pm713 wrote:Blastaar wrote:Alternatively, switch
40k to
AA,- then there wouldn't need to be band-aids to try to make
CC "work."
People keep saying to make that a thing and I've never seen someone explain how that actually fixes the problems of
40k rather than just shifting them.
As someone that plays pretty much exclusively with a modified version of the rules that uses
AA I can tell you that you are both correct and dead wrong at the same time.
AA doesn't magically fix the whole game. The fact of the matter is really that
40k isn't really an air tight competitive rule set it a coarse abstracted approximate guesstimation of a simulation. That said
AA IMO does fix the BIGGEST issues with the game (at least
IMO and the way I play
AA) that being the fact that the game ends up lasting longer than "Well it looks like you get to murder half my army on turn one before I get to do anything so GG!" The biggest problem with the
IGOUGO system is just that unless you get cucked by dice, have a wholly inadequate list, or make really bad decisions then if you get first turn you are probably going to win because you get to murder half their army before they move and if you're a stabby army fighting another stabby army then who ever goes second is probably going to win because they'll get more charges off.
So, yes when you really get down to it
AA really is just shifting stuff around rather than actually "fixing it" but it's kinda like mustard on a sandwich. If you just take a big glob of it and stick it all in one spot without spreading it around and then bite into it well congratulations your sandwich tastes like
sh*t. But if you take that mustard and spread it evenly over the whole sandwich that little bitterness can actually make the whole thing better. That is what
AA does, it keep both players engaged the whole time and makes that coarse simulation feel more like a method to keep things moving so stuff doesn't drag on longer than it needs to rather than straight up janky exploitable garbage. That is the best way I can describe it without going into the minutia and making this post longer than it should be.
In this instance however I will actually give you that a minor
AA modification doesn't actually help this problem and in fact actually makes this problem like 10 times worse. Which is why the only other "major" rule change my friends and I play with in our
AA system is that you can declare a charge in the movement phase. We did this because pretty much every melee unit was getting blasted off the table in turn 1 shooting phase before they were allowed to charge and you might as well have been throwing all those points in the garbage if you decided to take a melee focused unit. That didn't make the problem go away but it did add a layer of tactical decision making in the movement phase. Because a unit that was being charged could choose to run away if they had not already moved that turn so the goal was to wait as long as you could before declaring a charge in the movement phase because otherwise you might just run out at nothing and end up in that same situation.
One last nugget of food for thought for you. In the shooting phase with
AA the obvious thing to do is for both players to always fire with the unit that can do the most damage as early as possible and that creates some interesting dilemmas. While the choice of which unit you are going to fire with is going to be obvious most of the time the unit you are going to target is not. This is because you have to consider what your opponent has already fired previously in that turn. By the time you are activating your 3rd or 4th unit in the shooting phase they have all ready fired their 2 most powerful units so do you want to focus on those to prevent them from shooting at you again or do you want to focus on something that hasn't fired yet in order to reduce the damage you're going to take this turn?
Brutallica wrote:Alternating actions would defently NOT fix melee issues or touches them in any form for 40k, it dosent change the amount of insane damage many ranged units can pull off.
In the club im in we run a basic houserule, wanna fallback? Roll against eachother, 2D6 highest wins, and 3D6 pick the two highest for <fly> units and +1 to your roll for every unit you have more than the opponent in said engagement.
It dosent fix the balance issue, it doesnt change the meta, but it defently tones down the frustration for alot of the melee units/lists and make them ejoyable.
So this is basically how I handle this issue as I said above I play with a modified
AA system that allows for charges to be declared in the movement phase and one issue we ran into was that a unit might fall back and disengage only to have the unit they just disengaged charge them immediately afterward which effectively locked them in combat and we felt that just saying "no tag backs" and prohibiting the disengaged unit from immediately declaring another charge was equally unfair so we agreed on a rule that basically says if you want to fall back then the other player can either allow and also disengage without penalty or choose to pursue. If they chose to disengage they my move as normal but they may not declare a charge for the rest of that movement phase. If they chose to pursue then each unit involved in the combat roles a
D6 and adds their movement score fast attack and flyers roll
2D6 and add their movement. If the unit falling back wins then they may move up to the difference of the results while the pursuer was allowed a consolidation move of up to half their movement but must stay 1" away from any enemy models. All units that were previously engaged count as having advanced that turn. If multiple units are engaged on both sides then a roll is made for each unit involved any units wishing to disengage must beat the results of all pursuers.
