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I don't think a large part of the gaming population prefers 40k as IGOUGO. I think a large part of the gaming population prefers official rules.

Right now the vast majority of the people who play 40k want an official rule book that tells them how the game works and they want to follow those rules and learn how to play within the rules. If a year down the line GW released a "New way to play" supplement that rebuilt the game as alternating phases and/or alternating activations I think players would experiment and we would find more and more people shifting towards the more tactical version of the game (if the mechanics of those systems are all otherwise considered equal).

I think GW hasn't changed yet because despite all the progress of 8th they still have people dedicated to the outdated systems in place. Consider.... JRPG video games. Random battles because you are walking. Slow as dirt turn based combat. Up until very recently JRPGs have been in a rut of 30 years developing games off the same mechanics that were developed in the 80s. They were stagnant in their innovation and stalwartly refused to move into the modern era of game play. GW is still in that boat even though it looks like SquareEnix has actually managed to start to move on.

MTG is a bad example because your turns in MTG are very limited by the amount of mana. Turns are often quick, with only the final few rounds of the game potentially taking a bit long and never NEVER anywhere near as long as a single players turn in WH. In addition when one player acts in MTG the other player gets to make tactical choices about how they will block or not, if they will cast instants etc etc...

WH is too large and cumbersome for any of that to be true. You have no limiting resource that dictates how much you can do in a single turn to keep the game flowing quickly. Their are no reactions for the opponent to make.

And to be clear, the issue isn't just scale. It's a fundamental issue with what the game is about. MTG is a game about resource management with a random resource generator that you build yourself. Warhammer doesn't have you allocating resources turn by turn. There is no randomness to your options each turn.

IGOUGO requires a fundamentally different structure to stay engaging for both players. 40k has speed up with 8th, but ti's still not really engaging. My opponents individual movements don't matter. Only where they end up. Shooting overwatch is still primarily an exercise in futility where nothing significant happens. You spend large chunks of time just rolling saves. It's assault where things actually start becoming lively and it's in large part to the alternating activation nature of the phase.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.

They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.

Anyone who works for squaresoft professionally makes games that still have dumb ass random encounters while walking through a dungeon despite it being an outdated mechanic from almost 40 years ago.

I dont see the relevence.

Pink Horror wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.

They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.

Anyone who works for squaresoft professionally makes games that still have dumb ass random encounters while walking through a dungeon despite it being an outdated mechanic from almost 40 years ago.

I dont see the relevence.

You know what's really outdated? Moving miniatures around on a board and rolling dice, instead of using a PC, or even more modern: a mobile phone. I fail to see how a game mechanic can be "outdated".

Easy. Game design like any other kind of design, constantly evolves. We could have water radiators on our cars where we pour water right in as they overheat. But those designs are inferior and outdated. Random encounters were a necessity due to processing power and design philosphy of the day. Resource restrictions are gone. Weve moved on to more engaging encounters and better design.

Waiting and watching is worse the larger the game and yet used in a game that insists on getting bigger and bigger. Time to move on to better design philosphies.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Easy. Game design like any other kind of design, constantly evolves. We could have water radiators on our cars where we pour water right in as they overheat. But those designs are inferior and outdated. Random encounters were a necessity due to processing power and design philosphy of the day. Resource restrictions are gone. Weve moved on to more engaging encounters and better design.

Waiting and watching is worse the larger the game and yet used in a game that insists on getting bigger and bigger. Time to move on to better design philosphies.

No... game mechanics that are terrible don't stick around for ages and the "random encounter" JRPG genre has a tremendous amount of followers. The mechanic has stuck around because of its intelligent design. Casual players can skip most of the content or use consumables to make it easy, bypassing most of the hidden sidetracks and going straight for the objectives that are often both easier to overcome and simpler to find than any sidequest content. Hardcore completionists meanwhile must brave additional hazards along the way if they're to fully explore each dungeon. In fact, good RPGs are balanced around this fact since players like to challenge themselves according to how low of a level they can clear the game at, relying only on the stat boosting shop items to get the minimum required attributes to mathematically be capable of clearing the content ahead. Yet to accommodate all types and prevent players from ever becoming "stuck", they are able to grind as much as needed, doing sidequests and achieving great loot, to make the game even easier than it already is. Meanwhile, challenge content exists in places such as deep in the dungeons full of random encounters with maps specifically designed to confuse the player and create backtracking to force them to MAP the area out if they wish to arrive at the next save point without blowing through a stack of recovery consumables. Random encounters aid in all of this, granting spots to powerlevel, spots to farm gold or consumables, spots to find crafting materials for better gear, challenges to wear down the player's resources and force them to rethink what they're doing, all of that. Fixed cinematic encounters give a game the feeling of playing on rails, like Call of Duty, and there are many, MANY people who will trash that mechanic in favor of the RNG fights. Even RPGs that have much side content but only allow each fight once become a completionist's dream, like the D&D-based ones, but in doing so also lose some of the unpredictability of fights with their ability to save almost anywhere and scout ahead to see what needs to be prepared for with a simple reload.

This is a massive load of bull. It hasn't stuck around for decades because it's good. It stuck around for decades because it's lazy. The latest FF game ditched it for the most part for a good reason. grinding random loot from random encounters is an artificial time sink. It's complete crap from a game play perspective.

Want to know the definition of game play? A series of interesting choices. Shoots and Ladders. Not a game. You have no choices. You make none. You roll the dice, you move to the spot. You do what it says. The first person to randomly reach the end wins. Random Encounters are not a choice. It's a slog. Getting through one room to the next is not a combat puzzle the way each room in a Legend of Zelda is. Or a God of War. Most of the fights don't require power ups or items or resources. In fact, since back in the super nintendo days there has been an auto fight option that let the game swing away and win the combat for you. Wasn't it just a couple years ago that they made a FF game where you literally had your entire party built around preprogramed criteria to fight on their own? Thats not game play and thus it's not even really a game, because the vast majority of it is wandering into your next FMV.

With MTG you have interesting choices. You have resources. Do you spend them all on your turn or hold onto some to spend on instant and counters on your opponents? Do you have none of those cards in your hand but keep some mana free as a feint? How do you assign your blockers? Your turn and your opponents are full of interesting choices.

This is not true in 40k. IGOUGO 40k is 2 people taking turns swinging sledge hammers at each other. Where and how the opponent moves doesn't matter. You can't do anything about it anyway. When and how they shoot doesn't matter. You only get to roll your saves and you have no choice in whether or not you do that. When and how your opponent charges into melee doesn't matter. You roll your overwatch because you have to and chances are it won't do anything anyway. The new fight phase is interesting though, because you have interesting choices in who you activate and when. Alternating selections of units to fight to maximize your impact and minimize theirs. A leg up over here to take a hit over there. THAT is a series of interesting choices.

Ongoing game mechanics aren't necessarily obsolete and newer failures of an attempt at evolution are not inherently superior. Some would argue that 3D is the evolution of gaming yet many STILL PREFER the old side-scrolling 2D mechanics of Castlevania or Metroid, to the point that an entire genre exists for those games that sells extremely well just as the RPGs.

I didn't say new was inherently good and old was inherently bad. I said in THIS CASE the older IS bad. IGOUGO is an old, outdated, mechanic from a time when the game was very different in scale and scope and no longer fits. And it's sledge hammer swinging game play is dull and uninteresting and removes what could be a lot of interesting game play.

Yet these new games that copy-paste the old cookie cutter tropes, provide no challenge, and are dissected into multi-DLC purchases and merely attempts by prominent corporations to drain you of your income in exchange for rather mediocre products. Eye candy is not the wave of the future, it's just the caffeinated sugar of game "mechanics" that addicts the weak like Coca Cola, fast food, and candy.

I don't even know what your trying to say with this part. Are you arguing that newer games are bad because of their monetization structure? Or advertising? What exactly does that have to do with mechanics and gameplay?

Earth127 wrote:
It means that using the shiny new hype isn't inherently superior too old stuff.

Limiting alpha strike potential is a problem in 40k design but it isn't solved by alternating activation. In fact alternating activiation would favour huge deathstars. Unless you say the opponents army has to entirely go before a unit activates again.

I have never seen anyone suggest a system for alternating unit activation that allowed the same unit to be activated over and over again.You alternate until everyone has gone. There are no deathstar activations because deathstars require multiple units working in tandum. With each unit activating alone it's damage output is limited to what one unit can do.

At that point it's backll to IGOUGO.

Wut?

What I really want to see used more is larger tables for any game above 1500 points. depending on deployment type on a 6x4 table It can be impossible to be far away from your opponent altogether.

There is also LoS blocking terrain. Anyone that tells you it isn't an effective alpha strike mitigater hasn't tried it.
barrage-like weapons are few and far between.

So you want bigger than 6x4 at 1500+?

So... favor the tau and hurt the ork?

 Arkaine wrote:
Who needs death stars? Magnus and 3 Knights. You finish your turn in 4 activations, having shot 2000 points worth of death while your enemy is still busy finishing off the rest of his turn to catch up to the buttkicking he just received.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having larger more powerful units with less activations and smaller less powerful units with more activations. The smaller units will have greater over all mobility. In that yes, your 4 guys will activate and each activation will have a big impact and what little they can see and interact with, while the more activations guy can strategize around that. Feed those power houses targets while getting other units ready to come out and strike after they have already acted and can no longer react to anything you are doing.

To throw in another counter point, lets pretend the rest of what I said doesn't exist, what the hell is the difference between alternating unit activation and IGOUGO with that happening RIGHT NOW?

Someone with a dozen units vs magnus and 3 knights. Magnus and 3 knights have less deployments so chances are they go first. Except now instead of one acting and then you getting to respond all 4 get to act at once and lay down their 2k points of death before you get to move, or shoot, or buff, or anything. The situation you propose is WORSE with IGOUGO.

Fewer models activate quicker and frontload their payload just like a 1st turn barrage. Only now you're suffering that 1st turn barrage EVERY TURN. Should have just kept the single turn advantage instead of giving your enemy's Titan the advantage constantly.

Again. This is what is happening now. EVERY TURN. Except in the other version you get to act in between activations. Are are you thinking that turns don't exist? Depending on the system used if player 1 has 4 activations and player 2 has 12 then a single turn would go 1212121222222222 or it would have tokens for each unit thrown into a dice bag and the pwerson with less activations would be less likely to get a activation drawn from the bag. Or any number of other systems. These an panicy responses that are not thinking the systems through. There is no issue you can invent for alternating activations and "deathstars" that isn't compounded and made worse by IGOUGO.

Speaking of Titans, I play a single Lord of War. That's my army. The game is back to IGOUGO.

Sure. Maybe? Again, the system may have you acting randomly in the middle of the other players turn.

Alternating activations are inherently in favor of more elite armies. That's WHY we have IGOUGO..... give the Orks a chance! They want to frontload all their spammy death sometimes too!

No they are not. They are in direct favor of neither. They actual favor the most an army with a nice mix of heavy hitters and smaller more mobile units. You need to keep on your feet but drop the hammer where it needs to be dropped. Again, these are nonsensical panicy complaints that don't hold up under any actual scrutiny.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Someone with a dozen units vs magnus and 3 knights. Magnus and 3 knights have less deployments so chances are they go first. Except now instead of one acting and then you getting to respond all 4 get to act at once and lay down their 2k points of death before you get to move, or shoot, or buff, or anything. The situation you propose is WORSE with IGOUGO.

Again. This is what is happening now. EVERY TURN. Except in the other version you get to act in between activations. Are are you thinking that turns don't exist? Depending on the system used if player 1 has 4 activations and player 2 has 12 then a single turn would go 1212121222222222 or it would have tokens for each unit thrown into a dice bag and the pwerson with less activations would be less likely to get a activation drawn from the bag. Or any number of other systems. These an panicy responses that are not thinking the systems through. There is no issue you can invent for alternating activations and "deathstars" that isn't compounded and made worse by IGOUGO.

No, it's not what we have now. This is why I feel you are NOT thinking through the steps. Despite your ridicule, it's actually your stance that isn't holding up to scrutiny. You are failing to look past the 1st turn which is why I know you have never even tried to play Warhammer 40k as an alternating activation game. If you had, these obvious flaws would have stood out to you in your theorycrafting.

First:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/705473.page

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/727676.page

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/649503.page

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/674042.page

And more. Also, Just an FYI. My Bachelors Degree from the University of Advancing Technology is in Game Design.

Not only have I been participating in discussion on these mechanics I have been testing them FOR YEARS with a degree based on the building, testing, and refining of game mechanics. It's not simply theory crafting. I have implemented it myself. Tested it myself. Refined it myself.

In an IGOUGO system, allowing four giant monsters to go first and then responding means they shoot 2000 pts at you, you shoot 2000 pts at them, they shoot whatever's left at you, etc.
In an alternating system, the four monsters will shoot their 2000 pts before you do EVERY SINGLE TURN, which makes similar to an IGOUGO except the monsters have the advantage every single time.

In IGOUGO first player shoots 2k points. Second player shoots 2k-losses. In alternating activations first player shoots 1 units point value. Second player shoots 1 units points value (MAYBE minus losses if that is the unit they activate).

Alternating elite armies don't need to roll for who goes first. They always "go first" and they will always finish their activations before you get your full turn.

Who goes first is based on the mechanics of the system. Off of 8ths system? yes. The lower unit army would most likely go first. By Bolt Actions system? Very unlikely that they would go first or second or 3rd for that matter. But they could, It's basically random.

In your 12121212222222222 example, the enemy ALWAYS shoots before half your army, every single game turn. Your proposed system makes elite armies have the inherent advantage of Initiative, acting faster than your army can regardless of who began activating the first unit. Did you win the roll to go first or seize? That's nice, I'm still going to drop 2000 pts of death before you do much of anything. It doesn't matter if an elite army loses the first turn roll, they'll activate more quickly than you do and effectively get their turn in before you do anyway. If I bring a single Titan as my list, regardless of who went first or second, I will shoot ALL 2000 points of my army before you activate a second unit. This is horrible for horde armies and only benefits strong elite armies.

This is just false. What If my first activation is tying up one of your guys in melee? What if my guys are all scattered around at different ranges in los blocking terrain. You have to move your guys to get into a position to get a single unit in los. Or target the units I leave out to bait you with. Once your activations are spent my other more critical units can run rampant. I don't think YOU have ever played these types of games. YOUR theory crafting seems to be a lot of nonsense.

Since I bet you still can't see how it's different to what we have now, let's shift back to IGOUGO. Horde armies like Orks now have a slim chance through rolls to actually shoot all 2000 pts of their list before your elite titan list even moves at all, the titans get to retaliate yet look at the difference in activation speed for that turn! Then they get another opportunity to do it on turn 2, again before your Titans stomp them in. Once again, you have an activation speed advantage because most of your units aren't always going last on every single turn.

Witht he current system the orks have a slim chance to go full bore with 2k points. Otherwise it's 2k- loss. Then the titan attacks with 2k points. Then it's orks with 2k minus 2 rounds of losses.

]Since you guys love to bring up other game systems, lets take a look at Infinity for sure! I can bring a single heavy beast of an Avatar, my entire list let's say, and you have similarly point troops. With alternating activations, I can pump my entire army's strength into every single activation until I run out of orders. I'm going to be outshooting you easily because you can't catch up to my damage per activation.

I am less familiar with infinity then I am other systems. So I cannot comment overly much on inifinity. Except to say that it is my undertsanding that infinity is based on very small squads and it's rules probably don't and cannot encompass what 40k brings to the table. So... bad system for an example?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lance845 wrote:
To throw in another counter point, lets pretend the rest of what I said doesn't exist, what the hell is the difference between alternating unit activation and IGOUGO with that happening RIGHT NOW?

The difference is that right now Hordes are permitted to act without a handicap in speed. They can exercise their full turn before you even get yours, whereas in alternating activations an elite army will always exercise their full turn before your entire army gets to go. You are ALWAYS stuck playing last in an activation switchoff if you have more units. Can you use that to tactically plan or run circles around the opposition? Sure. You can do the exact same thing in an IGOUGO system, only better since your buffing Chaos Lord, Sorcerer, and Khorne Berserkers move at the SAME TIME.

You don't seem to understand the advantage that the flexibility more activations offers brings to the table. There is a reason MSU is common in many game systems. It's powerful to be able to adjust and react. Your calling one of the biggest advantages and disadvantage. Madness.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
And more. Also, Just an FYI. My Bachelors Degree from the University of Advancing Technology is in Game Design.

Then we are both graduates of the same one building office in the middle of sweltering Arizona. Did they stick you in the apartments near the mall too or did you find your own local housing? You remember the mall, right? The GW store, the food court near the movie theater, the giant screens and stair seating... personally I liked the pool at the apartments they housed me at. Oh and Fry's Electronics... that place puts Best Buy to shame. Or heck, the nice carpeted interior with the kids near the cafeteria eternally playing Smash Brothers on that corner screen... across from which was the auditorium where I won the Star Fox 64 tournament by being the best aerial battler.

Please don't think you're the only person to have attended UAT or studied Game Design... class of 2007.

I don't think I am. I am simply pointing out that your assertions that I am just some butt hole sitting around having never played these systems is false. Test the game systems. I tweak them. I make new ones. My "fan 8th" project was abandon only because actual 8th was shaping up to do a lot of what I was trying to do anyway. No reason to reinvent the wheel.

 Lance845 wrote:
This is just false. What If my first activation is tying up one of your guys in melee? What if my guys are all scattered around at different ranges in los blocking terrain. You have to move your guys to get into a position to get a single unit in los. Or target the units I leave out to bait you with. Once your activations are spent my other more critical units can run rampant. I don't think YOU have ever played these types of games. YOUR theory crafting seems to be a lot of nonsense.

You can already do such shenanigans in the current system, it's not false because you haven't contradicted any of my points nor claimed your own facts. If I have a SINGLE activation, I will eternally go before your 2nd activation regardless of what sort of system you come up to determine who goes first or second each turn. In that regard, it's identical to IGOUGO only -I always get first turn-.

Sheesh, you are oblivious to the end and eager to sound like you know anything about game design when UAT only stole our class homework and sold them to other companies. I came up with chicken scratch one morning because I didn't remember to do the assignment. That fat, bald, orange bearded Jedi-nerd of a teacher gave me a 95% for it.

School in general is a joke in the USA. But Game Design as a cohesive study is in it's infancy. Anyone who is teaching it is trying to figure out how best to teach the skills and doing mostly a crap job of it. I learned more reading through a few books and doing my own tests then I ever did paying for that fething piece of paper.

Why don't we go off a mostly complete system. Look at the Beyond the Gates of 40k Thread. Tell me where the major problems are in there. It's alternating activations with reactions as interupts.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Why don't we go off a mostly complete system. Look at the Beyond the Gates of 40k Thread. Tell me where the major problems are in there. It's alternating activations with reactions as interupts.

I'll have to catch up on reading it first. That looks like a full rule set, complete with tablet of contents, tons of pages, likely unique interactions to uncover... I'll make that a project for this week.

Tons of pages is 16. 9 of which are the actual rules (really about 7 1/2 considering the spaces) and a table of contents before you get to terrain and other miscellaneous nonsense thats not needed to gauge the core rules.

But frankly, D&D is probably my favorite example of an alternating activation system. The number one problem with alternating activation is assuming all units are equal. This was a problem in old editions where monsters only received a single action and were simply overwhelmed by the party's combos of ability interaction. The sum of their parts returned a whole that was greater than the threat of the monster and so monsters had to be obscenely lethal to even stand a miniscule chance of defeating the party. Later editions fixed that by giving Monsters what is effectively either split fire or multiple activations in a turn so they can perform extra needed actions and threaten more of your own forces. A single action there isn't enough because party synergy while a single Titan activating in 40k is pleeeennty strong due to harsher attrition.

But the number one thing I like about that system is that it's not alternating activations according to player turn. It's according to Initiative. Faster targets can move faster, act quicker, get more done. Slower targets go last and balance can place the more lethal enemies at the slower end of the spectrum. JRPGs do the same, often having ordered lists based on Agility while the boss is insanely slow and often getting a fraction of the number of turns your party receives. Often if the boss is quick, there is a way to slow it down to a crawl to regain the advantage of overwhelming it with more damage per activation than it can match, or as RPGs go more healing per activation than it can damage.

1) it's not needed to have all activations be equal. That is a false requirement.

2)DnD is not an alternating activation system. Or even a type of game that can even be comparable. The point of DnDs combat is not to put enemies on an equal footing. It's to create an interesting encounter for the players to always dominate. That system is built from the ground up for an entirely different type of experience that has no comparison what so ever with a miniature war game. If your comparison for alternating activation in 40k is DNDs combat system then you are coming into the discussion with incredible misconceptions on what those systems are meant to do.

Why the tangent? Because if 40k were to move to an alternating activation system, the number one way to avoid everything we've been arguing about is to bring back Initiative or some equivalent speed stat. Titans would be slow and often go last while speedy Orks and Slaanesh daemonettes and Eldar are often going before much of the slower tanks and behemoths on the field. Alternating activation is an aspect of Attack Wing, which is why I don't disagree with it as a principle! But similarly, the exact method of activating units is based on a speed stat. In that particular case it also reverses each turn. Units that are the first to move are the last to shoot. Units that are last to move are first to shoot. Since the turns are planned and executed simultaneously, it's not so much a choosing form of alternating activation but demonstrates the balance of a speed mechanic to keep elite fighters from simply always being better at everything always.

I disagree that that is needed either. In fact i think an initiative/speed stat would FURTHER unbalance the game by making generally slower armies get wrecked by generally faster armies and ruining the major advantages of a alternating activation system. Namely that units are trading blows and adding in the tactical depth and picking and choosing who you activate and when and trying to play that against what you think your enemies will be activating and why.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arkaine wrote:


Now I know I know, "where's the choice in all this?" If you want choice, add ways to interrupt or force a unit to the top of the list. Spend a CP to make this unit activate next regardless of initiative order. That sort of thing. You really shouldn't have many CP as a 1 unit army. But I'm a firm believer that if you want what is effectively simultaneous turns then there needs to be a balancing mechanic that acknowledges that this Goblin is not that same as that Dragon over there and in no way should they be treated likewise. Getting to activate a 50 pt that needs to go to buff some other unit then having you activate your 750 pt mega tyrant and annihilating said unit is not balance.

Im sort of sick of this. Command points are not the is all catch all way to fix issues in the core mechanics. They are a limited resource to add interesting options to a already balanced play field. You shouldn't be required to use a limited resource to patch a broken whole in the core mechanics. Command points are not the fix. The game needs to work first. Then you add in command points to be interesting options.

You keep comparing 1 unit to another instead of one force against another. What an entire army can do with 12 activations is very different from what a equal cost unit can do with 4. There is a kind of balance with that.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
1) it's not needed to have all activations be equal. That is a false requirement.
2)DnD is not an alternating activation system. Or even a type of game that can even be comparable. The point of DnDs combat is not to put enemies on an equal footing. It's to create an interesting encounter for the players to always dominate. That system is built from the ground up for an entirely different type of experience that has no comparison what so ever with a miniature war game. If your comparison for alternating activation in 40k is DNDs combat system then you are coming into the discussion with incredible misconceptions on what those systems are meant to do.

I take it you've never played the miniatures war game Chainmail. A D&D-based war game. Like 40k, actually. But what isn't like 40k these days... they stole their system from BattleTech.

 Lance845 wrote:
I disagree that that is needed either. In fact i think an initiative/speed stat would FURTHER unbalance the game by making generally slower armies get wrecked by generally faster armies and ruining the major advantages of a alternating activation system. Namely that units are trading blows and adding in the tactical depth and picking and choosing who you activate and when and trying to play that against what you think your enemies will be activating and why.

Seems to work fine in Warhammer Fantasy. Aside from the BS Always Strikes First elf death star shenanigans, normal armies acting and trading blows according to speed tends to work out quite well. Strong greatsword knights act last and slaughter just about anything but not before the fast and squishy horde armies go to try and thin them out first.


Also, we can disagree on what's "necessary" all you'd like but I'm pointing out positive solutions to correcting the previously mentioned issues involved with alternating activation systems. If you still don't agree that there even ARE issues (like the supposed game system is perfect huh?) then I can understand why you may disagree that solutions to them are required.

No I never played chainmail. Chainmail doesn't exist anymore for a reason. Same as original flavor dnd. they were bad games.

A system using it and being successful with it does not make it necessary. You are pointing out problems in a theoretical structure instead of an actual codified system of rules. There are good and bad IGOUGO. (MTG is a good IGOUGO) There are good and bad alternating activations.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/705473.page

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/727676.page

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/674042.page

Actual systems.

Chainmail was crap. 40k 7th was crap 6th was crap 5th was crap.

I go back to my statements on Gameplay. Besides building your list, how many actually interesting choices are there in 8th 40k IGOUGO structure.

When and how you spend your CP? Maybe? When and how you deploy? If that even has much of an option?

Which units you pile all of your shots into to focus fire and wipe the enemy off the board?



Every unit you activate in an alternating activation system is it's own interesting choice. You choose who and when. And who and when impacts your opponents next choice. And their choice impacts yours. There is more actual gameplay in the first 20 minutes of alternating activation 40k then there is in 2 hours of IGOUGO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/733847.page

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/734352.page

Here are two more. One is more alternating phases. But still... Better then IGOUGO

So my fan 8th which has an actual change log as every iteration was tested, and beyond the gates of 40k which is heavily based on using 40ks units in a actual published system are both untested and unproven theoretical structures?

Don't know what to tell you. More games on the market use alternating activations over IGOUGO because more people want actual game play and a quick interactive turn structure. Who would have thought?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.

Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
So my fan 8th which has an actual change log as every iteration was tested, and beyond the gates of 40k which is heavily based on using 40ks units in a actual published system are both untested and unproven theoretical structures?

Don't know what to tell you. More games on the market use alternating activations over IGOUGO because more people want actual game play and a quick interactive turn structure. Who would have thought?

Citation? Or is it just your gut feeling? All the card games, all the RPGs, all the board games, just about everything from WizKids or Fantasy Flight or Wizards (HeroClix/AttackWing), none of them use this system that you say is more popular than one player turn after another. This is because people want a simple and casual game that isn't overly complicated on meta rules, hence what we have on 8th edition, which has taken a large step backward in depth to give us better army interactions.

 mugginns wrote:
It's hard to discuss with people who don't seem to have much or any experience with alternating activations of any kind.

The "bbbbbbbut I can activate MY ONE SUPERPOWER and then it's the same as IGoUGo!" Is absolutely easily refuted with a simple dice bag system that is extremely well liked and used in the very popular Bolt Action. Lots of these fake scenarios just seem like problems that nobody has ever had.

Do you go to court and expect your opponent's attorney to argue your case for you as well? Expecting others to make your arguments for you makes about as much sense as asking the guy who is suing you for legal advice. It's hard to discuss anything with people who leave facts out of the paragraphs and merely spout "I hate this", "That sucks", "This was crap", "This is the best ever", "More games use what I like over everything else" without a shred of reasoning behind them. As if we're all supposed to be psychic and understand the glory that is your mind and its machinations, intricate though they must be, and anyone who doesn't immediately accept what's been stated as hyperbolic fact must be not understanding anything about the source material you're drawing inspiration from.

What over complication with "meta rules"? Heroscape used alternating unit activations. A significantly more simple game then any other miniature war game I have ever played.

But you see, you clearly don't understand. You make snap judgements with no basis in the reality of all the games that have been running for years and years using these systems. You claim all these problems WILL crop up. They HAVE to. It's and INHERENT part of these mechanics that make them clearly inferior to IGOUGO.

And yet they don't show up in any of those other games. They are not problems. It's all just in your head and you are sticking to your guns that these problems must be.

You ignore the points I made about gameplay being a drag in IGOUGO. About the tactical and strategic depth that alternating activations adds to the game. You ignore that the systems I posted to you HAVE been tested and DO function and instead ask me to make a list of all the games that use alternating activations.

Sure here are some purely minature war games.

Bolt Action
Knoflict 47
BTGoA
Heroscape
Xwing
Star Trek
SW Armada
War Hammer Disk Wars
Rune Wars
Dog Fight
Dust Tactics
Battletech
Oh yeah... Epic 40k.

Most of the games on that list have pretty recent releases. Like... in the last 5 years. And it's nowhere near a comprehensive list.

Why don't you provide me with a list of games that have come out in the last few years that are IGOUGO?

Il get your started. 40k for some reason.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.

Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.

Awesome. I love changes to the game that reduce options and murder fluffy armies.

3 Baneblades isn't a fluffy army. Also, it's still an option. It's just an option you suffer the consequences for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:


@Lance: your designed systems cannot be treated as "playtested" in the same sense as commercial systems are playtested. Number of iterations one can make himself doesn't ever get close to what whole communities of players can achieve. I played close to a 100 games of incrementally (and massively) reworked 7th ed, but I'll never claim that it has been playtested outside of the forces and table setups I play with. Being both the creator and playtester one is simply not equipped well enough to "break things", as you unconciously make a huge deal of silent assumptions and don't go outside of your habits far enough to see the whole picture. No one is and claiming otherwise is purely false sense of grandeur. Systems as complex and sandbox as tabletop wargames fall under Gödel's incompleteness theorems - you'll always encounter "bugs and contradictions" that need "most important rule of roll-off" to temporarily resolve and then need to be included in the ruleset permanently, resulting in rules bloat. Large bulk of this thread is focused on your inability to admit, that large power-output units are problem that has to be adressed in alternative activation systems, just like alpha strikes have to be adressed in high damage output IGOUGO systems...

I agree. I wasn't the only tester. I had other people from Dakka and about 6 or 7 players from 2 LFGS that were giving the game a whirl. I purosfully even saught out a TFG because I knew he would try to break it.

I don't admit it because I don't think it's that big of an issue. The mechanics themselves often mitigates their over all impact.

 Elbows wrote:
That's exactly what I'm arguing.

Games Workshop products have never, ever, been popular because of their game mechanics. In the 25 years I've been playing GW games, I've enjoyed them because they're cool, and yes back in the 90's had far more nerdy geekdom involved. But even the games I loved best, like Necromunda and Warhammer Quest had some pretty crap rules. The saving grace here was the ridiculous amount of content and the support for the game - the "feel" of the game was damn cool.

We're not discussing commercial success of 40K in this thread, we're discussing the archaic and boring IGOUGO turn structure.

40K has never been a success because of its rules - it's a success because of the lore and the cool models. No one ever played a demo game and thought "whoa, that's a fantastic, brilliant game design..." they thought "damn, those Space Marines are pretty cool...".

That's not really relevant to this thread is it?

The one connection you could make is that an IGOUGO game is more open to the dreaded "mathhammer" and thus is far more likely to end up as a tournament game (something 40K was never intended for - as stated numerous times in the early versions of the game). If you're gunning for tournament wins you obviously want meta/netlisting alpha-striking math...and not a genuinely fluid, chaotic game which you can't beat into submission with math.

You see the same thing in any game which becomes a tournament game. Magic, X-Wing etc. are all based on mathhammer-esque tournament lists etc. So, I will concede that the IGOUGO structure may make a game more popular as a tournament game. But the rules are not what draw people into the 40K "universe" as it were.

This. FF as a video game series has been running off the same principle. As video games they are crap. As interactive anime story books with drudgery between each new snippet of the story they excel. Mechanically they are garbage but it doesn't stop them from being popular.

8th is the best we have seen in a LONG LONG time from GW, but that doesn't quite make it good.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I dunno. Having 3 baneblades vs 50 squads of guardsmen with a dice bag sounds a lot like me standing around getting shot to I draw one of the 3/53rds coloured cubes.

Then build a more balanced force. The thing with alternating unit activations is YOU and only YOU are responsible for how long you wait. You want very few activations that are all heavy hitters? That is your CHOICE. You want a ton of activations that all have little to no impact? That is on you. It's not the mechanics that force you into that situation. It's you coming into the fight with a crap inflexible strategy. Build a more balanced list.

Awesome. I love changes to the game that reduce options and murder fluffy armies.

3 Baneblades isn't a fluffy army. Also, it's still an option. It's just an option you suffer the consequences for.

You're right, Superheavy Tank Companies have never existed in the fluff before.

And yes, but it's disingenuous to say "Well, it's more interactive!" and then make me wait while my enemy activates most of his 50 units so I can activate 3. I get to sit there and roll saves, just like I do now.

Or use reactions to act in response however you would want to act. (System depending)

It's disingenuous to argue that a situation you place yourself in is weaker and that that is the fault of the system as opposed to you. In 7th ed 40k I could build a tyranid list that had no synapse because OOE was a HQ option. If I brought that list and then complained that I was constantly rolling and failing my IB tests and had no control over my army whos fault would that be? I should be playing the game by utilizing the systems I have available to me. If I dig myself into a hole because GW has poor unit scaling that is on me for playing with GWs bad rules and then using them in the worst way possible.

If you WANT to take 3 super heavies into a fight with alternating activations you do so understanding the mechanics and what that means. That is on you. The game is not at fault because you dug yourself into a hole with your list.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
That's exactly what I'm arguing.

Games Workshop products have never, ever, been popular because of their game mechanics. In the 25 years I've been playing GW games, I've enjoyed them because they're cool, and yes back in the 90's had far more nerdy geekdom involved. But even the games I loved best, like Necromunda and Warhammer Quest had some pretty crap rules. The saving grace here was the ridiculous amount of content and the support for the game - the "feel" of the game was damn cool.

We're not discussing commercial success of 40K in this thread, we're discussing the archaic and boring IGOUGO turn structure.

40K has never been a success because of its rules - it's a success because of the lore and the cool models. No one ever played a demo game and thought "whoa, that's a fantastic, brilliant game design..." they thought "damn, those Space Marines are pretty cool...".

That's not really relevant to this thread is it?

I'd argue it's exactly relevant to the thread. The models and background are cool, and the game is easy to play. Those combined make it a popular and successful game/product. Because the game is easy to understand and play, it's good design, simply because it effectively does what it needs to do.

5th 6th and 7th are not simple and easy to play and yet have always been popular. Anyone who thinks 7th was a good design needs to be knocked upside their head Flintstones style until they get their head strait.

Voss wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

This. FF as a video game series has been running off the same principle. As video games they are crap. As interactive anime story books with drudgery between each new snippet of the story they excel. Mechanically they are garbage but it doesn't stop them from being popular.

I haven't even played most of them, and I know they've changed the mechanics around a lot- most mechanics in FF aren't consistent from game to game, particularly when they switched from turn based to phased turns in real time.

The later part is pure subjective nonsense, whether you like them or not.

When they went to phase based they made it so you only controlled a single character in the party. The other 2 were NPCs that acted on preset conditions. Definition of game play: A series of interesting choices. You loose control over 2/3rds of what little choices you were making in the "game" while those choices were mostly uninteresting auto swings anyway... well... to what extent is that a game?

 Charistoph wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I'd argue it's exactly relevant to the thread. The models and background are cool, and the game is easy to play. Those combined make it a popular and successful game/product. Because the game is easy to understand and play, it's good design, simply because it effectively does what it needs to do.

5th 6th and 7th are not simple and easy to play and yet have always been popular. Anyone who thinks 7th was a good design needs to be knocked upside their head Flintstones style until they get their head strait.

Agreed. Indeed, I don't think any of the previous editions were ever "easy to play", considering the size of the books and the necessity for human involvement in the rules to get them to work. When you consider all the arguments that got in to the wording of the rules for 5th, 6th, and 7th, that is a good indication of just how "easy" it was to play those editions.

Also has YMDC ever been an unpopular part of this forum? There is a reason for it's high traffic. The rules are so poorly written and designed that the community has had to build it's own support structure to figure out wtf is going on just so the game COULD be played.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

5th 6th and 7th are not simple and easy to play and yet have always been popular. Anyone who thinks 7th was a good design needs to be knocked upside their head Flintstones style until they get their head strait.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the problems with 7th were the Codexes, not the core rules. 7th was just as simple to pick up as previous editions, the only exception being the USR bloat.

I disagree. All the different unit types were bad. Especially having to remember what made each one special. Was it really needed to have jump and jetpack be 2 different things? The vehicle rules were bad. The disparity between MC and vehicles. Random tables.... all the random tables. Having 5 different resolution methods just to deal some damage is ridiculous.

USRs were a problem, but they were not even the biggest problem. It was the sheer complication.

 Arkaine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:
The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.

No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.

Ok. So what constitutes debunked to you? What would everyone need to show that these things are not problems? ::rolls eyes::

nou wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:
The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.

No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.

Ok. So what constitutes debunked to you? What would everyone need to show that these things are not problems? ::rolls eyes::

For example, you can start with showing how exactly an army of three IKs/WKs against low-power hordes or mid-strenght elite army on a standard ITC table don't have an inherent advantage of early activation of 100% of it's firepower in each and every game? On an ITC table you cannot hide your entire army behind LOS blocking terrain, so no matter who goes first, if you don't wipe out one IK/WK with your first activated unit, IKs/WKs practically start the game with net point advantage... For the ease of debunking let assume for a moment, that every roll in said game returns expected value of damage/saves succeded (to rid out luck factor) and that both armies are completely present on the table at the start of first turn (no reserves). IK/WK/superheavy armies are perfectly battle forged and legal under both 7th and 8th 40K rulesets. This is not a border edge case, but a common matchup during 7th ed... We are NOT discussing "alternating activation systems" as a whole, we are discussing "alternating activation 40K" with the whole spectrum of curently available models/units.

what a rediculous set up. Not a lot of los blocking terrain and, while using all the units of 40k and playing 40k, no reserves or deepstrikes. Pft.

With reserves its easy. How many targets can each one actually shoot? 3? Maybe 4 if they go all out guns. Mostly high dmg but lower hits?

Enjoy shooting at 3 blobs of 30 hormagaunts. With venomthrope support. The first one to activate gets charged. Now the other models caanot shoot at that unit anymore. After your s3cond activation deepstrike a trygon with genestealers. Charge and rip apart either one of the 2 that already activated. When after your 3rd do it again. I can garantee that at the very least 2 of your 3 models have dropped below 1/2 health and begun to degrade in effectivness. I stil have the rest of my turn to prep for the next round of combat. Taking positions. Grabing objectives. Doing whatever i want.

On turn 2 you step one guy out of combat. Half my major hitters that i even bothered to list are still in combat. I guess you can shoot those hormagaunts though!

Again. Your lack of flexibility cripples you. You commit early and i can exploit that. Targets use melee to protect themselves. Because what are you going to do about it? Deepstrikers can enter at liesure with no risk of retaliation. How many hormagaunts can a IK actually kill in shooting at start of game? Enjoy that. I am sure it was worth the points.

Here is the list i just made. Everything comes stock.

3 malathropes for hqs

3 units of 20 GENESTEALERS

3 UNITS OF Hormagaunts, 2 30 models 1 29 models.

2 trygons

1 trygon prime.

1999 points. Your "alpha strike" would be compleyely negated shooting at hormagaunts and the real threats would eat you alive because you are incapable of reacting properly

nou wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

nou wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:
The insane corner cases you and others have brought up to try to "break" alternating activations have already been debunked. New games using modern activation systems don't have the issues you are trying to invent.

No, they haven't been debunked, they've been CLAIMED as being debunked and then we're supposed to all just move on with our lives. XD Here you are even calling them "insane", showing your clear bias for the position you hold.

Ok. So what constitutes debunked to you? What would everyone need to show that these things are not problems? ::rolls eyes::

For example, you can start with showing how exactly an army of three IKs/WKs against low-power hordes or mid-strenght elite army on a standard ITC table don't have an inherent advantage of early activation of 100% of it's firepower in each and every game? On an ITC table you cannot hide your entire army behind LOS blocking terrain, so no matter who goes first, if you don't wipe out one IK/WK with your first activated unit, IKs/WKs practically start the game with net point advantage... For the ease of debunking let assume for a moment, that every roll in said game returns expected value of damage/saves succeded (to rid out luck factor) and that both armies are completely present on the table at the start of first turn (no reserves). IK/WK/superheavy armies are perfectly battle forged and legal under both 7th and 8th 40K rulesets. This is not a border edge case, but a common matchup during 7th ed... We are NOT discussing "alternating activation systems" as a whole, we are discussing "alternating activation 40K" with the whole spectrum of curently available models/units.

what a rediculous set up. Not a lot of los blocking terrain and, while using all the units of 40k and playing 40k, no reserves or deepstrikes. Pft.

With reserves its easy. How many targets can each one actually shoot? 3? Maybe 4 if they go all out guns. Mostly high dmg but lower hits?

Enjoy shooting at 3 blobs of 30 hormagaunts. With venomthrope support. The first one to activate gets charged. Now the other models caanot shoot at that unit anymore. After your s3cond activation deepstrike a trygon with genestealers. Charge and rip apart either one of the 2 that already activated. When after your 3rd do it again. I can garantee that at the very least 2 of your 3 models have dropped below 1/2 health and begun to degrade in effectivness. I stil have the rest of my turn to prep for the next round of combat. Taking positions. Grabing objectives. Doing whatever i want.

On turn 2 you step one guy out of combat. Half my major hitters that i even bothered to list are still in combat. I guess you can shoot those hormagaunts though!

Again. Your lack of flexibility cripples you. You commit early and i can exploit that. Targets use melee to protect themselves. Because what are you going to do about it? Deepstrikers can enter at liesure with no risk of retaliation. How many hormagaunts can a IK actually kill in shooting at start of game? Enjoy that. I am sure it was worth the points.

Congratiulations, you just went AROUND the question... I didn't ask you "how to beat this hypothetical list". You just showed that you can try and build a list to account for IKs/WKs inherent first shoot advantage in my example, bypassing it using reserves and alpha-strike Trygons as an example in a thread about how alternating activations help to get rid of alpha strike problem... And how exactly are you activating Trygons and genestealers at the same time? Right after you unload your Genestealers from Trygon activation they get obliterated by third Knight activation... Or am I missing something obvious? And ~2000pts is 5 WKs, not three. If we can cross-tailor, then I can exchange one knight for as many legal 20pts khymerae units I can and play the waiting game against you (you have 6 possible activations before commiting Trygons) and then unleashing 400pts of fire power with every knight activation. All I need is one more spare unit than you - we now have close to same number of activations but if there are units worh 20pts and 400pts in the same game, then as you can see your entire "alternating activations is best" devolves to "who can stall longer before unleashing main guns"... My solution to this, as wrote many pages earlier, would be to use Epic style formation "block activations" of roughly same point value (or of much, much smaller power/cost discrepancies than 20:1).

This "ridiculous setup" was specifically set this way because there will be A LOT of games not involving armies with mass deep strike/reserves tailored against those IKs/WKs. Amuse me with writing lists with same "hide in reserves and deep strike assault" principle for Harlequins or Ad Mech...

After all your arguments I don't really see any "inherently better for 40K" in alternating activations. All I see is change in what is optimal strategy to game the system from a set of similiarily dumb and unrealistic choices. That is hardly any improvement.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 mugginns wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 argonak wrote:
At worst, it turns the game into almost normal 40k. That's what you're complaining about. An edge case that turns the game back into normal 40k. Outside the edge case it's an improvement....at the edge case it's a wash. Why does it matter then?

Not so! It doesn't turn the game into 40k because 40k doesn't make your Imperial Knights always activate first. There's a dice roll involved for turn sequence. Horde armies can sometimes go before they do. The so-called edge case turns the game into 40k where elite armies act quicker than horde armies and therefore simulates them always going first. Could you imagine 40k if simply by the virtue of bringing a knight list you automatically Sieze the Initiative? Every time?

Most scenarios out of the rulebook allow the player with fewer deployments to go first.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:

 mugginns wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:
Most people define majority as more than half.

Have you ever seen Presidential election majorities? 49% is pretty common. Any time you have 2 choices, the majority will be in the 50%+ range. If you have 8 million choices.... good luck getting a majority higher than 10%.

If this is really, actually, a problem, then you add in other stuff to your alternating activation system. Random dice bag, initiative, whatever. Been stated countless times already. Next?

Each of those solutions invalidates some part of current model/unit range of 40K while promoting other part. No random dice bag on planet bowling ball? Superheavies FTW. With dice bag? Pure luck in drawing your activations soon enough not to be wiped out before you do anything. Initiative? Depends on activation structure - if it's "all moves first, all shooting later in reverse order" then it's sensible if things are ballanced. If it's "entire activation before next initiative orded" then initiative becomes the only truly relevant stat in the game. Etc...

Any form of time quantification in game systems creates some form of bias, that has to be accounted for. if you design your game from ground up, you can keep said bias in check. What is problematic with 40K is that it has a huge line of existing models with HUGE powerl level discrepancies. You have to account for all of that and produce a system as inclusive as possible. Simple answers like "deathstars don't belong in 40K proper" or "Titans have no place outside of Apocalypse" or "you like cheap hordes? then put them on moving trays or GTFO" aren't answers at all...

Somewhere on pages 1-3 of this thread there are some nice and sensible solutions to many of those "inclusion" problems, but none of them are straightforward implementations of either alternating activations or IGOUGO...

There are a lot of assumptions and hyperbole in this quote.

There are exactly zero assumptions, only more fundamental level of game design goal made clear and a simple fact of power discrepancies pointed out.

Yes! You can buy cheap units and play a waiting game. You can add more units to add more flexibility. Or have more units that actually do something to have both activations and impact. THATS the point. Note: I didnt bring msu. I bought all full sized units. I could easily have bought 9 units of 10 hormagaunts to further mitigate your shooting and maximize my activations. I did not.

You are missing something. In each of the systems i have seen that propose alternating activations there are rules that allow a couple units to activate together. Units within 3" of a character can activate both the unit and the character as an example. With 8ths auras its needed to keep the auras active. Also deepstriker and their cargo (drop pod and the marines inside/trygon and their tunnel occupants). Its the only way to keep those units viable.

Im not "alpha striking" trygons. Because if you had more units you would actually be able to do something about them in between each one arriving. Its only an "alpha strike" because you built a gak list that cannot react to anyone. I didnt go AROUND your proposition. I built a perfectly legal list that would function well in an alternating activation system amongst a large variety of lists. You didnt.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You asked how i could possibly negate your "alpha strike of shooting 2k points in 3 activations". I showed it.

First, i wont be putting together an admech or harelquinn list. I do not play those armies. I have fought 1 players admech twice. I am not familiar enough with them to do their lists justice.

Second, i never said it was the is all to end all best system. I said it was better then what 40k has now.

Third, there are bigger problems with 40ks igougo then down time. It degrades tactical game play and interesting choices. It favors actual alpha strikes. It makes first turn first player a significantly larger advantage.

You keep repeating it and those familiar with these systems keep telling you it doesn't work out that way.

 SideshowLucifer wrote:
Why not just play one of the myriad of games that have alternating actions if that's your thing? It's like saying Monopoly would be fun if it was more like clue. In that case, just play clue.

40k is more than it's rules (which have traditionally been pretty bad since... 3rd?). GW make great models. They have stupid but fun lore. The armies are incredibly interesting with a lot of flavor and scope. Tyranid and orks and SM and Tau. It's a fun universe to play in. It's a fun bunch of model kits to build and to paint.

Many people WANT to play within the setting with the models, but also want more tactical depth from the game itself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:
I remember when Warzone came out, and people were hard-selling the initiative based turn activation. They said it was so much better than IGOUGO that it would dethrone 40K as the fan favorite game. I wish I could track down those people and ask how that's doing for them.




IGOUGO is still around because it's the simplest way of handling turn sequence, it's what people have been used to for decades of 40K and even longer with other systems, and there hasn't been an alternative good enough to dethrone it.

As above 40k is more than it's rule set. The idea that something is going to come along and dethrone 40k because of a rule set is nonsense. You need the PR machine. The support. The models need to not just look good, but come together well with all their options and poseability. They need to be fun to build and paint. GW, in a lot of cases, has the best models on the market (and also some of the worst... WTF bending leg Hierophant/fine cast!).

They would need to release with 7-10 factions ready to go. Not 2 with a slow increase. 40k has had so long to build up all that it is and all that it offers. It can afford to have a crappier rule set.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Charistoph wrote:

Lance845 wrote:I disagree. All the different unit types were bad. Especially having to remember what made each one special. Was it really needed to have jump and jetpack be 2 different things?

To be fair, there are a LOT of differences in how Jet Pack and Jump units operate, and have since 5th Edition.

Yeah but was it really NEEDED? Was the added complexity of those differences worth the pay off in the actual game? I really don't think so.

Just Tony wrote:IGOUGO is still around because it's the simplest way of handling turn sequence, it's what people have been used to for decades of 40K and even longer with other systems, and there hasn't been an alternative good enough to dethrone it.

IGOUGO is still around because the longest running TT game uses it, and they have been reluctant to change so drastically. If they are still buying it, then it must still work, right? Only, it only works because we aren't willing to vote against it ourselves.

Yup.

nou wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
First, i wont be putting together an admech or harelquinn list. I do not play those armies. I have fought 1 players admech twice. I am not familiar enough with them to do their lists justice.

Second, i never said it was the is all to end all best system. I said it was better then what 40k has now.

Third, there are bigger problems with 40ks igougo then down time. It degrades tactical game play and interesting choices. It favors actual alpha strikes. It makes first turn first player a significantly larger advantage.

After a good night sleep one more thing about your Trygon "solution" - it's just more of the same problem I've been pointing out for a couple of pages. Your Trygon+Genestealers combo is 300pts singular activation I can only react to passively (I cannot preemptively shoot deep striking unit and if I remember correctly, reactions in your system are a bit penalized, yes?) or "trick" via gaming the game and stalling with lots of thrash khymerae-like units. You didn't beat IKs/WKs by alternating nature of your system, but via instagib nature of your reserves and you did it at listbuilding stage. Your list does exactly the same in IGOUGO - it kills me outright if you go first or kill me just right after if you go second, because of exactly same reserves play advantage. There is nothing in your solution, that screams "alternating activation is superior".

So let me reiterate one last time what my entire activity in this thread is about - alternating activations DO NOT help with overly killy nature of 40K, which is the main reason why alpha strikes can happen in the first place. Currently 40K has it's power scaled so that most powerfull units/combos can return more than their point value in a single volley and "up to the teeth" games of 8th end within two turns (damage output around 70%-80% of total points per turn) and even the "properly ballanced game" is designed to last about 5 turns (damage output around 30% of value per turn). What alternating activations do, in principle, is dividing this power output into smaller chunks, "smoothing out" decay rate throughout the turn and increase interaction frequency, but don't really change the outcome of an optimally played game. This same argument can be made without involving IKs, but using entirely very killy MSU units - if we play symetrical forces but each activation can always erase one unit at a time, then first player always wins with one unit left, no matter the "pawn removing strategy" of defending player (with smart counter-activations it just takes more turns to lose). Different in-game gimmicks just obscure such fundamental nature of high-power output games.

Now imagine, that power output is set far lower, like 10% per turn and you can take full advantage of movement/cover/los blockers to lower this damage defensively or multiply a bit offensively by flanking/outmanouvering/bottle necking/concentrating fire. This is when interesting tactical choices start to happen and the game can no longer be won at listbulding stage. This is what most skirmish games play like (there are often turns without any oportunity to inflict any damage and you must concentrate on movement play). And I agree, that with such modifiable damage output game, alternating activations do indeed increase number of possible interesting strategies.

Is this finally a clear enough explanation of what I'm arguing about?

If we are talking about the BTGo40k that Mithras001 was making, no. One of the orders is "ambush" which essentially has your unit buckle down and hold off to do a reaction. (BTW any unit that has not been issued an order yet CAN do a reaction in response to whatever the enemy is doing, but it's generally only part of what a full order can be, but it's an interrupt on the opponents turn and it eats up their own activation). One of which is stand and shoot. Essentially an over watch at full BS. If you know someone has deepstrikers it would be Intelligent to utilize a couple units as protectors and use them to cover your other units. If you had a list with 12 units like mine, you could have held 6 on Ambush around the field in preparation for my deepstrikers while 6 dealt with what I had. Or better, just 4, allowing your 8 units to put up a fight with my 6 on the field and having at minimum 1 unit covering every 2 others.

With BTGo40k, any unit that gets a wound allocated to it in a single round of shooting gets a pin. Basically the unit is under fire. Not only would you have been able to react to both the GS and the Trygon you very likely would have applied pins to them reducing their effectiveness (each pin is a -1 to hit using a d12 system) not only likely killing off some genestealers, but also reducing their effectivness on their arrival.

I didn't have to worry about doing any of that though. Why would I? With the dumb ass list you bought I could out maneuver you at every step. But if you did bring that 12 unit list instead of just 3, my list would have made for a really interesting game with a lot of twists and turns on how you and I were interacting with each other. Even if I went first. Where am I sending my blob of hormagaunts/Malanthrope? I don't have as clear targets anymore. I don't get to act at leisure while your just as mobile. My deepstrikers are still a powerful tool but now your 12 units on the field leave you far more flexible at the beginning of the game vs my 6 and my initial activations put me at a disadvantage.

Does this help clear up what WE have been talking about? You have been so concerned about what impact the powerful units are going to have. What a single activation can do. We have said over and over that that is not how this actually works out. It's not the few powerful activations, it's having MORE activations that often gets crazy powerful. Not because you stand around waiting it out. But because you can have more tools at your disposal.

If you bring a bunch of 20 point single model units, especially with 40k now having mass split fire, your number of activations will drastically dwindle with every turn. You want a good number of units with a bit of lasting power to have any kind of actual impact in the game. If you bring nothing but a few giant hammer units you will get outmaneuvered. What actually works best in this system, is have a good mix between some heavy hitters and a bunch of smaller light scout units and some middle ground tac squads that actually probably do most of the heavy lifting.

Are you seeing the bigger picture yet?

I understand how killy 40k is. How often in 40k do you actually see a single unit 1 shot an entire other unit? It's not a 1 unit vs 1 unit thing that causes hole units to disappear. It's The entire army focus firing on a single unit until it's gone (or will be after moral) and then hitting the next one with whatever units remain. Alternating activations with reactions at least allow those units being focus fired to DO something while they are being shot at.

So your not actually upset about alternating activation systems. In fact you agree that it's a more tactical more interactive game structure. You just think that 40ks units are not really suited for it because of the extreme damage output and general lack of durability?

nou wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

So your not actually upset about alternating activation systems. In fact you agree that it's a more tactical more interactive game structure. You just think that 40ks units are not really suited for it because of the extreme damage output and general lack of durability?

I never was "upset" with those systems I was (am) upset with definite statements about superiority in every/any context/goal. I agree, that it is more interactive (but not inherently more tactical, that depends on exact details of particular IGOUGO and AA systems) and yes, you got that last part about damage output and durability right at last - both IGOUGO and AA structures are totally indpependent from content you put into them. 40K content is so hard to handle and playerbase so all over the place, that no system will ever satisfy everyone (just read Unit1126PL responses here, he's not a sole fan of big tanks/robots that EXIST in this game). Your particular AA solution/GtGo40K just handle YOUR preferred type of armies better and do "strange" things to other. Hey, even simple Maelstrom scoring each turn upsets a whole deal of players who do not like to think along the way and want pre-planned strategies to work out-of-the-box in every single game they play...

Cool, at the very least you and I seem to have reached some understanding here.

Let me explain my stance real fast for the sake of clarity. I am not making any definitive statement about any generic broad mechanic. IGOUGO works really well in systems where there is quick turn around and counter play. (Magic the Gathering). I AM making a definitive statement about 40ks mechanics where there is no counter play. Where turns are not quick. And where the tactical decisions are so few and far between that they basically don't exist. There is a little bit about where you place your models to be in range of x and out of range of y. But.... they cannot do anything about it. So it's less about an interesting decision of risk and reward with one player playing against the other and all about how to maximize your effectiveness with obvious plays that boil down to the math of it. The exception to this is do you or don't you deny that particular power (if you even have the option) and who you activate and when during melee (if there are enough units tied up in melee for this to even come up).

40ks content CAN be hard to handle. There are outriders because it covers such a large range of points and power. 8th could really use something like the FoC of 30k. 8ths FoCs are so all encompassing... it's crazy. And not interesting. There are players who really enjoy the swinging sledge hammers at each other style of game play of 8th. There are players who really enjoy bringing all titans and knights and want to just lay down all their fire power as some kind of strategy. Fine. Good. Play 40k as it is. Go back to ANY edition for your favorite style of doing that. That exists. Suggesting that there could actually be another way to play 40k doesn't remove the ways that have already existed. They are still there. 8th doesn't remove 7th. Some people still play 7th because they don't like 8th. Great! Good on them. Do what you like.

If tomorrow 40k announced that there were releasing a book of New Ways to Play that took all the same datasheets but provided a new framework that was alternating activations instead of IGOUGO the players would pick the way they like to play and play. The same way they do with open, narrative, or matched. It wouldn't REMOVE IGOUGO. It would simply provide another style of game play. Im all for that. I made a thread soon after 8th dropped saying how disappointed I was that "3 ways to play" amounted to different missions and 2 styles of building a list. Not actually playing differently, just list building. It was a real bummer.

I don't give a gak that IGOUGO exists. But I also don't understand why AA doesn't. Especially for how 40k is built, basically ANY other set up would be more tactical. And the lack of tactical depth is 40ks biggest problem. Yeah, some people suggested bringing back initiative. Except I don't want orks and necrons to always get trounced by everyone because they are slower to react. And I don't want to win because I always act first as Nids.