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Here is a house-rule to curb first-turn advantage.

1) In the first turn of the first battle round all unit activations costs 1 CP per phase. So, if the beginning player wants to, say, move 2 units, deepstrike 1 unit, shoot with 3 units and charge with 1 unit, that would cost a total of 7 CP's. After this turn the game proceeds as normal.

2) Right before deployment both players secretly writes down a number on a piece of paper. After a simultaneous reveal, the player with the lowest number receives that amount of additional CP's and gets first turn as described above.

Pretty brilliant, eh?

With the addition of new codexes, first turn advantage has diminished quite a bit.

Also, in ITC progressive scoring missions, with scoring done at the end of the game turn as well as player turns, getting the last turn before game turn scoring is a big deal.

I recently played in a tournament and chose to go second every game.

Sheer genius! . What about players who only get 6-7 CP per game, like GK? Why even play as GK with that rule? Not only are you playing a sub-par army but you don't even get CP after the 1st turn.

 Marmatag wrote:
With the addition of new codexes, first turn advantage has diminished quite a bit.

Also, in ITC progressive scoring missions, with scoring done at the end of the game turn as well as player turns, getting the last turn before game turn scoring is a big deal.

I recently played in a tournament and chose to go second every game.

Then you just write a higher number on the paper. Which means that if you end up going first, you would be doing so with a bit of additional CP's.

But sometimes you just run into that Alpha Legion dude with 40 bezerkers or his mate with eight bassilisks, and then the first turn advantage is severe, and you will write down a smaller number on the slip.


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Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Sheer genius! . What about players who only get 6-7 CP per game, like GK? Why even play as GK with that rule? Not only are you playing a sub-par army but you don't even get CP after the 1st turn.

I don't see how GK is disadvantaged with the rule above. In fact I think it would work well even for list with zero CP's.

pismakron wrote:
Here is a house-rule to curb first-turn advantage.

1) In the first turn of the first battle round all unit activations costs 1 CP per phase. So, if the beginning player wants to, say, move 2 units, deepstrike 1 unit, shoot with 3 units and charge with 1 unit, that would cost a total of 7 CP's. After this turn the game proceeds as normal.

2) Right before deployment both players secretly writes down a number on a piece of paper. After a simultaneous reveal, the player with the lowest number receives that amount of additional CP's and gets first turn as described above.

Pretty brilliant, eh?

Hello I am GW's human resources
you are hired

What happens when both armies bid 0?

 Xenomancers wrote:
What happens when both armies bid 0?

You would resolve the tie in some way (roll-off, rapier duel, wet t-shirt contest). And then a player with a zero-bid would get first turn with only his regular set of CP's.

Bidding 0 would only be done by someone who desperately needed first turn, and that player would need to eat into his CP stockpile to do anything on the first turn, whereas the second turn player would just activate all his units normally.

Most of the time both players would bid a nonzero amount.

I hated the idea at first, but so far it's grown on me.

It's better for elite armies, but that's manageable.

So I can bid 0 CPs and essentially get 1st turn? And my opponent has to waste CPs just to do something in their first turn? Worth it
I'd just bid 0 extra CPs and deploy in a defensive manner (As in having multiple units set up as Reinforcements or in LoS blocking terrain). Once the opponent wastes all his CP, I can Alpha strike him in my second turn will my full compliment of CPs.

This idea is too easily abused.

A better way to reduce the turn 1 Advantage is to
A) limit the number of your Reinforcement can come in on turn 1 and/or
B) Reintroduce "Night fighting" in some way

For A, you could simple say that only half (rounding up) of your Reinforcements can arrive in the same turn.
For B, it would make sense to make this a -1 to hit the DOES NOT stack with army attributes that do the same.

-

Bharring wrote:
I hated the idea at first, but so far it's grown on me.

It's better for elite armies, but that's manageable.

That's probably the biggest weakness. An Imperial Knights player could shoot with his entire army for 4 CP's.


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 Galef wrote:
So I can bid 0 CPs and essentially get 1st turn? And my opponent has to waste CPs just to do something in their first turn? Worth it
I'd just bid 0 extra CPs and deploy in a defensive manner (As in having multiple units set up as Reinforcements or in LoS blocking terrain). Once the opponent wastes all his CP, I can Alpha strike him in my second turn will my full compliment of CPs.

This idea is too easily abused.

It is only the player going first that has to spend CP's activating units.

pismakron wrote:
It is only the player going first that has to spend CP's activating units.

That makes it even worse of an idea. I get that going first is a big advantage, but you change completely flips it in favor of going second.
In Malestrom games it is even worse. You definitely want to go second in every game

Honestly, I think just giving the player who goes second some form of turn 1 protection would be enough. Like Night fighting for just the first player turn.

 Galef wrote:

pismakron wrote:
It is only the player going first that has to spend CP's activating units.

That makes it even worse of an idea. I get that going first is a big advantage, but you change completely flips it in favor of going second.
In Malestrom games it is even worse. You definitely want to go second in every game

Honestly, I think just giving the player who goes second some form of turn 1 protection would be enough. Like Night fighting for just the first player turn.

It does not make it worse. The player going first needs to spend CP's to activate units, but he also gets an additional amount of CP to do it with (or keep). The exact amount is determined through a hidden auction. If you think going second is so much better, then you just bid high.

Sounds broken to all hell. Severely limits the ability to actually do an alpha strike and then screws you over for the rest of the game because you have no command points, or even if you just want to take a normal first turn you get screwed over because you can't use all your units and once you've had your half turn you have no CPs. This just effectively makes going second the new going first and going first a terrible nightmare.

I like the idea of bidding with CP but i know some one is going to try and break it pretty quick.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
Sounds broken to all hell. Severely limits the ability to actually do an alpha strike and then screws you over for the rest of the game because you have no command points, or even if you just want to take a normal first turn you get screwed over because you can't use all your units and once you've had your half turn you have no CPs. This just effectively makes going second the new going first and going first a terrible nightmare.

It definitely limits the ability of doing effective alpha strikes, that is the point of it. It does not screw you over for going first. You can go first and keep your entire bid of additional CP's for the remainder of the game. And if you really want to go second, then bid up and write a high number.


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 Desubot wrote:
I like the idea of bidding with CP but i know some one is going to try and break it pretty quick.

Try and break it. If you can, good. If you cannot, even better.

pismakron wrote:
Here is a house-rule to curb first-turn advantage.

1) In the first turn of the first battle round all unit activations costs 1 CP per phase. So, if the beginning player wants to, say, move 2 units, deepstrike 1 unit, shoot with 3 units and charge with 1 unit, that would cost a total of 7 CP's. After this turn the game proceeds as normal.

2) Right before deployment both players secretly writes down a number on a piece of paper. After a simultaneous reveal, the player with the lowest number receives that amount of additional CP's and gets first turn as described above.

Pretty brilliant, eh?

This doesn't scale at all thanks to game size or army size. An Imperial Knight or IG superheavy regiment would be able to move almost their entire army turn 1 and blow you off the table same as always. Meanwhile MSU and hordes get absolutely wrecked by this.

I get where you're trying to go with this, but it's a pretty flawed idea and just opens up a can of worms that is more complex and arguably worse than what it's trying to replace.


Ideally it should be where there are clear advantages to going second. Even in 40k there is a clear advantage to going second because it allows you to basically guarantee last turn objective grabs. It's not as dramatic as a turn 1 alpha strike but it's there. Honestly, there's nothing you can do to remove alpha strike from the game other than restrict reserves from popping up turn 1 or completely redoing to turn structure into some sort of alternating system like Bolt Action or Dropzone Commander uses.

pismakron wrote:

It definitely limits the ability of doing effective alpha strikes, that is the point of it.

I get that, i just think it goes way too overboard.

pismakron wrote:

It does not screw you over for going first. You can go first and keep your entire bid of additional CP's for the remainder of the game. And if you really want to go second, then bid up and write a high number.

Lets say I bid five and you bid six. For the purposes of the thought experiment let's say I have 6 CPs to start with and ten separate units. I now have 11 actions I can perform between ten units. They can either move or shoot, and one unit can do both. Now that's a very limited turn one. And now, on top of my terrible turn one, I am left with no CPs for the rest of the game. Alternatively, I hold onto my 11 CPs and let my opponent alpha strike me, killing one third of my army, and I'd take the third of my army over the 5 CPs any day. Meanwhile, the person who bid six, or hell they could bid 1000 it doesn't matter, gets their 6 or 7 starting CPs to use as and when they please, and a full first turn.
It sounds ridiculously unfair to whoever goes first.

pismakron wrote:

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
Sounds broken to all hell. Severely limits the ability to actually do an alpha strike and then screws you over for the rest of the game because you have no command points, or even if you just want to take a normal first turn you get screwed over because you can't use all your units and once you've had your half turn you have no CPs. This just effectively makes going second the new going first and going first a terrible nightmare.

It definitely limits the ability of doing effective alpha strikes, that is the point of it. It does not screw you over for going first. You can go first and keep your entire bid of additional CP's for the remainder of the game. And if you really want to go second, then bid up and write a high number.


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 Desubot wrote:
I like the idea of bidding with CP but i know some one is going to try and break it pretty quick.

Try and break it. If you can, good. If you cannot, even better.

Guard will just bid 12 command points and get 4 back. If you out bid then, they’ll get 4+ free points at the start. Bidding buffs guard when they already are too good.

Zero bid, spend 3 CP to activate my three LoW and get the same alpha strike, except now I'm guaranteed to get first turn instead of having to roll for it. Please no.

Guys, the troll is obvious...

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

Lets say I bid five and you bid six. For the purposes of the thought experiment let's say I have 6 CPs to start with and ten separate units. I now have 11 actions I can perform between ten units. They can either move or shoot, and one unit can do both. Now that's a very limited turn one. And now, on top of my terrible turn one, I am left with no CPs for the rest of the game. Alternatively, I hold onto my 11 CPs and let my opponent alpha strike me, killing one third of my army, and I'd take the third of my army over the 5 CPs any day. Meanwhile, the person who bid six, or hell they could bid 1000 it doesn't matter, gets their 6 or 7 starting CPs to use as and when they please, and a full first turn.
It sounds ridiculously unfair to whoever goes first.

Then why did you bid five? Nothing stops you from writing down, say, 10 or 15 on your piece of paper.


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 Jaxler wrote:

Guard will just bid 12 command points and get 4 back. If you out bid then, they’ll get 4+ free points at the start. Bidding buffs guard when they already are too good.

Then what if his opponent bids 10 thus getting first turn? I don't follow your train of thought, here.


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 Peregrine wrote:
Zero bid, spend 3 CP to activate my three LoW and get the same alpha strike, except now I'm guaranteed to get first turn instead of having to roll for it. Please no.

That list certainly breaks the system, and, in my opinion, such a list ruins every phase of the game. The obvious solution is to not use the house-rule with such lists, or just say that LoW/Titanic units require 5CP per activation.


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 MrMoustaffa wrote:

This doesn't scale at all thanks to game size or army size. An Imperial Knight or IG superheavy regiment would be able to move almost their entire army turn 1 and blow you off the table same as always. Meanwhile MSU and hordes get absolutely wrecked by this.

Hordes don't necessarily get wrecked by this. An ork Boy blob is 193 points and a Genestealer blob is 240. But I agree that lists with a few very powerful and points-dense units gets a big advantage from this system, but this is true of pretty much all alternate activation schemes as well. In a bolt-action scheme the guy with 3 Knights and 500 points of MSU will dominate, as he would be able to front load his shooting and fighting phases, while backload his movement and deployment phases. Regards


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 Galas wrote:
Guys, the troll is obvious...

Try and break the system, please.

Surely the simplest solution would be just to only allow reserves to enter from turn 2 onwards?

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Surely the simplest solution would be just to only allow reserves to enter from turn 2 onwards?

It wouldn't really solve anything at all though. Artillery-heavy gun-lines, alpha legion with 40 infiltrating Bezerkers, would still dominate on turn 1.

As for limiting deepstrike to turn 2, do you mean the first turn of the second battle round, or the second turn of the first battle-round? Both of those have issues.

 Marmatag wrote:
With the addition of new codexes, first turn advantage has diminished quite a bit.

Also, in ITC progressive scoring missions, with scoring done at the end of the game turn as well as player turns, getting the last turn before game turn scoring is a big deal.

I recently played in a tournament and chose to go second every game.

Sure, but the pages upon pages of ITC rulings are a much more extensive and invasive set of houserules with far more wideranging changes to the game than the little CP-activation suggested above.

ITC 40K is very from vanilla 40K.

pismakron wrote:
[
Then why did you bid five? Nothing stops you from writing down, say, 10 or 15 on your piece of paper.

Maybe because i wanted first turn to i tried to underbid my opponent. Although given the way this system looks you're right, why bid low, it'll just screw you over. Bid 100 to secure turn 2.

First turn fix: units belonging to the army that goes first fires half of the shots. For example 4 lascannons count as being only 2. Twin ass cannons count as single ass cannons, etc...

What is really strong about first turn is the shooting phase, just limit it and going first wouldn't be so vital.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

pismakron wrote:
[
Then why did you bid five? Nothing stops you from writing down, say, 10 or 15 on your piece of paper.

Maybe because i wanted first turn to i tried to underbid my opponent. Although given the way this system looks you're right, why bid low, it'll just screw you over. Bid 100 to secure turn 2.

Sure, and then your opponent bids ninety, gets first turn with ninety CP's? The correct approach is bid just enough that getting first turn would be acceptable, but as low as possible within that constraint.


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 Blackie wrote:
First turn fix: units belonging to the army that goes first fires half of the shots. For example 4 lascannons count as being only 2. Twin ass cannons count as single ass cannons, etc...

What is really strong about first turn is the shooting phase, just limit it and going first wouldn't be so vital.

That would not be a bad rule, but it would still allow people to infiltrate 40 bezerkers/15 aggressors whenever they rolled for first turn.

pismakron wrote:
Sure, and then your opponent bids ninety, gets first turn with ninety CP's?

You play a farce of a game where both players use literally every stratagem at every possible opportunity. The problem is that, before you bid, you have to ask whether or not you want to participate in the system at all. If you want the first turn you have to carefully weigh the options on how much you can afford to bid, and you probably get something reasonable for a number. If you don't care about going second, because you have a reserves-heavy beta strike list or just plan to win on end-of-turn objective grabs, you bid infinite points and have infinite stratagem use. A bid of 10 CP and 999999999999999999 CP have the same (nonexistent) chance of winning, so of course you take the bigger supply of CP.

The real solution is to nerf infiltrate/deep strike/etc so they aren't so effective as an alpha strike, and then let the end of turn objective claim advantage balance out having the first attack. Go back to the old rule of prohibiting first turn charges if you infiltrate/scout/etc, make reserves arrive on turn 2 or later, and bring back the scatter dice on deep striking. Now you can no longer deliver those threats directly to their target without any delay or chance of failure. And now that you can't cripple an opponent with an alpha strike before they even get a turn you have to weigh the (greatly reduced) casualties you'll inflict vs. having the ability to clear an opposing unit from an objective and then immediately claim it before anyone can react. This is the reason why people often defaulted to having the second turn in previous editions where zero-risk zero-effort infiltrate/deep strike/etc weren't available.

pismakron wrote:


That would not be a bad rule, but it would still allow people to infiltrate 40 bezerkers/15 aggressors whenever they rolled for first turn.

I agree, but IMHO deep striking abuse is another problem, a different one, but one of the main issues of 40k. In my ideal game deep strike would be completely removed, everything should start on the board, making vehicles more important, but maybe I'd still let 1 unit keep the ability. Or just make deep strike not automatic like rolling a D6: on 4+ the unit can arrive with the current rules, on 2-3 the 9'' limit becomes a 18'' one and on a 1 the unit is completely destroyed (it counts as the deep strike has placed them very far from the battle), no re-rolls allowed.

Infiltrate would still be part of the game but with a 15-18'' limit from enemy units.

Deep strike is too powerful but only a few deepstriking units are really OP and many armies can have decent screeners. Nerfing the shooting phase in turn 1 would be great.

To offset the CP cost of 1st turn, you need to bid an amount that relates to the number of units you play. So more units = higher bid (it's not worth to get 1st turn with 2 additionals CPs if you have 20 units).
So the system breaks down if the two players have a vastly different number of units.
If you have 4 (usually shooty) units, like 4 SHVs, you can just bid 4CP, which would be enough to get a normal first turn. If your opponent has 20 units, he/she has a choice: either bid very low, get first turn, but do nothing during 1st turn because a couple CPs does nothing for him/her. Or bid higher, and get screwed.

And obviously you shouldn't pay 1CP for each action (move, psychic, shoot, charge), but a fixed amount of CP for a whole turn. Otherwise units that can stay still and shoot gain an insane advantage over units that do need to move, shoot and charge in a turn to be useful.