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It seems this is a hotly topic for some or lots of people. Some like/love it, others dislike/hate it. I am making this thread so we don't derail other threads and we can continue our great debate over it.

First off, I am not saying I am correct and others are wrong. I respect every one's opinion. After all me liking/loving the concept is my opinion only. Also please no insults here. After all these our opinions, nobody is right or wrong. No name calling needed for someone else having a differing opinion.

As for why I like it, I always hated in 40K and when I was doing my research into Fantasy Battles, seeing someone go first and all you can do is just remove minis, and in some cases lots of minis and can't do nothing about it. At least this way if I have to go second, and I have to remove lots of minis, I can then look forward that all is not lost because I could get the second turn now. After all is it really fair your opponent shoots at 100% and you have to shoot at less? To me this is not fun. At least then while i am shooting at less than 100% now, I can get the priority next turn and see if I want to go first or second that turn.

To me this adds extra depth to the game and a layer of tactics instead of a random die roll at the begining of the game. This way a person has to adept every turn instead of just hoping the 50/50 chance of how their army is made. I see lots of people making their armies with the intent of having first turn or second turn. Yes this takes skill, but it means they don't have to adapt very much because of the possibilities are either first or second. With having a random turn and choosing when to go first or second I believe it takes more skill because now there is more than two possibilities happening and you may not be able to prepare for this like always going first or second. To me this adds depth.

Now I know Age of Sigmar is a flawed game. Lots will have to change to make it more fair. With the new edition coming out we will have to wait to see if having the double turn will be more fair or not. Seeing how they are implementing the Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit way of ties, I am hoping they add in Heroic Intervention. This way you can move or shoot out of turn adding another layer of tactics to the game. But since we don't know if it will be added, (my guess it's not sadly.) let's just discuss on the double turn that we know of now.

Again we have been keeping this civil and friendly in other threads let's please do the same here.

I've always been of the mind that the first turn advantage could easily be thwarted by a shared first hero phase. There wouldn't need to be that absolute hope for the double turn if the first turn wasn't so devastating for one side. There are armies that rely heavily on being able to buff or protect their units with prayers and spells. Some armies need that first turn to cripple an important unit on the other side. If both armies were allowed to have a hero phase before anyone moves, you could avoid that devastation.

Does that make things less fun? Maybe if you're WAAC. In the long run it would mean both armies are coming at each other with some hope of keeping those units you just allocated so many points toward. You aren't going to need to pray for random chance to bless you with a massive advantage, because you had a better chance to survive.

Anything that means I stand there for 60+ minutes while you do your turn... twice... while I stand there and do nothing but remove models, is the opposite of fun for me. Its dull.

It is entirely not tactical or strategic, since my army is basically standing still while your entire army is performing all kinds of actions while I just stand there staring mouth agape. That brings it into the other realm that I really dislike... non intuitive and non cinematic.

I prefer systems that are interactive completely, and IGOUGO is a turn system that I hate in all of my years playing tabletop games.

Now if they put in alternate activation or a system akin to middle earth where you move then i move then you shoot then i shoot then we fight, I wouldn't mind it as much. Because I'm not standing there with both thumbs up my rear for an hour waiting for you to finish two complete turns before I get to do anything to respond.

I've always hated the double turn and the turn mechanics for AoS in general.
I don't mind having to plan ahead for the game and indeed I think you should. I shouldn't need to plan the amount I do with the possibility of the enemy going next or me or will they get a double turn? Will I?
On top of that because it's so counter intuitive to me I constantly forget the turn roll off which is really annoying.

Double turns are ridiculous to me. The amount of damage you can do based entirely on dumb luck is ridiculous.

The new mechanic for turns is dumb to me, It just increases the chance of faffery because the possibilities go from I win, they win or we reroll to they win or I win or they choose what suits them better.

The whole thing is needlessly complicated and annoying and should be replaced with IGUGO.

I dislike double turns, I expected this change and I'm not feeling any increase of fondness. Neither do I think it adds any tactical depth or suspense. It's simply an RNG triggered event that has game swinging potential, designed to change the predictable flow of the game. In my eyes it's the flow that is problematic in the first place.

I play AoS for reasons that don't concern game play. YMMV, I'm just posting my view.

I don't "love" the double-turn, but I don't hate it, either. I do feel it's a little too random on how it might happen, but at the same time I kind of like that it forces me to plan a little bit. Do I go balls to the wall and possibly overextend myself and hope for the double turn, or do I play it a little safe and hold some back?

I get that a lot of people don't like it, and I can get why. I am, though, a little curious as to some of the responses that people give for hating it along the lines of "I just stand there and do nothing but remove models." Yes, you don't get to do hero phase, move, shoot, but I think one of the neater things about AOS is the way the combat phase works. This specifically reduces the idle time during your opponent's turn, because you alternate attacking with units. Are people somehow missing that, or is it that this doesn't feel like "enough"?

Because in my meta, which tries to emulate world championship ESPN AOS, the kings of the ring are shooting armies. Couple that with the current rules of "I get to shoot you wherever, whenever I like, even in combat, and never hurt my guys lolz" and a good chunk of our games and casualties come from removing models due to ranged mortal wounds or ranged attacks.

In fact, if a shooty heavy army gets into melee early on in the game, they either made a big mistake or are playing stormcast that are using their teleport into combat and roll like a pro with mitigation bonuses to charge turn 1 shennanigans.

For my experience, whenever the double turn is going to smack you in the balls and cripple you it will happen turn 2 or 3 (early in the game). If it happens later in the game it seems both sides are whittled down a bit and its not as devastating.

It is *FAR* too swingy and powerful based on other issues with the game that exponentiate the issue.

 auticus wrote:
Because in my meta, which tries to emulate world championship ESPN AOS, the kings of the ring are shooting armies. Couple that with the current rules of "I get to shoot you wherever, whenever I like, even in combat, and never hurt my guys lolz" and a good chunk of our games and casualties come from removing models due to ranged mortal wounds or ranged attacks.

In fact, if a shooty heavy army gets into melee early on in the game, they either made a big mistake or are playing stormcast that are using their teleport into combat and roll like a pro with mitigation bonuses to charge turn 1 shennanigans.

Ok, that I can absolutely agree with, and seems like the issue is slightly less about double turns but more about how crap the shooting/los/terrain rules are.

Like mentioned in another thread, it's starting to feel that the double turn itself isn't the problem but the fact that it exacerbates some of the other core problems, e.g. ranged mortal wound spam, stupid LOS rules, character sniping, etc. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll introduce some mitigations to those as well in 2.0 here?

I can for the most part agree yes that most of the issues are the other things that double turn just amplifies that are already bad.

From what I have read on facebook the only real thing being corrected is you can't fire OUT of combat (but supposedly can still fire into combat with no risk and true line of sight is not going away and characters are still able to be sniped with impunity)

Granted - none of us have the new rules in hand so we will have to wait and see before unleashing the salt lol.

Personally I've been wondering who the Crooked Dice fan is on the GW Design team, because they've been doing this for years in their 7TV game which is the genericised version of the Doctor Who Miniatures Game, itself Warhammer re-skinned for Inquisitor-sized adventure gaming.

Yeah, it does also feel that if the double turn happens early it has a much bigger impact (and thus feels like a harder kick to the balls). Shooting out of combat only fixes a small part of it (though, will be interesting to see how much that actually fixes...), for me the much dumber issue is TLOS (and I hate it in every game it's present in). I seriously doubt it will change from that, though, but some more reasonable cover/terrain rules would help.

While GW has, IMO, made some improvements in comparison to where they were when I swore off them 20 years ago, they're still not the best rules developers out there. But, the models have improved, and I mainly play for the enjoyment of the pretties and to have laughs with friends (so, perfect target audience for it, really), and only rarely do any competitive gaming, I'm more lenient of this kind of stuff. But, believe me, I fully appreciate how competitive/tournament players need far more clear and balanced rules (and how they can and will abuse even those), since I used to be on the front lines dealing with that for another game...

For now in my campaign events I houserule that when you shoot, for every terrain piece or enemy model your line crosses to reach your target you get -1 to hit. Similar to Lord of the Rings game.

Knight wrote:I dislike double turns, I expected this change and I'm not feeling any increase of fondness. Neither do I think it adds any tactical depth or suspense. It's simply an RNG triggered event that has game swinging potential, designed to change the predictable flow of the game. In my eyes it's the flow that is problematic in the first place.

I play AoS for reasons that don't concern game play. YMMV, I'm just posting my view.

I am not saying you are wrong, I would just like to understand your point of view. I don't understand the "simply an RNG triggered event". To me that is exactly what is happening in the beginning of the game. So what is the difference? What am I not understanding? To find out who goes first is an simple RNG triggered event. You only do it once instead of multiple times.

Just looking to understand your point of view more. Who knows I could change my stance on the matter.

Hate it. If I'm in a game using it and have turn choice going 2nd is auto-pick, because a round 1-2 double is nearly auto-win. And it's funny to think about with tournaments because you know that a requirement to win is not get screwed by double turns. A good list and good skill will get one into the top 10%, but getting even a single bad double turn roll will easily stop you from winning.

But I understand that a good chunk of people like it. So let's compromise and bump the first initiative roll to round 3 (instead of 2) and everyone gets something.

 mmzero252 wrote:
I've always been of the mind that the first turn advantage could easily be thwarted by a shared first hero phase. There wouldn't need to be that absolute hope for the double turn if the first turn wasn't so devastating for one side. There are armies that rely heavily on being able to buff or protect their units with prayers and spells. Some armies need that first turn to cripple an important unit on the other side. If both armies were allowed to have a hero phase before anyone moves, you could avoid that devastation.

Does that make things less fun? Maybe if you're WAAC. In the long run it would mean both armies are coming at each other with some hope of keeping those units you just allocated so many points toward. You aren't going to need to pray for random chance to bless you with a massive advantage, because you had a better chance to survive.

I absolutely 100% completely agree with this.

I would make each phase alternating activation. There is no need for the concept of turns in AoS. It seems like a game that would do very well in this regard.

Play AOS using the same turn sequence as LOTR. I have. It may depress you though because you'll see how much better it feels

That is exaclty what alternating hero, then move, then shoot, then combat would be.

 Marmatag wrote:

 mmzero252 wrote:
I've always been of the mind that the first turn advantage could easily be thwarted by a shared first hero phase. There wouldn't need to be that absolute hope for the double turn if the first turn wasn't so devastating for one side. There are armies that rely heavily on being able to buff or protect their units with prayers and spells. Some armies need that first turn to cripple an important unit on the other side. If both armies were allowed to have a hero phase before anyone moves, you could avoid that devastation.

Does that make things less fun? Maybe if you're WAAC. In the long run it would mean both armies are coming at each other with some hope of keeping those units you just allocated so many points toward. You aren't going to need to pray for random chance to bless you with a massive advantage, because you had a better chance to survive.

I absolutely 100% completely agree with this.

I would make each phase alternating activation. There is no need for the concept of turns in AoS. It seems like a game that would do very well in this regard.

I would love this is done by phase. So my hero-your hero, my movement-your movement, etc. Can even keep rolled initiative at that point because who starts off still matters but it isn't nearly as swingy.

The IGOUGO might work out better, but just as a really quick fix a shared first hero phase can mitigate a lot of that "alpha strike" devastating first turn. There's armies it won't help at all, but many armies rely on buffs that you can't do until your hero phase. So if both players get a hero phase at the start of the first battle round, you start out a lot more equal even if they unload on your army before you can act again.

Davor wrote:
Just looking to understand your point of view more. Who knows I could change my stance on the matter.

Honestly I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I sort of hold the right to change my mind anytime and my view shouldn't hinder anyone from his own enjoyment.

To the question, what is the purpose of the RNG ? Do we need the RNG to determine outcomes? In my view it should be used to create more pleasant cinematic feeling and breaking the complete predictability of outcomes during the game. Certain outcomes do have less of an impact than others, it's a bit tricky to determine which things are fine for the RNG to handle and which should be in control of the players or predictable elements. This is completely my impression but I feel as if designers somehow correlated the immersion, unpredictability and RNG to always an enjoyable player experience, when they were fiddling with seizing the round initiative. This might be true, but I just can't see it with the way things are and how we play it.

 Knight wrote:

Davor wrote:
Just looking to understand your point of view more. Who knows I could change my stance on the matter.

Honestly I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I sort of hold the right to change my mind anytime and my view shouldn't hinder anyone from his own enjoyment.

To the question, what is the purpose of the RNG ? Do we need the RNG to determine outcomes? In my view it should be used to create more pleasant cinematic feeling and breaking the complete predictability of outcomes during the game. Certain outcomes do have less of an impact than others, it's a bit tricky to determine which things are fine for the RNG to handle and which should be in control of the players or predictable elements. This is completely my impression but I feel as if designers somehow correlated the immersion, unpredictability and RNG to always an enjoyable player experience, when they were fiddling with seizing the round initiative. This might be true, but I just can't see it with the way things are and how we play it.

A fundamental of the various warhammers is also that there's tons of rolls every game so there is a natural tendancy to gravitate towards average results. Now obviously this does not by any means create average results every game, but you get the idea. The issue is when just one of those rolls has so much power it can determine the game by itself. It doesn't feel tactical, there's no trying to stack odds in one's favor, it's just a huge potential advantage based off nothing more than luck.

I hate it as a game mechanic, right up there with IGOUGO that GW just can’t get past. But it helps cement AoS as casual, take it easy game. I have never run into someone playing AoS who takes it that seriously, since it’s hard to.

I was looking at AoS a little knowing the new edition was coming but hearing that it's staying has soured me a little on it. That was one of the big things I hoped would go. I really don't see the appeal at all to a game that can be swung by a double turn, nor do I think the draw thing will help.

Oh its a very popular mechanic, but yeah it baffles me why that is too.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. My solution to the double turn would be to keep it but to give the player being double turned 3 free sequence breaking actions. So they could cast a spell, move a unit, shoot or break the combat sequence.
This would solve a lot of problems with the double turn without removing it all together. It would make it more interactive as the double turned player would have interesting decisions to make about when to use their actions. It would make the priority wiring player think twice about taking the double turn at all and it would make the game more tactical over all without requiring a massive change to one of the key aspects of the game.
I might try houseruling this myself and see how it turns out.

Now that I am seeing and understanding why people don't like the double turn, I am wondering if it's not the double turn that is the problem but how the rest of the game plays.

In my opinion part of the problem is the IGOUGO system. Just as some people like the current system others just like the IGOUGO or just use to it and don't want to change. Again nothing wrong with that either. To me though doing everything and just watching your opponent do everything and all you do is remove minis is just not fun.

When my son lost interest in 40K I modified the rules to play more like LotR. So what we did was roll for priority. Then in the first phase you either move or shoot. Then your opponent moves or shoots. Then in the second phase if you moved you shoot, or if you shoot you moved. Same goes for your opponent then. Then we do the assault phase. To me this kept the "flavour" of both moving and shooting but broken it up when it was done so there was more interaction between the two players and added in some tactics/depth so you are not always moving first but can shoot first if you wanted.

This way I find it more fair that you are not just removing models and doing nothing. I added in the move or shoot for something different. We found this more fair when we use to play and had so much more fun.

While not a perfect solution, it added in so much more fun, and still kept it simple.

So I believe if we are keeping the way things are the way they are now, and not get rid of the double turn or IGOUGO system, then we need more actions that allow "heroic intervention" where we can move/shoot out of turn or do the Battletech way and everyone shoots at the same time, even if they died.

I have a strong suspicion that had a more LOTR way been used instead of the current way, that a ton more people would have been more engaged and liked it... even the folks that say they love it as it is now and are vehemently against it changing at all.

I even remember the warseer threads about the rumored new 9th edition and how it was going to adopt LOTR mechanics and how excited a lot of people were for that. (then aos came in the form it is and we all know how that went from there)

That's the thing, there are three groups here; those who like double turns, those eho don't like them, and those who don't even play because they don't like them. I strongly suspect the latter two outnumber the first, and that were they removed hardly any of the first group would actually stop playing.

I suspect the number of people that would quit if they removed double turns would be extremely insignificant. More people would start playing/ start playing again than those that would leave. Even then I would bet a good number of people that would quit would start playing again within a year.

 mmzero252 wrote:
I suspect the number of people that would quit if they removed double turns would be extremely insignificant. More people would start playing/ start playing again than those that would leave. Even then I would bet a good number of people that would quit would start playing again within a year.

I think this is probably accurate. While I've admitted I don't hate the double turn, if it went away it certainly wouldn't be a big deal for me.

I do think that the fact they seem to at least be trying something to address some of it is good. If there's even more ways to help deal with it with whatever they do with Command Points that might also help a lot. I don't think just "ties go to previous" kinda thing they've previewed is quite enough, though. Bigger changes to really address what are some very valid complaints (even though I'm lucky enough to not really have experienced them yet) are needed.

A big problem as I see it is they have their head buried in an echo chamber of positivity.

The devs hang out with the fans and the fans don't want to give negative feedback. (at least as I see it from twitter posts showing various members of the dev team hanging out with influential podcasters and tournament organizers over in the UK)