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Hi all!

My idea is that instead of having a three phase game, 40k should be a single phase per turn game, and triple the turns. Each unit decides what they want to do: move, shoot, or assault. The same rules apply as they did for the game, such as if a heavy weapon toting squad has moved last turn, they can't move this turn, however, they can move next turn. Running just means that they can move and decide not to shoot, and move again (just giving them two movement phases) fleet means they can move, run AND charge into close combat in the same phase. Rapid fire means they can move the last turn, but can't assault the next turn, etc. It would make a much more streamlined game which requires much more tactical thinking than the current one.

I might be wrong, I might be crazy, who knows. It's just my idea and my two cents.

EDIT: for convenience, here's the post from 2011:
Old thread is really, really old, but it's mine so deal with it. I've been thinking about this whole thing again, and Lanrak's two-phase turn concept makes more sense every time I think about it. Turns are more engaging, there's more room for tactical deviancy, and it overall works better. About a year ago, not long after this whole thread died, I played a game using my rules, which fizzled and got boring quickly. I had the original question (why all of the needless phases?) again recently, and I was brought back to this thread. I have a few modifications to the proposition brought up by Lanrak, which I quote here:

Lanrak wrote:HI crazypsko666.

If we go with the' A performs ONE action with all thier units, B performs One action with all thier units.'(x3)
We have the restrictive practice of following set actions, move then shoot then assault.And some units doing nothing in a phase.(Heavy weapons teams rarley want to assault!)

Or we let players take any actions out of sequence, but this lets them react with unrealistic omnipitance.(Godlike knowlwedge of the battle field .)So player react to the actions of thier oponents 'unrealisticaly'.

If we let each player take 2 action with a unit a game turn, this allows reasonable levels of free interaction , also requires a bit of forward planning.

All the 'orders' are, is the 2 actions the unit will take in the action phases, and the 'order' in which they are performed.

Actions

'Move' , move up to the units movement value.

'Ready', set up heavier weapons , find best firing positions, make best use of available cover.

'Shoot', fire ranged weapons.

'Assault' move up to the units movement value and engage enemy unit in close combat.

The 5 'Orders' are made up of the 2 'actions' as follows.

Advance (A) move +shoot.

Double (D) move +move.

Charge(C ) move +assault.

Evade(E) shoot + move.

Fire support(F) Ready+shoot.

If a units weapon is classified as (F)Fire Support, it can ONLY fire when a (F)Fire support order is given to that unit.(Covers current Heavy/Ordmnance weapon type.)
If units are given a Movement stat like WH,and terrain modifies this by -1 or-2 inches.We dont need to use the 40k special rules for movement.

ALL units perform 2 actions per game turn, interleaved with oponents .

If we let assault actions be resolved at the 'end of turn' phase, this lets assaulting units pin enemy units, and stop them shooting.
Then assaults deminsh enemy manouvering and shooting akin to modern warfare annalogues.

The action phases are interleaved,

a-b-a-b.

Ill stop there so you can comment ...

TTFN
Lanrak.

And I'm wondering primarily why the restrictions on action-types (Advance, Double, Charge, etc.) are there at all. The whole point is to be more tactically flexible, to have the game feel more like it's playing out in real time, so why are there these restrictions at all? There was previous talk of a marker, or chip-like tool used to remind the player which action is being done for each unit. I've considered this, and based on the teachings of Sun Tzu, the art of war is based on deception. Why not give this marker two detachable sides, with a symbol representing the action being taken attached to each. The first action is immediately shown, whilst the second remains hidden, face down. This lets both players keep a tactical advantage over their opponent, making each move interesting and requiring extra consideration, due to Player A's first move being played out, then Player two's, then P1's second, and so on.


Moderators, please forgive the worst case of threadcromancy I've ever seen.

EDIT EDIT: I forgot to credit Nurglitch here, who had contributed immensely to the last, ancient iteration of the design.

can you...separate those thoughts out... it's kinda hard to make sense of it

You should go work for GW, because that sort of thinking is not what 40K needs.

Lacross wrote:can you...separate those thoughts out... it's kinda hard to make sense of it

Sorry about that....


My idea is that instead of having a three phase game, 40k should be a single phase per turn game, and triple the turns, essentially making it a fifteen turn game.

Each unit decides what they want to do: move, shoot, or assault. The same rules apply as they did for the game, such as if a heavy weapon toting squad has moved last turn, they can't move this turn and fire the heavy weapon, however, they can move next turn.

Running just means that they can move and decide not to shoot, and move again (just giving them two movement phases) fleet means they can move, run AND charge into close combat in the same phase.

Charging into close combat can include moving six inches, THEN charging in six inches into assault (possibly,) same rules apply with the above.

Rapid fire means they can move the last turn, but can't assault the next turn, etc. It would make a much more streamlined game which requires much more tactical thinking than the current one.

Better?


(Edited with more ideas)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

warpcrafter wrote:You should go work for GW, because that sort of thinking is not what 40K needs.

...Too bad i'm sixteen.

I don't really get why you would want to make the game so many turns, and why you would only be able to do one thing per turn, but I do agree that it should be one phase per turn per player, but that is for a separate reason:

If the players do not alternate phases (i.e. player 1 movement, player 2 movement, player 1 shoots, player 2 shoots, etc) then why does it matter that there are so many phases in a turn? It keeps it organized, I suppose, and makes it more rigid in terms of what you can do (no fighting retreats, like shooting first then moving away) which benefits the assaulty-armies.

Because then you can do more things. An army with no ranged weaponry (a 'nid army for example) can move significantly faster towards the enemy. Likewise, let's say the 'nids are playing against an IG enemy, now they get more opportunities to shoot at the bugs. It allows for more versatile playing, you're no longer limited to moving a maximum of 30" in the movement phases because you now have potentially 15 phases to move in rather than five dedicated (i'm not counting shooting phases for running and assault phases for charging).

I understand that GW was trying to do achieve this with some of their new rules, but it doesn't fully complete the job.

You do realize how nasty it would be to give assault armies more movement of more assault phases right? Armies like the IG or Tau would lose nearly every game if the enemy could move three times as fast even if they got shot at more.

Yes, it would totally unbalance the game.

It's just an idea, I haven't given it much thought or tested it. Yes, at first there would be some balancing issues, but a little tweaking and it could work very well.

You were clear enough the first time...

But, as mentioned, the thing about separating the game turn/player turn/phase into separate player turns is that much of the game's balance is predicated on limits - one shooting phase per player turn, two close combat phases per game turn, etc.

I'd suggest taking a look at Epic: Armageddon for a good way of amalgamating the actions taken in the Warhammer 40k phases into a single undifferentiated turn.

Hi all.
I think the OP might be asking for a more interactive game turn.
Rather than the yawn fest of waiting for your opponent to move everything, shoot with everything, assault with everything.....

Some alternatives for game turns are..
'Interleaved Phases'.

(Roll to see who goes first each game turn .)
Player A moves.
Player B moves.
Player A shoots.
Player B shoots.
Player A assaults.
Player B assaults.

OR
Player A moves.
Player B shoots.
Player A returns fire/assaults.

Player B moves.
Player A shoots.
Player B returns fire /assaults.

'Unit Activation'.
Player A picks ONE unit ,and moves shoots assaults with that singular unit.

Player B picks ONE unit , and moves shoots assaults with that singular unit.
Repeat untill all units have been activated!

Then if you make orders out of 2 action sets.
EG,
Move Shoot Ready and assault.
We could get the orders.
Fire support.(ready shoot.)
Advance (move shoot)
Evade (shoot move.)
Charge (move assault)

Then at the start of the turn players put order counters next to thier units.
Then players take turns activating units.(take the actions of the order counter.)
OR
Player A takes the first action of the order with all thier units.
Player B takes the first action of the order with all thier units.
Player A takes the second action of the order with all thier units.
Player B takes the second action of the order with all thier units.

With the 'order' game turn mechanic EVERY unit gets 2 actions per game turn.

TTFN
Lanrak.

Personally I like the way the game plays out. Its balanced so that people can follow whats happening when. If a player did all his shooting THEN moved, in large games, it could be prone to cheating. What my friends and I do when playing at our NFGS is allow for people to pop smoke/run during the movement phase. This cuts down on time in the shooting phase as we have less units to worry about.

Smoke Launchers are normally used at the end of the Movement phase...

Why do people want such radical changes to the game when the three-phase turns are so streamlined and work perfectly?

Hi Cheese Elemental.
It is obvious you have NO problems with the clunky counter intuative over compicated rule set of 40k.
So why do you post on a thread about changing the game to suit other peoples tastes?

IF you only have ever played 40k, then it is unlikely you would be able to see the need to change anything.

Anything written on this forum is to let people, (not as happy with 40k as you are,) try out some alternative ideas to get the game they prefer to play.
GW say you can and should do this if you want to!

One player performing all actions (in a set order) with all thier units, works for large scale games where fog of war and/or poor communication mean reaction times are slow.(Eg Warhammer.)

However most people belive that smaller scale of 40k (and the better communications,) mean more interaction make more sense to them in this type of game.

Adding a reaction mechnic into the 'army level IGO UGO ' game turn of of 40k would eliviate this abit.
But as 40k suffers from rules bloat as it is , perhaps restructured turn sequence is more user friendly?

I just posted some commonly used alternatives , to the 'army level IGO-UGO' from WH.

Zid .
I fail to see how 'I move , you move, I shoot ,you shoot, I assault, you assault ... is more complicated than I move then shoot then assault, you move then shoot then assault?

And the I move , You shoot , I assault. You move, I shoot, You assault, is just as easy to remember !

(And the orders mechanic can have what to do in what order written on the counter!)

The real bonus of having a more interactive game turn is increased tactical conciderations therfore incresed game play.

TTFN
lanrak.

There's lots of things to consider here that you would be changing about the game:

If you shake\stun a vehicle, how many turns does that last? If a land raider gets immobilized on turn 1, does that mean that a techmarine inside would potentially get 14 turns to repair it? How often would you roll for reserves to arrive? Do drop pods still arrive on turns 1 and 2?

Do you seriously want assault based armies having 15 turns of up to 18" movement for fleet troops (6" move + up to 6" run + 6" assault)? If not, will the fix for this hurt the Tau/Eldar Jump/Shoot(Run)/Jump? Would the Ork Waagh be limited to 1/15th of the game rather than 1/6th now? And how much more valuable would that make wierdboyz, giving them that many more chances at another Waagh?

How overpowered will strong defensive positions be now, if those heavy weapons now have 15 turns to shoot? On the flip side, how bad does it hurt to have 15 turns to deal with Without Number gaunts? Do you give the IG artillery pieces with limited ammo 3x that amount? Do you give vehicles with Smoke Launchers the chance to pop smoke 3x per game now? Then should Ammo Runts and Grot Orderlies work 3x as long? Slippery slope, does that mean we should give combi-weapons 3 shots in a given game?

Imbalanced as 40k may be at times, making these kind of sweeping changes go a long way towards breaking the game completely, all the above questions come to mind in no longer than it took me to actually type the above, I'm sure there's plenty of far more reaching and important questions that would have to be addressed before such an idea would be feasible, and I doubt that you'll find many people that will all give the exact same answers to the questions I've already listed here.

I've tried it before (player a moves, player b moves) and i have found it slows the game way down. I takes less time and there is less confusion if you have player a's move, shoot assult then player b's turn.

Malecus wrote:There's lots of things to consider here that you would be changing about the game:

If you shake\stun a vehicle, how many turns does that last? If a land raider gets immobilized on turn 1, does that mean that a techmarine inside would potentially get 14 turns to repair it? How often would you roll for reserves to arrive? Do drop pods still arrive on turns 1 and 2?

Do you seriously want assault based armies having 15 turns of up to 18" movement for fleet troops (6" move + up to 6" run + 6" assault)? If not, will the fix for this hurt the Tau/Eldar Jump/Shoot(Run)/Jump? Would the Ork Waagh be limited to 1/15th of the game rather than 1/6th now? And how much more valuable would that make wierdboyz, giving them that many more chances at another Waagh?

How overpowered will strong defensive positions be now, if those heavy weapons now have 15 turns to shoot? On the flip side, how bad does it hurt to have 15 turns to deal with Without Number gaunts? Do you give the IG artillery pieces with limited ammo 3x that amount? Do you give vehicles with Smoke Launchers the chance to pop smoke 3x per game now? Then should Ammo Runts and Grot Orderlies work 3x as long? Slippery slope, does that mean we should give combi-weapons 3 shots in a given game?

Imbalanced as 40k may be at times, making these kind of sweeping changes go a long way towards breaking the game completely, all the above questions come to mind in no longer than it took me to actually type the above, I'm sure there's plenty of far more reaching and important questions that would have to be addressed before such an idea would be feasible, and I doubt that you'll find many people that will all give the exact same answers to the questions I've already listed here.

I know that this rule would require lots of reconsideration of the common rules, but remember, this is just an idea. If I were to have taken this alot more seriously, I probably would've tried to come up with ways around things like this. I don't know. I'm just trying to see what people's reactions to this radical playstyle change would be. It's an experimental idea, and I'm not saying the game needs to change. I think the game is serviceable as is, but like all rule systems, there can always be room for change and improvement. If you're worried that the game will change too much, then you probably shouldn't be in proposed rules (sorry, it's just my opinion.) Changing any rule will usually force other changes. Changing something so concrete and determining of other things as the turn sequence will obviously do more of this than most other rules.

Have I made my intended purpose clear?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lanrak wrote:
The real bonus of having a more interactive game turn is increased tactical considerations therefore increased game play.

TTFN
lanrak.

THAT was what I was going at here.

Lanrak wrote:(And the orders mechanic can have what to do in what order written on the counter!)

My idea in consideration to that is that you do the orders in consideration to the phase type you have done (if there's an order that must be done in the shooting phase, it should be done when you shoot, if it's in the movement phase, it's done when you move, etc.)

Lanrak wrote:Hi Cheese Elemental.
It is obvious you have NO problems with the clunky counter intuative over compicated rule set of 40k.
So why do you post on a thread about changing the game to suit other peoples tastes?

Please don't flame on this thread. Just don't.
__________________________________________

The whole point of this is to find a balance so that the assaulting people get to do what they're going to do, let the shooting people shoot more, let the vehicles move more. Most importantly (to me,) just have a more tactical experience. The more thinking you get to do between phases (which is why I can appreciate Lanrak's idea) the better.

crazypsyko666:

Out of curiosity, what other games besides 40k have you played?

I have always said that 40k would be much more tactical and rely much less on who wins the roll off for first turn if players alternated taking actions in a turn.

The method that I found worked best was that both players rolled to see who went first. The player who won chooses a unit and moves/shoots/assaults with that unit. Then player B chooses a unit and moves/shoots/assaults with that unit. Play continues until both players consecutively pass. Once both players "pass" all close combats are resolved and turn one has ended. Now begin turn two, rinse and repeat. Rolling for reserves counts as activating a unit.

A few notes:

*All close combats are resolved at the end of the turn for timing issues. What if you wanted to assault the same unit with two units? Although the assault move is done during each unit's individual activation, the combat is resolved at end of turn. Having a separate assault phase at the end of each player's unit activation is annoying, clunky, and a bit unbalanced.

*Passing. You may pass even if you still have a unit that you have not 'activated' yet that turn. You may want to wait and see what your opponent does before you act. However, you risk your opponent also passing, thereby ending the turn and wasting that unit's activation. It adds a separate pokeresque element to the game.

*Set up should be done as it was in third and forth, with players alternating deploying units. I actually think that the fifth edition set up is by far the best with the current system of I go/you go but if players alternate activating units, they should also alternate deploying them.

Actually, something I noticed with 5th edition is that no one complains about who gets the first turn anymore.

Nurglitch wrote:Actually, something I noticed with 5th edition is that no one complains about who gets the first turn anymore.

Heh. I just edited my post to add that fifth edition has the best method of set up since second edition. Not that second edition was better, but it was an entirely different game. Not really comparable.

Admittedly, the system that I just listed was something I originally thought up back in third, when the game was often decided on the roll off for first turn. Although fifth has significantly decreased that advantage, I don't think that it is entirely gone. Nor will it ever be with an I go/you go system.

Have you ever played Epic: Armageddon?

Nurglitch wrote:Have you ever played Epic: Armageddon?

The last time I played epic was...six or seven years ago? So no, I believe the Armageddon version is much more recent than that.

Nurglitch wrote:crazypsyko666:

Out of curiosity, what other games besides 40k have you played?

None that are tabletop. I've played many a turn-based videogame, and plenty of them have been tactical/strategy. My favorites have probably been Civ series or Medieval II: Total War. They're extremely different games though, and I can't say that my inspiration came from any.

Battletech has an initiative system for 'you move i move you shoot i shoot'

Also, while I didnt get to read it yet, War of the Ring supposedly has a similiar set up.

In my opinion this is fantastic for tactical play but incompatible for the current 5th ed rules without drasticly slowing the game down.

The advantage of you move I move is that you can react to enemy movements better. The disadvantage is that with the current rules, you can move backwards as fast as the enemy moves forwards, meaning assaults are decidely difficult on a regular sized board since you can just squirm out of the way one unit at a time.

As for the idea of resolving 1 unit at a time and picking movement/shooting/assault, while it does add more depth, there is too much list variety in 40k. If you have one force with 3 units total in the list, and an enemy with 40 small units, the one with 40 small units will be at a huge activation disadvantage, needing 13 times the activations to equal you. This is basicly 'Mechwarrior clix'

DevianID wrote:Battletech has an initiative system for 'you move i move you shoot i shoot'

Also, while I didnt get to read it yet, War of the Ring supposedly has a similiar set up.

In my opinion this is fantastic for tactical play but incompatible for the current 5th ed rules without drasticly slowing the game down.

The advantage of you move I move is that you can react to enemy movements better. The disadvantage is that with the current rules, you can move backwards as fast as the enemy moves forwards, meaning assaults are decidely difficult on a regular sized board since you can just squirm out of the way one unit at a time.

As for the idea of resolving 1 unit at a time and picking movement/shooting/assault, while it does add more depth, there is too much list variety in 40k. If you have one force with 3 units total in the list, and an enemy with 40 small units, the one with 40 small units will be at a huge activation disadvantage, needing 13 times the activations to equal you. This is basicly 'Mechwarrior clix'

Something that could easily be done and tested is using the you, me, you, me system but also allowing any squad to do the phases out of order.

Damage is also simultaneous in BTech, so if I shoot higher in the initiative order than you and kill your 'Mech, your 'Mech doesn't die 'til the end of that phase (so it can still shoot).

I can't really imagine doing that on a scale like 40K's. Too many models to keep track of and remove at the end of a phase.

It also sounds like that's a much smaller scale game. I'd imagine it would be a horrifying prospect to keep track of all the little guys, especially for someone like a 'nid or guard player.

Norade wrote:You do realize how nasty it would be to give assault armies more movement of more assault phases right? Armies like the IG or Tau would lose nearly every game if the enemy could move three times as fast even if they got shot at more.

However, the Tau could shoot three times as much. So, in that example, the result would be the same.

There are systems that do this already - I'd suggest that the OP has a look at Stargrunt2.