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Now that WHFB has been announced, and I am no longer boycotting AoS. I would like to say that the Double Turn is one of the main things from keeping me from playing this game.

This rule is so bad it hurts.

If they did alternating Sub Phases, then it could work. But having two turns in a row?

I played nurgle two seasons in a row. It didnt destroy my army. Yes ive had power gamers exploit it. The end result was no worse than any other version of the game that they exploit. I will say yes with alt activation you lose the ability to easily manage your wombo combo buffing because you cant do your whole turn at once and have to make some tough choices but thats to me something that i loved about it, because there is a noticeable dearth of tough choices in aos.

I also dont understand the hypothetical slaanesh example. If they string out i dont see how that gains them a massive advsntage in alt activation. You can magic, shoot, and charge them same as if they strung out normally in a normal game. What about alt activation is giving them some double turn level exploit that has no counter other than flying?

Why does that not happen in other games with alt activation?

Movement phase of turn 1, the speakers activate first and run across the board to make a line in front of the enemy deployment zone. Since units cannot move within 3" of an enemy model, the enemy player is now trapped in their own deployment zone for the entire round. Even if they activate first they get to move one unit before it happens, in order to block that play they would need to do something similar.

But that was just an example. The end result is that unit-by-unit creates as many problems as it solves. Better to go hybrid: first player does their hero, then the second, first player does their movement, then the second, shooting phase alternates like the combat phase, first player does their charge phase, then the other, then combat and battleshock. Still requires adjustment but does not open up as many cans of worms.

How can they not just declare a charge and charge them? In the system i created if you were going to do that, id just activate a combat unit to charge and fight them the very next activation. Theyd then be charged by a second unit if they were still around on my next activation. I dont see this as a real problem. The slaanesh player would have sacrificed a unit to hold me back a couple activations. Thats fine. I still get to react and fight them in return.

They can do the same thing with normal phases as well with almost the same result. Theyd throw their dude screen forward and on my turn id charge them all.

Though TBH the whole discussion is rather moot since GW won't be doing anything like it anytime soon. Especially when 'deploy first go first then alternate turns' more or less fixes everything with the minimum amount of change. Endless spells would need work, but there seems to be a clear trend pointing towards an overhaul anyways.

Oh i have no delusions that anything will be changed ever.

 auticus wrote:
I guess because the games’ balance is already a burning train wreck, the balance shifts caused by alt activation dont really impact my opinion. Having done it for three years against power players i can also say the balance of the game was roughly the same. There was no gross imbalancing issues that came up thst wasnt anything you dont already deal with in aos 24/7.

The only ones that i can see sensitive to this are people that have built armies that take advantage of double turn or who really like elite small armies because those would have a disadvantage in board control over larger armies. And i know people hate buying new things to get back to optimal. Thats reasonable.

Also ive been doing alt activation in many games for many years and have not noticed any significant uptick in time.

That same complaint was levied when i put in alt activation to aos (the time) and we pretty solidly refuted that over an entire summer of playing where some would use alt activation and some would use standard turns and both types of games took nearly the same amount of time pretty much always.


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And yes i have a complete alt activation set of rules ive published on here before.

Actually, I just dislike the whole Alt activation idea.
Been playing epic for a good 15 years or so and the game suffers badly because of the way it’s done.
It’s also insanely clunky and adds a lot of time to games.

So those games were done with identical players and armies, same missions etc I assume?
Also, everything went the same way?

Alt activation can work fine in some games (epic is a good example of that) but for games like 40k and AoS it’s just too clunky and time consuming.
Would also be a pain in clock timed tournaments.

Im not sure how its clunky. You activate a unit then i do. For clocks its identical to chess. Chess is an alt activation system. If anything it makes it easier to manage on the clock because it removes sandbagging and everyone is progressing in a turn at the same pace, you dont have to worry about people not getting “their turn”.

Additionally it stops alpha strike which to me is a huge plus.

 auticus wrote:
Im not sure how its clunky. You activate a unit then i do. For clocks its identical to chess. Chess is an alt activation system.

Because unit count changes the play a lot.
MSU armies can gain the same as a double turn essentially.
So basically constant stop and run play, makes sense there.

Msu doesnt gain the same as a double turn at all. They gain a few extra activations. Thats nothing like gaining a full armys activations x2.

If it were true that msu gave similar results to double turn id not want anything to do with it.

Last result of a game i did with alt activation: 15 units vs 10. Thats 5 extra activations. Vs double turn which would have been 30 activations.

Very different scope and outcome.

 auticus wrote:
Msu doesnt gain the same as a double turn at all. They gain a few extra activations. Thats nothing like gaining a full armys activations x2.

If it were true that msu gave similar results to double turn id not want anything to do with it.

Last result of a game i did with alt activation: 15 units vs 10. Thats 5 extra activations. Vs double turn which would have been 30 activations.

Very different scope and outcome.

That’s also depending on the army.
You could easily spam chaff to burn early activations to set up with harder hitting units.
While it can work, it would change a lot about the game and how armies play.

It would also push people into magic and shooting heavy to prevent units getting close enough for combat.

Like I said... I've been playing games that have alt activation for years. The boogy men that we talk about here aren't that common over there.

Everyone could spam chaffe to burn early activations. Everyone has the ability to create their armies knowing that. Thats the same in every alt activation game. The only ones that impact are the people that want to run tiny elite armies that have 5 or so units of ultra badass models.

The ultra badass models are still ultra badass... but now there's a cost to being ultra badass in loss of battlefield control. Which is how any scrub army has to maximize on a real battlefield to beat an elite foe in the first place.

It would definitely change a lot about the game and how armies play. It would introduce tough decisions into the game. It would remove the ability to double turn entirely on someone and win the game by a lucky dice roll. It would remove alpha strikes from the game where you can just move and attack with impunity where your opponent has no reaction, thus removing just how important going first is. (going first is so important in a lot of IGOUGO games because you cannot react you just stand there and take the brunt of an entire enemy force in one go and then your response is significantly weaker because you have now lost units... thats why 40k is in the state it is in)

I don't see how alt activation would push people into magic and shooting heavy units to prevent getting close enough for combat. I've never once seen that be a thing in any alt activation system. I don't see any gain in trying to avoid close combat just because you have alt activation or why magic and range is suddenly much more attractive.

I do agree it changes how the game is played. I don't see how those are negative changes barring people that like to play small model count elite armies and would be chuffed to discover that they now have a disadvantage in loss of battlefield control, where they didn't have to worry about that before.

I also to reiterate know none of this is going to ever happen.

But then that’s not just removing the double turn, you are fundamentally changing how the game works and plays (which currently isn’t too bad)

Why not just go back to what worked and drop double turns?

Only thing it would really change is some may be inclined to pick up the odd hero or so that helps get the first turn.

I'm just saying that alternate activation is my favorite form of interaction in a wargame period. If I had a magic wand to wave that is what I would do.

If tomorrow the GW team said "hey AOS 3.0 is out and double turn has been removed, you just roll for who gets first turn at the beginning of the game and thats it like its always been" it wouldn't be my favorite, but I would also play with that without saying much of anything.

IGOUGO still has the problem of going first has a huge advantage, and alpha strikes where you stand there doing nothing but watch your opponent drop units in front of you and charge mindlessly for easy winz, but thats been a staple of warhammer and 40k for over a decade.

Maybe alt-activation should get its own house-rules thread. That way Auticus can fully lay out how he does it and we can discuss the merits independent of the double-turn discussion.

By all means, I’d give it a go.
I still play epic to this day so it’s not a new thing for me and I do enjoy it.

I just feel it would kill off AoS as it’s too different from what we have now.
Dropping double turn is far easier.

As I said though, I’d happily try it out.

I dont' think it would kill off AOS. It would be a transition just like moving from whfb to aos (when official points were added) was a transition for a lot of players.

I again also don't think its ever going to happen and just dropping double turn would be at a minimum sufficient.

I also think moving beyond IGOUGO goes against GW's design philosophy. Alt activation does introduce more tough decisions and I don't think GW is interested in producing a game that has tough decisions in it. Its a barrier to entry.

Hm. From what I have played, Double Turn make players more cautious. The interest of this system is the uncertainty for the next turn. If you know for sure when you play in a IGOUGO game, you plan accordingly and it plays a lot in the influence of the game. When you don't know, you take into account the two possibilities you can have (playing first or second).

But I certainly wish there were more mechanisms to give a choice for taking second when you have the priority. I know a few scenarios give advantage to the second player for marking victory points, but they are still the minority. The way Endless Spells work are actually making Predatory Spells not appealing to take in your army, because you're paying for a spell that can be turned against you.

If all scenarios give advantage for the second player while considering victory points, then there would be a more powerful incentive to choose second when you have priority for double turn. Choice is what makes things interesting in a strategy game. If it is just more interesting to go always first, then you only have to deal with the random part of the system.

Having played both IGOUGO and alternate activations systems (even those with cards or random), I have found neither are especially better than the other. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Double turn is also the same, to me.

But I can certainly see AoS without it. Players would definitely play the game differently, though, and I'm not sure it would be always in a good way.


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 auticus wrote:


I also think moving beyond IGOUGO goes against GW's design philosophy. Alt activation does introduce more tough decisions and I don't think GW is interested in producing a game that has tough decisions in it. Its a barrier to entry.

GW actually made games with alternate activations. Warcry is the best recent example. And given Warcry simple yet elegant rules, I wouldn't say it's a question of barrier to entry.

It's just a question of design choices for the game system. To be honest, and from my experience, I found alternate activations work best with skirmish level games. When it's become more on mass scale battle, it's become much more messy. I still remember that big AT43 game I made in my former club...

Warcry and middle earth both have a form of alternate activation. To clarify I meant for one of their main games.

 auticus wrote:
Warcry and middle earth both have a form of alternate activation. To clarify I meant for one of their main games.

You can also add Kill Team. While you think they're not main games, they are still part of their main universes. I don't think they think less of them in that way.

When I say not main games I mean they have a very small playerbase compared to the main games.

 auticus wrote:
When I say not main games I mean they have a very small playerbase compared to the main games.

Honestly, I don't think that's the point here.

For example, I have played a 40k with the Kill Team way of handling alternate activation on the different phases of a turn - including the change for charges during the move phase. It worked as fine, but we sure did play our units completely differently from a regular 40k game. Focus fire could still be done, but we did play on the possibility to shoot at an unit that didn't already fired during the turn to hinder the opponent's ability in that field. The way the move phase is played also changed massively, and playing second actually was a real incentive in more than one case, so that you could react immediately to your opponent's own moves and even get out of line of sight before he could shoot.

The game was more reactive, but ours plans had to be more as well.

What I mean is, what you gain on one part, you lose on another. Alternate activations sure make the game more reactive, but it also tend to wreck your plans - you have to always adapt and react to your opponent's former action. IGOUGO systems are sure more rigid, but they allow you to plan / act with your army as a whole more easily.

The point I was making is that I don't think GW will put alt activation into the main games (the games with the biggest player base) because it makes for more tougher choices, which is considered a barrier of entry.

Everything you have said I fully agree with. The fact that IGOUGO systems allow you to plan and act with your army much more easily is spot on, and why I find it to be the inferior of the two systems we are discussing.

Because as you also 100% spot on nailed, alt activation means your plans have to be more fluid. You will be tested much more than you are in an IGOUGO system where you can force your will with impunity. It makes at-the-table play matter more.

 auticus wrote:
The point I was making is that I don't think GW will put alt activation into the main games (the games with the biggest player base) because it makes for more tougher choices, which is considered a barrier of entry.

No, that's really not a barrier of entry to me. One isn't especially harder to learn than the other, it's just how you want your game to feel that is more important. If you want a nervous, fast paced game involving a small number of units, alternate activations can translate that perfectly. If you want your players to plan and use their armies as a whole with full synergies / combos, IGOUGO systems can be a better answer. To me, AoS is in the second category - like Warmachine / Horde, actually.

But otherwise, I totally understand your point of view. I too thought alternate activations to be the best system ever for quite a while...and then, I played that massive game of AT43. It was awesome, but I was so completely drained after the day that I also understood how tiring it can be to always react / adapt to my opponent with such a massive number of activations every turn. If we did play IGOUGO style, it would have been easier for us, I have no doubt.

I have always thought that AOS was directly inspired by Magic the Gathering and Warmachine/Hordes.

IGOUGO for me better fits the narrative of -armies- fighting each other. Skirmish games work well with individual activation because they are games with a bunch of -individuals- fighting each other. But at the same time I feel like there is middle ground which ends up working better for both, provided the system is designed to accommodate it.

I do think Auticus should start a thread for alt activation in AoS, it would be a good resource to have around for players interested in trying it.

GW rarely do things in a vacuum. If pretty much all of their recent, non-copy/pasted games (Blood Bowl, Necromunda) games have been going with some form of Alternating Activations then I do think they're planning to introduce it to AoS in some form. I doubt 9th will, just because AoS seems to be used as more of a 'beta test' for their most popular game (thus why we'll probably see Endless Psychic Spells in 9th) but if it proved popular enough in AoS 3.0 I could easily see it going over to 9th.

The new Apocalypse also uses a form of Alternate Activations. LotR was a 'main' game for years too.

So this might be a long post and i'm going to go over a couple things but they do relate to double turns, alt actions, etc.. and not off topic.

I'm going to go over my feelings of double turns, this is really just optional reading you can skip if you want.
I'm going to also talk about 40k Apoc, imo it is something GW might actually move to soon, and eveyone that has played it seems to like the system.
Most importantly Warcry, it was some really good ideas that could make the best GW game if you combine them with AOS and Apoc.
Finally my idea will also stop the "Lowest drop" problem we have too.
My idea is at the bottom.

First, before i get into the good bits, i person am fine with the double turn, but thats b.c i play armies that don't care, or even are benefited from the double turn against me. Tho i do still dislike that it is a part of the game and wish for it to go away, i understand its part of the game and make do, with those 2 things its just another mechanic i need to play with, just like RNG on mission, terrain, and all the other RNG aspects of the game.

The worst part of the Double turn; At least 1/2 the armies can build around it, but the problem is that not all armies can. And even if 1/3 can't build around it thats terrible, especially when a few armies actually benefit from double turns or are not handicapped at all. Armies like IDK on turn 3, Slaanesh with fight first, armies that can flank/deploy/move faster than others, Armies with fight during opponents turn like Khorne, or fight when dies, etc... If every army had a double turn defense mechanic then it wouldn't be so bad, but that is not the case.

Apoc for 40k. Why do i bring this up? Well b.c it is Alternating actions and all damage is at the end of the game turn. Apoc truly has one of the best turn order/phases of any GW game systems yet for large scale games (its like Epic but better). Tho the rules are meant to play with huge armies and you have detachments (For those that don't know, imagine if you had 5k points but you had to make your armies into 500-2k point size bites) and how the alternative works is; Each player picks 1 detachment and does all of their actions for that detachment. WHen playing Apoc at "lower" levels for APoc, it was still normal for each side to have 3-5 detachments, meaning the player would take a full turn with 1 of those detachments, then the other player, if 1 player runs out of detachments then the other player gets to finish all of there other ones.

Warcry: Why talk about this? Well b.c it is full alternating, but with a twist (well 3) and i like them all, everyone i talked to also like them a lot.
1) Priority roles: You each roll 6 dice, your doubles and triples are for abilities, singles gives you priority, who ever has the most singles goes first b.c they are getting the least extra buffs. You have 1 wild dice per turn you can use as a single or to make a double, triple, quad (you can save these for later and stack them, think of them as the free CP in AoS you get at the start of your turn)
1a) IMO this is an amazing system for priority. The player with strong buffs doesn't get priority. How will this help in AoS? Well for double turns make it a roll and put Triumphs there. Each triumph is on an ability chart like in Warcry, you have a Double a Triple and a Quad, etc..
1b) Add in a new one or two as well like Quad: "A unit fights first regardless of other rules" or a double "A unit can make a normal move" , Triples "A unit can shoot", along with the re-rolls like other triumph. Heck give a couple "single" dice triumphs like "make a retreat move, must move closer to your deployment zone"
1c) now if you do get a double turn against you, you at least have 1-3 triumphs or a powerful one, and you have a closer option to not take them and go first.

2) Shield, Hammer, Dagger system while its more meant for deployment and missions, you can expand it (this is where 40k Apoc comes into to play)
You set up your warband into 3 types, Hammer, Shield Sword, you can put and units/fighters in any of them it doesnt matter the type. But at least 1 unit and not more than 1/2 of your units can be in each. What does this do in game? During deployment it tells you where to place these groups, and many missions has objectives for doing something with 1 or more of them like "kill all Shield", "dagger needs to stay live", or "Hammer gets more points for holding objectives".



My idea My full idea is;
Make each player set up their armies into 3 groups, each group must be X points (based off game size). All army rules still/buffs/etc.. still effects all groups.
Each player gets to activate a Group on their turn
Phases are the same other than Damage and Moral (hero>move>shoot>fight&gt Damage and Moral is at the very end of the game turn, Damage then moral.
Roll for triumphs, who ever takes the least gets to take priority to pick 1 group to play first
Now we also have new system for deployment and missions.

As i was typing this out, i decided to heavily shorten it, so not as long as i first thought. I am trying to just get to the points as my english is terrible.

Funnily enough everyone I've spoken to don't use the Apocalypse rules at all. They haven't said they hate them but just use normal 40k rules with huge points which I find stupid since the whole point of the Apoc rules is to streamline and speed up big games so they don't take an entire day or more.

I doubt GW will ever get rid of IGOUGO, it's too ingrained in their design philosophy for the main Warhammer games. What I would like the most is for the double turn to become an optional rule so you have the choice to use it.

Not a AoS player, so maybe the question is going to be dumb. But wouldn't something like a double turn create huge problems with armies that can go all in on magic, shoting or getting where they want real fast. I get that if two bad armies plays vs each other it maybe doesn't matter much. But if someone can, or has to, counter a specific important unit or hero, this creates a very negative expiriance, when some drops down you can't do anything about them getting two turns of doing their thing, other then pray for bad rolls. And the fact that next turn you may get double turn yourself, doesn't matter as much, I think, if your army is already crippled.