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How to recognize an eldar player ; )

 Jimsolo wrote:
I like an initiative system..

"Activation" seems the way to go in game terms for 40k.
Since having an entire army unload on you as you stand there seems a bit far from the wargame we are trying to simulate.
The interval for your opponent or yourself to do something is greatly reduced, activation order and unit targeting by activation (has not gone yet) is a strategy all it's own.
I am a big fan of Bolt Action and it is very similar to 40k so it is a mechanic worth considering.

Anyone looking for "initiative based" would need a re-balance of the game since points would not represent as well (only a factor in melee at this point).
Look at X-wing for instance where the initiative is very much part of the game (Han shot first!).

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I would certainly prefer if 40K went "I go, you go" or at least "interleaved turns" rather than this all or nothing thing we got going on.

I think it would open up tactics, and eliminate 1st or 2nd turn tabling that is now quite common.

However, I certainly would not want it to go the route of a die roll like in AOS. That gak is stupid.

If you're getting tabled on the 1st or 2nd turn, you either have no clue how to deploy and you deserve it or you need to be playing with more terrain. Not playing parking lot hammer fixes a lot of the major imbalances in the game.

 Toofast wrote:
If you're getting tabled on the 1st or 2nd turn, you either have no clue how to deploy and you deserve it or you need to be playing with more terrain. Not playing parking lot hammer fixes a lot of the major imbalances in the game.

I think that largely depends on your army type.
Keeping things in reserve, elite units so they are small enough to fit behind terrain, means of being "shrouded" in some way, going all defensive or all offensive is a risk either way.
Nothing says "losing" like when someone "steals the initiative" unexpectedly.
I just LOVE all the random for random sake in 40k.

 Toofast wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I would certainly prefer if 40K went "I go, you go" or at least "interleaved turns" rather than this all or nothing thing we got going on.

I think it would open up tactics, and eliminate 1st or 2nd turn tabling that is now quite common.

However, I certainly would not want it to go the route of a die roll like in AOS. That gak is stupid.

If you're getting tabled on the 1st or 2nd turn, you either have no clue how to deploy and you deserve it or you need to be playing with more terrain. Not playing parking lot hammer fixes a lot of the major imbalances in the game.

Parking lot hammer or not, the whole idea of IGOUGO is horribly outdated. Even with alternating phases to reduce downtime it's better suited for ancient/medieval/fantasy or maybe Napoleonic games.

That said, I'm in favor of alternating phases with casualty removal at the end of shooting as a minimalist fix to 40k. It still has a lot of subtle problems with it but it fixes player downtime and alpha strikes without requiring too much work.

No, IGYG is not outdated and works quite well also in modern/sciFi themed games.

 Talizvar wrote:

 Toofast wrote:
If you're getting tabled on the 1st or 2nd turn, you either have no clue how to deploy and you deserve it or you need to be playing with more terrain. Not playing parking lot hammer fixes a lot of the major imbalances in the game.

I think that largely depends on your army type.
Keeping things in reserve, elite units so they are small enough to fit behind terrain, means of being "shrouded" in some way, going all defensive or all offensive is a risk either way.
Nothing says "losing" like when someone "steals the initiative" unexpectedly.
I just LOVE all the random for random sake in 40k.

the problem is, with the current state of codex balance, neither unit activation nur alternate turns will help some armys/lists to survive the first turn.

Jefffar wrote:
I think the simplest solution is to alternate on aphase by phase basis, soa Game Trun would resolve as

Turn Start Book Keeping
Movement phase
Player 1 Goes, Player 2 Goes
Psychic Phase
Resolve Psychic Points
Player 1 Goes, Player 2 Goes
Shooting Phase
Player 1 Goes, Player 2 Goes
Assault Phase
Player 1 Goes, Player 2 Goes
Resolve Combats
End Turn

I like this. At the same time, my mind wanders into card games. There's so much more room for abilites and quirks. Traps, quick plays, effects, dissolutions, mergers and many of the mechanics are right at the door. Which makes for better skirmish games. Keeping it simple and expanding scale is interesting.

I prefer alternating activation. Makes the game more strategic. Not a fan of one entire side goes. After playing games with better activation rules it makes 40k seem clunky and slow.

Nominally I prefer random activation like Bolt Action and Gates have where you blindly pull a colored dice from a bag to see who gets to activate a unit. Don't know if it would work for 40k but its the most superior turn system I have seen in a game to date.

Don Savik wrote: I guess the 10 minute wait till your next turn is just too much for some. Again, personal experience, I've never found it that tiresome.

Please quote multiple people who have said waiting 10 minutes is the problem. I am sure a lot of us have said 1/2 or even 45 minutes we had to wait for. So I am not sure where your 10 minutes is coming from.

@CalgarsPimpHand.
Games I have played using alternating unit activation.
Epic Space Marine, Bolt Action , Bodycount, DZC , and a few other older games .

All of these games had strict limits on unit types, (unit group types) and frequency .(EG no Heavy tank Companies in B.A with 5+Tigers for example.)
There are not such a wide range of unit costs and effects in rules sets the use alternating unit activation, as there are currently in 40k.

Its not just the range of units as such, but the complete lack of any sort of balance in force composition in 40k, that exasperates the issues with alternating unit activation..

The issues with alternating unit activation, are mainly down to 'time warp effect'.
EG one unit performing multiple actions while everyone else just stands and watches.This means most people ask for 'reaction or initiative mechanics' to be added which just adds complication .

If Alternating phases model simultaneous actions, what 'issues' remain?

@ Kodos.
Alternating game turn mechanic, (IGO UGO) works fine for games where tactical maneuver into effective weapons range is a large part of the game play.
EG ancient warfare where ranged attacks are used in a supporting role.(WHFB, K.O.W. A.O.S etc.)

Or where the scale of the smaller scale minatures gives smaller in scale weapons effective ranges , eg 6 mm to 15mm modern/scifi battle games like F,o,W, etc.

And skirmish games where the distsnce between units is much larger due to the lower density of model coverage on the table top.
Infinity,2nd ed 40k,etc.

For the current scale and scope of the 40k game , Alternating game turns is not suitable.

Alternating phases, (with simultaneous resolution.)
Or
Alternating actions , (with tactical options set in the start of turn/ command phase.)

Seem to be the best fit .(With minimal amount or re working of the current rules.)

Lanrak wrote:

Alternating phases, (with simultaneous resolution.)
Seem to be the best fit .(With minimal amount or re working of the current rules.)

No, without a complete re-write, alternating phases will make things much wores
with all the stuff around that is not bound to a specific phase and can shot or move whenever they want is not going to work well


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lanrak wrote:

For the current scale and scope of the 40k game , Alternating game turns is not suitable.

For the current mess of 40k, nothing is really suitable

but, for the unit based mass-skirmish game 40k wants to be it will work fine (just look at StarShipTroopers, it is the same scale as 40k is now and works with IGYG quite well)

Lanrak wrote:
@CalgarsPimpHand.
Games I have played using alternating unit activation.
Epic Space Marine, Bolt Action , Bodycount, DZC , and a few other older games .

All of these games had strict limits on unit types, (unit group types) and frequency .(EG no Heavy tank Companies in B.A with 5+Tigers for example.)
There are not such a wide range of unit costs and effects in rules sets the use alternating unit activation, as there are currently in 40k.

Its not just the range of units as such, but the complete lack of any sort of balance in force composition in 40k, that exasperates the issues with alternating unit activation..

The issues with alternating unit activation, are mainly down to 'time warp effect'.
EG one unit performing multiple actions while everyone else just stands and watches.This means most people ask for 'reaction or initiative mechanics' to be added which just adds complication .

If Alternating phases model simultaneous actions, what 'issues' remain?

@ Kodos.
Alternating game turn mechanic, (IGO UGO) works fine for games where tactical maneuver into effective weapons range is a large part of the game play.
EG ancient warfare where ranged attacks are used in a supporting role.(WHFB, K.O.W. A.O.S etc.)

Or where the scale of the smaller scale minatures gives smaller in scale weapons effective ranges , eg 6 mm to 15mm modern/scifi battle games like F,o,W, etc.

And skirmish games where the distsnce between units is much larger due to the lower density of model coverage on the table top.
Infinity,2nd ed 40k,etc.

For the current scale and scope of the 40k game , Alternating game turns is not suitable.

Alternating phases, (with simultaneous resolution.)
Or
Alternating actions , (with tactical options set in the start of turn/ command phase.)

Seem to be the best fit .(With minimal amount or re working of the current rules.)

You're simply doing it again. Epic has formations that are literally as far apart as four Sentinels compared to an Emperor titan. You can do armies of all titans, you can do armies of predominantly infantry. That is very much in the same scope as 40k. Bolt Action also does have options for playing armored companies, and you can't pretend that a sniper compared to a Tiger is far off from the extreme differences in unit power you see in 40k. Both those games work fine.

This is why I am saying you don't understand the concept. You are correct that these games have mechanics to encourage a balanced mix of powerful and weak units. Alternating activations favors MSU spam, but Epic (as an example) has a suppression/morale system that encourages bigger units. You end up with armies that have similar numbers of activations but still include units with very widely varying power levels. Every time you talk about unit imbalance in 40k as a reason why alternating activation doesn't work, you turn on a neon sign that says you don't get it.

Same thing with talking about "units standing around" due to a "time warp effect". Alternating Phases on its own still has your entire army stand around to get shot or charged. There is always going to be at least one unit doing something while the other player isn't touching their models - this is how tabletop games work. It's a bizarre objection to have, this lack of comprehension that one unit being activated doesn't mean the others are literally frozen in place.

The only reaction you might add is overwatch, and it isn't a complicated idea.

The legitimate issues with bringing alternating activations to 40k are as follows:

smaller rules throughout codexes rely on IGOUGO - more work to clean these up

some concepts need rework to fit into alternating activations, like the psychic phase, independent characters, and transports

the game needs another mechanic to help balance MSU spam against big tough units - activation count trumps concentrated power without something like a suppression or activation mechanic that punishes small units

And to answer your question, the main issues with alternating phases, even after you add simultaneous casualty removal:

The second player in each turn can always act with perfect information to negate the first player's moves, making it much harder for the first player to shoot or charge successfully

Assault armies are nerfed by the inability to move and charge back to back without the opponent moving away. The opposing army always has a chance to move away from assault units before the charge phase, whether you're going first or second.

Basically, alternating activations require more of a rewrite to implement in 40k, but can provide a very tactical back and forth with heavy emphasis on units maneuvering to contact. This is why you see it so much in WWII/modern/sci fi games.

Alternating phases is definitely an improvement over IGOUGO and would be easier to implement, but still has some shortcomings when you apply it to a game heavy on ranged combat.

Davor wrote:

Don Savik wrote: I guess the 10 minute wait till your next turn is just too much for some. Again, personal experience, I've never found it that tiresome.

Please quote multiple people who have said waiting 10 minutes is the problem. I am sure a lot of us have said 1/2 or even 45 minutes we had to wait for. So I am not sure where your 10 minutes is coming from.

Woah relax I wasn't claiming that anyone said a specific time, I was just saying that I think turns are never that long. I personally haven't ran into people that slow that it takes them 45 minutes to move their guys outside of an apocalypse game, but if you have I can see why that would be frustrating. I think knowing your list well has partially to do with how fast you play too. I don't think changing the turn sequences would entirely get rid of this.

I would say I am against this system
"I go you go" only works when you have armies that are basically the same doesn't it?
I feel like close combat armies are at a major disadvantage in this system when they play shooting armies.

My Tau vs KDK

I go first. I shoot at one of his units
He goes and moves one of his units up the table.
I go and shoot at the next unit
He goes and moves another unit up the table.
by the time he gets up the table to close combat most of his units will be dead or mostly dead. Then he assaults and I over watch.

The assault player looses the ability to push multiple small units up the table at once which forces the shooting army prioritize targets. He's depending on multiple simultaneous threats or even waves of units to force the shooting player to make a bad decision.

This works for games that would have armies that are basically the same and games that don't have getting into close combat as a game mechanic.

Don Savik wrote:

Davor wrote:

Don Savik wrote: I guess the 10 minute wait till your next turn is just too much for some. Again, personal experience, I've never found it that tiresome.

Please quote multiple people who have said waiting 10 minutes is the problem. I am sure a lot of us have said 1/2 or even 45 minutes we had to wait for. So I am not sure where your 10 minutes is coming from.

Woah relax I wasn't claiming that anyone said a specific time, I was just saying that I think turns are never that long. I personally haven't ran into people that slow that it takes them 45 minutes to move their guys outside of an apocalypse game, but if you have I can see why that would be frustrating. I think knowing your list well has partially to do with how fast you play too. I don't think changing the turn sequences would entirely get rid of this.

I am relaxed. I wasn't aggressive at all my friend. Turns do take that long otherwise we wouldn't be saying they are. We are not exaggerating at all but talking from experience. Your 10 minute comment came out as our explanations don't count and are not valid or even worse trivial and we should be embraced. While you may not have that problem other people do. So we are wrong when it happens to us?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:

No, without a complete re-write, alternating phases will make things much wores
with all the stuff around that is not bound to a specific phase and can shot or move whenever they want is not going to work well

Can you please explain why a complete re-write is necessary? I don't see it. I am curious as to why you think a re-write is needed.

 Talizvar wrote:
"Activation" seems the way to go in game terms for 40k.
Since having an entire army unload on you as you stand there seems a bit far from the wargame we are trying to simulate.
The interval for your opponent or yourself to do something is greatly reduced, activation order and unit targeting by activation (has not gone yet) is a strategy all it's own.
I am a big fan of Bolt Action and it is very similar to 40k so it is a mechanic worth considering.

Anyone looking for "initiative based" would need a re-balance of the game since points would not represent as well (only a factor in melee at this point).
Look at X-wing for instance where the initiative is very much part of the game (Han shot first!).

My friends and I only play with modded bolt action activation rules and it makes 40k 100x better.

You can charge from deep strike!!!@

... if your last move was to bring a unit in from deep strike, and you get the first avtivation, and opt to charge instead of shooting!

Adds way more depth.

If you're getting tabled on the 1st or 2nd turn, you either have no clue how to deploy and you deserve it or you need to be playing with more terrain. Not playing parking lot hammer fixes a lot of the major imbalances in the game

First of all, you don't need to lose your whole army on turn 2 to not be able to win. Only crippled entirely.

Secondly, I know how to deploy, but unfortunately I play Chaos Marines and I have no reserves manipulation at all, and my army is slow as feth and outdated. Guess which army completely ignores cover on everything? Tau?

Third, I'm not a good player. You know why? Because I enjoy close combat and I play gakky armies like Chaos Marines and Dark Eldar. So forgive me for wanted my game to not be a one sided shooting fest that it's turned into.

You know what else fixes a lot of imbalances in the game? A good rules set.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

If you're getting tabled on the 1st or 2nd turn, you either have no clue how to deploy and you deserve it or you need to be playing with more terrain. Not playing parking lot hammer fixes a lot of the major imbalances in the game

First of all, you don't need to lose your whole army on turn 2 to not be able to win. Only crippled entirely.

Secondly, I know how to deploy, but unfortunately I play Chaos Marines and I have no reserves manipulation at all, and my army is slow as feth and outdated. Guess which army completely ignores cover on everything? Tau?

Third, I'm not a good player. You know why? Because I enjoy close combat and I play gakky armies like Chaos Marines and Dark Eldar. So forgive me for wanted my game to not be a one sided shooting fest that it's turned into.

You know what else fixes a lot of imbalances in the game? A good rules set.

The bolt action style activation really tones down first turn advantage.

You can play free for all very easily as well, I've had a 5 player FFA capture the relic game and it was loads of fun.

I'm actually making a fantasy game because of this. I loved the excitement of collecting minis, painting together with my friends, and then we'd get around a game board and...meh. Then I played Infinity, which uses a much similar system, and found it much more engaging.

I think there's definitely a place for it in fantasy, strategically moving bowmen onto hills and towers, or seizing the initiative when your opponent is half-way through shuffling around their formation. Makes things much more tactically interesting.

Our game is going to be based around individual actions taken by units, rather than turns as a whole. We've got a system where the player can take around five actions and then it switches to the other player, on average - though obviously through player maneuvring it can be longer or shorter. It also opens the game up for 'special actions', like forming a shieldwall, etc, that units can take instead of moving or charging. The turn switches are necessary to allow for movement of units that are routing, or for resolving combat, etc.

Whatever way you look at it, fantasy battle has definitely fallen behind on this front, and skirmish and sci-fi games really seem to have shot ahead. Not sure why this is, but its a shame.

Have you ever tried SAGA?
It has a nice fantasy version

Davor wrote:

Can you please explain why a complete re-write is necessary? I don't see it. I am curious as to why you think a re-write is needed.

in short:

First would be that to get alternating phases working would be keep everything inside it's specific phase
If one faction able to shoot in the movement phase and move in the assault phase, it has a major advantage and the whole thing is messed up before you start.

So, all moving in the moving phase (except assault), all shooting in the shooting phase etc.
This also leads to a problem that some factions need their play style re-worked, and a lot of special rules needs to be re-done

Next is the "reaction system" of 40k

alternating anything means that a player reacts directly. All other reactions need to be removed.

No Overwatch, Intercept etc, and no strike back in combat (this is replaced with the enemy CC phase which follows directly after). Therefore the whole melee section need to be re-done.
Keep them would give the passive player an advantage, because he will act 2 times in a row (the passive reaction and his own phase directly after)


If you just add stuff to the current rules, it will work somehow, but will not be an improvement over the current system

Actually, fantasy battles have moved pretty far as an historical / ancients-style communications / command-focused block game rather than an individual model combat-focused skirmish battle.

Thanks Kodos for your explanation. I can understand where you are coming from now.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Actually, fantasy battles have moved pretty far as an historical / ancients-style communications / command-focused block game rather than an individual model combat-focused skirmish battle.

Frostgrave and A fantastic SAGA would disagree

PS:

Davor wrote:
I can understand where you are coming from now.

is this positive or negative?

Don't expect me to be cool with this idea, if you randomly ask me for a pick up game. But If we know each other and you ask "hey want to try this idea out?" then I would love to. Just let me think about the changes and how I might have to adjust my all-comers list for the change.

I'm pretty open to trying out new things, games, ect.

I am against the whole IGOUGO as 40K does for the simple reason that it gives the player that goes first far to big of an advantage. He who goes first - baring those few and very rare cases where the player has no long ranged weapons - can easily cripple his opponents army by taking out key units and as the armies usually start within rifle range of each other it is far too easy to remove a large chunk of your opponents army i the first turn.
If I end up deploying second then I have to make sure that everything starts neck deep in cover because I know that it will have to endure the other sides shooting before it can do anything. This means that I cannot deploy in an optimal position to advance because I know that these units will never have the chance to do so if they do as my opponent will wipe them from the face of the board before they have even left the deployment zone.

An alternate system like Bolt Actions would be better but the problem here lies with the scale of the game. Bolt Actions system works well because you rarely have more than 12 units in your average game and even MSU armies struggle to breach 16 but 40K allows the player to have many, many units and as such the dice system might risk becoming bogged down.
Nonetheless something needs to be done as no one enjoys losing a third of their army before they even have a chance to do something.

kodos wrote:

Davor wrote:
I can understand where you are coming from now.

is this positive or negative?

I say it's a positive. It opened up my eyes on what I didn't see before. While I still disagree with you, I can finally understand where you are coming from and actually see your point of view now. Just like with anything, everything needs to be tweaked and tried. I guess that is why ALOT of play testing would be needed to see how the proper way it should be done, and not just math hammer everything and say that is the way to do it.

I am in general against of adding stuff to a system that is not part of the basic concept, which is something GW is doing all the time.

There are just small things in the rules that make big problems.
Like the a small sentence that is there in the rules since 3rd edition and because the whole part was always just copy&paste no one ever corrected it and now in 7th is messes things up.


And I agree, it is not really possible to do such things without a large Beta Test.
(or things become very slow and see no progress for a long time)

 master of ordinance wrote:
I am against the whole IGOUGO as 40K does for the simple reason that it gives the player that goes first far to big of an advantage.

Maybe you need to play with fewer models and more terrain...

@Kodos.
If we move to alternating phases, we loose all the additional rules that have to be used because the current alternating game turn does not generate enough natural levels of player/unit interaction.


So we get less complication in the rules and more tactical choices in the game play, with very minor modifications.

I would see this as a good thing.I am not sure why you think this is bad thing?

@CalgarsPimpHand.
I have not done a very good job of explaining why alternating unit activation takes a lot more effort to get work well with the current 40k units.

Alternating unit activation focuses player attention on the differences between individual units more sharply than any other game turn mechanic.
As a single unit performs several actions in isolation.(Even with a reaction mechanic like over watch in place.)

And with the massive disparity between units currently in 40k, that is even evident with the game turn mechanic that mitigates unit imbalance the most.
I believe that the amount of extra re balancing , on top of reworking the entire rules to suit the game turn would take lots more time and work than an alternating phases based re write.

It could be done , but it would take a lot more work, and my not be recognizable as '40k' at the end.

Quite a lot of people have said they like the clearly defined phases, and activating armies at once.(As this is quite close to the game turn /game play they are used to and associate with 40k.)

I admit that alternating phases allows players to react to the opponents actions in each phase.But if you have any sort objective driven game play, just 'running away' is not going to win you any games.

Also alternating unit activation allows players to ignore units that have activated , and just focus on the units that are yet to do anything.

So both systems can be 'gamed'.However, a set of tactical objectives can get rid of them in an alternating phase game turn.

Lanrak wrote:

I would see this as a good thing.I am not sure why you think this is bad thing?

I don't see it as a bad thing, I just don't see that it is necessary. Also the main problems people here have with the current system are not solved by altering phases
eg Alpha Strike and weak melee would still be a problem not matter if you have phases, altering phases or altering unit activation
To solve this problems you need to balance factions/units, streamline reactions and re-design melee (or movement) in general. But if you do this, also the current phases would work again

Work/time need and the outcome would be the same so I prefer to stay with the current system which also makes 40k unique
if people want to play Bolt Action with SciFi models they can to this anyway and need no re-written 40k rules. but those who want to have a balanced and fun 40k game are left behind if some of the main characteristics of the game are removed