Excuse the inflammatory title, but I wish it were not so. I enjoy strategy games a great deal, and part of that is friendly competition that exercises the mind. As such I am a stickler for rules - not to try the "gotchas" (although that is an inevitable part of strategic thought), but just because "rules are rules" mediates many disputes - the system dictates the outcome.
With some 9th games under the belt now, the crew and I have concluded that alternating activation simply makes the game better. Its more engaging, it produces more opportunities for strategic play and decision making and keeps both players more involved in the game. I really wish I did not feel this way - as I am learning game mechanics for a game system that will not work outside my small crew. But alas, it simply plays better.
So for those other homebrew heretics (i know you're out there), how do you prefer to do AA? We have done KT style where each player moves, then AA for all other phases. We are looking to experiment with AA for all phases next, but currently on hiatus for indefinite time on account of pandemic.
I personally hate AA in a game of 40k size. Might be okay for Combat Patrol size.
When I get a turn I want it to be a TURN. I want it to feel like an event. I don't want to shoot with one unit and then it's over.
AA in 2k point game would feel as stupid to me as a one down football game. Turnover, turnover, turnover and nobody gets to feel like they made a drive.
That's my opinion; you are entitled to yours, and I don't begrudge you for it. I'm happy you're taking matters into your own hands and solving your own issues with the game within your gaming group. You will find LOTS of like-minded folks here- it's a big ole pet issue that comes up every month or so.
If 40k went AA, I'd give it a chance and try to be open minded to see if I could continue to play it that way. But I'd probably end up doing what so many 8th/9th haters have done; they froze time and continue to play 5th, and they love it! More power to them.
I'd freeze the game in 9th ed Crusade.
On a side note, if future editions DON'T include Crusade, AA or IGOUGO, I won't even bother giving them a chance. I've waited 31 years for Crusade; I feel like it's the best thing that ever happened to this game. I am never going back.
PenitentJake, I'm sure you've been asked this before, but have you played many games that use AA, and if so, which ones? Just curious.
Personally, I always prefer more interactivity than pure IGOUGO, but AA is not the only way to accomplish that. Having an IGOUGO system with dynamic reactions is one way to accomplish both letting the 'active' player feel like they're executing a strategy and give the 'reactive' player more to do than sit there and take it.
OP: I've done some tinkering with my group and we've had the most success doing it one of two ways:
1. Roll off to determine who is the 'active' and 'reactive' player that turn. In each phase, the active player goes first, followed by the reactive player. So A moves, then R moves, then A shoots, then R shoots, and so on.
2. As above, but alternate within each phase. So A moves a unit, R moves a unit, A moves a unit, and so on. Units that don't move get to shoot before units that did.
Both approaches preserve the phased turn structure that the game is built around, and avoids some of the issues you can run into with trying to homebrew pure AA (as in, when activated a unit moves, shoots, fights, etc).
For all the armies writen by GW in a such a way they that only function, if they go through a whole turn of buffing, debuffing, casting etc An AA system would require a house rewrite of those armies codex rules.
It makes stuff like deep strike unusable for anything other then grabing objectives and staying out of LoS, again hurting factions where use deep strike as their deployment/movment method.
Maybe it is possible to make w40k a good AA system, but it would took years to rewrite the rules for all or even most w40k factions.
one die in the bag (of the player's color) for each unit on the field. Draw a die, the player's color that is picked gets to activate unit. Unit does the whole shebang - move, shoot, assault, counter-assault.
Officers add in the nice feature they can co-ordinate units, allowing you to activate multiple (usually 2) at once.
About the only thing I don't like is close combat is 1 round. Loser is eliminated - no argument, no retreat; unless you somehow have a tie the losing unit is gone.
As I have never played or seen Bolt Action, how do they solve the problem of some units needing ton of buffs and rule stacking to be efficient in shoting or assault?
Are there big differences between AA system that let one unit do everything, and those that let unit of after unit do all movment, then all shoting, then all melee etc?
Phases at a time can allow units to avoid assaults somewhat easier unless you can corner them or they WANT to engage. Phases at a time can allow you to ensure your unit gets some sort of activation if the damage step is moved to the end of the phase or turn (such as with Armageddon). This can result in suicidal decisions - if you know your unit is already going to die from the results of a phase, there's a likelyhood you'll be as aggressive as possible until the damage is applied. The good news - you got to do something before the unit was wiped out.
Single unit activation can allow you to remove/negate/neuter a unit before it can retaliate. Also, a unit that has already activated isn't as big a threat as one that hasn't gone yet. There's a bigger feeling of tension because you want to suppress/eliminate an enemy unit before it does the same to you. There's a strategy in forcing the enemy to activate the wrong unit at the wrong time and then capitalize on that mistake.
In an AA scenario, a Knight taking a turn is much different that a squad of cadian regulars. However, if the Knight goes down, that's a lot of firepower lost all at once.
But also, two MSU squads of space marines vs. one full-size space marine squad is swapping quick bee stings for massed attacks. It becomes a strategic tradeoff - first blood or mass slaughter.
But honestly, if you're playing with anything bigger than a Leman Russ, you shouldn't be fighting a game using infantry scale rules and should be using something more akin to the Armageddon rules (which uses AA to a point).
(Also, Bolt Action does have a separate ruleset for Tank War where each side is using mechanized/armored units and changes the scale of activation to accommodate such.)
The best way we've done AA was inspired by the system from Apocalypse, where rather than pure unit-by-unit you activate a chunk of your army.
We did it like this:
When activating, you may select any unit. If you select a CHARACTER keyword unit, you can choose to select all units within 6" of that unit that have not been activated yet in the turn.
It was pretty easy to manage. We just progressed through Command, movement, Psychic, Shooting, Charge, and Combat like that.
The best way we've done AA was inspired by the system from Apocalypse, where rather than pure unit-by-unit you activate a chunk of your army.
We did it like this:
When activating, you may select any unit. If you select a CHARACTER keyword unit, you can choose to select all units within 6" of that unit that have not been activated yet in the turn.
It was pretty easy to manage. We just progressed through Command, movement, Psychic, Shooting, Charge, and Combat like that.
Our group tried a similar method for a few games and also really liked it.
If interactivity: you don’t need AA. Just faster players and snappy games. This is a on the player base to learn the rules. In fact AA would slow games down and cause the same issue you’re trying to fix since you can never plan. You move to accomplish a goal then they move to counter it. Now you’ll have a bunch of extra wasted time.
If speed: see above. It will not speed the game up in any way.
Alpha Strike: not likely to be helped. Probably worsen the issue. Not to mention that alpha strikes are blown out of proportion. This also cringe to mind what you mean by AA even? Move move shoot shoot? That’s the worst solution: now player two alphas player one harder than currently.
Are we doing one unit full activation? Now the armies that already have intrinsic issues can never win. Marines will always be forced to move valuable units first against most armies due to activation economy. See necromunda for the delay game on first important move.
Furthermore; people stated rolling off for active vs reactive...this would create double turns ala AoS right? That’s the single mechanic making that game unworthy of a real competitive scene.
AAs work...very well in fact. But only in games designed for it. You can’t design a game like 40k to work with it I’m afraid...not with the streamline path GW wants and needs. You’d need momentum’s and other big-brain things to help add some predictability ala Star Wars: Armada, X:Wing or auronotica.
Kill Team-style AA combined with the new Objective-based Scenerios just might be a very viable alteration to the rules. With the full side moves followed by alternating units in all other phases, you don't have to worry about losing the synergistic parts of the rules, avoid the alpha strike since attacks are alternating between the sides, and the ability to run away from advancing enemies is offset by the need to move forward to claim objectives and win the game.
Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.
Don't know why it pains you to suggest it though. People have been pushing AA for 40k for years, there is nothing new about the sentiment.
catbarf wrote: PenitentJake, I'm sure you've been asked this before, but have you played many games that use AA, and if so, which ones? Just curious.
Personally, I always prefer more interactivity than pure IGOUGO, but AA is not the only way to accomplish that. Having an IGOUGO system with dynamic reactions is one way to accomplish both letting the 'active' player feel like they're executing a strategy and give the 'reactive' player more to do than sit there and take it.
OP: I've done some tinkering with my group and we've had the most success doing it one of two ways:
1. Roll off to determine who is the 'active' and 'reactive' player that turn. In each phase, the active player goes first, followed by the reactive player. So A moves, then R moves, then A shoots, then R shoots, and so on.
2. As above, but alternate within each phase. So A moves a unit, R moves a unit, A moves a unit, and so on. Units that don't move get to shoot before units that did.
Both approaches preserve the phased turn structure that the game is built around, and avoids some of the issues you can run into with trying to homebrew pure AA (as in, when activated a unit moves, shoots, fights, etc).
The last time I played a non-gw miniatures game would have been 1998, so the memory is hazy on them. I regularly play Kill Team, and like their version of AA for the scale of their game. I haven't played Newcromunda, but I played the heck out of the classic. Don't think it was AA.
Here are the non gw mini games I've played:
Mutant Chronicles
Battletech
Full Throtle
Legions of Steel
Inferno
Zombies!
Fairy Meat
Heroscape
Most of those games, you use forces with WAY fewer models than 40k, which is where I can get behind AA. The other thing about me though is that I have an unnaturally long attention span, and I like the amount of planning time my opponent's turn gives me. The American Football vs Soccer analogy, as has been pointed out to me in NUMEROUS threads on this forum, is not a perfect analogy for IGOUGO vs AA... but it's the closest thing I can come up with; and see, I get what it is that people like about soccer- the action NEVER stops, and turnover, turnover, turnover. I just happen to prefer football. Doesn't mean I'm right; nobody can be right here and nobody can be wrong. Your taste is yours and mine is mine.
My preferences are also a product of the environment in which I play: never with strangers and never ultra competitive; ALWAYS at somebody's house, usually with loud music and beer or better. Sometimes we stop mid game for pizza, or eat while we play.
AA people tend to be the type of guys who love the game and love to play the game and want nothing but game when they play. Maybe that's because they are playing in a public space like a store against someone they don't know well or at all; maybe it's because they have a limited window of time.
But me? I want it all. Game days are events for me.
I totally get why people like AA. I wish they could understand why I like IGOUGO. But instead of trying to empathize, and see the game through someone else's eyes, and just going, "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Not my cup of tea, but I can see what you like about it," they typically double down and try to convince me that my own personal preferences are wrong, and that there's only supposed to be one way to play the game, and that way, of course is their way. And they'll talk about how if you don't like AA, you must not know anything about game design and it goes on for twenty or so pages.
So AA lovers: I get you. You're not wrong; there are things that are great about AA.
I still prefer my 40k to be IGOUGO. It wouldn't feel like 40k to me if it wasn't, because I've played since '89 and it's ALWAYS been IGOUGO. Don't let that stop any of you from liking your game your way. This is why I was happy for OP; they've got a group who likes the same thing they do, and they took matters into their own hands and made it work for them. And if GW did change 40k to an AA game in 10th, like I said, as long as they keep Crusade, I'd be willing to give it an honest, open minded try. If they ditch Crusade in 10th, then I'll just keep playing 9th, because Crusade is pretty much everything I've ever wanted from 40k.
I quite like AA. We adapted the style from Apocalypse while back and had a complete blast.
Actually our favourite bit about it was we also had damage not come into play until the end of turn like in apocalypse. That alone was amazing because there is no worse bad feel than spending weeks customizing and painting a knight or other fancy model and see it blasted off first turn without even getting to move it.
Oo think you'll generally find more of the casual crowd to be all for AA as they get engaged the whole time. And generally less if the competitive crowd for it as generally their mentality is just git gud an git fasta .
Are you familiar with the ARO system Infinity employs? It's pretty much a middle ground where it's still IGOUGO but with the opportunity to react to the opponent's actions whenever certain conditions are fulfilled.
This should really be a discussion for the Proposed Rules section, and it's already been discussed to death.
Personally, I think Alternating Activation is by far the superior method.
However, it would need a great redesign of rules than simply "dropping it in".
For one thing, it doesn't work with 40k's current buff-stacking playstyle (although I hate this playstyle anyway).
I personally absolutely detest Kill Team and Aeronautica's activation style.
The fact that I move into position to line up a shot, and my opponent simply moves to avoid whatever I did, immediately ruins my enjoyment of the game.
One problem I've always seen with Alternating Activation in a game like 40k is that there is such a vast range of units in the game. This would make deathstars (which have already been a frequent issue in the game) even more of one because, well, if you get to shoot first with a very expensive high-firepower unit, you can take out quite some parts of the enemy army first, especially against an army that lacks such individual heavy hitters.
Of course, I have my other issues with 40k, if only because it's a game without any idea of the scale it is/wants to be.
Often activating first is a *disadvantage*. Because in order to line up your shot you'll need to expose yourself to the entire enemy army, who still has yet to activate.
Whereas if you activate last, you can remain in hiding whilst the enemy army activates, then expose yourself to shoot without giving your opponent a chance to retaliate.
Someone mentioned Necromunda briefly in passing. I play that a lot and it's very true, a large part of the game is delaying key fighters by activating random mooks first.
That makes it sound really lame, but imo it works really well in game.
kirotheavenger wrote: Often activating first is a *disadvantage*. Because in order to line up your shot you'll need to expose yourself to the entire enemy army, who still has yet to activate.
Whereas if you activate last, you can remain in hiding whilst the enemy army activates, then expose yourself to shoot without giving your opponent a chance to retaliate.
Someone mentioned Necromunda briefly in passing. I play that a lot and it's very true, a large part of the game is delaying key fighters by activating random mooks first.
That makes it sound really lame, but imo it works really well in game.
You mean you actually need to be concerned about where your units go?
Thats not lame and if anything that's an improvement over the system since the beginning where you can throw all concern out the window.
I think just dropping AA into 40K as is probably doesn't work too well for some of the reasons described above.
But I vastly prefer it to IGOUGO as a mechanic and I am playing Grimdark Future now because it has alternating activations and is designed for that. So deathstars are basically impossible to build (max unit sizes are pretty well constrained) and the kind of stacking buff interaction that 8e has is just not part of the game really.
I am always a bit surprised when I see that there are people who really don't like AA. Different strokes for different folks I suppose! I feel it is no more unrealistic than an entire army standing there and getting the crap beaten out of them while doing nothing, and in games like 40K where powerful long ranged shooting is so common, having alternating activation means you at least get to do something with your units before they get blasted off the table.
I used to like it in LOTR when you had heroes who could react out of turn with heroic actions and stuff and bring units with them, that was really cool I thought. You could probably integrate something like that into 40K as is without TOO much disruption.
Da Boss wrote: I think just dropping AA into 40K as is probably doesn't work too well for some of the reasons described above.
But I vastly prefer it to IGOUGO as a mechanic and I am playing Grimdark Future now because it has alternating activations and is designed for that. So deathstars are basically impossible to build (max unit sizes are pretty well constrained) and the kind of stacking buff interaction that 8e has is just not part of the game really.
I am always a bit surprised when I see that there are people who really don't like AA. Different strokes for different folks I suppose! I feel it is no more unrealistic than an entire army standing there and getting the crap beaten out of them while doing nothing, and in games like 40K where powerful long ranged shooting is so common, having alternating activation means you at least get to do something with your units before they get blasted off the table.
I used to like it in LOTR when you had heroes who could react out of turn with heroic actions and stuff and bring units with them, that was really cool I thought. You could probably integrate something like that into 40K as is without TOO much disruption.
I've seen Grimdark Future, it's method of activating looks really promising.
I really want to try it, I hope my local groups will be receptive once Covid lifts.
One definite problem with Alternating Activation however is that it's slower than IgoUgo. As each time a player activates they need a moment to consider the new state-of-play caused by their opponent's activation.
This means that if 40k wants to go to AA it needs to drop some bloat (although imo it needs that anyway). But the benefits will be more than worth it imo.
It’s not good. I’m going to have to praise Epic Space Marine 2nd Ed again (never played 1st Ed, so can’t praise it equally).
You want AA? Go with an orders system. First Fire, Advance, Charge, Fall Back. Orders assigned by both players in the same phase, then revealed. If you forget a unit, it gets Advance as default.
From there, AA based on the orders given. The placing of orders becomes highly strategic, as given I’m tying into set and limited actions, I need to think about what I want to do, but also what my opponent might be up to.
Sadly, memory fails as to the exact order. But...First Fire meant you shot first, but couldn’t move. Advance meant standard move and shoot. Charge meant initiating combat, but no shooting.
The victory conditions were VP based on a first past the post basis (again, if memory serves). And the target was set by the points value of the game.
Objectives were worth 5VPs, and again the number was set by the points value of the game. You couldn’t win the game solely by holding objectives, but they sure as hell gave you a leg up.
Units gave away VPs in two stages. First for taking it to its break point. The second for wiping it out entirely.
This opened up lots of options. I could design a speedy list, intended to grab Objectives, and simply panel certain enemy units for the rest I needed to win. Or I could go for outright obliteration of the enemy force, and many stages in between.
Different armies mixed it up, and list design was deliberately fairly restrictive.
First, you picked a Company Card, such as a Space Marine Tactical Company. Each the opened up your choice of up zero to six Detachment Cards, and one Special Card.
Company Cards were largely inflexible, so your Detachment Cards let you tailor your force. Special Cards were characters or Titan equivalents.
Orks and Nids changed it up a bit. For Orks, their Break Point was the Company Card and its Detachments added together, meaning you really had to smack them around to get those VPs. Nids linked the number of Detachment Card equivalents to the Company Card equivalent to represent the Hive Mind.
That’s my preference. Because I effing love 2nd Ed Epic Space Marine.
For Sci Fi Games, I have 2 favourite game-system/designs
Alternate Activations with Actions/Orders like Warpath or Gates of Antares, which specially for Warpath works well with 40k sized games
Action/Reaction like Starship Troopers (would also work up to 40k sized games but is better of with the current 1500 points)
PenitentJake wrote:I personally hate AA in a game of 40k size. Might be okay for Combat Patrol size.
When I get a turn I want it to be a TURN. I want it to feel like an event. I don't want to shoot with one unit and then it's over.
AA in 2k point game would feel as stupid to me as a one down football game. Turnover, turnover, turnover and nobody gets to feel like they made a drive.
That's my opinion; you are entitled to yours, and I don't begrudge you for it.
well I could go with alternating player turn if 40k would not be a "Combat Patrol sized" game by design that is blown up to sell more models
as long as the basic rules are "single model" based and not unit based AA is the better option for the game
NinthMusketeer wrote:Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.
the same you have now with 1 army standing still and waiting 1" away from the enemy to get killed until the other army is done
"realistic" would be a reaction based system, as if a unit fullfilled any action, every models within a reaction range would be allowed to react
but without, alternate activations have the same amount of unrealims als alternate phases and alternate turns
A reaction based system could work very well.
Already I don't have any direct experience with such a system to imagine how that would work as applied to 40k.
Basically, the fact that one player can apply all their firepower from their entire army at an opposing player's entire army with no chance to respond until their turn creates a massively lopsided experience that basically requires the game board to have a giant 2-foot wall in the middle of it to prevent 50% casualties turn 1 being the norm.
If you play AA, the game being over near the end of turn 3 you hardly even notice, because both players got to do stuff and act.
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Karol wrote: That sounds very interesting. And it should work well for both high and low number models armies.
It did work pretty well.
One thing I forgot to mention: Units in Reserves are all considered to be within 6" of each other, but any units activated together from reserves must be deployed within 6" of each other.
So you can have your Jump Pack Captain bring in 3 assault squads together as one activation in the movement phase if you want (More useful in the Charge and Shooting phase tbh)
This didn't come up, but thinking about it now there could be a problem of a charging character in the Fight phase being able to snag other units that had not charged and get them to fight before they should be able to. Maybe that would be a problem, maybe it would not be, certainly you can make the argument hat characters would be able to 'rally the men' to fight? Certainly the Fight phase felt a LOT more interactive when both players were actually alternating because both players actually had units that had charged.
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kirotheavenger wrote: A reaction based system could work very well.
Already I don't have any direct experience with such a system to imagine how that would work as applied to 40k.
Honestly I've found a lot of the 'rules improvements' in infinity to be a bit overhyped.
I've come to really hate the structure of "have a bunch of units that literally do nothing and stand around providing Orders so you can activate your big super special guy/unit 12 times in a turn" and I found both the fact that it's a D20 system and the concept of ARO's to be overhyped in the amount of impact they tend to have.
An ARO matters in Infinity about as much (In my experience, anyway) as often as a clutch heroic intervention, stratagem, or close combat action on your opponent's turn in 40k.
And the fact that it's a D20 system is HEAVILY diluted by the fact that the die shifts by 3 seemingly 85% of the time. So its like "Pfff, D6s what is this fething CANDYLAND dude, shifting probability by 17%? We use D20s here, we do shift by 3 a whole lot meaning that probability changes by 15% most of the time..."
PenitentJake wrote: I totally get why people like AA. I wish they could understand why I like IGOUGO. But instead of trying to empathize, and see the game through someone else's eyes, and just going, "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Not my cup of tea, but I can see what you like about it," they typically double down and try to convince me that my own personal preferences are wrong, and that there's only supposed to be one way to play the game, and that way, of course is their way. And they'll talk about how if you don't like AA, you must not know anything about game design and it goes on for twenty or so pages.
So AA lovers: I get you. You're not wrong; there are things that are great about AA.
I still prefer my 40k to be IGOUGO. It wouldn't feel like 40k to me if it wasn't, because I've played since '89 and it's ALWAYS been IGOUGO. Don't let that stop any of you from liking your game your way. This is why I was happy for OP; they've got a group who likes the same thing they do, and they took matters into their own hands and made it work for them. And if GW did change 40k to an AA game in 10th, like I said, as long as they keep Crusade, I'd be willing to give it an honest, open minded try. If they ditch Crusade in 10th, then I'll just keep playing 9th, because Crusade is pretty much everything I've ever wanted from 40k.
Fair enough, I get where you're coming from. While I feel AA makes for a better game, I don't have any problem with people who just prefer IGOUGO.
I do take issue with people arguing for why AA is mechanically worse, such as:
If interactivity: you don’t need AA. Just faster players and snappy games. This is a on the player base to learn the rules. In fact AA would slow games down and cause the same issue you’re trying to fix since you can never plan. You move to accomplish a goal then they move to counter it. Now you’ll have a bunch of extra wasted time.
If speed: see above. It will not speed the game up in any way.
Alpha Strike: not likely to be helped. Probably worsen the issue. Not to mention that alpha strikes are blown out of proportion. This also cringe to mind what you mean by AA even? Move move shoot shoot? That’s the worst solution: now player two alphas player one harder than currently.
Respectfully, this really sounds like a 40K player who doesn't have much experience with non-GW wargames.
Playing faster doesn't increase the interaction tempo of the game, you just play it to conclusion quicker. It's still the same limited five turns of interaction points, with uninterrupted activity during a turn. 'Interactivity' isn't just about how long you spend sitting and doing nothing, it's also about how much the armies get to interact and respond to one another over the course of the game. And if you're going to say it's on the player base to learn the rules, my experience has been that with players who know the game, AA doesn't slow it down to any noticeable degree.
Also, alpha strike absolutely is reduced by any sort of alternating activation or reaction system. The idea that it might be worse doesn't make any sense. Your opponent has the ability to respond after you engage with a single unit; they don't have to sit there and get shot by your whole army before they can respond, and can prioritize your units that have yet to fire. Outside of pure AA, reaction systems often provide the ability for a unit to move in response to fire (typically at the cost of activity later), mitigating early-game lethality on a board with sufficient cover.
I mean, there are good reasons virtually all successful wargames in the last twenty years have used AA elements- either AA by unit or phase, or reactions within an IGOUGO framework.
Bitharne wrote: Are we doing one unit full activation? Now the armies that already have intrinsic issues can never win. Marines will always be forced to move valuable units first against most armies due to activation economy. See necromunda for the delay game on first important move.
There are a million and one ways to address this. Proportional activation a la Bolt Action, mechanics to allow armies to interfere with the activation order, reserved actions (which makes having smaller forces a significant advantage) are the big three. In Dust, having the smaller force makes you more likely to win the initiative, which is a significant advantage as it gives you the ability to go first and still react later, while your opponent's reactions come at the cost of their later activation. This gives smaller, more elite forces more opportunity to seize the initiative, act, and react- it fits Space Marines perfectly.
I really don't understand this common thread of '[broad mechanic] wouldn't work, see: [extremely specific implementation of mechanic]'.
Bitharne wrote: Furthermore; people stated rolling off for active vs reactive...this would create double turns ala AoS right? That’s the single mechanic making that game unworthy of a real competitive scene.
No, double turns in AoS are a product of IGOUGO within a randomized round system meaning that one force can act, in its entirety, twice in a row without response. Rolling to see who performs a single activation first (in a pure AA system) or who goes first within each phase is much, much less impactful. It gives one player the initiative, but that can be detrimental rather than beneficial.
Bitharne wrote: You can’t design a game like 40k to work with it I’m afraid
Andy Chambers wanted to do exactly that for 4th Ed. GW corporate said no. He left and designed Starship Troopers, then went on to design Dust. They're 40K-like games with effective reaction systems. Apocalypse has AA. Grimdark Future has AA. It's really not that hard to make a large-scale wargame use AA.
Yeah, I'll be honest to folks, it's actually really easy to try.
Here's the system we used in more of a formalized setup:
Heroic Alternating Activation System
Proceed as normal through list-building, mission setup, secondary objective selection, and deployment. At the point where the players typically roll off and the winner takes the first turn, instead the winner is the first Active Player.
The Battle Round then progresses as normal through the Movement, Psychic, Shooting, Charge, and Fight phases, but rather than one player performing all their actions, players alternate activating units until neither player has any units that can activate during that phase.
A player may choose to activate any unit they control so long as they may act during that phase. Units that cannot act during a given phase (immobile units during the Movement phase, units that are not yet on the battlefield during the Shooting phase, non-psyker units during the Psychic phase, etc) may not be activated, and players may not pass if they have any units that can still activate.
If in any phase a CHARACTER keyword unit is selected, the controlling player may either choose to activate them alone as normal, or to activate that CHARACTER and all friendly units within 6" that can also act that phase (this can include other CHARACTER keyword units, but those units may not then activate other nearby units). All activated units' actions can then be resolved by their player in any order they desire.
Units not yet on the battlefield who would be activated in the Reinforcements step may only be selected after all units currently on the battlefield have moved in the movement phase.
In the Fight phase, all units that performed a Charge move or who have a rule stating that they always fight first must be activated before any other units may be activated.
Any rules that reference "your turn" or "the controlling players turn" may be used during any of that player's activations, and conversely any rules that reference "your opponent's turn" may be used during any of your opponent's activations. Any rules that reference the beginning of a player's phase take effect the first time that player activates a unit or must pass in that phase (e.g. a psychic power that expires at the beginning of the controlling player's next psychic phase). Any rules that reference the end of a player's phase take effect when they must pass during that phase.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.
Don't know why it pains you to suggest it though. People have been pushing AA for 40k for years, there is nothing new about the sentiment.
Unfortunately, I feel this is the way 40k has to go with the way it is going. If it wants to be like Warmachine, with all of its buffs, auras, debuffs etc. then it needs to have the same turn structure was Warmachine. It is still IGOUGO, but you activate unit by unit as you describe above (if you don't know already). This is crucial for positioning and the order you activate things in is an art form all in itself. 40k wants to have its cake and eat it with all of these stacking things, but none of the tactical nuance that comes with games that do that.
You want to buff that unit? Well, you'd best activate the support character first to get them in range; but that support character is blocked in his movement by another unit which is in melee. etc etc.
Although, as for AA in 40k? I'll keep tilting at this windmill, but there is already a game that is very much like 40k with AA (and D10s too!), as you can see there the rules are free- It might be hard to swallow for some people, but minis can be game system agnostic. The rules are right there already to play 40k with AA (and D10s, it's BCBs wet dream!).
The scotsman's approach is pretty similar to what we've tinkered with.
I've also experimented with something more reminiscent of Epic. Basically works as follows:
(1) Each battle round, players roll off for the initiative. The player that wins choses to seize the initiative or give it to their opponent.
(2) Movement: The player with initiative moves all of their forces. Then the player without moves all of their forces.
(3) Shooting Phase, First Fire. Players alternate activating units to fire with units that did move. Casualties are removed/applied AFTER all players have finished first fire.
(4) Shoot Phase, Normal Fire. Players alternate shooting with units that moved. Casualties are removed after your opponents next firing activation (this means that Unit A can shoot unit B, and if player B activates unit B to shoot with next, the casualties unit B suffered from unit A would only apply after they resolve their shooting). Makes for more of a simultaneous fire simulation.
(5) Charge - players alternate declaring and resolving charges, starting with the player with the initiative.
(6) Fight phase, players alternate choosing units to fight with, as per normal.
My thing with alternating activations isn't that I think it would ruin the game or something like that, but it would completely change the game. People have already touched on it a bit, but to implement that kind of change would require a total revamp of essentially all of the game's rules to make it work in the world of alternating activations. That game and that world may be really fun for some people, but I already have a lot of fun with the current format. I would just hate to lose the current game.
Player A move
Player B move
(proceeding turn Player B move then Player A)
Players roll off to activate units to shoot or advance ether 1 by 1 or by detachments. If you advance or move into enemy units you immediately fight (no charge phase) (psychic done in shooting phase)
I think I like the detachment activation the best. The way you make it balanced is by forcing players to split their army into 3 equalish points detachments. You could even add things like an imitative value to units to add up for a bonus on your roll to see who acts first.
Mezmorki wrote: The scotsman's approach is pretty similar to what we've tinkered with.
I've also experimented with something more reminiscent of Epic. Basically works as follows:
(1) Each battle round, players roll off for the initiative. The player that wins choses to seize the initiative or give it to their opponent.
(2) Movement: The player with initiative moves all of their forces. Then the player without moves all of their forces.
(3) Shooting Phase, First Fire. Players alternate activating units to fire with units that did move. Casualties are removed/applied AFTER all players have finished first fire.
(4) Shoot Phase, Normal Fire. Players alternate shooting with units that moved. Casualties are removed after your opponents next firing activation (this means that Unit A can shoot unit B, and if player B activates unit B to shoot with next, the casualties unit B suffered from unit A would only apply after they resolve their shooting). Makes for more of a simultaneous fire simulation.
(5) Charge - players alternate declaring and resolving charges, starting with the player with the initiative.
(6) Fight phase, players alternate choosing units to fight with, as per normal.
This is similar to how Kill Team works, and I don't think it works at all. In fact I have to say it's by far my most hated method of activation.
The player that goes second has essentially total control of the game.
1. If they don't want to get shot at, they can just move out of LoS.
2. If they think they're better at shooting that you, they can just stay still and shoot you first.
3. If they don't want to get charged, they can just back up out of range.
4. If they want any shooting to be at a particular range, they can just move to make that a reality.
The first player is almost entirely at the mercy of the second player and it's super super lame.
If you make players assign rough orders (like first fire, advance, charge, etc) secretly before the turn you at least mitigate that somewhat. But the problem is still there, and assigning orders brings problems of its own.
kirotheavenger wrote: ...This is similar to how Kill Team works, and I don't think it works at all. In fact I have to say it's by far my most hated method of activation.
The player that goes second has essentially total control of the game.
1. If they don't want to get shot at, they can just move out of LoS.
2. If they think they're better at shooting that you, they can just stay still and shoot you first.
3. If they don't want to get charged, they can just back up out of range.
4. If they want any shooting to be at a particular range, they can just move to make that a reality.
The first player is almost entirely at the mercy of the second player and it's super super lame.
If you make players assign rough orders (like first fire, advance, charge, etc) secretly before the turn you at least mitigate that somewhat. But the problem is still there, and assigning orders brings problems of its own.
LotR has a few key differences that mitigate the second player's ability to control the game:
-Priority rolls (as Grimtuff mentioned), so one player isn't the second player for the whole game.
-Charge in movement, so the second player can't back up out of charge range.
-Strict controls on moving and shooting (weapons are either move-or-fire or move-half-to-fire, so the fastest anyone can ever go and make any shooting attacks is 5"), so if someone's backing up and shooting the other side is still capable of closing the distance.
Mud Turkey 13 wrote: My thing with alternating activations isn't that I think it would ruin the game or something like that, but it would completely change the game. People have already touched on it a bit, but to implement that kind of change would require a total revamp of essentially all of the game's rules to make it work in the world of alternating activations. That game and that world may be really fun for some people, but I already have a lot of fun with the current format. I would just hate to lose the current game.
Not so much changes to the rules as to folks strategies. Biggest changes with AA concerns handling Assault - one you figure that out, everything else works pretty easily with only a couple minor changes. I've played several 40K games using a kit-bashed AA system and it works pretty well.
Grimdark Future handles assault by saying each unit gets to fight once per turn, and if it has to fight after that it only hits on 6s. Not a perfect solution but reasonably good.
Anecdotally, we found pretty much everything to be so deadly that having a shared fight phase was virtually identical to having there be a theoretical possibility of fighting in your opponent's turn IF they didn't fall back and IF you didn't just murder everything already in the first round of combat.
The distinction between having 1 fight phase and 2 fight phases between turns potentially maybe sometimes didn't ever come up.
I wouldn't mind alterative activation, if the game was built for it. But, I don't like the idea of trying to shoehorn it into an existing game. I'm happy with the turn structure 40k has, it's been a staple of the game. I wouldn't want to see that change.
This is similar to how Kill Team works, and I don't think it works at all. In fact I have to say it's by far my most hated method of activation.
The player that goes second has essentially total control of the game.
1. If they don't want to get shot at, they can just move out of LoS.
2. If they think they're better at shooting that you, they can just stay still and shoot you first.
3. If they don't want to get charged, they can just back up out of range.
4. If they want any shooting to be at a particular range, they can just move to make that a reality.
The first player is almost entirely at the mercy of the second player and it's super super lame.
If you make players assign rough orders (like first fire, advance, charge, etc) secretly before the turn you at least mitigate that somewhat. But the problem is still there, and assigning orders brings problems of its own.
The player with the initiative gets to set the tempo, which is important. If I advance on you (as the first player) and you decide to move back (out of LoS), it may very well be the case that you just moved away from an objective and gave me free reign to sit there and not even have to take incoming fire (from the unit that moved out of sight).
If you're better at shooting and standstill to fire first, then you're at the mercy of return fire later on, or are left in a closer position and more likely to be charged, etc.. In cases where both sides move and shoot, the player with initiative gets to shoot first. If you shoot at someone at a range where they can't shoot you back, then it's a definite advantage for the player with initiative going first - again setting the tempo.
Honestly, I think the nature of objectives and scoring is such that players are going to end up needing to move up the field either way. And with movement and ranges as they are, things are going to happen still. If you're using units to cower and hide out of sight, they probably aren't really participating in the fight and I'm not sure it's a winning strategy.
This is similar to how Kill Team works, and I don't think it works at all. In fact I have to say it's by far my most hated method of activation.
The player that goes second has essentially total control of the game.
1. If they don't want to get shot at, they can just move out of LoS.
2. If they think they're better at shooting that you, they can just stay still and shoot you first.
3. If they don't want to get charged, they can just back up out of range.
4. If they want any shooting to be at a particular range, they can just move to make that a reality.
The first player is almost entirely at the mercy of the second player and it's super super lame.
If you make players assign rough orders (like first fire, advance, charge, etc) secretly before the turn you at least mitigate that somewhat. But the problem is still there, and assigning orders brings problems of its own.
The player with the initiative gets to set the tempo, which is important. If I advance on you (as the first player) and you decide to move back (out of LoS), it may very well be the case that you just moved away from an objective and gave me free reign to sit there and not even have to take incoming fire (from the unit that moved out of sight).
If you're better at shooting and standstill to fire first, then you're at the mercy of return fire later on, or are left in a closer position and more likely to be charged, etc.. In cases where both sides move and shoot, the player with initiative gets to shoot first. If you shoot at someone at a range where they can't shoot you back, then it's a definite advantage for the player with initiative going first - again setting the tempo.
Honestly, I think the nature of objectives and scoring is such that players are going to end up needing to move up the field either way. And with movement and ranges as they are, things are going to happen still. If you're using units to cower and hide out of sight, they probably aren't really participating in the fight and I'm not sure it's a winning strategy.
I disagree, if it isn't in player B's interest to move back, they just wouldn't. The ball is literally entirely in their court.
Shooting first isn't a significant benefit at all, firstly because it's only 1 unit. Secondly, if Player A has to move to set up a shot, Player B can just match it by standing still and getting First Fire.
The best Player A can hope to do is force Player B to make a decision, but all the decisions are B's to make.
catbarf wrote: Andy Chambers wanted to do exactly that for 4th Ed. GW corporate said no.
You got a source on that? I'd love to read about it.
Can’t find a source ring now, but it is fairly well known that the rules for Mongoose’s Starship Troopers game is what Chambers wanted for 40k.
When he left GW he used those concepts he already laid out to make SST. 40k’s own rules from 3rd to 7th are essentially based on a 15mm WW2 game that Rick Priestley was working on that he bodged into 3rd Ed at the last minute. If Chambers and Priestley got their way, 40k would be incredibly different.
I’ve been working on my set up for AA... incursion level to 1500 it seems to work okay... really simple solve too... I just put down a different coloured dice next to each unit as a phase token... each unit can spend 1 token per phase, and cannot spend another token until all units have spent the same number... as for abilities that work at the end of “X phase”, simply perform the required phase and get your bonus... if it’s important you’ll prioritise it ☺️
GamerGuy wrote: I’ve been working on my set up for AA... incursion level to 1500 it seems to work okay... really simple solve too... I just put down a different coloured dice next to each unit as a phase token... each unit can spend 1 token per phase, and cannot spend another token until all units have spent the same number... as for abilities that work at the end of “X phase”, simply perform the required phase and get your bonus... if it’s important you’ll prioritise it ☺️
To make sure I understand, when you activate a unit you can choose for it to act as if it were in a phase of your choosing? So each unit can activate the phases in an order of your choosing?
So for example;
I activate my Devastators and have them shoot.
My opponent does something.
I activate my Assault Marines and have them charge.
My opponent does something.
Now every unit as activated once, I can activate my Assault Marines again and have them fight.
Correct?
Mezmorki wrote: The scotsman's approach is pretty similar to what we've tinkered with.
I've also experimented with something more reminiscent of Epic. Basically works as follows:
(1) Each battle round, players roll off for the initiative. The player that wins choses to seize the initiative or give it to their opponent.
(2) Movement: The player with initiative moves all of their forces. Then the player without moves all of their forces.
(3) Shooting Phase, First Fire. Players alternate activating units to fire with units that did move. Casualties are removed/applied AFTER all players have finished first fire.
(4) Shoot Phase, Normal Fire. Players alternate shooting with units that moved. Casualties are removed after your opponents next firing activation (this means that Unit A can shoot unit B, and if player B activates unit B to shoot with next, the casualties unit B suffered from unit A would only apply after they resolve their shooting). Makes for more of a simultaneous fire simulation.
(5) Charge - players alternate declaring and resolving charges, starting with the player with the initiative.
(6) Fight phase, players alternate choosing units to fight with, as per normal.
the couple of games i tried AA, i did something similar to this except our phases were :
We put shooting and charging together because this system made melee basically impossible to reach since the opponent would just unload their whole army in the unit that was positionned to charge in. This also removed the "double action" that some units can do (shoot real guns and fight in the same turn).
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Mud Turkey 13 wrote: My thing with alternating activations isn't that I think it would ruin the game or something like that, but it would completely change the game. People have already touched on it a bit, but to implement that kind of change would require a total revamp of essentially all of the game's rules to make it work in the world of alternating activations. That game and that world may be really fun for some people, but I already have a lot of fun with the current format. I would just hate to lose the current game.
It really doesn't take much changes honestly, even with very little changes most strategies would still exist, even the "stack 20 buffs on a unit" that some posters seem to think would be invalidated by AA.
The thing is GW has never had a different system as far as I am aware and if they did make such a massive change to the rules and method of then really it’s a different game isn’t it. But they could put out a second official play style.
I always have thought that’s if both players omcpleted each phase at the same time. I’ve seen a lot of player complain that 40K can be over in the first round. But it would make it more realistic if one player moved all their units, then the other player moved in response
I think the partial AA system of Kill Team works well enough. There are also "strats" like decisive move/shot which allow you to act before your opponent even if you didn't win the advantage that round, and since the charges occur during the movement phase, you cannot back out of a charge just by moving second.
However, 40K is its own game so just swittching it to use KillTeam's partial AA is not going to work without collateral damage.
I'd love it if 40K used more AA aspects in its rules. Its boring to watch your opponent play out his full turn and all you do is roll a few saves here and there. When the game turn is shared, it keeps both players more engaged to the action. Feels good man
I don't buy the argument that 40k has always been this way, so it needs to stay this way.
40k has "always had" loads of different rules that are now not a thing. 40k is popular for many reasons, quality rules is not one of them.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.
Don't know why it pains you to suggest it though. People have been pushing AA for 40k for years, there is nothing new about the sentiment.
Unfortunately, I feel this is the way 40k has to go with the way it is going. If it wants to be like Warmachine, with all of its buffs, auras, debuffs etc. then it needs to have the same turn structure was Warmachine. It is still IGOUGO, but you activate unit by unit as you describe above (if you don't know already). This is crucial for positioning and the order you activate things in is an art form all in itself. 40k wants to have its cake and eat it with all of these stacking things, but none of the tactical nuance that comes with games that do that.
You want to buff that unit? Well, you'd best activate the support character first to get them in range; but that support character is blocked in his movement by another unit which is in melee. etc etc.
Although, as for AA in 40k? I'll keep tilting at this windmill, but there is already a game that is very much like 40k with AA (and D10s too!), as you can see there the rules are free- It might be hard to swallow for some people, but minis can be game system agnostic. The rules are right there already to play 40k with AA (and D10s, it's BCBs wet dream!).
That's great--do those rules come with an active local community where I can easily join a league or find pick up games every week? Because that has more to do with what game people play than anything. There are a lot of wargames I would LIKE to play, but in practice I will take a flawed rule system with players over a great rule system without them.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.
Don't know why it pains you to suggest it though. People have been pushing AA for 40k for years, there is nothing new about the sentiment.
Unfortunately, I feel this is the way 40k has to go with the way it is going. If it wants to be like Warmachine, with all of its buffs, auras, debuffs etc. then it needs to have the same turn structure was Warmachine. It is still IGOUGO, but you activate unit by unit as you describe above (if you don't know already). This is crucial for positioning and the order you activate things in is an art form all in itself. 40k wants to have its cake and eat it with all of these stacking things, but none of the tactical nuance that comes with games that do that.
You want to buff that unit? Well, you'd best activate the support character first to get them in range; but that support character is blocked in his movement by another unit which is in melee. etc etc.
Although, as for AA in 40k? I'll keep tilting at this windmill, but there is already a game that is very much like 40k with AA (and D10s too!), as you can see there the rules are free- It might be hard to swallow for some people, but minis can be game system agnostic. The rules are right there already to play 40k with AA (and D10s, it's BCBs wet dream!).
That's great--do those rules come with an active local community where I can easily join a league or find pick up games every week? Because that has more to do with what game people play than anything. There are a lot of wargames I would LIKE to play, but in practice I will take a flawed rule system with players over a great rule system without them.
Well, obviously it does not. It did 20-odd years ago when Void came out. I was merely pointing out how, for all of these people clamouring for 40k to have AA, D10s (or both!) there is already a set of rules out there for said people to try in their groups. Put their (proverbial) money where their mouths are as it were. There is literally no investment to try it. You have minis, you have the free rules. If the existing group wants to give it a go for a couple of games, nothing is lost.
tauist wrote: However, 40K is its own game so just swittching it to use KillTeam's partial AA is not going to work without collateral damage.
Doubtful. AoS 1.0 was a joke (and in the case of some special rules, a literal, actual joke) and it managed to shoot to the position of second most popular wargame just by virtue of GW pushing it.
If 10th edition introduced AA I imagine most of the detractors of it would be singing from the rooftops that going with AA was genius and any grogs who prefer IGUG should get with the times. If GW says jump, the fandom asks how high. What're they going to do, go play another company's game? Bwahahahahaha...
Anyway, I support AA. There's a reason pretty much every new game now uses it and IGUG is reserved for systems which, much like 40k, just 'always had it'.
GW made significant changes to the rules of AoS when they first released the General's Handbook, ostensibly 'matched play' rules but they were used universally because they made the game far more functional.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.
Don't know why it pains you to suggest it though. People have been pushing AA for 40k for years, there is nothing new about the sentiment.
Unfortunately, I feel this is the way 40k has to go with the way it is going. If it wants to be like Warmachine, with all of its buffs, auras, debuffs etc. then it needs to have the same turn structure was Warmachine. It is still IGOUGO, but you activate unit by unit as you describe above (if you don't know already). This is crucial for positioning and the order you activate things in is an art form all in itself. 40k wants to have its cake and eat it with all of these stacking things, but none of the tactical nuance that comes with games that do that.
You want to buff that unit? Well, you'd best activate the support character first to get them in range; but that support character is blocked in his movement by another unit which is in melee. etc etc.
Although, as for AA in 40k? I'll keep tilting at this windmill, but there is already a game that is very much like 40k with AA (and D10s too!), as you can see there the rules are free- It might be hard to swallow for some people, but minis can be game system agnostic. The rules are right there already to play 40k with AA (and D10s, it's BCBs wet dream!).
That's great--do those rules come with an active local community where I can easily join a league or find pick up games every week? Because that has more to do with what game people play than anything. There are a lot of wargames I would LIKE to play, but in practice I will take a flawed rule system with players over a great rule system without them.
Well, obviously it does not. It did 20-odd years ago when Void came out. I was merely pointing out how, for all of these people clamouring for 40k to have AA, D10s (or both!) there is already a set of rules out there for said people to try in their groups. Put their (proverbial) money where their mouths are as it were. There is literally no investment to try it. You have minis, you have the free rules. If the existing group wants to give it a go for a couple of games, nothing is lost.
Easier said than done I'm afraid. Both in terms of convincing people to try it and in giving it a reasonable trial. Getting multiple people to learn a new set of rules then play multiple games with those rules to the point of understanding them is a matter of weeks at the least. During that period people are losing out on regular 40k games with their limited time to play, not to mention if there is a league going on and they want to do games in that. If it really was as simple as whipping out some alternate rules and giving them a whirl people would be far more willing to do it.
I have done it though, in AoS. I came up with alternate-by-phase rules simple enough that they could be explained to someone during deployment and they would have enough understanding to use them by the time the game started. Once the effort required to learn the new system was eliminated people were more than happy to give it a go.
mrFickle wrote: The thing is GW has never had a different system as far as I am aware and if they did make such a massive change to the rules and method of then really it’s a different game isn’t it. But they could put out a second official play style.
I always have thought that’s if both players omcpleted each phase at the same time. I’ve seen a lot of player complain that 40K can be over in the first round. But it would make it more realistic if one player moved all their units, then the other player moved in response
All four editions of Epic have been alternate activation of some flavour (although some of them split it up by phase). I prefer Epic 40,000 and Epic Armageddon's way of doing it rather than the order counters used in 1st and 2nd edition Space Marine - they're fiddly, take ages to place and tidy up, and look ugly). I think Man O' War also had some form of alternate or simultaneous activation, too.
As for changing the rules, they did that with Epic, from 2nd edition Space Marine/Titan Legions to Epic 40,000, and everyone complained.
Since Infinity and Starship Troopers have been mentioned, it's worth pointing out that SST's reaction rules were in place long before Corvus Belli started making 28mm spacemen instead of 15mm vikings.
Oh! That squad of 30 Conscripts 11" away from my Intercessors passed their Order roll earlier - let's thin their numbers before they fire!
The enemy just moved to the objective with a squad of Scouts, so let's move our Infantry Squad just close enough to get ObSec before the turn is over.
The Stalker is in a prime position to hit at least one of my Valkyries - I think I'll hit it with the Macharius Vanquisher before it fires next activation!
catbarf wrote: Andy Chambers wanted to do exactly that for 4th Ed. GW corporate said no.
You got a source on that? I'd love to read about it.
Can’t find a source ring now, but it is fairly well known that the rules for Mongoose’s Starship Troopers game is what Chambers wanted for 40k.
When he left GW he used those concepts he already laid out to make SST. 40k’s own rules from 3rd to 7th are essentially based on a 15mm WW2 game that Rick Priestley was working on that he bodged into 3rd Ed at the last minute. If Chambers and Priestley got their way, 40k would be incredibly different.
Priestly also is cowriter of Bolt Action...
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mrFickle wrote: The thing is GW has never had a different system as far as I am aware and if they did make such a massive change to the rules and method of then really it’s a different game isn’t it. But they could put out a second official play style.
Excuse me, have you never seen how dramatically the game changed between 2E to 3E and the amount of change between 7E and 8E?
Slayer6 wrote: Oh! That squad of 30 Conscripts 11" away from my Intercessors passed their Order roll earlier - let's thin their numbers before they fire!
The enemy just moved to the objective with a squad of Scouts, so let's move our Infantry Squad just close enough to get ObSec before the turn is over.
The Stalker is in a prime position to hit at least one of my Valkyries - I think I'll hit it with the Macharius Vanquisher before it fires next activation!
...
Appealing in theory, not in practice...
The thing is, you can do this exact thing back to your opponent. I mean, that's obvious right?
If one is going to change the turn structure of the game, then it would be reasonable to conclude that such changes would affect the order and sequencing of actions. That's the whole point. If you don't want to change the order and sequence of the actions, then why would one bother pursuing a change to the turn structure.
I mean, in the current rules... you opponent could move their 30 conscripts into 11" and fire at your unit too. And their tanks, and artillery, and their entire army before you'd have a chance to shoot with your intercessors!
Slayer6 wrote: Oh! That squad of 30 Conscripts 11" away from my Intercessors passed their Order roll earlier - let's thin their numbers before they fire!
The enemy just moved to the objective with a squad of Scouts, so let's move our Infantry Squad just close enough to get ObSec before the turn is over.
The Stalker is in a prime position to hit at least one of my Valkyries - I think I'll hit it with the Macharius Vanquisher before it fires next activation!
...
Appealing in theory, not in practice...
Yeah, you just described why people ask for AA, it gives opportunities for counterplay unlike IGOUGO
Alternating activations works fine in Kill Team. It worked fine in Epic 40k. It works fine in every game of other types that I've tried that uses it.
Would it take a major redesign for some balance issues? Sure. Would it be worthwhile to create a more engaging, more strategic, and more modern game?
Yes, I think it would. The main thing I dislike about Kill Team, as a matter of fact, is the IGOUGO movement phase that can completely determine how a game is going to turn out with a single role.
AA also helps mitigate the effect of the going first advantage, because now its down to a single unit (or set of units however you do it) going first, rather than my entire army getting to blast and charge your entire army (potentially reducing you by 10 to 20%) before you can even react.
Slayer6 wrote: Oh! That squad of 30 Conscripts 11" away from my Intercessors passed their Order roll earlier - let's thin their numbers before they fire!
The enemy just moved to the objective with a squad of Scouts, so let's move our Infantry Squad just close enough to get ObSec before the turn is over.
The Stalker is in a prime position to hit at least one of my Valkyries - I think I'll hit it with the Macharius Vanquisher before it fires next activation!
...
Appealing in theory, not in practice...
"Ah, I see it is my turn first. My strategy will be that ALL my things, MY ENTIRE ARMY, and kill a solid 500-750pts of your stuff before you ever get to move, take psychic tests, shoot, charge or score with it."
Appealing in....no...nevermind, that does seem to just suck.
If it was full AA instead of by phase I think it'd be better to take a bunch of tiny chaff units to activate while the bulk of my army remained hidden, then once my opponent had gone with his whole army jump the real units out to gank him.
Maybe elite armies would get multiple activations per phase to balance it. Like lets say a knight would have 3, but a unit of grots would have 1 . It could even help with making vehicle unit different from just taking them as solo. A LR would have 1 activation, but if you took 3 in one unit they would get 3 activations.
Karol wrote: Maybe elite armies would get multiple activations per phase to balance it. Like lets say a knight would have 3, but a unit of grots would have 1 . It could even help with making vehicle unit different from just taking them as solo. A LR would have 1 activation, but if you took 3 in one unit they would get 3 activations.
considering concentration of action is also something you want, AND the corresponding power of elite formations, i doubt that to be necessary. Karol.
Karol wrote: For all the armies writen by GW in a such a way they that only function, if they go through a whole turn of buffing, debuffing, casting etc An AA system would require a house rewrite of those armies codex rules.
It makes stuff like deep strike unusable for anything other then grabing objectives and staying out of LoS, again hurting factions where use deep strike as their deployment/movment method.
Maybe it is possible to make w40k a good AA system, but it would took years to rewrite the rules for all or even most w40k factions.
It's almost like dropping right next to all your opponents in entrenched positions is dangerous and that they aren't just going to stand around and wait for you to do everything.
Epic Armageddon is a great game with a really good alternating activation system. You can attempt to activate more than one unit when it is your turn, but there is a risk that your unit will do nothing that turn rather than simply activate later.
Teleport is the deep strike in epic armageddon. You place your units at the start of the turn and then alternating activation begins. It forces you to deploy tactically rather than putting your whole army anywhere you like.
Great discussion everyone! Thanks for all of the different ideas - we will definitely try a few out when it is safe to do so again.
Just wanted to touch on why I said "it pains me to say..."
I hate rules disputes, I hate grey areas, and I hate arguing with people in order to gain a competitive edge in a game. If I win, I want to win because of the game itself, not because I used language to twist a confused situation to unfold in my favour.
The answer may be "then 40k is not the game for you!" And thats probably true! Unfortunately tabletop wargaming is an incredibly niche hobby. It may seem to be the world to many of us, but it is really a small community and 40k is the monolith. Knowing the rules of 40k and playing 40k is really the best/only way to get a lot of tabletop wargames under the belt.
I wait patiently for the return of Warhammer Fantasy Battle - but that seems years down the road. So for now, I dig my heels in and search for way in which the 40k rule system may be improved.
Alpha strikes, amped up by a shoot twice strategem (which most factions have), remains the biggest culprit of removing interesting gameplay options. Sticking a giant rock in the middle of the board to block LOS works, but it does not solve the underlying problem.
Everyone discusses the extreme lethality of units in 40k - AA inherently solves that issue by forcing players to choose how to target and distribute damage, rather than simply alpha as hard as they can right away. Alpha striking remains the best strategy - period, because if successful you cripple your opponent and they cannot ever catch up again.
NinthMusketeer wrote: If it was full AA instead of by phase I think it'd be better to take a bunch of tiny chaff units to activate while the bulk of my army remained hidden, then once my opponent had gone with his whole army jump the real units out to gank him.
Oh man imperial/chaos knights would be a hoot.
In many implementations, that means the now-depleted-by-indirect-fire unit jumps out into the waiting guns of an entire army's worth of units on overwatch, and is killed in the crossfire before it can blink. Readied actions/opportunity fire/overwatch is one of the more popular ways to address exploitation of the activation order.
In others, a unit that comes under attack might be able to react with a limited action. Units that have already activated often get a single reaction for free, while units that have yet to activate can react, but at the cost of part of their activation this turn. So, your unit pops out to do the ganking, and the enemy either returns fire or scurries into cover. This incentivizes you to activate your star units early, so that they can both fight early and still be able to react later.
In some, your units are allocated into formations that activate as a group. You may not have the option to put all your star units in one formation, and if you do, your opponent knows exactly what to target before you have the opportunity to activate. Losing a formation leader can mean running the risk of failing to activate normally, limiting your activity. Putting all your eggs in one command-and-control basket magnifies their strength, but also their vulnerability to disruption.
In a few, you don't even get to pick what order your units (or formations) activate in, and neither player knows which unit or formation will be activating next. I personally enjoy it as I find it an effective representation of Clausewitzian 'friction', but a lot of wargamers hate that degree of randomness.
Again, lots of ways to implement AA. Lots of lessons learned over the past thirty-ish years from the issues it introduces. Raw alternation with no reactions or deferred actions has problems of its own, it's just a step in the right direction. I'd be just as happy with IGOUGO with reactions.
Reactions like that can cause problems though.
Both players just setting their own whole army on Overwatch and daring their opponent to make the first move is a good example.
I know one game though, that gives every unit two actions.
When the unit activates, it must use all of it's remaining actions (1/2).
However, one unit per enemy action can interrupt, using one of it's own actions to return fire.
Like any rules, the exact implementation of AA has it's positives and negatives. Indeed, what you view as a positive or a negative may differ between different people.
In Necromunda, I would describe smaller, more elite gangs, having to activate first is a feature - not a bug.
Karol wrote: Maybe elite armies would get multiple activations per phase to balance it. Like lets say a knight would have 3, but a unit of grots would have 1 . It could even help with making vehicle unit different from just taking them as solo. A LR would have 1 activation, but if you took 3 in one unit they would get 3 activations.
Gates of Antares and Warlords of Erehwon (sci-fi and fantasy d10-based games written by Rick Priestly and using the Bolt Action activation system) actually covers this via Multiple Order Dice and Monster Dice, respectively.
Particularly powerful/expensive units like tanks or monsters add 2 or more dice to the bag and can be activated more than once in a turn.
Slayer6 wrote: Oh! That squad of 30 Conscripts 11" away from my Intercessors passed their Order roll earlier - let's thin their numbers before they fire!
The enemy just moved to the objective with a squad of Scouts, so let's move our Infantry Squad just close enough to get ObSec before the turn is over.
The Stalker is in a prime position to hit at least one of my Valkyries - I think I'll hit it with the Macharius Vanquisher before it fires next activation!
...
Appealing in theory, not in practice...
"Ah, I see it is my turn first. My strategy will be that ALL my things, MY ENTIRE ARMY, and kill a solid 500-750pts of your stuff before you ever get to move, take psychic tests, shoot, charge or score with it."
Appealing in....no...nevermind, that does seem to just suck.
500-750? That's a very conservative number... Try 40% to 60% instead...
I had a recent 2000pt game where a trio of Deathstrikes hidden right at the back behind a giant piece of terrain was able to practically eliminate 1400 points of Custodes on Turn 3...
But the best part is, that I know GW will never add an alternative activation system to their main game... So absolute alpha strike armies have nothing to worry about!
Because in the end, the biggest drawback to alternative actions is when you have armies with uneven unit counts. Such as an AM army of 35 units versus a Custodes army of 7 - when those 7 Custodes have had their actions for the turn, do they get additional actions, or do they simply sit there and take it as 28 other units get their own counter actions? How about 3 Knights versus 15 Tyranids?
If you decide to cycle additional activations amongst units which have already had their turn you can technically create imbalance... Disproportionate power, etc. Stormlord, vs Orks for instance:
Stormlord fires
Ork Shoota Boys Mob 1 fire
Stormlord fires
Ork Trukk 3 fires
Stormlord fires
Ork Shoota Boys Mob 2 fire
Karol wrote: Maybe elite armies would get multiple activations per phase to balance it. Like lets say a knight would have 3, but a unit of grots would have 1 . It could even help with making vehicle unit different from just taking them as solo. A LR would have 1 activation, but if you took 3 in one unit they would get 3 activations.
Having an Imperial Knight activate 3 times per turn sounds kind of crazy. The general point of elite units is that they are better than chaff or line units, and should be able to outfight them on their turns. If someone is going to such a skew that their entire list is only 3 or 4 activations, they should have a disadvantage in terms of maneuver and reaction: they are putting all their eggs in one basket. And even in that worst case scenario, its still better than current 40k with the foes entire army activating before you can do anything. Plus, unless those elite units are made of glass (which 40k, so fair enough I guess with how much damage armies can deal), they should be able to tank a few good hits even if caught out of position.
That said there are ways to mitigate it - as others said reaction moves/abilities exist in some systems, or perhaps the ability to defer an action till later in the turn under certain circumstances, or maybe certain elite units can add extra tiles into the action bag (for games where you draw randomly to determine who activates), and while you still have the same total number of activations, you can get a few extra draws and slightly more ability to pick WHEN you take your action.
Slayer6 wrote: ...Because in the end, the biggest drawback to alternative actions is when you have armies with uneven unit counts. Such as an AM army of 35 units versus a Custodes army of 7 - when those 7 Custodes have had their actions for the turn, do they get additional actions, or do they simply sit there and take it as 28 other units get their own counter actions? How about 3 Knights versus 15 Tyranids?...
I've worked on this a lot over the years. There are three fixes:
--Initiative system: Like in X-Wing. Players don't get to choose the order of their activations, they go in descending order of initiative. More expensive units get to go faster. Unfortunately, on the scale of 40k and given how GW designed the last "Initiative" system they had, what you'd effectively get is still player turns only the player with the more elite army always gets to go first.
--Random activations: Like in Bolt Action. Instead of switching off one to one you put a token for each unit or tokens for each player equal to the number of units they're using in a bag, then draw tokens to determine who gets to go next. This theoretically intersperses activations such that the player with more units remaining has greater odds of getting to go next, and stretches out the number of activations available to the player with fewer activations. In practice it still kind of breaks down with the kind of unit count disparity in 40k.
--Chunk activations: Like Epic. Before the game starts assign all units in both armies to the same/a similar number of "chunks", then alternate activating all units in one chunk rather than alternating one unit. This one's probably the easiest and most practical fix to apply to 40k, but I've yet to come across a wargame that uses it, which makes me nervous.
Gregor Samsa wrote: Great discussion everyone! Thanks for all of the different ideas - we will definitely try a few out when it is safe to do so again.
Just wanted to touch on why I said "it pains me to say..."
.......
Everyone discusses the extreme lethality of units in 40k - AA inherently solves that issue by forcing players to choose how to target and distribute damage, rather than simply alpha as hard as they can right away. Alpha striking remains the best strategy - period, because if successful you cripple your opponent and they cannot ever catch up again.
You might also want to look at THIS THREAD. In addition to the turn structure changes discussed here, I also think that there are some aspects of the game rules that could be changed (without having to throw out all the codexes) that would work to tone down the lethality issue in various ways.
I also think, as discussed at length in the recent threads about objectives and secondary scoring, the current mission design exacerbates the lethality question. In addition to fixing the core rules, the mission design I think also needs to be re-thought and made more diverse.
The challenge one runs up against when trying to convince people entrenched in the current edition of the game is that they often have a lot invested in their army. Changing rules is GOING to impact the relative value and effectiveness of units, and it's GOING to impact people's attitude towards changes when they feel their units of choice would be negatively impacted. I think the price to pay for critical adjustments to the rules, if it raises the potential for deeper gameplay, is worth having to rethink your army list from scratch.
Slayer6 wrote: Because in the end, the biggest drawback to alternative actions is when you have armies with uneven unit counts.
If alternating activation only worked for games with comparable unit counts, it wouldn't have come to be one of the most popular turn structures in wargaming. Check out my last post. There are lots of ways the issue you bring up has been addressed.
And I think you, and others, overestimate how much of a problem it is to begin with- being able to go early by having a smaller unit count is advantageous in its own right. I mean, in a game where currently going first is a significant advantage, why would anyone say 'oh no, my entire army gets to act before more than a quarter of my enemy's can'?
The number and significance of each activation would become a consideration when list building and playing.
I think this is a good thing, it adds some real decision making depth that ultimately comes down to more than "how many buffs can I stack".
Some armies like Knights or Custodes would struggle to achieve a large number of activations due to their expensive units, and that's fine.
There's always allies.
IMO factions like that shouldn't be a viable stand alone army anyway.
Slayer6 wrote: Oh! That squad of 30 Conscripts 11" away from my Intercessors passed their Order roll earlier - let's thin their numbers before they fire!
The enemy just moved to the objective with a squad of Scouts, so let's move our Infantry Squad just close enough to get ObSec before the turn is over.
The Stalker is in a prime position to hit at least one of my Valkyries - I think I'll hit it with the Macharius Vanquisher before it fires next activation!
...
Appealing in theory, not in practice...
You've basically highlighted the advantages of AA, not the disadvantages. Each of those scenarios requires the player to consider whether responding to a threat is the best play or creating a threat of your own. A player who literally just reacts is likely to lose but the same is true of a player who disregards their opponent's actions and carries on with their plan regardless.
Like many of the responses here it seems a lot of people haven't played an AA-based game so don't really seem to understand how the system works, specifically how it changes decision making.
Karol wrote: Maybe elite armies would get multiple activations per phase to balance it. Like lets say a knight would have 3, but a unit of grots would have 1 . It could even help with making vehicle unit different from just taking them as solo. A LR would have 1 activation, but if you took 3 in one unit they would get 3 activations.
Having an Imperial Knight activate 3 times per turn sounds kind of crazy.
You could write the rules such that while it could be activated multiple times in a round, it couldn't take the same action more than once. Similar to how most strats work atm.
This could also come at a cost. The easiest that comes to mind is that each unit only puts 1 activation into the pool. But things with the ability to act ++ still use one of those precious activation per action they take. So if that Knight Moves + Shoots + Fights? Well, two other units aren't doing anything....
Having played infinity, the whole "elite armies would be bad because they would get less activations" idea makes no sense to me.
My army has better stats/equipment than the other armies and hits better than them. Me getting less activations when i play Pano (space marines) than when i play Ariadna (Imperial guard) doesnt make the game unbalanced.
ccs wrote: You could write the rules such that while it could be activated multiple times in a round, it couldn't take the same action more than once. Similar to how most strats work atm.
This could also come at a cost. The easiest that comes to mind is that each unit only puts 1 activation into the pool. But things with the ability to act ++ still use one of those precious activation per action they take. So if that Knight Moves + Shoots + Fights? Well, two other units aren't doing anything....
Taking two minimum sized squads of Guardsman to supercharge a Knight is also silly.
Have you played Alternating Activation games much? Because I believe you're searching for a solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist.
VladimirHerzog wrote: Having played infinity, the whole "elite armies would be bad because they would get less activations" idea makes no sense to me.
My army has better stats/equipment than the other armies and hits better than them. Me getting less activations when i play Pano (space marines) than when i play Ariadna (Imperial guard) doesnt make the game unbalanced.
Having played SW Legions.. It's pretty much "More Activations, more power" that helped dominate the meta for such a long time between sniper activation, constant troop outputs, and other issues.
ccs wrote: You could write the rules such that while it could be activated multiple times in a round, it couldn't take the same action more than once. Similar to how most strats work atm.
This could also come at a cost. The easiest that comes to mind is that each unit only puts 1 activation into the pool. But things with the ability to act ++ still use one of those precious activation per action they take. So if that Knight Moves + Shoots + Fights? Well, two other units aren't doing anything....
Taking two minimum sized squads of Guardsman to supercharge a Knight is also silly.
Have you played Alternating Activation games much? Because I believe you're searching for a solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist.
1) While I can envision many ways of playing these games, I don't think there's a problem and I'm really not searching for a solution. I don't care if 40k stays IGUGO or changes. I'm good either way.
2) I don't see how my idea would supercharge a knight. As is Knights can already move/shoot/charge/fight AND the Guard squad can do the same. As can the next Guard squad. My idle musing of multiple, but must be different, actions would at best allow the Knight the same options it currently enjoys - at the expense of one or more of those Guard squads not doing anything.
3) Yes, chiefly Bolt Action atm.
VladimirHerzog wrote: Having played infinity, the whole "elite armies would be bad because they would get less activations" idea makes no sense to me.
My army has better stats/equipment than the other armies and hits better than them. Me getting less activations when i play Pano (space marines) than when i play Ariadna (Imperial guard) doesnt make the game unbalanced.
Infinity gets around this by giving you an action for every action your opponent takes in most instances. It's also really not an alternating activation game for a few key reasons, but uses its ARO system to provide similar levels of interactivity.
AA is a system I generally prefer, but it comes with its own design pitfalls. It works best in games with relatively few activations that have roughly equal value. Large numbers of activations lead to issues of models losing their interactivity for long periods of time between rounds. The sense of responsiveness that you get from AA goes away when a model activates early and then sits out another dozen activations. Likewise, if games have too much cost disparity, the system hugely punishes expensive units because the opponent never lets them take meaningful activations by essentially "passing" until the expensive model loses the ability to respond. Few games feel as "gamey" as when a player is playing red rover tag with activation counts.
Again, I'm a huge fan of Alternating Activation designs, but you have to do more than just alternate taking actions in an existing engine.
Again, I'm a huge fan of Alternating Activation designs, but you have to do more than just alternate taking actions in an existing engine.
obviously, it "works" as a homebrew without many changes but it would still require a full redesign (ie : a new edition) to be implemented at large in 40k.
VladimirHerzog wrote: Having played infinity, the whole "elite armies would be bad because they would get less activations" idea makes no sense to me.
My army has better stats/equipment than the other armies and hits better than them. Me getting less activations when i play Pano (space marines) than when i play Ariadna (Imperial guard) doesnt make the game unbalanced.
Uhhh, did we play the same Infinity? N3 was marred by activation-based meta. When they gave YJ new rules they specifically addressed this by giving multiple orders to their Heavy Infantry to compensate for the activation loss incurred by taking Heavy Infantry. Every list at a tournament level had 16+ orders because anything less was hamstringing yourself. My PanO army got shredded because it took my Hospitaller link team 40% of my orders (because I didn't play to meta and brought Limited Insertion style lists every time, because that's what I wanted to play) to kill a Grunt in cover and those same 4 orders to kill a Hospitaller was only 20% of the Ariadna player's pool. Every time I lost a game, every player in my group would recommend me new lists which were 16+ orders. If I mentioned my losses on forums, people would suggest 16+ order lists.
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Grimdark Future lets Titan Lords (their Imperial Knight equivalents) delay their activations if the entire army is Titan Lords. This gets around their lack of activations by letting you make a skill-based decision on when to activate. You can let your opponent activate half their force hoping for them to get a unit out of position for your titans to spring on, or you use an early activation to bait out certain behaviors from your opponent. It's a very interesting take on elite armies and a good way of balancing them out vs armies with more activations.
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You pick a unit and that unit can do all their phases. (move psychic shoot charge fight).
No unit may be activated more than once per game turn unless some special rule says otherwise.
When you activate a unit you may also activate a CHARACTER unit within 3" of the activated unit (this is how you bring a character buff with the unit like Crypteks or whatever.) You may not activate a CHARACTER in this way if it was activated earlier in the turn. This counts as activating that CHARACTER unit.
When you activate a unit you may also activate a unit that can protect the activated unit ala drones/lychguard/etc... his is how you bring keep those units doing their jobs. Coupled with characters you could activate a unit of necron warriors, a cryptek, and lychgaurd. Or Firewarriors, a Fireblade, and drones. A hive Tyrant, Tyrant guard, and some warriors.) You may not activate a unit in this way if it was activated earlier in the turn. This counts as activating that unit.
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Reserves: When you activate a unit in reserves you deploy it. You do not have to activate units in reserves and may end the turn by having only units in reserves.
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Transports: When you activate a Transport you activate all/any units embarked inside it. You may disembark any of the units inside before you move the Transport (or after deploying it from reserve in the case of drop pods and such). All activated units then go through all their phases together.
A unit that ends their move within 3" of a legal Transport may EMBARK on the transport. Their activation then immediately ends.
If the Transport allows embarked units to shoot out of it they get to shoot at the same time as the Transport during the Transports activation.
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Fighting/Melee
A unit that is in melee when it is activated has a choice to fall back or fight. If they can shoot while within 1" they can do that. Just start at the top of the activation and work your way through the phases as normal. Move if you want with all the consequences there of. Powers, Shooting, Charge, Fight.
If the concerns about disparities in the relative number of activations are legit, the easiest thing to do is just have it structured around a number of activation rounds (i.e. 3) and each round each player must activate 1/3 of their units.
I think this issue is far less of a problem in practice though, particularly for the turn structure I suggested earlier. That structure was basically an alternating phases and alternating activation hybrid:
Movement: Alternate phases (players move all of their units, then the other player)
Shooting: Alternating activation (single units at a time, can build in simultaneous fire elements)
Assault: Alternate phases for declaring + resolving charges. Fighting happens with alternating activations (basically the rules as written already).
Armies with fewer activations during shooting have a potential benefit in that more of the armies total fire power is concentrated in a fewer number of units. If I have 6 units and you have 10, I'm dealing out my full armies shooting after the first 6 activation rounds, meaning your remaining 4 units would've potentially suffered loses/wounds/reduction in fire power without a chance to respond yet. But that can have it's upside too.
tldr; Full AA systems (where an activated unit performs its full move-shoot-assault action) I don't think work well at all alongside the rest of 40K rules, and would require a lot more fussying to get right. A hybrid approach like I describe above can work pretty well (I've done it for the record), and is a nice change to the game.
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Lance845 wrote: When you activate a unit you may also activate a CHARACTER unit within 3" of the activated unit (this is how you bring a character buff with the unit like Crypteks or whatever.) You may not activate a CHARACTER in this way if it was activated earlier in the turn. This counts as activating that CHARACTER unit.
When you activate a unit you may also activate a unit that can protect the activated unit ala drones/lychguard/etc... his is how you bring keep those units doing their jobs.
My issue with this, is that creates an additional incentive to build lists centered around characters with aura's and buffs, because you can leverage that to activate multiple units at once ahead of your opponent. Strong incentive for both players to do this. But this a personal playstyle thing. I prefer the game to be less centered on characters and stacking abilities.
I think the easier fix (which also addresses transports) is to just have a series of three activation rounds, and you can activate up to 1/3 of your total unit's per round. If you have less than 3 units left, these can all be activated in one round (and you can pass) (lords of war exempt).
argonak wrote: Alternating activations works fine in Kill Team. It worked fine in Epic 40k. It works fine in every game of other types that I've tried that uses it.
Would it take a major redesign for some balance issues? Sure. Would it be worthwhile to create a more engaging, more strategic, and more modern game?
Yes, I think it would. The main thing I dislike about Kill Team, as a matter of fact, is the IGOUGO movement phase that can completely determine how a game is going to turn out with a single role.
AA also helps mitigate the effect of the going first advantage, because now its down to a single unit (or set of units however you do it) going first, rather than my entire army getting to blast and charge your entire army (potentially reducing you by 10 to 20%) before you can even react.
But mostly it just reduces my boredom.
If the movement phase was model by model AA like shooting and fighting, coordinated squadlike movements of your troops would be much more difficult to pull off. I suppose ideally it could be broken down into chunks, but the current implementation has its merits as well IMO. And you should always keep that "Decisive move" tactic on the button when your enemy moves, its your only tool of countering the worst of what can happen during the opponent's movement phase if they go first.
I hate Kill Team's system.
The player that moves first essentially has no control, whereas the player that goes second can make sure that you enter the next phases exactly how they want.
If they don't want to get shot at, they'll just move out the way.
If they want to take the firefight, they can just stay still and shoot first.
Aeronautica works on a similar system, although at least players alternate moving as well. This way, rather than Player 2 just perfectly countering Player 1, it's every plane countering the plane that went before it.
I still hate it though.
IMO your opponent should not get a response in-between the movement and attacking of a unit. It's just begging for them to completely negate the move you've set up.
IMO your opponent should not get a response in-between the movement and attacking of a unit. It's just begging for them to completely negate the move you've set up.
This generally makes it incredibly difficult to utilize buffing or other forms of combo abilities in alternating activation systems. It's not... impossible... but anything with wind up is likely to wiff.
IMO your opponent should not get a response in-between the movement and attacking of a unit. It's just begging for them to completely negate the move you've set up.
This generally makes it incredibly difficult to utilize buffing or other forms of combo abilities in alternating activation systems. It's not... impossible... but anything with wind up is likely to wiff.
it could be a good way to make use of the command phase honestly, nerf the amount of buffing wombo combo and move all these buffs to the command phase.
IMO your opponent should not get a response in-between the movement and attacking of a unit. It's just begging for them to completely negate the move you've set up.
This generally makes it incredibly difficult to utilize buffing or other forms of combo abilities in alternating activation systems. It's not... impossible... but anything with wind up is likely to wiff.
well, any implementation of alternating activation is going to noticeably change 40k anyway. I think moving away from the current gameplay of just buff-stacking to victory would be a good thing.
But it's not impossible to do, you simply allow characters to multi-activate.
You could do this remaining with thr current system if characters bring independent units that can't be shot, or returning to the older system of embedding characters within units.
I have been playing 40k with AA for at least 10 years. The old "I go you go" system has nothing to offer but an unfulfilling gaming experience for both parties involved.
Strg Alt wrote: I have been playing 40k with AA for at least 10 years. The old "I go you go" system has nothing to offer but an unfulfilling gaming experience for both parties involved.
Care to share your experience after such a decade?
Strg Alt wrote: I have been playing 40k with AA for at least 10 years. The old "I go you go" system has nothing to offer but an unfulfilling gaming experience for both parties involved.
Care to share your experience after such a decade?
You have to be more specific.
If you would like to know how such a battle with AA turns out, look up my BatRep in Pics threads in the Battle Reports section of this forum.
I find it hard to understand why so many people think implementing AA in 40k would be difficult. It's not. IGOUGO is about the worst of all worlds for compelling gameplay, especially with the level of lethality seen in the current game.
Just nabbing the Bolt Action activation system for randomised sequences of "mini-turns" within one round, with some finetuning for character support and on-going assaults, makes the game so much better. Been there done that, can recommend.
Of course there are many ways to do AA with quirks of their own: detachment activation (Apoc), phase priority and heroic moves (LotR), operational friction on detachment level (Epic Armageddon), commander centric systems (De Bellis Multitudinis etc.), initiatives (X-Wing), pre-planned sequences via card decks (Confrontation), reactionary IGOUGO (Infinity), timed orders (Epic Space Marine) ...
Of these, the Bolt Action method has been trivial to plonk into 40k and hasn't caused much problems thus far:
1) No player turns, only the game round.
2) At the beginning, all players count the number of their units. Assign coloured dice or chits into a bag in corresponding numbers.
3) Determine the player that has initiative that round, who then gets some extra tokens of their colour into the bag.
4) Draw tokens from the bag until the colour changes. The indicated player chooses that many of their units and makes a full 40k turn sequence with them from Move to Fight phases.
5) Repeat 4 as long as there are tokens in the bag, though every unit can only act once per round unless otherwise stated in the rules.
6) Handle Morale phase collectively, all buff powers and such end now unless otherwise stated.
The new Command phase would probably be done collectively in the beginning as well. It's up to taste how the players like to handle the melees when multiple units get involved, do characters get extra activations for units around them and so on.
Whereas this system sits into the current 40k frame without much of a hitch, if I were to put some effort into it, I'd probably rig something along the lines of Epic Armageddon into the system to increase the differences in faction identities and operational friction in the game that doesn't really have any in it. In E:A, all detachments need to pass a check to do their given orders instead of milling around less effectively and it is up to their commanding player to decide if they want to keep trading the initiative with their opponent or push for more concentrated actions with the risk of not getting what they want as the command checks get progressively harder until you let the other player do their stuff too.
Sherrypie wrote: Of course there are many ways to do AA with quirks of their own: detachment activation (Apoc), phase priority and heroic moves (LotR), operational friction on detachment level (Epic Armageddon), commander centric systems (De Bellis Multitudinis etc.), initiatives (X-Wing), pre-planned sequences via card decks (Confrontation), reactionary IGOUGO (Infinity), timed orders (Epic Space Marine) ...
But Sherry, I've never played AA so I'm going to assume it's just taking turns activating one unit at a time back and forth. Here's three paragraphs about why that'll ruin 40K...
Sherrypie wrote: I find it hard to understand why so many people think implementing AA in 40k would be difficult...
It's fairly straightforward, actually. Implementing AA in 40k without breaking things would require either a) tacking a new layer of bloat on top of an already bloated game and figuring out how to account for broken interactions (groups playing homebrew AA stacked straight over 40k have the safety net of being able to patch things on the fly and don't have to worry about minis/armies their group doesn't play), or b) taking the whole game apart and putting it back together. Both approaches are "difficult" in the sense that they're far more thorough and intensive than GW ever is (every time GW's done some kind of grand overhaul to everything at the same time they've relied on simple translation formulas to produce new stats rather than actually doing the legwork, which tends to break things (see: general damage/durability balance and ineffectualness of blasts in the 8e Indexes, bizarre and nonsensical points costs in the 9e rescale, anything to do with any of the WHFB minis in Sigmar)). People who think AA in 40k would be too hard to implement are the same people who think that rolling back stupid design decisions is harder than just buffing everything else in the game to compensate, because they watch what GW does and assume that GW's work ethic is normal for game design.
I think a system change to 40k that could work would be Alternating Phase Selection.
Basically in the command phase, you take a dice for Movement, Shooting, Psychic, Charging, Fighting.
You set the order you want to go in on those 5 dice (basically command phase is always 1).
If i picked Movement 2, Shooting 3, Charging 4, fighting 5, psychic 6; then I would do them in that order.
Both players would do the number 2 option before either did the number 3 option, but you would still have player turn order.
This makes the game far more tactically flexible, and even makes armies that skip a phase have a slight advantage of hasting the phases they do participate in.
kirotheavenger wrote: I hate Kill Team's system.
The player that moves first essentially has no control, whereas the player that goes second can make sure that you enter the next phases exactly how they want.
If they don't want to get shot at, they'll just move out the way.
If they want to take the firefight, they can just stay still and shoot first.
Aeronautica works on a similar system, although at least players alternate moving as well. This way, rather than Player 2 just perfectly countering Player 1, it's every plane countering the plane that went before it.
I still hate it though.
IMO your opponent should not get a response in-between the movement and attacking of a unit. It's just begging for them to completely negate the move you've set up.
The movement phase is the only part of kill team that is still igougo. I totally agree it should be redone to be AA like the rest of the game.
I've actually houseruled Killteam's movement phase to be IGYG. Tbh it didn't improve it. In fact, it just made small elite armies absolutely garbage because they would always end up having to go first, with all the problems I've already outlined.
kirotheavenger wrote: I've actually houseruled Killteam's movement phase to be IGYG. Tbh it didn't improve it. In fact, it just made small elite armies absolutely garbage because they would always end up having to go first, with all the problems I've already outlined.
I've been working on a semi-fix for the issue built to port 40k armies into the Necromunda system (pure alternating activations with no phases at all); you give the player with the spammy army the ability to do more activations at once (so the Marines don't get to always attack first) and you give the more elite army pass tokens (so the spammy army can't always force them to move first).
Oh the number of ways to do it are legion, each with its own little dynamics for smaller and larger armies.
You just need to take your pick.
Some would require more overall than others of course.
Although as I said, I find alternating action by phases to be absolutely horrific and hate playing those sorts of games.
In general though, I think each unit doing an entire move/shoot/charge phase every activation is perhaps a bit much (I generally assume psychic to be more a sub-phase).
Moving to an action system like Necromunda or Grimdark Future would be better.
It would also generally slow the pace of the game down a little (not in terms of how long it takes to complete a turn, but how much is achieved in a turn) and make things like transports more useful for covering distances. Which I think is a good thing.
Mezmorki wrote: If the concerns about disparities in the relative number of activations are legit, the easiest thing to do is just have it structured around a number of activation rounds (i.e. 3) and each round each player must activate 1/3 of their units.
I think this issue is far less of a problem in practice though, particularly for the turn structure I suggested earlier. That structure was basically an alternating phases and alternating activation hybrid:
Movement: Alternate phases (players move all of their units, then the other player)
Shooting: Alternating activation (single units at a time, can build in simultaneous fire elements)
Assault: Alternate phases for declaring + resolving charges. Fighting happens with alternating activations (basically the rules as written already).
Armies with fewer activations during shooting have a potential benefit in that more of the armies total fire power is concentrated in a fewer number of units. If I have 6 units and you have 10, I'm dealing out my full armies shooting after the first 6 activation rounds, meaning your remaining 4 units would've potentially suffered loses/wounds/reduction in fire power without a chance to respond yet. But that can have it's upside too.
tldr; Full AA systems (where an activated unit performs its full move-shoot-assault action) I don't think work well at all alongside the rest of 40K rules, and would require a lot more fussying to get right. A hybrid approach like I describe above can work pretty well (I've done it for the record), and is a nice change to the game.
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Lance845 wrote: When you activate a unit you may also activate a CHARACTER unit within 3" of the activated unit (this is how you bring a character buff with the unit like Crypteks or whatever.) You may not activate a CHARACTER in this way if it was activated earlier in the turn. This counts as activating that CHARACTER unit.
When you activate a unit you may also activate a unit that can protect the activated unit ala drones/lychguard/etc... his is how you bring keep those units doing their jobs.
My issue with this, is that creates an additional incentive to build lists centered around characters with aura's and buffs, because you can leverage that to activate multiple units at once ahead of your opponent. Strong incentive for both players to do this. But this a personal playstyle thing. I prefer the game to be less centered on characters and stacking abilities.
I think the easier fix (which also addresses transports) is to just have a series of three activation rounds, and you can activate up to 1/3 of your total unit's per round. If you have less than 3 units left, these can all be activated in one round (and you can pass) (lords of war exempt).
Your concerns are unfounded in both regards.
1) disparate numbers of activations isn't a problem. AA balances a lot of things inherently. Single activations made up of many points chunk out your army faster which makes you less able to adapt to a changing battlefield and allow the opponent to out maneuver you. Smaller activations have "mobility" in that they can set up and react and manipulate the changing state of the battlefield. More then anything else they give you flexibility. People who do all MSU get outguned in every confrontation and their advantage dwindles turn by turn until it turns to disadvantage. Peope who go all "deathstars" get ruined by a smart opponent who can deny them optimal targets and then widdle them down and take them out after they have burned through everything. Which is also the answer to number 2) If you list build for characters and auras and protecectors like that you burn through your activations. It's just as bad as bringing nothing but knights. And every lost model you suffer dwindles the power of your "super unit".
For the record, I have played a multitude of AA40k. It just works. It doesn't require a lot of fussing. The theory crafting concerns that get trotted out every time have no foundation in the reality of playing it.
Sherrypie wrote: Of course there are many ways to do AA with quirks of their own: detachment activation (Apoc), phase priority and heroic moves (LotR), operational friction on detachment level (Epic Armageddon), commander centric systems (De Bellis Multitudinis etc.), initiatives (X-Wing), pre-planned sequences via card decks (Confrontation), reactionary IGOUGO (Infinity), timed orders (Epic Space Marine) ...
But Sherry, I've never played AA so I'm going to assume it's just taking turns activating one unit at a time back and forth. Here's three paragraphs about why that'll ruin 40K...
Naturally, this is of course the inevitable response
AnomanderRake wrote:
Sherrypie wrote: I find it hard to understand why so many people think implementing AA in 40k would be difficult...
It's fairly straightforward, actually. Implementing AA in 40k without breaking things would require either a) tacking a new layer of bloat on top of an already bloated game and figuring out how to account for broken interactions (groups playing homebrew AA stacked straight over 40k have the safety net of being able to patch things on the fly and don't have to worry about minis/armies their group doesn't play), or b) taking the whole game apart and putting it back together. Both approaches are "difficult" in the sense that they're far more thorough and intensive than GW ever is (every time GW's done some kind of grand overhaul to everything at the same time they've relied on simple translation formulas to produce new stats rather than actually doing the legwork, which tends to break things (see: general damage/durability balance and ineffectualness of blasts in the 8e Indexes, bizarre and nonsensical points costs in the 9e rescale, anything to do with any of the WHFB minis in Sigmar)). People who think AA in 40k would be too hard to implement are the same people who think that rolling back stupid design decisions is harder than just buffing everything else in the game to compensate, because they watch what GW does and assume that GW's work ethic is normal for game design.
It's funny to me how this mostly seems to be a problem with GW's 40k studio, the company produces a whole slew of other games where such corrective moves and bolder steps in innovation are much more common. Part of the baggage of being the flagship game where change is frowned upon, I guess.
There IS a lot of inertia when it comes to changing things or trying out innovative mechanics in 40k. There are ways to mitigate that (honestly I think GW would benefit from some open playtesting, as the current setup has some combination of incompetent playtesters and GW not listening to them) but it is definitely a significant factor they must manage.
IMO your opponent should not get a response in-between the movement and attacking of a unit. It's just begging for them to completely negate the move you've set up.
This generally makes it incredibly difficult to utilize buffing or other forms of combo abilities in alternating activation systems. It's not... impossible... but anything with wind up is likely to wiff.
Units should be good on their own with buffers just being a bonus.
Sherrypie wrote: Of course there are many ways to do AA with quirks of their own: detachment activation (Apoc), phase priority and heroic moves (LotR), operational friction on detachment level (Epic Armageddon), commander centric systems (De Bellis Multitudinis etc.), initiatives (X-Wing), pre-planned sequences via card decks (Confrontation), reactionary IGOUGO (Infinity), timed orders (Epic Space Marine) ...
But Sherry, I've never played AA so I'm going to assume it's just taking turns activating one unit at a time back and forth. Here's three paragraphs about why that'll ruin 40K...
Hahaha, excellent. The amount of people that think 40k can't be ruined to begin with is hilarious.
The one thing I've been kind of wondering on is the best way to rejigger Imperial Guard orders to work in AA. Most buffs are easy - if you activate unit and end up under aura, you have the buff, or if you need to use psychic power, activate psyker first. How does one do orders though? Currently you use them in the shooting phase and it lets other units do a thing. Best I could think of is activate leader first and you select X units that receive orders on their turn, or popping an order allows you to activate X units out of sequence who then get their turn / order. Are there other, more elegant fixes out there?
kurhanik wrote: The one thing I've been kind of wondering on is the best way to rejigger Imperial Guard orders to work in AA. Most buffs are easy - if you activate unit and end up under aura, you have the buff, or if you need to use psychic power, activate psyker first. How does one do orders though? Currently you use them in the shooting phase and it lets other units do a thing. Best I could think of is activate leader first and you select X units that receive orders on their turn, or popping an order allows you to activate X units out of sequence who then get their turn / order. Are there other, more elegant fixes out there?
Depending on the AA format used, some sort of command phase could be preserved. Orders and other similar buffs could be issued at this point.
If you did a "chunked" AA (each player divides their army as equally as possible into an equal number of chunks, then alternates activating those) making the Guard officers issue orders to their own chunk is fairly trivial.
The exact solution depends on what system of AA you choose and any other changes you make to rules.
For example, you could say that when a character activates they can activate alongside 1-2 other units within 6" as part of a single activation, just tie orders into this.
I actually think something like this is necessary if you continue to count characters as entirely separate units to the rank and file.
What's the problem with Guard orders? In the BA style tokenhammer we usually play them like any other buff spells or powers that can be thrown around. When the officer activates, they throw the order on a unit. When the unit activates, it executes the order in the appropriate phase as normal.
Sherrypie wrote: What's the problem with Guard orders? In the BA style tokenhammer we usually play them like any other buff spells or powers that can be thrown around. When the officer activates, they throw the order on a unit. When the unit activates, it executes the order in the appropriate phase as normal.
Nothing about this is complicated in practice.
I was guessing something along those lines. I was just kind of curious how people implemented them since it takes place specifically in the shooting phase and is in default terms automatically has the unit ordered do its thing. Like I said, most other buffs are immediately self explanatory to me since it is "are you in buff radius" or "did you activate psychic power on unit" or the like, orders just seemed slightly different and I was curious what the easiest, or best work around was for them.
Sherrypie wrote: What's the problem with Guard orders? In the BA style tokenhammer we usually play them like any other buff spells or powers that can be thrown around. When the officer activates, they throw the order on a unit. When the unit activates, it executes the order in the appropriate phase as normal.
Nothing about this is complicated in practice.
When you use this Bolt Action system, do you use any mechanics to allow Characters to bring units along with them?
Without it, I can see it being all but impossible to manoeuvre with characters as they'll just get caught out of "Look Out Sir" and killed.
kurhanik wrote: The one thing I've been kind of wondering on is the best way to rejigger Imperial Guard orders to work in AA. Most buffs are easy - if you activate unit and end up under aura, you have the buff, or if you need to use psychic power, activate psyker first. How does one do orders though? Currently you use them in the shooting phase and it lets other units do a thing. Best I could think of is activate leader first and you select X units that receive orders on their turn, or popping an order allows you to activate X units out of sequence who then get their turn / order. Are there other, more elegant fixes out there?
Is there really much need to rejigger Imperial Guard Orders? Only two of the 15 orders require immediate action upon being assigned (Move! Move! Move! and Fix Bayonets!), the rest giving an effect "until the end of the phase". The question is do Officers issue orders when they activate or are all orders issued at the beginning of the Shooting Phase before any shooting is performed? If the former, let those two orders be resolved immediately. Otherwise, change them to be when the ordered unit is selected to shoot, instead do X.
Sherrypie wrote: What's the problem with Guard orders? In the BA style tokenhammer we usually play them like any other buff spells or powers that can be thrown around. When the officer activates, they throw the order on a unit. When the unit activates, it executes the order in the appropriate phase as normal.
Nothing about this is complicated in practice.
When you use this Bolt Action system, do you use any mechanics to allow Characters to bring units along with them?
Without it, I can see it being all but impossible to manoeuvre with characters as they'll just get caught out of "Look Out Sir" and killed.
Just activate your other units in a way that your character won't be too far from them. Or use terrain to your advantage.
SW Legion has no character protection and they work just fine.
I don't know much about Star Wars Legion to comment, but what about jump pack units in 40k?
Especially now that Look Out Sir requires you to be within 3", the only way my jump pack units can continue to protect a character during a movement is if they string out in a ridiculous line, and with new coherency rules even that's not so viable. TBH it's already incredibly difficult to protect your characters just from charging, let alone the movement as well.
Or if you move the character first, he can't move up to where his unit is going to be because that'll put him way out in the front.
The problem is significant even with a 6" move, with a 12"+charge it's horrific.
kirotheavenger wrote: I don't know much about Star Wars Legion to comment, but what about jump pack units in 40k?
Especially now that Look Out Sir requires you to be within 3", the only way my jump pack units can continue to protect a character during a movement is if they string out in a ridiculous line, and with new coherency rules even that's not so viable. TBH it's already incredibly difficult to protect your characters just from charging, let alone the movement as well.
Or if you move the character first, he can't move up to where his unit is going to be because that'll put him way out in the front.
The problem is significant even with a 6" move, with a 12"+charge it's horrific.
GW had a fairly easy answer to your problem in the past. Characters could join units and the wound allocation system prevented the sniping of your heroes. The only way to remove the character from play was to drown his corresponding unit in fire.
kirotheavenger wrote: I don't know much about Star Wars Legion to comment, but what about jump pack units in 40k?
Especially now that Look Out Sir requires you to be within 3", the only way my jump pack units can continue to protect a character during a movement is if they string out in a ridiculous line, and with new coherency rules even that's not so viable. TBH it's already incredibly difficult to protect your characters just from charging, let alone the movement as well.
Or if you move the character first, he can't move up to where his unit is going to be because that'll put him way out in the front.
The problem is significant even with a 6" move, with a 12"+charge it's horrific.
GW had a fairly easy answer to your problem in the past. Characters could join units and the wound allocation system prevented the sniping of your heroes. The only way to remove the character from play was to drown his corresponding unit in fire.
Oh definitely, and I wish we could return to that system.
Although you'd need to be careful to avoid the whole Smashfether gimmick again, but that shouldn't be too hard (putting Look Out Sir before any saves would be a good start or dropping it entirely).
It's how Grimdark Future does it too.
My question/concern was specifically regarding just dropping Bolt Action's AA system into 40k as-is.
Again, expand heroic intervention to function as part of activations. You activate a unit you can activate a character within 3" along with that unit. Now the cryptek comes with the warriors. The fireblade stays with his firewarriors. The Prime stays with his warriors. And so on.
Sherrypie wrote: What's the problem with Guard orders? In the BA style tokenhammer we usually play them like any other buff spells or powers that can be thrown around. When the officer activates, they throw the order on a unit. When the unit activates, it executes the order in the appropriate phase as normal.
Nothing about this is complicated in practice.
When you use this Bolt Action system, do you use any mechanics to allow Characters to bring units along with them?
Without it, I can see it being all but impossible to manoeuvre with characters as they'll just get caught out of "Look Out Sir" and killed.
Yes, there's a mechanic in Order Dice games, usually called "Snap To" or "Follow". It allows an officer/character to activate, and then draw dice for a number of units in a certain command radius to activate them as well. In BA, for example, a 2nd Lieutenant can draw 1 die for a unit within 6", while a Captain can draw 3 dice to give to units within 12".
kirotheavenger wrote: I don't know much about Star Wars Legion to comment, but what about jump pack units in 40k?
Especially now that Look Out Sir requires you to be within 3", the only way my jump pack units can continue to protect a character during a movement is if they string out in a ridiculous line, and with new coherency rules even that's not so viable. TBH it's already incredibly difficult to protect your characters just from charging, let alone the movement as well.
Or if you move the character first, he can't move up to where his unit is going to be because that'll put him way out in the front.
The problem is significant even with a 6" move, with a 12"+charge it's horrific.
GW had a fairly easy answer to your problem in the past. Characters could join units and the wound allocation system prevented the sniping of your heroes. The only way to remove the character from play was to drown his corresponding unit in fire.
Oh definitely, and I wish we could return to that system.
Although you'd need to be careful to avoid the whole Smashfether gimmick again, but that shouldn't be too hard (putting Look Out Sir before any saves would be a good start or dropping it entirely).
It's how Grimdark Future does it too.
My question/concern was specifically regarding just dropping Bolt Action's AA system into 40k as-is.
GW wouldn't need help from Bolt Action. I just implemented the AA system from SPACE MARINE (90s tabletop game) along with it's order system (First Fire, Advance & Charge) into my 40K games. Just a little bit of homebrew rules were added to that mix and voila, a very satisfying gaming experience could be accomplished.
kirotheavenger wrote: I have, but it didn't seem to talk about the actual mechanics of the system that you used much.
Well, you need to understand that I won't write down the entire ruleset which I used because they were already included in the Rulebooks from 3rd-6th. However if you want to copy specific rules in your games (e. g. Order system, Overwatch, Actions, Suppression) you could message me in those BatRep threads.
kirotheavenger wrote: I don't know much about Star Wars Legion to comment, but what about jump pack units in 40k?
Especially now that Look Out Sir requires you to be within 3", the only way my jump pack units can continue to protect a character during a movement is if they string out in a ridiculous line, and with new coherency rules even that's not so viable. TBH it's already incredibly difficult to protect your characters just from charging, let alone the movement as well.
Or if you move the character first, he can't move up to where his unit is going to be because that'll put him way out in the front.
The problem is significant even with a 6" move, with a 12"+charge it's horrific.
SW Legion uses a movement system based on articulated rulers, with 3 different sizes. The fastest one (size 3) is more or less 9"; however, in SW Legion the base is added to the movement - thus, as most infantry units is on 27mm bases, those using size 3 movement rulers (generally, jump pack units) will move almost as far as 12".
kirotheavenger wrote: I don't know much about Star Wars Legion to comment, but what about jump pack units in 40k?
Especially now that Look Out Sir requires you to be within 3", the only way my jump pack units can continue to protect a character during a movement is if they string out in a ridiculous line, and with new coherency rules even that's not so viable. TBH it's already incredibly difficult to protect your characters just from charging, let alone the movement as well.
Or if you move the character first, he can't move up to where his unit is going to be because that'll put him way out in the front.
The problem is significant even with a 6" move, with a 12"+charge it's horrific.
SW Legion uses a movement system based on articulated rulers, with 3 different sizes. The fastest one (size 3) is more or less 9"; however, in SW Legion the base is added to the movement - thus, as most infantry units is on 27mm bases, those using size 3 movement rulers (generally, jump pack units) will move almost as far as 12".
Wouldn't that be 9" move + 1.06" base = 10.06" total movement? Or am I misunderstanding how it works?
RE: Characters moving with units, I agree with the suggestion for Heroic Intervention to be reworked into allowing you to activate when a nearby unit is activated. Meshes well with the existing rules, allows character protection to exist.
SW Legion has no character protection and they work just fine.
Actually, Star Wars Legions does have a bodyguard rule, known as Guardian. Characters with a command slot can take this upgrade, some units also have it as well.
As for my thoughts on AA, I really do love it. It offers counterplay and it makes the game far more interesting. I am not waiting who knows how long for my opponent to finish their turn. The whole game I am interacting. I have gotten some of my 40k friends to play Legion and they fell in love with the basic rules. We are now trying to come up with a way to use the Legion AA rules in 40k.
It did 20-odd years ago when Void came out. I was merely pointing out how, for all of these people clamouring for 
