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I agree that AA would reduce the issue of turn 1, as you would only get to fire 1 unit before the opponent gets to use one, so in theory you can only be denied half as much (if they kill the stuff you haven't used yet).

I'm not 100% that 40k could just flip to AA, as there are a lot of Aura abilities which would cause issues. As an ork player:

normal taktik: deffkilla wartrike moves up with the morkanaught, both advance, and both can charge due to wartrikes aura. Hooray!

AA Taktik: Deffkilla wartrike moves up to within 6" of enemy, ready for the morkanaught. He doesn't charge as if he does, the 'naught will be out of range. so he sits there. Opponent picks killiest unit and shoots him in the face. Then the morkanaught moves up, without the wartrike, and cannot charge.
Or the 'naught moves first, can't charge because the trike is too far back, and so does nothing as well.

AA is definitely a smoother and more balanced option, but I'm not sure it's something which can just be slapped on 40k as a fix. The game itself would have to be rewritten to incorporate it - auras affecting units which start in range, for example.

 some bloke wrote:
I agree that AA would reduce the issue of turn 1, as you would only get to fire 1 unit before the opponent gets to use one, so in theory you can only be denied half as much (if they kill the stuff you haven't used yet).

I'm not 100% that 40k could just flip to AA, as there are a lot of Aura abilities which would cause issues. As an ork player:

normal taktik: deffkilla wartrike moves up with the morkanaught, both advance, and both can charge due to wartrikes aura. Hooray!

AA Taktik: Deffkilla wartrike moves up to within 6" of enemy, ready for the morkanaught. He doesn't charge as if he does, the 'naught will be out of range. so he sits there. Opponent picks killiest unit and shoots him in the face. Then the morkanaught moves up, without the wartrike, and cannot charge.
Or the 'naught moves first, can't charge because the trike is too far back, and so does nothing as well.

AA is definitely a smoother and more balanced option, but I'm not sure it's something which can just be slapped on 40k as a fix. The game itself would have to be rewritten to incorporate it - auras affecting units which start in range, for example.

The functional versions of 40k AA I have seen and played allowed for some measure of multi unit activations under strict guidelines. It's generally considered an expansion on the scope of heroic intervention.

It's usually something like 1 unit + 1 character within 3" + 1 "protector" unit within 3" of the unit they can protect.

So Hormagaunts, the Swarmlord, and Tyrant guard.

Firewarriors, A cadre Fireblade, and a unit of drones.

Necron Warriors, A cryptek, and lychguard.

Thats the biggest you can do. And it eats into your number of activations to do it. A fair trade off in a system that runs on AA and all that implies.

Then isn't it better for you to play apoc with less points and more detachments? Why does 40k have to become diluted version of apoc to reduce turn 1 lethality (which again, isn't a thing)?

 skchsan wrote:
Then isn't it better for you to play apoc with less points and more detachments? Why does 40k have to become diluted version of apoc to reduce turn 1 lethality (which again, isn't a thing)?

1) it is a thing. Your "it gets it's impact mitigated if you follow all these steps that include changing your army lists and banning certain weapons/units and flooding your table with terrain so that every battlefield is the same" doesn't make the problem go away. Your just putting band aids nobody should need over the symptoms.

2) It doesn't need to be apoc. It could be anything. There are lots of ways to do AA.

3) Again, you don't actually have any arguments for why IGOUGO should stick around. It causes problems that you have to patch to mitigate without eliminating the underlying issue while denying the advantages of all the other potential systems out there. Instead of asking why the game should become AA why don't you tell us why the hell it would be better to stay IGOUGO? Whats the "advantage" of having less tactical and strategic depth with a system that creates problems?

I wish I could be in that hardcore denial that turn lethality wasn't a thing and that IGOUGO is great.

Like, did you forget we just had a Strat last edition giving everyone cover to try and alleviate an issue that exists because of the refusal to let go of outdated game mechanics?

 Lance845 wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
I agree that AA would reduce the issue of turn 1, as you would only get to fire 1 unit before the opponent gets to use one, so in theory you can only be denied half as much (if they kill the stuff you haven't used yet).

I'm not 100% that 40k could just flip to AA, as there are a lot of Aura abilities which would cause issues. As an ork player:

normal taktik: deffkilla wartrike moves up with the morkanaught, both advance, and both can charge due to wartrikes aura. Hooray!

AA Taktik: Deffkilla wartrike moves up to within 6" of enemy, ready for the morkanaught. He doesn't charge as if he does, the 'naught will be out of range. so he sits there. Opponent picks killiest unit and shoots him in the face. Then the morkanaught moves up, without the wartrike, and cannot charge.
Or the 'naught moves first, can't charge because the trike is too far back, and so does nothing as well.

AA is definitely a smoother and more balanced option, but I'm not sure it's something which can just be slapped on 40k as a fix. The game itself would have to be rewritten to incorporate it - auras affecting units which start in range, for example.

The functional versions of 40k AA I have seen and played allowed for some measure of multi unit activations under strict guidelines. It's generally considered an expansion on the scope of heroic intervention.

It's usually something like 1 unit + 1 character within 3" + 1 "protector" unit within 3" of the unit they can protect.

So Hormagaunts, the Swarmlord, and Tyrant guard.

Firewarriors, A cadre Fireblade, and a unit of drones.

Necron Warriors, A cryptek, and lychguard.

Thats the biggest you can do. And it eats into your number of activations to do it. A fair trade off in a system that runs on AA and all that implies.

That seems like a good way to go, though I suspect it could lead to deathstar-esque tactics (which isn't an inherently bad thing!)

I also like the idea of all auras getting locked in at the start of the turn, it would remove 90% of the worries with AA I think.

I would be inclined to push for AA prior to 7th ed. But with single unit that can splitfire into 5-9 units in one go? No thanks. I dont want IGOUGO to stay because its better than AA. I want it to stay because AA in 40k setting is worse than dealing with IGOUGO.

 skchsan wrote:
I would be inclined to push for AA prior to 7th ed. But with single unit that can splitfire into 5-9 units in one go? No thanks. I dont want IGOUGO to stay because its better than AA. I want it to stay because AA in 40k setting is worse than dealing with IGOUGO.

I've never found split-fire to be the issue - usually for me it's 2-3 units all piling into one of mine, and destroying it before I get to use it. If my opponent activates a knight and takes a few wounds off several of my units instead of destroying one utterly, I'd call it an improvement!

 skchsan wrote:
I would be inclined to push for AA prior to 7th ed. But with single unit that can splitfire into 5-9 units in one go? No thanks. I dont want IGOUGO to stay because its better than AA. I want it to stay because AA in 40k setting is worse than dealing with IGOUGO.

Bull gak. You have no arguments that support that position.

If any one unit split fire into 7-9 other units it would do so little damage to any of them and then it's activation would be shot. It would also be a unit that cost a crap ton of points and would eat up a large % of your whole armies activations. With strategic positioning, usage of deep strikes, and some clever baiting a unit like that would be out maneuvered and crippled in AA especially if they were dumb enough to split fire each individual gun into a different unit.

Don't just SAY AA is worse. Prove it.

The Pros for IGOUGO:
-Simplicity. There's no remembering which units have acted or if unit X can allow unit Y to activate off sequence.
-Speed. For players who need time to think through each move, AA can strike them with analysis paralysis.
-Combos. Units can combine into powerful combinations more easily with IGOUGO.

The Cons:
-Alpha/Beta Strike. The entire idea that positioning is about deleting as much of your opponents army in one go often widens the gap between merely good and broken armies.
-Lack of Depth. It rarely matters which order you move or activate units in and this can feel shallow to players used to other systems.
-Ease of Combos. The flip side of combos being easy is that they also become automatic and the best ones are the only ones you ever see. AA can add powerful combos that have activation requirements to unlock with other 'easy' combos having less power in exchange for always working.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
The Pros for IGOUGO:
-Simplicity. There's no remembering which units have acted or if unit X can allow unit Y to activate off sequence.

You do that RIGHT NOW as you work through which units have shot and which have not. And if it's really difficult you put a penny or a dice next to a unit that has been activated. AA is no more complex then the game is now in terms of this and for even the most forgetful among us a small token is incredibly easy to come by with the tons of dice we all have.

-Speed. For players who need time to think through each move, AA can strike them with analysis paralysis.

In terms of actual play its exactly the same. Every unit is making all the same moves. But AA has drastically less downtime. Sure, some people might have "analysis paralysis". Which only provides evidence for the increase in tactical decision making. Thats a pro for AA.

-Combos. Units can combine into powerful combinations more easily with IGOUGO.

Is that a good thing?

 Lance845 wrote:
You do that RIGHT NOW as you work through which units have shot and which have not. And if it's really difficult you put a penny or a dice next to a unit that has been activated. AA is no more complex then the game is now in terms of this and for even the most forgetful among us a small token is incredibly easy to come by with the tons of dice we all have.

I think you mistake me for somebody who favours IGOUGO. I do not, I was just listing the commonly 'know' pros and cons of each because I knew people would have something to say about them.

That said, there's something to sticking with a system some 40k players have used for decades and not forcing them to learn new rules. A better more nuanced game isn't what a lot of players want so your or my idea of 'better' might just be a bunch of changes that drive them away from the game, just as 8th and 9th's 'better' have driven other players away.

In terms of actual play its exactly the same. Every unit is making all the same moves. But AA has drastically less downtime. Sure, some people might have "analysis paralysis". Which only provides evidence for the increase in tactical decision making. Thats a pro for AA.

Have you ever played with people who always take turns twice as long as everybody else at the table and just wished you were playing a simpler game so there wasn't so much waiting around? I have, anything that streamlines games can be a plus for groups with that type of player.

Is that a good thing?

If you enjoy the fantasy of pulling off a powerful combo and aren't bothered by the fact that your 'combo' is just standing unit A next to unit B it can be. Lots of 40k players like mindless picking up a bucket of dice on their turn and making you remove models. To those players losing that aspect is a downside of AA.

Two part solution with the least changes.

First?

"At the start of the game, each player rolls a die. The higher die chooses to go first or to go second.

The player who goes second gets +1 to all armor saves in the first turn."

Second?

"No models may move closer than 3" from the other player's deployment zone during the first turn."

Holds back the alpha strike, prevents the movement-crippling of a first-turn charge.

Is it perfect? No, but, it'll do a LOT to even the scale.

Wakshaani wrote:
Two part solution with the least changes.

First?

"At the start of the game, each player rolls a die. The higher die chooses to go first or to go second.

The player who goes second gets +1 to all armor saves in the first turn."

Second?

"No models may move closer than 3" from the other player's deployment zone during the first turn."

Holds back the alpha strike, prevents the movement-crippling of a first-turn charge.

Is it perfect? No, but, it'll do a LOT to even the scale.

I'm not going to say I'm an expert on the nuances of 40k, but isn't this horribly artificial, returning to people's issue that the real problem is IGOUGO? What rationale is there for either of these? In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only respecting others' personal space?

Wakshaani wrote:
Two part solution with the least changes.

First?

"At the start of the game, each player rolls a die. The higher die chooses to go first or to go second.

The player who goes second gets +1 to all armor saves in the first turn."

That first one wouldn't be very useful for armies that don't really do armor saves. Harlequins and daemons are generally leaning on their invuls. Drukhari (so we're talking vehicles on turn 1) would be back to their invul save despite the +1 against anything AP2 or better.

I wonder if the changes to auras (the "core" keyword) might reduce the first turn advantage. BLOS terrain seems to have helped with alpha strikes already. If an army's heaviest hitters aren't benefitting from marine auras, Kauyon, etc., that will theoretically reduce the quality of firepower that can reach out and hit you on turn 1.

Anecdotes are anecdotal, but I've been finding that wanting to go first vs second is kind of a toss up in my 9th edition games. If I go first, I can get some defensive buffs up or possibly even charge a shooting unit that's too far forward. If I go second, my opponent generally wanders out onto objectives where I can hit them harder on my own first turn. Then again, I've been playing smaller games (mostly 1k), so there's less firepower floating around in general.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
What the game needs is more incentives for holding down the central region of the board and discourage backfield camping.

AA doesn't do either so I'm against AA as a solution. It merely decreases the rate of casualties and does nothing against absolute casualty amount. As in, AA is just as lethal as IGOUGO, just at a slower rate.

Ample terrain coverage can prohibit backfield camping from being effective to a certain degree. Better objective based ruleset forces players to commit to holding down objectives rather than playing napoleonic standoff.

It isn't as lethal because you can actually counter lethality via moving and killing over the top shooting before it can do anything. IGOUGO lets the player do whatever they want with no consequences. If you told the players of any other game that there was a Strat made for the second player getting cover on everything, they'd laugh at you because that's stupid.

I honestly don't believe it's a problem with IGOUGO, wargames have been IGOUGO since the ones focused on planning for real life military operations and haven't had an alpha strike problem like this, and my experiences with AA game systems has been, with the exception of Dropzone Commander, pretty much overwhelmingly negative.

I think the problem with alpha strike in Warhammer 40k is exclusively with the way units and their abilities are written and balanced and missions are run and scored.

For example, end game scoring is a function that empowers the player moving second. Setting up reactively also empowers the player playing second [and rather drastically at that]. These are all measures that could be taken that we're done away with for no real good reason [Well, progressive scoring was a response to tabling by shooting being a thing, which isn't a thing this edition anyway]

It is fair to say that the mechanic of IGOUGO taken on it's own is not ALWAYS an issue (though it is still the most dull and least interactive thing there is) and could be functional in other games.

But it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists with the rest of 40ks mechanics. So unless you are changing EVERYTHING ELSE about 40k it's the turn structure thats fething with everything else.

Also again it's boring.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I honestly don't believe it's a problem with IGOUGO, wargames have been IGOUGO since the ones focused on planning for real life military operations and haven't had an alpha strike problem like this

Real-life military simulations, and actual wargames that try to model real-life warfare, generally involve some combination of:

-Reduced combat effectiveness at range, so your infantry and IFVs are not able to close to 800m and then immediately open fire with all the same firepower as a close assault.
-Representation of real-world terrain, where 'flat' ground isn't, and being able to geometrically sight on a target at range is far from guaranteed.
-Friction, such that perfect coordination is difficult to achieve, orders are received late or incomplete, and troops don't always behave as expected or suicidally rush into certain death to get a shot off.
-Incomplete information, where the commander doesn't know perfectly where the enemy is positioned.
-Enemy reactivity or interruption, so that activating an entire army before the enemy can do anything is never guaranteed or outright impossible.
-Lower lethality, higher importance of soft kills (mission kills on vehicles, morale/suppression on infantry).

I've played a number of good IGOUGO wargames. The best have always included some form of overwatch (interrupt the enemy's movement to perform opportunity fire) at a bare minimum, as the idea of an entire infantry platoon being able to simultaneously pop out in front of an emplaced machine gun and kill it with rifle fire before it gets a shot off is completely stupid and instantly constitutes a failure as a wargame. The better ones use mechanics like reactions (take an action in response to the enemy now at the cost of activity later), initiative (IGOUGO by phase, with one player going first in each phase), or activation by formation (as Apocalypse does it).

Any game where a player can:
1. Muster enough firepower to wipe out a non-negligible portion of the opposing army in a single turn,
2. Do so from the very first turn, and
3. Do so without the enemy being able to perform any reaction (not even take cover) until the entire army's shooting is resolved,

will lend itself to alpha-strike tactics by sheer Lanchesterian efficiency. And then as one further point,

4. If you can do all this while also being able to play to the scenario objectives, then that's just the optimal strategy.

40K currently has an alpha-strike problem that it didn't used to have, simply because all of these have grown worse over time. Comparatively, in 3rd Ed:

-No double-shooting, no bonus AP such that one player's army can ignore most of the armor of the other player's, no shooting all your (non-Assault) guns and then charging with the same unit, no stratagems to boost combat effectiveness or shoot twice, and cover provides an invulnerable save that cannot be mitigated (all to point #1).
-No Bolter Discipline, no moving and shooting Rapid Fire with two shots, no basic guns with 30" range (point #2).
-Units fight in initiative order, or with the defender having an advantage in cover, and heavy weapons like power fists always strike last, rather than the player whose turn it is always going first (point #3).
-No moving full speed and firing all your vehicle weapons, no moving and shooting Rapid Fire at long range, no moving and shooting Heavy (point #4).

Since rolling back the core mechanic changes to the game that produce increased lethality, increased range, and increased mobility while bringing full fire to bear seems unlikely, incorporating some form of alternating activation or reaction system seems the better alternative.

I agree with the people characterizing this proposal as a band-aid fix. Greater ability to proactively respond to threats is needed game-wide, not just for the second-turn player.

Its nice to see how a thread about a small tweak in the game devolved into a debate of a complete overhaul of the game system...derrailling everything

 iGuy91 wrote:
Or we could play with a great deal more terrain cutting down cross-map turn 1 firepower.

I'll pass on turn 0. This can be addressed outside of the game itself.

Which doesn't help with LOS ignoring shooting, fast mobile shooting, T1 automatic charges etc etc etc.

Plus the mere fact you need tons of terrain a) makes for same boring looking boards b) hard practically c) shows how broken game rules are to begin with because of GW.

barsa90 wrote:
Its nice to see how a thread about a small tweak in the game devolved into a debate of a complete overhaul of the game system...derrailling everything

It's not a derailment. The thread is about mitigating first turn advantage. The OPs suggested method for doing so 1) doesn't work and 2) doesn't address the root cause.

If people don't want a discussion of their ideas then don't post them to a discussion board.

 Lance845 wrote:

barsa90 wrote:
Its nice to see how a thread about a small tweak in the game devolved into a debate of a complete overhaul of the game system...derrailling everything

It's not a derailment. The thread is about mitigating first turn advantage. The OPs suggested method for doing so 1) doesn't work and 2) doesn't address the root cause.

If people don't want a discussion of their ideas then don't post them to a discussion board.

Lance, you were responding to the OP, who's getting defensive, not defending someone else.

@ OP, this is a discussion of the underlying problem, and that does demand a major overhaul. Your suggestion didn't address the problem, just a symptom, and people are discussing the problem. There's no devolution, there's a deeper dive. If you think that there's a better way of solving 1st turn or you think you can more effectively argue why your proposal works, feel free to share, but clearly people are currently unconvinced.