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https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/01/28/metawatch-is-warhammer-40000s-first-turn-advantage-a-thing-of-the-past/

This is actually a ridiculously long read so here's the meat. There's no quantifiable data to support their assertion yet, but credit seems due for what seems to be a reasonable approach to analyze the issue.

GW's measured average first turn win chance was 58% so this is the basis:

Especially notable is the high rate of 15 VP turns for players who go first and go on to win, and the high rate of 0 VP turns for players who lose after going second. Because of the limited number of scoring opportunities in the game, this can create an early swing that’s very difficult to come back from, leading to the win rates observed.

As to why this happens mechanically, it appears to be because the player going first has a lot more control over the scoring in the second battle round than their opponent. They have two turns to move and attack the opponent’s positions before they get to score, and can even bring in reinforcements to help out with this. Conversely, for armies relying on ranged threats or slower melee units, it’s extremely difficult to stop an opponent who goes first from racking up at least a respectable score because you simply don’t have time to push them off the objectives. This being the driving effect has been hammered home for us by Retrieval Mission having one of the most balanced go-first/go-second win rates, and that appears to be a result of its objective map putting players on a far more even footing for early scoring.

So, to summarise, this is where we were before the FAQ:

There was, on average, an advantage to going first.
That advantage manifested in players going second needing to score about 5 VP more on average to beat their opponent.
The mechanical cause seemed to be the increased control the player going first had over the scoring in battle round 2.

With all that in mind, we can look at the key change here, which is that the player going second now scores their primary objective VPs for the final battle round at the end of their turn rather than in their Command phase. This means they can use their final turn’s movement to zoom onto as many unoccupied objectives as possible, or launch some final defiant charges to try and take fortified positions from the opponent – in both cases, aiming to maximise their score. This gives them something unique in the Grand Tournament missions in the form of an opportunity to take primary objectives without the other player getting to react before points are scored.

Here, we think that’s going to be a good thing! If one player’s increased control over the scoring in an early turn is providing them with a significant advantage, then a mechanic that provides their opponent with greater control over the scoring in one of their turns could go a long way towards balancing that out. How well it works will depend on whether the average VPs scored are roughly equal. We certainly think it could be, and the change that’s been made here should also disproportionately help more shooting-focused lists that pack some mobile options like Craftworlds, Astra Militarum, and T’au Empire.

Part of the struggle for these factions, when they go second, is that they’re less able to flip objectives directly into their control via melee, which means that it takes them longer to seize positions than melee-focused armies. If they go first, that’s okay – they can move onto nearby objectives and focus on holding the enemy back – but if they go second, they often have to spend a Shooting phase clearing a path to an objective, then move onto it in their next turn. This puts them a turn behind on the scoring in a way that can be a challenge to come back from, even if they wipe out most of the opponent’s army over the course of the game. Opening up a final turn where they can take advantage of the damage they’ve dealt to move onto scoring positions without worrying about the counter-attack is therefore a crucial change.

This will surely bring that percentage much closer to 50%, or even lower than that.

It will not be equally beneficial to all factions.

Alpha strike lists are quite penalized from this. If they go second they are already in trouble by nature of being alpha strike lists. Those lists also tend to be full of glasscannons, so they are hardly going to have models alive by turn 5.

For more durable factions, going second will be better than going first.

Spoletta wrote:
This will surely bring that percentage much closer to 50%, or even lower than that.

It will not be equally beneficial to all factions.

Alpha strike lists are quite penalized from this. If they go second they are already in trouble by nature of being alpha strike lists. Those lists also tend to be full of glasscannons, so they are hardly going to have models alive by turn 5.

For more durable factions, going second will be better than going first.

For sure. AM go second is 30%. They definitely won't pick up 20% from the change - they need some other boosts, which the point changes may provide ( or not ).

I think overall the first turn advantage has been overstated some. I won't disregard it as not being there. Because there are many games particularly ones with low terrain density or fast vs. slow armies it is definitely there. I just think it is merely a symptom of one of the bigger flaws with the way 9th edition might play.

I haven't played 9th, but I have watched (well listened while painting) a fair number of video batreps. It seems to me that 9th allows for a 'make-or-break' turn in the game that can be difficult to avoid with some faction/army matchups. This issue is mostly easily revealed in games where an army positioned in an Alpha Strike gets the first turn to accomplish their strike. At the same time, a defensively positioned player who anticipates their opponent's unit movements and the makes use of the speed with their own units can also set up a devastating turn typically no later than end of Round 2 going second. More concerning to me is terrain can't always equalize this out. In fact, with some faction terrain (heavy or dense) exacerbates the issue.

As I said, I haven't managed to play 9th yet and haven't watched or watched close enough to video batreps to know if this really will be and issue. Overall, I think 9th will be pretty good in comparison to 8th. I am just concerned that after all the codices are out, the factions while being pretty well-balanced, there is going to be a lot of rock, paper, scissor with certain factions being hard-counters to other factions. I can't say I'll be a fan if 9th does devolve into basically a game of Primaries chicken where the army with the ability for force the opposing army to move into a bad position is going to have a much easier time winning. Especially if there are going to be some blood simple Secondaries picked.

Which I think is the concern over gaining first turn (as said first turn makes is easy to see this issue). That said, I do think taking the control out of players' hands on who goes first and who goes second is welcome even if some player agency was lost. I am not as sure about the second turn player's round 5 change yet. It sounds like a positive change, but at the same time a lot of advantages has been stacked going second for a number of factions before any of the changes. Only time will tell if the turn 5 change tips the pendulum too far the other way.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
It seems to me that 9th allows for a 'make-or-break' turn in the game that can be difficult to avoid with some faction/army matchups.

I've played a fair bit of 9th so far (in-person some, but also thanks to TTS), and this matches my experience, but I think the first-turn advantage is a big part of it.

I've seen, broadly, three flavors of 'one-turn victory'. They're not actually game over in one turn, but make it extremely difficult for the other player to recover.
1. One player grabs all the objectives, seizing the initiative, and is tenacious enough to hold.
2. One player infiltrates their army to be right outside the enemy's deployment zone, or uses movement blockers like spore mines, and keeps the enemy pinned in their deployment zone, allowing them to grab all the objectives as per #1.
3. One player alpha-strikes to wipe out the bulk of the enemy's forces, then takes the objectives.

Because you can efficiently build an army to do one (or more) of these, if you get the first turn you can execute the plan and put your opponent at a severe disadvantage. People say to use more terrain, but while that definitely helps prevent #3, it also makes #2 easier, so it's a bit of a wash.

I have seen the going-second player successfully execute one of these, but it's much harder than if you get the first turn. And I don't think the extra round of scoring at the end of the game helps if you're three turns' worth of objectives behind or you got tabled two turns ago.

I really think it boils down to the game no longer having a turn or two of 'closing to contact' before the bloodbath starts, and the IGOUGO structure allowing the starting player to execute their full turn's worth of activity without counterplay. Compared to prior editions we have greater mobility, smaller boards, longer ranges, more firepower, and scoring right off the bat- it feels like starting the battle 1/3 of the way through.

catbarf wrote:I've played a fair bit of 9th so far (in-person in '19,

Playtesting, or did you mean '20?

Seems like the first decent metawatch, and that's because they have someone from Goonhammer on to have a proper chat.

Not sure what to make of the Craftworlds list, I don't think Ulthwe Dire Avengers are good enough to run that many, but it's an army that looks like it would play the objective game well.

Voss wrote:

catbarf wrote:I've played a fair bit of 9th so far (in-person in '19,

Playtesting, or did you mean '20?

I meant that my sense of time has been ruined and the launch of 9th feels like a long, long time ago, lol. Thanks for the catch.

 catbarf wrote:

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
It seems to me that 9th allows for a 'make-or-break' turn in the game that can be difficult to avoid with some faction/army matchups.

I've played a fair bit of 9th so far (in-person some, but also thanks to TTS), and this matches my experience, but I think the first-turn advantage is a big part of it.

I've seen, broadly, three flavors of 'one-turn victory'. They're not actually game over in one turn, but make it extremely difficult for the other player to recover.
1. One player grabs all the objectives, seizing the initiative, and is tenacious enough to hold.
2. One player infiltrates their army to be right outside the enemy's deployment zone, or uses movement blockers like spore mines, and keeps the enemy pinned in their deployment zone, allowing them to grab all the objectives as per #1.
3. One player alpha-strikes to wipe out the bulk of the enemy's forces, then takes the objectives.

Because you can efficiently build an army to do one (or more) of these, if you get the first turn you can execute the plan and put your opponent at a severe disadvantage. People say to use more terrain, but while that definitely helps prevent #3, it also makes #2 easier, so it's a bit of a wash.

I have seen the going-second player successfully execute one of these, but it's much harder than if you get the first turn. And I don't think the extra round of scoring at the end of the game helps if you're three turns' worth of objectives behind or you got tabled two turns ago.

I really think it boils down to the game no longer having a turn or two of 'closing to contact' before the bloodbath starts, and the IGOUGO structure allowing the starting player to execute their full turn's worth of activity without counterplay. Compared to prior editions we have greater mobility, smaller boards, longer ranges, more firepower, and scoring right off the bat- it feels like starting the battle 1/3 of the way through.

I think it has a lot more to do with the actual missions.

Retrieval (11) has super deep deployment zones, objectives just 4" from the DZ, and a requirement to hold just two to get 10 points.
Scorched (12) has only 10" deep deployment, objectives 12" from deploy, and a one/two requirement.

Most armies should have zero problems holding two objectives 4" from DZ with good terrain. Then the battle is secondaries and preventing the opponent from "more". That same army that might be relatively static would really struggle badly in Scorched and would become a list building loss rather than a tactical one.

Like you mentioned someone with heavy infiltrate will control so much board that scoring in 12 would be way harder than in 11.

The last game I played I won despite going second specifically because of scoring at the end of turn 5. I won 73-72 against a DG army because a LoC failed to kill a squad of tactical marines and they didn't fail the morale check on an objective. 5 points came from primary being scored at the end (hold more).

Completely anecdotal, but yeah I think the change is huge.

So instead of fixing the outdated core rules they're adding more bloat of errata and FAQs, and on top of they wrote their own article praising themselves AND the white Knights are eating it up.

This is classic GW, holy gak.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So instead of fixing the outdated core rules they're adding more bloat of errata and FAQs, and on top of they wrote their own article praising themselves AND the white Knights are eating it up.

This is classic GW, holy gak.

They didn't come to a conclusion. They outlined the reason for their decisions and showed supporting data. And they'll collect more data and make further evidence based changes.

Why you gotta be gakky about it?

Like I know nothing short of AA will make you happy, but come on...

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So instead of fixing the outdated core rules they're adding more bloat of errata and FAQs, and on top of they wrote their own article praising themselves AND the white Knights are eating it up.

This is classic GW, holy gak.

They didn't come to a conclusion. They outlined the reason for their decisions and showed supporting data. And they'll collect more data and make further evidence based changes.

Why you gotta be gakky about it?

Like I know nothing short of AA will make you happy, but come on...

I'm not being gakky about it. A tight ruleset prevents CORE issues to begin with. See what I did there?

To think that just adding bloat on top of a badly written ruleset is the solution means nobody learned from 6th onwards.

The very nature of the systems mechanics and lethality of the game make can make first turns quite painful. I know some lists that it wouldn't matter as much for but generally speaking there are issues baked into the system we need to think of.

Generally rolling back over all lethality or buffing survival for units with properly priced units could help or a core, real, revamp where you aren't just power creeping up and up.

Basically some armies will always suffer with this kind of system, especially glass cannons or squishy high fire power, low durability forces.

Thing is I don't think these problems will ever really change as they don't want a system to work. They just want to bloat out, power creep up then burn it all down and start over. Doesn't sell things well enough to actually make a stable, good system, even if they could.

20% difference....

I do miss the larger board size. The new one feels like I am just right in the enemy's face and maneuvering, while still an important tactical element, is just choosing exactly where I will be right in the enemy's face.

I think the smaller size would work better in Age of Sigmar where the edge most 6" is rarely used for anything save units coming in from the edge, and ranged weapon ranges are far shorter (24" is quite a long range in AoS, 30" or more restricted to just a few options in a few armies). But in 40k with a large amount of high movement units and a massive amount of shooting at 24" or more it does not make as much sense.

I prefer forces to be far enough apart that only really long range stuff or fast units that gun it way forwards are in range. But that's just me, and failing that the new rules around first turn are a nice change.

Yeah the smaller the board the less it makes me happy, even if I don't have lots of long range stuff, I like the tactical movement more than just the " Get Um ! " strategy all the time.

I praised the smaller board instead, and also the 9th mechanics that incentivize close combat. I've alwyas wanted an edition in which shooting and melee is roughly 50/50 on average.

Rules wise this is definitely the best edition ever (well since 3rd at least as I never played 1st and 2nd), now I just hope codex creep doesn't ruin everything.

We live in an age were 40k is dominated by meele and AoS is dominated by shooting. Weird.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Seems like the first decent metawatch, and that's because they have someone from Goonhammer on to have a proper chat.

Not sure what to make of the Craftworlds list, I don't think Ulthwe Dire Avengers are good enough to run that many, but it's an army that looks like it would play the objective game well.

Yeah, at 11pm I am feeling them but not THAT much. They still die like a stiff breeze compared to MEQ troops, and pretty much anyone from guardsmen to tacticals can have a favorable exchange with them pointswise just by nature of their low defense and not particularly impressive damage.

As people have said - I think "first turn imbalance" will just give way to greater faction imbalance.

I feel the First Turn advantage is that moving on to the objectives puts your opponent in check. They have to deal with it - because as the article sort of implies, giving a 15-5, or 15-0 turn 2 is often game over (would be interesting to see some more stats on this though). Unfortunately this is to some degree a function of probability. Its inevitable you will sometimes fail to clear units with shooting, fail to make charges to tie up objectives etc etc. So Player 1 can get that initial lead and have a very easy walk to the finishing line. Its precisely those factions that can reliably stop this (Harlequins, Slaanesh) who will be able to capitalise on the turn 5 changes.

I don't think Dire Avengers are mad underpowered at 11 points - but making them a quarter of your list seems very keen, even with Asurmen. Especially if you are also bringing a 20 strong guardian bomb (or at least I assume its going to be run that way). Fishing on Doom is going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting (which, to be fair, it can do, but I'm not sure sufficiently reliably).

I'd still probably cut something from the troops for another unit of War Walkers.

 Blackie wrote:
I praised the smaller board instead, and also the 9th mechanics that incentivize close combat. I've alwyas wanted an edition in which shooting and melee is roughly 50/50 on average.

Rules wise this is definitely the best edition ever (well since 3rd at least as I never played 1st and 2nd), now I just hope codex creep doesn't ruin everything.

Yea I think a larger board would spread the objectives more and melee wouldn't be as key as it is now. So many people want melee to be a thing and it finally is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'm not being gakky about it. A tight ruleset prevents CORE issues to begin with. See what I did there?

To think that just adding bloat on top of a badly written ruleset is the solution means nobody learned from 6th onwards.

I don't understand where you see bloat. Is it the codexes or the FAQ that you're referencing here?

I guess we'll both agree that there's more and more rules floating around, but we disagree on the outcome/purpose of them.

I've won a lot games going second. It is not preferable but there are some major advantage to it. Mainly - You get to react and typically the most valued targets are out in the open because they were trying to hurt you.

If you are a durable army like crons...Going second is almost preferable because you will almost always win battles of attrition and you aren't forced to overextend to alpha when you go second. So the Data collected here is also not a surprise to me.

I think the biggest issue with the game is too few turns. going back to 6 or 7 turns would fix a lot of these issues. Objectives on the other hand should all be scored at the end of the game turn - not the beginning of each player turn. That is just common sense.

 Xenomancers wrote:

I think the biggest issue with the game is too few turns. going back to 6 or 7 turns would fix a lot of these issues.

I think 5 is appropriate. Games finish on time and people aren't sitting on their hands.

Objectives on the other hand should all be scored at the end of the game turn - not the beginning of each player turn. That is just common sense.

That just means the opponent has no input. If I have fast units that can overwhelm and score you can do nothing about it.

 Galas wrote:
We live in an age were 40k is dominated by meele and AoS is dominated by shooting. Weird.

This is hardly a first for 40k and AoS is new enough that it hasn't had that much time to feel the ebb and flow of GW's rules team.

I just think it's funny that it kind of seemed like they had Nick write the first meta-watch as a kind of sideways - knock on anyone claiming 1st turn advantage was a thing (in the face of both the core rules very obviously and clearly granting an advantage to player 1, and also the stats available at the time backing this up), and now here we are.

Meta-watch 1: Hi everyone! Mikey B here to introduce my good friend Nick, who's going to explain to you how, despite having not really played in a tourney himself yet, all the data is wrong and there is no 1st turn advantage! Also, please stop critiquing my missions!

Meta-watch 2 - Not gonna lie - have already forgotten what this was even about

Meta-watch 3 - HI everyone! Mikey B back to bring you the news on how we fixed that first turn advantage!


Seriously though - kudos to them for addressing it finally. At this point, even the most ardent opponents of "first turn advantage as a thing" have to see how this is better. Right? Or no?

I think the biggest issue with the game is too few turns. going back to 6 or 7 turns would fix a lot of these issues. Objectives on the other hand should all be scored at the end of the game turn - not the beginning of each player turn. That is just common sense.

Eh - I think the biggest issue is still in the missions themselves. They are better than what we've had from GW in the past, but I had to laugh when I read the line in the article about how "It's really important to out-maneuver your opponent now". No dude. Put the Kool-aide down and go outside for a bit. Manuever has never been less important.

I think the missions and objectives need to be mixed up a bit more. Right now, the game is too predictable, and really only boils down to two choices - "Get there first and survive your attempts to kill me" or "get there second and try to kill you". Most of the objective placement happening at mid-board doesn't help, the secondaries still need another review (although the FAQ helped to a point), and there also need to be some missions where the objective is occasionally about something other than "Get yer dudes to point x".

For a while I thought my issues with 9th were the core rules, but those are growing on me (outside of a few minor gripes). The more I play, the more I realize the missions need the most tweaking. At least for me anyway ...

Tycho wrote:
Seriously though - kudos to them for addressing it finally. At this point, even the most ardent opponents of "first turn advantage as a thing" have to see how this is better. Right? Or no?

Better, but we won't know how fixed it is until much later. And we'll layer on all the new codexes between now and then. I'm impressed they managed to gather data for over 17,000 games.

Better, but we won't know how fixed it is until much later. And we'll layer on all the new codexes between now and then. I'm impressed they managed to gather data for over 17,000 games.

Agreed. What I'll be curious to see is how the scoring change for player 2 in turn 5 effects things. One of the issues our group has is that games rarely make it that far (even with the correct amount of terrain) so it almost didn't matter. I do think that fix is an elegant one, and to their credit, it's one I don't think I saw anyone else suggest.

Also think the die role change was a good move. Very cheeky. lol

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

I think the biggest issue with the game is too few turns. going back to 6 or 7 turns would fix a lot of these issues.

I think 5 is appropriate. Games finish on time and people aren't sitting on their hands.

Objectives on the other hand should all be scored at the end of the game turn - not the beginning of each player turn. That is just common sense.

That just means the opponent has no input. If I have fast units that can overwhelm and score you can do nothing about it.

Sounds like you are losing the game if you are getting overwhelmed and pushed off objectives. Or if you can't remove them. The issue with scoring in the command phase is clear...they have even made a rule to address it it is just incomplete. It's okay for the player going first to have objective advnatage the whole game except for turn 5...why? Why turn 5? Why not turn 2 or 3? It is so random. Realistically you are lucky to have units left on turn 5. Plus in tournaments you are lucky to even make t to turn 5. So IMO this is a real disconnect from the reality of the game. If anyone should have the objective advantage it should be the player going second. Not the player who gets to strike first.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Seems like the first decent metawatch, and that's because they have someone from Goonhammer on to have a proper chat.

Not sure what to make of the Craftworlds list, I don't think Ulthwe Dire Avengers are good enough to run that many, but it's an army that looks like it would play the objective game well.

Yeah, at 11pm I am feeling them but not THAT much. They still die like a stiff breeze compared to MEQ troops, and pretty much anyone from guardsmen to tacticals can have a favorable exchange with them pointswise just by nature of their low defense and not particularly impressive damage.

Yeah, the great thing about DA is that they're Craftworlds' cheapest troop and you can fit MSUs into a wave serpent or falcon and that's how you'd keep them safe to make a difference at the end of the game. They don't have the range, lethality or durability to last 5 turns in this list, regardless of slapping Ulthwe traits on them.

Back on topic, I've not had the chance to play many games this edition, but going second really hurt the 2/3 times I've managed to get a game and they were not even that competitive. Hoping to see the tournament results in a few months when there is substantial enough data and then discuss further. For now, good changes and a positive response from GW is all we can hope for.