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For what it's worth, I'm kicking off an AoS campaign soon and it was unanimously voted to house rule away the Double Turn in a pre-campaign survey.

I think we could use an alt activation thread as it has far deviated from double turn.

The MSU will break alt activation is a topic that always comes up and has always come up for years. It even comes up in games that currently use AA.

In Conquest, for example, there was a short but hot argument on AA back in early 2020 where some of the vanguards thought it should be removed because as they said all one had to do was simply create MSU lists and farm AA and then just use their big stuff at the end with impunity. This helped give rise to the all militia / priest 100k army to test that theory out (as militia were the cheapest unit you could get short of force grown drones and you can literally carpet an entire table with militia/priest combos).

While entertaining, and definitely challenging in some parts, it was also not as bad as everyone thought it was going to be.

This also came up in Warlords of Nowhere (which uses the dice system where you draw a die from a bag and if its your color you activate a unit) and has been a to-do on forums for that game as well as a reason why several of our players didn't want to touch the game because they said AA systems can be gamed too easily by just running MSU.

It will also not surprise you that it was also voiced quite loudly in my AOS campaigns that used it.

Funny enough the person that had the biggest meltdown in my campaigns was a skaven player ... farming the AA system to then drop storm fiends in front of everyone.

Which was pretty powerful, like most powers in games where you can just drop units where you want and do what you want (which is why I'm against the way things just teleport and charge turn 1 in this game).

However after its initial charge it became manageable and that type of tactic didn't overrun everyone like it was promised to. Once they were on the table, the other players were usually able to begin ganging up on that unit to remove it, which was the main complaint of that particular skaven player on why AA was not fair (to him).

Now it should be said that ANY system will have parts you can break about it or parts that are to one type of playstyle more advantageous than others. However, I have not found anything in the games that used AA to be any more gregarious than what already exists in AOS today or any past warhammer game utilizing full igougo or strong derivatives of it.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
A lot of rules are made to handle perceived deficits. A lot of the desire of going AA is how Warhammer deals with the Alpha Strike, particularly of the ranged and magic attacks. The changing Initiative emphasizes the problems inherent with Warhammer's traditional handling of Movement, Range, and Magic actions that one has access to in the game. Whereas with AA, even Phased AA, diminished the impact of changing Initiative by limiting how much Movement, Range, and Magic one can get out of their turn without reactions.

Infinity is a great point out. It largely is IGOUGO, but is so Reaction-heavy that it is almost a complete AA system. If it wasn't for the fact that so many Orders can be utilized on one model, it's almost X-Com in simplicity.

Right. But here's the thing: thats exactly the gameplay fantasy that Infinity is built to create. The GOAL of infinity is to replicate fight scenes like Ghost in the Shell or The Matrix or any given anime/cyberpunk film - where you have the potential to have the flashy main character hero leap in and take out a whole string of goons, and all the goons get to try and take a swing or shoot back at them or take cover, but where it's fairly likely that your badass anime protagonist hero is going to end up slicing/shooting them all to bits.

It's balanced around that, it's why you have the concept of "Cheerleader" models and why you can issue orders to the same guy multiple times. The same concept, applied to a WW1 historical simulation game (I have actually seen this, btw) results in just Yakkity Sax comedy idiocy.

Right, I was just pointing out that a lot of the great things about Infinity was its Reaction system which allows it to be somewhat balanced when compared Games Workshop's IGOUGO system. I only pointed out the Cheerleader system because that was a departure from X-Com's system where a single unit had its movement and action.

the_scotsman wrote:What is a mass fantasy battle game intended to feel like? I mean, if you made me pick, I'd say https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX5ff7W7IQQ

IMO, there should be a moment where I get to coordinate and marshal my forces and have some guy yell a command heroically as my lines march forward into position. I'm fine with everything descending into chaos and a whirlwind of alternating bloodletting once the armies get within striking distance of one another, but most purely AA systems in my experience do not lend themselves well to feeling like a 'mass battle.'

Except that you'd never be able to do that with any turn-based game, either IGOUGO or AA. I guess the closest one MIGHT get would be to include the number of reactions that Infinity has, but with Fantasy Battles numbers and organization. Even then, it has its problems because of the turn-based nature of the system.

the_scotsman wrote:I DESPISED the gameplay of Warmahordes, I thought it felt like a card game with really expensive cards rather than a wargame

Which is interesting when it is still an IGOUGO system like Warhammer, nor ever intended to be a massed battle game, but more like a heavy skirmish game. Somewhere between the small numbers of Infinity and Malifaux and the hordes of AoS. But yeah, I've heard it compared as "Magic: The Gathering with models".

Rihgu wrote:
Every time a player chants the mantra "I *need* this double turn to win!" I die a little inside. And then when they actually get the double turn, I fully die.

Rihgu wrote:
For what it's worth, I'm kicking off an AoS campaign soon and it was unanimously voted to house rule away the Double Turn in a pre-campaign survey.

Yeah that sounds about right

Interesting, though brief article about a 40K player making a switch from 40K to AoS. The double turn comes up.

Link: https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2021/12/30/havent-tried-age-of-sigmar-yet/?fbclid=IwAR2j0vfeY2_DoY51k-v4Q6QBfaNDmEXum9CeTkPyb79KEmqIuO888gLUf9o

Topical section if you don’t want to read the entire article:

The Dreaded Double Turn:

The double turn system in AoS was probably the single factor that kept me from playing the game. I thought any game where my opponent just randomly gets back to back attempts to take my army off the table cannot be fun. Like with many things in my life, I was wrong about this as well.

First, just rolling for the double turn was exciting each time. Knowing that, if I won priority, I could swing the game around in my favor at almost any time gave the game a sense of purpose even when my little swamp Orruks (Orks?) were being massacred. Obviously, this could easily go the other way with the player who is winning getting a double turn, but AoS has some rules in place to help mitigate this.

The second player on the third turn gets to remove an Objective from the battlefield. This seemed like an excellent way to really make players think if they wanted to take that double turn or not. You may be able to go twice, but this isn’t 40k. You may kill an extra unit, but it may be at the cost of losing out on points with that objective your opponent is going to take away from you.

Kind of neat to see this perspective from a new player.

I'd be interested in that player's opinion if he's playing a shooting or casting heavy power list that double turns him - how much fun he had in that type of game.

I love the aspect of pulling an objective because it makes the double a real choice in that instance. Some games it isn't worth taking a round 2-3 because of that. Unfortunately it also makes coming back from getting hit by a 1-2 that much harder.

My local tournaments have been run with a house rule that the first random initiative roll doesn't happen until round 3. So no 1-2 doubles, ever. It's a pretty big improvement.