyd throw their dude screen forward and on my turn id charge them all.

Though TBH the whole discussion is rather moot since GW won't be doing anything like it anytime soon. Especially when 'deploy first go first then alternate turns' more or less fixes everything with the minimum amount of change. Endless spells would need work, but there seems to be a clear trend pointing towards an overhaul anyways.

Oh i have no delusions that anything will be changed ever.

 auticus wrote:
I guess because the games’ balance is already a burning train wreck, the balance shifts caused by alt activation dont really impact my opinion. Having done it for three years against power players i can also say the balance of the game was roughly the same. There was no gross imbalancing issues that came up thst wasnt anything you dont already deal with in aos 24/7.

The only ones that i can see sensitive to this are people that have built armies that take advantage of double turn or who really like elite small armies because those would have a disadvantage in board control over larger armies. And i know people hate buying new things to get back to optimal. Thats reasonable.

Also ive been doing alt activation in many games for many years and have not noticed any significant uptick in time.

That same complaint was levied when i put in alt activation to aos (the time) and we pretty solidly refuted that over an entire summer of playing where some would use alt activation and some would use standard turns and both types of games took nearly the same amount of time pretty much always.


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And yes i have a complete alt activation set of rules ive published on here before.

Actually, I just dislike the whole Alt activation idea.
Been playing epic for a good 15 years or so and the game suffers badly because of the way it’s done.
It’s also insanely clunky and adds a lot of time to games.

So those games were done with identical players and armies, same missions etc I assume?
Also, everything went the same way?

Alt activation can work fine in some games (epic is a good example of that) but for games like 40k and AoS it’s just too clunky and time consuming.
Would also be a pain in clock timed tournaments.

Im not sure how its clunky. You activate a unit then i do. For clocks its identical to chess. Chess is an alt activation system. If anything it makes it easier to manage on the clock because it removes sandbagging and everyone is progressing in a turn at the same pace, you dont have to worry about people not getting “their turn”.

Additionally it stops alpha strike which to me is a huge plus.

 auticus wrote:
Im not sure how its clunky. You activate a unit then i do. For clocks its identical to chess. Chess is an alt activation system.

Because unit count changes the play a lot.
MSU armies can gain the same as a double turn essentially.
So basically constant stop and run play, makes sense there.

Msu doesnt gain the same as a double turn at all. They gain a few extra activations. Thats nothing like gaining a full armys activations x2.

If it were true that msu gave similar results to double turn id not want anything to do with it.

Last result of a game i did with alt activation: 15 units vs 10. Thats 5 extra activations. Vs double turn which would have been 30 activations.

Very different scope and outcome.

 auticus wrote:
Msu doesnt gain the same as a double turn at all. They gain a few extra activations. Thats nothing like gaining a full armys activations x2.

If it were true that msu gave similar results to double turn id not want anything to do with it.

Last result of a game i did with alt activation: 15 units vs 10. Thats 5 extra activations. Vs double turn which would have been 30 activations.

Very different scope and outcome.

That’s also depending on the army.
You could easily spam chaff to burn early activations to set up with harder hitting units.
While it can work, it would change a lot about the game and how armies play.

It would also push people into magic and shooting heavy to prevent units getting close enough for combat.

Like I said... I've been playing games that have alt activation for years. The boogy men that we talk about here aren't that common over there.

Everyone could spam chaffe to burn early activations. Everyone has the ability to create their armies knowing that. Thats the same in every alt activation game. The only ones that impact are the people that want to run tiny elite armies that have 5 or so units of ultra badass models.

The ultra badass models are still ultra badass... but now there's a cost to being ultra badass in loss of battlefield control. Which is how any scrub army has to maximize on a real battlefield to beat an elite foe in the first place.

It would definitely change a lot about the game and how armies play. It would introduce tough decisions into the game. It would remove the ability to double turn entirely on someone and win the game by a lucky dice roll. It would remove alpha strikes from the game where you can just move and attack with impunity where your opponent has no reaction, thus removing just how important going first is. (going first is so important in a lot of IGOUGO games because you cannot react you just stand there and take the brunt of an entire enemy force in one go and then your response is significantly weaker because you have now lost units... thats why 40k is in the state it is in)

I don't see how alt activation would push people into magic and shooting heavy units to prevent getting close enough for combat. I've never once seen that be a thing in any alt activation system. I don't see any gain in trying to avoid close combat just because you have alt activation or why magic and range is suddenly much more attractive.

I do agree it changes how the game is played. I don't see how those are negative changes barring people that like to play small model count elite armies and would be chuffed to discover that they now have a disadvantage in loss of battlefield control, where they didn't have to worry about that before.

I also to reiterate know none of this is going to ever happen.

But then that’s not just removing the double turn, you are fundamentally changing how the game works and plays (which currently isn’t too bad)

Why not just go back to what worked and drop double turns?

Only thing it would really change is some may be inclined to pick up the odd hero or so that helps get the first turn.

I'm just saying that alternate activation is my favorite form of interaction in a wargame period. If I had a magic wand to wave that is what I would do.

If tomorrow the GW team said "hey AOS 3.0 is out and double turn has been removed, you just roll for who gets first turn at the beginning of the game and thats it like its always been" it wouldn't be my favorite, but I would also play with that without saying much of anything.

IGOUGO still has the problem of going first has a huge advantage, and alpha strikes where you stand there doing nothing but watch your opponent drop units in front of you and charge mindlessly for easy winz, but thats been a staple of warhammer and 40k for over a decade.

Maybe alt-activation should get its own house-rules thread. That way Auticus can fully lay out how he does it and we can discuss the merits independent of the double-turn discussion.

By all means, I’d give it a go.
I still play epic to this day so it’s not a new thing for me and I do enjoy it.

I just feel it would kill off AoS as it’s too different from what we have now.
Dropping double turn is far easier.

As I said though, I’d happily try it out.

I dont' think it would kill off AOS. It would be a transition just like moving from whfb to aos (when official points were added) was a transition for a lot of players.

I again also don't think its ever going to happen and just dropping double turn would be at a minimum sufficient.

I also think moving beyond IGOUGO goes against GW's design philosophy. Alt activation does introduce more tough decisions and I don't think GW is interested in producing a game that has tough decisions in it. Its a barrier to entry.

Hm. From what I have played, Double Turn make players more cautious. The interest of this system is the uncertainty for the next turn. If you know for sure when you play in a IGOUGO game, you plan accordingly and it plays a lot in the influence of the game. When you don't know, you take into account the two possibilities you can have (playing first or second).

But I certainly wish there were more mechanisms to give a choice for taking second when you have the priority. I know a few scenarios give advantage to the second player for marking victory points, but they are still the minority. The way Endless Spells work are actually making Predatory Spells not appealing to take in your army, because you're paying for a spell that can be turned against you.

If all scenarios give advantage for the second player while considering victory points, then there would be a more powerful incentive to choose second when you have priority for double turn. Choice is what makes things interesting in a strategy game. If it is just more interesting to go always first, then you only have to deal with the random part of the system.

Having played both IGOUGO and alternate activations systems (even those with cards or random), I have found neither are especially better than the other. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Double turn is also the same, to me.

But I can certainly see AoS without it. Players would definitely play the game differently, though, and I'm not sure it would be always in a good way.


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 auticus wrote:


I also think moving beyond IGOUGO goes against GW's design philosophy. Alt activation does introduce more tough decisions and I don't think GW is interested in producing a game that has tough decisions in it. Its a barrier to entry.

GW actually made games with alternate activations. Warcry is the best recent example. And given Warcry simple yet elegant rules, I wouldn't say it's a question of barrier to entry.

It's just a question of design choices for the game system. To be honest, and from my experience, I found alternate activations work best with skirmish level games. When it's become more on mass scale battle, it's become much more messy. I still remember that big AT43 game I made in my former club...

Warcry and middle earth both have a form of alternate activation. To clarify I meant for one of their main games.

 auticus wrote:
Warcry and middle earth both have a form of alternate activation. To clarify I meant for one of their main games.

You can also add Kill Team. While you think they're not main games, they are still part of their main universes. I don't think they think less of them in that way.

When I say not main games I mean they have a very small playerbase compared to the main games.

 auticus wrote:
When I say not main games I mean they have a very small playerbase compared to the main games.

Honestly, I don't think that's the point here.

For example, I have played a 40k with the Kill Team way of handling alternate activation on the different phases of a turn - including the change for charges during the move phase. It worked as fine, but we sure did play our units completely differently from a regular 40k game. Focus fire could still be done, but we did play on the possibility to shoot at an unit that didn't already fired during the turn to hinder the opponent's ability in that field. The way the move phase is played also changed massively, and playing second actually was a real incentive in more than one case, so that you could react immediately to your opponent's own moves and even get out of line of sight before he could shoot.

The game was more reactive, but ours plans had to be more as well.

What I mean is, what you gain on one part, you lose on another. Alternate activations sure make the game more reactive, but it also tend to wreck your plans - you have to always adapt and react to your opponent's former action. IGOUGO systems are sure more rigid, but they allow you to plan / act with your army as a whole more easily.

The point I was making is that I don't think GW will put alt activation into the main games (the games with the biggest player base) because it makes for more tougher choices, which is considered a barrier of entry.

Everything you have said I fully agree with. The fact that IGOUGO systems allow you to plan and act with your army much more easily is spot on, and why I find it to be the inferior of the two systems we are discussing.

Because as you also 100% spot on nailed, alt activation means your plans have to be more fluid. You will be tested much more than you are in an IGOUGO system where you can force your will with impunity. It makes at-the-table play matter more.

 auticus wrote:
The point I was making is that I don't think GW will put alt activation into the main games (the games with the biggest player base) because it makes for more tougher choices, which is considered a barrier of entry.

No, that's really not a barrier of entry to me. One isn't especially harder to learn than the other, it's just how you want your game to feel that is more important. If you want a nervous, fast paced game involving a small number of units, alternate activations can translate that perfectly. If you want your players to plan and use their armies as a whole with full synergies / combos, IGOUGO systems can be a better answer. To me, AoS is in the second category - like Warmachine / Horde, actually.

But otherwise, I totally understand your point of view. I too thought alternate activations to be the best system ever for quite a while...and then, I played that massive game of AT43. It was awesome, but I was so completely drained after the day that I also understood how tiring it can be to always react / adapt to my opponent with such a massive number of activations every turn. If we did play IGOUGO style, it would have been easier for us, I have no doubt.

I have always thought that AOS was directly inspired by Magic the Gathering and Warmachine/Hordes.

IGOUGO for me better fits the narrative of -armies- fighting each other. Skirmish games work well with individual activation because they are games with a bunch of -individuals- fighting each other. But at the same time I feel like there is middle ground which ends up working better for both, provided the system is designed to accommodate it.

I do think Auticus should start a thread for alt activation in AoS, it would be a good resource to have around for players interested in trying it.

GW rarely do things in a vacuum. If pretty much all of their recent, non-copy/pasted games (Blood Bowl, Necromunda) games have been going with some form of Alternating Activations then I do think they're planning to introduce it to AoS in some form. I doubt 9th will, just because AoS seems to be used as more of a 'beta test' for their most popular game (thus why we'll probably see Endless Psychic Spells in 9th) but if it proved popular enough in AoS 3.0 I could easily see it going over to 9th.

The new Apocalypse also uses a form of Alternate Activations. LotR was a 'main' game for years too.

So this might be a long post and i'm going to go over a couple things but they do relate to double turns, alt actions, etc.. and not off topic.

I'm going to go over my feelings of double turns, this is really just optional reading you can skip if you want.
I'm going to also talk about 40k Apoc, imo it is something GW might actually move to soon, and eveyone that has played it seems to like the system.
Most importantly Warcry, it was some really good ideas that could make the best GW game if you combine them with AOS and Apoc.
Finally my idea will also stop the "Lowest drop" problem we have too.
My idea is at the bottom.

First, before i get into the good bits, i person am fine with the double turn, but thats b.c i play armies that don't care, or even are benefited from the double turn against me. Tho i do still dislike that it is a part of the game and wish for it to go away, i understand its part of the game and make do, with those 2 things its just another mechanic i need to play with, just like RNG on mission, terrain, and all the other RNG aspects of the game.

The worst part of the Double turn; At least 1/2 the armies can build around it, but the problem is that not all armies can. And even if 1/3 can't build around it thats terrible, especially when a few armies actually benefit from double turns or are not handicapped at all. Armies like IDK on turn 3, Slaanesh with fight first, armies that can flank/deploy/move faster than others, Armies with fight during opponents turn like Khorne, or fight when dies, etc... If every army had a double turn defense mechanic then it wouldn't be so bad, but that is not the case.

Apoc for 40k. Why do i bring this up? Well b.c it is Alternating actions and all damage is at the end of the game turn. Apoc truly has one of the best turn order/phases of any GW game systems yet for large scale games (its like Epic but better). Tho the rules are meant to play with huge armies and you have detachments (For those that don't know, imagine if you had 5k points but you had to make your armies into 500-2k point size bites) and how the alternative works is; Each player picks 1 detachment and does all of their actions for that detachment. WHen playing Apoc at "lower" levels for APoc, it was still normal for each side to have 3-5 detachments, meaning the player would take a full turn with 1 of those detachments, then the other player, if 1 player runs out of detachments then the other player gets to finish all of there other ones.

Warcry: Why talk about this? Well b.c it is full alternating, but with a twist (well 3) and i like them all, everyone i talked to also like them a lot.
1) Priority roles: You each roll 6 dice, your doubles and triples are for abilities, singles gives you priority, who ever has the most singles goes first b.c they are getting the least extra buffs. You have 1 wild dice per turn you can use as a single or to make a double, triple, quad (you can save these for later and stack them, think of them as the free CP in AoS you get at the start of your turn)
1a) IMO this is an amazing system for priority. The player with strong buffs doesn't get priority. How will this help in AoS? Well for double turns make it a roll and put Triumphs there. Each triumph is on an ability chart like in Warcry, you have a Double a Triple and a Quad, etc..
1b) Add in a new one or two as well like Quad: "A unit fights first regardless of other rules" or a double "A unit can make a normal move" , Triples "A unit can shoot", along with the re-rolls like other triumph. Heck give a couple "single" dice triumphs like "make a retreat move, must move closer to your deployment zone"
1c) now if you do get a double turn against you, you at least have 1-3 triumphs or a powerful one, and you have a closer option to not take them and go first.

2) Shield, Hammer, Dagger system while its more meant for deployment and missions, you can expand it (this is where 40k Apoc comes into to play)
You set up your warband into 3 types, Hammer, Shield Sword, you can put and units/fighters in any of them it doesnt matter the type. But at least 1 unit and not more than 1/2 of your units can be in each. What does this do in game? During deployment it tells you where to place these groups, and many missions has objectives for doing something with 1 or more of them like "kill all Shield", "dagger needs to stay live", or "Hammer gets more points for holding objectives".



My idea My full idea is;
Make each player set up their armies into 3 groups, each group must be X points (based off game size). All army rules still/buffs/etc.. still effects all groups.
Each player gets to activate a Group on their turn
Phases are the same other than Damage and Moral (hero>move>shoot>fight&gt Damage and Moral is at the very end of the game turn, Damage then moral.
Roll for triumphs, who ever takes the least gets to take priority to pick 1 group to play first
Now we also have new system for deployment and missions.

As i was typing this out, i decided to heavily shorten it, so not as long as i first thought. I am trying to just get to the points as my english is terrible.

Funnily enough everyone I've spoken to don't use the Apocalypse rules at all. They haven't said they hate them but just use normal 40k rules with huge points which I find stupid since the whole point of the Apoc rules is to streamline and speed up big games so they don't take an entire day or more.

I doubt GW will ever get rid of IGOUGO, it's too ingrained in their design philosophy for the main Warhammer games. What I would like the most is for the double turn to become an optional rule so you have the choice to use it.

Not a AoS player, so maybe the question is going to be dumb. But wouldn't something like a double turn create huge problems with armies that can go all in on magic, shoting or getting where they want real fast. I get that if two bad armies plays vs each other it maybe doesn't matter much. But if someone can, or has to, counter a specific important unit or hero, this creates a very negative expiriance, when some drops down you can't do anything about them getting two turns of doing their thing, other then pray for bad rolls. And the fact that next turn you may get double turn yourself, doesn't matter as much, I think, if your army is already crippled.

Yes to all of those and yes it often creates very negative experiences unless you can get behind “thats just how the game works do i deal with it”

Karol wrote:
Not a AoS player, so maybe the question is going to be dumb. But wouldn't something like a double turn create huge problems with armies that can go all in on magic, shoting or getting where they want real fast

Yes, which is part of the problem. Even close combat heavy armies get it good because whilst close combat itself alternates who starts player to player; if you get two turns in a row you can maximise the targets you initiate combat with. You can go for the archers or the weaker units and pick the best fights to win and avoid those you might not come off to well in.

Wayniac wrote:
Funnily enough everyone I've spoken to don't use the Apocalypse rules at all. They haven't said they hate them but just use normal 40k rules with huge points which I find stupid since the whole point of the Apoc rules is to streamline and speed up big games so they don't take an entire day or more.

I doubt GW will ever get rid of IGOUGO, it's too ingrained in their design philosophy for the main Warhammer games. What I would like the most is for the double turn to become an optional rule so you have the choice to use it.

Did they actually play Apoc or look at the rules? B.c i know a lot that hasn't played but looked at the rules and said "looks bad" and never even tried. About the seed, it heavily does speed it up. We were able to do 2x the points in the same amount of time even with more models on the table. I played nids, with 30 Gargoyles, 100 gants, 60 Hgants, 60 Genestealers, 30+ was warriors/warrior size units (Hive guard, Tyrant guard, Venomthropes, Zoanthropes) and another 12 MC's. In total about 300 models.


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Karol wrote:
Not a AoS player, so maybe the question is going to be dumb. But wouldn't something like a double turn create huge problems with armies that can go all in on magic, shoting or getting where they want real fast. I get that if two bad armies plays vs each other it maybe doesn't matter much. But if someone can, or has to, counter a specific important unit or hero, this creates a very negative expiriance, when some drops down you can't do anything about them getting two turns of doing their thing, other then pray for bad rolls. And the fact that next turn you may get double turn yourself, doesn't matter as much, I think, if your army is already crippled.

It does if the two players are not experienced. Practicing for adepticon even with double turns i still won 90% my games, heck i went 1st more than second b.c they didn't want me to get a double turn (I was using a leafblower style army basically). Normally you don't put yourself in a position that makes you lose the game if they get the double turn. It is very hard to do for new players and for certain armies. But in general you play thinking you will be double turned on and it goes a lot better. I've haven't had a bad double turn in many games b.c of that. Its more just frustrating its in the game at this point.

PS: I practice all learn for the event and even bought an army just for it and now its cancelled

But back onto topic, it feels REALLY bad if you won b.c of the double turn, just for that i can't believe its part of the game, GW is more about the casual player, and double turns hurt them the most.
.

I'm not a fan of it. I've suffered major defeats due to it, and I think it sucks that you can loose the entire game just because you've literally had 1 bad roll. It's another one of those stupid random for the sake of random mechanics I don't much care for.

I've been working on a rules system of my own, as a stepping stone to my own game but atm it's good to 'practice' it on AoS. It uses Command Points as activation points for your units, with alternative unit activation. You still roll for initiative every turn, but that's only to see who gets to activate first. The aim is to cut down on the alpha strike and keep both players in the game at all times as much as possible.

Karol wrote:
Not a AoS player, so maybe the question is going to be dumb. But wouldn't something like a double turn create huge problems with armies that can go all in on magic, shooting or getting where they want real fast. I get that if two bad armies plays vs each other it maybe doesn't matter much. But if someone can, or has to, counter a specific important unit or hero, this creates a very negative expiriance, when some drops down you can't do anything about them getting two turns of doing their thing, other then pray for bad rolls. And the fact that next turn you may get double turn yourself, doesn't matter as much, I think, if your army is already crippled.

Yes, that is the primary issue. Especially when a skilled player is running said magic/shooting army, a double turn becomes game ending. I would know---that is exactly how my tourney army worked in first edition. It was set up to secure turn choice every game, I would always choose second, and if I won the first initiative roll I basically won the game automatically. In my entire history playing that army only three times did I get the double turn and lose, two were because of 'derp' mistakes on my part. I lost plenty of other times with the army, but they were games where I did not win the double.

Karol wrote:
Not a AoS player, so maybe the question is going to be dumb. But wouldn't something like a double turn create huge problems with armies that can go all in on magic, shoting or getting where they want real fast. I get that if two bad armies plays vs each other it maybe doesn't matter much. But if someone can, or has to, counter a specific important unit or hero, this creates a very negative expiriance, when some drops down you can't do anything about them getting two turns of doing their thing, other then pray for bad rolls. And the fact that next turn you may get double turn yourself, doesn't matter as much, I think, if your army is already crippled.

I haven't played against a Disciples of Tzeentch (arguably one of the most magic based factions) too many times, but I found AoS magic doesn't generate tons of damage easily. Even the Smite equivalent, Arcane Bolt, does less damage. Then again, nearly all my Slaves to Darkness army has a +5 resistance to Mortal Wounds with Runic Shields/Armor. So I might be bias. Honestly, I focus on buffing spells for the most part, so I glad to have Double Turns used against me sometimes as I don't have to try and recast the buffs again.

Shooting is straight up annoying since I army has no ranged attacks not counting magic or 'summoning' Warcy Cults. However, I feels like mass Shooting doesn't hit as often as is does in 40k even though I think -1 Rend seems to occur a little bit too often at Range (or I haven't been playing on tables that provide as much Cover as the game is intended). At the same time, I haven't encountered ranged units that weren't push overs in melee. And I think Age of Sigmar is still a primarily melee game. Double shooting makes it a little worst on me, but not by much. Even being focused fired upon, I don't usually lose more than 6 wounds from main units. With Look Out, Sir!, even my weaker Heroes (and I have a few) can survive an double turn onslaught. I don't really think they are force multipliers effective enough to necessarily warrant that amount of resources to take them down. I lose a Sorcerer Lord or Chaos Lord on foot, and I lose Fearlessness (Chaos Undivided) and basically the ability to attack twice (whether and actual double attack or re-roll hits/wounds). Realistically, my army has low damage out put so I don't really do that much damage even with the double attack and they are fairly resilient so I tend not to loose warriors in droves having me fail Bravery checks.

The Double Turn is not equally good across all factions. My army is only really affected by Movement Phase as I have a fairly slow army. For Battleplans (read: Missions) with known static objectives even that doesn't bother me as my Chaos Warriors will run to them and basically form square around them with my Hero Character in the center of the square. My Warriors don't really care to be the ones charging. The job is to be as tough as old boots and hold the ground they have. My knights/Varanguard are a little different in that I would like to have the Initiative to activate them before their target's can activate (AoS has alternating activation for melee combat if you aren't aware). Especially my Cursed Lance Knights which I don't like fielding becuase they need the Charge just to maybe be as good as my Ensorcelled Weapons Knights. In games with moving or unknown objective locations the double turn can really swing the game for me.

I wonder if, outside of player skill variation, another thing that has "masked" the doubleturn for a while is the fact that until recently, not all armies were running 2.0 editions. It might be that with many armies running under-powered players losing with them were attributing it more toward having and out of date tome, rather than perhaps getting a double turn used against them.

With the game now fully running with 2.0 rules it might be that eventually more players start to realise that the doubleturn does swing win results very significantly in favour of whoever gets it.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

I haven't played against a Disciples of Tzeentch (arguably one of the most magic based factions) too many times, but I found AoS magic doesn't generate tons of damage easily. Even the Smite equivalent, Arcane Bolt, does less damage. Then again, nearly all my Slaves to Darkness army has a +5 resistance to Mortal Wounds with Runic Shields/Armor. So I might be bias. Honestly, I focus on buffing spells for the most part, so I glad to have Double Turns used against me sometimes as I don't have to try and recast the buffs again.

I wasn't thinking about killing stuff with spells, or not just that. I was more thinking about something like summoning. Powerful demons running amok for two turns, and summoning what is best suited for two turns, would be like playing against an army and a half, specialy if your own army doesn't summon.
But am basing this on seeing AoS being played on a table next to me playing w40k, so I doubt what am saying here is super accurate.


So if the double turn mechanic exists there as a gatcha thing, so that even someone with a bad army or bad skill has a chance to win. doesn't it require a real lot of games to be played to feel that way? the chance of getting double turn, and not getting one is the same for all players right? this means someone with a weak army or who is a noob, get the chance to win half the time, but half the time he gets steam rolled even harder. And as others said there are probably difference between armies too. An army that uses its double turn to shuffle some units around or fight an extra melee or two, won't benefit from it as much as one that rises itself up from being dead with summoning. seems like a very swining mechanics, good when your lucky and your army is good, but not so fun when it is not the case.

Are there many armies in AoS that can't counter double turns, Like ones that are slow or who don't have chaff to screen the whole army?

It is also affected by the relative strength of battalions. Some armies have army encompassing battalions made up of their best units with excellent benefits across them while some armies have few/none worth including.

This hurts even more when it also gives the advantaged race the choice of initial turn order.

Karol wrote:



So if the double turn mechanic exists there as a gatcha thing, so that even someone with a bad army or bad skill has a chance to win. doesn't it require a real lot of games to be played to feel that way? the chance of getting double turn, and not getting one is the same for all players right? this means someone with a weak army or who is a noob, get the chance to win half the time, but half the time he gets steam rolled even harder. And as others said there are probably difference between armies too. An army that uses its double turn to shuffle some units around or fight an extra melee or two, won't benefit from it as much as one that rises itself up from being dead with summoning. seems like a very swining mechanics, good when your lucky and your army is good, but not so fun when it is not the case.

Are there many armies in AoS that can't counter double turns, Like ones that are slow or who don't have chaff to screen the whole army?

I feel the double turn is most useful at the time between Round 1 and Round 2 which is something a player does have some control of. In Age of Sigmar who ever finishes deploying first get to chose who goes first. That why when people are talking about optimization they talk about drops. Also in Age of Sigmar Battalions (kinda like Detachments you spend extra points to receive bonuses) also count as a single drop. They, apparently, are so important some players want to be able to spend 160 points or so just to have a generic Battalion to reduce drops and get an extra Command Point. Mind you, CP aren't nearly as plentiful or easy to get in AOS as they are in 40k. Even I like spending the extra 50 points for the one CP you can straight up buy so I can both summon a Warcry Cult and make use of my Chaos Warrior on foot Command Ability to allow a unit to attack twice in a single round.

There really isn't anyway to counter a double turn in my opinion. Hence the distaste of them in addition to how much they can swing a game. There are just factions/armies can that can survive them better than others. My army can, my most common opponent's armies (Kharadron Overlords and Tzeentch) can't really. So if I go second Round 1, get a double turn and pull off some good charges I can cripple his army while setting mine to secure the win conditions (usually some sort of objective) that he'll probably never talk away from or it will be far too late to catch back up. We had one game he conceded at the mid-point of Round 2 as he made a few mistakes pushing too far forward and with the double turn I basically broke his army and had nearly secured all objectives that he was probably never going to get me away from other than maybe one.

As for chaff, yeah my opponent probably should have something to screen me better. At the same time, my army can generate a lot of reliable (re-rolls is my faction's thing) if weak (No Rend) attacks that can usually punch through chaff. Conversely, I can teleport/ summon Warcry Cults to basically deep strike to tie him up too. I also have access to flying units to get around them if they don't screen well.

None of that is special to my army either. In fact, competitively speaking, my army is rather weak. I think I mostly win because I know how to execute the best plan for it win when my opponent doesn't. I think most players after regular play of Age of Sigmar will be able to beat consistently as I already feel like I am at the ceiling of my army can do. That ceiling is a long ways from what even a strong army can do even by a player that makes mistakes. I am genuinely surprised every win I get.

Again, I really don't have any issue with the Double Turn. I don't like it but don't care that it exists in the game either. It is just a thing that is. If I had to side, I would probably say get rid of it as I can definitely see how dismantles some factions with really no way to prepare for it.

I was more thinking about something like summoning. Powerful demons running amok for two turns, and summoning what is best suited for two turns, would be like playing against an army and a half,

In some cases double your army. Which is why I have been 100% anti-summoning how GW lets you summon since they let it be free summoning, and why its one of my barriers of wanting to play.

I've watched that scenario you've described many times. It feels dirty and it doesn't feel like much of a fun game unless you can summon equal amounts.

Otherwise it turns the game from a 2000 point affair to upwards of 3000 - 4000 pts vs 2000 points (depending on the army that is spam summoning and especially given a double turn to double the pleasure double the fun)

The thought of having to play 3000 or 4000 pts vs 2000 pts as an actual "balanced matched play" game baffles me. For special scenarios - absolutely. Siege games were often this, the attacker got double the defender because of the walls. But for normal games? Absolutely no.

Please don't talk about summoning here, if you want to talk about that go to another thread, or make 1 just for it. B.c i fully feel summoning is that bad and only new players or non-experience ones has problems with it.
For example Enlighten on Disks are more costly than Morrsarr Guard, but Morrsarr guard are better in every way, they even get better supporting rules, then why are TEoD more costly? B.c they can be summoned. Its the values of Rules plus points, not just straight points. IDK are still a top tier army and they don't summon for that reason)

This is suppose to be about double turns, if you rant about 1 aspect that effects doubles turns, then talk about them all like "fight first" or "fight twice" or "healing" i know some people take 2-3 healing spells with Life swarm just to heal 3++/5+++ units. Sure its not competitive, but against an inexperience player its deadly to have a tank unit hold the line, or Horrors for example, phoenix guard works too, etc..

So if you don't want to have a back and forth rant, lets top now.

Edit: englsh bad sorry.

That would indeed be a great thread. How someone could explain how 4000 pts vs 2000 pts is a good thing for a balanced matched play system.

If someone wants to create that thread, that'd be awesome to read.

Wayniac wrote:
Funnily enough everyone I've spoken to don't use the Apocalypse rules at all. They haven't said they hate them but just use normal 40k rules with huge points which I find stupid since the whole point of the Apoc rules is to streamline and speed up big games so they don't take an entire day or more.

I doubt GW will ever get rid of IGOUGO, it's too ingrained in their design philosophy for the main Warhammer games. What I would like the most is for the double turn to become an optional rule so you have the choice to use it.

Very few people use the Apocalypse rules because they have to invest in what amounts to a new game boxset, as opposed to just a rulebook, then learn what is 'technically' sold as a game unto itself (like Kill Team).

The fandom in general is just really uncomfortable about using any kind of additional rulesets, which is why things like Cityfight never appear outside of one guy convincing his mates to test the rules as a one-off.

 Arbitrator wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Funnily enough everyone I've spoken to don't use the Apocalypse rules at all. They haven't said they hate them but just use normal 40k rules with huge points which I find stupid since the whole point of the Apoc rules is to streamline and speed up big games so they don't take an entire day or more.

I doubt GW will ever get rid of IGOUGO, it's too ingrained in their design philosophy for the main Warhammer games. What I would like the most is for the double turn to become an optional rule so you have the choice to use it.

Very few people use the Apocalypse rules because they have to invest in what amounts to a new game boxset, as opposed to just a rulebook, then learn what is 'technically' sold as a game unto itself (like Kill Team).

The fandom in general is just really uncomfortable about using any kind of additional rulesets, which is why things like Cityfight never appear outside of one guy convincing his mates to test the rules as a one-off.

Which in a rather funny twist, Cityfight provides additional rules that resolve a lot of common complaints about the game. By no means perfect, it is a step in the right direction for helping balance, and deepen 40k's gameplay with improved and meaningful terrain rules and makes melee units stronger. However, getting back to AoS.

Personally, I'm all for trying out whatever weird additional rules I find or are put out in some official manner, like the Siege rules in Wrath of the Everchosen. Had a great game with them where there were three people who wanted to game at my group's last meet up, so we did a big 2v1 of Khorne Mortals and Nurgle Daemons vs Ossiarchs in a siege. I abnormal games every now and again to try out different things, because the mission objectives don't vary the actual gameplay up enough. My test match of having no Double turn/Initiative roll off also included rolling for first turn (+1 to roll for finishing alternate deployment first) and rolling for first control of Endless spells at the start of battle rounds. Next time I try without Double Turns, I think I'd rather play around with sole control of Endless Spells for the player that bought them.

The issue comes in convincing others to try it, as others said earlier.

Those rules do look cool, but discussing them is for another thread I'm afraid.


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 auticus wrote:
That would indeed be a great thread. How someone could explain how 4000 pts vs 2000 pts is a good thing for a balanced matched play system.

If someone wants to create that thread, that'd be awesome to read.

Since APPARENTLY no one else wants to start threads...

Since APPARENTLY no one else wants to start threads...

When it comes to the AOS section, no I don't start threads

Jackal90 wrote:

Actually, I just dislike the whole Alt activation idea.
Been playing epic for a good 15 years or so and the game suffers badly because of the way it’s done.
It’s also insanely clunky and adds a lot of time to games.

Just dropping in here as am thinking of taking up AoS with a friend (just ordered the rule book!)
It's interesting to read some of the comment here and it sounds for sure like the double turn will be an interesting thing to happen - I'm not very keen on sitting around (playing on my phone?) while my opponent spends a turn using all of their stuff for a second time. I can see how it would be very frustrating, as even the concept of 'all army move' (without any option to 'overwatch' or making some kind of counter) is not very fashionable in current game design, let alone having two turns.

What I will say for Epic is I find alternative activation works really well, but as a risk/reward mechanic. You can 'risk' it and go for multiple activations, but there is a chance your troops will stand like plums and get hammered. Also, it does mean that you have to consider your opponent getting to attack before you do for each of your moves. So there is a lot more player and tactical choice involved, rather than the game swinging on a lucky (or unlucky) dice result.

Surprisingly I have found great peace with the Double-Turn. I find it an interesting mechanic that I have to plan around and expect.

However, there are caveats, and that are armies that have been given a toolset to ignore the Double-Turn in a way and what it means.

The thing is, alternating activation of melee units is a counter to the double-turn, but the problem lies with shooting(CoS) units that are completely one-sided activations, as well as units that get something like always strike first(Slaanesh) and/or double attack(FEC).

This is of course one of the oldest problems with all GW games. They make a mechanic that requires some explicit game designs around it, but then go and make armies that ignore the mechanic or play completely around it.

The double turn mechanic, along with the sheer amount of MW spam, is one of the main things stopping me from picking up AoS. There's a lot of stuff in the game that do appeal to me and I like the look of the Lumineth, but having watched plenty of batreps and reading the rules the double turn concept turns me off of the game entirely. Like others have mentioned, there also doesn't really seem to be any solid information or tactical counterplay to it aside from vague statements like "you've got to play around it."

Obviously there's lots of rumours surrounding a 3rd edition of the game in 2021, but is there any possibility that GW would just outright remove the mechanic entirely or is it something that Jervis Johnson and his team are just obsessively wedded to?

Who knows. I doubt it. The Double Turn is a sacred cow that people cling to and love. It is also one of my pillars for not touching the game anymore and was always houseruled out until the lockdown on houserules came about in my main stores.

I'm waiting on the Old World project to come out. Hopefully they move away from IGOUGO in the first place and give us a form of alternate activation. LOTR works that way. So its not entirely out of the question.

I'm not even convinced it was intentional in the first place. More like an unintended consequence of a hasty four page rules document that was meant more as a starter set to get in quick games. But there it is to stay.

The Old World will for sure have a refined version of WHFB of old. They would piss so many people off, which they produce the Old World for.
So any old WHFB player would not like massive changes in game design.

My hope is that they use 6th edition refined.

Old world is not guaranteed to be anything unfortunately, we have no news.

If you go to the big facebook old world group, more than half want the old world to just be aos reskinned for the old world. So I'm not entirely sold or put my emotional investment into it, because part of me thinks thats exactly what it will be. AOS rules in the old world.

I'm going to chime in with stating that I actually didn't even "catch" the whole double-turn thing when I first read the rules for AoS.

I got really excited for the new game, bought a bunch of stuff, half painted it, then went for my first game and lost about 75% of my army before I even got to do anything aside from move forward a few inches.

That was fun.

After that I literally only played with the mechanic one more time. In that game I got the double turn, killed 75% of my opponents army, and then won without even feeling like I had played a game.

After that I've never used the rule. Before every game I make CERTAIN that the opponent knows that I just flat out won't play with that crappy rule. I honestly don't even care about being competitive/winning a lot. My favorite games are the ones that are super close and dramatic, with a lot of parts where the battle can go either way.

To me: double-turn does exactly the opposite of that. I hate it, I won't use it, and the day they get rid of it will be the single best day for AoS.

Sorry for the salt. Heck, I haven't even played a game since lockdown began! I just feel quite strongly on the subject is all.

The salt is warranted.

The refrain of "Double-turn can save armies loosing or that are against stronger foes!" is oft repeated and just incredibly wrong.

A roll-off mechanic like that ruins more games than it 'saves'. Even as a person with armies that benefit greatly from double turns (Sylvaneth, Skaven, now Lumineth) I would much prefer playing without the mechanic. However, it's hard to convince my opponents to cut out a core mechanic. Nevermind the fact that I've done exactly that, wiped out over 75% of their army and claimed a massive lead in objective points, time and time again.

I flat-out tell my opponent at the start that I will not be taking the double turn, even if it means I lose. Assuming we did not house rule it away already. 'Deploy-first-go-first' then alternate works very well.

Well, you could argue if it ruins your game, then you are not playing with it in mind and you need to change some parts of what you do on the table.

I personally don't like it, but i don't think its a bad mechanic for the game sense everyone knows it can happen every turn. Just like everyone knows someone can DS and charge.

There is no army in the game that can prepare for two rounds of shooting and magic in a row from Skaven, Lumineth, Tzeentch, Seraphon, Shootcast, CoS and others.

There is no army in the game that can prepare for the disgusting speed that Ironjawz with 4 movement phases (Hero and movement) and potentially 3 combat phases, one of them being uncontested in the second hero phase. Two rounds of uncontested Slaanesh magic and combat(to a lesser degree).

There are several notable and popular armies that absolutely wreck face with a double turn, compared to other armies.

While by no means perfectly balanced (or even well balanced) to begin with, these armies are disparately strong if they get two turns of hero move and shoot in a row.

@Ninth, I still take double turns, even after I argue that they should be taken from the game. I always hope that while my persuasion didn't work, perhaps beating my opponent over the head with the rulebook will make them realize.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Well, you could argue if it ruins your game, then you are not playing with it in mind and you need to change some parts of what you do on the table.

I personally don't like it, but i don't think its a bad mechanic for the game sense everyone knows it can happen every turn. Just like everyone knows someone can DS and charge.

Except you can't deepstrike your entire army.

The problem with the doubleturn is its nothing like a random good or bad dice roll for a single unit, its a random dice roll that affects the entire army. As noted above you really can't "prepare" for it. The only arguments I've ever heard about preparing for it are mostly "screen your models." and that's not really protecting you against a doubleturn, its just basic tactics you'd be using anyway. Plus in a game with only 6 turns you really can't waste several turns at the start hiding at the back of the board incase your opponent gets a doubleturn. You have to advance, you have to push forward and you can't sacrifice turns.

Furthermore I don't think you need to change anything in the game to make it work without the doubleturn, because you can play games with the doubleturn and the dice rolls won't activate it. So the game plays out as normal. So to get rid of it you just take it out of the rules.


I've long said it should be retired to openplay and removed from matched play. It's just FAR too swingy a mechanic.

As noted above its not even fun for either side - one getting it wins far too easily and one getting it used on them loses far too easily. Heck this a game where a single turn can change the game result, having two in a row is utterly insanely powerful

The only change I would make regarding the removal of double turns involves Endless Spells. Either have a roll-off for who picks the first endless spell to use in the new battle round... Or my preferred method of "You Pay for it, you Own it" cause sorry, I don't want to pay between 30-100 points for one spell, only to have those points used against my army.

Lets face it msot times you use a predatory spell the best your opponent can do is send it away for a turn so it does nothing. It's very rare that they will get to actually use it on you.

Also I've noticed a few more factions have their own spells that they control and can't be taken over, which I think suggests that with a 2.5 or 3.0 release Endless Spells might well be "you pay for it you own it" affairs.

I'd be glad with that. Ossiarchs and Seraphon were a step in the right direction IMO, when it came to Endless Spells. Especially the OBR method, where controlling the endless spell required the caster to focus on them, and reduced their spellcasting ability in exchange.

Other than them, and Khorne Judgements, the predatory endless spells of factions can be moved by the other player, but they just won't effect the owning armies models. Which is fine I suppose, just sort of annoying.

Cut Double Turn from Matched Play officially, no losing control of your Endless spells, even if the caster suffers a negative to casting to control it. Short wishlist for rules updates.

I like that wishlist too.

With limit to 3 endless spells now, i feel losing control over yours is bad. If they had random movements or something thats fine, but go back and forth starting with 2nd player in new GH2020 i don't agree with.

 Thadin wrote:
I'd be glad with that. Ossiarchs and Seraphon were a step in the right direction IMO, when it came to Endless Spells. Especially the OBR method, where controlling the endless spell required the caster to focus on them, and reduced their spellcasting ability in exchange.

Other than them, and Khorne Judgements, the predatory endless spells of factions can be moved by the other player, but they just won't effect the owning armies models. Which is fine I suppose, just sort of annoying.

Cut Double Turn from Matched Play officially, no losing control of your Endless spells, even if the caster suffers a negative to casting to control it. Short wishlist for rules updates.

Yea, I want to use the endless spells that I paid for too, and not let my opponent use my 30 points against me. It is the main thing keeping me from really using endless spells in the lumineth lists I’m planning on.

I can’t wait for my opponent to take control of my twin stones and move them as far away from where I need them. That’s always fun too...

At least you can cast yours lol. For my BoC (i've kept trak for a bit) i get mine off 1/8 the time. There are games i try every turn and never goes off. BoC has no plus to cast or ways to stop deny, etc.. its just a strait cast, and almost every army makes me either -1, or they have better deny, or i just fail to cast it.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
I'd be glad with that. Ossiarchs and Seraphon were a step in the right direction IMO, when it came to Endless Spells. Especially the OBR method, where controlling the endless spell required the caster to focus on them, and reduced their spellcasting ability in exchange.

Other than them, and Khorne Judgements, the predatory endless spells of factions can be moved by the other player, but they just won't effect the owning armies models. Which is fine I suppose, just sort of annoying.

Cut Double Turn from Matched Play officially, no losing control of your Endless spells, even if the caster suffers a negative to casting to control it. Short wishlist for rules updates.

Yea, I want to use the endless spells that I paid for too, and not let my opponent use my 30 points against me. It is the main thing keeping me from really using endless spells in the lumineth lists I’m planning on.

I can’t wait for my opponent to take control of my twin stones and move them as far away from where I need them. That’s always fun too...

They only move 8", but affect things within 12". So unless they're being sent off-board I'd think it'd be pretty hard for them not to be close enough to where you need them.

 auticus wrote:
Who knows. I doubt it. The Double Turn is a sacred cow that people cling to and love. It is also one of my pillars for not touching the game anymore and was always houseruled out until the lockdown on houserules came about in my main stores.

I'm waiting on the Old World project to come out. Hopefully they move away from IGOUGO in the first place and give us a form of alternate activation. LOTR works that way. So its not entirely out of the question.

I'm not even convinced it was intentional in the first place. More like an unintended consequence of a hasty four page rules document that was meant more as a starter set to get in quick games. But there it is to stay.

Ummm...lotr is igougo at core. One player moves, other player moves etc. And same player can get first action repeatedly which can have huge impact.

Closer to aos than aa

While interesting perhaps the endless spell discussion can be spun off into another thread?

tneva82 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Who knows. I doubt it. The Double Turn is a sacred cow that people cling to and love. It is also one of my pillars for not touching the game anymore and was always houseruled out until the lockdown on houserules came about in my main stores.

I'm waiting on the Old World project to come out. Hopefully they move away from IGOUGO in the first place and give us a form of alternate activation. LOTR works that way. So its not entirely out of the question.

I'm not even convinced it was intentional in the first place. More like an unintended consequence of a hasty four page rules document that was meant more as a starter set to get in quick games. But there it is to stay.

Ummm...lotr is igougo at core. One player moves, other player moves etc. And same player can get first action repeatedly which can have huge impact.

Closer to aos than aa

When one player moves, and another player then moves, that is a /form of/ alternate activation. /form of/ Because you at least get to do something in response other than stand there for an entire turn doing nothing. When you say IGOUGO the assumption is you stand there for an entire turn doing nothing. Or in AOS' case... you stand there for TWO whole turns doing nothing. Because tactical and strategic.

 auticus wrote:
Who knows. I doubt it. The Double Turn is a sacred cow that people cling to and love. It is also one of my pillars for not touching the game anymore and was always houseruled out until the lockdown on houserules came about in my main stores.

I think it's only a sacred pillar by virtue of being part of AoS at all. I never see anyone, even the biggest fanboys, bring it up as a feature when trying to sell the game. They're quick to defend it when it does come up, but they secretly hope it isn't mentioned because their enjoyment of it only extends to the fact GW/AoS can do no wrong. I've said it before, but if it's removed in 3.0 those same people will cheer it's removal as genius as loudly as they defended it all this time.

I'm waiting on the Old World project to come out. Hopefully they move away from IGOUGO in the first place and give us a form of alternate activation. LOTR works that way. So its not entirely out of the question.

A Song of Ice & Fire is a fantastic example of an AA rank-and-file game, but I'd be happy with a LotR style. I never actually had the chance to play War of the Ring but I'm guessing that worked very, very similar just with larger armies and movement trays?

 auticus wrote:

If you go to the big facebook old world group, more than half want the old world to just be aos reskinned for the old world. So I'm not entirely sold or put my emotional investment into it, because part of me thinks thats exactly what it will be. AOS rules in the old world.

How many of those are just AoS-newcomers angry GW brought back the game they gleefully cheered was dead every time another holdover WHFB model got squat'ed though? There's a trend in TOW threads where a lot of AoS diehards get way too giddy at the idea the game is NOT what WHFB players have been clamouring for since 2015. The words 'false flag' sound painfully dramatic but I wouldn't put it past that segment of the so-called audience to try and vocally convince GW that TOW needs to be anything but WHFB to kill it before it can succeed. Afterall these people spent years thinking they'd 'won' and that only five guys in Antarctica actually played it.

I never actually had the chance to play War of the Ring but I'm guessing that worked very, very similar just with larger armies and movement trays?

I only got to play it a couple of times, but it had some issues they needed to iron out. It was the beginnings of a good system though. It was rumored in 2015 that AOS was actually going to be using that system and I was pretty pumped about that. Of course, we know what we got instead lol.

I think it's only a sacred pillar by virtue of being part of AoS at all.

I think you are 1000% correct and I have voiced that opinion as well.

How many of those are just AoS-newcomers angry GW brought back the game they gleefully cheered was dead every time another holdover WHFB model got squat'ed though? There's a trend in TOW threads where a lot of AoS diehards get way too giddy at the idea the game is NOT what WHFB players have been clamouring for since 2015. The words 'false flag' sound painfully dramatic but I wouldn't put it past that segment of the so-called audience to try and vocally convince GW that TOW needs to be anything but WHFB to kill it before it can succeed. Afterall these people spent years thinking they'd 'won' and that only five guys in Antarctica actually played it.

Great question and one that I cannot realistically answer. However I suspect a lot of what you are saying is true because I have observed that same sentiment.

There is indeed a lot of those threads in the old world facebook group and a lot of trolling of people that are wanting something a little more like it used to be or at least something not AOS because AOS rules are repellent to a lot of people who were into rank and file games for a variety of reasons (less impactful maneuver, terrain that doesn't really do much, spam summoning, double turn, etc).

Its at this point turned into something that mirrors the political environment. But thats not surprising since people are at their core... people. And for a lot of people "winning" by exterminating the other side's wants and desires is a common motivator.

I just want a game that I can use my models in again that I don't throw up a little in my mouth everytime.

An AOS 3.0 without double turn would definitely be one of the solid pillars of never playing for me removed. If they got rid of free spam summoning and gave me a warriors of chaos book that wasn't designed to make my opponents look good everytime Id probably be on board with at least giving it a try again, despite it not being the style of game I enjoy.

 auticus wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Who knows. I doubt it. The Double Turn is a sacred cow that people cling to and love. It is also one of my pillars for not touching the game anymore and was always houseruled out until the lockdown on houserules came about in my main stores.

I'm waiting on the Old World project to come out. Hopefully they move away from IGOUGO in the first place and give us a form of alternate activation. LOTR works that way. So its not entirely out of the question.

I'm not even convinced it was intentional in the first place. More like an unintended consequence of a hasty four page rules document that was meant more as a starter set to get in quick games. But there it is to stay.

Ummm...lotr is igougo at core. One player moves, other player moves etc. And same player can get first action repeatedly which can have huge impact.

Closer to aos than aa

When one player moves, and another player then moves, that is a /form of/ alternate activation. /form of/ Because you at least get to do something in response other than stand there for an entire turn doing nothing. When you say IGOUGO the assumption is you stand there for an entire turn doing nothing. Or in AOS' case... you stand there for TWO whole turns doing nothing. Because tactical and strategic.

Except when one player moves his entire army there's often not much other can do. Especially once combat starts. One player moves, then other is in melee locked.

Lotr is lot closer to aos than aa. Double and triple turns decide games there as well

Ok. I'm not going to argue with you. I've played LOTR for many years. Its nothing at all like AOS. Other than they use D6. And there's a turn sequence.

You're the first person I have ever heard in the history of that game try to say LOTR is like AOS with double and triple turns deciding games.

If you feel that AOS and LOTR are similar in that way good on you. I don't agree with you. I'd play AOS with a LOTR ruleset in place any day.

tneva82 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Who knows. I doubt it. The Double Turn is a sacred cow that people cling to and love. It is also one of my pillars for not touching the game anymore and was always houseruled out until the lockdown on houserules came about in my main stores.

I'm waiting on the Old World project to come out. Hopefully they move away from IGOUGO in the first place and give us a form of alternate activation. LOTR works that way. So its not entirely out of the question.

I'm not even convinced it was intentional in the first place. More like an unintended consequence of a hasty four page rules document that was meant more as a starter set to get in quick games. But there it is to stay.

Ummm...lotr is igougo at core. One player moves, other player moves etc. And same player can get first action repeatedly which can have huge impact.

Closer to aos than aa

When one player moves, and another player then moves, that is a /form of/ alternate activation. /form of/ Because you at least get to do something in response other than stand there for an entire turn doing nothing. When you say IGOUGO the assumption is you stand there for an entire turn doing nothing. Or in AOS' case... you stand there for TWO whole turns doing nothing. Because tactical and strategic.

Except when one player moves his entire army there's often not much other can do. Especially once combat starts. One player moves, then other is in melee locked.

Lotr is lot closer to aos than aa. Double and triple turns decide games there as well

It's really not. Really really not.

You see, LotR contains resources that allow players to act out of strict priority, and much of the game revolves around spending or conserving these resources for maximum impact, because they also usually allow for things like roll modification, or the activation of special abilities.

Also it doesn't have the same issues of allowing for doubling down of damage that AoS shooting, or the ASF wars allows for.

Units in LotR also don't have dramatic insane movements as a rule, as opposed to what is extremely common on AoS.

Also there are no units, and every model acts individually.

There's, uh, not a lot in common in fact.

There's, uh, not a lot in common in fact.

The d6. And the fact there are turns. Thats about it.

 auticus wrote:

There's, uh, not a lot in common in fact.

The d6. And the fact there are turns. Thats about it.

There's also a priority roll.

It just doesn't have the same effect in a game where the phases alternate, and there are methods that players can control to mitigate the roll based off limited resources their army contains.

When AoS was first released I was excited. It seemed to be changing to something I would enjoy more than WHFB. I waited for an army to come along that I could really get passionate about. Then came the Daughters of Khaine and I was all in.
I got the army built (and some of it partially painted) and went to the game store.
Then the double turn happened. I packed up after the game and went home with a complete lack of interest in the game.
A few months passed and a grow league started. Having forgot completely about the double turn I got all excited and joined up.
Then the double turn happened and remembered why I stopped playing. Packed up when home and put the army in storage.
A few months passed and some really cool models came out. My friend bought and painted up (stunningly) a OBR army. I got excited to play a few games with him, picked up Morathi for something to work on during covid.
Decided it had been a while since I visited Dakka and thought I'd see what had been going on over the last fee months.
Then i saw this thread. And once again I was reminded that I actually HATE AoS because of the double turn. Been trying to sell the army online ever since. I really should make a post on here in the Swap Shop but its too mich work using only a phone.

I can dig that. For me ... AOS ruleset is mostly repulsive to what I want out of a wargame, but I played it because of the large community and it got me games in. But yeah the double turn is one of the trifecta of reasons why I can't play the game until they are removed.

 DeffDred wrote:
When AoS was first released I was excited. It seemed to be changing to something I would enjoy more than WHFB. I waited for an army to come along that I could really get passionate about. Then came the Daughters of Khaine and I was all in.
I got the army built (and some of it partially painted) and went to the game store.
Then the double turn happened. I packed up after the game and went home with a complete lack of interest in the game.
A few months passed and a grow league started. Having forgot completely about the double turn I got all excited and joined up.
Then the double turn happened and remembered why I stopped playing. Packed up when home and put the army in storage.
A few months passed and some really cool models came out. My friend bought and painted up (stunningly) a OBR army. I got excited to play a few games with him, picked up Morathi for something to work on during covid.
Decided it had been a while since I visited Dakka and thought I'd see what had been going on over the last fee months.
Then i saw this thread. And once again I was reminded that I actually HATE AoS because of the double turn. Been trying to sell the army online ever since. I really should make a post on here in the Swap Shop but its too mich work using only a phone.

Ooh, here's an idea. It's pretty radical.....

You know your friend with that stunningly painted OBR army? Why don't you just talk to him about playing games without the hated double turn mechanic?
Might also work with other players.

In the group I play with some of us like the double turn, some don't & some don't care either way.
So what do we do?
If two like minded people are playing - it's in/out depending upon opinion.
If the games between pro & neutral - it's in.
If the games between negative & neutral it's out.
Neutral vs neutral - flips a coin
Pro vs Negative - flip a coin for that game. The next time these two play each other it's in/out depending upon who lost the coin flip the last time.
We've not noticed any down side to not using this rule.

Personally I think its quite telling that with AoS and 40K sharing very similar rules systems and GW clearly swapping the best parts back and forth - that with 40K not having a doubleturn suggests that GW knows its not universally liked.

In my opinion I hate the double turn.

I was an ETC 9th Age Player, and now I´m on the AOS Spanish ETC Team, and a doble turn allows an opponent that is playing worse than you to win a game.

Yeah, you can play with the double turn etc etc... but it´s broken.

ccs wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
When AoS was first released I was excited. It seemed to be changing to something I would enjoy more than WHFB. I waited for an army to come along that I could really get passionate about. Then came the Daughters of Khaine and I was all in.
I got the army built (and some of it partially painted) and went to the game store.
Then the double turn happened. I packed up after the game and went home with a complete lack of interest in the game.
A few months passed and a grow league started. Having forgot completely about the double turn I got all excited and joined up.
Then the double turn happened and remembered why I stopped playing. Packed up when home and put the army in storage.
A few months passed and some really cool models came out. My friend bought and painted up (stunningly) a OBR army. I got excited to play a few games with him, picked up Morathi for something to work on during covid.
Decided it had been a while since I visited Dakka and thought I'd see what had been going on over the last fee months.
Then i saw this thread. And once again I was reminded that I actually HATE AoS because of the double turn. Been trying to sell the army online ever since. I really should make a post on here in the Swap Shop but its too mich work using only a phone.

Ooh, here's an idea. It's pretty radical.....

You know your friend with that stunningly painted OBR army? Why don't you just talk to him about playing games without the hated double turn mechanic?
Might also work with other players.

In the group I play with some of us like the double turn, some don't & some don't care either way.
So what do we do?
If two like minded people are playing - it's in/out depending upon opinion.
If the games between pro & neutral - it's in.
If the games between negative & neutral it's out.
Neutral vs neutral - flips a coin
Pro vs Negative - flip a coin for that game. The next time these two play each other it's in/out depending upon who lost the coin flip the last time.
We've not noticed any down side to not using this rule.

Because that one friend and I are only a singular example of potential games. Despite living within 30 minutes of each other we have not had the chance to game together since Tyranids had their mutation based codex and Dakka was a brick and mortar store.
If I do go to the local stores I have 2 choices, the store where every last person is a tfg power gamer that wants every last rule possible in effect or the other place that isnt really the place to play so much as buy stuff.

and a doble turn allows an opponent that is playing worse than you to win a game

That was its design intent. AOS was supposed to be devoid of barriers to entry. One barrier to entry is losing games because you aren't as good, which drives people away.

No I'm not being sarcastic, this was touched on in a very early designer video interview back in either late 2015 or early 2016. They wanted to remove the things people hated about whfb, and one of those things was rules mastery and opening the game up to be more fun for casual people by introducing ways where even the worst strategic player in the world could feel that they have a chance to win, which is where the double turn stems from.

Ooh, here's an idea. It's pretty radical.....

You know your friend with that stunningly painted OBR army? Why don't you just talk to him about playing games without the hated double turn mechanic?

The idea you pose in general is not a bad one, however I'm responding beacuse you lead off with it as if it were the obvious choice that every group should be able to do.

Except thats not true. If you have an area that is 100% against any houseruling, you aren't playing without the double turn. And if you suggest playing without the double turn, you won't have any games to play. You have to basically accept that you'll have to use the double turn, find garage or basement games and not participate in the community overall, or not play AOS.

Even my play area, which has great people, focused on putting cool toys on the table and having a good game, are hesitant about dropping rules from the game, particularly the double turn mechanic. I really do hope I can convince them after several games where my Skaven get two turns of uncontested shooting in a row.

Maybe two turns of uncontested Lumineth shooting where their heroes and support pieces are removed without any way to interact or defend against it, will be the tipping point. And I get to have a smug "I told you so" moment once they realize that double turn sucks.

 Overread wrote:
Personally I think its quite telling that with AoS and 40K sharing very similar rules systems and GW clearly swapping the best parts back and forth - that with 40K not having a doubleturn suggests that GW knows its not universally liked.

When an army can get 400 shots at 48"+ range and the ability to re-roll those hits and wounds, Double turns are impossible in 40k. AoS is not 40k. Sure some aspects can translate, but many can not.

Shooting armies do exist in AoS. Are they as shooty as their 40k equivalents? No. Are they shooty enough to auto-win with a double? Absolutely. I would know given my first edition tourney army was built around exactly that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Thadin wrote:
Maybe two turns of uncontested Lumineth shooting where their heroes and support pieces are removed without any way to interact or defend against it, will be the tipping point. And I get to have a smug "I told you so" moment once they realize that double turn sucks.

Please tell us how that goes over!

People will continue to defend double turn until gw finally removes it. And I'm betting is that when that day comes... the people defending it won't be really lamenting its loss either.

 ElAntiguoGuardián wrote:
and a doble turn allows an opponent that is playing worse than you to win a game.

Actually this is a core problem with understanding the double turn - it doesn't allow what you're saying.


See if it allowed for the underdog in a battle to gain the upper hand, or at least have a greater chance at gaining the upper hand, then it might not be too bad. If, say the doubleturn begin for a side starting a battle round with 50% less points than their opponent - ergo that the game state is taken into account - then the doubleturn might have a merit.

However it doesn't, its a simple dice roll that relies and is modified by nothing in the game state. It can just as easily happen to the underdog as to the person winning or turn an even sided match one sided.

And that's its critical flaw. It's a single random dice roll that heavily swings the game in the favour of the person who gets it. Furthermore because its a dice roll it only happens by chance. So writing it out of the rules is a super simple step, you just take it out and the whole game functions as normal without the risk.


I've heard a few argue that you can't do that, because tactics in the game require you to think it might happen and "plan for it" but I've yet to see any of those plans actually be specific to the doubleturn. Screening your good units with chaff units isn't unique to the doubleturn; its purely good tactics in general. The doubleturn has likely forced some to learn those tactics whereas before they didn't "need" them because if an underdog gets a double on them then even worse players have a hard time losing when getting full two rounds.



So in the end I try not to justify it as "allowing a worse player to win" because it equally allows a slightly better play to guarantee their win; in the end it basically hands whoever gets it a near iron clad chance to win.

On the contrary. I have seen worse players pull off wins because they got a key double turn that just tore the guts out of their opponent. They had played poorly up to the point of the double turn, and the double turn is what helped them swing the game back into their favor and ultimately win the game.

Thats also one of the reasons why I hear it defended so hard. Because people have won games with it and they know its powerful and it gives them that feeling that they are never out of the game if they can get the double turn. Its also a commonly cited reason of scorn against people that don't like it: because those are just salty neckbeards that don't like losing when they get double turned and therefore double turn is good because it drives those people out of the game and away from the community.

I've seen both of those many many times cited in some form or fashion over the past four - five years of AOS' lifetime.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Shooting armies do exist in AoS. Are they as shooty as their 40k equivalents? No. Are they shooty enough to auto-win with a double? Absolutely. I would know given my first edition tourney army was built around exactly that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Thadin wrote:
Maybe two turns of uncontested Lumineth shooting where their heroes and support pieces are removed without any way to interact or defend against it, will be the tipping point. And I get to have a smug "I told you so" moment once they realize that double turn sucks.

Please tell us how that goes over!

You can counter shooting in AoS thou, you can not in 40k, otherwise you'll only see shooting armies in top 10.

 Overread wrote:

 ElAntiguoGuardián wrote:
and a doble turn allows an opponent that is playing worse than you to win a game.

Actually this is a core problem with understanding the double turn - it doesn't allow what you're saying.


See if it allowed for the underdog in a battle to gain the upper hand, or at least have a greater chance at gaining the upper hand, then it might not be too bad. If, say the doubleturn begin for a side starting a battle round with 50% less points than their opponent - ergo that the game state is taken into account - then the doubleturn might have a merit.

However it doesn't, its a simple dice roll that relies and is modified by nothing in the game state. It can just as easily happen to the underdog as to the person winning or turn an even sided match one sided.

And that's its critical flaw. It's a single random dice roll that heavily swings the game in the favour of the person who gets it. Furthermore because its a dice roll it only happens by chance. So writing it out of the rules is a super simple step, you just take it out and the whole game functions as normal without the risk.


I've heard a few argue that you can't do that, because tactics in the game require you to think it might happen and "plan for it" but I've yet to see any of those plans actually be specific to the doubleturn. Screening your good units with chaff units isn't unique to the doubleturn; its purely good tactics in general. The doubleturn has likely forced some to learn those tactics whereas before they didn't "need" them because if an underdog gets a double on them then even worse players have a hard time losing when getting full two rounds.



So in the end I try not to justify it as "allowing a worse player to win" because it equally allows a slightly better play to guarantee their win; in the end it basically hands whoever gets it a near iron clad chance to win.

I think you are confusing 'can allow a player playing worse to win' with 'always allows a player playing worse to win' he isn't saying that scenario is what ALWAYS happens, just that it can.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Shooting armies do exist in AoS. Are they as shooty as their 40k equivalents? No. Are they shooty enough to auto-win with a double? Absolutely. I would know given my first edition tourney army was built around exactly that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Thadin wrote:
Maybe two turns of uncontested Lumineth shooting where their heroes and support pieces are removed without any way to interact or defend against it, will be the tipping point. And I get to have a smug "I told you so" moment once they realize that double turn sucks.

Please tell us how that goes over!

You can counter shooting in AoS thou, you can not in 40k, otherwise you'll only see shooting armies in top 10.

That is beside the point; enough shooting exists in AoS for a double-turn army to shoot the opponent up so badly they cannot recover. It is a scenario where the opposing army cannot win unless they happen to have been an army that both possesses strong counter-shooting and brought those tools (which would be useless against a melee-centered build). And that is the issue; a no-win scenario where the initiative roll decided the game. The players might well have brought only their lists and a single d6, rolled the round two initiative then shook hands and called the game. Now that is a somewhat specific scenario where one army is very shooty, gets turn choice to go second, then wins the first initiative roll. But that it exists at all is a big issue to many people.

To be honest, removing the double turn won't solve AoS's problems - I actually think it will make them worse. It's a fallacy to think it allows "worse" players to win because of that - it has nothing to do with being "good" or "bad" players. The thing is, the double turn is always uncertain and while you can hope to have one at the right time or get ready to eat one in the face, you can never know when or if you'll get it in the end.

That's what most players hate about it : lack of control about the game. Others like it because of that, because you can never predict it 100 %.

Some battles that should have been lost in advance because of the lists didn't thanks to the double turn. Of course, it can become a one sided game as well because lady Luck wasn't on your side. But since it can go either way, it's also the reason shooting lists aren't considered that consistent on the competitive scene - because they rely heavily on when the double turn happens in their favor, and are really bad when it goes the other way.

Remove the double turn, and you will have another meta similar to 40k. It won't stop the one-sided battles...it will just make them more predictable, that's all.

Now with AoS having double turn for so long, players who keep playing it got used to it. Sure, GW may remove it the next edition, but I'm not sure the caucus of voices against it is as loud as people against double turn think it really is.

Removing double turn will indeed not solve AOS' problems. Yes the games will continue to be one-sided provided the two players aren't playing tippy top optimal lists of similar power. Thats another of the problems (the non-balance). However AOS is not a game where balance matters, and its fan base also largely doesn't seem to care about it either.

AOS is a game designed for a casual social experience where the game itself is secondary and balance is not something that really matters at the end of the day so long as chucking dice and drinking beer and pushing pretty gw models around is the primary. And that I guess is ok, if thats what one is after.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 ElAntiguoGuardián wrote:
and a doble turn allows an opponent that is playing worse than you to win a game.

Actually this is a core problem with understanding the double turn - it doesn't allow what you're saying.


See if it allowed for the underdog in a battle to gain the upper hand, or at least have a greater chance at gaining the upper hand, then it might not be too bad. If, say the doubleturn begin for a side starting a battle round with 50% less points than their opponent - ergo that the game state is taken into account - then the doubleturn might have a merit.

However it doesn't, its a simple dice roll that relies and is modified by nothing in the game state. It can just as easily happen to the underdog as to the person winning or turn an even sided match one sided.

And that's its critical flaw. It's a single random dice roll that heavily swings the game in the favour of the person who gets it. Furthermore because its a dice roll it only happens by chance. So writing it out of the rules is a super simple step, you just take it out and the whole game functions as normal without the risk.


I've heard a few argue that you can't do that, because tactics in the game require you to think it might happen and "plan for it" but I've yet to see any of those plans actually be specific to the doubleturn. Screening your good units with chaff units isn't unique to the doubleturn; its purely good tactics in general. The doubleturn has likely forced some to learn those tactics whereas before they didn't "need" them because if an underdog gets a double on them then even worse players have a hard time losing when getting full two rounds.



So in the end I try not to justify it as "allowing a worse player to win" because it equally allows a slightly better play to guarantee their win; in the end it basically hands whoever gets it a near iron clad chance to win.

I think you are confusing 'can allow a player playing worse to win' with 'always allows a player playing worse to win' he isn't saying that scenario is what ALWAYS happens, just that it can.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Shooting armies do exist in AoS. Are they as shooty as their 40k equivalents? No. Are they shooty enough to auto-win with a double? Absolutely. I would know given my first edition tourney army was built around exactly that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Thadin wrote:
Maybe two turns of uncontested Lumineth shooting where their heroes and support pieces are removed without any way to interact or defend against it, will be the tipping point. And I get to have a smug "I told you so" moment once they realize that double turn sucks.

Please tell us how that goes over!

You can counter shooting in AoS thou, you can not in 40k, otherwise you'll only see shooting armies in top 10.

That is beside the point; enough shooting exists in AoS for a double-turn army to shoot the opponent up so badly they cannot recover. It is a scenario where the opposing army cannot win unless they happen to have been an army that both possesses strong counter-shooting and brought those tools (which would be useless against a melee-centered build). And that is the issue; a no-win scenario where the initiative roll decided the game. The players might well have brought only their lists and a single d6, rolled the round two initiative then shook hands and called the game. Now that is a somewhat specific scenario where one army is very shooty, gets turn choice to go second, then wins the first initiative roll. But that it exists at all is a big issue to many people.

Then you prep for it poorly. Sorry but you don't always win by running up mid field and sitting there doing nothing hoping not to get a double turn on being shot at. I play IDK, CoS, and BoC, i have zero problems with the 2 large shooting forces (DoT and CoS).

I would be surprised if a player of those armies did have problems with shooting. All three are among those which have strong answers to it. IDK in particular are a hard counter to shooting forces, an army which clearly operates outside the norm in that dynamic.

And I was the one doing the shooting for an entire edition. I won a large number of double-turn matches against opponents who definitely could not have done anything to prep for it. This was an army I used exclusively for tourney and tourney-practice games, against players who knew what they were doing. Now if the shooting player is incompetent they can indeed blow their auto-win opportunity, but it is on them to lose.

And finally, there is another critical element; if the first-turn player DID prep so well for a double turn that it was not worth taking the shooter can do exactly that.

 auticus wrote:
Removing double turn will indeed not solve AOS' problems. Yes the games will continue to be one-sided provided the two players aren't playing tippy top optimal lists of similar power. Thats another of the problems (the non-balance). However AOS is not a game where balance matters, and its fan base also largely doesn't seem to care about it either.

AOS is a game designed for a casual social experience where the game itself is secondary and balance is not something that really matters at the end of the day so long as chucking dice and drinking beer and pushing pretty gw models around is the primary. And that I guess is ok, if thats what one is after.

Thing is, it's a game. Conquest is also a game the same way. Both are meant for social experience...and I'm not sure you can say AoS is a "casual" one, given the amount of time you can sink on it. Some may see Conquest the same you're looking at AoS, in the end. It's just a matter of what the players want to do with it and how much time they're ready to invest as well.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

And I was the one doing the shooting for an entire edition. I won a large number of double-turn matches against opponents who definitely could not have done anything to prep for it.

And finally, there is another critical element; if the first-turn player DID prep so well for a double turn that it was not worth taking the shooter can do exactly that.

Sure, but how many did you lose ? It's not the number of victories that matter, it's the ratio.

And while the shooter can indeed get ready for not having a double turn, it usually is lacking in the melee department and can't counterattack well during the opponent's turn because of that. It just has not as many tools as a melee army on that matter. Otherwise, we would see shooting armies constantly at the top of tournaments, but it's not the case. That means shooting doesn't have as many interesting tools as melee ones with the mechanism of double turn existing.

and I'm not sure you can say AoS is a "casual" one, given the amount of time you can sink on it.

I've sunk several thousand hours into my side soccer hobby too over the course of my life. It was still casual.

I dont think the amount of time sunk into something defines it as "casual" or not.

When I say AOS is built for the casual social experience I mean that quite literally:

* it was designed to be as simple and as easy as possible to remove any barrier of entry concerning rules mastery or poor strategy and tactics holding one back. That was said verbatim by a gw designer in 2015 interview about the system and why they did what they did.

* it is a game whose massive player base is a main hook for a great many people

* balance amongst its player base is listed as tertiary or not important at all.

Games like conquest cannot even come close to being successful if they rolled out a game like AOS. They have to make an attempt to build a solid game and not rely on their non existent name or street cred to carry them.

If mantic or para bellum or warlord games or Joe's Game Shop.com had released AOS, AOS would not be played very much today if at all. I'll die on that hill saying that.

Sarouan wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

And I was the one doing the shooting for an entire edition. I won a large number of double-turn matches against opponents who definitely could not have done anything to prep for it.

And finally, there is another critical element; if the first-turn player DID prep so well for a double turn that it was not worth taking the shooter can do exactly that.

Sure, but how many did you lose ? It's not the number of victories that matter, it's the ratio.

And while the shooter can indeed get ready for not having a double turn, it usually is lacking in the melee department and can't counterattack well during the opponent's turn because of that. It just has not as many tools as a melee army on that matter. Otherwise, we would see shooting armies constantly at the top of tournaments, but it's not the case. That means shooting doesn't have as many interesting tools as melee ones with the mechanism of double turn existing.

You are highlighting the point; with a hard shooting army the roll for initiative decides the game more than any other factor. Also to answer your first question, I had a bit under a 5:1 win:loss ratio. Out of all my games there were three where I got the double then managed to lose (each time due to a critical mistake on my part against a skilled opponent). Three.

 auticus wrote:

Games like conquest cannot even come close to being successful if they rolled out a game like AOS. They have to make an attempt to build a solid game and not rely on their non existent name or street cred to carry them.

If mantic or para bellum or warlord games or Joe's Game Shop.com had released AOS, AOS would not be played very much today if at all. I'll die on that hill saying that.

You'll die alone, then.

Reason why AoS is popular is clearly not just the game system. The brand and the size of the company also matters - especially when GW already has a whole network of places where you can play and can promote everything by themselves. Mantic Games, Para Bellum, Warlord Games - they all have to depend on third parties, they have nothing for themselves. Also, the wargame market is very crowded now.

And yeah, GW was here the first. Helps too.

But if Para Bellum was in the place of GW ? I think the game system doesn't matter that much. Battle has survived for so many years with a clunky and old game system, after all. Conquest isn't any different here, it is far from being perfect - it's clear it will evolve much more as years pass on.

In the end, the rules are just a way to make everyone agree on how to use it before going in the real game - and here with Conquest, I think it's not just the game system : it's also the universe and the miniatures. Sure, they may not be that original, but the scale is quite an unusual one for wargames on the market and you can't deny it has quite a good art design for itself.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

You are highlighting the point; with a hard shooting army the roll for initiative decides the game more than any other factor.

That's very true. TBH, I think as long as AoS will keep a "I Go U Go" rule system, allowing you to make your whole army shoot without the enemy being able to answer during your turn, the problem will stay the same - double turn or not. That's why 40k games feel so one-sided with optimized lists. That's why I think removing the double turn won't actually make things better for AoS if it keeps the rest.

If there was an alternance like in Kill Team, it already changes quite a lot (well, as long as you have some parts of shooting units, of course...which isn't guaranteed in AoS, I agree).

I would rather work on scenarios with victory conditions favorable for the player who decides to play last - like giving more victory points, as it already exists in some scenarios right now. So that there is more of a choice rather than automatically taking double turn because it's a win-win situation in all cases.

Removing doubleturn won't magically make the whole system perfect but it will remove one of its most glaring imperfections. Even in close combat where it alternates the double turn gives a major advantage because the player with the doubleturn gets to choose about engaging into new fights or not. They can hold units back or sweep them around to gang up on a specific target. They can also make good on actual dodging of attacks the enemy was going to initiate.

Not to mention the duel magic phase use and doubling of any shooting.

You'll die alone, then.

Reason why AoS is popular is clearly not just the game system. The brand and the size of the company also matters - especially when GW already has a whole network of places where you can play and can promote everything by themselves. Mantic Games, Para Bellum, Warlord Games - they all have to depend on third parties, they have nothing for themselves. Also, the wargame market is very crowded now.

And yeah, GW was here the first. Helps too.

But if Para Bellum was in the place of GW ? I think the game system doesn't matter that much. Battle has survived for so many years with a clunky and old game system, after all. Conquest isn't any different here, it is far from being perfect - it's clear it will evolve much more as years pass on.

In the end, the rules are just a way to make everyone agree on how to use it before going in the real game - and here with Conquest, I think it's not just the game system : it's also the universe and the miniatures. Sure, they may not be that original, but the scale is quite an unusual one for wargames on the market and you can't deny it has quite a good art design for itself.

Nah. There is a whole wide world of people who are basically of the same mindset as me. You just won't find them in an AOS forum.

I agree and you mirrored a lot of what I said though. AOS is more than its game system. Its the massive fan base that draws most people in. At least the ones I know. They invest in AOS same reason they invest in 40k. Because they know they have people to play and their $1000 investment isn't going to be wasted.

If Para Bellum came out in 2015 BEFORE GW DID with a rule system that was AOS, they'd be bankrupt today and gone and forgotten. Because these other companies HAVE to make solid game systems, they don't have their name to go off of or the massive fanbase that will defend anything that they do to protect their investment.

AOS is popular because its produced by GW and the investment into the game is more guarnteed. No other game company in the world can offer that, and its hard to convince people to drop $500 - $800 on a new game when that group could just disappear. With AOS and 40k you can go to any major city in the USA and get a game in anytime. Thats why AOS is so popular. The balance, the bad rules, the wonky interactions, the double turn, those are all universally hand waived because in the end protecting the investment that a player drops, that large amount of cash, is what is the most important thing for a whole lot of people (and that is quite understandable)

Art and lore are great. And I just did a whole video review I posted in the other game channel about all of the fantasy games I've played in the past 30 years, and AOS definitely has appealing visuals and art and models and lore for me, being a heavy metal fan. The reason *I* am still here posting is beacuse I have a considerable $10,000+ investment into GW models that I'd like to use again and if you remove spam summoning, the double turn, and true line of sight, AOS wouldn't be my favorite game but I'd play it a lot and be ok with the experience.

 auticus wrote:

If Para Bellum came out in 2015 BEFORE GW DID with a rule system that was AOS, they'd be bankrupt today and gone and forgotten. Because these other companies HAVE to make solid game systems, they don't have their name to go off of or the massive fanbase that will defend anything that they do to protect their investment.

I'll be honest, I disagree with you here. I think the game system isn't really that important for a game to last - building a community and nurturing it while giving them constantly something new to strive for, that's what makes a game last over the years. It doesn't have to be a complex / good / balanced game system at all.

The reason why I think this is because I have seen lots of promising game systems slowly die and disappear over the decades just because they weren't able to give something to their community on the long term. It's a shame, really, but the sad truth is quality alone isn't important.

I miss Anima Tactics a lot. That was a really high quality game, both in miniatures, game system and material (the core book was just a beauty), and yet...it didn't matter in the end.

I think that if Para Bellum made something akind to AoS before GW, it could have last over the years as long as they managed to do the above. It doesn't even have to build a huge community, just a big enough to give profits on long term and keep the development going.

I could consider your stance if you can give me an example of a game whose system is generally seen as not very good, but is very popular.

I don't know of any, hence why my stance is what it is.

I realize and agree with you that quality alone is not important. That realization came to me many years ago when people would complain about 40k and warhammer being hot garbage but still play it regularly and buy stuff for it regularly.

I didn't realize how much BALANCE didn't matter until after I did azyr for AOS before official points tanked the fan comps.

I think other companies have the huge hurdle of ... no one has the fan base that GW does, and GW because it has the fan base it does can produce pretty much whatever it wants rules-wise and it will be popular.

 auticus wrote:
I could consider your stance if you can give me an example of a game whose system is generally seen as not very good, but is very popular.

I don't know of any, hence why my stance is what it is.

I realize and agree with you that quality alone is not important. That realization came to me many years ago when people would complain about 40k and warhammer being hot garbage but still play it regularly and buy stuff for it regularly.

I didn't realize how much BALANCE didn't matter until after I did azyr for AOS before official points tanked the fan comps.

I think other companies have the huge hurdle of ... no one has the fan base that GW does, and GW because it has the fan base it does can produce pretty much whatever it wants rules-wise and it will be popular.

The existence of Risk still nowadays should be proof enough.

Joke aside, I know some people aren't satisfied with AoS or 40k and are very critical about how GW handles the rules / see their game system. What really matters, though, is the number of people who believe the opposite and keep playing.

It's not really a question of who's right, in the end. It's just a matter of perception. I do understand it can be frustrating to see so many people still playing a game you don't see as good, but that's the reality. That doesn't mean they have bad taste or enjoy a bad game...it just means the game is satisfying for them enough to keep playing.

TBH, the other companies have the hurdle of not being as big as GW and not able / not willing to invest the same amount in the recruitment of new players. You can do only that much when you give that job (and it's a real job) to third parties / to the good will of very motivated players. GW does that, that's the difference.

And yes I agree with you that GW has much more freedom about making game systems, since they can sell it more easily to their base thanks to their shops and own marketing section.

Still...with the market so bloated with new games all the time, I think it's really difficult now to have an original game system that makes it stand out in comparison to others. I mean, you can try to make a new game system with totally new mechanisms, but there are good chances that whatever you're trying to use, it already was made before in another obscure game somewhere anyway. Conquest has a lot of mechanisms that are actually inspired from previous games (their activation system is actually very similar to old AT-43 and Rag'Narok games from Rackham). Yet they try to be different so that they can be noticed upon the tsunami of games that keep being released over and over again.

It's more a frantic race for survival than trying to be a good game, in the end. The key part is building a core base of fans / players big enough to sustain the game on long term. It's really not about the quality of the game system at all.

I'd be wondering what GW does to enable the job of third parties promoting the game that other companies don't do?

I know as a Conquest Vanguard, the company gives us $100 a month in free product as well as the chance to get exclusive models not for sale to the general public.

I promoted GW like crazy for 20 years. I was an outrider for about a year and a half in the late 90s before they axed that program, and that was the only time GW really acknowledged my presence. Other than that I did what I did out of love for the game, but GW didn't really do anything to enable that.

I appreciate your answer though, because it was a lot more than "you just have to git gud" or "the balance is just fine" or "in the tournament circuit this isn't a problem, so this isn't a problem". It was more an honest answer and I really do appreciate you taking the time to give it.

 auticus wrote:
I'd be wondering what GW does to enable the job of third parties promoting the game that other companies don't do?

They actually have their own shops with their own people they pay for the job - their main purpose is recruiting new blood as well as making sales, then guiding them to the locals for long term play.

They also contact third parties like independants and clubs, but the thing is ; they don't rely on them alone. That's why GW reach so easily so many people for their games.

I know as a Conquest Vanguard, the company gives us $100 a month in free product as well as the chance to get exclusive models not for sale to the general public.

That's great, but that's not a full paid job. Like I said, there are limits to what third parties can do. Imagine what you could do if you were paid to promote and sell Conquest 5 or 6 days a week during working hours. Imagine how many more people you would be able to reach that way. That's what GW does with their shops.

I appreciate your answer though, because it was a lot more than "you just have to git gud" or "the balance is just fine" or "in the tournament circuit this isn't a problem, so this isn't a problem". It was more an honest answer and I really do appreciate you taking the time to give it.

You're welcome ! And honestly, I understand your arguments as well. I do feel there is a lot of room for improvement for AoS, but I don't see the double turn as a bad mechanism in itself. Sure, the games can be wanky and one-sided because of it, but I had really fun games with it as well when it suddenly turn the battle to a more interesting development. Will I be able to play the game without it ? I think, but I believe it will become a bit more predictable and it won't especially be for a better game in the end.

auticus wrote:

and a doble turn allows an opponent that is playing worse than you to win a game

That was its design intent. AOS was supposed to be devoid of barriers to entry. One barrier to entry is losing games because you aren't as good, which drives people away.

No I'm not being sarcastic, this was touched on in a very early designer video interview back in either late 2015 or early 2016. They wanted to remove the things people hated about whfb, and one of those things was rules mastery and opening the game up to be more fun for casual people by introducing ways where even the worst strategic player in the world could feel that they have a chance to win, which is where the double turn stems from.

Ooh, here's an idea. It's pretty radical.....

You know your friend with that stunningly painted OBR army? Why don't you just talk to him about playing games without the hated double turn mechanic?

The idea you pose in general is not a bad one, however I'm responding beacuse you lead off with it as if it were the obvious choice that every group should be able to do.

Except thats not true. If you have an area that is 100% against any houseruling, you aren't playing without the double turn. And if you suggest playing without the double turn, you won't have any games to play. You have to basically accept that you'll have to use the double turn, find garage or basement games and not participate in the community overall, or not play AOS.

Overread wrote:

 ElAntiguoGuardián wrote:
and a doble turn allows an opponent that is playing worse than you to win a game.

Actually this is a core problem with understanding the double turn - it doesn't allow what you're saying.


See if it allowed for the underdog in a battle to gain the upper hand, or at least have a greater chance at gaining the upper hand, then it might not be too bad. If, say the doubleturn begin for a side starting a battle round with 50% less points than their opponent - ergo that the game state is taken into account - then the doubleturn might have a merit.

However it doesn't, its a simple dice roll that relies and is modified by nothing in the game state. It can just as easily happen to the underdog as to the person winning or turn an even sided match one sided.

And that's its critical flaw. It's a single random dice roll that heavily swings the game in the favour of the person who gets it. Furthermore because its a dice roll it only happens by chance. So writing it out of the rules is a super simple step, you just take it out and the whole game functions as normal without the risk.


I've heard a few argue that you can't do that, because tactics in the game require you to think it might happen and "plan for it" but I've yet to see any of those plans actually be specific to the doubleturn. Screening your good units with chaff units isn't unique to the doubleturn; its purely good tactics in general. The doubleturn has likely forced some to learn those tactics whereas before they didn't "need" them because if an underdog gets a double on them then even worse players have a hard time losing when getting full two rounds.



So in the end I try not to justify it as "allowing a worse player to win" because it equally allows a slightly better play to guarantee their win; in the end it basically hands whoever gets it a near iron clad chance to win.

I was not saying that the double turn gives the option to a worse player to win everytime they have it, I was saying that that die roll can change an entire game, and in the correct turn, a worse player can change the flow of the entire game.

I understand what is intended with the double turn, but in a competitive game it´s too bad. Maybe AoS it´s not a competitive game, but since the origins of the game the competitive ways are growing, and if you´re going to win a tournament because you´re playing great and a dice roll destroy everithing...

 ElAntiguoGuardián wrote:

I was not saying that the double turn gives the option to a worse player to win everytime they have it, I was saying that that die roll can change an entire game, and in the correct turn, a worse player can change the flow of the entire game.

But it's already the case in AoS without the double turn : a single die roll can change the outcome of the game. How many times did you win / lose because you failed / succeeded in a single crucial die roll ? It happens all the time for me, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone here.

Some say the initiative roll for first turn in 40k already decide the outcome of the game. In some cases, that's true.

Sure, the roll for double turn is just another one of them, but GW games were always about crucial dice rolls deciding the outcome of the game. Removing double turn won't change that.

And I don't believe in that "worse player" narrative. If a player was really that bad, having a double turn won't make him magically win - especially if the other player is "better" and knows what a double turn is, and play accordingly. Maybe the other was not that good if he can't ready himself for the possibility, and maybe his opponent wasn't that worse in the end to use his advantage to win the battle.

I think it's more a question of the frustration felt when the battle slips out of your control when it turns to your disadvantage. You think you're good, you believe your victory was stolen by a worse player because he was lucky, that's how you see it as a mechanism to allow "worse players to win".

The difference is that a normal single good roll affefts one model or unit. That unit has to be in the right place at the right time to swing the battle either for or against the player. Thus that moment is built from the choices and play of both players up to that point.


The doulble turn has nothing of that, it is pure luck of a single dice roll that in no way is influenced by the game it self. It changes the whole course of the game butis in no way a part of the choices of either player.

Its not the same as failing one ssve roll and losing your most powerful unit, its not even being part of the dice roll and suddenly losing your entire turn. Your entire chance to reply in the dance of the game is gone.

I still fail to also see who it is even fun for most.
For those who get it it almost makesbthe game an automatic win, for those who it is used against its the opposite and worse they spend double the length of time only able to react to game state. The only agncy they ,ightget is swapped control of an emdless spell. Otherwise they can only react to what theopponent does

I have won far, far more games because of a double than lost because of a double. That is a not-insignificant part of why I dislike it so much.

 ElAntiguoGuardián wrote:

auticus wrote:

and a doble turn allows an opponent that is playing worse than you to win a game

That was its design intent. AOS was supposed to be devoid of barriers to entry. One barrier to entry is losing games because you aren't as good, which drives people away.

No I'm not being sarcastic, this was touched on in a very early designer video interview back in either late 2015 or early 2016. They wanted to remove the things people hated about whfb, and one of those things was rules mastery and opening the game up to be more fun for casual people by introducing ways where even the worst strategic player in the world could feel that they have a chance to win, which is where the double turn stems from.

Ooh, here's an idea. It's pretty radical.....

You know your friend with that stunningly painted OBR army? Why don't you just talk to him about playing games without the hated double turn mechanic?

The idea you pose in general is not a bad one, however I'm responding beacuse you lead off with it as if it were the obvious choice that every group should be able to do.

Except thats not true. If you have an area that is 100% against any houseruling, you aren't playing without the double turn. And if you suggest playing without the double turn, you won't have any games to play. You have to basically accept that you'll have to use the double turn, find garage or basement games and not participate in the community overall, or not play AOS.

Overread wrote:

 ElAntiguoGuardián wrote:
and a doble turn allows an opponent that is playing worse than you to win a game.

Actually this is a core problem with understanding the double turn - it doesn't allow what you're saying.


See if it allowed for the underdog in a battle to gain the upper hand, or at least have a greater chance at gaining the upper hand, then it might not be too bad. If, say the doubleturn begin for a side starting a battle round with 50% less points than their opponent - ergo that the game state is taken into account - then the doubleturn might have a merit.

However it doesn't, its a simple dice roll that relies and is modified by nothing in the game state. It can just as easily happen to the underdog as to the person winning or turn an even sided match one sided.

And that's its critical flaw. It's a single random dice roll that heavily swings the game in the favour of the person who gets it. Furthermore because its a dice roll it only happens by chance. So writing it out of the rules is a super simple step, you just take it out and the whole game functions as normal without the risk.


I've heard a few argue that you can't do that, because tactics in the game require you to think it might happen and "plan for it" but I've yet to see any of those plans actually be specific to the doubleturn. Screening your good units with chaff units isn't unique to the doubleturn; its purely good tactics in general. The doubleturn has likely forced some to learn those tactics whereas before they didn't "need" them because if an underdog gets a double on them then even worse players have a hard time losing when getting full two rounds.



So in the end I try not to justify it as "allowing a worse player to win" because it equally allows a slightly better play to guarantee their win; in the end it basically hands whoever gets it a near iron clad chance to win.

I was not saying that the double turn gives the option to a worse player to win everytime they have it, I was saying that that die roll can change an entire game, and in the correct turn, a worse player can change the flow of the entire game.

I understand what is intended with the double turn, but in a competitive game it´s too bad. Maybe AoS it´s not a competitive game, but since the origins of the game the competitive ways are growing, and if you´re going to win a tournament because you´re playing great and a dice roll destroy everithing...

They don't even stick to this conceit though. So many armies in AoS revolve around being able to move the entirety of a game board in a single turn and cripple the enemy entirely in that one turn, so the double turn really doesn't actually matter. You go first and win. An issue they're actually tackling in 40k, but they have done the opposite of tackle in AoS. They continue to reinforce it. They just nerfed the one army that trivially tanked anyone's alpha strike (by trivially tanking literally everything in the game because they were too good), but the armies that continue to revolve around the alpha strike haven't really changed.

Sarouan wrote:

 ElAntiguoGuardián wrote:

I was not saying that the double turn gives the option to a worse player to win everytime they have it, I was saying that that die roll can change an entire game, and in the correct turn, a worse player can change the flow of the entire game.

But it's already the case in AoS without the double turn : a single die roll can change the outcome of the game. How many times did you win / lose because you failed / succeeded in a single crucial die roll ? It happens all the time for me, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone here.

Some say the initiative roll for first turn in 40k already decide the outcome of the game. In some cases, that's true.

Sure, the roll for double turn is just another one of them, but GW games were always about crucial dice rolls deciding the outcome of the game. Removing double turn won't change that.

And I don't believe in that "worse player" narrative. If a player was really that bad, having a double turn won't make him magically win - especially if the other player is "better" and knows what a double turn is, and play accordingly. Maybe the other was not that good if he can't ready himself for the possibility, and maybe his opponent wasn't that worse in the end to use his advantage to win the battle.

I think it's more a question of the frustration felt when the battle slips out of your control when it turns to your disadvantage. You think you're good, you believe your victory was stolen by a worse player because he was lucky, that's how you see it as a mechanism to allow "worse players to win".

I play kharadrons (on the occaision that I play). How does a KO army both win a game and play around a double turn?

No, I play kharadrons. How do my opponents survive me getting a double turn? I mean provided the enemy army couldn't traverse the entire board in a single turn and has already killed all my stuff.

So many armies in AoS revolve around being able to move the entirety of a game board in a single turn and cripple the enemy entirely in that one turn

Also an experience I have seen in many AOS games, which is why one of my complaints is that AOS removed the importance of maneuver from the game for the most part. (you can get down to that fiddly level where it matters like in combat when people are positioning their guys 0.25" away from something to prevent a counter strike)

However the counter to this I am told many times is that this is "more exciting". And makes melee armies "viable" because they weren't viable before because shooting could shoot you in turn 1, but melee couldn't. Now it can.

 auticus wrote:

So many armies in AoS revolve around being able to move the entirety of a game board in a single turn and cripple the enemy entirely in that one turn

Also an experience I have seen in many AOS games, which is why one of my complaints is that AOS removed the importance of maneuver from the game for the most part. (you can get down to that fiddly level where it matters like in combat when people are positioning their guys 0.25" away from something to prevent a counter strike)

However the counter to this I am told many times is that this is "more exciting". And makes melee armies "viable" because they weren't viable before because shooting could shoot you in turn 1, but melee couldn't. Now it can.

Most shooting armies couldn't really shoot you in turn one to any appreciable extent until they got their own super movement nonsense. Or got super good long range shooting (As an aside, boy am I not looking forward to 5 plus mortal wound shooting archers of the new elves now that I'm looking at AoS again in hopes KO are in a good place finally.)

Again, as a KO player, I can do appreciable shooting out to about 18 inches. That's not turn one shooting territory (unless I go second, but by turn 2 people are on me). And then I got the ability to teleport pretty much my entire army wherever.

A fair few of the best armies in the game currently are shooting heavy armies. KO is showing strong results at tournament play as of late. And of course, there's Tzeentch Flamers shooting, Seraphon laser lizard artillery, Skaven shooting, Stormcast shooting, CoS Artillery. Though, CoS and Stormcast aren't doing as well, their long-range shooting is still worth mentioning as they're quite strong.

Either these armies need a knock to their power (simplest is removing double turn) or, TO's/garage hammer hosts need to be putting more LOS blocking terrain chunks on the board. The last AoS tournament I went to, the boards looked more akin to the barren WHFB style boards.

Shooting is OP, i 100% agree with that.

 Thadin wrote:
A fair few of the best armies in the game currently are shooting heavy armies. KO is showing strong results at tournament play as of late. And of course, there's Tzeentch Flamers shooting, Seraphon laser lizard artillery, Skaven shooting, Stormcast shooting, CoS Artillery. Though, CoS and Stormcast aren't doing as well, their long-range shooting is still worth mentioning as they're quite strong.

Either these armies need a knock to their power (simplest is removing double turn) or, TO's/garage hammer hosts need to be putting more LOS blocking terrain chunks on the board. The last AoS tournament I went to, the boards looked more akin to the barren WHFB style boards.

Does not help as much as one might think; note how all of those listed except Stormcast and CoS have movement shenanigans to get shooters the firing lines they need.

The ease of moving wherever you want to go is very much a thing in AoS, and few performing armies go without. CoS looked to have like a crazy lock on a shoot/magic murder army. But that never translated to actual performance because they lack the speed to maneuver their compact shooting block onto objectives and score (And CoS get significantly worse if they aren't compact).

KO, seraphon, skaven? They just literally teleport about. The difference between shooting and melee is pretty much nonexistent if you can be in melee from anywhere on the board, or move your shooting assets to pretty much anywhere on the board.

There is a difference between melee and shooting. It's about being able to interact. Most armies in melee have to alternate between their forces, and the enemy forces attacking one unit at a time. Also why Double turn effects shooting armies more than melee.

stratigo wrote:

I play kharadrons (on the occaision that I play). How does a KO army both win a game and play around a double turn?

No, I play kharadrons. How do my opponents survive me getting a double turn? I mean provided the enemy army couldn't traverse the entire board in a single turn and has already killed all my stuff.

You miss/fail to wound on enough of your rolls.
They make enough of their saves.

 Thadin wrote:
There is a difference between melee and shooting. It's about being able to interact. Most armies in melee have to alternate between their forces, and the enemy forces attacking one unit at a time. Also why Double turn effects shooting armies more than melee.

Except for all the armies that utilize tools to skip the activation order (A surprising number of them). Oh two of them just so happen to post at the top pretty regularly.

Not to mention that melee is just regularly more point efficient than shooting tends to be without a lot of sacrifice. Depending on if you fold magic into shooting.

ccs wrote:

stratigo wrote:

I play kharadrons (on the occaision that I play). How does a KO army both win a game and play around a double turn?

No, I play kharadrons. How do my opponents survive me getting a double turn? I mean provided the enemy army couldn't traverse the entire board in a single turn and has already killed all my stuff.

You miss/fail to wound on enough of your rolls.
They make enough of their saves.

So the only path to victory against that double turn is basically purely in the luck of the dice

 Overread wrote:


So the only path to victory against that double turn is basically purely in the luck of the dice

No, the way you deployed / moved your units and use the terrain as cover also matters.

But otherwise, yes, luck plays quite a big role. Like in all wargames using dices.

You know that AoS without the double turn will still rely heavily on dices, right ?

 Overread wrote:

ccs wrote:

stratigo wrote:

I play kharadrons (on the occaision that I play). How does a KO army both win a game and play around a double turn?

No, I play kharadrons. How do my opponents survive me getting a double turn? I mean provided the enemy army couldn't traverse the entire board in a single turn and has already killed all my stuff.

You miss/fail to wound on enough of your rolls.
They make enough of their saves.

So the only path to victory against that double turn is basically purely in the luck of the dice

No, not victory. Survival. Though the two are often linked....

But luck of the dice is what it always comes down to, x2 turn or no. On a double turn you just need to do this twice in a row vs getting a chance to lessen the 2nd volley 1st.
I suppose if you were truly worried about it you could find ways to put things in reserve/outflank/etc for early turns. Like my Slayers. Some of them can be tunneling until I bring them on to the board. In the end, as a defense, that just boils down to "Don't get hit".

And sometimes, you want the other player to have the double turn - so that he can waste it. It's especially true against shooting armies on the first turns, where most things are out of range. If you keep your units away and force him to spread his army to get something to shoot at while your main force is in reserve and waiting the good time to come and strike.

Depending on the scenarios and the armies, I sometimes give my opponent the double turn even if I get the initiative. Because it gives me a tactical advantage and help me getting ready for the following turns better (and I admit, trying to have a double turn in my advantage next time ).

Luck still plays its part, but that doesn't mean choice is stripped from you entirely.

I just wish we have more scenarios with victory conditions giving more points to the player who chose to go second. We have some, but not that many. That's how you encourage choice better - because right now, it's kinda linked to just how your army will destroy the other.

Going second is already an advantage for most armies because of the double. Going first means everything will be out of range anyways aside from alpha strike or very long-range builds.

Fixing the first/second imbalance is simple anyways; roll off then the winner decides to deploy their whole army first and also go first, or deploy second and go second. Then alternate turns from there, with no random initiative. I have done it in practice plenty of times with a wide variety of matchups. It works.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Fixing the first/second imbalance is simple anyways; roll off then the winner decides to deploy their whole army first and also go first, or deploy second and go second. Then alternate turns from there, with no random initiative. I have done it in practice plenty of times with a wide variety of matchups. It works.

Well of course it works. You'll just end up with more predictable results in your games with imbalanced lists, though.

What you're doing is not fixing the double turn, it's erasing it and replacing it with something else.

What I'm wishing is keeping the double turn, but giving more incentives for the player to choose second when they have the initiative. And I think that can be achieved by playing scenarios with more victory conditions giving an advantage to the second player.

To be honest, I think it's a bit alike to the tendancy of 40k's new version with missions not that much focused on destroying the enemy, but rather playing the objectives to win. That way, you can't just win by destroying your enemy with a double turn.

This isn’t a dig, but do a lot of people not use terrain and start off right in front of their opponents?

The thread is full of comments about shooting entire armies off the board in a double turn.

1: AoS has far less devastating shooting than 40k.
2: AoS has far less range on its shooting.
3: terrain exists. Do players not use it any more?

I’m not saying that a double turn of shooting isn’t severely painful, but it sounds as if people are just sitting in front of a gun line army out in the open here.

Chaff, terrain, LoS blocking etc, it all has a use.

Even pure tournament cheese armies based solely on shooting don’t wipe entire armies on a double turn as players make use of what they have.
If you sit a blob of troops in the open in front of a gun line it’s either stupidity or you actually have a plan. (Draw shooting, distraction, flanking etc)

In our area you have to run tournament standard tables or people will throw epic fits.

Tournament standard tables you generally don't block line of sight pretty much anywhere because here at least using custom terrain that blocks line of sight people consider modeling for advantage. When I bring something out that is not a gw kit that is terrain, even stuff that i have had for 20 odd years and used to be used in tournaments, but is itself not a gw kit, someone will pitch a fit. That has happened to me almost every single time I've played at the store with non GW terrain in AOS unless it didn't block line of sight (like I have pet store aquarium terrain i use a lot but because it doesn't really block line of sight, no one cares) - the moment I bring a building or something that blocks line of sight there is a hate thread in our facebook group about how the events are rigged.

If its not an "official GW kit" you shouldn't be using it, and every GW kit basically has holes everywhere so you can't fully block line of sight.

Add to that true line of sight rules and well... there you have it.

Thats just my commentary on terrain and here. I know where I am is not an oddity either because I have army buddies all over the US and their stores are similar if not the exact same throughout from texas to california to the midwest to the east coast.

So blocking line of sight is pretty much not a thing here. Screening doesn't really do it since you can almost always find a way to see Bob's right pinky finger to draw line of sight to it with true line of sight, and its almost impossible to screen line of sight with other models if you really want to get down and dirty and pedantic about it, which a lot of my former opponents do.

Jackal90 wrote:
This isn’t a dig, but do a lot of people not use terrain and start off right in front of their opponents?

The thread is full of comments about shooting entire armies off the board in a double turn.

1: AoS has far less devastating shooting than 40k.
2: AoS has far less range on its shooting.
3: terrain exists. Do players not use it any more?

I’m not saying that a double turn of shooting isn’t severely painful, but it sounds as if people are just sitting in front of a gun line army out in the open here.

Chaff, terrain, LoS blocking etc, it all has a use.

Even pure tournament cheese armies based solely on shooting don’t wipe entire armies on a double turn as players make use of what they have.
If you sit a blob of troops in the open in front of a gun line it’s either stupidity or you actually have a plan. (Draw shooting, distraction, flanking etc)

The shooting armies pulling this stuff generally have means around the issue of LoS terrain. Obviously they do not wipe out the -entire- enemy army but when one side loses half or more in one go it is still over; even with a double turn themselves they simply don't have the tools to recover.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sarouan wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Fixing the first/second imbalance is simple anyways; roll off then the winner decides to deploy their whole army first and also go first, or deploy second and go second. Then alternate turns from there, with no random initiative. I have done it in practice plenty of times with a wide variety of matchups. It works.

Well of course it works. You'll just end up with more predictable results in your games with imbalanced lists, though.

What you're doing is not fixing the double turn, it's erasing it and replacing it with something else.

What I'm wishing is keeping the double turn, but giving more incentives for the player to choose second when they have the initiative. And I think that can be achieved by playing scenarios with more victory conditions giving an advantage to the second player.

To be honest, I think it's a bit alike to the tendancy of 40k's new version with missions not that much focused on destroying the enemy, but rather playing the objectives to win. That way, you can't just win by destroying your enemy with a double turn.

So, because problem B exists we should not bother fixing problem A? Because imbalanced listbuilding certainly exists wether the double turn does or not. And honestly? I am not even talking tournaments. Tourney players know what they are getting into. I want the experience for my league players to be better than it currently is. I want to improve things for the casual players I see week to week. When two people show up with balanced lists the outcome of the game can still be one-sided in a very unfun way, and that is frustrating for me to witness as a community organizer.

Jackal90 wrote:
This isn’t a dig, but do a lot of people not use terrain and start off right in front of their opponents?

The thread is full of comments about shooting entire armies off the board in a double turn.

1: AoS has far less devastating shooting than 40k.
2: AoS has far less range on its shooting.
3: terrain exists. Do players not use it any more?

I’m not saying that a double turn of shooting isn’t severely painful, but it sounds as if people are just sitting in front of a gun line army out in the open here.

Chaff, terrain, LoS blocking etc, it all has a use.

Even pure tournament cheese armies based solely on shooting don’t wipe entire armies on a double turn as players make use of what they have.
If you sit a blob of troops in the open in front of a gun line it’s either stupidity or you actually have a plan. (Draw shooting, distraction, flanking etc)

AoS armies have significantly more generous movement and move tricks than 40k armies. A good table you can hide your army and reserve a bunch and dodge the first turn shooting phase almost completely (Under 9th edition at least)

In AoS, against a number of armies, hiding doesn't matter. They can teleport from the board to anywhere, or they move 20 inches and then charge 12, the limits to off the board reserves are a lot more generous than 40k. Or some other set of tricks that render attempting to hide nonviable.

stratigo wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:
This isn’t a dig, but do a lot of people not use terrain and start off right in front of their opponents?

The thread is full of comments about shooting entire armies off the board in a double turn.

1: AoS has far less devastating shooting than 40k.
2: AoS has far less range on its shooting.
3: terrain exists. Do players not use it any more?

I’m not saying that a double turn of shooting isn’t severely painful, but it sounds as if people are just sitting in front of a gun line army out in the open here.

Chaff, terrain, LoS blocking etc, it all has a use.

Even pure tournament cheese armies based solely on shooting don’t wipe entire armies on a double turn as players make use of what they have.
If you sit a blob of troops in the open in front of a gun line it’s either stupidity or you actually have a plan. (Draw shooting, distraction, flanking etc)

AoS armies have significantly more generous movement and move tricks than 40k armies. A good table you can hide your army and reserve a bunch and dodge the first turn shooting phase almost completely (Under 9th edition at least)

In AoS, against a number of armies, hiding doesn't matter. They can teleport from the board to anywhere, or they move 20 inches and then charge 12, the limits to off the board reserves are a lot more generous than 40k. Or some other set of tricks that render attempting to hide nonviable.

You realise we are talking about gun line armies here, right?
If you are advancing your gun line or teleporting it close to the enemy then that helps them even more as it’s less distance to close.
You are basically saving them a turn or more of movement.

Also, as you stated, movement and it’s tricks are big in AoS.
Utilising them helps even more.

Also, terrain isn’t just to block LoS, it’s to gain cover.

Sarouan wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Fixing the first/second imbalance is simple anyways; roll off then the winner decides to deploy their whole army first and also go first, or deploy second and go second. Then alternate turns from there, with no random initiative. I have done it in practice plenty of times with a wide variety of matchups. It works.

Well of course it works. You'll just end up with more predictable results in your games with imbalanced lists, though.

What you're doing is not fixing the double turn, it's erasing it and replacing it with something else.

What I'm wishing is keeping the double turn, but giving more incentives for the player to choose second when they have the initiative. And I think that can be achieved by playing scenarios with more victory conditions giving an advantage to the second player.

The problem is the way you want the double turn basically means re-writing the entire game and all the unit profiles to account for it.

When you talk about how it helps reduce the predictability of results based on army lists I'd say that the double turn isn't even attempting to "fix" that. Because no part of the mechanic takes into account the different potential of either side there is no benefit to the underdog. The doubleturn might not happen; it might happen to the superior army or it could happen to the underdog. That's 2 chances against 1 for "helping" the weaker side.

In a game where we already talk about the problems of armies being too powerful within a SINGLE turn; surely its apparent that the games whole structure is jsut poorly setup to allow for the potential for a faction to get TWO whole turns in a row.



I'd also say that its darn hard to impossible to balance for. See no matter how you choose to balance units they will always perform significantly better when they get a double turn. If you balance all armies to the same level (in an ideal situation) then any army getting a double is sitll performing TWICE in a row and doubling their potential performance (accepting that magic/ranged armies are likely performing perfectly double whilst close combat might be a bit more variable).

Either way i've still yet to hear of any method of armies being able to prepare, plan or anything for properly dealing with the doubleturn. Furthermore I've not heard of any method what so ever in dealing with the issue of double performance and thus increased performance for units when they get a doubleturn. Perhaps every unit needs two unit profiles for a regular and double-turn - then at least unit stats could be lower on the double to represent increased fatigue. Even so it would likely just complicate and bloat the game.


In the end I still say move doubleturn to openplay.

Jackal90 wrote:

stratigo wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:
This isn’t a dig, but do a lot of people not use terrain and start off right in front of their opponents?

The thread is full of comments about shooting entire armies off the board in a double turn.

1: AoS has far less devastating shooting than 40k.
2: AoS has far less range on its shooting.
3: terrain exists. Do players not use it any more?

I’m not saying that a double turn of shooting isn’t severely painful, but it sounds as if people are just sitting in front of a gun line army out in the open here.

Chaff, terrain, LoS blocking etc, it all has a use.

Even pure tournament cheese armies based solely on shooting don’t wipe entire armies on a double turn as players make use of what they have.
If you sit a blob of troops in the open in front of a gun line it’s either stupidity or you actually have a plan. (Draw shooting, distraction, flanking etc)

AoS armies have significantly more generous movement and move tricks than 40k armies. A good table you can hide your army and reserve a bunch and dodge the first turn shooting phase almost completely (Under 9th edition at least)

In AoS, against a number of armies, hiding doesn't matter. They can teleport from the board to anywhere, or they move 20 inches and then charge 12, the limits to off the board reserves are a lot more generous than 40k. Or some other set of tricks that render attempting to hide nonviable.

You realise we are talking about gun line armies here, right?
If you are advancing your gun line or teleporting it close to the enemy then that helps them even more as it’s less distance to close.
You are basically saving them a turn or more of movement.

Also, as you stated, movement and it’s tricks are big in AoS.
Utilising them helps even more.

Also, terrain isn’t just to block LoS, it’s to gain cover.

While I feel Stratigo is being rather hyperbolic here, the core of his sentiment is right; the 'problem armies' generally have means to get around the difficulties you mentioned. That is generally half the reason they are problem armies in the first place. You have decent theory-hammer for why that is not the case (and the factors you raise do mitigate the situation to some degree), but I have seen the reality play out in person. Even done so myself.

Jackal90 wrote:

stratigo wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:
This isn’t a dig, but do a lot of people not use terrain and start off right in front of their opponents?

The thread is full of comments about shooting entire armies off the board in a double turn.

1: AoS has far less devastating shooting than 40k.
2: AoS has far less range on its shooting.
3: terrain exists. Do players not use it any more?

I’m not saying that a double turn of shooting isn’t severely painful, but it sounds as if people are just sitting in front of a gun line army out in the open here.

Chaff, terrain, LoS blocking etc, it all has a use.

Even pure tournament cheese armies based solely on shooting don’t wipe entire armies on a double turn as players make use of what they have.
If you sit a blob of troops in the open in front of a gun line it’s either stupidity or you actually have a plan. (Draw shooting, distraction, flanking etc)

AoS armies have significantly more generous movement and move tricks than 40k armies. A good table you can hide your army and reserve a bunch and dodge the first turn shooting phase almost completely (Under 9th edition at least)

In AoS, against a number of armies, hiding doesn't matter. They can teleport from the board to anywhere, or they move 20 inches and then charge 12, the limits to off the board reserves are a lot more generous than 40k. Or some other set of tricks that render attempting to hide nonviable.

You realise we are talking about gun line armies here, right?
If you are advancing your gun line or teleporting it close to the enemy then that helps them even more as it’s less distance to close.
You are basically saving them a turn or more of movement.

Also, as you stated, movement and it’s tricks are big in AoS.
Utilising them helps even more.

Also, terrain isn’t just to block LoS, it’s to gain cover.

The only gunline army in AoS that actually sits static is CoS (and I guess someone trying to do raptors still, but, come on people, it's been a year at least). And even then, no CoS army relying on just a mostly static block (even with a bridge) of firepower is going to do well competitively. It's just not mobile enough.

Every other shooting army has extreme mobility or other tricks. There's no hiding from Tzeentch or KO. And... what other gunlines are there? Would we count kroak lists a gunline because they nuke you so hard in magic? They're not exactly limited in mobility.

And I still don't see much difference between a shooting and combat alpha strike. They both strike from anywhere on the board and do all their damage before you can respond.

I don't play AoS myself (hell, no!!!) but I will show you a comment of our Polish top tournament AoS player on the matter (I was surprised to learn there are AoS tournies, but later I found out there are tournaments for Munchkin and Monopoly too, so...) Maybe you will find his opinion interesting.

I am sorry for the way it is presented, it was too long for me to bother with proper translation so I just used Google Translate to change it from Polish to English and made some minor corrections. You should get the gist, though.

Aos is a primitive game where 50% of the battles are resolved with a stupid throw for a turn. The faction is unbalanced as hell ... e.g. Sisters vs Beastclow or Death vs Sylvaneth etc. This means that it should not be treated as a serious tournament game. I don't write this maliciously because I play SCE myself and I'm pissed off by the problem you described. However, this is just the tip of the system's iceberg of problems. Unfortunately, Aos is played mostly for beautiful models and not for tournament competition, which is decided by strategic thinking. The truth is that people who treat this game as a "duel of mind and dice" and try to play very precisely are wrong. For them it is warmashine, infinity, nineth age. We play aosa. Here in three hours of the match we perform two (because later ones do not matter) opposing dice rolls and that's the end of the tactical depth of this system.

To anyone who would like to say that it is not so and I do not know myself because Aos is a game where "better general" wins, I will say this: I have won several tournaments in several to be on the podium and this year with a motto "do not think because you will make a mistake" we have won the vice-championship of Poland. Terrain, spells, abilities, the idea for the army, everything is great, but ithe bottom line, in the era of "my unit has 120 attacks and now save" complaining about the lack of territory with cover as the reason for the lack of balance in the tournament playing is strongly tertiary. Focus on the movement of your wrist during the throw for a turn and you will see progress, cheers.

Dante, and by arguing with me, you only prove that I am right. You are just the perfect example that my thesis on the aos is correct. You, Adam, Jagred, Pioterek Kurkowski, Dagmara and many other players are simply better than us. You know the rules better, you have better rosters, an idea for the game, table review, etc. And yet, two teams from Katowice lost to Częstochowa. How could this happen? Following your way of thinking, we are just better than you, which is not true. In my opinion, you have skill above us and you lost because in two of the three matches your players failed the throws for the second round (and no skill could help them make up for it) and this is the reason. Maybe I exaggerated a bit that nothing matters except for a roll for a turn, but unfortunately it still determines the fate of most battles too much. As for my vice-championship, why "without sarcasm" I just gave it as an example of the fact that playing mindlessly with the most primitive lists like a punch in the face, we took second place in the most prestigious tournament in Poland.

In my earlier statement, there was no champion's hubris, but a pitying smirk that meant nobody should try to tell me that skill counts as hell. Well, it does not count and our result at this year's DMP in Aos is an irrefutable proof of that. I could write more, but I don't want to. You, as the best player in this country, answer sincerely - would you like this stupid throw to stay or disappear?
Ps. for those who write about gak storms. I write my posts without any pressure and at ease. I care not for who will think what and if I can convince anyone.

In the third sentence his viewpoint seems to suggest some pretense of AoS being a serious tourney game or even a serious game at all. In my eyes that is a mistake of perspective from the onset; I cannot recall seeing anyone claim AoS as a serious game and certainly never for tournaments.

The rest is largely elaborating on the why and how of a basic concept there is broad agreement with. No surprise given the details are where there is a lot of differing opinions.

The notion that unnecessary randomness of the game sets the skill ceiling very low and removes player agency is universal for all types of games, though, tournament or not.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
In the third sentence his viewpoint seems to suggest some pretense of AoS being a serious tourney game or even a serious game at all. In my eyes that is a mistake of perspective from the onset; I cannot recall seeing anyone claim AoS as a serious game and certainly never for tournaments.

The rest is largely elaborating on the why and how of a basic concept there is broad agreement with. No surprise given the details are where there is a lot of differing opinions.

The disconnect with that comes from a great many of people, on here, on facebook, on twitter, down at my game store, i'm sure down at most of your game stores, treat AOS like a serious tourney game and a serious game. There are many people in this very section of dakka that use a form of git gud to hand waive issues and who talk about how the best players are the ones that always win no matter what, indicating that there is a degree of skill that they possess and with that skill they win most of their game and place high in tournaments.

That people treat AOS as a serious tourney game is etched in stone by guys like Rufio (@sixdiceskills) who have created an esports type platform for tabletop gaming, with AOS as one of the featured brands.

I believe a great many people see AOS as a game of mind and skill and in depth tactical strategy, and therein lies the disconnect.

I agree pretty much 100% with the quote from the polish tournament player above.