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That's still better than one player getting to move 20 units at a time while the other is there purely for the obligation of making saves.

Besides, armies with less units could be given the option to delay an activation if it would be prudent.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:

For all of you who say that they don't want to just sit during their opponent's turn if you face a horde army with an elite army that will still happen but at the end of every turn.

I usually play with 180 Ork boyz. That's is six units.

So you only play with those 6 units or do they come with other support? It's not really a question of how many models but rather how many units?

 techsoldaten wrote:
There would be challenges with alternating activations in 40k.

For one, elite armies with few units would be at a huge disadvantage. Opponents with a larger number of units could game the activations to make it challenging for the elite player to do much of consequence.

For another, 40k is a big game. There's often 200+ models on the board. Part of why yougoigo works for 40k is its just plain more efficient to group player actions into phases to get them over with.

There's a downside to the strategic part, which is the fact most players are not good strategists. I have a feeling this would lead to a game that's worse than what we have now.

Could do what Heroscape did and you just get a set amount of unit activations each turn and can put multiple on the same unit.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
So you only play with those 6 units or do they come with other support? It's not really a question of how many models but rather how many units?

Yeah they come with other support. But 11-14 units for that +1 to the first turn roll (usually) is pretty doable.

Say, 180-210 boyz, a warboss, Ghaz, a painboy, 2 weirdboys, and you are there. You can easily make it into a 30-unit 3 battalion army, but while you get more CPs, you will be weaker in CC and get second turn more often. Not all horde armies has a massive amount of units. And as an index army Orks has nothing interesting to spend CPs on anyway.

There are many ways that alt actiivation can be made to happen.

AA is a nobrainer. Implementing it is the challenge.

There's the Stargrunt II model: The player with less unactivated units can choose to keep skipping activations until both players have an equal number of units. You can call it the "Ok, you move an Inquisitorial Acolyte. Quit screwing around and take a real turn" factor.

Optionally, you can declare certain superheavy units activate in parts. So a Baneblade would need one activation to move, one to shoot. This would also improve the parity in the number of activations available to both players.

Without breaking the current rules and phases....the detachment activation is the easiest fix. We all have the same number detachments in a 2k army (well almost everyone fills out the 3 allotted.)

Now do you pick and choose any detachment or do you have to go in a certain order. ....say...Patrols, Outriders can react faster so they must go first. Then Command, Vanguard, AirWing would go 2nd grouping. Battalions could execute their orders faster than a Brigade. LoW, Fortifications and Spearheads are the slower sledgehammer and go last.

Would this make more people consider Patrols and Outriders for faster activation over heavy handed spearheads or bulky brigades.

I can say that since I play mono-GK I only have 1 detachment 9a battalion). How would you deal with the situation of less detachments vs more?

Could you not just do it by the power rating of a unit?

e.g. i move my marines 9 power
you can now move say 3 units of guard 3 power each

you can always move at least one unit even if your opponent moved a lower power unit.

e.g. i move a unit of guard 3 power
i move my marines 9 power
i now can move 3 more guard units

movement phase ends when one player moves everything after at least one round each of activating.

same for all the other phases.

roll off at the end of the turn for first move activation

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
I can say that since I play mono-GK I only have 1 detachment 9a battalion). How would you deal with the situation of less detachments vs more?

Well you could always go first with only 1 detachment...but that would lead to a single detachment with Brigades.

The other thought would be all Patrols would go first....If you have 2 Patrols and the enemy none....then he could get 2 detachments activated before you for example.

Then you could group other detachments like Command, Outriders, Vanguard, AirWing next since those are faster deploying and reacting focused detachments

3rd would be your SpearHeads and Battalions since those heavier and larger detachments are a bit more unwieldy.

4th would be the slow LoWs, Fortifications and extra large Brigades.

Or any combo that you think would work. So it makes you choose between the best CP advantages vs activation advantages.

So for your army you would go in the 3rd group.....if the enemy has only Patrols you will always go last....if he has 1 brigade you will always go first.

The other idea to this is that Marines always go as if they were a Patrol detachment since they are the elite quick response army. Or perhaps they just jump +1 order of battle activation groupl

Any types of ideas could be used if one wants to ditch the old for the new....It does not have to be a complicated one unit at a time.

 Latro_ wrote:
Could you not just do it by the power rating of a unit?

e.g. i move my marines 9 power
you can now move say 3 units of guard 3 power each

you can always move at least one unit even if your opponent moved a lower power unit.

e.g. i move a unit of guard 3 power
i move my marines 9 power
i now can move 3 more guard units

movement phase ends when one player moves everything after at least one round each of activating.

same for all the other phases.

roll off at the end of the turn for first move activation

A more interesting way to utilize power levels could have players blind pick the units they want to activate. Upon revealing those units, the player who chose the lowest combined power level gets to activate their selection first, enacting their turn for those units as normal (with the only caveat being that a unit's close combat is also tied to it's whole activation). This process continues until all units have been activated, at which point the next game turn begins.

This would allow players to gamble big coordinated plays against predictions of their opponents' own, which would create a pretty interesting guessing game. A high activation cost for bigger, more powerful units is also then reflected in this. Such a system would also disturb the current game's systems the least, and would give some decent value to power levels.

I honestly like more an Infinity-like system, IGOUGO + reactions, dunno if it has a proper name.

I have no clue how to balance that out for a whole army instead of a skyrimsh game though.


I would love to see alternating activation right now for a t'au army with their marketlights though.

Dropzone commander did alternating activations by detachment, a typical army and four - six detachments.

Star Wars legions seems to be successful with aa. So do the other ffg games.

New necromunda does it well. Old epic epic 40k too.

I think alternate activations, done well, would really help solve a lot of 40ks issues.

I am for alternating activation as it makes the game more tactical .

Alternating activations by phase (I move a unit, you move a unit) but the player with the fewest units can 'skip' an activation until there is an equal number of units on each side remaining. Casualties are removed only a the end of each phase (so they get to shoot before they die); is something like how I would have done it.

 Fafnir wrote:


A more interesting way to utilize power levels could have players blind pick the units they want to activate. Upon revealing those units, the player who chose the lowest combined power level gets to activate their selection first, enacting their turn for those units as normal (with the only caveat being that a unit's close combat is also tied to it's whole activation). This process continues until all units have been activated, at which point the next game turn begins.

This would allow players to gamble big coordinated plays against predictions of their opponents' own, which would create a pretty interesting guessing game. A high activation cost for bigger, more powerful units is also then reflected in this. Such a system would also disturb the current game's systems the least, and would give some decent value to power levels.

I understand why this could be an interesting game, but I like not having to make those types of decisions. I also enjoy downtime - it's the time for beer & pretzels in a "beer & pretzels" game. 40K is complex enough with all of the datasheets, models, terrain, measuring, line of sight, etc. I like to focus on just where on the table my models should be, and who they should shoot at. Now, several editions of 40K have slowly taken some of the fun out of the positioning part, I admit. I'd still rather try to add some of that back instead of coming up with other artificial decisions to make.

I have no problem with IGOUGO and like the action/reaction element. I agree that alternating activations might be better but it can get unwieldy with the vast difference in unit sizes.

How would close combat work, if you do alternative action for phases?

Wouldn't any unit that moves into charge range get annihilated by the full fire power of the opponents army (as the charge phase comes after every single unit has fired...)?

HMint wrote:
How would close combat work, if you do alternative action for phases?

Wouldn't any unit that moves into charge range get annihilated by the full fire power of the opponents army (as the charge phase comes after every single unit has fired...)?

Most other games don’t do it by phases. Instead your unit would move, and en either shoot or charge. Your opponent would have an opportunity to interrupt (potentially) , and then you’d handle the close combat.

On he other hand some games do the phase thing,but have simultaneous execution. So your troops would fight after they charged even if they’d also been killed.

There’s a lot of creative options out there these days.

I dont think 40k is ready for that, the game needs to be completely redesign.

I cooncur that a mix of heroscape activation limit plus phase alternating is best. Something along the lines of:

Move phase I move a unit then you move a unit and on until we move three units.

Shoot same, I pick one, you pick one until you activate three units.

If at any point you have less than three units a unit activaes more times. So if you have 3 units and I have 2, then one of mine activates twice in any phase.

Alternatively, pun intended, keep things as they are and “alternate” in the shooting and psychic phases in a model similar to fight phase. In fight phase units that charged fight first, then alternate. Maybe units that didn’t move get to shoot first if it’s your turn then armies alternate. Though that would require a full on initiative roll like AOS.

MagicJuggler wrote:AA is a nobrainer. Implementing it is the challenge.

There's the Stargrunt II model: The player with less unactivated units can choose to keep skipping activations until both players have an equal number of units. You can call it the "Ok, you move an Inquisitorial Acolyte. Quit screwing around and take a real turn" factor.

Optionally, you can declare certain superheavy units activate in parts. So a Baneblade would need one activation to move, one to shoot. This would also improve the parity in the number of activations available to both players.

I really like these. This would also make elite armies feel a bit more elite, while making larger armies feel a little unwieldy.

mew28 wrote:
Could do what Heroscape did and you just get a set amount of unit activations each turn and can put multiple on the same unit.

I fear using a limited number of activations could drive players to use no more than <limit> of the hardest units they can get, which also punishes horde armies. Happy to be proven wrong though! How do you think this would play out?

Just played our first 8th edition 40K game with token activation, and it went really well. To add to the complexity we were playing a three-way game. It was much more interesting/fun/challenging and ignited my interest in 40K again. The other guys also said it was very reinvigorating.

In short we used the token system mentioned on the other page (one token = each unit). Mixed in a mug and drawn until an alternate colour was pulled. For the armies we started with 8/12/13 tokens, and the largest "run" we had was four leftover units at the end of one turn.

We tackled close-combat pretty well, and resolved all effects, buffs, bonuses, and stratagems by ending them at the end of the battle round (i.e. a full turn for everybody). We picked up pretty quick that eliminating lingering models or finishing off the wounds on a Rhino was a good tactic (removing a token for their next turn). Tokens were assembled fresh at the start of each battle round, so if you lost a unit on Turn 1, you reduced your tokens for Turn 2, etc.

It did slow the pace of the game down slightly, and created far more moments where players were planning, deciding what to do - more analysis paralysis than a normal 40K game.

It added waaay more involvement, and you had to think far more about what you were doing and when - and the timing of maybe trying to get a unit to activate late in one turn, and early in the next (planning to try to get two activations close to each other).

Overall, really good and really fun. Far more enjoyable than normal IGOUGO.

 Elbows wrote:

It did slow the pace of the game down slightly, and created far more moments where players were planning, deciding what to do - more analysis paralysis than a normal 40K game.

I'm okay with this. 40k has typically been slow because you have to drag your way through piles of minutiae and wordy decipherings of poorly written and spotty rules. Being slow because more situations demand thought, planning, and most importantly having to think about what's going on in your opponents' headspace is the good kind of slow.

And that's the biggest thing to take from any system of alternating activation over IGOUGO: it encourages more playing against your opponent and predicting their decisions than it does playing against their list. I wouldn't be surprised at all if many of the games' balance issues became mitigated or removed entirely (not to say that others wouldn't supplant them, but I'd expect them to be less egregious) simply by such implementation.

Fleeing from combat, a big problem with melee armies at the moment becomes a much smaller issue, to begin with. Does you waste an activation to pull a valuable unit out of combat so that you can potentially shoot at the assailants on your next activation, all while running the risk of leaving your other units open to further assaults? Those are good decisions to have to be making, and something that alternating activation does much better. Since the core mechanics of 8th edition are simple enough now anyway, it's not like it'd be a huge leap at this point either.

Yep, it was an entirely different way to think about it. Examples.

1) My buddy had units in a drop pod and had to wait to have a small run in order to drop the pod and activate the units inside.

2) I used a command re-roll I wouldn't normally use to ensure I killed a Rhino because it would cost my opponent a token.

3) When you have your whole army, but draw one token you start to have to prioritize differently - which is your strongest unit? Which unit is wounded and will likely not get an activation if it doesn't go now? Which unit is in line-of-sight of most enemies? Which unit is easy for your opponent to wipe out and thus reduce your tokens? How late is it in the turn? Will I get to double activate if this unit goes last and I activate it first? Can it last that long?, etc.

4) The one player with the fewest tokens did have the strongest units, but he was activating less often and rarely had a large run.

5) There was heavy consideration with who to activate early - do you activate your shootiest stuff? Or do you activate your spellcasters who will buff a unit....but what if you cast on a unit and it's destroyed before it activates?

6) The few instances where we had early turn runs, the last guy would always luck out near the end of the turn with 3-4 activations at the same time, which became a really big deal.

7) We occasionally made some banzai moves at the end of a turn, realizing the tokens were about to be put back in the mug and shaken up for a new Battle Round. So you could kind of risk hoping you'd draw first. Normally this banzai unit was slain before it ever got to go - but it was a nice option.

We all agreed that one large part of why 40K uses such large armies, is so that the second player has something left on the table when their turn comes up. The larger size doesn't add any enjoyment to the game, but we do think that you could have a really good game at 1,000 to 1,500 points with this system.

One major highlight was that we had great game with three players, because this kind of activation doesn't punish anyone - no one is "going last" The terrain bottlenecked some units into getting tag-teamed by the others (and we often tried to snipe the last wounds off of something wounded by another player), but the game ran flawlessly as a three-way game, something you simply can't do in a normal IGOUGO system.

My only fear? I won't want to play normal 40K again, lol.

 Elbows wrote:

Spoiler:

Yep, it was an entirely different way to think about it. Examples.

1) My buddy had units in a drop pod and had to wait to have a small run in order to drop the pod and activate the units inside.

2) I used a command re-roll I wouldn't normally use to ensure I killed a Rhino because it would cost my opponent a token.

3) When you have your whole army, but draw one token you start to have to prioritize differently - which is your strongest unit? Which unit is wounded and will likely not get an activation if it doesn't go now? Which unit is in line-of-sight of most enemies? Which unit is easy for your opponent to wipe out and thus reduce your tokens? How late is it in the turn? Will I get to double activate if this unit goes last and I activate it first? Can it last that long?, etc.

4) The one player with the fewest tokens did have the strongest units, but he was activating less often and rarely had a large run.

5) There was heavy consideration with who to activate early - do you activate your shootiest stuff? Or do you activate your spellcasters who will buff a unit....but what if you cast on a unit and it's destroyed before it activates?

6) The few instances where we had early turn runs, the last guy would always luck out near the end of the turn with 3-4 activations at the same time, which became a really big deal.

7) We occasionally made some banzai moves at the end of a turn, realizing the tokens were about to be put back in the mug and shaken up for a new Battle Round. So you could kind of risk hoping you'd draw first. Normally this banzai unit was slain before it ever got to go - but it was a nice option.

We all agreed that one large part of why 40K uses such large armies, is so that the second player has something left on the table when their turn comes up. The larger size doesn't add any enjoyment to the game, but we do think that you could have a really good game at 1,000 to 1,500 points with this system.

One major highlight was that we had great game with three players, because this kind of activation doesn't punish anyone - no one is "going last" The terrain bottlenecked some units into getting tag-teamed by the others (and we often tried to snipe the last wounds off of something wounded by another player), but the game ran flawlessly as a three-way game, something you simply can't do in a normal IGOUGO system.

My only fear? I won't want to play normal 40K again, lol.

Thank you for your experience. This is basically exactly what I'd want out of 40k, and your posts only reinforce it. I've played with a token system in other games before and I found it was a good compromise between player control and simulating the random and shifting nature of the battlefield.

Having tried a few 40k games with alternating activations, I can say that it's still not my favorite option as the game now stands. I still prefer alternating phases. AA just feels too gamey, and it seems to favor MSU. I prefer having large units, and AA just feel punishing to that playstyle. If the game did move to AA, I would definitely like to see a cap on the number of activations in a turn. It works really well in Shadespire.

The solution there is to game with people who aren't petty enough to 'cheese' a method which exists to make the game more fun.

Also, if you have the MSU style gaming, those units are easy to eliminate (and thus remove your opponents tokens). 40K is still as breakable as ever, but playing with similarly minded people goes a long way.

 EnTyme wrote:
Having tried a few 40k games with alternating activations, I can say that it's still not my favorite option as the game now stands. I still prefer alternating phases. AA just feels too gamey, and it seems to favor MSU. I prefer having large units, and AA just feel punishing to that playstyle. If the game did move to AA, I would definitely like to see a cap on the number of activations in a turn. It works really well in Shadespire.

Since you can freely split fire from a unit nowadays, don't players with a few powerful units have the advantage that they get to discharge a lot more points worth of firepower/offensive output in a shorter number of activation? Of course this is offset by the MSU player being able to hang back with his army out of range until you have run out of turns, but both types of force have advantages that can be played to with the right tactics.

(Also you can simply allow the player with the fewest units left to skip activations if you like, although I feel that gives too much advantage to the few mighty units (FMU) player.)

Mark.