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To clarify what I mean in the title - one entire regiment going before the other seems a bit simple and completely unrealistic. At the same time, I understand that removing initiative and simply exchanging full attacks both ways would be stupid (anything other than a great weapon would be pointless).

Does anyone have any ideas or are there house rules in existence that find a compromise between everyone going at the same time and one entire side going before the other?

2 d6 + Initiative perhaps?
Gives every unit some chance of swinging first, fairly quick and simple roll to make prior to each combat.

Obviously things like Saurus and Ogres are going to be predominantly swinging second against Elves and the like, but that's probably how it should be.

Oddnerd wrote:
To clarify what I mean in the title - one entire regiment going before the other seems a bit simple and completely unrealistic. At the same time, I understand that removing initiative and simply exchanging full attacks both ways would be stupid (anything other than a great weapon would be pointless).

Does anyone have any ideas or are there house rules in existence that find a compromise between everyone going at the same time and one entire side going before the other?

I agree, I've always thoguh "swings first" is too low level to really belong in warhammer (in its current version). And it doesn't really represent anything logical when you consider large scale combat. I think rather than step up, they should have just let all attacks happen at the same time, and not used iniatiative at all. You'd have to rebalance strikes last and strikes first units and abilities, bu I think it'd make for a better game. There's enoguh going on that worrying about iniatitive, who dies, who can strike, blah blah, seems rather silly, and it slows the game down a fair bit.

In older editions if you charged then you struck first. But there also was no step up so it was insane to charge.

With step up it matters less with who goes first. Of course not in ever situation but more often than not.

1. Bring back initiative modifiers for weapons
2. add initiative modifiers for tactical situations (such as -1 if enemy in your flank, -2 if enemy in your rear, +2 if charging, make these stack)
3. take a black marker to ASF & ASL, replace with initiative modifiers
4. love the idea of 2D6 + modified initiative each round

Split out re-rolls from ASF totally, now have it so if your initiative is way twice that of the enemy you can pick one of the following:
- +1 to hit
- +1 attack
- re-roll attacks
- -1 enemy armour save
- enemy at -1 to hit

So if you are significantly quicker after the 2d6+I roll you not only strike first, but can fight better

Currently the issue seems to be that combat is getting too predictable, rolling so many dice now (where as when the system was designed it would have been 5-6 dice per side so chance still had a big impact, when rolling 40 or so its a lot more average in outcomes) - so the fixed initiative values are having a huge impact, if you know you will strike first, specially with re-rolls you know it, there is no risk at all.

The dice idea is a good one, and provides for characters or say a unit champion to provide a modifier (so champions actually do something other than protect other characters) and with dice even goblins will occasionally get the edge and lower initiative characters become worth taking as they stand a chance of actually getting to act.

All good ideas. Just need to be mindful that all these modifiers take time to calculate and it can just be a chore to go through it all each combat phase. Also it's a lot to take in for new players.