A simple poll to determine the position of this community regarding Alternative Activation in games of Warhammer 40k.
For the sake of argument, the game would be balanced around that system, and not just slapped on the current ruleset and datasheets.
Definitions :
Activation per phase : player one executes all its possible actions during a given phase (movement phase, shooting phase, combat phase...), then the other player do the same. When both players are done, the next phase begins.
Activation per unit : during every phase, players alternate activating their respective units until both players exhausted their actions, then the next phase begins.
Also a reminder that AA is a thing in Legions Imperialis, so it definitely works in a big-size GW game.
Also a reminder that 2019' Apocalypse resolved the removal of wounded models from the table at the end of the turn instead of immediately, making alpha strike and going second much less of a problem, so there are also different solutions instead of AA.
I don't want AA in this game until GW thoroughly playtests such a thing.
Why? Because while not perfect, current 40kis still playable & often fun enough.
AA sounds like an all right idea, and there's any # of other games from other companies that successfully use forms of it, but this is AA as filtered through the lense of GW we're talking about....
It'd require completely re-writing the game. Wich, because GW, will result in ALOT of ill-considered crap, pages of faqs/errata (more so than now) & likely render the game almost unplayable for at least one edition.
The lack of AA is one of the reasons we moved on to OPR. And it's also probably the main reason some of our group say: For all the flaws of OPR, we wouldn't want to miss AA and therefore won't go back to 40K.
I'm still on the pro AA side of things, but nowadays I see the appeal of 40K's IGOUGO because it makes the game pretty... approachable if that's a word. 40K is not so much a thinking game like others. You plan and do your stuff in the 20-30mins your opponent does their things and when it's your turn you do everything you want and planned. Stratagems break up the strict IGOUGO already, but they're limited. In AA you control a unit. Your opponent reacts on that unit and does his thing. You need to think again and react on that. It allows for much deeper tactics but is also a far more stressful experience. Same with lotr's alternating phases which are accompanied by heroic actions that break up the sequence.
In 40K you can empty a bottle of beer during your opponent's turn, in OPR you can only take a nip once in a while. That would make 40K a pretty laid back game if you didn't have to read up on a thousand special rules every game.
I generally prefer Alternating Activation games, but their advantages kind of fall apart with bigger game sizes and varied activation values. When you get more than 5-6 activations the system starts to feel unresponsive and if players have notably different activation counts or values it feels more like you're gaming the activation system than playing the game. Alternating Activations also tend to work better with relatively low attrition so that the above remains consistent.
So.... while I like and generally prefer Alternating Activations, I don't think slapping them on 40k works very well. You end up creating a very gamey game of trying to out activate the opponent's power pieces and double activate your own. It's not something that I think improves on 40k's current setup, particularly with the Turn Phases.
I do think there's probably a way to make a system built around squadrons or something where you alternate activations portions of your army. Armageddon played around with something like that in 8th to decent effect.
To a degree though, I think there's value in 40k playing like 40k. A LOT of people love the game as it is and if you want a game that plays like something else, there's dozens of great games out there that absolutely deserve your time and money.
I’m not a fan of “Freeform” alternating activations. That is where my opponent has a full and free choice in reactions to my own shenanigans.
But, I’ve long been a fan of Epic’s version. In short? Both players issue orders to their units, using counters turned face down. Once revealed, the Orders dictate what a unit can and can’t do. Importantly, it also dictates when I can do. That means I’m largely locked into a set of actions, so I have to consider what I want a given unit to do, and second guess what I think you’re up to.
But, 40K is 40 years old next year. And I don’t see any need for it to switch to alternative activation.
I like Alternating Activation in OPR, but what would be the fun of making 40K identical to a game I already have?
I think LOTR SBGs alternating phases, with the ability to jump the gun using limited resources, is great fun and could work well for 40K.
Or, since the really big issue is the shooting phase, have the shooting phase always be simultaneous like close combat is and only have alternating movement phases. It'd be a bit more complicated to keep track of but could keep the feel of big sweeping moves while limiting the skew caused by shooting alpha strikes. Alternating unit by unit for the shooting phase would also work, meaning target priority and unit selection would be important decisions.
Edit to add: The thing that all alternating systems have to grapple with is a way to visually show who has done what that isn't obtrusive, especially for really big games.
The thing is with GW making 40K often very killy very quickly the current system has a very high chance that one side over the other gets to have one REALLY fun turn doing a LOT of damage and the other side is instantly an uphill struggle. This can quickly become very unfun for one player because they've almost lost a huge chunk of their army, plan and potential before really doing anything in the game; and they've not done anything "wrong" to reach that point.
Lowering the lethality would go a LONG way to actually resolving some the issues GW's rules have.
Another option could be partial - Age fo Sigmar currently has alternating "who goes first" close combat so they are part way there already and people seem to be plenty happy with that.
Shooting phase should ideally follow and then you're almost having alternate activation as a core mechanic.
Balance and GW are always a difficult conversation because GW's 3 year cycle and structured approach to balance and rules writing actively works against improving the situation. Even with all the good steps they've taken there are some major inherent flaws that make it an insane uphill struggle to achieve good balance and gameplay.
Going full Alternate Activation can be a great option - as noted its one reason OPR is popular. Heck in OPR games I've played I often feel far more so that the win-loss is from choices both players made and thus is something you can evaluate and improve on easily. In 40K games sometimes the win-loss feels more like one good choice or one lucky turn sequence that then upturns the game in a splitsecond. It creates a "cinematic moment" but also means that one side is basically "Oh ok so because I didn't go first I kind of lost this game"
Notably you do not alternate shooting in AoS, but honestly, I always feel like AoS is step backwards from the progress 40k has made whenever I play it.
LunarSol wrote: Notably you do not alternate shooting in AoS, but honestly, I always feel like AoS is step backwards from the progress 40k has made whenever I play it.
There are only two steps back in my view
1) The Double freaking turn *insert long rant*
2) The Regiments system. Whilst I get that GW wanted to
a) Create more of a divide between rank and file and AOS b) Create a game that was cheaper to get into in general (both in terms of costs and construction/paint time)
c) Give elite and large monsters a fighting chance
I still feel that its a shame that big infantry blocks feel so convoluted now to put together because of the limits. I can see logical reasoning for it, but I still am not the biggest fan of this method of approach.
NOTE its not helped that GW also goes with the odd "build every banner you have per 10 troops (box) so a full unit even LOOKS daft because its got a huge number of banners and musicians - bot ODDLY GW only lets you take one leader model. So they DO get that it looks silly but only on one model - it would be great if we went back to "1 banner, 1 musician and if that model is killed you either lose the bonus or another model in the unit picks it up and continues on"
LunarSol wrote: Notably you do not alternate shooting in AoS, but honestly, I always feel like AoS is step backwards from the progress 40k has made whenever I play it.
There are only two steps back in my view
1) The Double freaking turn *insert long rant*
2) The Regiments system. Whilst I get that GW wanted to
a) Create more of a divide between rank and file and AOS b) Create a game that was cheaper to get into in general (both in terms of costs and construction/paint time)
c) Give elite and large monsters a fighting chance
I still feel that its a shame that big infantry blocks feel so convoluted now to put together because of the limits. I can see logical reasoning for it, but I still am not the biggest fan of this method of approach.
NOTE its not helped that GW also goes with the odd "build every banner you have per 10 troops (box) so a full unit even LOOKS daft because its got a huge number of banners and musicians - bot ODDLY GW only lets you take one leader model. So they DO get that it looks silly but only on one model - it would be great if we went back to "1 banner, 1 musician and if that model is killed you either lose the bonus or another model in the unit picks it up and continues on"
AoS is a weird game for me. A lot of its systems sound fine to me in isolation, but brought together I find the overall experience lacking agency. I often feel like I'm resolving the game more than making impactful decisions. In a lot of ways the alternating combat makes me feel like I've got less meaningful choices than I do playing melee heavy armies in 40k. It definitely doesn't result in the same kind of sense of agency I get out of true AA systems. Target selection not being particularly meaningful is part of it, but I just don't feel as invested in my decisions when I play.
Granted, 40k isn't exactly one of more decision rich games I play. There are plenty others I prefer. I just personally rank AoS quite a bit lower.
I think it might come from the fact that whilst the combat resolution is alternating the actual choice of engaging or not engaging in combat in the first place is based on I-go-you-go mechanics. So you can easily end up with your opponent forcing combats you wouldn't want to have and you can't really react to those choices save to fight when its your alternate turn during the combat sequence.
Also a thought - another way GW's IGYG style of gaming could be adjusted would be to have damage allocated at the end of the whole turn. So both players move, shoot, assault and only at the end of all that do you remove models.
However that can quickly become a bit of a headache in terms of tracking wounds done to each unit and so forth.
It can mean that units don't get wiped out without doing anything and it means that an opponent is always taking a risk moving into close combat or ranged fire distances to do their own damage.
It might be easier to track if GW did a neat card system so you could mark on a card per unit/squad what damage has been done (Eg with counters) before removing the counters as you assign damage at the end of the sequence.
Yeah it's the tracking that is the problem with those sorts of approaches. I think alternating who shoots or goes first in melee is probably the best compromise.
I might try 3e with alternating shooting and see how it feels. I wonder if you'd have to make any big points changes based on that. Certainly, the ability to get into close combat and "lock" an enemy unit would become a bit less essential.
Da Boss wrote: Yeah it's the tracking that is the problem with those sorts of approaches
Yeah you end up either needing a very slick app (which can bring its own issues and not everyone wants to HAVE to use an app to play)
Or a sideboard with a very clear layout as to what is what. That worked well with Warmachine but at the same time you often only had one of each kind of unit and even when you had duplicates they were rare or a warbeast being controlled and damaged very differently.
Warhammer side you can easily have armies with lots of the same model so its super easy to get a turn or two in and forget which is connected to which card etc..
The Alternating(Per phase) works in small games like Adeptus Titanicus, but doesn't work in games where one side has a lot more units than the other.
The numerous guy simply activates his useless or never-gonna-move artillery pieces, and forces the other player to move his important guys... the numbers guy can pick the optimum positions for his troops.
I've had this happen to me multiple times in BattleTech. It's no fun, and people will abuse any rule in Tournament settings.
I think people might find its not actually as fun or as deep as they imagine.
This is perhaps too sweeping - but based on the transports thread, I feel a lot of the appeals to a movement based game are sort of a function of wishing to play against an NPC. By which I mean you'll always be the clever, strategic player who gets to encircle the enemy and cut them down with enfilading fire - and not the player whose lumbering force is destroyed.
You are always left with this strange rub that if 40k and IGOUGO was so obviously bad to all concerned, why does it comprehensively crush games which have different/more modern/more interesting activation systems?
I mean I wouldn't mind playing some weird version of "40k meets Infinity the Game."
But... the problem is that if you start playing Infinity, against anyone with experience, you are probably condemned to lose the first 10 games. Possibly in a completely humiliating fashion. Which you might say is a good thing if you want a test of skill - but you can see why it puts people off.
Personally, I’d rather lose a game and be able to look back, say “That’s what I did wrong,” and improve for next time than win a game where my skill wasn’t particularly relevant.
Part of the issue with "why is 40K popular when its rules are so bad" is because its not just the rules.
First up GW makes REALLY good models and in plastic. For many that's enough right there. Then there's the market dominance - GW are everywhere.
Many people will accept the less than top rate rules because they CAN get a game and they don't have to spend months building a community they can just turn up to any club with a GW army and if not that week then next week get a game. Most gamers have a GW army or have played GW.
You turn up to a random club with Infinity and they MIGHT play or they might have heard of it but you could easily have not a single other player locally.
It's a very rare club that won't have any GW players at all even if they aren't playing GW games right at that very week.
Couple that to marketing; 3rd party products; physical stores selling only their product; school programs and more - GW get their claws into people early; have a huge dominance; great models; good materials (at least for plastics and FW resin on modern stuff that isn't a 30year old tank kit)
Also there's a bias to the rules system GW uses and I think the Doubleturn in AoS shows it greatly. Those who win from that turn system can really love it and sometimes people hyper fixate on the wins and overlook the loses. So suddenly its a fantastic system because they do "win" and when they win its a crushing defeat where their army totally smashes an opponent in one epic sweep
I for one prefer alternate activations, it just lets you react to your opponent as things are going on.
I don't quite get the argument that armies with lots of activations will just run roughshod over more elite armies, considering that on a unit by unit basis most elite units are much more useful than chaff. I forget what game it was, but I remember there is at least one game with alternating activations where each player throws a token in a bag for each unit they have and then draws it out. It makes it so that neither player can know exactly who activates next and the person with more drops is likely to get their turns mixed throughout rather than all at the end of the round - that seems like a decent compromise position there.
I'm not totally a fan of random activations because it destroys any potential combos or basic tactics. Eg using a caster to buff a unit before that unit then takes action. Or to curse an enemy unit before another charges in.
Random activations for your unit selection could end up with you getting some really daft orders of activation that nullify a lot of good tactical options and thinking in the game. It might well make the game feel more like you're on railtracks without much choice/agency in the game
Swarm armies VS Elite is a problem with alternate unit activations because the swarm can indeed use their chaff and hold their good units in reserve and then get a bunch of activations for them in one go whilst the elite player can't respond.
Now honestly GW's Command Points could easily come ot the fore here. You might get bonus Command points if you've fewer activations at the start of a turn. So now either your units do even more in their turn with command points or you've a bunch of abilities to throw your opponent offguard when they are activating their extra units at the end when.
Suddenly they might not want to hold all their best till last if there's a chance you can get them to lose movement or accuracy etc...
I like how Kill Team's AA worked two editions ago. I could see a slightly modified version of that working in smaller scale games of 40k. So picture something like Combat Patrol or Boarding Actions where a battle round looked something like this:
* Roll off to see who has initiative.
* Command phase: players take turns activating command phase abilities starting with the player who has initiative.
* Movement: players take turns moving units. The charge phase probably gets rolled into this.
* Shooting: Players take turns shooting "readied" units. Readied units are generally units that didn't move in the movement phase. Once all readied units have shot, take turns shooting non-readied units. Units that charged can shoot, but only at the unit they charged. Or maybe shooting after charging becomes an Assault weapon thing.
* Fight: Players take turns fighting with units that charged or have the Fights First rule. Once all such units have fought, take turns fighting with units that didn't charge and don't have Fights First.
So do that with like, 5ish units per player, and you create a lot more back and forth and some interesting decisions in terms of which units want to activate in which order, which units want to hold still to shoot sooner, which units want to charge if it means they have to put their shooting towards the thing they're charging, etc.
I'm picturing Boarding Action style "detachments" that offer some decent customization to which units you field but still require you keep things in theme and also force you to keep your total number of units/activations within a reasonable range.
kurhanik wrote: I for one prefer alternate activations, it just lets you react to your opponent as things are going on.
I don't quite get the argument that armies with lots of activations will just run roughshod over more elite armies, considering that on a unit by unit basis most elite units are much more useful than chaff. I forget what game it was, but I remember there is at least one game with alternating activations where each player throws a token in a bag for each unit they have and then draws it out. It makes it so that neither player can know exactly who activates next and the person with more drops is likely to get their turns mixed throughout rather than all at the end of the round - that seems like a decent compromise position there.
There are many options for resolving the different number of activations based on number of units.
A simple on is having the player with more activations to active more units at a time.
Kill Team offsets the more activation issue by giving the player with less activations the ability to add additional mini-activations to already activated units.
When dealing with high quality (knights) versus low quality (gretchin) units, you can have some require "more" activations while others require less.
I think what would be interesting is an initiative based system similar to what close combat was in 5th edition, with initiative also applying to attack order in shooting phase.
Obviously, it would require significant balancing against the advantage of initiative. But it would go a long way towards entrenching initiative order as a meaningful characteristic balanced against other characteristics, the most obvious one being toughness and general durability, and points cost obviously being a big part of the opportunity cost.
I think AA combined with initiative order could be an interesting system. In effect, you could still have an army that "goes first," but it would be consistently, and the cost would be baked in per unit.
JNAProductions wrote: Personally, I’d rather lose a game and be able to look back, say “That’s what I did wrong,” and improve for next time than win a game where my skill wasn’t particularly relevant.
I wouldn't want skill to be completely eliminated. If you are making decisions, there must inevitably be "good decisions" and "bad decisions". And skill is arguably making the good ones.
But there are two sides to a game. Giving one player scope often entails preventing the second player from just instantly stopping them.
I mean again - "wouldn't it be good to make initiative matter?"
"Why?"
"So my superfast Eldar can hit your sluggish Orks before they know what's happening."
"But what's in it for me as an Ork player?"
"I guess you've got slightly higher toughness, so maybe I'll roll poorly and you won't die, then you can try and hit me back."
"...doesn't seem great?"
And in a game where the Eldar player picks apart the Ork player's army (which blunders around with worse movement, lower initiative etc) what did the Ork player do wrong? Beyond playing Orks that is.
Now maybe there are people who wouldn't mind. But competitively it feels like one side would have a major advantage. And so, inevitably, GW would then have to come up with a lot of mechanisms for trying to make Orks work despite being initiative 2. Feels like we've gone down this road before.
Now maybe there are people who wouldn't mind. But competitively it feels like one side would have a major advantage. And so, inevitably, GW would then have to come up with a lot of mechanisms for trying to make Orks work despite being initiative 2. Feels like we've gone down this road before.
They did, though.
And power klaws and thunder hammers were still amazing, despite striking at initiative 1. Hidden power klaws were still a thing despite costing 25 points on a basic infantry model. Why? Because despite swinging last, they struck at double strength when it actually mattered and caused instant death, bypassed all armor saves and krunked tanks due to high strength.
Oh, and shootas were actually good. Why? Because they were assault 2 versus rapid fire 1 on most weapons. And there was a real cost to rapid fire in terms of mobility and assaulting. You might hit on 3's, but if it's with a pistol profile, assault 2 at BS5 was actually equivalent, and the points cost difference between, say, a marine and an ork boy was a factor of two. I would argue that ork boyz had a material economic advantage against a tactical marine at this point in 5th edition, which is why tactical marines were considered a troop tax, whereas a grey hunter was considered a huge step up simply because it had a CCW unlike a tactical marine. Even for +1 PPM it was considered a big upgrade since it meant +1 attack (since ork boyz had base 2 attacks compared to tactical marines, and nobz has base 3 attacks compared to vets at 2).
Now orks can't seem to catch up on volume or accuracy and shootas have been straight trash and fell behind massively in terms of power creep as rapid fire got better again and again, overwatch and free AP on everybody else's basic shooting profile, and shootas got stripped of the assault rule for the final death knell (and the assault rule was changed, along with shooting and assault in general). It used to be that you had to use pistols to assault.
To me, it makes much more sense that you have to elect to stand still and rapid fire and dump munitions into a unit and prepare for close combat. These are the things that are allowing these high mobility units like Eldar or even Marines so much more flexibility in terms of movement and assault that they didn't have before.
Complexity and effective range are always the main banes of IGOUGO - anything that slows the game down needlessly, and anything that lets units be immediately effective.
There is a gulf in gameplay between being wiped out by the units that have been maneuvering towards you for the past three turns and being wiped out by the unit that just fell from the sky, or the artillery six feet away, out of sight, before you act.
Similar to blood bowl, there is a 'good' middle ground when the teams are back and forth and you can combine multiple activations in a coherent way, but not so much when your whole team gets knocked down in one turn or the sneaky elf/skaven runner scores in a single turn while you stand around watching.
It's a no from me. While I'm generally happy to give anything a go if it sounds like it would improve the game, I'm not sure you can make an AA game that can cope with alternating between wildly different scale units from nurglings to titans, over any game size from combat patrol to apocalypse. The amount of admin required to play a game would be crazy.
Insularum wrote: It's a no from me. While I'm generally happy to give anything a go if it sounds like it would improve the game, I'm not sure you can make an AA game that can cope with alternating between wildly different scale units from nurglings to titans, over any game size from combat patrol to apocalypse. The amount of admin required to play a game would be crazy.
I don't see why it requires so much more admin? About the only difference is you just need an activation token per unit (not per model for squads).
The issues of nurglings to Titans is basically the same no matter the rules system - a titan is always going to be a massive difference in power over a nurgling no matter what.
Insularum wrote: It's a no from me. While I'm generally happy to give anything a go if it sounds like it would improve the game, I'm not sure you can make an AA game that can cope with alternating between wildly different scale units from nurglings to titans, over any game size from combat patrol to apocalypse. The amount of admin required to play a game would be crazy.
I don't see why it requires so much more admin? About the only difference is you just need an activation token per unit (not per model for squads).
The issues of nurglings to Titans is basically the same no matter the rules system - a titan is always going to be a massive difference in power over a nurgling no matter what.
Activation tokens alone is already more admin, but that wouldn't be enough. If damage is applied in AA in real time like it is currently (pick up models as soon as they lose wounds):
1. Melee units are useless, as you get an entire shooting phase to intercept them (on top of a potential reactive move away from them). Factions that rely on melee are dead
2. MSU armies are useless, as activating a 1 gun tac squad at a time is way less efficient then activating a maxed out squad of devastator centurions (or a unit of nurglings vs a titan or whatever)
3. Every player just focuses on either intercepting melee units, or shooting enemy units that haven't shot yet to deny an activation
To balance out these issues and more, you would need to get rid of real time damage. This would require additional damage tokens that units rack up throughout the turn to be cashed in during a new damage phase at the end of the turn. In short, AA is not a silver bullet, it would introduce as many issues as it alleviates.
Melee units have already had issues for years - remember way back when Tau were new they could utterly demolish any close combat heavy army if the Tau player got a good turn.
It's still an issue now, though mitigated a bit by the fact that GW has included a lot more options for deployment other than hiding close combat units in transports.
MSU has gains and losses - multiple smaller units means more activations and thus more choices to make. It also means that you've more targets for your opponent. If they've got that one massive unit with all their guns in it then if there's no split fire or limited splitfire rules then that huge amount of damage might go to waste firing it into one or two smaller units. Whilst the army with more smaller units can now return fire on that single blob from more of their individual units.
It's not a silver bullet; but it is a bullet for one of the major issues of large army high lethality I-go-you-go games which is removing or at least reducing the potential for one player to wipe out a significant portion of their opponent's army in a single turn with limited to no retaliation options during that moment. In fact it lets you keep high lethality if the system favours MSU construction of forces in general because both players get retaliation options one after the other rather than one getting to do so with impunity for a turn .
As noted damage assigned at the end of a whole phase could easily overcome that issue with the current turn sequence. Or lowering the lethality of the game in general.
Of course any system being balanced by GW could likely fail. Or do well but then have all its gains undone by the 3 year rules edition cycle.
Honestly, the lethality issue has always been a little overstated. I haven't seen wiping out deployment zones since the swap to 8th and GW pushing players to adopt real terrain. There are definitely moments where some busted combo makes it seem bad against and 10th definitely had early issues with Eldar and Knights, but for the most part I do not see the crippling lethality that was so common a decade ago and really haven't for a while. I think if you're getting blasted off the table you really need to look into your terrain setups and make sure you've got enough ruins to block LOS.
That's the opposite of my experience since 8th. I vastly prefer the 8th edition onwards system to the 3rd to 7th approach, but had to realize that there's hardly a game where something survives past 3rd turn since then. 2nd turn is usually a big slaughter and afterwards you have few if any squads remaining in 40K. Especially in 8th and 9th were you could blow 10 stratagems in the first two turns. In 10th is not as pronounced anymore.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: That's the opposite of my experience since 8th. I vastly prefer the 8th edition onwards system to the 3rd to 7th approach, but had to realize that there's hardly a game where something survives past 3rd turn since then. 2nd turn is usually a big slaughter and afterwards you have few if any squads remaining in 40K. Especially in 8th and 9th were you could blow 10 stratagems in the first two turns. In 10th is not as pronounced anymore.
Yeah, 8th in particular had no idea how to run a resource economy and was riddled with exploits. I mostly was referring for the tendency for armies to die in their deployment zone on the bottom of turn 1, which is something I've not seen nearly as often post 8th edition. To be clear though, 10th is the first time I've rated 40k as a game I actively want to play as opposed to an excuse to stage cool models on a cool board and roll dice. I just find that a lot of the game's traditional lethality problems have been greatly overstated since meaningful LOS blocking became the norm.
Activation tokens alone is already more admin, but that wouldn't be enough. If damage is applied in AA in real time like it is currently (pick up models as soon as they lose wounds):
1. Melee units are useless, as you get an entire shooting phase to intercept them (on top of a potential reactive move away from them). Factions that rely on melee are dead
Just move the charge phase at the end of the movement phase, no problem.
2. MSU armies are useless, as activating a 1 gun tac squad at a time is way less efficient then activating a maxed out squad of devastator centurions (or a unit of nurglings vs a titan or whatever)
MSU are very useful, since you have many more activations than your opponents. You also have stronger units on the board by the way, not just shaff, so you paint a one-sided picture that is not sincere.
3. Every player just focuses on either intercepting melee units, or shooting enemy units that haven't shot yet to deny an activation
As they already do. But as said in point 1, move charge at the end of movement phase, and melee units are not useless at all.
To balance out these issues and more, you would need to get rid of real time damage. This would require additional damage tokens that units rack up throughout the turn to be cashed in during a new damage phase at the end of the turn. In short, AA is not a silver bullet, it would introduce as many issues as it alleviates.
Any issue would be worth solving, instead of the current system of waiting 30 min for your first turn (most boring game system i have ever seen) while your opponent weakens your army because of luck of the draw.
Activation tokens alone is already more admin, but that wouldn't be enough. If damage is applied in AA in real time like it is currently (pick up models as soon as they lose wounds):
1. Melee units are useless, as you get an entire shooting phase to intercept them (on top of a potential reactive move away from them). Factions that rely on melee are dead
Just move the charge phase at the end of the movement phase, no problem.
2. MSU armies are useless, as activating a 1 gun tac squad at a time is way less efficient then activating a maxed out squad of devastator centurions (or a unit of nurglings vs a titan or whatever)
MSU are very useful, since you have many more activations than your opponents. You also have stronger units on the board by the way, not just shaff, so you paint a one-sided picture that is not sincere.
Spoiler:
3. Every player just focuses on either intercepting melee units, or shooting enemy units that haven't shot yet to deny an activation
As they already do. But as said in point 1, move charge at the end of movement phase, and melee units are not useless at all.
To balance out these issues and more, you would need to get rid of real time damage. This would require additional damage tokens that units rack up throughout the turn to be cashed in during a new damage phase at the end of the turn. In short, AA is not a silver bullet, it would introduce as many issues as it alleviates.
Any issue would be worth solving, instead of the current system of waiting 30 min for your first turn (most boring game system i have ever seen) while your opponent weakens your army because of luck of the draw.
On the subject of one sided and not sincere, your poll options are Yeah! Yeah! and no, for a sarcastic reason. I think AA games can be great, I don't think 40k can be made to fit in AA without losing more than you gain - that is my sincere thoughts on this.
Gitdakka wrote:Activation by formations of units is something I could see working for 40k. Say blocks of 500pts in each formation roughly.
Spoiler:
That way units and transports could act together for example. And msu would not spam activations.
Activation by formation feels like IGOUGO, with extra steps.
Why does it feel like that, rather than feeling like AA with fewer steps? At least superficially it looks like a way to mitigate the common critique of AA where one side exploits the system by having far more activations.
Gitdakka wrote:Activation by formations of units is something I could see working for 40k. Say blocks of 500pts in each formation roughly.
Spoiler:
That way units and transports could act together for example. And msu would not spam activations.
Activation by formation feels like IGOUGO, with extra steps.
Why does it feel like that, rather than feeling like AA with fewer steps? At least superficially it looks like a way to mitigate the common critique of AA where one side exploits the system by having far more activations.
Swarm Tyranid VS Custodes would still have the same issue; you'd just have one side with more formations than the other. Unless you adjust the game to have mirror-deployment numbers and quantities then you're always going to have an imbalance of activations. Heck you have it now its just a moot point because you only have 1 activation per army so you don't see the unit disparity. A Swarm army always has more choices; more units; more mass to move around and do stuff with and an elite army always has fewer units that will demolish most swarm army individual units one-on-one.
I think its important to note that alternate activation doesn't mean that units are just 1v1 all the time. Yes a swarm army unit won't stand up to an elite 1 on 1; but even in AA you will still gang up your many swarm units onto one target; you will still see 1 elite unit split fire so they can pin/damage/take out more than one weaker swarm unit.
Sprinkle in some command point abilities and so forth and perhaps some additional points if there's a big activation disparity (eg for every 2 activations your opponent takes in a row you get 1 additional point to use a strategic ability) and you've got things to do even when your opponent might out-activate you.
Insularum wrote: On the subject of one sided and not sincere, your poll options are Yeah! Yeah! and no, for a sarcastic reason. I think AA games can be great, I don't think 40k can be made to fit in AA without losing more than you gain - that is my sincere thoughts on this.
Not sure what's your point. I have a preference and it shows right in the first post.
Anyway, there are 2 yes and 2 no answers to this poll, seems very balanced for a poll on such a touchy subject.
Gitdakka wrote:Activation by formations of units is something I could see working for 40k. Say blocks of 500pts in each formation roughly.
Spoiler:
That way units and transports could act together for example. And msu would not spam activations.
Activation by formation feels like IGOUGO, with extra steps.
Why does it feel like that, rather than feeling like AA with fewer steps? At least superficially it looks like a way to mitigate the common critique of AA where one side exploits the system by having far more activations.
Swarm Tyranid VS Custodes would still have the same issue; you'd just have one side with more formations than the other. Unless you adjust the game to have mirror-deployment numbers and quantities then you're always going to have an imbalance of activations. Heck you have it now its just a moot point because you only have 1 activation per army so you don't see the unit disparity. A Swarm army always has more choices; more units; more mass to move around and do stuff with and an elite army always has fewer units that will demolish most swarm army individual units one-on-one.
I think its important to note that alternate activation doesn't mean that units are just 1v1 all the time. Yes a swarm army unit won't stand up to an elite 1 on 1; but even in AA you will still gang up your many swarm units onto one target; you will still see 1 elite unit split fire so they can pin/damage/take out more than one weaker swarm unit.
Sprinkle in some command point abilities and so forth and perhaps some additional points if there's a big activation disparity (eg for every 2 activations your opponent takes in a row you get 1 additional point to use a strategic ability) and you've got things to do even when your opponent might out-activate you.
Do you mean formations or squads? The example given was activations in 500 point blocks so each players activation is roughly the same overall combat value. True, the Tyranids might have more squads taking actions per activation, but you're still avoiding that big end-of-round clump of activations that comes from the same scenario but activating only unit-by-unit.
Armies should definitely be different, and I'd never advocate for mirror unit numbers. But AA naturally seems to favor gaming unit numbers in ways that ought to be mitigated. The same-combat-value "chunk" activations don't seem unreasonable at first glance.
I was more talking about formations which would be multiple squads but not necessarily linked to point values. Breaking armies down into 500point blocks for, say, a 2K game could be done but I suspect it would require a LOT of fundamental adjustments to be undertaken to make it work.
It might also result in really simplified unit types and roles because now your specialists have to be sprinkled into mass activations.
I dunno, my gut feeling says no because 500 point blocks are still big blocks capable of quite considerable firepower and damage all on their own. It might mitigate out though; but that might only be if it came hand in hand with major reworks and things like lethality also coming down.
GW might even like that though as they could do 500 or near 500 boxed "combat patrols"
I have seen "Formation" building like that before - Planetfall kind of went that way under Spartan Games, but a bit part of that was both making the game simple to build armies with, but also keeping their sku really down so you had preformed blocks of select models you'd form your army around. It made army building a lot simpler and I think 40K players would HATE that (we already dislike the loss of points in the current edition*)
*say what you like, this edition is running on power-level in all but name and the numbers we have to add up.
Armageddon in 8th edition essentially worked that way. I think you could do something where you have 3 squads in your list that have to be a minimum of 500 points each. Certainly something that could be played around with if someone wanted to try it out.
I was more talking about formations which would be multiple squads but not necessarily linked to point values. Breaking armies down into 500point blocks for, say, a 2K game could be done but I suspect it would require a LOT of fundamental adjustments to be undertaken to make it work.
It might also result in really simplified unit types and roles because now your specialists have to be sprinkled into mass activations.
I dunno, my gut feeling says no because 500 point blocks are still big blocks capable of quite considerable firepower and damage all on their own. It might mitigate out though; but that might only be if it came hand in hand with major reworks and things like lethality also coming down.
GW might even like that though as they could do 500 or near 500 boxed "combat patrols"
I have seen "Formation" building like that before - Planetfall kind of went that way under Spartan Games, but a bit part of that was both making the game simple to build armies with, but also keeping their sku really down so you had preformed blocks of select models you'd form your army around. It made army building a lot simpler and I think 40K players would HATE that (we already dislike the loss of points in the current edition*)
*say what you like, this edition is running on power-level in all but name and the numbers we have to add up.
Why would it take a lot of "fundamental changes"?
Like, genuinely I don't think you need new unit restrictions or anything. Just take a 40k system and change it to AA, but then limit activations to "up to 500 points". I don't see what immediately "breaks" with that.
But also, doesn't have to be 500 points either. Pick a number. 350. Whatever.
JNAProductions wrote: Personally, I’d rather lose a game and be able to look back, say “That’s what I did wrong,” and improve for next time than win a game where my skill wasn’t particularly relevant.
I wouldn't want skill to be completely eliminated. If you are making decisions, there must inevitably be "good decisions" and "bad decisions". And skill is arguably making the good ones.
But there are two sides to a game. Giving one player scope often entails preventing the second player from just instantly stopping them.
I mean again - "wouldn't it be good to make initiative matter?"
"Why?"
"So my superfast Eldar can hit your sluggish Orks before they know what's happening."
"But what's in it for me as an Ork player?"
"I guess you've got slightly higher toughness, so maybe I'll roll poorly and you won't die, then you can try and hit me back."
"...doesn't seem great?"
And in a game where the Eldar player picks apart the Ork player's army (which blunders around with worse movement, lower initiative etc) what did the Ork player do wrong? Beyond playing Orks that is.
Now maybe there are people who wouldn't mind. But competitively it feels like one side would have a major advantage. And so, inevitably, GW would then have to come up with a lot of mechanisms for trying to make Orks work despite being initiative 2. Feels like we've gone down this road before.
It's a somewhat artificial distinction though.
The same argument can be made for S vs T - why should a low T army want it, when you could just make to wound automatic? It's of no advantage to a low T army that you have this rule, because it does nothing but penalise them and advantage high S armies. Orks have crap BS, but somehow no one considers removing the roll to hit so they don't feel bad about it.
Because that's the point of rules that make armies good at some things and bad at others. The only reason Initiative is discussed this way is because GW took it away, lending it some pseudo justification that there's an intrinsic reason that it be removed. But it's no more or less sensible than saying that scifi guns should automatically wound what they hit - they're deadly weapons.
Low initiative armies feel bad if initiative exists.
Low Toughness armies feel bad if toughness exists.
Low save armies feel bad if saves exist.
Being bad at something is not a reason to remove a rule from the game, unless you want a game where every dice succeeds on a 2+ and no one is bad at anything.
Initiative really lacks meaningful counterplay. Fights first can cause similar issues if available in mass on models that are either durable or have competent shooting and really needs to be rare. I don't think making it a core rule does any favors.
LunarSol wrote: Initiative really lacks meaningful counterplay. Fights first can cause similar issues if available in mass on models that are either durable or have competent shooting and really needs to be rare. I don't think making it a core rule does any favors.
LunarSol wrote: Initiative really lacks meaningful counterplay. Fights first can cause similar issues if available in mass on models that are either durable or have competent shooting and really needs to be rare. I don't think making it a core rule does any favors.
Having low toughness has no counter play either.
Toughness has almost no bearing on the active player.
The point is that if you always go first, you always have a chance to just win without your opponent being able to do anything about it. And equally, you'd probably want your chances of success to rise if you do the sensible thing of putting say Shuriken Catapults into infantry, and Fire Dragons+Bright Lances into tanks.
So then you always go first, and have a good chance to just win due to sensible decision making - much balance, great game. The opponent can really look at their decision making and workout what they did wrong (not play Eldar I guess).
I don't want to pick on Eldar too much - but I feel this is a real Eldar mentality (and to a degree the other elite armies). "I'm playing the perfect game, so I should win most of the time". Fine - but what of your opponent - with lower movement, lower initiative. What's their gameplan? Just hope their opponent messes up or fluffs the dice rolls?
Fundamentally though - no. Ork BS shouldn't be bad "so Ork Shooting Is Bad". GW has then often be reduced to trying to "remove the hit roll" to fix it. Just as they had to bail out Ork initiative. But without this you are stuck with a terrible way to design a game. Because if Ork Shooting is objectively bad, its really telling Ork Players they should never run Ork Shooting Units. (Like say Shoota Boyz for approaching 30 years). Its like the idea Tau should have the worst assault unit in the game for the lols. But no one would ever run it (except for the lols - or as a trap for newbies) so what's the point? See Storm Guardians for pretty much the whole of 40k up until maybe 10th.
If as GW you don't think Orks should be shooting, then the answer is not to make Orks with guns. Its not to have them and then make them deliberately bad. Every unit in the game should be "good" at what its meant to be used for. So you might want to take it in a vaguely sensible list.
You can go down the Bloodbowl route and have a clear tier system. Some factions are explicitly not as good as the best ones - and if you play them then that's on you. But that works on the basis that you can buy a team with a single box. Not so much in 40k where you've spent hundreds to get the joke NPC tier faction that will be beaten up by everyone else. Its not as easy as say playing Wood Elves and Halflings.
This is perhaps trending off topic. To a degree unit AA might inevitably detract from this. You move your Eldar unit up to do some damage - well then the big clunking fist of an Ork unit gets to respond. But I feel such a system isn't going to allow for the grand manoeuvres or subtle encirclements to enable shooting people in the flank or rear that people seem to imagine and want. Such would depend on your opponent wandering into your trap.
Orks play against higher initative is having more numbers and above average toughness to weather through to eke out the win..
The Eldar play against high strength (against low toughness) used to be the higher initiative to try and reduce the eventual damage coming in to eke out the win.
The game is simply more dysfunctional without initiative and removing it (like removing Movement during 3e) was a mistake.
I don't mind iniaitive, and I think it's a good stat and worked well for close combat. Orks going last in close combat was made up for by each Ork being really good in melee for their points, so you were able to weather the pummelling and give it back.
In theory, I really like the idea of Initiative vs BS for shooting. But I feel it's going to really hammer Orks (and Necrons) even more. And I feel shooting is different to melee - for one, Orks aren't good at shooting, and they don't get to reply to enemy shooting immediately. So a fast enemy with good shooting can kite them, and now they're gonna hit them more often too because of the Ork's low initiative stat. I feel that's very hard to point for properly, and I think it's true that people who would like these systems aren't thinking much about how it might feel for the Ork player in these situations.
I dunno, you could probably hammer it out but I feel it'd be a lot trickier than it is for melee.
Gitdakka wrote:Activation by formations of units is something I could see working for 40k. Say blocks of 500pts in each formation roughly.
That way units and transports could act together for example. And msu would not spam activations.
I've kicked this idea around before. The high concept is really appealing, but the details get messy fast. Like, if you're activating 500 points at a time from anywhere on the table, it can immediately become harder to keep track of which units are still available. Tokens to mark activated units help, sure, but it's still a consideration. And then you have to constantly be juggling unit costs in your mind. If you're playing MSU, you might be juggling the costs of around 10 units in your head and trying to keep them straight while you plan out which units to activate next. Or your remaining unactivated units might have unfortunate points totals that force you to do a few "inefficient" activations because you can't activate your transport and its passengers and your walker in the same activation because they're just a little over 500 points collectively but any two of those units is less than 400 points.
These are all solvable problems, but they are problems that would have to be solved.
I feel like more restrictive army building rules that help keep the number of activations within a reasonable range might be the way to go here. Alternatively, some sort of initiative system might work, but instead of making it an army-wide thing, keep it restricted to a few broad categories. So for instance, both eldar and ork bikes might be initiative 3, both eldar and ork "heavy" units (tanks, wraiths, meganobz) might be initiative 1, and everything else would be in the middle at initiative 2. You could play with those values as part of special rules , but you'd want to do so sparingly to avoid having all eldar attack before all orks, etc.
I also feel like there's maybe some interesting potential with having multiple common/battleline units activate together. So guardsmen might not be as impressive as heavy weapons teams or tanks, but maybe activating a company commander lets you activate up to X additional Guardsmen units within Y" of him. That gives your relatively unimpressive units a way to apply more force per activation while still remaining flexible in how you use them and individually less impressive than their elite counterparts.
LunarSol wrote: Initiative really lacks meaningful counterplay. Fights first can cause similar issues if available in mass on models that are either durable or have competent shooting and really needs to be rare. I don't think making it a core rule does any favors.
Having low toughness has no counter play either.
Toughness has almost no bearing on the active player.
Consistently going second as orks wouldn't be much fun, but I think there are ways to play around with the turn order to keep it more interesting for both parties. If you do the old Kill Team thing of letting some units "ready" their shooting, then orks could potentially be activating before some units but after others provided they're willing to give up some movement/charging to do so. Charging could let units swing before non charging units in the fight phase meaning that orks might find themselves shooting *after* their opponents as they move closer, but punching *before* them once you get to the charge phase. Some strats or unit abilities could let you count as being ready/having charged for purposes of keeping the tempo a little uncertain. This is all assuming per phase AA rather than per unit though.
If you bring the damn Initiative stat back AND want to put it on shooting as well, you better give Orks the very best shooting initiative because they don't even waste time on aiming.
The other option is to do damage allocation at the end of the combat resolution for both sides in a close combat situation. So that damage is allocated at the same moment so it doesn't matter which side fights first.
Then you can introduce a few special abilities for limited units that gain "assigns damage before opponent resolves attacks" and "engages attacks after opponent assigns damage"
This means that you have units that you know will always fight first or second (unless against units with the same ability and then they cancel each other out) and thus you can balance their stats around that aspect of their playstyle.
So Eldar might have more of the former and orks more of the latter ;but not all units would be like that.
LunarSol wrote: Initiative really lacks meaningful counterplay. Fights first can cause similar issues if available in mass on models that are either durable or have competent shooting and really needs to be rare. I don't think making it a core rule does any favors.
Having low toughness has no counter play either.
Toughness has almost no bearing on the active player.
You mean the active player's toughness has no bearing - the target's toughness certainly does. Whether it does or not is not really relevant though - you said meaningful counterplay. You can't avoid having low toughness you just have to deal with being vulnerable to your enemy's attacks. There is no way to avoid the effects of low toughness, no counterplay to mitigate it.
Melee that uses initiative has a range of counterplay options that GW used in some games and not others. WFB 6th had chargers striking first to reflect the charge advantage, so even slow orcs got to strike first if they set up their charges right. in 40k they got bonus attacks for charging so even if some died the remainder hit more. Some rules allow for Initative bonuses.
But the fact you want simultaneous melee but also don't want initiative is weird - if it was truly turn based then whoever was active would make attacks the target would stand there and take it. having both sides attack together is already giving the inactive player a bonus they shouldn't really have and now they shouldn't even have a mediating factor of initiative either? Where is the tactics of setting up your melees if you're just giving your opponent free melee attacks back?
Then there's the simple fact that the low initiative armies either had cheap units, or tough ones or both, so that they made up for first strikes by surviving or having a lot more bodies to attack back.
The problem isn't with IGoUGo, it's with the pacing of the game. Too few turns, too much movement and damage per turn, and too many special abilities that can be pulled out of a hat with no warning. Also too much time spent resolving dice-gimmicks.
If that wasn't the case you wouldn't need AA to react to stuff, you'd just react to it when your own turn comes and that would be sufficient.
a grey hunter was considered a huge step up simply because it had a CCW unlike a tactical marine. Even for +1 PPM it was considered a big upgrade since it meant +1 attack (since ork boyz had base 2 attacks compared to tactical marines, and nobz has base 3 attacks compared to vets at 2).
5th edition Grey Hunters were cheaper than Tactical Marines. A 5-man GH squad started at 75 points. A 5-man tactical squad was 90 in the vanilla codex. The Tacticals included a squad Sergeant with LD 9, had combat tactics (allowed them to voluntarily fail morale), and the combat squads rule allowing them to split a 10-man squad into two 5-man squads. They were 16 points per model. At 15 points per model, the Grey Hunters not only got the Bolt Pistol/CCW combo for the extra attack they also had the Counterattack USR which gave them the bonus attack for charging when they got charged. So they had 3 attacks per model in close combat whether they were the instigators or not. Grey Hunters didn't have a pack leader and so were just LD 8 but they could take two special weapons instead of a special and a heavy weapon like the tacticals. They were practically an upgrade across the board and were cheaper to boot. Orks would think twice about charging a grey hunter pack that could put out 30 CC attacks before a single boy got to swing.
Orkeosaurus wrote: The problem isn't with IGoUGo, it's with the pacing of the game. Too few turns, too much movement and damage per turn, and too many special abilities that can be pulled out of a hat with no warning. Also too much time spent resolving dice-gimmicks.
If that wasn't the case you wouldn't need AA to react to stuff, you'd just react to it when your own turn comes and that would be sufficient.
Frankly i disagree, the problem with igougo is not about the ruleset contained within it, it's about player agency and having fun.
In the current 40k system (or any other main GW games) :
1) the person going second is effectively locked out of playing the game for the first 20-30 minutes. Fine and dandy for competitive players, no fun for normal people.
2) the person going second has an inherent disadvantage since damage is distributed immediately (as opposed to "at the end of the turn").
Let's be frank, the fact that GW maintains that system is because of tradition and the fear of the vocal minority uproar, certainly not because of its quality.
It's not just that - we've all had games where one player takes their turn and utterly demolishes their opponent in that one turn. One player getting to move, fire, assault, use psy powers (in every edition bar current one) etc.. They get to do everything they want and their opponent can really only roll on saves and so forth.
This can easily mean that the game is won-lost in a single phase and the ones that come after are mopping up for one player and trying to win with a decimated force for the other.
Sure you can get some epic moments in that, but there's a reason a LOT of other games in the market don't use the same system GW does.
Even AoS tries to mitigate it by having close combat alternate on who attacks first during the turn.
Overread wrote: It's not just that - we've all had games where one player takes their turn and utterly demolishes their opponent in that one turn. One player getting to move, fire, assault, use psy powers (in every edition bar current one) etc.. They get to do everything they want and their opponent can really only roll on saves and so forth.
Range and speed is what does it.
There isn't much counterplay to your opponent shelling you from their deployment zone turn 1 - at most you had the counter-deployment and static heavy weapons of 5e which lasted precisely one book into the edition before Cruddace pie-plated all over it.
Something like a game of 5e between witch hunters and orks plays out a little differently to leafblower vs drop pods or railgun spam.
Do people actually experience that anymore? There's enough terrain on the GW boards now that if anything its kind of the opposite. Player 1 often has no targets available to shoot at, which is why towering and indirect have been such dangerous abilities to have in large quantities.
LunarSol wrote: Do people actually experience that anymore? There's enough terrain on the GW boards now that if anything its kind of the opposite. Player 1 often has no targets available to shoot at, which is why towering and indirect have been such dangerous abilities to have in large quantities.
I think in every edition it has been hit and miss depending on armies involved and the table available.
I have a fair bit of scenery and so was asked to provide a table for a demo game a year back, IIRC 9th edition, and there was quite a considerable amount of deepstriking weapons and assault units going on that might have well have been artillery.
Orkeosaurus wrote: The problem isn't with IGoUGo, it's with the pacing of the game. Too few turns, too much movement and damage per turn, and too many special abilities that can be pulled out of a hat with no warning. Also too much time spent resolving dice-gimmicks.
If that wasn't the case you wouldn't need AA to react to stuff, you'd just react to it when your own turn comes and that would be sufficient.
Frankly i disagree, the problem with igougo is not about the ruleset contained within it, it's about player agency and having fun.
In the current 40k system (or any other main GW games) :
1) the person going second is effectively locked out of playing the game for the first 20-30 minutes. Fine and dandy for competitive players, no fun for normal people.
2) the person going second has an inherent disadvantage since damage is distributed immediately (as opposed to "at the end of the turn").
Let's be frank, the fact that GW maintains that system is because of tradition and the fear of the vocal minority uproar, certainly not because of its quality.
Also, past editions (mostly thinking 7th and earlier) had more turns, less movement, more restrictions on doing damage, no strats/fewer datasheet special abilities, and fewer rerolls/dice gimmicks. Games still took forever, and people were definitely complaining about long periods of non-interaction back then too.
1. Melee units are useless, as you get an entire shooting phase to intercept them (on top of a potential reactive move away from them). Factions that rely on melee are dead
melee is fixed by making the charge part of the movement phase
Orkeosaurus wrote: The problem isn't with IGoUGo, it's with the pacing of the game. Too few turns, too much movement and damage per turn, and too many special abilities that can be pulled out of a hat with no warning. Also too much time spent resolving dice-gimmicks.
If that wasn't the case you wouldn't need AA to react to stuff, you'd just react to it when your own turn comes and that would be sufficient.
Frankly i disagree, the problem with igougo is not about the ruleset contained within it, it's about player agency and having fun.
In the current 40k system (or any other main GW games) :
1) the person going second is effectively locked out of playing the game for the first 20-30 minutes. Fine and dandy for competitive players, no fun for normal people.
2) the person going second has an inherent disadvantage since damage is distributed immediately (as opposed to "at the end of the turn").
Let's be frank, the fact that GW maintains that system is because of tradition and the fear of the vocal minority uproar, certainly not because of its quality.
In 10th, going second is a MASSIVE advantage, wdym lol?
It was such an advantage that GW forced the winner of the initiative dice roll to go first, because 99% of the time, people would give first turn to their opponent.
Most games, no meaningful attacks are rolled by the player going first
In 10th, going second is a MASSIVE advantage, wdym lol?
It was such an advantage that GW forced the winner of the initiative dice roll to go first, because 99% of the time, people would give first turn to their opponent.
Most games, no meaningful attacks are rolled by the player going first
I often wonder if people are complaining about the game when they last played and not its current form.
Wyldhunt wrote: Games still took forever, and people were definitely complaining about long periods of non-interaction back then too.
Oldhammer suffered from a lot of marginal positional play - standing just outside of range, positioning units for minimum blast impact or visibility. Put a clock on the round and it would have played out exactly the same but with 15 minutes less shuffling, eyeballing, and tape measure waving per turn.
Those millimeters would win you games and lose you friends.
Unless there's a specific design reason for IGOUGO or it's a very small game, I prefer AA.
A few IGOUGO's that I'm happy with:
Song of Blades and Heroes and it's family of games have a modified gambling IGOUGO activation scheme that actually makes the game more tactical and gives additional weight on your decisions around who, when and how far to push your luck during activation.
A game like Kings of War uses IGOUGO to speed the game up quite a bit and deliberately restricts actions of any kind to the active player so you can even play with a chess clock.
Games like Original Necromunda or Mordheim have IGOUGO because GW, but it works pretty well in those situations because you're dealing with so few figures that activating them all together can give you a bit of synergy.
For most other situations, I'm going to lean hard towards AA. It's more interactive, more reactive, more balanced, and just more fun.
Sgt. Cortez wrote:The lack of AA is one of the reasons we moved on to OPR. And it's also probably the main reason some of our group say: For all the flaws of OPR, we wouldn't want to miss AA and therefore won't go back to 40K....
...In 40K you can empty a bottle of beer during your opponent's turn, in OPR you can only take a nip once in a while. That would make 40K a pretty laid back game if you didn't have to read up on a thousand special rules every game.
I agree. Our reasons for moving to OPR were more about cost and complexity, but our club definitely prefers alternating Unit Activation in most games
LunarSol wrote:I generally prefer Alternating Activation games, but their advantages kind of fall apart with bigger game sizes and varied activation values. When you get more than 5-6 activations the system starts to feel unresponsive and if players have notably different activation counts or values it feels more like you're gaming the activation system than playing the game. Alternating Activations also tend to work better with relatively low attrition so that the above remains consistent.
Unless I'm missing something, I would say hard disagree. I find alternating unit activation to actually be even better for larger games because otherwise the time between players activating their units can be long and the advantages of activating everything at once (especially on first turn) can be massive. In OPR, we play massive games and alternating unit activation keeps it from becoming a slog.
LunarSol wrote:I generally prefer Alternating Activation games, but their advantages kind of fall apart with bigger game sizes and varied activation values. When you get more than 5-6 activations the system starts to feel unresponsive and if players have notably different activation counts or values it feels more like you're gaming the activation system than playing the game. Alternating Activations also tend to work better with relatively low attrition so that the above remains consistent.
Unless I'm missing something, I would say hard disagree. I find alternating unit activation to actually be even better for larger games because otherwise the time between players activating their units can be long and the advantages of activating everything at once (especially on first turn) can be massive. In OPR, we play massive games and alternating unit activation keeps it from becoming a slog.
I prefer smaller games in general, but to this specific point, the issue with alternating activations in larger games is that the game really warps itself around gaming the activation system. They all devolve into weird games of red rover where you try to stall out your opponent's heavy hitters in order to attack with your own without reprisal. It also tends to create really weird list building incentives and greatly limit the kinds of viable army designs. Large expensive models are almost impossible to make viable and anything with an elite baseline becomes nearly unplayable. It's almost impossible to create viable combo pieces unless they're so cheap they also act as a pass token and generally speaking, I just find army design in what I will call unrestricted AA games to be very focused on things that pad out the activation count.
Large activation counts also create a weird gameplay situation where that sense of responsiveness that makes AA feel good diminishes as activation counters get larger. The first model to activate in a 10+ activation army becomes a very dead piece on the board in terms of what its position offers and the very long time between when it gets to act again gets really noticeable. While that's true to an extent in IGUG, since your units activate together, the order often isn't as impactful and you don't have that same feeling of something being unresponsive.
None of that is to say I don't prefer AA, just that what I like about it tends to fall off when armies have large numbers of activations and those activations have significantly different values. It feels great in a back and forth between 5-6 models who are all valued within a point or two from one another. I think there's ways that could be applied to a game with 40k style list building, but when its just applied to game like this without alterations, it just turns into this weird distraction of taking max Grots so the opposing Knights are done activating while I take an unconstested turn with all the real units in my Ork army. Just too much gamey nonsense for my liking.
I haven't read the full thread (skimmed most of it), but I want to add to the discussion my thoughts about AA which I haven't really seen discussed here or in other places.
My first wargame was Dropzone Commander with the alternate activation of battlegroups - small sub organizations within a players army. I believe the last apocalypse version hada similar activation mechanic.
I really liked this approach. Each player typically had 5 to 6 battlegroups, which made the order of activation important, while it reduced the worst alpha strike (positioning and the importance of infantry on objectives made going first actually quite undesirable).
I would prefer 40k to go into this direction, but I'm not sure how well this can be implemented.
The other AA mechanic I encountered recently was in Five parsecs from home: Tactics, where each player rolls 3D6 before his activation. The player must activate that many units with a higher training score that have not yet activated this battleround plus one additional. So each turn, a player may activate 1 to four units, with the opportunity to delay the activation for one turn. This makes it a lot more random (which might not be desired) but forces the player to adapt their plan on the spot. Combined with the reduced lethality and options for units to hide (and to detect hidden units) requires a lot of positioning and a well thought of order of activation. I had a lot of fun with it. This might be better suitable for 40k Games between 1000 and 2000 points, but requires the introduction of the training stat.
Finally, AA implementations that I don't like:
- as in chess: I find repetitive activation of the same unit quite immersion breaking.
- only one unit until all activated: I prefer activating several units as it sells the combined arms effect better. But depends on game size
- activation per phase: I tested this once and it was really annoying, it devolved into a cat and mouse game. Move to line up shot/charge, opponent moves out of sight/range, do nothing, repeat. At least until round three, then the second player has to commit to get the objectives, must expose himself so he might return fire after the first players shooting round, and then the game ended in mutual annihilation just 2 turns later then usual.
Brickfix wrote: I would prefer 40k to go into this direction, but I'm not sure how well this can be implemented.
By FoC perhaps?
Halve, third, or quarter the turns.
Player 1 - All fast and elite units activate
Player 2 - All fast and elite units activate
Player 1 - All heavy and troop units activate
Player 2 - All heavy and troop units activate
Or intermix it so that the attacker and defender are fundamentally different - i.e. player 1 fast and elite, player 2 heavy and troop, player 1 heavy and troop, player 2 fast and elite, repeat.
Wyldhunt wrote: Games still took forever, and people were definitely complaining about long periods of non-interaction back then too.
Oldhammer suffered from a lot of marginal positional play - standing just outside of range, positioning units for minimum blast impact or visibility. Put a clock on the round and it would have played out exactly the same but with 15 minutes less shuffling, eyeballing, and tape measure waving per turn.
Those millimeters would win you games and lose you friends.
I remember the need to disperse your units to avoid getting wiped out by blast templates took a huge amount of time. But there's also a difference between pacing and speed; a 1000pt and 3000pt game will have roughly the same pacing but turns take longer to resolve in 3000pts. Likewise dice-gimmicks don't necessarily change the pacing, they just take more time to resolve (though that can also be a problem). Pacing could be measured by how much progress is made towards the end of the game each turn, rather than how many minutes each turn takes. Though you wouldn't want to make the pacing super-slow either, obviously.
In terms of the sheer time needed to resolve a round, I suspect IGoUGo is faster than AA, all else being equal. I can certainly move 50 models at one time faster than 10 models 5 different times. But you do have a longer stretch of time between getting to do something so that's a real tradeoff, and that gets worse the larger game is. I guess middle-ground solutions like battle-groups are halfway between each.
One idea that I like to bat around is an action/reaction system, where the off-turn player has a single thing they can do with each unit during their opponent's turn (Take Cover, Overwatch, Flee, Counter-Attack). I guess that would be another hybrid system.
The way GW does alternate activation/reactions/etc it would not be faster. The main problem for AA to be really efficient is the fact that GW is trying to mix narrative/skirmish style rules with mass combat of a large scale war game. All those LoS problems, going through/around buildings, "death windows" etc are only a problem, because part of the rules is writen as if we were playing with 20 models per side. And aside for knights, not even custodes do that.
Simplification and removal of narrative/skirmish elements combined with an AA (per unit) system could make the game go a lot faster, and feel more dynamic. The question is can GW write it, and write it without instantly adding exeptions that break the system.
For example the "FA goes before HS" idea is cool, but it becomes less cool when some armies get the "and all their HS are actualy just as fast as FA".
I used to be very much in "Alternating Activation best activation" champ. But after much experience with it, it really has a lot of flaws.
In Necromunda, AA is all about stalling out your opponent to hammer activate your power combo at the end. Which also makes it a bit of a noob trap as new players don't really 'get' that.
AA also basically stops combos, as your opponent gets to shut down the combo in between, or just straight up a unit walks away from their support before the support activates.
I think AA would require far bigger changes to 40k than just bolting it on.
My local group tried bolting on AA to 40k for our annual apocalypse game, and it was better than IgoUgo but did have issues.
We started with just "3 activations each, back and forth", but that made transports and characters redundant. Would you like to activate a Rhino or deepstrike another Terminator squad?
So next year we added that when activating a unit you could activate an accompanying character and transport alongside. Which helped.
But it still felt like you were basically firing off missiles.
40k has so much mobility and lethality that there's basically no manoeuvring involved. Most games I know turns 1-2 very little real fighting happens as players vie for positioning. Not so in 40k. But I feel like that's a feature of 40k - violence starts immediately.
I think 40k would be better off with a good reaction system. Not like Heresy, because that system kinda sucks, but a good system.
Perhaps even add some kind of "seize the initiative" built in wherein a players turn could end prematurely.
This sort of thing is quite common in historical battles, Bloodbowl uses it too.
It's good because it adds a new level of tactics/risk management. Do you start with the big risky moves? Or do the smaller, safer, moves first?
IgoYgo isn't bad, it has many advantages on AA.
But "I beat you up, you take it without lube for 30 minutes, then we reverse roles" is bad.
In our version of the game, we still use movement, shooting and assault phases but we also use a reaction phase.
The current player may either move or shoot first, then the other player may react then or wait until before the assault phase (reacting after player A moves & shoots).
This allows the defensive player to decide when's the best time to react, but each unit eligible to react must pass a Leadership test, and their options are still somewhat restricted. However, they are still powerful enough to make an attacker be more cautious since it could disrupt an attack before it even starts.
amanita wrote: In our version of the game, we still use movement, shooting and assault phases but we also use a reaction phase.
The current player may either move or shoot first, then the other player may react then or wait until before the assault phase (reacting after player A moves & shoots).
This allows the defensive player to decide when's the best time to react, but each unit eligible to react must pass a Leadership test, and their options are still somewhat restricted. However, they are still powerful enough to make an attacker be more cautious since it could disrupt an attack before it even starts.
^I'm curious as to how this works. Is this done with AA one unit at a time or is this entire-army, then entire army gets to react? Are there penalties for reacting (like to-hit modifiers or loss of following turn)? I'm sorta imagining this system bogs down a bit (and maybe that's fine) but I'm having trouble picturing it.
Maybe every unit gets to do more in a game because they get their normal turn plus a limited reaction "turn".
kirotheavenger wrote: I used to be very much in "Alternating Activation best activation" champ. But after much experience with it, it really has a lot of flaws.
In Necromunda, AA is all about stalling out your opponent to hammer activate your power combo at the end. Which also makes it a bit of a noob trap as new players don't really 'get' that.
AA also basically stops combos, as your opponent gets to shut down the combo in between, or just straight up a unit walks away from their support before the support activates.
I think AA would require far bigger changes to 40k than just bolting it on.
My local group tried bolting on AA to 40k for our annual apocalypse game, and it was better than IgoUgo but did have issues.
We started with just "3 activations each, back and forth", but that made transports and characters redundant. Would you like to activate a Rhino or deepstrike another Terminator squad?
So next year we added that when activating a unit you could activate an accompanying character and transport alongside. Which helped.
But it still felt like you were basically firing off missiles.
40k has so much mobility and lethality that there's basically no manoeuvring involved. Most games I know turns 1-2 very little real fighting happens as players vie for positioning. Not so in 40k. But I feel like that's a feature of 40k - violence starts immediately.
I think 40k would be better off with a good reaction system. Not like Heresy, because that system kinda sucks, but a good system.
Perhaps even add some kind of "seize the initiative" built in wherein a players turn could end prematurely.
This sort of thing is quite common in historical battles, Bloodbowl uses it too.
It's good because it adds a new level of tactics/risk management. Do you start with the big risky moves? Or do the smaller, safer, moves first?
IgoYgo isn't bad, it has many advantages on AA.
But "I beat you up, you take it without lube for 30 minutes, then we reverse roles" is bad.
Oathmark and other systems have mechanics that give hero models the ability to command more than unit at once (connected with a steep points cost). This means that combos are possible.
You might also see some combos shift in nature. Eg instead of casting a buff on a specific unit a buff model might instead might just have an area effect "every model in X gets the bonus" or a "select 1 model in X amount of inches and it gains the bonus"
So you've got your combo, it just doesn't rely on necessarily activing the buff model first
So I think there are certainly ways to setup combos and many AA games have their own methods for this.
Are combos even desirable in the first place? Maybe it's my age showing through, but I'd be happy to see them go.
Regarding alternate activation's "issues", I'd strongly recommend looking at game systems that actually have AA before assuming they're intrinsic. Bolt action for example handles out-activating and leader units providing more activations (newcromunda has this too iirc). Most of the problems raised here have had a solution for years.
Combos are kind of a buzzword I feel - in the past it was just supporting units.
GW has also shifted from one psy unit with multiple abilities toward having more individual units with fewer abilities. As such some have become much more dedicated support units and "combo" units.
The Combo is just something simple like a buff unit casting a buff ability on a target squad before using that squad to perform an action.
These days you might layer that combo with a commandpoint activated ability as well. So its still basic*. AA can easily include those.
We might even see a shift toward more casual unit attachments; that's how Warmachine coped with a few by having specialists that attach to specific units. So AA could see a lot more psychers and named leaders joining squads formally so that their "combo" buff/bonus is simply part of that single unit activation.
*though I still argue that there's almost too many command point abilities and they way they come in and out of the game makes them fiddly to memorise compared to on-the-profile unit abilities.
If the game had a large number of units you could have an escalating number of activations.
Player A activates 1 unit
Player B activates 1 unit
Player A activates 2 units
Player B activates 2 units
Player A activates 3 units
Player B activates 3 units
etc
(That assumes a game where going first in the round is advantageous.)
I figured people who want AA should go play different games like OPR or WOTR or whatnot. These things are available if you're not weirdly hung up on playing Warhammer 40k but not Warhammer 40k.
Well, by golly, I've been struggling uphill both directions through a snowstorm since 2nd edition 40k just to play...
Yeah, no one cares. I get it. That said, I played 40k and Fantasy way back when, and the problems then were way more obvious.
I can't tell you the number of 40k games I played at tournaments twenty years ago that were over on turn 1, when you didn't get to go first and because of the rules and weapons might pick up 25%-33% of your army before you ever got a chance to move a model. It was a big reason I quit playing 40k in any form of competitive environment, the IGO-UGO first turn death stupidity. A lot of games came down to a single die roll to see who went first. They unleashed their purpose-built list, and when it was time to go second, you did it with a ridiculously reduced chance of victory.
I focused on Fantasy after that, which had it's own unique problems depending on edition (Heroes are Gods! Heroes suck and units rule in the next edition! Magic is Godly! Magic sucks in the next edition! then, 8th, where if you didn't bring a L4 mage you didn't win), but at least the game wasn't over before it began based on a single die rolled.
I've played everything GW, Confrontation, Wargods of Aegyptus, SFB, and many other games. The best of them are still earlier editions of Mordheim, Necromunda (because of the concepts of carrying over gangs from one game to another with experience, wounds, better gear, etc.), and Epic, because of the activation sequence/trying to retain initiative concept of the games. Or Wargods, with face-down activations, and similar games.
IGO-UGO is always the worst of worlds.
ALL OF THAT SAID, I think Warhammer 40K has come light-years beyond what it used to be with first-turn annihilations, to the point where going second isn't a death sentence, and can actually be beneficial for a smart player who has the final chance to rack up VP's in whatever manner, objective claiming, unit killing, whatever the battle rules require. We seem to be well and truly past the era of "all that matters is how many enemy units you kill how fast to gain their points value in VP's" and into a new era where there's some thought put into how VP's are gained. That really makes 40K a much better game overall.
Still, I do prefer alternating activation games, like Epic or Wargods. Or games where what happens to your warband carries over into future games, meaning you put a bit more thought into their fates. 40K will never be that, especially on a competitive level. You'll ignore anything related to fluff ("Eldar are a dying race, but put their citizens and breeding stock into Kleenex(tm) brand armor and give them submachine guns to rush into the face of the enemy! Brilliant!), and sacrifice whatever models you need to while you get an entire turn to move and attack mostly free of interference (short some spent CP's) before your opponent tries to counter that with whatever special rules they can dredge out of their Codex.
40K is a deeply flawed game that gets different, and occasionally better, with new iterations. It's also usually fun to play, right up until Codex Creep and such sets in just before a new edition is released and you get to spend a bunch of money again. It's the most popular game going, but far from the best.
Could we do AA in 40K? It's been tested before. It would require a full re-write, and serious playtesting. Neither of those things is something GW has ever been interested in. The churn out rules, minis, books, errata, etc. etc. etc. and leave it to you to playtest while they make money. It's been that way since the 80's. It's not going to change.
Enjoy 40k, or don't. Play other games, or don't. Make up your own rules for you and your friends to use in your garage, or don't. GW doesn't care. They never have. Their only goal is to sell overpriced minis. That's coming from someone who's been doing this almost 40 years. 36 to be more exact. Have fun, spend what you can afford, and don't stress over the rules too much. They change every few years anyway.
I focused on Fantasy after that, which had it's own unique problems depending on edition (Heroes are Gods! Heroes suck and units rule in the next edition! Magic is Godly! Magic sucks in the next edition! then, 8th, where if you didn't bring a L4 mage you didn't win), but at least the game wasn't over before it began based on a single die rolled.
I've played everything GW, Confrontation, Wargods of Aegyptus, SFB, and many other games. The best of them are still earlier editions of Mordheim, Necromunda (because of the concepts of carrying over gangs from one game to another with experience, wounds, better gear, etc.), and Epic, because of the activation sequence/trying to retain initiative concept of the games. Or Wargods, with face-down activations, and similar games.
I agree with most of what you've said. However, a few threads I'd like to pull on, mostly about WHFB, Mordheim and Necromunda.
In my opinion WHFB and Mordheim are probably less-bad options for IGOUGO because you don't have the majority of an army being able to shoot, charge on turn one. Fantasy and KoW (My preferred mass fantasy battle rank and flank game) just don't have the same "Alpha Strike" advantage that going first gives you in 40k.
As for Necromunda 1995, if played properly, with heavy multi-level terrain (Ideally Mordheim would be similarly dense), each player is usually going to get at least a turn to move around, spread-out, etc before being in the direct line-of sight of the majority of the opponent's force.
Which leads me back to 40k and other IGOUGO games in general, I left 40k well over a decade ago and I will never defend IGOUGO as the best option, but....
Is IGOUGO significantly "less-bad" on tables where a higher amount of cover, and/or minimal interaction on turn 1 is the norm?
Is IGOUGO significantly "less-bad" on tables where a higher amount of cover, and/or minimal interaction on turn 1 is the norm?
Generally speaking, the issue with heavy turn 1 interaction is the feeling that you just have stuff done to you before you have the opportunity to make decisions. Heavy terrain can help with this a lot by both minimizing how much of that happens, but also because it makes the decisions made during deployment feel more meaningful.
You need to be a little careful to ensure that the game still demands moving into the middle of the table or you can run a real risk of punting the issue to player 2 or worse, make turtling in the deployment a dominant strategy.
Is IGOUGO significantly "less-bad" on tables where a higher amount of cover, and/or minimal interaction on turn 1 is the norm?
You need to be a little careful to ensure that the game still demands moving into the middle of the table or you can run a real risk of punting the issue to player 2 or worse, make turtling in the deployment a dominant strategy.
This is very true. I'm a big believer in intentional scenarios. Sometimes a scenario let's one player turtle and part of the fun is seeing if you can bust it up, but I agree that in general the scenario should encourage maneuver and tactics.
In a basic seize-the-objectives scenario I'll often discuss with my opponent mutual placing of objectives to in interesting, thematic or less-initially-advantageous places. Makes for much more interesting games than simply 'hey I'll put my objectives by my toughest units.
For me the main problem with AA, which I believe several people have already discussed as well, is that I don't think it works well with what 40k is. AA doesn't work well with high unit counts (and lets face it I don't think unit counts are going down in 40k), and it really doesn't work well when there is a vast disparity in unit power between units that can be activated. For example, the difference in activating a tank squadron and an infantry squadron in old style epic did not have the same gap in power that activating a Rogal Dorn tank and a single infantry squad has in 40k, let alone the extreme of a unit of cultist compared to a knight. You could group some units together, but that just adds levels of complexity, and doesn't fix the issue (how many guardsmen need to go to equal a knight?) I just don't see AA working in 40k as I think it would just push the game to only bring the biggest baddest units and have as minimal activation as possible which isn't good either.
As an alternative, I like what GW has been moving towards, which is IGOUGO but with a lot of defensive reactionary abilities via unit abilities and stratagems. With the right terrain (to mitigate the turn 1 issues) and more reactive style stratagems I think would be more interactive than just AA being added in.
amanita wrote: In our version of the game, we still use movement, shooting and assault phases but we also use a reaction phase.
The current player may either move or shoot first, then the other player may react then or wait until before the assault phase (reacting after player A moves & shoots).
This allows the defensive player to decide when's the best time to react, but each unit eligible to react must pass a Leadership test, and their options are still somewhat restricted. However, they are still powerful enough to make an attacker be more cautious since it could disrupt an attack before it even starts.
^I'm curious as to how this works. Is this done with AA one unit at a time or is this entire-army, then entire army gets to react? Are there penalties for reacting (like to-hit modifiers or loss of following turn)? I'm sorta imagining this system bogs down a bit (and maybe that's fine) but I'm having trouble picturing it.
Maybe every unit gets to do more in a game because they get their normal turn plus a limited reaction "turn".
I'm intrigued. Sorry for all the questions!
Apologies for not responding earlier; I sometimes miss these threads.
All units have a chance to react when they are near enough to the enemy or are targeted by enemy fire, after the enemy moves or shoots. No penalties to reacting, but only half (round up) the hits count, & heavy/ordnance weapons are restricted by which direction they are facing (if a model has a fixed gun the player may elect to indicate a weapons's facing during their turn).
xeen wrote: For me the main problem with AA, which I believe several people have already discussed as well, is that I don't think it works well with what 40k is. AA doesn't work well with high unit counts (and lets face it I don't think unit counts are going down in 40k), and it really doesn't work well when there is a vast disparity in unit power between units that can be activated. For example, the difference in activating a tank squadron and an infantry squadron in old style epic did not have the same gap in power that activating a Rogal Dorn tank and a single infantry squad has in 40k, let alone the extreme of a unit of cultist compared to a knight. You could group some units together, but that just adds levels of complexity, and doesn't fix the issue (how many guardsmen need to go to equal a knight?) I just don't see AA working in 40k as I think it would just push the game to only bring the biggest baddest units and have as minimal activation as possible which isn't good either.
As an alternative, I like what GW has been moving towards, which is IGOUGO but with a lot of defensive reactionary abilities via unit abilities and stratagems. With the right terrain (to mitigate the turn 1 issues) and more reactive style stratagems I think would be more interactive than just AA being added in.
That is my two cents.
What about 40k would makeactivating different powered units so problematic?
Grimdark has AA and units as differently powered as 40k. There are benefits and drawbacks to having more-lower or fewer-higher powered units. I've played tons of Grimdark, often with widely differently proportioned units and it's never been a problem.
I focused on Fantasy after that, which had it's own unique problems depending on edition (Heroes are Gods! Heroes suck and units rule in the next edition! Magic is Godly! Magic sucks in the next edition! then, 8th, where if you didn't bring a L4 mage you didn't win), but at least the game wasn't over before it began based on a single die rolled.
I've played everything GW, Confrontation, Wargods of Aegyptus, SFB, and many other games. The best of them are still earlier editions of Mordheim, Necromunda (because of the concepts of carrying over gangs from one game to another with experience, wounds, better gear, etc.), and Epic, because of the activation sequence/trying to retain initiative concept of the games. Or Wargods, with face-down activations, and similar games.
I agree with most of what you've said. However, a few threads I'd like to pull on, mostly about WHFB, Mordheim and Necromunda.
In my opinion WHFB and Mordheim are probably less-bad options for IGOUGO because you don't have the majority of an army being able to shoot, charge on turn one. Fantasy and KoW (My preferred mass fantasy battle rank and flank game) just don't have the same "Alpha Strike" advantage that going first gives you in 40k.
As for Necromunda 1995, if played properly, with heavy multi-level terrain (Ideally Mordheim would be similarly dense), each player is usually going to get at least a turn to move around, spread-out, etc before being in the direct line-of sight of the majority of the opponent's force.
Which leads me back to 40k and other IGOUGO games in general, I left 40k well over a decade ago and I will never defend IGOUGO as the best option, but....
Is IGOUGO significantly "less-bad" on tables where a higher amount of cover, and/or minimal interaction on turn 1 is the norm?
Also both sides fight both turns (though the charger has some advantage, there's other parts baked into stats and certain units can go before chargers thanks to the initiative stats which are often balanced with the durability or sheer cost of most units that take advanatage of it.
With shooting there's no such thing.
Though another thing with IGOUGO is that in practice it's faster than AA. 40k (modern) is slowed down more by every unit having semi-unique abilities and reactions with spending command points on, and it would significantly speed up if that part of the game were removed from it, and pull it more away from playing virtual cards throughout the game, breaking it up (which can be even more disruptive than even the phase of using real cards in prior editions).
I kinda do think it would be interesting if there were different versions of 40k. Battletech has the classic rules, and it has alpha strike, you can use the same mechs, similar mechanics, but different structure of the stats/rules. I could see a "classic" 40k remaining in place with the YGIG format, and a new/different version of 40k existing with alternative activation style. Let both versions exist, same armies, same units, change some things where needed to make them work better in both formats, and see what the players like better.
If anybody is interested in an AA version of 40k after all that talk, I would like to shamelessly point towards the link in my signature.
Most if not all problems that were raised in this thread are a non-issue on the actual game table and I have yet to meet someone saying they did not enjoy the rules after a game or two.
xeen wrote: For me the main problem with AA, which I believe several people have already discussed as well, is that I don't think it works well with what 40k is. AA doesn't work well with high unit counts (and lets face it I don't think unit counts are going down in 40k), and it really doesn't work well when there is a vast disparity in unit power between units that can be activated. For example, the difference in activating a tank squadron and an infantry squadron in old style epic did not have the same gap in power that activating a Rogal Dorn tank and a single infantry squad has in 40k, let alone the extreme of a unit of cultist compared to a knight. You could group some units together, but that just adds levels of complexity, and doesn't fix the issue (how many guardsmen need to go to equal a knight?) I just don't see AA working in 40k as I think it would just push the game to only bring the biggest baddest units and have as minimal activation as possible which isn't good either.
That's not been my experience. I've played Grimdark Future and Bolt Action. They have different implementations of AA, but have similar impacts on army building. In Grimdark it's straight alternating activations with one caveat that the player who activated last in the previous turn doesn't go first in the new turn. BA has a semi random activation system that uses a dice bag to determine who activates. In both systems, however, the player feels incentivized to maximize the number of activations he can get. In Grimdark, for example, having 15 units to your opponent's 10 gets you the ability to out activate him.
Generally, you hold your powerful units back wanting to activate them after your opponent commits with his powerful units. So with more units you can start your turn activating your rear echelon units, the objective campers. Mostly you're putting them on overwatch or hunkering down. Your opponent does the same until he runs out of them and has to commit his big guys first and you get to react to those moves with multiple activations of your big guys knowing that he won't be able to respond. In BA having more dice in the bag gets you more opportunities for multiple back to back activations. Your force will feel more flexible and dynamic. In neither system did I ever feel that having the smallest number of powerful units was the best option.
Arschbombe wrote: In neither system did I ever feel that having the smallest number of powerful units was the best option.
And that will always be the issue.
That happened in the original Warmachine, when people started buying infantry and using them as activation sinks vs. Warjacks.
This isn't limited to Warmachine, AA in BattleTech works when it's Mech on Mech combat, because its roughly the same number of models. But once you fight the infantry Brigade and their artillery friends... there will be one less Lance in the Inner Sphere.
Small Elite armies will always be out maneuvered by horde armies in AA games.
And that will cause frustration.
I could win more games if I had more models. Is a thought I've had before.
I couldn't afford to buy tons of models so I would lose a lot.
That's why if I play an AA game I look for games with roughly the same model count per side, otherwise the game isn't worth playing.
xeen wrote: For me the main problem with AA, which I believe several people have already discussed as well, is that I don't think it works well with what 40k is. AA doesn't work well with high unit counts (and lets face it I don't think unit counts are going down in 40k), and it really doesn't work well when there is a vast disparity in unit power between units that can be activated. For example, the difference in activating a tank squadron and an infantry squadron in old style epic did not have the same gap in power that activating a Rogal Dorn tank and a single infantry squad has in 40k, let alone the extreme of a unit of cultist compared to a knight. You could group some units together, but that just adds levels of complexity, and doesn't fix the issue (how many guardsmen need to go to equal a knight?) I just don't see AA working in 40k as I think it would just push the game to only bring the biggest baddest units and have as minimal activation as possible which isn't good either.
That's not been my experience. I've played Grimdark Future and Bolt Action. They have different implementations of AA, but have similar impacts on army building. In Grimdark it's straight alternating activations with one caveat that the player who activated last in the previous turn doesn't go first in the new turn. BA has a semi random activation system that uses a dice bag to determine who activates. In both systems, however, the player feels incentivized to maximize the number of activations he can get. In Grimdark, for example, having 15 units to your opponent's 10 gets you the ability to out activate him.
Generally, you hold your powerful units back wanting to activate them after your opponent commits with his powerful units. So with more units you can start your turn activating your rear echelon units, the objective campers. Mostly you're putting them on overwatch or hunkering down. Your opponent does the same until he runs out of them and has to commit his big guys first and you get to react to those moves with multiple activations of your big guys knowing that he won't be able to respond. In BA having more dice in the bag gets you more opportunities for multiple back to back activations. Your force will feel more flexible and dynamic. In neither system did I ever feel that having the smallest number of powerful units was the best option.
I get it, I don't think it is impossible, but I think it will lead to issues.I have not played Grimdark or Bolt Action, only some of GW's AA games and some board games. But even in those, where there isn't such a broad power difference, I found that you almost always just activated your "best unit" first, and quite frankly similar to what you said, weaker units just felt like administration for the sake of completion. But part of your quote, "Mostly you're putting them on overwatch or hunkering down" really sounds like it makes the game boring and has less interaction. Right now, other than like one or two camper units, I use all of the units in my army actively. But again this is just my opinion and perhaps a viable AA rule set that is balanced, interactive, fun and not overtly complicated could be created, but in my opinion, I think that would be a tall order.
But like I previously stated, I am very glad 40k has started to add in reactive moves and out of order actions as during 3-7 when it was really just purely IGOUGO the game was not as much fun or interactive.
Alternating Activation systems, particularly if they don't have a pass mechanic, tend to make expensive things unplayable pretty quick and devolve into a red rover mechanic that I personally find very gamey and not really what I want.
That's not to say I don't like Alternating Activations, just that they work so much better when there's only around 5 activations a side and each activation is similar in power level. Even then, a pass system is often incredibly important. 40k's unit structure just doesn't conform to it well.
It would be more complicated, but I feel like there might be room for an Activation Cost stat. Like, when it's your turn to activate some units, you choose one, do that unit's stuff, then choose another unit and do it's stuff, etc. until you've activated X Activation Cost worth of units. So functionally you're still able to pull off multi-unit maneuvers like having a transport drop off its passengers and have those passengers shoot, but there's still generally some back and forth on activations to avoid the IGOUGO problems *and* it gives you a way to avoid some of the red rover issues that come with big disparities in unit count.
Plus, it could be fun to experiment with things like having crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units have lower AC so that you can activate a bunch of them at once. Or have your commander type characters treat a unit's AC as being lower meaning you can activate more units at a time.
AA in no way has to push players into playing safe at the beginning of the turn nor does it have to reward spamming low cost units in order to get control of the end of turn.
Alpha Strike and some other games have players with more units activate more until the numbers average out.
Also, games like Grimdark reduce a unit's effectiveness after the first close combat of a given turn. In the AA context this rewards aggressive action early for both players as you prioritize where you really need to be the first attacker. Simultaneously, it rewards good tactics as you strive to keep other units out of these situations to effect your late turn goals.
LunarSol wrote: Alternating Activation systems, particularly if they don't have a pass mechanic, tend to make expensive things unplayable pretty quick and devolve into a red rover mechanic that I personally find very gamey and not really what I want.
That's not to say I don't like Alternating Activations, just that they work so much better when there's only around 5 activations a side and each activation is similar in power level. Even then, a pass system is often incredibly important. 40k's unit structure just doesn't conform to it well.
Tell me you haven’t played Kill Team without saying you haven’t played Kill Team
But seriously, Kill Team is AA with 6-10(14) units per side with the occasional basic units that activate as groups. It has a mechanic that allows the player with less activations make ‘minor’ activations with units after all have been activated and his opponent has in activated units. I find it very fun and engaging. I can only hope 40K becomes more like it.
yes, but in kill team it is not easy to kill an opposing unit per activation and definitly not multiple ones. Objective also function different. Imagine a custodes or GK or IK army having to do big activiation, while their opponent have 16-17(normal for even msu marines) activations and just wait for their opponent to stand on an objective to be blown up after the elite player runs out of their activations. And if they don't go in and take objectives? great the swarm player takes them, and with the elite player being unable to kill stuff was enough they practicaly lose turn 1. We had something like that happen in 9th ed with DE, when a ton of armies were in a lose/lose situation, if they didn't go pro active the DE player was trading up (a lot) and would win unless some abyssal rolls were involved, and if the DE opponnt was pasive the DE player would just win on objectives.
Plus, it could be fun to experiment with things like having crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units have lower AC so that you can activate a bunch of them at once. Or have your commander type characters treat a unit's AC as being lower meaning you can activate more units at a time.
What about armies that don't have "crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units" though? Those would be left in a situation where combining stuff would be rather hard to pull off, their opponents had more activations to bait out actions/movment.
Plus in a system like that GW, the very next codex would go "You see this units is in Heavy Support, but because it is X it actualy shots like FA, but only for this one army/detachment. Everyone else gets the bad HS version".
I get it, I don't think it is impossible, but I think it will lead to issues.I have not played Grimdark or Bolt Action, only some of GW's AA games and some board games. But even in those, where there isn't such a broad power difference, I found that you almost always just activated your "best unit" first, and quite frankly similar to what you said, weaker units just felt like administration for the sake of completion. But part of your quote, "Mostly you're putting them on overwatch or hunkering down" really sounds like it makes the game boring and has less interaction.
It's quite the opposite actually. There is no my turn or your turn. It's just the turn and it belongs to both players. You are fully engaged because you are an active player every turn. Every move changes the board state and what your next move might be. Just because both players have chaff units hiding in the backline and those get activated first doesn't make the game boring.
Yep plus having features like splitting fire and such can mean that even if you've an elite army with fewer squads you can still project a lot of power against an opponent who might have a very chaff heavy army, but where most have a close combat weapon or only one weapon.
There are lots of ways to deal with the imbalance in squad counts
But yeah you get to be fully invested for the whole turn sequence. There's no half hour where you're watching your opponent play and your only input is to roll dice in a defensive situations that you are forced into (because its your opponents turn and they choose who and what they charge).
The whole argument of "well you might have a few more activations than your opponent" is undone by the fact that currently you have a whole ARMY more than your opponent if you go first in a turn sequence.
AA games you can't do that sweeping "I just obliterated your whole army and you couldn't do anything about it" as commonly and often if you DO manage it its because you've either done something masterful or there's a huge skill divide between you and your opponent.
Personally I also find the flow of an AA game easier to learn and easier to see mistakes in to grow and learn from. 40K and AoS have big turn sequences and that can somewhat make it harder to see what went wrong/right from your actions because its muted by the blur of "it was your opponents turn and they did EVERYTHING that hurt you".
Instead AA is like lots of micro-situations where you can really see very quick results from your actions and very quick retaliations.
Of course higher level play still focuses on those long term goals/plans not just short term; but again I feel like the AA flow really works better to make a game that's honestly easier to advance skill wise with.
I looked at the last couple games I played and compared that list to a bunch of meta chasers who play locally.
I have 10 units in my IK force... if I was a meta guy it would be 12.
I compared that to 8 different SM and CSM lists. That's what my shop has MEQ for days.
Most of their armies were 15-19 units.
That's not a huge difference.
But, for the sake of argument, here's a balancing point that could be used, in order to push units into a more aggressive 40k playstyle.
Every model that Activates goes into Overwatch at the end of its turn and may fire its ranged weapons (still needing 6s) at an enemy that activates later that turn.
I think AA definitely increases accessibility because new players only have to deal with one unit at a time. It breaks the game into more manageable chunks. If a new player gets first turn in IGOUGO they need to manage their entire force at once, but in AA they can try a relatively low risk unit, watch what the opponent does in response, and then move on to the next unit.
Da Boss wrote: I think AA definitely increases accessibility because new players only have to deal with one unit at a time. It breaks the game into more manageable chunks. If a new player gets first turn in IGOUGO they need to manage their entire force at once, but in AA they can try a relatively low risk unit, watch what the opponent does in response, and then move on to the next unit.
Also when you start to build plans for your actions AA allows you to do so much more readily every full game turn; whilst at the same time adapting to what your opponent does.
the IGOUGO has a huge barrier which is that if you get the turn at the right moment you can do your whole gameplan in one turn OR your opponent does. If you do then great you get to do what you want; if not then you have to watch as your whole game plan goes out the window along with a good chunk of your army. So suddenly you're having to react to major loss and major game state change. That actually takes a good chunk of experience to work through and learn how to deal with and its tricky in a game where you might get 1 game a week a best for many people.
Now its obviously not stopping people learning and having fun and having deep strategies and such; but again I'd argue that its harder to get to grips with.
Plus, it could be fun to experiment with things like having crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units have lower AC so that you can activate a bunch of them at once. Or have your commander type characters treat a unit's AC as being lower meaning you can activate more units at a time.
What about armies that don't have "crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units" though? Those would be left in a situation where combining stuff would be rather hard to pull off, their opponents had more activations to bait out actions/movment.
The way I'm picturing it, AC would roughly correspond to how powerful a unit is. So a marine player might only be able to activate 2 or 3 units at a time while a tau player might be choosing between activating either 1 crisis squad or 3-4 pathfinder/stealth suit squads. And then a guard player might have the option of activating like 5 units together provided they're all unimpressive chaff.
You'd probably need a mechanic to compel people to activate more than one or two low AC units at a time to avoid action baiting though. Maybe make it so that you *must* keep activating until you hit at least X AC or something. The details would need to be hammered out, but I think there might be something there.
Plus in a system like that GW, the very next codex would go "You see this units is in Heavy Support, but because it is X it actualy shots like FA, but only for this one army/detachment. Everyone else gets the bad HS version".
I mean, every idea is a bad one if we assume GW goes out of there way to mess it up somehow. But even then, I think we might still get a better result than what we have now. If loyalist predators are using less AC than chaos predators, that's probably going to hurt the overall balance, but you'd still have an end result of players activating smaller portions of their army at a time with limited ability to action bait or wipe out the other side with a big alpha/beta strike. So still an improvement even if an imperfect one.
Lathe Biosas wrote: I looked at the last couple games I played and compared that list to a bunch of meta chasers who play locally.
I have 10 units in my IK force... if I was a meta guy it would be 12.
I compared that to 8 different SM and CSM lists. That's what my shop has MEQ for days.
Most of their armies were 15-19 units.
That's not a huge difference.
But, for the sake of argument, here's a balancing point that could be used, in order to push units into a more aggressive 40k playstyle.
Every model that Activates goes into Overwatch at the end of its turn and may fire its ranged weapons (still needing 6s) at an enemy that activates later that turn.
What do you think?
It's a solution looking for a problem, no offense intended.
A simple pass mechanic is all that is needed to solve unit count discrepancy.
Lathe Biosas wrote: I looked at the last couple games I played and compared that list to a bunch of meta chasers who play locally.
I have 10 units in my IK force... if I was a meta guy it would be 12.
I compared that to 8 different SM and CSM lists. That's what my shop has MEQ for days.
Most of their armies were 15-19 units.
That's not a huge difference.
But, for the sake of argument, here's a balancing point that could be used, in order to push units into a more aggressive 40k playstyle.
Every model that Activates goes into Overwatch at the end of its turn and may fire its ranged weapons (still needing 6s) at an enemy that activates later that turn.
What do you think?
It's a solution looking for a problem, no offense intended.
A simple pass mechanic is all that is needed to solve unit count discrepancy.
No offense taken.
I was trying to think of a method that rewards aggressive gameplay.
Karol wrote: yes, but in kill team it is not easy to kill an opposing unit per activation and definitly not multiple ones. Objective also function different. Imagine a custodes or GK or IK army having to do big activiation, while their opponent have 16-17(normal for even msu marines) activations and just wait for their opponent to stand on an objective to be blown up after the elite player runs out of their activations. And if they don't go in and take objectives? great the swarm player takes them, and with the elite player being unable to kill stuff was enough they practicaly lose turn 1. We had something like that happen in 9th ed with DE, when a ton of armies were in a lose/lose situation, if they didn't go pro active the DE player was trading up (a lot) and would win unless some abyssal rolls were involved, and if the DE opponnt was pasive the DE player would just win on objectives.
You must be playing a different version of Kill Team than me. I've not experience that much trouble dropping an opposing model in Kill Team. Heck, I find it harder to kill a unit with just one unit in 40K than I do in Kill Team.
But there are many possible ways to deal with Big Unit vs MSU in an AA system. You can use proportional activations where one player gets multiple activations when they have significantly more activations available than their opponent.
In a more sophisticated way, you can use an Activation Tally system where every unit gets an Activation Cost (AC). Starting at 0 for both players, you add the AC to your Activation Tally each time you activate a unit. If your Activation Tally remains below your opponents, you activate another unit until it either equals or exceeds theirs. At that point, they take over activating units until their Activation Tally exceeds yours. If AC is roughly 1 per 50 points, there is no issue of the Custodes, Grey Knight, or Knight player having to activate their entire army before their opponent gets to meaningful activations. Both players will activate a similar proportion of their army strength at the same time.
But the real issue with AA and 40K is that too much happens in a current 40K turn then a good AA system allows a single unit to do in an activation. A Kill Team unit gets 2-3 actions (move/charge, shoot, fight, special ability) while a 40K unit can move, shoot, charge, fight (including pile in and consolidate). A lot of the game would need to be remastered to be much leaner than it is today for AA. But that's a good thing in my mind!
Most of the arguments I hear against AA are arguments against a bare-minimum implementation of AA. Issues like army sizes or uneven numbers of units are readily solvable and have been addressed numerous different ways by other wargames.
People keep talking about AA as a single thing, but alternating activation is an umbrella term for a host of mechanics that can add different things to the gameplay. Sometimes they're structured around modeling command and control, sometimes they're intended to create unpredictability and friction, sometimes they convey faction identity, sometimes they're just there to add an additional tactical layer. There are a bunch of different ways to implement it depending on what you're going for.
But IGOUGO also has a variety of implementations with different gameplay implications. Modern wargames that make use of IGOUGO tend to employ concepts like sequential activation, action economies, or reaction systems to add interesting tactical considerations and mitigate some of the problems that 40K still struggles with. I certainly wouldn't mind an AA rework of 40K, but my issue with 40K's turn structure is less that it's IGOUGO, and more that it's a sucky holdover of 1980s game design that doesn't do anything interesting for the gameplay and creates a bunch of problems in the process. You could do a lot better even without going AA.
To continue what catbarf said, most issues people raise with AA are either oversimplifications or empirically disproven. There are plenty of ways to interleave activations over the game round in a way that fits the chosen themes of the rest of the rules framework.
Straight AA, risk-assessment sudden death initiative, phased activations, deck or token draws, initiative order series, secret orders in timing priority, activation around commanders, activation in groups, asymmetric activation elements and passing options... all of these work fine in games big and small and arguing they don't is frankly just fighting the windmills. Personal preference is one thing, such as my dislike of IGOUGO, but lumping all AA as one thing unsuited for X is simply misguided.
40k in particular is not any exception. I've played it with various AA modifications (like Bolt Action inspired token draw group activations) in multiple editions and it definitely improved the game for our group.
Sherrypie wrote: To continue what catbarf said, most issues people raise with AA are either oversimplifications or empirically disproven. There are plenty of ways to interleave activations over the game round in a way that fits the chosen themes of the rest of the rules framework.
Straight AA, risk-assessment sudden death initiative, phased activations, deck or token draws, initiative order series, secret orders in timing priority, activation around commanders, activation in groups, asymmetric activation elements and passing options... all of these work fine in games big and small and arguing they don't is frankly just fighting the windmills. Personal preference is one thing, such as my dislike of IGOUGO, but lumping all AA as one thing unsuited for X is simply misguided.
40k in particular is not any exception. I've played it with various AA modifications (like Bolt Action inspired token draw group activations) in multiple editions and it definitely improved the game for our group.
I feel that a vocal minority in the 40k Community had become accustomed with list-tailoring for Alpha-Striking being the norm, and even tho this kind of gameplay has been toned down a little, many have an unhealthy attachement to the dated turn sequence, out of habit and fear of change ("my army's strenght will be broken with AA!"). I mean technically, the 40k community already has a love/hate relationship with the permanent ruleset-shift occuring every 3 years, but still continue to play the game nonetheless.
GW has already introduced AA in almost all the other game system (Epic/Imperialis, KT, Apocalypse), so we know for a fact it works even within the company.
Also, from the corporate GW point of view, maybe modifying the way the turn sequence works in 40k might seem like a jump into a big unknown.
I don't think most people would drop 40k if AA was introduced, simply because there is no equivalent universe and miniatures, but the higher ups are probably completely adverse to change it and potentially hurt sales/growth.
Siegfriedfr wrote: but the higher ups are probably completely adverse to change it and potentially hurt sales/growth.
We know this has been the case for over twenty years; Andy Chambers left GW because he wanted to significantly iterate on 3rd and the suits wouldn't let him. 8th was the big reboot of 40K and it still was about 90% the same game, with the same dated IGOUGO and the same dated phase structure and the same dated sequential dice rolls to resolve everything.
40K is full of atavisms because the degree to which GW is willing to change the game is inversely proportional to how profitable it is at any given moment, and for all its problems it isn't struggling the way WHFB was. Specialist titles and spin-off games are where GW's designers are free to actually design.
I like being able to plan my army's coordinated movement rather than have the army's plan being interrupted by a countermove after every move I make.
As others have pointed out, there are ways to come close to this even with AA- group activations might be okay. Using the old multi-detachment system of 8th/ 9th and alternating between detachments would have added another consequence to choices about army composition/ organization.
But straight "you move one unit then I move one unit?" No thanks. By the time I got to my last unit every turn, the table wouldn't even remotely resemble what it was when the turn began. IMHO, it defeats the purpose of playing with many units if the system doesn't allow them to effectively coordinate their actions.
I understand why people would like AA.
In 40k, I just prefer the "BIG TURN" feel that I get from IGOUGO. I like the downtime afforded by my opponent's movement phase, and I find my level of participation in the shooting and fighting phases sufficient with saves, counter attacks and out of turn strats.
My group's solution to alpha strikes was always put lots of LOS blocking terrain in deployment zones. Now often, on tables with lots of LOS blocking terrain, there can be significant advantages to deploying in the open... But that sets up positioning and risk/ reward.
With swarm armies, or Towering armies, I acknowledge that isn't always easy to do. Building terrain big enough to completely block LOS to a Knight or a Baneblade takes up a lot of table real estate, and it would have to be scratch built, because few if any manufacturers make anything of the sort.
But unit for unit AA feels like the whole game is a single, ongoing turn. I want Big Turn Rhythm. It's what 40k has that skirmish games don't. Just my preference.
PenitentJake wrote: IMHO, it defeats the purpose of playing with many units if the system doesn't allow them to effectively coordinate their actions.
As opposed to 40K of today, where coordination as basic as 'unit A shoots the single Grot in the way, unit B advances through the gap' requires 40% of the entire duration of the game to execute, and in between those actions your opponent's entire army has the ability to interrupt and counter you.
Warmachine has IGOUGO but also permits sequencing within a turn, because the designers had a clear vision of combo-focused gameplay and designed the turn structure around it. You can activate unit A to kill a unit in the way, activate unit B to move into the gap, and activate unit C to cast a spell through B and exploit the breakthrough.
40K has IGOUGO with a rigid phase structure because that's how games were written in 1987, even as the game keeps running into problems that directly or indirectly stem from its turn structure. IGOUGOcan be a good structure for a game designed to promote army-wide coordination, but this ain't it.
As opposed to 40K of today, where coordination as basic as 'unit A shoots the single Grot in the way, unit B advances through the gap' requires 40% of the entire duration of the game to execute, and in between those actions your opponent's entire army has the ability to interrupt and counter you.
Warmachine has IGOUGO but also permits sequencing within a turn, because the designers had a clear vision of combo-focused gameplay and designed the turn structure around it. You can activate unit A to kill a unit in the way, activate unit B to move into the gap, and activate unit C to cast a spell through B and exploit the breakthrough.
40K has IGOUGO with a rigid phase structure because that's how games were written in 1987, even as the game keeps running into problems that directly or indirectly stem from its turn structure. IGOUGOcan be a good structure for a game designed to promote army-wide coordination, but this ain't it.
Perhaps not focusing exclusively on the part of my post where I said:
PenitentJake wrote: IMHO, it defeats the purpose of playing with many units if the system doesn't allow them to effectively coordinate their actions.
And instead recognizing that in the same post I also said:
As others have pointed out, there are ways to come close to this even with AA- group activations might be okay. Using the old multi-detachment system of 8th/ 9th and alternating between detachments would have added another consequence to choices about army composition/ organization.
But straight "you move one unit then I move one unit?" No thanks. By the time I got to my last unit every turn, the table wouldn't even remotely resemble what it was when the turn began.
Would help you to see that I've already conceded that a system like Warmachine's could definitely work- even for me. I'm not arguing anywhere that I'm set on GW's turn structure. I'm saying that I like it better (for me) than the version of AA that is "You move a unit, I move a unit, repeat."
You're a smart guy. Read my posts before you reply please.
I do feel that alternating by phase gets you a lot of the way there for both styles. Most of the co-ordination is through movement anyway, so moving all your stuff with perhaps some reactive counterplay (like Heroic Moves in LOTR) gets you that "grand plan" feel, and then having shooting alternate means you have to be a bit careful about how you manage it. I think simultaneous resolution is even better than alternating for shooting but the book keeping would be a pain. Melee is already essentially simultaneous/alternating so no problem there.
Would not require much extra work to implement this.
Alternating by initiative (not the stat, rather a unit category) is an interesting option. I mention this because I saw it in this game's first impressions video yesterday https://youtu.be/U64ty_5faPc?si=RTmPHWL_1ssaTdc3 explained at 4 minutes mark.
Simply, players activate categories of units, maybe Fast attack first, then Elite, then Troops, then Heavy Support (I am using 40k unit categories, but really units can be varied further within categories, also it's a simplified outline of a concept, not a rules proposal). So there's a level of coordination within one category, but also some alternating moves for less downtime for each player.
PenitentJake wrote: You're a smart guy. Read my posts before you reply please.
I did, I just quoted the bit that's most relevant. I apologize if I gave the impression of cherry-picking.
My point was that 40K's game structure doesn't do a great job of permitting (or promoting) army-wide coordination to begin with, because it wasn't designed to. In order to carry out any sort of cooperative activity that requires temporal sequencing you need to string it out over multiple turns, and that gives the opponent the opportunity for counterplay, which is the biggest thing you are complaining about with AA. In practice, I don't think you would find army-wide coordination any harder under an AA structure of some sort than under the current IGOUGO; it would just be more incremental. It would also solve coordination problems like your entire army getting hung up for a turn because a conga-lining unit of Termagants is blocking your movement.
Also, depending on the implementation, AA can often discourage directly reacting to what the opponent has already done. It's a common newbie trap in straight AA systems to shoot at whatever unit just activated, where it's often better to instead engage a unit that has yet to activate, reducing its strength before it has a chance to act this turn. You get a game flow where things are happening across the table, sometimes in direct response to what the opponent just did, but more often to take initiative and apply pressure elsewhere.
In any case, AA doesn't increase the amount of counterplay, it just shifts it more granular. Whether you prefer that is very much YMMV, but I personally consider getting away from I'll-go-make-a-sandwich levels of inactivity, and dramatically increasing the number of decision points that shape the outcome, to be a feature rather than a bug. The general industry (and GW themselves, in everything besides 40K) seems to agree. I know the bare-bones nature of OPR isn't your jam but it's a pretty good showcase of how AA lends itself to gameplay and narrative potential in a 40K-like game.
Fair enough- as I said, there probably is a version of AA that could still give me coordinated action or Big Turn feel. I don't have a lot of experience with other table-top miniature games, because I prefer role-playing games. If it wasn't for the RP elements offered by Crusade, narrative escalation/ roster based play, I'd have quit 40k in 8th.
I'd be okay with an AA system that made room for inter-unit coordination, or allowed me to maintain some sense of "Big Turn" feel... I just don't want to be bouncing back and forth between your unit/ my unit like a tennis match, because that wouldn't feel like 40k. I don't think you're advocating for that type of system, and probably most of the folks who want AA aren't either.
To be clear, I heavily play AA games. They are generally my preferred systems, but they feel very different and I have not really enjoyed them in games styled like 40k like ASoIaF, Legion, The Other Side or even Sigmar's pseudo AA. AA has a ton of strengths, but its drawbacks I really feel as the scale of the game expands. There hits a point where I start to feel like the game is more about manipulating the turn order than playing with the toys in my mind.
I guess I just don't hate IGUG the way I used to. It's got its flaws, but the time when I felt like a massive Alpha Strike decided the game hasn't held true for me in more recent editions. There's more of a back and forth grind that I enjoy. 40k is far from my favorite game system but I actually kind of appreciate what they've made out of it. They've made a good IGUG system to the point where I don't think AA would actually result in something better, even if I have a bunch of AA games I think ARE better.
We play a home brew version mashup of 3rd thru 5th with a little 6th and 7th sprinkled in, I suppose. But we also developed a robust Reaction Phase to mitigate that single player turn domination.
However, I wonder about the viability of simply combining aspects of AA with IGOUGO, whereas a player only does a 'partial' turn and then the next player does the same.
For example, what if Player A could either move OR shoot with each unit, performing a single action. Then Player B would do the same, and so on? Essentially playing twice as many 'half' turns? Possible exceptions for assault weapons or similar types or other situations, being able to do both? Or reduce movement/firepower by half for other exceptions.
LunarSol wrote: AA has a ton of strengths, but its drawbacks I really feel as the scale of the game expands. There hits a point where I start to feel like the game is more about manipulating the turn order than playing with the toys in my mind.
I think what you're observing is how overtly 'gamey' any sort of activation mechanic becomes when it's applied at larger scale without any greater structure, and I tend to agree.
I consider Epic's formation-based activation to be a standout example of AA as applied to a large-scale wargame. It's simple to play, it keeps your army to a manageable 3-8 activations, it effectively models C&C but does so by leveraging your army's organizational structure rather than needing to fuss around with commander units, it provides natural-feeling differentiation between armies (both in terms of force organization and the command ratings that dictate how easy they are to coordinate), and it provides an additional tactical layer of deciding when to try retaining the initiative and when to pass.
amanita wrote:However, I wonder about the viability of simply combining aspects of AA with IGOUGO, whereas a player only does a 'partial' turn and then the next player does the same.
For example, what if Player A could either move OR shoot with each unit, performing a single action. Then Player B would do the same, and so on? Essentially playing twice as many 'half' turns? Possible exceptions for assault weapons or similar types or other situations, being able to do both? Or reduce movement/firepower by half for other exceptions.
Dust: Warfare is sort of like this. You roll off to see which player has the initiative for the turn- say Player A wins. Player A takes two actions with each of their units, but Player B can perform reactions as this happens, with each unit able to perform a single action as a reaction. Then Player B takes two actions with each of their units, except the units that reacted only get one action apiece. Any of Player A's units can still react, effectively giving them a third action. It's still IGOUGO, but the organic reactions keep both players engaged, and the initiative structure creates a particular 'flow' to the turn.
Lathe Biosas wrote: I wouldn't mind's an AA, I pick a unit, then I move and shoot with that unit. Then you select a unitnto move and shoot.
When it's all over we go to the assault phase and AA actions based on unit initiative.
That's the kind of AA I'd hate.
"Great, so my plan is to fly-by attack with the jetbikes, move the shooty infantry up to shoot, and the leaders in behind them for the buff"
"Naw, once you move your jetbikes, the drive- by survivors will charge them, nullifying your shooting and leaving the HQ with no one to buff"
So much for planning and coordination.
The group activations that CB was talking about earlier are way better than "Your unit/ My unit/ repeat"
Heck, IMHO, what we currently have is better than "Your unit/ My unit/ repeat"
This "big turn" argument is exactly what I've been feeling when playing AA games. I feel my grand strategy quickly gets lost in micro action->reaction sequences (could be a me issue though). I still favor AA, but I do miss that feeling.
Maybe a battletech-style "damage is only applied at the end of the game turn" applied to igougo would help you?
In theory AA still has big-grand strategy. If you purely react to the micro in AA you've a higher chance of losing to a player also looking at the big picture.
Because at that point you're surrendering control over the board to your opponent be always being reactive to their plan, their choices and their change of the game state.
Effective AA playing is both reacting to the micro; but also having a grand plan on top. To put pressure on your opponent and to make them have to answer your questions from your choices.
Yes its different to alternate army turns, but at the same time AA has a greater chance that both players can have and work with an adapting grand strategy of their own. Meanwhile in typical GW games only one player gets their grand strategy - whilst the other has to be reactive to it.
I focused on Fantasy after that, which had it's own unique problems depending on edition (Heroes are Gods! Heroes suck and units rule in the next edition! Magic is Godly! Magic sucks in the next edition! then, 8th, where if you didn't bring a L4 mage you didn't win), but at least the game wasn't over before it began based on a single die rolled.
I've played everything GW, Confrontation, Wargods of Aegyptus, SFB, and many other games. The best of them are still earlier editions of Mordheim, Necromunda (because of the concepts of carrying over gangs from one game to another with experience, wounds, better gear, etc.), and Epic, because of the activation sequence/trying to retain initiative concept of the games. Or Wargods, with face-down activations, and similar games.
I agree with most of what you've said. However, a few threads I'd like to pull on, mostly about WHFB, Mordheim and Necromunda.
In my opinion WHFB and Mordheim are probably less-bad options for IGOUGO because you don't have the majority of an army being able to shoot, charge on turn one. Fantasy and KoW (My preferred mass fantasy battle rank and flank game) just don't have the same "Alpha Strike" advantage that going first gives you in 40k.
As for Necromunda 1995, if played properly, with heavy multi-level terrain (Ideally Mordheim would be similarly dense), each player is usually going to get at least a turn to move around, spread-out, etc before being in the direct line-of sight of the majority of the opponent's force.
Which leads me back to 40k and other IGOUGO games in general, I left 40k well over a decade ago and I will never defend IGOUGO as the best option, but....
Is IGOUGO significantly "less-bad" on tables where a higher amount of cover, and/or minimal interaction on turn 1 is the norm?
Apologies, haven't been here for a bit, but since you quoted part of my post, I'll answer the question.
Yes, terrain/cover is critical Not just terrain that gives you a bonus or something, but terrain that completely blocks LOS. The main reason I quit playing 40K so many years ago and focused solely on Fantasy (and other, non-GW games) was simple. At the RT's and GT's I was attending, most games were decided by the roll to go first. I can't even count the number of times I lost that roll, and picked up 1/3rd of my army before I moved a miniature.
Why? Because good terrain was expensive, and a hobby store putting together a dozen tables worth for an RT was cost prohibitive. Add in 50+ tables for a GT, and terrain was downright SPARSE. A couple of ruins, a forest or two, some crates and such. Scattered over 24 sqft of table. It was disheartening to say the lest to spend a year collecting and painting an army only to realize the game sucked and would be decided by a single die roll.
WHFB didn't have that problem. You weren't putting lascannon shots four feet across the board and popping your opponent's expensive transport/squad before they got to move it. Necromunda and Mordheim were better games for the reason you described, the terrain prevented such nonsense.
Most of the group I played with gave up on 40k around the same time, and never went back. They all became WHFB players, and delved into non-GW games. Except for Epic Armageddon. That's where we got our sci-fi jam on. The alternative activations with a chance to Retain the Initiative was a vastly superior system when dealing with board-spanning heavy weapons.
Lately I've really wanted to go back to painting and playing (it's been a while), and I've been watching a lot of YouTube battle reports for 40k. It doesn't really seem like the game has improved any since I was playing it two decades ago. Now, they seem to have decided that WAY more terrain on a tournament board is the correct way to go, which is great...at the same time, they've:
--Reduced the number of turns to 5, and the time limit to 1.5 hours. Some tournaments use chess clocks. WTF? Aren't we here to actually have some fun? Enjoy the company of fellow gamers? Do we suddenly enjoy games were I get 9 minutes per turn, period, and if I run out of time I essentially get to watch myself lose? How does anyone use an army with a large number of models? Orks and Gretchin, multiple 'Gaunt squads, etc? You'd use the 9 minutes just on your movement phase if you brought multiple such units. Monsters and tanks it is, I guess.
--Increased the number of dice you're rolling by a ridiculous amount. If the Harlequin squad I'm modelling rolls into a unit, uses the 6" pile-in from the Troupe Master so everyone is in engagement range, I need to pick up 55-60-freaking-dice for their attacks, roll them, sort them into hits and misses, re-roll the 1's to hit (maybe), then pick them all up and roll 40+ dice to wound, again possibly with re-rolls, then sort out the Troupe Master's attacks, then watch my opponent make a couple dozen saves, also possibly with re-rolls. WT Actual F? This is insanity, and looking through the various Codex units, there are units everywhere that do this.
--Increased the number of special rules to try and remember and use, to the point where darn near every separate unit in a Codex has it's own special rule that applies to it. When did that get to be a good idea?
Most of the battle reports I watch/read break down like this: Both players hide all the units they can in their Deployment Zone, maybe putting a few in Reserves. Someone goes first, and rushes the center-table objectives, trying to pick apart whatever they can get LOS on. The next player goes, and rushes the center of the board, hoping to obliterate as much of the now-exposed enemy as possible. If they succeed, they are ahead. If they fail, the same thing happens to them on their opponent's second turn. Rinse and repeat. The really cagey players might hold off on their rush to try and make the opponent expose themselves first. Yay.
Basically, the additional terrain just delays the inevitable "pick up 1/3rd of your army" stage for a round. That's great. An improvement, albeit a small one. But IGOUGO does, and always will suck in a game with devastating weapons reaching across the entire table and units rolling 40-60 dice for their attack phase. Every game turns into a slaughter-fest with the only goal to hold some objectives or achieve a secondary or two.
AA, on the other hand, fully engages both players for the entirety of the game, as you use your activations to respond to your opponent's latest move, or try and set them up for something, or see what they're up to and try to prevent it or protect something you don't want to lose. Instead of just watching someone move their entire army, roll fistful after fistful of dice, then do so yourself and pick up tons of models.
Sorry. /Rant off. I was trying to express an opinion about the amount of cover being important, and got carried away. These are just my opinions, obviously. Nothing more.
Lathe Biosas wrote: I wouldn't mind's an AA, I pick a unit, then I move and shoot with that unit. Then you select a unitnto move and shoot.
When it's all over we go to the assault phase and AA actions based on unit initiative.
That's the kind of AA I'd hate.
"Great, so my plan is to fly-by attack with the jetbikes, move the shooty infantry up to shoot, and the leaders in behind them for the buff"
"Naw, once you move your jetbikes, the drive- by survivors will charge them, nullifying your shooting and leaving the HQ with no one to buff"
So much for planning and coordination.
The group activations that CB was talking about earlier are way better than "Your unit/ My unit/ repeat"
Heck, IMHO, what we currently have is better than "Your unit/ My unit/ repeat"
This "big turn" argument is exactly what I've been feeling when playing AA games. I feel my grand strategy quickly gets lost in micro action->reaction sequences (could be a me issue though). I still favor AA, but I do miss that feeling.
This kind of thing is why I like legion. Unless the game has turned into a melee mosh-pit, no one unit is so destructive or powerful that you can't pull off a grand strategy, and with how legion's token system works it helps give a feel of setting up a plan. You have to coordinate lots of units at once to fully destroy a unit. I.e. A unit of CIS aqua droids marching up the board to cover Count Dooku so he can burst in with his command card so he can charge and saber/lightning something. That's a big play and can kill at most 2 units. I can dump 6 squads of B1s into a squad of clones and maybe kill it. It requires high-level commands and handing out tokens from abilities and commands to really make a difference.
Overread wrote: In theory AA still has big-grand strategy. If you purely react to the micro in AA you've a higher chance of losing to a player also looking at the big picture.
Because at that point you're surrendering control over the board to your opponent be always being reactive to their plan, their choices and their change of the game state.
Effective AA playing is both reacting to the micro; but also having a grand plan on top. To put pressure on your opponent and to make them have to answer your questions from your choices.
Yes its different to alternate army turns, but at the same time AA has a greater chance that both players can have and work with an adapting grand strategy of their own. Meanwhile in typical GW games only one player gets their grand strategy - whilst the other has to be reactive to it.
This. If you're playing an AA game, and all you do is react to each thing in sequence, you probably aren't going to win, or enjoy it much. IGOUGO "grand" strategy can barely be called strategy at all. Strategy in 40k is basically what your army list is, what you choose to bring to the table. That's really where the strategy ends. After that you might decide on an overall game "strategy" for that particular game by looking at the scenario and battle objectives and rules, but you really know that you're going to use the same units to do the same things as you do in every other game because that's how you built the list, and you get to do it uninterrupted by the opponent for the most part.
Unit A will be behind Unit B supporting it, Unit C will be sitting on the home objective shooting, Unit D is your sacrificial lamb to launch at the opposing deployment zone as a distraction, etc. And that's exactly what you'll do with them. Every time. Because you get to every time, and the only thing that can throw a wrench in the works is a Stratagem or two, which are extremely limited in number, circumstances for deployment, and effect. It'll be a rare day when your gameplan has any significant changes in it.
AA, OTOH, requires a second layer of thinking. You have to do everything you normally have to do in an IGOUGO game, but you don't get to do it without interruption. You have to implement a smaller portion of your plan at a time, and try to anticipate how your opponent is going to screw it up. In the example that was given, instead of that order of things happening, maybe you bring the buffing Hero forward to the shooting unit first, then shoot, and finally do the drive-by with the jetbikes. Because you know if you do it in the order you described, you'll get the result you mention.
But also notice that in this case, you're anticipating what will happen, not reacting to what did happen. That's the key to AA games. IGOUGO is checkers; AA is chess. Or perhaps more accurately, IGOUGO is chess where you get to move all your pieces at once. And that's not bashing on IGOUGO games OR anyone who plays them. Far from it. I've played them for decades. Both can be immense fun, and everyone will have their preference on which they like better. The key is knowing which one you're playing, and adapting to it.
40K is IGOUGO with minor interruptions, and isn't likely to change in any significant fashion. Could it be better as an AA game? Maybe. Maybe not. Go play Epic Armageddon for a while and decide if you like that sort of game. You could even just proxy in your current minis. Instead of a little stand with 5 small Marines on it hiding behind a 1/2" wall, just use your regular board terrain and a single Marine representing that squad. Your Dreadnaught is now a Titan, etc. Try it out, make your own decision about whether you think 40K would be a better or worse game with AA. I know what I think, and I also know no one's mind is likely to be changed by this thread.
johnpjones1775 wrote: Alternating activations might be more engaging, but I think a casualty phase would fix the game’s alpha strike problem.
Three issues I see.
One is balance-my Nurgle Daemons have two guns past 12" in range. A gunline vs. a more melee force won't be affected by a casualty phase until later turns, meaning the Alpha Strike still happens.
Two is that if you have two Alpha Strike armies, this just means that EVERYTHING gets blown to bits instead of just one side. Better for balance, but not so much for gameplay.
Three is tracking it all. A Repulsor can have an AP-3 Dd6, AP-3 Dd6+1, AP0 D1 and some AP-1 D2 shots. That's four separate profiles to track from one unit. Imagine expanding that to a whole army.
Depends on how such a casualty phase operates - is that when saves are rolled, or just when the dead are removed?
It might be simpler to roll saves as part of resolving the attack, but all the dead remain (and still function normally) until the end of the round. Not sure how that'd work with any degrading profiles, though - if not dead, the wounds kick in during the casualty phase?
Dysartes wrote: Depends on how such a casualty phase operates - is that when saves are rolled, or just when the dead are removed?
It might be simpler to roll saves as part of resolving the attack, but all the dead remain (and still function normally) until the end of the round. Not sure how that'd work with any degrading profiles, though - if not dead, the wounds kick in during the casualty phase?
You would need some sort of tracking sheets Ala BattleTech or Adeptus Titanicus to easily track damage... and with smaller tables, there is plenty of room.
That's the big risk with having wounds issued in a casualty phase. Yes it means that every model gets to act during a single game turn; but it also means more data-tracking has to take place.
Games have to be careful with data tracking - too little and the game feels simplistic; too much and it can feel overwhelming or messy to play.
For GW games I always err toward less because GW are GW and their style of writing rules is (these days) messy. You've got codex, rulebook, upgrade book; expansion book; index; and for each of those FAQ and Errata documents. Even within a book information on things can be scattershot about.
I'm also cautious about apps - they can be great, BUT, you don't want your physical game to feel like you're just spending the evening head bent over a phone/tablet constantly plugging in info and pulling it out to play. Not only does it set a barrier of entry (having a good enough phone/tablet to play); but it also is something many specifically don't want as part of their physical gaming experience. They are physical gaming to get away from the digital for a bit.
johnpjones1775 wrote: Alternating activations might be more engaging, but I think a casualty phase would fix the game’s alpha strike problem.
Three issues I see.
One is balance-my Nurgle Daemons have two guns past 12" in range. A gunline vs. a more melee force won't be affected by a casualty phase until later turns, meaning the Alpha Strike still happens.
Two is that if you have two Alpha Strike armies, this just means that EVERYTHING gets blown to bits instead of just one side. Better for balance, but not so much for gameplay.
Three is tracking it all. A Repulsor can have an AP-3 Dd6, AP-3 Dd6+1, AP0 D1 and some AP-1 D2 shots. That's four separate profiles to track from one unit. Imagine expanding that to a whole army.
Does don't seem to be an issue though. Or are fixed with stuff like, don't play with armies, which aren't ment to be played under a specific editions rule set. Or adapt eg. play an artilery DG gun park with demons. Two Alpha stirke armies isn't that bad either. So the game ends fast. How is that different from now, we have armies right now which only work on UK/GW tables, or only on US tables, or only on mainland euro lay outs. Those games, if you bring the wrong army for the them, end before the deployment stage. And that is pre match up affecting this too. The tracking part is probably the only real problem, but we already have to have marks and tokens near units to check who used which ability. For armis with long set up/movment phase, like GK, you already do a lot of checking and rechecking, so it is not like adding that much.
Plus the tracking can be simplified, there is no way an AA system can keep the skirmish system of weapons and rules w40k has now. Give each weapon a anti tank/monster profile and an anti infantry profile. X shots, causes Y save rolls per succesful hit. It would both help make weapons different from each other and dodge the "and this edition the weapon of choice is.... [pick random weapon type]". A rocket launcher would be no melta or lascanon, but it wouldn't be frying one infantry per turn. etc
Rare weapons could have some extra rules (like those of special characters, AA rules, sniper weapons etc), but that would be it. Units would be accumultating "save tokens" over phase and then at the end of it each player would roll them on a unit by unit basis.
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explained at 4 minutes mark.
