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syr8766 wrote:

fellblade wrote:

Hellfury wrote:
GW should stop staring at their second edition as if it will be the answer to their woes regarding pants rules for 40K and start looking elsewhere for a new idea that actually works better than what they have been trying to wrestle with for the las 20years.

They won't. That's why Andy Chambers left, and went to work on SST.

Which is a neat system. too bad the models are pants.

And pre-painted.

The combination of pants models, little variety and pre-painted is enough to make me go running for the hills.

I'm getting the message that going first doesn't seem to matter as much as I thought. I argue that the armies that enjoy going second are chosen partially due to this fact (playing the meta-game, as you were,) which doesn't dissaprove that going first is generally favorable. But maybe I'm wrong. So a quick show of hands here, so that I don't have to open another poll - in general, is going first in 40k a big deal? I would say yes. Thoughts?

Zoned

There are times when you want to go first and times when you want to go second. It depends partly on the army you have and partly on the scenario.

The proper question is, whether strict UGOIGO makes for a more or less interesting game than a different kind of turn order.

There are plenty of alternative ways to do it, all of them requiring more flexibility and imagination from the players which is arguably a good thing.

The main advantage of strict UGOIGO is that it is very simple.

Kilkrazy wrote:

The main advantage of strict UGOIGO is that it is very simple.

and boring. I'll go to taco bell real quick while you play by yourself. Just let me know when its my turn...

Asmodai wrote:

syr8766 wrote:

fellblade wrote:

Hellfury wrote:
GW should stop staring at their second edition as if it will be the answer to their woes regarding pants rules for 40K and start looking elsewhere for a new idea that actually works better than what they have been trying to wrestle with for the las 20years.

They won't. That's why Andy Chambers left, and went to work on SST.

Which is a neat system. too bad the models are pants.

And pre-painted.

The combination of pants models, little variety and pre-painted is enough to make me go running for the hills.

They're only pre-painted now. When the game first came out, they were unpainted plastic and metal kits, and some of them (the bugs, Pathfinders, CHAS, TAC UAV, Cougar and Grizzly battlesuits, for example) were pretty good. The basic troopers, Light Infantry, skinnies, etc. were all seriously garbage.

As to prepainted, I just dove into AT-43, and I think that game proves that prepainted can be done a right way, and a wrong way. SST and Battlefield Evolution, I think, are the wrong way, and it's a shame, 'cause the games themselves are pretty neat (full disclosure: never played 'em, just read 'em).

Where the heck are you guys finding pre-painted SST figures? The biggest problem SST has is, we have been waiting over two years for the prepaints to go into production! The SST:Evo rules are more or less on hold until they can release everything at once, which means no one is buying while we wait and see what the new system will be like.

I think that the opponent of the player that gos first should get a scout move for their entire army. If they have units that already have scout move , it moves twice.

Sincity

Is there a problem with just rolling a D6 at the start of every phase to see who can go first, or even rolling a D6 at the start of every turn.

BattleTech uses hte Initiative system, and while, yes, it's a much smaller scale, it works very well.

BYE

Hellfury wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

The main advantage of strict UGOIGO is that it is very simple.

and boring. I'll go to taco bell real quick while you play by yourself. Just let me know when its my turn...

Yes, well, a lot of 40K players want a simple game where they can roll a bucket of dice, blow a bunch of stuff up and swing their chainswords while shouting "Waaagh!" without too much thought. It's all over in six turns then you can start again.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Hellfury wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

The main advantage of strict UGOIGO is that it is very simple.

and boring. I'll go to taco bell real quick while you play by yourself. Just let me know when its my turn...

Yes, well, a lot of 40K players want a simple game where they can roll a bucket of dice, blow a bunch of stuff up and swing their chainswords while shouting "Waaagh!" without too much thought.

Mores the pity.

I really liked the way Warzone had it. Each turn a player would move, shoot or assault one unit at a time. Once he had completed what he was doing with a single squad or vehicle, his opponent would then do his thing with a single squad or vehicle. This would go until all units had been activated before the next turn began. Some of the most fun games I ever had were using this system either in small skirmishes or full blown multi player affairs. After each turn we would then roll dice to see who got first move for the upcoming turn. This really balanced out the whole game and led to some really difficult decisions on whether to attack an enemy unit or move one of your own to safety, because you knew you were going to get hit before your whole army moved..

That could make for a very intense game. Each move/shoot/assault would make follow on moves more challenging. The tactical picture would change from phase to phase.

Intriguing.

Warzone is (was) a great game. But dont despair, because AT-43 made that alternate turn structure even better.

The primary advantage of going first is the ability to simply remove points from your opponents army. Anything you kill in the first turn is essential something your opponent didn't get to bring to the table. If you happen to play a very shooty army and your opponent can't hide enough of his units from the first turn shooting, it can (and I've seen it happen a lot) end a game before one of the players even gets a turn.

On the other side, there are army builds (mass poders) that work better if they go second. Going second also allows for last turn objective grabbing, which can win games just as sure as killing all of your opponents army.

My personal army falls under the shooty catagory, so its rare that I don't want to go first, but at least in 4th edition there are factors that make going first less of a problem than the near gaurenteed victory of 3rd.

Do you reckon it is balanced enough already, then?

I'm not so sure. The thing is that while you may want to go first or second depending on army selection and mission, being able to chose to go first or second is still extreamly powerful and often times is what really decides the game. Its that "game deciding" power of being able to chose that I would like to see eliminated more so than the power of going first specificaly.

Even if you remove the element of choice of going first or second, 'go' order has a significant bearing on the game outcome due to the other factors that have been mentioned.

A system that has been around at the odd tourney for at least the last 7 years successfully solves the problem of turn 1.

Each player rolls dice.
Highest can pick to do one of the following.
1: Take remaining deployment area, deploy first and get first turn.
2: Pick deployment area first, deploy second and go second.

Removes the ridiculous deployments you get because you don't know who will go first.
Assault based armies can know that they will get to go first (if successful roll)
Defensive armies likewise
You should never ever be assaulted first turn if you are going second because you have given your oppenent the worst deployment zone and set up outside of assault range... haven't you.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:
Each player rolls dice.
Highest can pick to do one of the following.
1: Take remaining deployment area, deploy first and get first turn.
2: Pick deployment area first, deploy second and go second.

You talking about deploying your entire army first / second? Kinda ala APOC, without the (IMO) whacked time betting system. I was skeptical of it working in APOC, but I think it's not a bad idea for smaller 40k. In APOC you've got titans that take 0 time to put down yet have LOS most everywhere and will obliterate if given the first turn (well, more obliteration anyway), so deploying second doesn't allow for too much "safe" deployment. 1500 games you can better take into account the fact you're going second and hide, move back from range / assault, etc much more effectively.

- Salvage

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:A system that has been around at the odd tourney for at least the last 7 years successfully solves the problem of turn 1.

Each player rolls dice.
Highest can pick to do one of the following.
1: Take remaining deployment area, deploy first and get first turn.
2: Pick deployment area first, deploy second and go second.

I must say that that's certainly a great system for 3rd edition. I'm certain that in a fair number of 4th editoin games, it also works well. The problem is that with a resonable amount of 4th editon games, you want to go second and that just makes option #2 really powerful and thus throws the game back to being decided mostly on one die roll. So I question its effectiveness in all situations. However if the trounament has boards and missions set up to give the advantage to the person who goes first, then I would imagine its a great system.

The First Move advantage is bound up with the UGOIGO system and the Second Move advantage is connected to the defined game end time.

The way to solve these is to get rid of UGOIGO and to have an indeterminate system of game ending.

Something like roll a die at the end of each turn and add the result to the turn number. If it exceeds X (a number picked to make 6 turns the most likely) then the game ends.

Getting rid of UGOIGO would probably be enough in itself to minimise second move advantage.

We need an extra 'half turn' at the beginning and end of each game.

Two players A goes first, B goes second. A has the first turn "advantage", B gets the final game turn.

Therefore before A has his first turn B gets turn with a free movement phase but no shooting phase. No deepstrike or reserves moves allowed.
After B has his final turn A gets a free shooting phase, for all remaining scoring units except ordnance only but no movement.

This would tactically enrich the game and sort out most of the issues.

Player B can avoid such problems as stationary skimmers and can advance if he likes - but must take a risk as he cannot support that advance. With this rule rush armies will get to the enemy lines after the same number of shooting opportunities irrespective of who has the first turn, thus eliminating a huge imbalance cvaused on the single dice roll.

player A benefits by making objective grabs more reasonable. By current rules the final player can make 'stupid' moves to objerctive grab into the teeth of enemy guns. It doesnt matter as with the last turn advantage there is no downside to moving a unit to contest a table quarter or whatever when you know it would be shot to death if the enemy had but one opportunity to do so. Player A can respond with a shooting phase only (plus approrpriate morale check), no movement so the objective grab move isnt stolen, and no assault either, for the same reason. However one extra shooting phase is a fair counter. the restriction on scoring units is there to limit the adcvantages of having an extra opportunity to kill models, break a unit, or reduce it to half strength and it doesnt get a parting shot. The restriction on ordnance also prevents player A from attaining a raw advantage by fire volume. Though non ordnance weapons on a scoringng ordnance mounted vehicle could fire, for example the heavy bolter(s) on a Russ.

For good or for ill, 40k will be this way forever. It is part of the foundation to 40k, and to change that is to make it something else entirely. Boring is entirely a state of mind by the way...

The problem with a lot of other systems is how much it can bog a game down when the number of models and units grows. A lot of systems just wouldn't work quick enough for good organized play. When you create a new game, it's easy to go wild with systems, but with this lot even minor changes become a frothing revolution.

And really, the system works fine, and can only be better with tweaks and fixes.

I am curious to see what 5th will bring. If missions are being changed, it could solve the first turn problem.

Though, to make fun of the internet crowd, and one person at the shop that was very vocal about whoever got first turn wins, we now christen the start of every game with the phrase.

I played my first games with wierd activation rules this past winter at a historical mini convention. I actually liked a lot of them, particularly those with "card" activation (every unit was on a card in a deck, and a card was flipped on at a time and that unit got to do everything.) The big problem with it though was that for big games it was really awkward, and sometimes you got stuck with silly things like units on a road couldn't go because the units in front didn't move out of their way yet.

I do like the idea of alternating phases per player, e.g. I move, you move, I shoot, you shoot, etc. It seems like a nice way to wrap overwatch and other reactive ideas into one basic system.

It worked rather decently for Warzone, but it also was a lot slower. A decent sized game of Warzone was about 1/2 the size of your average 40k game. The larger you went, the more time it took. Part of this was the actions and overwatch, which tended to make careful players turtle up a lot.

Wehrkind wrote:I played my first games with wierd activation rules this past winter at a historical mini convention. I actually liked a lot of them, particularly those with "card" activation (every unit was on a card in a deck, and a card was flipped on at a time and that unit got to do everything.) The big problem with it though was that for big games it was really awkward, and sometimes you got stuck with silly things like units on a road couldn't go because the units in front didn't move out of their way yet.

I do like the idea of alternating phases per player, e.g. I move, you move, I shoot, you shoot, etc. It seems like a nice way to wrap overwatch and other reactive ideas into one basic system.

Traffic jams frequently occur in war. Although in the game it depends on cards, you can rationalise it as the effect of breakdowns and other causes that are beyond the commander's control. Card activation can really bog down a game with a lot of units though.