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We've played quite a few battles already, and we mostly enjoy the rules.

When we were discussing the strengths and weaknesses of KT rules the Initiative roll was one of the most criticised elements. Does the competitive community have any ideas on how to reduce the randomness of the Initiative roll? Tbh I've found this moment in all of my games so far an anticlimax, regardless of whether the roll went in my favour or not and other players are hardly fans of this solution either.

I know that randomness like that is often used in game design as an equalizer, giving the player on the back foot some kind of a boost, but in this form it is as often just another kick in the groin, robbing such a player of a chance to get back in the game.

Activating the same powerful model twice in a row is probably the worst, but even having the winning player activating any of his models twice in a row (as they have more surviving models, they were likely to have the last activation the previous turn) is harsh and feels undeserved and random (because it is).

ASOIAF simply has alternating initiative, which is something both players can plan for.

For Initiative to be an actual catch up mechanism I was thinking of the player with fewer total Vps choosing initiative, with a 1CP universal Tac Ploy that can be used to grasp (and then grasp back, and again 😉 as long as you want to spend the CP) the Initiative from your opponent in the Initiative Phase
But I am sure tournament vets have solutions that should work better.

Perhaps you could bid CP points with the highest getting to choose to go first or second. A tie is a roll-off unless one of the players decides to up their bid?

How about a simple houserule that goes something like: "Regardless of iniative, an operative who was last to active in the previous turning point cannot be the first to activate the following turning point, unless that operative is the player's last model on the board"?