Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So doesn't everyone think points are really important for balance? That the game needs balance to be fun n fair? Well then let's take two evenly matched army's then let's let one fire all its stuff at the other then now that the other side has been potentially severally weakened it gets to fire back, doing likely less damage. Yeah! Fair!

I think not - it's also boring and disheartening.

My group play as follows:
Alternate deployment of units.
Roll off, winner(player 1) goes first.
P1 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P2 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P1 picks a unit to shoot.
P2 picks a unit to shoot.
So on until no more units wish to shoot.
P1 picks a charger.
P2 picks a charger.
So on until no more units wish to charge.
Complete assaults starting with chargers, p1 then p2, alternating as by the base rules.
Complete moral phase.
Turn 2, roll off again to see who is player 1 and 2, draws are won by the player who wasnt p1 last turn.

This works well in both AoS n 40k.

 Zognob Gorgoff wrote:
So doesn't everyone think points are really important for balance? That the game needs balance to be fun n fair? Well then let's take two evenly matched army's then let's let one fire all its stuff at the other then now that the other side has been potentially severally weakened it gets to fire back, doing likely less damage. Yeah! Fair!

I think not - it's also boring and disheartening.

My group play as follows:
Alternate deployment of units.
Roll off, winner(player 1) goes first.
P1 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P2 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P1 picks a unit to shoot.
P2 picks a unit to shoot.
So on until no more units wish to shoot.
P1 picks a charger.
P2 picks a charger.
So on until no more units wish to charge.
Complete assaults starting with chargers, p1 then p2, alternating as by the base rules.
Complete moral phase.
Turn 2, roll off again to see who is player 1 and 2, draws are won by the player who wasnt p1 last turn.

This works well in both AoS n 40k.

Wouldn't that give advantage to the person that moved last?

Vertrucio wrote:IGOUGO can be kept if there were some more mitigation of alpha strikes. They used to have things like Gone to Ground, and cover used to do more.

One thing though is that I'm noticing people are playing with poor terrain overall. I'll have to look and see what the guidelines are, but I see a lot of games without well defined cover points to use at all.

NenkotaMoon wrote:More terrain. I always see near empty tables in many reports.

Indeed, mass Deep Strike or Barrage aside, complex and dense terrain is great alpha-strike remedy. It always puzzled me how "planet bowling ball" is often considered a valid terrain...

But this is one of those things in 40K that weren't ever designed to be the way they are, but instead are "community standard" resulted from three decades of accumulated history. When I started in '94 there were only three clubs in Warsaw and they had very little terrain available. Hills and forests were standard, because they were universal for both 40K and WHFB, and because WHFB was first, it's typical terrain layout "sneaked" into 40K. My first ever tournament had like one large or two small hills per table and that's it - it was pitifull amount even at 750 2nd ed points small games level. When Necromunda premiered in '95, we weren't able to build a decent table for it using even all available stuff. There were no ready-made kits available back then and painted styrofoam bunkers made from moulds used in appliance packaging were considered "high end dioramas". And this "tradition" of scarce terrain preavailed to this day, changing forms a little when plastic kits became available. Now, with all that laser cutting and kickstarter boom things start to change a bit, because decent amount of terrain can be both cheap and ready-made. But common desire to have "fast setup" tournament style pick-up games, combined with "universal TT den" style of FLGS makes complex tables still a rarity - there isn't even a single diorama-style table in my local club. Best tables I see on the web (Warhammer World put aside) are usualy house tables, not club or tournament ones. Making my own, fully 3D modular terrain set so I could finally play on table interesting enough was one of my first projects when I returned to this hobby 2 years ago.

 ross-128 wrote:
On the first turn of 40k, you have your entire army at your disposal. Your forces will never be stronger than they were on the first turn. As a result, the first-turn advantage in 40k is massive: you can launch the most powerful attack you will ever be able to launch, and you can decimate the enemy army before they get to take any action. This is greatly amplified in 8th, where increased movement ranges, the removal of difficult terrain, universal shoot-and-charge, reliable deep-strike, and universal move-and-shoot combine to ensure that bringing the full might of your army to bear on the first turn is trivial on a 4x6 table.

This only applies when your entire army is shooty with like 36" or more range on every model, more if the enemy setup back line, and assumes you have LOS to every enemy model of import that has selectively decided to not hide behind a building despite being permitted to move and fire along with the cover saves that benefit bunkered positions and denies the inclusion of assault specialists that cannot make that 1st turn charge. The thing about attrition is it's not equal for all factions. Some get stronger as the game goes on because they shoot off more than they lose while others don't care if they lose half their army in the first few turns because once they get into close combat you're toast.

1st turn advantage is massive even in Magic because it means you have 1 more land than the opponent on every one of your turns. You're casting 4 mana spells when they have nothing bigger than 3 on the field. You're attacking with those creatures first too. It puts one player on the offense and the other struggles to defend while trying to catch up and overtake the initiative through a decent enough reversal or bomb card. You might not have an entire army to play with turn 1 but don't think that makes going first irrelevant. It's HUGE, especially when you near turn 5 or 6 and you're the first one to play your game-winning mass devastation card that finishes your combo or seals the game in your favor. The tables would easily be flipped if your opponent had gone first instead.

 NenkotaMoon wrote:
More terrain. I always see near empty tables in many reports.

Terrain can only mitigate so much however. One of the reasons Warp Spiders were so insanely powerful in 7th was due to being able to mass Deep Strike in and Battle Focus to targets, then jump to cover, all in the (pardon the pun) blink of an eye. If you tried to shoot them with your guys, they would then Flickerjump out of LOS (meaning that extra terrain made their alphastrike *more* dangerous), before doing another round of move-shoot-Battle Focus (or move, shoot, and assault a weakened unit as a Hit&Run booster). And of course, terrain protects not versus Earthshakers or Smart Missiles.

Actually i don't hate IGOUGO phases. Surely, it makes no sense as far as accuratly representing a firefight, and you still stumble on the alphastrike cancer, and makes for very less dynamism.

However, i personnaly feel that it helps focusing on your tactics and strategy with more planning and cunning on a large scale as opposed to Bolt Action for example, where the more dynamic approch leads to a more unit per unit way of playing. What's more, other system might replace the alphastrike issue with, in BA again you can cheat on it by spamming units in order to get dice quickier and make your worthy units act first. Both are interesring in my opinion of soft player and i would be quite a defender of 40k's current turn morphology. Which does not mean a few tweaks could be applied, especially, once more, concerning the alphastrike.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 NenkotaMoon wrote:
More terrain. I always see near empty tables in many reports.

Terrain can only mitigate so much however. One of the reasons Warp Spiders were so insanely powerful in 7th was due to being able to mass Deep Strike in and Battle Focus to targets, then jump to cover, all in the (pardon the pun) blink of an eye. If you tried to shoot them with your guys, they would then Flickerjump out of LOS (meaning that extra terrain made their alphastrike *more* dangerous), before doing another round of move-shoot-Battle Focus (or move, shoot, and assault a weakened unit as a Hit&Run booster). And of course, terrain protects not versus Earthshakers or Smart Missiles.

So one tree on the table fixes that, got it.

 NenkotaMoon wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 NenkotaMoon wrote:
More terrain. I always see near empty tables in many reports.

Terrain can only mitigate so much however. One of the reasons Warp Spiders were so insanely powerful in 7th was due to being able to mass Deep Strike in and Battle Focus to targets, then jump to cover, all in the (pardon the pun) blink of an eye. If you tried to shoot them with your guys, they would then Flickerjump out of LOS (meaning that extra terrain made their alphastrike *more* dangerous), before doing another round of move-shoot-Battle Focus (or move, shoot, and assault a weakened unit as a Hit&Run booster). And of course, terrain protects not versus Earthshakers or Smart Missiles.

So one tree on the table fixes that, got it.

You mince my words. Terrain is a band-aid for a flawed terrain structure. Try playing Infinity on a "one tree" table and the game will grind into an ARO-fest for example. Ditto 40k. Sure, it mitigates being alpha-striked by slow-static gunlines, but mobile alphastrikes care less. Look at MkII eKaya or eLylyth as a classic example of being able to get the drop on your foe as well; neither cared much about terrain or smoke either, FWIW.

MTG is a bad example because your turns in MTG are very limited by the amount of mana. Turns are often quick, with only the final few rounds of the game potentially taking a bit long and never NEVER anywhere near as long as a single players turn in WH. In addition when one player acts in MTG the other player gets to make tactical choices about how they will block or not, if they will cast instants etc etc...

WH is too large and cumbersome for any of that to be true. You have no limiting resource that dictates how much you can do in a single turn to keep the game flowing quickly. Their are no reactions for the opponent to make.

And to be clear, the issue isn't just scale. It's a fundamental issue with what the game is about. MTG is a game about resource management with a random resource generator that you build yourself. Warhammer doesn't have you allocating resources turn by turn. There is no randomness to your options each turn.

IGOUGO requires a fundamentally different structure to stay engaging for both players. 40k has speed up with 8th, but ti's still not really engaging. My opponents individual movements don't matter. Only where they end up. Shooting overwatch is still primarily an exercise in futility where nothing significant happens. You spend large chunks of time just rolling saves. It's assault where things actually start becoming lively and it's in large part to the alternating activation nature of the phase.

OP! Tsk-Tsk. Presumption that IGOUGO is a negative feature, and further presumption that there is a better replacement! You're seeking an echo chamber... er... er.

Anyhow, the simplest alternative is, well, alternating unit activations. My unit activates, gets a "Depletion Counter", and can't activate again until it's depletion counter is removed at the end of the game turn. Now your unit activates, gets a DC, and can't activate again. When I run out of units, you can finish up with any unit that doesn't have a DC on it. It allows preemptive alpha-strike lists from few-unit builds, and allows reactive beta-strike lists from many-unit builds. Both have pros and cons. The system can be gamed and counter-gamed.

The unconsidered issue, I think, is that when you pull back on the effectiveness of alpha strike, you naturally strengthen defensive play. If there's little value in committing your resources to a devastating blow, then why not wait until your opponent exposes themselves... tee hee... and then take advantage... tee hee.

People don't want to play against defensive gunlines, but they don't like being crushed by unstoppable avalanches either. It's a tough balancing act. I want a game where some kind of defensive strategy is possible. It doesn't need to be the whole thing, but full-on aggression games are less interesting to me than games with some parry-riposte.

To that end, IGOUGO allows me to

STRATEGICALLY build an army with disposable elements [parry]
with powerful backup [riposte]
to weather the aggressive [alpha strike] nature of many armies,
which leaves them exposed and vulnerable [Win condition: Attrition / Favourable exchange of resources].

I adapt my strategy to allow the tactics I wish to play. There are no armies in which you CAN'T take disposable units. But they're inefficient, and aren't the bestest-best-best units in my codex! Of course they aren't. But they do open up alternative tactics to just pure agro.

I would expect that alternating activation, with all else kept from 8th edition, would result in a couple turns of positioning before piece trades began over turns 3-4, with final gambits enacted on turns 5 onwards. I think it would be a more tactical game, with greater depth, but it would also slow the game down greatly and all but eliminate assault armies as they could be picked apart one unit at a time. You'd typically need to make a unit vulnerable during approach and then you get whacked. That would be my expectation, anyway.

There are games -no tabletop wargames afaik- which "solve" the issue of first player A having an advantage over second player B by using ABBAABBAAB etc. as turn order.

While you cannot copy paste this straight onto 40k, I wonder if it could work as a foundation.
It increases downtime between your turns even more, which sucks.
However it is way fairer than ABABAB and players probably prefer going second if you play an odd number of turns, cause player B would have the first double strike as well as the last turn. If you have en even number of battlerounds player A would go last with a single turn.

If it is too devastating to have an entire army shoot you twice (CC armies would gladly go second btw.) then you could go for alternating detachment activation.

Say matched play required that you play with the same number of points AND the same number of detachments, which I would guesstimate at 1 per 500 points to be a decent first try.

Each detachment can't have more than 1/(number of detachments-1) of the total points in it.

Four detachments means no detachment with more than 1/3 of the total points in it. I recommend reworking detachments in 8th anyway.

Activation would then work by first player activating an entire detachment and going through the entire turn with it as if it was his/her entire army. Then the second player would do this with two of his/her detachments at the same time. Mark activated detachments with a counter.

When a player can't activate two detachments anymore, because there is only one left remove all activation counters from all of that player's detachments and activate the one which hadn't had a counter and one of those you just removed the counters from.

When a player can't activate two detachments anymore because all have been activated simply remove all counters and activate two detachments.

When a player can't activate two detachments because there is only one left simply activate that single detachment every time it is that player's turn to activate. It is not activated twice to compensate. So watch out.

Disclaimer:
This is a first draft of an idea. Don't dismiss it right away. If you have improvements to offer, please do so. Thank you!

I'm in the IGOUGO boat as well. The sweeping, multi-unit actions are fun to plan for.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I'm in the IGOUGO boat as well. The sweeping, multi-unit actions are fun to plan for.

I don't believe that's something that's exclusive to IGOUGO though. The key is making a mechanic that allows such things, especially as planned maneuvers rather than something both players innately get (or as may usually be the case, the player with the first turn advantage).

I've got an idea:

What if we introduced a strategem:

1CP: Nominate a unit, until the beginning of its next turn, whenever a model from this unit would be removed as a casualty, that model may immediately shoot as if it where the shooting phase or fight as if it were the fight phase. Then, remove the model as a casualty.

That way, all-in alpha strikes still work, but a key element of the defenders' army can still retaliate, blunting the overall power of the strike.

It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.

They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.

They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.

Anyone who works for squaresoft professionally makes games that still have dumb ass random encounters while walking through a dungeon despite it being an outdated mechanic from almost 40 years ago.

I dont see the relevence.

 Lance845 wrote:
MTG is a bad example because your turns in MTG are very limited by the amount of mana. Turns are often quick, with only the final few rounds of the game potentially taking a bit long and never NEVER anywhere near as long as a single players turn in WH. In addition when one player acts in MTG the other player gets to make tactical choices about how they will block or not, if they will cast instants etc etc...

WH is too large and cumbersome for any of that to be true. You have no limiting resource that dictates how much you can do in a single turn to keep the game flowing quickly. Their are no reactions for the opponent to make.

And to be clear, the issue isn't just scale. It's a fundamental issue with what the game is about. MTG is a game about resource management with a random resource generator that you build yourself. Warhammer doesn't have you allocating resources turn by turn. There is no randomness to your options each turn.

IGOUGO requires a fundamentally different structure to stay engaging for both players.

Yes. Its called 'player preference.' There isn't much more to it than that. It isn't about 'archaic' or 'quality' rules, its simply about what individuals prefer. And maybe a little about attention span and empathy. Tuning out because it isn't your turn in a two player game (or group RPGs/board games) is very bizarre to me.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.

They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.

Anyone who works for squaresoft professionally makes games that still have dumb ass random encounters while walking through a dungeon despite it being an outdated mechanic from almost 40 years ago.

I dont see the relevence.

You know what's really outdated? Moving miniatures around on a board and rolling dice, instead of using a PC, or even more modern: a mobile phone. I fail to see how a game mechanic can be "outdated".

Pink Horror wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It is worth noting that I work on professional wargames with ODS, MORS, and the USMC and they still use IGOUGO on their ultra-high-tech supercomputer-assisted tabletop wargames like JWAM.

They do put movement after shooting in a few cases though.

Anyone who works for squaresoft professionally makes games that still have dumb ass random encounters while walking through a dungeon despite it being an outdated mechanic from almost 40 years ago.

I dont see the relevence.

You know what's really outdated? Moving miniatures around on a board and rolling dice, instead of using a PC, or even more modern: a mobile phone. I fail to see how a game mechanic can be "outdated".

Easy. Game design like any other kind of design, constantly evolves. We could have water radiators on our cars where we pour water right in as they overheat. But those designs are inferior and outdated. Random encounters were a necessity due to processing power and design philosphy of the day. Resource restrictions are gone. Weve moved on to more engaging encounters and better design.

Waiting and watching is worse the larger the game and yet used in a game that insists on getting bigger and bigger. Time to move on to better design philosphies.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I've got an idea:

What if we introduced a strategem:

1CP: Nominate a unit, until the beginning of its next turn, whenever a model from this unit would be removed as a casualty, that model may immediately shoot as if it where the shooting phase or fight as if it were the fight phase. Then, remove the model as a casualty.

That way, all-in alpha strikes still work, but a key element of the defenders' army can still retaliate, blunting the overall power of the strike.

I rather like this idea, but I would add one change: have models with damage tables execute this attack as though they were undamaged. A knight getting to retaliate at BS5+ isn't going to offset the loss nearly enough. Overall though it's clean and would go a long way I think.

I'm a firm believer in the superiority of alternating unit activation and similar systems. Unfortunately there's a lingering perception that such systems are inherently more complicated, (untrue -they allow for more complex play, but not neccessarily a more complicated game system). IGOUGO was the convention for a long time, and as with anything that's so long established, there will always be those loathe to move away from it.

Voss wrote:

Yes. Its called 'player preference.' There isn't much more to it than that. It isn't about 'archaic' or 'quality' rules, its simply about what individuals prefer.

So nothing can be objectively better? New ways of doing things, progress, can't happen?

And maybe a little about attention span and empathy. Tuning out because it isn't your turn in a two player game (or group RPGs/board games) is very bizarre to me.

Don't you think it's a symptom of the game? Even the most 'empathic' person could tune out while someone rolls a million dice with reroll from an IG shooting phase.

This is how we do things around 'ere.

 Zognob Gorgoff wrote:
So doesn't everyone think points are really important for balance? That the game needs balance to be fun n fair? Well then let's take two evenly matched army's then let's let one fire all its stuff at the other then now that the other side has been potentially severally weakened it gets to fire back, doing likely less damage. Yeah! Fair!

I think not - it's also boring and disheartening.

My group play as follows:
Alternate deployment of units.
Roll off, winner(player 1) goes first.
P1 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P2 moves all their units and completes psychic phase.
P1 picks a unit to shoot.
P2 picks a unit to shoot.
So on until no more units wish to shoot.
P1 picks a charger.
P2 picks a charger.
So on until no more units wish to charge.
Complete assaults starting with chargers, p1 then p2, alternating as by the base rules.
Complete moral phase.
Turn 2, roll off again to see who is player 1 and 2, draws are won by the player who wasnt p1 last turn.

This works well in both AoS n 40k.

I think that this looks good.
Now if we house rule cover and terrain and hour start using templates again,
Then we may have a decent wargame.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I've got an idea:

What if we introduced a strategem:

1CP: Nominate a unit, until the beginning of its next turn, whenever a model from this unit would be removed as a casualty, that model may immediately shoot as if it where the shooting phase or fight as if it were the fight phase. Then, remove the model as a casualty.

That way, all-in alpha strikes still work, but a key element of the defenders' army can still retaliate, blunting the overall power of the strike.

Why not a rule that any unit that is shot at can simultaneously shoot back to represent a simultaneous firefight.
Each time that a single unit is attacked in this way, returned fire is made at a -1 cumulative.
So when attacked by a third unit then return fire is at -2. And so on...

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I'm in the IGOUGO boat as well. The sweeping, multi-unit actions are fun to plan for.

I don't believe that's something that's exclusive to IGOUGO though. The key is making a mechanic that allows such things, especially as planned maneuvers rather than something both players innately get (or as may usually be the case, the player with the first turn advantage).

Thats fair, although I haven't personally experienced it as far as I recall. But I'll also admit that I havent played that many non igougo systems. Battletech and Epic Armageddon come to mind.

But I'm comfortable with IGOUGO, I dont think its inherently a bad system. In practice I also feel that it might be faster, too, all else being the same.

 Lance845 wrote:
Easy. Game design like any other kind of design, constantly evolves. We could have water radiators on our cars where we pour water right in as they overheat. But those designs are inferior and outdated. Random encounters were a necessity due to processing power and design philosphy of the day. Resource restrictions are gone. Weve moved on to more engaging encounters and better design.

Waiting and watching is worse the larger the game and yet used in a game that insists on getting bigger and bigger. Time to move on to better design philosphies.

No... game mechanics that are terrible don't stick around for ages and the "random encounter" JRPG genre has a tremendous amount of followers. The mechanic has stuck around because of its intelligent design. Casual players can skip most of the content or use consumables to make it easy, bypassing most of the hidden sidetracks and going straight for the objectives that are often both easier to overcome and simpler to find than any sidequest content. Hardcore completionists meanwhile must brave additional hazards along the way if they're to fully explore each dungeon. In fact, good RPGs are balanced around this fact since players like to challenge themselves according to how low of a level they can clear the game at, relying only on the stat boosting shop items to get the minimum required attributes to mathematically be capable of clearing the content ahead. Yet to accommodate all types and prevent players from ever becoming "stuck", they are able to grind as much as needed, doing sidequests and achieving great loot, to make the game even easier than it already is. Meanwhile, challenge content exists in places such as deep in the dungeons full of random encounters with maps specifically designed to confuse the player and create backtracking to force them to MAP the area out if they wish to arrive at the next save point without blowing through a stack of recovery consumables. Random encounters aid in all of this, granting spots to powerlevel, spots to farm gold or consumables, spots to find crafting materials for better gear, challenges to wear down the player's resources and force them to rethink what they're doing, all of that. Fixed cinematic encounters give a game the feeling of playing on rails, like Call of Duty, and there are many, MANY people who will trash that mechanic in favor of the RNG fights. Even RPGs that have much side content but only allow each fight once become a completionist's dream, like the D&D-based ones, but in doing so also lose some of the unpredictability of fights with their ability to save almost anywhere and scout ahead to see what needs to be prepared for with a simple reload.

Ongoing game mechanics aren't necessarily obsolete and newer failures of an attempt at evolution are not inherently superior. Some would argue that 3D is the evolution of gaming yet many STILL PREFER the old side-scrolling 2D mechanics of Castlevania or Metroid, to the point that an entire genre exists for those games that sells extremely well just as the RPGs. Yet these new games that copy-paste the old cookie cutter tropes, provide no challenge, and are dissected into multi-DLC purchases and merely attempts by prominent corporations to drain you of your income in exchange for rather mediocre products. Eye candy is not the wave of the future, it's just the caffeinated sugar of game "mechanics" that addicts the weak like Coca Cola, fast food, and candy.

 greatbigtree wrote:
OP! Tsk-Tsk. Presumption that IGOUGO is a negative feature, and further presumption that there is a better replacement!

The presumption is because it is true. IGOUGO is a terrible mechanic in a game like 40k, and the only reason for keeping it is GW's failure to understand good game design and stubborn insistence on keeping the core elements of a 1980s fantasy game intact.

The unconsidered issue, I think, is that when you pull back on the effectiveness of alpha strike, you naturally strengthen defensive play. If there's little value in committing your resources to a devastating blow, then why not wait until your opponent exposes themselves... tee hee... and then take advantage... tee hee.

Actually it's the exact opposite, because the best alpha strike armies tend to be static gunlines that skip investing in speed or melee ability or anything else besides long-ranged firepower. Think IG Basilisk/Manticore spam, Tau MCs in 7th, etc. In an IGOUGO system the gunline is guaranteed to deliver its alpha strike without disruption, it out-ranges anything but another gunline and gets to activate its entire alpha strike while all you can do is sit there and roll saves. In an alternating activation system it's possible to get in and disrupt the gunline while it activates one unit at a time, significantly reducing the power of the alpha strike.

and all but eliminate assault armies as they could be picked apart one unit at a time

Again, it's the exact opposite. Most melee units can't get into combat until the second turn (and first turn charges suck from a game design point of view), which means spending at least one turn exposed to enemy fire before charging. With an IGOUGO system you're forced to activate your whole army, put those melee units in a vulnerable position in preparation for a charge next turn, and hope they survive your opponent's full shooting power. With an alternating activation system you can deploy your melee units out of LOS, activate them as your last units at the end of the first turn after your opponent has already activated their primary shooting threats, and then activate them first at the start of the second turn and jump directly into combat before your opponent can activate more than a single unit to shoot at them.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Easy. Game design like any other kind of design, constantly evolves. We could have water radiators on our cars where we pour water right in as they overheat. But those designs are inferior and outdated. Random encounters were a necessity due to processing power and design philosphy of the day. Resource restrictions are gone. Weve moved on to more engaging encounters and better design.

Waiting and watching is worse the larger the game and yet used in a game that insists on getting bigger and bigger. Time to move on to better design philosphies.

No... game mechanics that are terrible don't stick around for ages and the "random encounter" JRPG genre has a tremendous amount of followers. The mechanic has stuck around because of its intelligent design. Casual players can skip most of the content or use consumables to make it easy, bypassing most of the hidden sidetracks and going straight for the objectives that are often both easier to overcome and simpler to find than any sidequest content. Hardcore completionists meanwhile must brave additional hazards along the way if they're to fully explore each dungeon. In fact, good RPGs are balanced around this fact since players like to challenge themselves according to how low of a level they can clear the game at, relying only on the stat boosting shop items to get the minimum required attributes to mathematically be capable of clearing the content ahead. Yet to accommodate all types and prevent players from ever becoming "stuck", they are able to grind as much as needed, doing sidequests and achieving great loot, to make the game even easier than it already is. Meanwhile, challenge content exists in places such as deep in the dungeons full of random encounters with maps specifically designed to confuse the player and create backtracking to force them to MAP the area out if they wish to arrive at the next save point without blowing through a stack of recovery consumables. Random encounters aid in all of this, granting spots to powerlevel, spots to farm gold or consumables, spots to find crafting materials for better gear, challenges to wear down the player's resources and force them to rethink what they're doing, all of that. Fixed cinematic encounters give a game the feeling of playing on rails, like Call of Duty, and there are many, MANY people who will trash that mechanic in favor of the RNG fights. Even RPGs that have much side content but only allow each fight once become a completionist's dream, like the D&D-based ones, but in doing so also lose some of the unpredictability of fights with their ability to save almost anywhere and scout ahead to see what needs to be prepared for with a simple reload.

This is a massive load of bull. It hasn't stuck around for decades because it's good. It stuck around for decades because it's lazy. The latest FF game ditched it for the most part for a good reason. grinding random loot from random encounters is an artificial time sink. It's complete crap from a game play perspective.

Want to know the definition of game play? A series of interesting choices. Shoots and Ladders. Not a game. You have no choices. You make none. You roll the dice, you move to the spot. You do what it says. The first person to randomly reach the end wins. Random Encounters are not a choice. It's a slog. Getting through one room to the next is not a combat puzzle the way each room in a Legend of Zelda is. Or a God of War. Most of the fights don't require power ups or items or resources. In fact, since back in the super nintendo days there has been an auto fight option that let the game swing away and win the combat for you. Wasn't it just a couple years ago that they made a FF game where you literally had your entire party built around preprogramed criteria to fight on their own? Thats not game play and thus it's not even really a game, because the vast majority of it is wandering into your next FMV.

With MTG you have interesting choices. You have resources. Do you spend them all on your turn or hold onto some to spend on instant and counters on your opponents? Do you have none of those cards in your hand but keep some mana free as a feint? How do you assign your blockers? Your turn and your opponents are full of interesting choices.

This is not true in 40k. IGOUGO 40k is 2 people taking turns swinging sledge hammers at each other. Where and how the opponent moves doesn't matter. You can't do anything about it anyway. When and how they shoot doesn't matter. You only get to roll your saves and you have no choice in whether or not you do that. When and how your opponent charges into melee doesn't matter. You roll your overwatch because you have to and chances are it won't do anything anyway. The new fight phase is interesting though, because you have interesting choices in who you activate and when. Alternating selections of units to fight to maximize your impact and minimize theirs. A leg up over here to take a hit over there. THAT is a series of interesting choices.

Ongoing game mechanics aren't necessarily obsolete and newer failures of an attempt at evolution are not inherently superior. Some would argue that 3D is the evolution of gaming yet many STILL PREFER the old side-scrolling 2D mechanics of Castlevania or Metroid, to the point that an entire genre exists for those games that sells extremely well just as the RPGs.

I didn't say new was inherently good and old was inherently bad. I said in THIS CASE the older IS bad. IGOUGO is an old, outdated, mechanic from a time when the game was very different in scale and scope and no longer fits. And it's sledge hammer swinging game play is dull and uninteresting and removes what could be a lot of interesting game play.

Yet these new games that copy-paste the old cookie cutter tropes, provide no challenge, and are dissected into multi-DLC purchases and merely attempts by prominent corporations to drain you of your income in exchange for rather mediocre products. Eye candy is not the wave of the future, it's just the caffeinated sugar of game "mechanics" that addicts the weak like Coca Cola, fast food, and candy.

I don't even know what your trying to say with this part. Are you arguing that newer games are bad because of their monetization structure? Or advertising? What exactly does that have to do with mechanics and gameplay?

It means that using the shiny new hype isn't inherently superior too old stuff.

Limiting alpha strike potential is a problem in 40k design but it isn't solved by alternating activation. In fact alternating activiation would favour huge deathstars. Unless you say the opponents army has to entirely go before a unit activates again. At that point it's backll to IGOUGO.

What I really want to see used more is larger tables for any game above 1500 points. depending on deployment type on a 6x4 table It can be impossible to be far away from your opponent altogether.

There is also LoS blocking terrain. Anyone that tells you it isn't an effective alpha strike mitigater hasn't tried it.
barrage-like weapons are few and far between.

About the only type of wargame IGOUGO is truly fitting in is one at a strategic level, and even then there are usually reactions available to the non-active player.

The killer for the system is the feeling players get that when a significant amount of their forces are shot to death before they can return fire, take cover or run away. That rarely happens in real firefights, unless you catch the enemy with their pants down and their asses hanging out. So it provides a type of play that is both jarringly unrealistic and very frustrating.