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The rough draft of it looks like this:

Movement Phase
Player A
Player B
Reserves Player A
Reserves Player B

Psychic Phase
Player A
Player B

Shooting Phase
Player A
Player B

Assault Phase
Player A Charge sub phase
Player B Charge sub phase
Fight Sub Phase

Introduction
So….what exactly am I trying to fix here? That’s the first question I ask myself when I start tinkering with rules. Change just for the sake of change can be fun, but then I’m usually just making new problems without making the system better. Obviously, any tinkering with the rules is begun with the hope of making something more fun. In this exact case, I’m trying to reduce the benefit of getting first turn and allow the opposing player more chances to react. I’ve played a couple 1,000 point games with these rules and have liked the results so far. It seems like a simple enough idea that I’m sure someone else has made similar proposals. I would love to see other versions if anyone could point them out to me

Turn Order Variants
The rough draft above was my first idea. I thought it might also be interesting to roll off at the beginning of every Turn to see who would go first, or at least swap the positions of Player A and B. When it came time to test the rules out, my discussion with my friend led to something a bit more radical and we rolled off at the beginning of every phase. I made the arbitrary ruling that the person who roles highest HAS to go first instead of receiving the choice of doing so. I didn’t want the start of every phase to become moment of great tactical intrigue as the pros and cons are weighed.
It made the game a bit more intense as every tactical decision you made in the previous phase may rely on you going first. It may be a bit too random for some people, so find what works best for you.

Movement Phase
In the movement phase, it’s immediately obvious going second offers a huge advantage. Much like getting second deployment, you know exactly where the enemy guns are going to be and can move to avoid them. Going first is a bit of a nightmare scenario for short range weapons as your intended target can just wander off. However, by going first you do get to choose where the fight is happening and limit where your opponent can advance. It’s an interesting trade-off. It mostly hurts vehicles as they are the only models with limited firing arcs. But….maybe this is ok? Vehicles are rather powerful units (usually) so stealth nerfing them a little isn’t that bad. Overall, my opponent both enjoyed getting to react to the others movement. I also made a slight adjustment to reserves that messes with things a little more….
Reserves
Instead of handling reserves at the beginning of the movement phase, I moved it to the end after both players have moved. This includes rolling to see which models are coming in. It adds a bit of tactical uncertainty that I enjoy and also allows reserves to react to the opponent’s movement regardless of who went first. Reserves are usually a reactionary force, so this change feels good to me.

Shooting Phase
I feel this phase is the great deciderer of most 40K games. If you go first and kill key targets before they get a chance to react, you win! Not really, of course, but that’s how it often feels. The alternate turn structure I’m proposing here doesn’t actually help much with alleviating that. In an ideal world, everyone’s actions would be resolved simultaneously. There are definitely ways to do that, but it ends up with too much bookkeeping for a game of 40K’s scale. So….we need more special rules? Specifically, it’s a rule the player who is taking the second turn in the shooting phase has access to:
Return Fire!
When a unit is fired upon, before hits are rolled, it’s player may declare that the unit will Return Fire! (This has the same timing as declaring you are going to Jink) The fired upon unit may make a full shooting attack resolved against the unit shooting at it. All shots are resolved simultaneously, much like models striking at the same initiative. Just remove casualties at the end. A unit that uses Return Fire! may not fire in their own shooting phase. A unit may only use this ability once per phase. To summarize

Unit A shoots at Unit B. Unit B may declare it will Return Fire and shoots at Unit A. Resolve casualties simultaneously. Only the player going second in the shooting phase may use this rule.

The purpose of Return Fire! is to allow a shooty unit to have some effect on the game even if they are going to be wiped out. It’s not all powerful though as the unit shooting you may not be the unit you want to shoot. You then have the choice to shoot back anyways (might as well take some of those guys with me…) or hope to survive the storm of fire. Just remember that only the player going second gets this ability.
I was quite happy with the effect of this rule on the game. It felt a lot more fun to see casualties happening on both sides of the table and gives both players some new and interesting tactical choices to make. Knowing that whatever you are shooting at will get a chance to shoot back can be worrisome.
Some addendums
In the test games I ran, vehicles were not allowed to use Return Fire! (except for walkers, because walkers :p ). It seemed to work out ok.
There are also some additional questions pertaining to Jink and Going to Ground. If a unit has returned fire at full ballistic skill should it be allowed to Jink or Go to Ground at a later point? Seems kind of cheesy, but it’s the same effect as going first and jink/g2g when the player going second starts to shoot. The only restriction we placed was that you can’t g2g against the shooting attacking that triggered Return Fire!
The way I wrote this rule would probably make GW proud. I need to find a way to better summarize it :p

Additional Addendum
Given how models are able to scamper around vehicles a bit too easily sometimes, we allowed non-zooming vehicles to rotate in place up to 45 degrees in the shooting phase, but only if it’s to get a target into LOS. Just a minor thing.

Assault Phase
is interesting to note that there is one lest round of combat per turn, but now turn one assaults may be attempted by both players as both have had a chance to move forward. Two assault armies should be getting right to business.
As players are getting a chance to react to their opponents movement and shooting, Overwatch no longer seemed necessary so we stripped it out for the test games. It was rather refreshing to not need to worry about giving extra shots to your opponent. We did let flamers keep their Wall of Death rule though as 1: it’s a really cool name and 2: Short range weapons suffer from reactionary movement and need all the help they can get.

As far as I know, Tau are the only race to have a rather prevalent rule attached to Overwatch. It wouldn’t be that big of a loss, but I don’t want to strip out their flavor of units supporting each other. My thought then would be to allow them to use the special rule Return Fire! in a similar fashion. Basically, if a Tau unit is shot, that unit and other Tau units with the special rule within the six inches may all trigger Return Fire! Sounds fitting, but I don’t have the means to test it.

One other change I tried in the assault phase is that equal weapon skills hit on 3+, not 4+. This is simply because I hate pillow fights and want to see close combat resolved a bit more speedily.


Conclusion
My friend and I both enjoyed playing with the new rules. It was nice to not have to wait as long for a chance to play and the opportunities to react made things feel a bit more dynamic. I’m not entirely sold on the Return Fire! rule I introduced but the shooting phase needs something to help balance it. There are also a lot of special abilities that trigger at odd times under the new system. For example, popping smoke, if left as a shooting phase ability, is completely useless for the player going second. My friend and I made the ruling to just trigger it in the movement phase and that solved the dilemma. There are surely many more abilities like that which will require similar adjustment. Feel free to ask me any clarifying questions and if you actually like my bizarre ideas enough to try them I would love to hear how it went. Any feedback is welcome.

I have to think about how I feel about some of the other stuff, but I definitely like the idea of the initiative being rolled for each turn (each phase might be over doing it), and I think "return fire" is an excellent rule. The one change I would make to it would be to make heavy weapons fire snap shots when returning fire (representing the fact that return fire is reactionary, and it would take longer to bring to bring the heavy weapons to bear on a new target). Of course, I'm also one of those people who thinks Snap Shots should be BS1, so you can still fire blast weapons, just with potentially 11" of scatter.

HI.
I much prefer alternating phases for 40k.I think the turn structure to OP posted is good for the current 40k rules.

But I would much prefer to streamline it a bit.(Put psychic abilities back in to the relevant action phase, movement, shooting or assault.)

This would allow a much simpler structure ..

Player A moves.
Player B moves

Player A shoots
Player B shoots

Player A assaults
Player B assaults

Roll for initiative each turn.


We could re structure the game turn something like this...

Roll for initiative each turn..

Player A moves.
Player B shoots.
Player A reacts.(moves , assaults or snap fires.)

Player B moves
Player A shoots.
Player B reacts.(moves , assaults or snap fires.)

The 'react' action allows units to act in their best interest.
(Those that are better off shooting can 'snap fire' out of turn .Those better of assaulting can assault, and those better off moving toward or away from combat can.)

Units can react in their react phase OR shoot in their proper shooting phase.(Just to add a bit of tactical option into the game turn, rather than additional conditional rules.)

Just a thought.

That is a rather unique idea. It might end up favoring hiding behind a building all game long though. It will mostly depend what the "react" actions are. And I would love to ax the psychic phase eventually, but the psychic powers in general need a lot of work. But that's another thread

In my opinion, alterning phases would make both 40k and Fantasy much more interesting and fun games to play.

It's as simple as discarding the obsolete I Go (and do everything while you watch), You Go (and do everything while I watch) system and implementing something like what's been proposed in this thread. I move, you move, I psych, you psych, I shoot, You shoot, I charge, You charge, then let's resolve the close combat phase. Next turn, you go first.

In fantasy, the only thing needed to adjust the current and obsolete IGOUGO to a more dynamic system is to put Charge moves in the Assault phase, just like in 40k.

The fact that 40k still employs the IGOUGO mechanic screams high and loud how much of a "3.4" the 7th edition truly is, and how chained to the past the guys at rules development are.

@Korinov.
I agree all the rules bloat in the current 40k rules is down to the devs having to make the rules backwards compatible to 2nd ed 40k/WHFB 3th ed.

If the devs were allowed to re write the 40k rules for 40k, they would probably be closer to Epic Armaggeddon rules, than WHFB.(138 pages for everything including all the army lists!)
(They have tried to re-write the rules to fit the game play of 40k since 4th edition!But keep getting over ruled by the corporate managers/ sales department.According to Rick,Andy, Jake ,Alessio,et all .)

Looking at other fun battle games balanced for competitive play available today. 40k rules look very over complicated yet deliver very restricted game play.

I think the tactical depth could be increased , simply by putting all movement back into the movement phase.
Rather than move in the movement phase, run in the shooting phase, and charging into assault in the assault phase.

I know some people do not want to add the movement stat back onto the units profile.But using fixed movement rates instead of rolling dice would help quite a bit IMO.

We could, give units a maximum move based on their unit description ..
EG
Slow infantry 4"(Ignore terrain movement modifier..)
Infantry 5"
Fast Infantry 6"

Tanks/walkers= 6"
Fast vehicles =9"
Bikes/skimmers =12"

This would allow the following tactical options in the movement phase.
A)Stay still and shoot to full effect, in the shooting phase.(Heavy ,ordnanace , double range (from 12" to 24")on rapid fire weapons.)

B)Move then shoot 'move and shoot' weapons only.In the shooting phase.

C) Move then charge into assault.(fight assault in the assault phase.)

D) Move then move again, and not shoot or launch an assault.

We could let difficult terrain reduce maximum movement by 2".(When entering or moving through difficult terrain.)


Very difficult terrain could simply cost a movement action .(When entering or moving through very difficult terrain.)Rather than random casualties on the roll of a 1.

EG units can shoot OR assault OR move when entering or moving through very difficult terrain.

Just some ideas for discussion.

With that turn structure wouldn't Player B be at a disadvantage, since he always has to suffer losses before his units get to fire (and if he stays hidden, he can't fire himself).

DrunkPhilisoph wrote:
With that turn structure wouldn't Player B be at a disadvantage, since he always has to suffer losses before his units get to fire (and if he stays hidden, he can't fire himself).

The fact is that, ideally, shooting should happen simultaneously, just like close combat. As long as one player gets to shoot before the other (which isn't really all that realistic), they'll have an advantage, because they always get to reduce their opponent's firepower before they get attacked.

Personally, I don't think it would be that hard to resolve shooting simultaneously. One player does their shooting attacks. As enemy models are killed, they place a marker next to the model to remind them which ones are dead. Then the second player does the same. Once both players have finished shooting, both players remove their casualties.

My main question, though, would be: should shooting be subject to Initiative?

Sounds a lot like lotr sbg. The way you would treat shooting is the way they treat close combat at the moment ie everyone fights at the same time?

DrunkPhilisoph wrote:
With that turn structure wouldn't Player B be at a disadvantage, since he always has to suffer losses before his units get to fire (and if he stays hidden, he can't fire himself).

Yes, it hurts to go last, just as in vanilla 40K. Any chance to inflict damage first means you have less to hurt back with. When I first set out to alter the turn structure I tried working with simultaneous shooting. It started feeling like too much of a headache. I'll let someone else come up with that system
What I did come up with is the Return Fire! special rule. Your infantry will always have a chance to retaliate (to some degree at least) but it isn't a complete "get out of jail free" card.

Another way to run Return Fire! (Which I haven't had a chance to test yet), would be to allow a unit fired upon to Return Fire! on any unit it wishes to. That new target also have a chance to Return Fire! and onwards and onwards. It seemed a bit to chaotic though, hence the more limited version.

If I ever went to an alternating turn structure for the game, I would absolutely insist that the entire shooting phase be "effectively" simultaneous.

You could, for example, lay down members of a squad that died (or place a number marker,) but still count them as shooting in your shooting phase, and then remove all casualties from both sides at the end of the combined phase.

That should be doable in most games. Large scale would require maybe too much paperwork. I'm curious how jink and g2g would work in that rule set.

Move running to the movement phase, and declare jinks and GTG at the start of the shooting phase, before any actual shooting.

An issue that's come up with alternating/combined 40k structure is that the assault phase has to somehow be doubled to retain it's comparable effectiveness to regular turn structure. In regular 40k, there are two assault phases per game turn. If you combine both player turns, there still has to be two assault phases. Just doing the assualt phase twice is rather clumsy and boring.

The assault phase needs a lot of work. I don't like how so many abilities are only active the first turn, I don't like the clunky sweeping advance mechanic, and I don't like the to hit chart either. There's lots of opportunities for improvement there.

As it related to alternating turns, losing an assault phase doesn't feel too debilitating. The game runs by a bit quicker so you barely notice it. It does mean an assaults army gets fewer attacks though.
An idea I haven't had the opportunity to test yet would be putting in a fight sub phase at the end of the movement or shooting phase. It might be an interesting situation with both players maneuvering around an ongoing assault without knowing the impending results.
I'll have to try that some time.