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 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I can say I find IGOUGO much more fun, faster, and less arcane.

How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I can say I find IGOUGO much more fun, faster, and less arcane.

How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.

With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.

I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.


As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.

I’m one of the contributors for Gates of 40K. The aim for the conversion was not to just rid ourselves of the horribly outdated IGOUGO system of 40K but to also involve both players at all times. This is what the Warlord family of games (Antares, Bolt Action and Konflikt ’47) does so well with their Action/Reaction system.

GW makes excellent models but their rules are lacking. Instead of watching your opponent do their entire thing while waiting for the few spots that GW threw a bone at you in the form of Command Points, you can instead react to their moves with firefights, running for cover, going down, ambushes, etc.

We’ve played over a score of games averaging at about the 1500 point level and found there isn’t a better game out there that let’s us use our models in such an engaging way.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

OTOH, I think the alpha-strike problem is actually indicative of another problem with 40k: namely that troops are too fast, the battlefield is too small, and our weapons are too powerful. Unit speed needs to be reduced, and general offensive output, especially CQC output, needs to be massively reduced.

The main drawback of this approach, which makes it not valid for wider audience is that it makes games A LOT longer and simple battle lines become totally invalid. Under your raw propositions two battle line armies would just throw dice longer and probably end up with totally random (so usually close call) results, regardless of players skill. You have to rewrite winning conditions for this to work as intended.

But this is very close to what has been my solution to alpha strikes and first turn advantage for my 7th ed "customisation" and worked well for more than a year and close to a 100 games so far. Increased survivability (a lot - completely rewriten saves, covers and AP), rewriting other "all or nothing" mechanics/weapons and droping end game objectives and tabling auto-win in favour of "pseudo enlargement" of the table resulting from using sensible, Maelstrom based "you have to be in all those places" scenarios (resulting in something more akin to tabletop version of Dawn of War than pre-maelstrom 40K). This still makes battle line armies invalid, but introduces a lot of tactical, in-game thinking.

Getting back to main topic - as OP himself noted, alternating activation systems tend to devolve into "concealed IGOUGO", because IGOUGO is simply the edge case of alternating activation (one huge activation per side) and any non-trully-parallel resolution system is just a half-measure with problems of it's own. If I were to try to write a complete system from scratch I personally would go with alternating phases with simultanous resolution, but this would result in a completely different game than 40K ever was. The biggest problem with parallel systems though is finding some way to make "concealed movement" happen with infantry based games (this is why starship/aerial games can be better in this regard, it is more plausible to put "manouver tables" in place).

You know, I do think a lot of 40k's alpha strike problems probably could be resolved by re-scaling it to 15mm or 10mm.

By cutting the scale by 1/2 to 1/3 across the board we'd have far fewer weapons that provide full-table coverage (basically everything that's in the 48"+ range, even though on the low end of that range it only really happens in the center of the table), far fewer units with enough movement to cross no-man's land in a single turn, etc.

Models would be easier to fit on the table, we'd be able to place more terrain, it'd basically be the equivalent of playing on a table that is 2x-3x as large, but without having to climb on said table to reach the center.

Downside is it would require re-tooling the entire model range, so it's probably not a *practical* solution.

 ross-128 wrote:
You know, I do think a lot of 40k's alpha strike problems probably could be resolved by re-scaling it to 15mm or 10mm.

By cutting the scale by 1/2 to 1/3 across the board we'd have far fewer weapons that provide full-table coverage (basically everything that's in the 48"+ range, even though on the low end of that range it only really happens in the center of the table), far fewer units with enough movement to cross no-man's land in a single turn, etc.

Models would be easier to fit on the table, we'd be able to place more terrain, it'd basically be the equivalent of playing on a table that is 2x-3x as large, but without having to climb on said table to reach the center.

Downside is it would require re-tooling the entire model range, so it's probably not a *practical* solution.

Not if you leave things like Deep Strike and Drop Pods in place... It's not WWII or Napoleonic "ground troops advancing" type of game for such solution to work so easily... Even leaving "entire range of models is now obsolete" kind of problems aside.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I can say I find IGOUGO much more fun, faster, and less arcane.

How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.

With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.

I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.


As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.

I haven't seen that issue so much on DZC, Bolt Action, etc. Limiting an activation to a small subset of a force as compared to the entire army will almost always make sure that you don't get an alpha strike issue.

It absolutey is an issue with igougo - you get to do nothing to react to the entire firepower of your opponents army. If you had a turn after they shot something, you could preempt their next activation and try to at least make it less powerful.

(and how is it more complicated? Chess and checkers use alternating activation)

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I can say I find IGOUGO much more fun, faster, and less arcane.

How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.

With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.

I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.


As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.

I haven't seen that issue so much on DZC, Bolt Action, etc. Limiting an activation to a small subset of a force as compared to the entire army will almost always make sure that you don't get an alpha strike issue.

It absolutey is an issue with igougo - you get to do nothing to react to the entire firepower of your opponents army. If you had a turn after they shot something, you could preempt their next activation and try to at least make it less powerful.

(and how is it more complicated? Chess and checkers use alternating activation)

Chess and checkers are both tedious and boring.

Anyway, I have seen this occur in DZC. Stacking a bunch of tanks into one battlegroup can get you a very powerful activation, and if you get first activation you can stand to blow a lot of things up. In fact, putting an AA gun squad and a large tank squad into an armored battlegroup is a pretty good way to ensure you can take a chunk of the enemy army out if you have first activation on section turn. Drop your group on turn 1, and if they dropped too you can hammer them with your tanks before they can do anything, and if they didn't drop you can shoot them down with your AA, and then hammer them with your tanks. There is a limiter on how much you can blow up based on how big your battlegroup is, but it still pretty much is the same sort of thing as IGoUGo. It definitely occurs less, though, because there's a strong incentive to have a lot of battlegroups and not make one big one.



And IGoUGo doesn't inherently prevent reaction to the enemy army's firepower. As long as you can move before you can shoot, there's effectively no reaction to be had. Switching to alternating activations will solve nothing of the underlying problem as long as a unit can maneuver to an optimal firing position and then shoot before the opposition gets to react.

The only way to actually address the issue is to change the operation order to allow the opponent to react to a unit's movement before that unit gets to fire. Otherwise, alternating activations achieves the exact same effect as IGoUGo, just dressed up nicely so you feel less bad about it.

And this is one reason I like IGoUGo, with Shooting occurring before Moving: This ensures that the entire enemy army, not just one unit, gets a chance to get out of the way. Another way of doing it that I like is P1Move, P2Move, P1Shoot, P2Shoot, which works well too, since it still gives the opponent a chance to move out of the way [and the latter method punishes aggression significantly less]

I'm generally a big fan of bolt actions basic system. I'll definitely have to check out the ongoing conversion mentioned for 40k. At home I already made a d8 based system based around it, and it's what we use. I find it makes everything from setting up onwards more engaging, and breaks up the turn sequence so you don't get so much down time when nothing exciting is happening.

That said, I've found it's been hard to replicate some things in 40k using BA as a base. Notably ongoing effects(not too bad, we found a workaround), and especially handling melee fights.

If a middle ground were to be found I'd say it's some form of alternating activation either on a unit level or phase level. I mov,e you move, I shoot, you shoot, etc...

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I can say I find IGOUGO much more fun, faster, and less arcane.

How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.

With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.

I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.


As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.

I haven't seen that issue so much on DZC, Bolt Action, etc. Limiting an activation to a small subset of a force as compared to the entire army will almost always make sure that you don't get an alpha strike issue.

It absolutey is an issue with igougo - you get to do nothing to react to the entire firepower of your opponents army. If you had a turn after they shot something, you could preempt their next activation and try to at least make it less powerful.

(and how is it more complicated? Chess and checkers use alternating activation)

Chess and checkers are both tedious and boring.

Whatever your opinion of how fun they are, the response was to your idea that alternating activations is somehow more complex. My five year old handles alternating activations in checkers pretty well.

Anyway, I have seen this occur in DZC. Stacking a bunch of tanks into one battlegroup can get you a very powerful activation, and if you get first activation you can stand to blow a lot of things up. In fact, putting an AA gun squad and a large tank squad into an armored battlegroup is a pretty good way to ensure you can take a chunk of the enemy army out if you have first activation on section turn. Drop your group on turn 1, and if they dropped too you can hammer them with your tanks before they can do anything, and if they didn't drop you can shoot them down with your AA, and then hammer them with your tanks. There is a limiter on how much you can blow up based on how big your battlegroup is, but it still pretty much is the same sort of thing as IGoUGo. It definitely occurs less, though, because there's a strong incentive to have a lot of battlegroups and not make one big one.

It sounds like a rare case, or perhaps just a bad opponent. Dzc Battlegroups are built to not have a stacked firepower group. Either way, that's cool that you have one powerful activation, but you'd be letting yourself down for the rest of the turn. Doesn't seem like it'd hold up at all.

And IGoUGo doesn't inherently prevent reaction to the enemy army's firepower. As long as you can move before you can shoot, there's effectively no reaction to be had. Switching to alternating activations will solve nothing of the underlying problem as long as a unit can maneuver to an optimal firing position and then shoot before the opposition gets to react.

One unit could move and then shoot... But then I get the opportunity to move a unit and shoot and remove some of your firepower. An opportunity I don't get in the current 40k system. I'm pretty sure I already said that?

The only way to actually address the issue is to change the operation order to allow the opponent to react to a unit's movement before that unit gets to fire. Otherwise, alternating activations achieves the exact same effect as IGoUGo, just dressed up nicely so you feel less bad about it.

And this is one reason I like IGoUGo, with Shooting occurring before Moving: This ensures that the entire enemy army, not just one unit, gets a chance to get out of the way. Another way of doing it that I like is P1Move, P2Move, P1Shoot, P2Shoot, which works well too, since it still gives the opponent a chance to move out of the way [and the latter method punishes aggression significantly less]

Its certainly not the only way - seems more like slapping a partial fix on a broken system. For the reasons outlined above alternating activations are pretty well superior.

 mugginns wrote:

Spoiler:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I can say I find IGOUGO much more fun, faster, and less arcane.

How? Sitting through someone else's entire turn never seems fast to me, having entire swaths of my army removed without me being able to do anything is definitely not as much fun. I don't know how to measure arcane.

With a Knowledge: Arcana test, DC20, obviously.

I don't actively hate alternating activations, but it's generally added complexity that doesn't need to be there. Really, it's a mechanism to try to reduce the value of first turn, that doesn't actually do that great a job of it. It's entirely possible to make a crippling strike that decides the game with first activation on the second turn in Dropzone Commander.


As for having swathes of your army removed, it's not a problem with IGoUGo, it's a problem with the relative speed and destructiveness of units.

I haven't seen that issue so much on DZC, Bolt Action, etc. Limiting an activation to a small subset of a force as compared to the entire army will almost always make sure that you don't get an alpha strike issue.

It absolutey is an issue with igougo - you get to do nothing to react to the entire firepower of your opponents army. If you had a turn after they shot something, you could preempt their next activation and try to at least make it less powerful.

(and how is it more complicated? Chess and checkers use alternating activation)

Chess and checkers are both tedious and boring.

Whatever your opinion of how fun they are, the response was to your idea that alternating activations is somehow more complex. My five year old handles alternating activations in checkers pretty well.

Anyway, I have seen this occur in DZC. Stacking a bunch of tanks into one battlegroup can get you a very powerful activation, and if you get first activation you can stand to blow a lot of things up. In fact, putting an AA gun squad and a large tank squad into an armored battlegroup is a pretty good way to ensure you can take a chunk of the enemy army out if you have first activation on section turn. Drop your group on turn 1, and if they dropped too you can hammer them with your tanks before they can do anything, and if they didn't drop you can shoot them down with your AA, and then hammer them with your tanks. There is a limiter on how much you can blow up based on how big your battlegroup is, but it still pretty much is the same sort of thing as IGoUGo. It definitely occurs less, though, because there's a strong incentive to have a lot of battlegroups and not make one big one.

It sounds like a rare case, or perhaps just a bad opponent. Dzc Battlegroups are built to not have a stacked firepower group. Either way, that's cool that you have one powerful activation, but you'd be letting yourself down for the rest of the turn. Doesn't seem like it'd hold up at all.

And IGoUGo doesn't inherently prevent reaction to the enemy army's firepower. As long as you can move before you can shoot, there's effectively no reaction to be had. Switching to alternating activations will solve nothing of the underlying problem as long as a unit can maneuver to an optimal firing position and then shoot before the opposition gets to react.

One unit could move and then shoot... But then I get the opportunity to move a unit and shoot and remove some of your firepower. An opportunity I don't get in the current 40k system. I'm pretty sure I already said that?

The only way to actually address the issue is to change the operation order to allow the opponent to react to a unit's movement before that unit gets to fire. Otherwise, alternating activations achieves the exact same effect as IGoUGo, just dressed up nicely so you feel less bad about it.

And this is one reason I like IGoUGo, with Shooting occurring before Moving: This ensures that the entire enemy army, not just one unit, gets a chance to get out of the way. Another way of doing it that I like is P1Move, P2Move, P1Shoot, P2Shoot, which works well too, since it still gives the opponent a chance to move out of the way [and the latter method punishes aggression significantly less]

Its certainly not the only way - seems more like slapping a partial fix on a broken system. For the reasons outlined above alternating activations are pretty well superior.

Checkers and chess isn't even alternating activations, anyway. I can "activate" my queen repeatedly and never once use a rook. The fundamental strategy there is actually quite different.

It's not hard to stack a DZC battlegroup in Clash and Skirmish sized games. However, it's success, much like a first-turn strike list in earlier editions of 40k, is dependent on winning a roll-off, which is far from guaranteed.


And with regards to P1 moves and shoots a unit, then P2 moves and shoots a unit, it really is just IGoUGo dressed up to make you feel less bad about it. It really does make fairly little difference. You don't actually get to react tactically to whatever I just did anymore than if I used all my units, you take your hit and then retaliate. Sure, it might slow down the degradation of your force, but it doesn't actually the ability to see the enemy strategy and react to it before/as is executed.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Checkers and chess isn't even alternating activations, anyway. I can "activate" my queen repeatedly and never once use a rook. The fundamental strategy there is actually quite different.

it's still alternating activations

And with regards to P1 moves and shoots a unit, then P2 moves and shoots a unit, it really is just IGoUGo dressed up to make you feel less bad about it. It really does make fairly little difference.

That's not true though.

You don't actually get to react tactically to whatever I just did anymore than if I used all my units, you take your hit and then retaliate.

I already explained this.

I definitely wouldn't oversell the merits of it. All alternating does is reduce the size of the first-turn advantage, by reducing the size of the first turn.

However, going raw unit-by-unit definitely wouldn't work well in 40k because on the one hand you have huge stuff like Knights and Baneblades, who can still alpha-strike, then on the other side you have infantry Guard lists with dozens of individual guardsman squads and a bazillion independent characters, who can easily beta-strike by sticking a bunch of stuff in reserves (where it is safe from being shot) and then dropping all of it on the board after their opponent has run out of moves.

Activating in chunks can create a compromise between the two (one guy moves a Knight, the other moves about a Knight's worth of assorted guardsman models), which doesn't restrict alpha-striking quite as much but also partially avoids the runaway turn problem. The difficulty there is defining the chunks.

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Checkers and chess isn't even alternating activations, anyway. I can "activate" my queen repeatedly and never once use a rook. The fundamental strategy there is actually quite different.

it's still alternating activations

And with regards to P1 moves and shoots a unit, then P2 moves and shoots a unit, it really is just IGoUGo dressed up to make you feel less bad about it. It really does make fairly little difference.

That's not true though.

You don't actually get to react tactically to whatever I just did anymore than if I used all my units, you take your hit and then retaliate.

I already explained this.

By the logic that Checkers is Alternating Activations, so is IGoUGo, because I'm taking an activation and then you are. Checkers and chess are in no way alternating activations.



And yes, I heard your explanation, and it isn't correct. I shoot your tanks dead with my tanks, then you shoot my artillery with your artillery, then I shoot your infantry with my infantry doesn't add reactive capability. It just makes you feel less bad about going second, since you got to shoot with your artillery. Your tanks have no choice here but to die, and your other units have no real choice but to trade fire as they can, just like returning fire with what's left of your army after a IGoUGo alpha-strike.

Reactive capability would be: I telegraph intent to engage your tanks with my tanks. You have a choice to move them away, at the expense of giving up board control or move another unit to encourage my tanks to not attack your tanks and leave your tanks in place, or just leave them there and hope they live. If I move and shoot together without allowing you a word edgewise, there is no additional reactive tactical counterplay. The only "reaction" is "well, you killed my tanks, so I'm going to kill your artillery, which is precicely identical to the effective counterplay options of an IGoUGo system where movement precedes firing and no interrupt occurs between.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

And with regards to P1 moves and shoots a unit, then P2 moves and shoots a unit, it really is just IGoUGo dressed up to make you feel less bad about it. It really does make fairly little difference. You don't actually get to react tactically to whatever I just did anymore than if I used all my units, you take your hit and then retaliate. Sure, it might slow down the degradation of your force, but it doesn't actually the ability to see the enemy strategy and react to it before/as is executed.

You have one fundamental flaw in your logic here. Take this series:

- I activate my entire army, part of your army dies; you activate the rest, smaller part of my army dies. Repeat untill player two runs out of units, player one pretty much always wins.
- I activate one detachment, small part of your army dies; you activate your detachment, probably same chunk of my army dies. Player one still has (smaller) advantage.
- I activate one unit, only small part of one of your units die; you retaliate with a full strenght unit and we are again at even level. Player one has slight advantage.
- I activate one model, probably nothing dies; you activate one model, probably not more than one of my models die if any. Things happen pretty much in parallel this way so no one has any significant advantage.

Of course in any of scenarios above I don't get to react to any particular activation before it is resolved, but somewhere around a single unit activated it becomes irrelevant if forces are large enough. I don't get to react with targeted unit, but I can then make meaningfull decisions with the rest of my entire army. At this level your postulated "time to react" is pretty much irrelevant in game of anticipation of enemy moves ahead. Interrupts and reactions are important only in small unit/model count games with units/models not durable enough to last more than a turn of shooting at them, because such games hinge on things actively avoiding being shot at. Alpha strike IGOUGO 40K is effectively a single model count game with not enough durability and no reaction mechanics whatsoever. Alternatively look at Battletech or IK:Renegade - those are (in their smallest form) single model count games with enough durability to accomodate tactical decisions and don't have alpha strike problems.

To illustrate it in one other way: if a single activation can lead to randomly determined destruction of 0-5% of enemy force, then reacting to enemy fire isn't necessary to create ballanced game. Of course it will lack your postulated "tailored reaction" but both sides can win based on ability to maximise their oportunities of inflicting damage while minimising possible loses. If a single activation can take out guaranteed 30-50% of enemy force, then no amount of reaction (unless such reaction guarantees no losses at all) makes no difference, such game is stupidly deadly and has huge first turn advantage.

I prefer alternating activation. You activate a unit from move to shoot to charge to fight.

Battleshock at the very end.

Much more interactive.

 ross-128 wrote:
I definitely wouldn't oversell the merits of it. All alternating does is reduce the size of the first-turn advantage, by reducing the size of the first turn.

However, going raw unit-by-unit definitely wouldn't work well in 40k because on the one hand you have huge stuff like Knights and Baneblades, who can still alpha-strike, then on the other side you have infantry Guard lists with dozens of individual guardsman squads and a bazillion independent characters, who can easily beta-strike by sticking a bunch of stuff in reserves (where it is safe from being shot) and then dropping all of it on the board after their opponent has run out of moves.

Activating in chunks can create a compromise between the two (one guy moves a Knight, the other moves about a Knight's worth of assorted guardsman models), which doesn't restrict alpha-striking quite as much but also partially avoids the runaway turn problem. The difficulty there is defining the chunks.

The beta strike scenario where a player can drop in after their opponent runs out of moves is why I added the "Reserves cost Command Points" clause to my homebrew. The logic I was going for was you can have big activations, react to your foe, or play the reserve game, but you only have so many points to do all three. It's basically Warmahordes Focus/Fury, only to meddle with activations and Reserves instead of "boosting"/buying extra actions.

The main kludge I put was that it costs less CP to interrupt or target Super-Heavies, since red tape has a funny way of disappearing when your enemy breaks out the big guns. I suppose the remaining stuff would be less related to the activation system per se, so much as making super-heavies the unwieldy behemoths they are, rather than a system where a Baneblade can Tokyo Drift and shoot all its guns from a tank tread

I believe the best system is one where you can pre-empt your foe if you out-bid your foe, and where there is no downtime. Whatever happens, you should have the *option* to enable a counter play.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:



By the logic that Checkers is Alternating Activations, so is IGoUGo, because I'm taking an activation and then you are. Checkers and chess are in no way alternating activations.



And yes, I heard your explanation, and it isn't correct. I shoot your tanks dead with my tanks, then you shoot my artillery with your artillery, then I shoot your infantry with my infantry doesn't add reactive capability. It just makes you feel less bad about going second, since you got to shoot with your artillery. Your tanks have no choice here but to die, and your other units have no real choice but to trade fire as they can, just like returning fire with what's left of your army after a IGoUGo alpha-strike.

Reactive capability would be: I telegraph intent to engage your tanks with my tanks. You have a choice to move them away, at the expense of giving up board control or move another unit to encourage my tanks to not attack your tanks and leave your tanks in place, or just leave them there and hope they live. If I move and shoot together without allowing you a word edgewise, there is no additional reactive tactical counterplay. The only "reaction" is "well, you killed my tanks, so I'm going to kill your artillery, which is precicely identical to the effective counterplay options of an IGoUGo system where movement precedes firing and no interrupt occurs between.

It just doesn't seem like you are using the same definitions as most war gamers or have much experience with alternative activation games besides a few corner case dzc games. Sorry.

I won't lie, I'm pretty amazed anyone can even try (note: "try") to defend IGOUGO as a reasonable option for a wargame. That's pretty incredible to me.

 mugginns wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:



By the logic that Checkers is Alternating Activations, so is IGoUGo, because I'm taking an activation and then you are. Checkers and chess are in no way alternating activations.

And yes, I heard your explanation, and it isn't correct. I shoot your tanks dead with my tanks, then you shoot my artillery with your artillery, then I shoot your infantry with my infantry doesn't add reactive capability. It just makes you feel less bad about going second, since you got to shoot with your artillery. Your tanks have no choice here but to die, and your other units have no real choice but to trade fire as they can, just like returning fire with what's left of your army after a IGoUGo alpha-strike.

Reactive capability would be: I telegraph intent to engage your tanks with my tanks. You have a choice to move them away, at the expense of giving up board control or move another unit to encourage my tanks to not attack your tanks and leave your tanks in place, or just leave them there and hope they live. If I move and shoot together without allowing you a word edgewise, there is no additional reactive tactical counterplay. The only "reaction" is "well, you killed my tanks, so I'm going to kill your artillery, which is precicely identical to the effective counterplay options of an IGoUGo system where movement precedes firing and no interrupt occurs between.

It just doesn't seem like you are using the same definitions as most war gamers or have much experience with alternative activation games besides a few corner case dzc games. Sorry.

So, I play DZC, I have some limited experience with Dystopian Wars, and I play Tobruk and Conflict of Heroes.

DZC works with Battlegroup Activations, and that's what I'm assuming you're proposing. I select a group of units, squad by squad they move and shoot in any order, then you select a group move and shoot with those units, and we repeat. No group can be activated twice, and once all groups have been activated the round is over, all groups are refreshed, and we roll for initiative again

Torbuk is pretty cool. I move all my units, then you move all your units, then you select 1 unit to shoot and it becomes exhausted, then I select 1 unit to shoot and it becomes exhausted, then I select 1 unit to shoot, then your select 1 unit to shoot, etc. until all units are exhausted, then the round ends, units are refreshed, and we start again with I move all units.

Conflict of Heroes works where I chose a unit, and do a single thing [move or shoot] with it. Then you chose a unit, and do a single thing [move or shoot] with it. Then I get to do another thing with my unit, then you get to do another thing. Once my unit runs out of things to do, it become exhausted and I select a new unit to do things with. Once all my units and all your units are exhausted, the round ends, all units refreshed and we start again.

Dystopian Wars works like DZC, where I chose a squadron, it moves then it shoots in that order, then you chose a squadron to move and shoot, and we repeat until all squadrons have moved and shot.


The key elements that I'm considering to be part of your alternating activation proposal are:
I get to use a group, then you get to use a group. The group can be anywhere from one model to a third of the army.
Each time I get to use a group, it gets to move and fire before you get to chose a group.
Once a group has been used, it cannot be used again until all of my and all of your groups have been used.


I am in specific opposition to the second clause, which isn't actually an element of alternating activations. As you can see, both Tobruk and Conflict of Heroes use alternatic activations and allow a reaction between a unit moving and firing.

However, I believe that the specific change of inserting opponent's actions between my units' opportunities to move and shoot work better using an IGoUGo system, since it allows your units to react to all potential threats to them, as opposed to the first one presented.


There's one additional thing, and reason I like IGoUGo: it's fast. Conflict of Heroes take absolutely forever to play one turn, even if they'res only 5 units on each side, and gets fairly unwieldly, especially when there's a lot of units.


One more thing I like: declare all attacks before any are resolved. This is also unwieldly, though. At some point the game does have to be playable.

 auticus wrote:
I prefer alternating activation. You activate a unit from move to shoot to charge to fight.

Battleshock at the very end.

Much more interactive.

Magic the Gathering and other card games are highly interactive despite using the same sort of My Turn, Your Turn style that Warhammer 40k uses. You get the same break down of phases, the same "I attack with EVERYTHING" zerg rush, the same 1st turn advantage with resources, and yet the games are generally considered to be FULL of interaction.

40k can easily survive on Turns. It just needs more things like the Stratagems and Fight activations to add actual reactions and decision making to the game. Choosing when to reroll or what unit should get a defense/attack buff or maybe even having a reaction that can NEGATE an attack for CP can all add reaction potential to the game and make it more interactive without changing the Turn system.

Magic the Gathering is a very bad example to use. It's a very, very different game. Besides the whole card thing, each card has very little stats, a defined rule, there's no ranges, and a simple goal. MTG is its own beast.

This entire army goes system's problems is highlighted with the inclusion of the Seize Initiative roll in some missions, which my group has started calling the Ruin the Game Roll.

Changing the game's phases is a valid way to do things, and could work. However, thematically 40k is space fantasy where armored space knights charge with guns blazing at enemies. So the current phases fit thematically.

Hmm, reading responses, now Im my in favor of IGoUGo even more.

I was really hoping 8th would go alternate somehow, igougo is one of my biggest issues with 40k and the reason ive held off starting so long.

Bolt Action, with all its flaws, is one of the most enjoyable rulesets ive tried and it keeps players in the game at all time, it even offers some response type activations during the opponents turn!
That said, Bolt action is best played without randomly drawing dice but simply alternate consistently.


If GW offer a new way to play 8th that feature alternating activation ill play that solely since everything about it is more enjoyable IMO.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
I go, you go lets you carry out a coordinated plan with multiple units - that's why War Machine and Infinity (and Malifaux?) do it.

This isn't exclusive to IGOUGO, unless you mean it makes mass alphastrikes easier.

If your game is based around multiple-unit synergies and complex plans, the I go, you go lets you arrange those. Warmachine, for example is all about using one unit to boost the abilities of a second, then a third weakens the enemy, a fourth softens them up and then the second unit finally charges in and kills the enemy. The game was designed around those sort of combination attacks, so adding an activation option that makes it impossible to pull them off was never going to happen.

Personally, I rather like games where the turn sequence is undefined and potentially can be cut short - Song of Blades and Heroes, for example, or Too Fat Lardies games, or World of Twilight.

 Vertrucio wrote:
Magic the Gathering is a very bad example to use.

I disagree but am open to specific points on why that may be.

 Vertrucio wrote:
It's a very, very different game.

Naturally but we're discussing the Turn mechanic specifically and I've mentioned numerous similarities between the two that support the Turn mechanic as a gaming function.

 Vertrucio wrote:
Besides the whole card thing,

Fairly irrelevant to the Turn or IGOUGO systems, merely the platform for game rules.

 Vertrucio wrote:
each card has very little stats,

Same as 40k, and stats are merely stats, irrelevant to the turn sequence. D&D has tons and tons of stats more than 40k has and still uses turn structures along with some editions featuring that All Characters Go then All Enemies Go.

 Vertrucio wrote:
a defined rule,

As does Warhammer and actually most competitive cards have such complex and confusing rules that they need to FAQ a carefully defined order of events with even more rules lawyering than 40k. We have defined rules but with less competitive play or need for spelling out exactly when everything occurs.

 Vertrucio wrote:
there's no ranges,

Again not necessarily required given the average rolls and since damage can be prevented or shuffled around many of the best cards simply ignore your health to begin with and apply blanket effects, and with reactions or counters MORE OFTEN modifying the values of stats on the fly, it has a sense of uncertainty. Plus what are draw cards and shuffling otherwise?

 Vertrucio wrote:
and a simple goal.

Play World Eaters. Goal: Kill everything.

 Vertrucio wrote:
MTG is its own beast.

Obviously. But we're discussing the Turn sequence as a positive game mechanic.

I am a fan of Bolt Action and I like their activation method:

I have a command dice for each unit of my army.
My opponent has the same and we each have different colour dice.
They all go in a bag and we do a blind pull and activate each unit.
That way we can then apply the "order" and run all phases for that unit.

It does seem to promote fielding more units however.
What IS good is that some more critical to activate units can have a chance of being able to do something rather than have an entire army able to wipe it out.

I find 8th edition is so incredibly close to Bolt Action (killed models = -1 to moral check, act much like "pins") and keeping track of Moving / Advancing / Falling Back that order dice would be helpful.

Heck, we are using Command points to steal who goes first in alternating melee, it is a natural change.
"After all charging units have fought, the players alternate choosing eligible units to fight with (starting with the player whose turn it is) until all eligible units on both sides have fought once each.

I am not a big fan of a whole army going at once, it is a huge advantage to going first that I think needs mitigating.
I find it has the added bonus of keeping both players busy with little wait time.

I will say I don't like random activation very much, because a streak can quickly ruin the game one way or the other.

Edit:

Regarding the MTG thing, the fundamental difference between MTG and 40k is that MTG is a game of escalation, while 40k is a game of attrition. This is a very, very important difference.

On the first turn of MTG, both players have a hand of seven cards and no lands. The only thing you can do on your first turn of MTG is play a land or other zero-cost card (which, outside of lands, are quite rare and tend to either be weak or dependent on other cards already having been played). Thus, MTG's first-turn advantage is small because you can hardly do anything on your first turn.

On the first turn of 40k, you have your entire army at your disposal. Your forces will never be stronger than they were on the first turn. As a result, the first-turn advantage in 40k is massive: you can launch the most powerful attack you will ever be able to launch, and you can decimate the enemy army before they get to take any action. This is greatly amplified in 8th, where increased movement ranges, the removal of difficult terrain, universal shoot-and-charge, reliable deep-strike, and universal move-and-shoot combine to ensure that bringing the full might of your army to bear on the first turn is trivial on a 4x6 table.

Regardless of any of the pros and cons of various activation schemes, one thing that I see as being important is that the less you are able to do in a single turn, the less having the first turn matters. First-turn advantage can never be entirely eliminated in a turn-based game (because "doing nothing in the first turn" just means you have second turn), even chess requires players to play several games while trading first-turn precisely because any single game could potentially be decided by the first-turn advantage still present in chess. It can, however, be mitigated so that it is only a deciding factor in very, very close games.

IGOUGO can be kept if there were some more mitigation of alpha strikes. They used to have things like Gone to Ground, and cover used to do more.

One thing though is that I'm noticing people are playing with poor terrain overall. I'll have to look and see what the guidelines are, but I see a lot of games without well defined cover points to use at all.

More terrain. I always see near empty tables in many reports.