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My friends and I tried two techniques to lessen the first turn win ness we have been experiencing.

First we tried the LOTR technique as that game is very well written. We did Each player moves, then each player shoots, then each player resolves their combats.

This went well, and made for a much more back and forth game, we also added a friendly fire mechanic when shooting into combat that was fun. (roll for each hit, on a 1-3 its a friend, 4-6 a foe). Made my orks have alot of fun mowing down enemy and friends alike.

Option two led to us doing activation style. You moved one unit, then your opponent until both sides have moved everyone ones or moved the units they wanted too. Then did the same thing with shooting, back and forth and then resolved combats. This is how we intend to play in th future. Its great fun.

With how many points and how many unit's/models.
While alternative activation or interwoven turns work at lower scale they tend to become quite tricky in larger games.

I'm interested in hearing more details as well. Systems I've played games that do interwoven tuns were almost universally better. I was disappointed when coming back to 40k to find that GW was still clinging onto you-go-i-go.

The fact that Kill Team has alternating turns makes it seem as if GW may be dipping their toe into the idea, but I'm not hopeful that 40k will ever see a real change to this.

Even a simple change may have mitigated this issue - such as -1 to hit for first activation or the first player may only choose to move or fire, and that's their turn.

they had interlaced turns back in V1 space marine.

basically the way that worked was you issued an "order" to each unit, via counters - face down (when a counter was face up you knew it had moved)

then a movement phase, stuff ordered to "Charge" moved first, then "advance", "first fire" couldn't move.

this was done IIRC as all of player #1 charge orders, then all of player #2 - it could have been unit by unit though.

firing phase saw "first fire" firing first (+1 to hit), then "advance", then "charge" (-1 to hit)

then you had combat

worked very well

leopard wrote:
they had interlaced turns back in V1 space marine.

basically the way that worked was you issued an "order" to each unit, via counters - face down (when a counter was face up you knew it had moved)

then a movement phase, stuff ordered to "Charge" moved first, then "advance", "first fire" couldn't move.

this was done IIRC as all of player #1 charge orders, then all of player #2 - it could have been unit by unit though.

firing phase saw "first fire" firing first (+1 to hit), then "advance", then "charge" (-1 to hit)

then you had combat

worked very well

Sounds fun, but I'm dubious that it would translate well to 40k. My 1250 point army today had like...14 units in it.

I don't think it is at it's best when alternating units within a phase. I think the best is when you do activate a unit, do it's whole turn, then alternate to the other player.

It keeps the action flowing and it doesn't allow for the opponent to back up away from units trying to get into charge range by responding to your movement/set up.

One thing that could be interesting maybe, would be to change first turn: player 1 plays first in turn one, and you alternate in turn two, with player 2 going first. This may void the same player always having the first shooting. Maybe add this to alternated sub phases.

We tried alternate activation with my brother, and I confirm that it doesn't turn that well at large point. Compared to smaller game, 40k is relying on list and for lack of actual "tactic" on the global strategy you set up. An activation system à la Bolt Action just ends up with you praying to play soon enough to move your must powerful stuff before your oponents mawl it down or alternatively do precisely that and OS something. In addition it can be hard to follow a strategy without being automatically countered if you're not lucky enough to play 3 times in a row. In my personnal experience, as a consequence, it doesn't fit to well in 40k.

Would just like to retry it with the commander activation system though, as our attempt was adapted following the V1 rules.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
One thing that could be interesting maybe, would be to change first turn: player 1 plays first in turn one, and you alternate in turn two, with player 2 going first. This may void the same player always having the first shooting. Maybe add this to alternated sub phases.

So Sigmar style double-turns, but guaranteed to happen instead of only happening sometimes and with 40k firepower? I feel like I pretty much win any game where my somewhat shooty list gets two shooting phases in a row and lose any games where the opposite happens to me. Or am I missing something?

Another solution that may require a little more bookkeeping is to have a resolve damage and morale phase after both players take their turns. The turns are identical except players don't roll any saves or remove any models until both players take their turn. It's not the most elegant solution but it is an easy one to try.

Kill teams Turn style actually has some valid means to scale towards normal 40k.

So basically it's this order style:


Initiative
Movement (Move,Advance,Ready,Charge,Fall back)
Psychic (Initiative)
Shooting(Readied units in Initative, Normal shooting)
Fight Phase(Charged units,Normal Fight)
Morale


The Bold part is a unit by unit Action (So a single unit by player), the movement is done player by player.

Then you have the react action from a charge (Overwatch, Retreat) although i would restrict retreat to only once and if you retreat you cannot react further that turn


Also, you can choose to forgo the initiative if you won the roll. If that happens then your opponent gets the initiative instead (multi way battles roll of to see which opponent gets initiative)

The shooting phase would be in this order: readied units, Normal units. Note that if readied units ever move they lose their ready status. This is all still in initiative order. Also charged units can't shoot

Fall back cannot happen to units who have just been charged

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
One thing that could be interesting maybe, would be to change first turn: player 1 plays first in turn one, and you alternate in turn two, with player 2 going first. This may void the same player always having the first shooting. Maybe add this to alternated sub phases.

So Sigmar style double-turns, but guaranteed to happen instead of only happening sometimes and with 40k firepower? I feel like I pretty much win any game where my somewhat shooty list gets two shooting phases in a row and lose any games where the opposite happens to me. Or am I missing something?

Have you understood anywhere that you should be involved in 2 phases in a row at some point? If yes then you did miunderstood, I may have spokeen in an unclear way.

The turns would go as follow

Turn 1

A moves/ B moves
A shoots/B shoots
A charges/ B charges
A checks moral/ B checks moral


Turn 2

B moves/ A moves
B shoots/ A shoots
B charges/ A charges
B checks moral/ A checks moral

Turn 3

A/B
A/B...

You just alternate each turn who will have the initiative, if you will. That might prevent one player from always shred you to a man by shooting first each turn.

That's what I meant, but it was simple hypothesis.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ComradeRed1308 wrote:
Another solution that may require a little more bookkeeping is to have a resolve damage and morale phase after both players take their turns. The turns are identical except players don't roll any saves or remove any models until both players take their turn. It's not the most elegant solution but it is an easy one to try.

Could be worth as far as gameplay is concerned, but it doesn't look that comfortable. But worth a try, definitly.

Like I've said many times in many similar threads.
Bolt Action turn sequences combined with Dust Tactics skip

ValentineGames wrote:
Like I've said many times in many similar threads.
Bolt Action turn sequences combined with Dust Tactics skip

I don't know dust tactic's system, could you please elaborate on what you take from it?

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:

ValentineGames wrote:
Like I've said many times in many similar threads.
Bolt Action turn sequences combined with Dust Tactics skip

I don't know dust tactic's system, could you please elaborate on what you take from it?

They have a system where if your opponent has more units than you have you may "skip" your go a number of times equal to the additional number of units.

It stops smaller forces being torn to shreds by horde armies that force them to activate their entire army.
It'd put a barrier up against players who spam MSU forces to cheat the Command points system too.

The right answer is to just play with enough terrain to mitigate the ability to get a full strength alpha strike when going first.

I think "alternating" activations could work in 40K if it required putting unique tokens in a bag for every unit on the table and drawing to see who goes. If it's just I move a unit and then you move a unit, knight armies and similar elite shooters will get their whole army of shots off much earlier than a more balanced force. It would be like they got the first turn of shooting in every single game.

Unique tokens would be required so there's no way to fill your list with chaff to help control what order you activate things.

One of the best solutions I've seen is in Battletech. Everybody shoots during that Phase, but the damage doesn't take affect until after everybody has had a chance to shoot. Same thing for Melee.

Alpha Strikes still hurt, but they won't guarantee you can't do anything during the same turn.

 Charistoph wrote:
One of the best solutions I've seen is in Battletech. Everybody shoots during that Phase, but the damage doesn't take affect until after everybody has had a chance to shoot. Same thing for Melee.

Alpha Strikes still hurt, but they won't guarantee you can't do anything during the same turn.

I've kicked this idea around before. It's a little heavy on the book-keeping (you can't really remove casualties until after the phase because you need to know who's in range of what), but it does give the feeling that both armies are actually shooting at one another.

On the other hand, some armies are currently built around the assumption that you''ll be able to mitigate return damage through positioning/charging. Charging some wyches into a large squad of orks is much more promising when the X boys you manage to kill don't get to swing back before they die. My fire dragons are a lot less valuable when the vehicle or knight they deepstruck down to shoot at gets to evaporate their squad before it dies.

Maybe a universal stratagem would pair well with this? For 1CP, immediately after resolving the wounds inflicted by one of your units against another, remove the slain models from the targeted unit (as opposed to waiting until the end of the phase). That way, you can point at the unit you absolutely positively want to take down before it can return fire/punch back once per phase.

Also, I'd worry that this would slow down the game as you have to re-evaluate your plans based on new information every few seconds. Plus, you'd have to track which units had acted at all times in a given phase.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
One of the best solutions I've seen is in Battletech. Everybody shoots during that Phase, but the damage doesn't take affect until after everybody has had a chance to shoot. Same thing for Melee.

Alpha Strikes still hurt, but they won't guarantee you can't do anything during the same turn.

I've kicked this idea around before. It's a little heavy on the book-keeping (you can't really remove casualties until after the phase because you need to know who's in range of what), but it does give the feeling that both armies are actually shooting at one another.

On the other hand, some armies are currently built around the assumption that you''ll be able to mitigate return damage through positioning/charging. Charging some wyches into a large squad of orks is much more promising when the X boys you manage to kill don't get to swing back before they die. My fire dragons are a lot less valuable when the vehicle or knight they deepstruck down to shoot at gets to evaporate their squad before it dies.

Maybe a universal stratagem would pair well with this? For 1CP, immediately after resolving the wounds inflicted by one of your units against another, remove the slain models from the targeted unit (as opposed to waiting until the end of the phase). That way, you can point at the unit you absolutely positively want to take down before it can return fire/punch back once per phase.

Also, I'd worry that this would slow down the game as you have to re-evaluate your plans based on new information every few seconds. Plus, you'd have to track which units had acted at all times in a given phase.

Agreed. I wouldn't choose the all simultanious either, this actually, in a sense, tend to miic RTS games, but you and you're opponent are no computers, unfortunatly. What scale is battletech however? Big battles or little skirmishes?

LunarSol wrote:The right answer is to just play with enough terrain to mitigate the ability to get a full strength alpha strike when going first.

This falls apart as cover in this edition benefits armoured units more than others. a 6+ armour or 5++ invuln dont care about cover, and since they only need to see the tiniest thing on my model to shoot it, this is just plain moot.


If cover gave a -1 to hit on the other hand, it would also make some armies even more powerful (eldar rangers would be untouchable, so would raven guard scouts and stealth suits)

Also, shooting alpha strike in this edition is godly compared to it's CC counterpart.

If anything, nerfing shooting alpha strike would be needed

mchammadad wrote:

LunarSol wrote:The right answer is to just play with enough terrain to mitigate the ability to get a full strength alpha strike when going first.

This falls apart as cover in this edition benefits armoured units more than others. a 6+ armour or 5++ invuln dont care about cover, and since they only need to see the tiniest thing on my model to shoot it, this is just plain moot.

Unpopular opinion: Cover is mostly alright this edition. It's weird that a rhino has to be pressed against an intervening wall to benefit from cover, but that's my only real complaint. My marines enjoy having 2+s. My guardians enjoy having 4+. My venoms enjoy floating behind window-pocked ruin walls and having a 3+ armor save against small dakka while retaining their 5++ against big dakka.

Some units that were heavily dependent upon cover for 4+ saves (lootas) got the short end of the stick, but I feel the current cover system is preferable to last edition's and generally created more winners than losers.

Wyldhunt wrote:

mchammadad wrote:

LunarSol wrote:The right answer is to just play with enough terrain to mitigate the ability to get a full strength alpha strike when going first.

This falls apart as cover in this edition benefits armoured units more than others. a 6+ armour or 5++ invuln dont care about cover, and since they only need to see the tiniest thing on my model to shoot it, this is just plain moot.

Unpopular opinion: Cover is mostly alright this edition. It's weird that a rhino has to be pressed against an intervening wall to benefit from cover, but that's my only real complaint. My marines enjoy having 2+s. My guardians enjoy having 4+. My venoms enjoy floating behind window-pocked ruin walls and having a 3+ armor save against small dakka while retaining their 5++ against big dakka.

Some units that were heavily dependent upon cover for 4+ saves (lootas) got the short end of the stick, but I feel the current cover system is preferable to last edition's and generally created more winners than losers.

I will agree that taking out the cover saves from 7th edition backwards is indeed a step forward.

However, you must realise, that the cover system does not benefit people the same. Sure, astartes and vehicles greatly benefit from this because of the +1 armour.

However, not everyone has an even reward from the system. 4+ armour has a fairly good chance of benefiting from the bonus, 5+ is now half chance at saving. Yet this is only one part of the equation. If you compare these rewards compared to the sheer fire rate and the fact that fire rate is incredibly important this edition because of the kill factor from shooting.

This is also not factoring in AP, or range from weapons. Or even sheer numbers of units.

Why do people are still surprised when a unit of guardsmen could take out a terminator squad? It's because the firepower that 10 man squad packs is really efficient. 30 shots at 4+ to hit/5+ to wound to save on a 2+ save. Stastically speaking people would say the likelihood of that unit of terminators dying is low, but lets all remember that this is 40k. And statistics goes out the window when people are rolling hot.

The fact that any part of the model counts as a target is probably one of the most glaring problems in this edition. Because actual true LOS blooking doesn't work as well as last edition used to.

Short part of the story is, the cover system works for most people. Yet it should be a system that benefits all people, not most

mchammadad wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

mchammadad wrote:

LunarSol wrote:The right answer is to just play with enough terrain to mitigate the ability to get a full strength alpha strike when going first.

This falls apart as cover in this edition benefits armoured units more than others. a 6+ armour or 5++ invuln dont care about cover, and since they only need to see the tiniest thing on my model to shoot it, this is just plain moot.

Unpopular opinion: Cover is mostly alright this edition. It's weird that a rhino has to be pressed against an intervening wall to benefit from cover, but that's my only real complaint. My marines enjoy having 2+s. My guardians enjoy having 4+. My venoms enjoy floating behind window-pocked ruin walls and having a 3+ armor save against small dakka while retaining their 5++ against big dakka.

Some units that were heavily dependent upon cover for 4+ saves (lootas) got the short end of the stick, but I feel the current cover system is preferable to last edition's and generally created more winners than losers.

I will agree that taking out the cover saves from 7th edition backwards is indeed a step forward.

However, you must realise, that the cover system does not benefit people the same. Sure, astartes and vehicles greatly benefit from this because of the +1 armour.

However, not everyone has an even reward from the system. 4+ armour has a fairly good chance of benefiting from the bonus, 5+ is now half chance at saving. Yet this is only one part of the equation. If you compare these rewards compared to the sheer fire rate and the fact that fire rate is incredibly important this edition because of the kill factor from shooting.

This is also not factoring in AP, or range from weapons. Or even sheer numbers of units.

Why do people are still surprised when a unit of guardsmen could take out a terminator squad? It's because the firepower that 10 man squad packs is really efficient. 30 shots at 4+ to hit/5+ to wound to save on a 2+ save. Stastically speaking people would say the likelihood of that unit of terminators dying is low, but lets all remember that this is 40k. And statistics goes out the window when people are rolling hot.

The fact that any part of the model counts as a target is probably one of the most glaring problems in this edition. Because actual true LOS blooking doesn't work as well as last edition used to.

Short part of the story is, the cover system works for most people. Yet it should be a system that benefits all people, not most

I would question if what you complaining about(which is valid to be clear) is actually an issue with the cover mechanics or more an issue with the flattened wounding chart.
I would say its that change that has really helped volume of fire over quality of firepower in the transition to 8th edition.
I would say too much but its also been held back by GW being afraid to move away from old edition stats. They also should maybe have a rule for T=3xS of attack roll a 7+ or such.

 LunarSol wrote:
The right answer is to just play with enough terrain to mitigate the ability to get a full strength alpha strike when going first.

Exactly what I was going to suggest. Never had an issue playing after populating the board with the appropriate amount of trees or buildings. There's no excuse not to have an urban or forested section on your board. Both if you've got room. I see so many people just playing long table edges totally exposed. It baffles me. I've found the best games always start with Vanguard Strike deployment and plenty of scenery. Saying that, seeing DKoK deployed along a long front is very fluffy...

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
One of the best solutions I've seen is in Battletech. Everybody shoots during that Phase, but the damage doesn't take affect until after everybody has had a chance to shoot. Same thing for Melee.

Alpha Strikes still hurt, but they won't guarantee you can't do anything during the same turn.

I've kicked this idea around before. It's a little heavy on the book-keeping (you can't really remove casualties until after the phase because you need to know who's in range of what), but it does give the feeling that both armies are actually shooting at one another.
...
Also, I'd worry that this would slow down the game as you have to re-evaluate your plans based on new information every few seconds. Plus, you'd have to track which units had acted at all times in a given phase.

Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:Agreed. I wouldn't choose the all simultanious either, this actually, in a sense, tend to miic RTS games, but you and you're opponent are no computers, unfortunatly. What scale is battletech however? Big battles or little skirmishes?

Unfortunately, all your points are irrelevant. The same book-keeping you are so afraid of is required anyway for other purposes. You need to know if the unit needs to test its Morale, so tracking damage is already a thing. You still need to keep track of what unit has done what anyway to avoid cheating. That's not even considering that its something that all but the most Vehicle-heavy Necron army has had to deal with since their 3rd Edition codex.

As for scale, Battletech is on the small side, breaking down to be really slow at 12 v 12 with common matches being no more than 4v4 or 5v5. Its scale is not because of keeping track of damage during the phases, however. The amount of damage that most units will absorb without any available mitigation is far higher than anything short of a Titan, and I'm not talking about those tiny Knights, either. It takes time to work all that damage through, and that's not even considering all the modifiers and concepts like Clustered-damage, ammo tracking, and heat tracking are all considerations that affect game speed. Oddly enough, by adding more concepts to the game, it can actually go faster, too!

 LunarSol wrote:
The right answer is to just play with enough terrain to mitigate the ability to get a full strength alpha strike when going first.

This.

Alternative fix would be only allowing the first player to shoot with 50% of his/her units that are currently on the table, rounding up. Could lead to some msu shenanigans but would be infinitely better that what we have now.

 Charistoph wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
One of the best solutions I've seen is in Battletech. Everybody shoots during that Phase, but the damage doesn't take affect until after everybody has had a chance to shoot. Same thing for Melee.

Alpha Strikes still hurt, but they won't guarantee you can't do anything during the same turn.

I've kicked this idea around before. It's a little heavy on the book-keeping (you can't really remove casualties until after the phase because you need to know who's in range of what), but it does give the feeling that both armies are actually shooting at one another.
...
Also, I'd worry that this would slow down the game as you have to re-evaluate your plans based on new information every few seconds. Plus, you'd have to track which units had acted at all times in a given phase.

Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:Agreed. I wouldn't choose the all simultanious either, this actually, in a sense, tend to miic RTS games, but you and you're opponent are no computers, unfortunatly. What scale is battletech however? Big battles or little skirmishes?

Unfortunately, all your points are irrelevant. The same book-keeping you are so afraid of is required anyway for other purposes. You need to know if the unit needs to test its Morale, so tracking damage is already a thing. You still need to keep track of what unit has done what anyway to avoid cheating. That's not even considering that its something that all but the most Vehicle-heavy Necron army has had to deal with since their 3rd Edition codex.

As for scale, Battletech is on the small side, breaking down to be really slow at 12 v 12 with common matches being no more than 4v4 or 5v5. Its scale is not because of keeping track of damage during the phases, however. The amount of damage that most units will absorb without any available mitigation is far higher than anything short of a Titan, and I'm not talking about those tiny Knights, either. It takes time to work all that damage through, and that's not even considering all the modifiers and concepts like Clustered-damage, ammo tracking, and heat tracking are all considerations that affect game speed. Oddly enough, by adding more concepts to the game, it can actually go faster, too!

Well in little battles I confirm it could work -I could totally see a Project Z game run this way-, but I really don't believe that the size of 40k would be fitting.

Actually insta removing helps keeping track simply because if a squad gets its manpower cut down from 10 to 5 even if you forgot who treated them that raw it'll be pretty obvious they'll have to test. And as dumb as it might look the number of dead bodies helps remember what occured, at least in my experience it does.

The thing is: as far as bookkeeping is concerned, you'll necessarely have to change turns with your opponent to work out each unit's damage, and in the current I go you go sequence, you basically go for one and immedialty after make a headnote of what happened or can report what happened all at once, beig able to see what happened to the enemy models. If you were to have both player bury their dead at the same moment, although everyone would fight at full effect, it would still be necessary that a player works out a unit's shooting then the other one, and so on, for sake of order, you can't resolve everything together obviously.

So it would require an insanely (but obviously not impossible) strict bookmarking because when you have to finally take off the models and mark the damages on vehicules,for both players at once, it'll could get tricky recalling oneselves of what fell, especially in the comparativly huge battles of 40k.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:

Actually insta removing helps keeping track simply because if a squad gets its manpower cut down from 10 to 5 even if you forgot who treated them that raw it'll be pretty obvious they'll have to test. And as dumb as it might look the number of dead bodies helps remember what occured, at least in my experience it does.

Usually, I've seen differently. Instant remove puts them all in the same place as they put previous turn's casualties. If you have 2+ units that are the same, then that can be even more confusing unless you keep everything in your head when it comes to the Morale Phase. As I said, you're already doing the book keeping, so it's not as hard as you may think.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
The thing is: as far as bookkeeping is concerned, you'll necessarely have to change turns with your opponent to work out each unit's damage, and in the current I go you go sequence, you basically go for one and immedialty after make a headnote of what happened or can report what happened all at once, beig able to see what happened to the enemy models. If you were to have both player bury their dead at the same moment, although everyone would fight at full effect, it would still be necessary that a player works out a unit's shooting then the other one, and so on, for sake of order, you can't resolve everything together obviously.

Yes, that is usually what happens, everyone does their shooting in the same phase of the same turn. It's not like this is completely unusual in 40K, it just applied to melee before. Movement in Battletech is usually handled by an Initiative roll at the beginning of the turn, and each person takes turn moving their units.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
So it would require an insanely (but obviously not impossible) strict bookmarking because when you have to finally take off the models and mark the damages on vehicules,for both players at once, it'll could get tricky recalling oneselves of what fell, especially in the comparativly huge battles of 40k.

Not difficult at all. As I said, Necron players have been doing this for years. They just tip the Infantry casualties as they apply and record the damage to Vehicles and Monsters and do the removal at the end of the Phase or Turn when they failed their ability to return.

I'm new to the forum so I hope it's not too early for me to weigh in on this subject.

In my observation 40k isn't usually lost in the first turn, but rather lost during deployment. I usually see players deploying all of their units as far forward in the deployment zone as possible and sitting out in the open so that they can fire every weapon in their arsenal at full BS during the first turn. Of course the loser of the roll off proceeds to get blown off the table and the player's reasoning is often that the 1st turn is broken and/or the units in their army need better armor saves or toughness. While the player is right to assume changes to the rules could help with their first turn survivability I would counter that smarter deployment and an overall change of tactical mindset can far better save their army while preserving what I've found to be an already pretty well balanced game.

If you think about how two real world armies would engage on a battlefield there are generally 4 major phases: 1. Long range bombardment, 2. Medium range assault and advancement, 3. Close quarters fighting, 4. The cleanup phase. The commander that takes the fewest causalities during each of the ensuing phases - either from actual damage or via moral and attrition - is more often than not the one that wins. Yet time and again the 40k player's mindset is the opposite. Rather than positioning units to preserve them, they feel the need to inflict maximum casualties to their opponent and that the best way to achieve this is by deploying in order to engage all 4 phases simultaneously - turn 1. Not only is this an unrealistic objective, it's an unnecessary one. Someone far wiser than me once said the smartest generals can win a battle without engaging the enemy at all.

In the beginning of 8th ed we could more reliably position units in deployment by taking fewer drops than our opponent. If you counted your opponent's drops and realized you were going first you had a 5/6 chance of safely camping your army in the open for that glorious turn 1 alpha strike. With the randomness of the dice roll now, however, I'd rather prepare for the long game. It's better to take the -1 to hit penalty because you had to move a tank into range or to achieve LoS than it is to have said tank get blown off the table by 2 lucky lascannon shots before it gets the chance to shoot back. When you think about it, it's even better from a survivability perspective to hide a tank behind a building than it is to deploy in the open and use alternating unit activations. Your units don't need to be able to fire all of their weapons all of the time in order to earn their points. Sometimes just the treat that a big gun is still on the table is enough to start disrupting your opponent's strategy and that goes longer to winning the game than deleting a unit of conscripts.

As a tyranid player frequently up against necrons and tau I'm always thinking about cover and LoS. It's not uncommon for my games to go more than 2 full rounds before an opponent is able to shoot at me with more than one unit. Sure I am equally not damaging my opponent during this window, but I can still reliably pick up a VP or 2 without having my army's full assault potential crippled. It's also pretty satisfying to catch my opponent moving out of a strong defensive position in order to shoot by turn 3 and then pounding him with a genestealer blob to the face and a trygon-gant bomb on a flank. Forget trying to rocket up the board - looking at you hive fleet kraken - I'll just wait behind that building until you decide to come to me. There's a reason the xenomorphs were always lurking in the air ducts....

In conclusion I think more defensive minded positioning not only solves the supposed broken turn 1, but also helps with another common 8th edition complaint that terrain rules are not dynamic enough. While I do agree that some tweaks in this department could make for a more flavorful game, I wouldn't go so far as to say that GW needs to incentivize me to put my neophytes behind a wall. Alas their 5+ armor save is not nearly so protective as being out of sight. And let's be honest, those autoguns were never going to hurt those immortals anyway.

Cweg is right.

If your opponent has LOS to your whole army turn 1 your problem is either poor deployment or not enough LOS blocking terrain.

8th edition NEEDS LOS blocking terrain to function well. True LOS and weak bonuses from partial cover make LOS blocking terrain much more vital to a balnced game than an any previous edition.