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So I've seen delayed mechanics brought up in a few games - apparently apocalypse delays model removal until the end of the turn, so both players remove models at once. I've seen other mechanics similar, with a view to making it fairer and the turn seem more simultaneous.

I have considered delayed damage mechanics in my own game designs, and my thought is this - at what point do you delay it?

The issues are:

1: If you go through to the point of certainty of how many wounds are being removed, a unit can act in the full knowledge that it will be its last activation - using 1-shot weapons at sub-optimal times, charging forward knowing that they are going to die no matter what. I find this somewhat lacking, personally.

2: If you have variable saves, delaying pre-save (maintaining the uncertainty of whether you will die or not) will require a lot of bookkeeping.


My design was to have damage cards, which had varying effects. These were dealt face-down, and were resolved after the unit activates - so you might have 4 cards and 3 health left, so charge forward to die heroically, only to flip them and find you had 2 lucky misses and are still alive. Awkward.

Another thought I have had is that, if there is a set save or "to wound" roll for a unit, you could store successful wounds/hits for later resolution, maintaining the uncertainty.

Another-another thought is for successful hits to build up on a unit and then be resolved all at once after the unit activates. This would provoke a few odd, but not necessarily bad, interactions:

1- you would have to decide whether to shoot a unit which has just activated (for maximum build-up prior to their activation and the subsequent damage roll) or fire at things which haven't activated yet in the hope of killing them in this turn.
2- you would have to decide whether to activate a unit which has taken some damage to stop it from building up too far, but which may not have been your preferred choice of unit.
3- you would have to decide what to do with said unit - it could be that if a unit is in cover when the damage is resolved, they reduce it. so running for cover in your activation may retroactively reduce the damage of the shots - it's all supposed to be simultaneous after all.
4- powerful weapons will be better for killing units/models in this activation, whereas small-arms would be best built-up until next activation.


In other delayed mechanics, I had toyed with a game where you duel with an opponent/s, and your "reaction time" is how many cards ahead you have to play. cards would have low effects but build fairly well. EG you might cast magic and then cast a few others, which would be in your action queue, but if the opponent opens by grappling you, it might prevent the actions you made. A guy with reaction time 2 must have 2 cards in front of them, and add 1 each round after the last is resolved, where someone with reaction time 5 needs 5 cards, so what they add now will resolve in 5 rounds time, making them slow to react. if that makes sense.


What are other peoples feelings & experiences with delayed mechanics?

Would delayed mechanics include things like counters that get placed on the board to remind players to resolve effects?

I have played This Is Not a Test and Reality's Edge which use delayed mechanics. The idea is that it forces you to decide if you should keep shooting/attacking the model to make sure they go out, or hope one hit does the job.

Honestly, it wasn't worth the hassle and token clutter to me. However, some people swear by it.

Some games which use delayed mechanics are using them as band-aids to cover their poor game design.

If a game is IGOUGO and needs this to avoid one side being shot off the table, the better option is....don't be IGOUGO. I agree with many of your concerns, and really dislike the "Well, this unit is dead, they might as well do some suicidal thing because who cares..." . That's a pretty poor mechanic. You can rectify that by simply keeping damage results until the end of the turn, but then that starts layering on book-keeping.

I guess I've never seen a delayed mechanic which made a lot of sense or was elegant and useful. If you're using damage cards, you could do it hidden, where everyone reveals their damage cards at the end of the turn - but then that mechanic would solely be a fix to the issue of knowing one's fate, etc.

I'd agree with Elbows. If you need to delay the effect of something you disempower the player, and they don't like that. Causes and effects chosen by players should be resolved 'on the barrel head' so to speak, and not in dividends to be paid later.

iirc isn't that the way battletech was (still is?)

The best way to use such delayed action is to resolve all results at the end of the round, but that gets complicated and messy really fast.

Apocalypse places blast markers onto a UNIT (not a model) and then at the end you roll saves and issue damage.

Whether the unit will suffer any damage at all is unknown until the end of the turn.

The book keeping is saved because

1) a very low amount of dice being thrown. Apoc is unit to unit based and the stat line is for the unit not the model. A termagant with a devourer rolls 3 dice for every 10 models in the unit. a unit of 30 roll 9 dice when upgraded with a high rate of fire weapon.

2) tokens.

3) no models are ever removed until the unit is destroyed. When a unit reaches 1/2 wounds it's attacks are halved. Roughly every 5 infantry models have 1 wound.


So... You roll to hit, roll to wound. place blasts. 1 wound is a small blast. The next wound upgrades it to a large blast. The next would is another small blast etc...
At the end you roll a save for the blasts. Small blasts roll a d12, large a d6. Place damage markers for failed saves.