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Yes, I know it stands for "I go, you go", but I still don't understand what it means in practice.

-Guardsman- wrote:
Yes, I know it stands for "I go, you go", but I still don't understand what it means in practice.

Tl;dr.
Essentially, Igougo is:
In my turn, I make all of the moves/actions with all of the units in my whole army.
In your turn, you make all of the moves/actions with all of the units in your whole army.
Then back to me.

Traditionally speaking, in my turn I do my stuff, and you stand there and remove the models I kill. Then vice versus. More modern interpretations of Igougo (games like infinity for example) have a lot more going on for the guy whose turn it isn't (things like out-of-turn-reactions etc).

As opposed to 'alternate activations' where I make the moves/actions of a single model/unit, then you make the moves actions of a single model/unit, then back to me, until every model/unit has activated, which ends the turn.

Warhammer 40k, age of sigmar and warmachine would be classic examples of 'igougo', whereas necromunda, or warcry would be examples of alternate activation.

The slightly longer version of the answer is there are variations of both. Some alternate activation systems you activate 'sections' of your army, or whole platoons/squadrons, depending on the size of the game, and some igoyougo games, depending on how they are built/structured have a lot more response/interplay built in and are more than 'you stand there while I do stuff'.

Your units get to do all their stuff, and then your units do all their stuff. That's turn.

I go and do my thing, and then you get to do it.

Make more sense?

Some people do use it a bit confusingly when you get into the deeper, darker game design topics.

Deadnight wrote:
Tl;dr.
Essentially, Igougo is:
In my turn, I make all of the moves/actions with all of the units in my whole army.
In your turn, you make all of the moves/actions with all of the units in your whole army.
Then back to me.

Traditionally speaking, in my turn I do my stuff, and you stand there and remove the models I kill. Then vice versus. More modern interpretations of Igougo (games like infinity for example) have a lot more going on for the guy whose turn it isn't (things like out-of-turn-reactions etc).

As opposed to 'alternate activations' where I make the moves/actions of a single model/unit, then you make the moves actions of a single model/unit, then back to me, until every model/unit has activated, which ends the turn.

Okay, got it.

Arguably, the terms "I go, you go" and "alternate activations" are not very descriptive on their own, since both systems have a name that means going back-and-forth. Hence my confusion.

 Easy E wrote:
Some people do use it a bit confusingly when you get into the deeper, darker game design topics.

Yeah, I may have seen the expression in some confusing contexts. E.g. someone decrying 40k's IGOUGO system, which had me thinking: "As opposed to what? Doing stuff simultaneously like a real-time video game? No board game can work like that."


.

No board game can work like that?
Not essentially true.
Bidding systems and hidden/preplanned actions are effectively simultaneous.
Also check out game play from Escape the board game, Hungry Hungry Hippos and the classic card game Snap, just to name a few.

IIRC crossbows and catapults was igugo but could easily be played simultaneously. In fact was as fun that way due to the chaos of it

Usually IGOUGO is contrasted with:

Alternate Activation: One unit/model activates, does its thing, and then the opponent chooses a unit and does stuff. Deadzone and Void.

Reaction Activation: A player activates and does stuff, until the opponent tries to "interrupt" or "react" and take over activation. Force-on-Force of Infinity

Activation by Phase: One player does all their movement, then the next player does their movement, then the first player does all their shooting, etc. Play alternates by game phase between players. I can't think of an example right now.

Bid System: Players bid resources to try and gain the ability to activate a unit. Men of Bronze

Chit Draw/Random Activation: A player pulls a marker out of a bog/rolls a dice, or draws a card which says which units can activate. This allows you to trade-off and not know who will get to do something next. Bolt Action

Initiative Order: The order in which units activate is dictated by the turn sequence or a stat rank. I.e. Tanks activate before infantry. Once all the appropriate unit types activate and do stuff, then units further down the list can activate. Dux Bellorum

Proceed until Failed: The player chooses a unit and makes a command check. If passed, the unit can act. If failed play turns over to the opponent. Blood Bowl, Warmaster, Lion Rampant, and the Warlord mass battle games.

Those are some examples of other activation methods. The world is full of them. As yo play more games, you will see there are many more ways to handle activation than IGOUGO.

IGOUGO is not inherently bad and other systems good. It all depends on how you use it.

-Guardsman- wrote:

Yeah, I may have seen the expression in some confusing contexts. E.g. someone decrying 40k's IGOUGO system, which had me thinking: "As opposed to what? Doing stuff simultaneously like a real-time video game? No board game can work like that."

For a counter example, see Infinity, the first edition of Mantic's Deadzone, or even the original table top war-games with their judge/referee.

2nd edition Infinity:

1. The player whose turn it is (the active player) chooses a model to activate
2. The active player's model declares its first action.
3. The other player (the reactive player) declares any reactions to that first action
4. The active player's model declares its second action
5. The reactive player declares any reactions to the second action
6. Roll dice to see what happens, if there are conflicting declarations (like "I shoot your dude" and "My dude shoots back at your dude", or "I shoot your dude" and "My dude dodges") to see what the result is.
There's an alternating advantage, so that it doesn't just become "We all shoot each other at the same time, and the better dice win".

Simultaneous declarations usually require more work, or more resources, because you have to include things like cards, and include rules for resolving the inevitable attempts to either occupy the same position, or claim the same resource, or whatever.

Another example, which which I remember as a kid but it took me a bit to remember what it was called, is Last Starfighter-Duel in Space
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3882/last-starfighter-duel-space
The entire game is "Turn your dial to what you're going to do; reveal choices; roll dice; repeat."

And then there's stuff like X-Wing and the dogfighting games that X-Wing is derived from, where each ship is committing to a movement trajectory in secret, then you go up and down the initiative order to work out what happens in the turn. So that ends up being simultaneous movement, then sequential shooting, with grouping by initiative so that you can still get the heroic "You shot the enemy fighter down before it could shoot you" dogfighting moments mixed between "The two opposing grunt fighters shoot each other down" moments.

Now that I think about it, Dragon and Flagon
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/193840/dragon-flagon
is another great example of a simultaneous board game, illustrating what happens when you make players simultaneously commit to actions in advance of when they're going to get resolved.

Yeah, eventually it comes down to "You've got to move X things around the board, pick then up one at a time and put them down somewhere else", because you don't have a fleet of programmable micro drones or something, but there's plenty that can be done for "Everyone declares at the same time" and "Resolve everything at once" to get effectively simultaneous (or close enough).

 Easy E wrote:

Activation by Phase: One player does all their movement, then the next player does their movement, then the first player does all their shooting, etc. Play alternates by game phase between players. I can't think of an example right now.

I think GW's Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game would count.

Players each roll a d6 at the start of the turn to determine who has Priority (the higher roller).

The Players then go through the Move, Shoot, and Fight phases. The player with Priority moves first, then the other player, shoots first, then the other player, and then chooses the order in which duels are fought in.

 infinite_array wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Activation by Phase: One player does all their movement, then the next player does their movement, then the first player does all their shooting, etc. Play alternates by game phase between players. I can't think of an example right now.

I think GW's Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game would count.

Players each roll a d6 at the start of the turn to determine who has Priority (the higher roller).

The Players then go through the Move, Shoot, and Fight phases. The player with Priority moves first, then the other player, shoots first, then the other player, and then chooses the order in which duels are fought in.

Yes, this is an excellent example! That was what I was getting at.

Another example of how you can handle "IGOUGO" vs "Alternation" is by building in mechanics that allow you to forgo action in order to take action in the opposing turn (usually at a penalty, usually something like "going on overwatch" to shoot later).

This is how 2nd edition handled it, and how Necromunda handles it, but it can lead to defensive deadlocks where one player is able to castle up and effectively prevent opponents from moving.

Anyone who has experienced playing against that guy in Necromunda who's got a Van Saar shooty gang, picks the highest platform on the map and sets up his gang as effectively a stationary gun turret knows just how "fun" overwatch mechanics can be.

The classic GW approach to keeping both players involved in the action during an IGO-UGO game is the saving throw.

You're not making decisions, just rolling dice. There's no real reason why you need to include saving throws, mathematically speaking. The hit/wound rolls could incorporate that, as they do in Lord of the Rings SBG, where armour just increases your defence (toughness). But taking a saving throw does feel like you can participate and 'save' your guys from death, even though it's an illusion.

However... my favourite example of how to keep IGO-UGO interesting for both players is the old Specialist Game, Battlefleet Gothic.

In the designer's notes in the BFG rulebook, Andy Chambers mentions that the IGO-UGO system is admittedly clunky, but keeps things simple. One side moves all their ships, shoots with all their ships, and works out torpedoes and attack craft for all their ships. Then the other side does the same. (Although the torps and attack craft for both sides move every turn.)

Because moving BFG ships involves a) careful decision-making so you'll end up where you want to be several turns ahead, and b) careful movement of the physical models because they can only turn at certain angles after they've moved a certain distance, the IGO-UGO method of play can drag out and become a bit boring for the other player.

Fortunately, BFG includes a 'brace for impact' mechanic. When one of your ships gets shot at, you can order it to 'brace for impact!' You have to take a Leadership test on 2D6 and roll below your Ld value. If you succeed, the ship gains a 4+ saving throw against all damage for the rest of the turn (because everyone is slamming bulkheads shut, hanging onto safety rails, hiding in the strongest bits of the ship, putting oxygen masks on and stuff like that).

But the trade-off is that your ship stays on 'brace for impact' orders for your next turn. It can't take any other orders, it will be hard to steer, and its firepower is halved.

So when your opponent shoots at you, do you save your ship now and potentially stuff up your grand plan next turn? Or do you ride it out and hope your luck holds so that you can take revenge with a fully armed and operational battleship next turn?

And you have to think about this for every ship or squadron that takes fire.

It's far more engaging and nail-biting than just taking a few saving throws. 'Do you wish to brace?' is the most agonising question in BFG and probably my favourite mechanic in any GW game.

(Incidentally, don't brace with Orks. It's un-Orky. Gork and Mork will punish you with terrible dice rolls. I say this from rueful experience.)

 Easy E wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Activation by Phase: One player does all their movement, then the next player does their movement, then the first player does all their shooting, etc. Play alternates by game phase between players. I can't think of an example right now.

I think GW's Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game would count.

Players each roll a d6 at the start of the turn to determine who has Priority (the higher roller).

The Players then go through the Move, Shoot, and Fight phases. The player with Priority moves first, then the other player, shoots first, then the other player, and then chooses the order in which duels are fought in.

Yes, this is an excellent example! That was what I was getting at.

Another old GW example is Epic 40,000 (the infamous 3rd edition from the late 90s). It was a bit more complex, though. It included drawing chits, and also sometimes alternated activation. I'll run through it briefly here because it's a good example of how you can combine several of the above mechanics in the same game.

In each phase--movement, shooting, etc.--you draw a chit from a cup. Not for individual units, but for priority in that phase. Like LotR SBG, except you check it every phase rather than every turn. The winner decides whether to go first or second in that phase. In practice, this means that if you draw well at the start of a turn, your opponent will have the upper hand toward the end of a turn.

The number of chits in the cup for each side is determined by the strategy rating of the opposing armies. Whoever has the highest strategy rating gets three chits, while the other player gets two.

First you declare what missions your flyers will undertake that turn.

Next, one player moves all their units, followed by the other player moving all their units. (Flyers zoom onto the board, do their thing and zoom off again in this phase.)

In the shooting phase, you do alternating activations. One of your units fires, then the opposing player's unit fires, then one of your units fires, and so on.

Then there's a special 'war engine' shooting phase, when your big stuff like Titans get to fire. This works the same way as the regular shooting phase. It's kept separate so that the little guys will have had a chance to shoot up your Titans before you can blow them away.

Next comes the assault phase. One side does all their assault moves, combats and firefights. Then the other side does theirs. (Orks get a special rule that lets them put all their chits back into the cup before drawing priority for this phase, 'cos they have a tendency to suddenly go WAAAGH and catch the enemy by surprise.)

Finally there's a book-keeping phase in which you rally broken troops, try to calm down the guys who are panicking because they're under heavy fire, repair damaged Titans, check victory points and so on.

It's an odd hybrid of the older IGO-UGO approach and the alternating activation approach that featured in the next edition of Epic (Armageddon). But it works.

I go first.
Wipe out 33% of your army turn one.
Then you go and wipe out 16.5% turn one

Then I go second
Wipe out 24.75% of what you have left turn two.
You go and wipe out 8.25% of what I have

Then turn 3 we just give up because the winner was already decided on turn 1

IGOUGO does not inherently suck..... it can be the right tool for the job in some scenarios.

Some additional thoughts on this....
https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/06/wargames-design-igougo-does-not.html

- Of course, there are a lot of alternatives.

Wargods of Aegyptus, and many historical games have a phase at the beginning of a tun in which each unit is given a secret order card. Then players take turns nominating units to act (they can even pick opposing units). Those units may only take the action on their card, so you can really screw with your opponent's plans.