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Going first is a huge advantage in most cases regardless of lists. Some of them are just affected more than others. Nothing you can do without rulechanges.

You need to make it so that killyness is lowered and that scoring is at the end of both turns for objectives. Get rid of deep strike limitations so second player can hide their troops off the board.

By making scoring at the end of each turn, player two will have a bigger advantage at getting objectives, and by being able to hide more off the board, it’ll make going second able to protect more.

Also make it the roll first and then first player deploys and then the person who goes second deploys. Let’s you deploy defensively if your screwed and makes seize a mechanic that makes sense again.

Maybe they should bring first turn night fighting back

Or rip a page from kill team

Enemy contact: During turn one, armies are coming into contact with one another and battle lies are being drawn. Druing the first turn of shooting, units enemies that are more then half the range of your weapon profile take a -1 to hit.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Riggs wrote:
Played a game today where the advantage to going first was painfully obvious. Each of us had shooting style titanic units, and it honestly felt like the game was decided after we rolled to see who goes first. Are there any ideas to combat this? One thought I had was the strategem below for Lords if War

"This strategem can only be used during the first battle round. If your Lord of War is destroyed, it may either fight as if it's the fight phase, or shoot as if it's the shooting phase." 3CP

This would allow the side that went second a chance to somewhat even the odds before losing a ton of their firepower before their first turn.

Place said Lord of War into reserve with the Tallarn strategem.

You can only do that if you dont take it in a Super Heavy Aux detachment right? Doesnt the only other deatchment you can take a LOW in require like 3 HQ or something? i dont remember all the detachments.

 Billagio wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Riggs wrote:
Played a game today where the advantage to going first was painfully obvious. Each of us had shooting style titanic units, and it honestly felt like the game was decided after we rolled to see who goes first. Are there any ideas to combat this? One thought I had was the strategem below for Lords if War

"This strategem can only be used during the first battle round. If your Lord of War is destroyed, it may either fight as if it's the fight phase, or shoot as if it's the shooting phase." 3CP

This would allow the side that went second a chance to somewhat even the odds before losing a ton of their firepower before their first turn.

Place said Lord of War into reserve with the Tallarn strategem.

You can only do that if you dont take it in a Super Heavy Aux detachment right? Doesnt the only other deatchment you can take a LOW in require like 3 HQ or something? i dont remember all the detachments.

This is correct but with how criminally cheap guard HQs are, oh no, you need to twke 100 points worth of hqs

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Billagio wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Riggs wrote:
Played a game today where the advantage to going first was painfully obvious. Each of us had shooting style titanic units, and it honestly felt like the game was decided after we rolled to see who goes first. Are there any ideas to combat this? One thought I had was the strategem below for Lords if War

"This strategem can only be used during the first battle round. If your Lord of War is destroyed, it may either fight as if it's the fight phase, or shoot as if it's the shooting phase." 3CP

This would allow the side that went second a chance to somewhat even the odds before losing a ton of their firepower before their first turn.

Place said Lord of War into reserve with the Tallarn strategem.

You can only do that if you dont take it in a Super Heavy Aux detachment right? Doesnt the only other deatchment you can take a LOW in require like 3 HQ or something? i dont remember all the detachments.

This is correct but with how criminally cheap guard HQs are, oh no, you need to twke 100 points worth of hqs

120 at the cheapest, making a max-sponson Shadowsword cost 660 (instead of 540) points and making you spend 3CP to outflank it.

EDIT:
Though, if I'm not mistaken, it's actually fine to do in a Superheavy Aux, as they only don't get Regimental Doctrines. You can still use Regimental stratagems, Warlord Traits, etc. on them.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Billagio wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Riggs wrote:
Played a game today where the advantage to going first was painfully obvious. Each of us had shooting style titanic units, and it honestly felt like the game was decided after we rolled to see who goes first. Are there any ideas to combat this? One thought I had was the strategem below for Lords if War

"This strategem can only be used during the first battle round. If your Lord of War is destroyed, it may either fight as if it's the fight phase, or shoot as if it's the shooting phase." 3CP

This would allow the side that went second a chance to somewhat even the odds before losing a ton of their firepower before their first turn.

Place said Lord of War into reserve with the Tallarn strategem.

You can only do that if you dont take it in a Super Heavy Aux detachment right? Doesnt the only other deatchment you can take a LOW in require like 3 HQ or something? i dont remember all the detachments.

This is correct but with how criminally cheap guard HQs are, oh no, you need to twke 100 points worth of hqs

120 at the cheapest, making a max-sponson Shadowsword cost 660 (instead of 540) points and making you spend 3CP to outflank it.

EDIT:
Though, if I'm not mistaken, it's actually fine to do in a Superheavy Aux, as they only don't get Regimental Doctrines. You can still use Regimental stratagems, Warlord Traits, etc. on them.

Correct, they retain the <TALLARN> keyword even if they're not in a <TALLARN> detachment. For the same reason you can use <ALAITOC> stratagems on Ynnari reapers. No need to bring 3 HQs.

Super heavies should not be able to outflank or deep strike, just from a balance standpoint.

Of if they do, then all super heavies should. *Cough* deep strike primarch*cough*

 Marmatag wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Billagio wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Riggs wrote:
Played a game today where the advantage to going first was painfully obvious. Each of us had shooting style titanic units, and it honestly felt like the game was decided after we rolled to see who goes first. Are there any ideas to combat this? One thought I had was the strategem below for Lords if War

"This strategem can only be used during the first battle round. If your Lord of War is destroyed, it may either fight as if it's the fight phase, or shoot as if it's the shooting phase." 3CP

This would allow the side that went second a chance to somewhat even the odds before losing a ton of their firepower before their first turn.

Place said Lord of War into reserve with the Tallarn strategem.

You can only do that if you dont take it in a Super Heavy Aux detachment right? Doesnt the only other deatchment you can take a LOW in require like 3 HQ or something? i dont remember all the detachments.

This is correct but with how criminally cheap guard HQs are, oh no, you need to twke 100 points worth of hqs

120 at the cheapest, making a max-sponson Shadowsword cost 660 (instead of 540) points and making you spend 3CP to outflank it.

EDIT:
Though, if I'm not mistaken, it's actually fine to do in a Superheavy Aux, as they only don't get Regimental Doctrines. You can still use Regimental stratagems, Warlord Traits, etc. on them.

Correct, they retain the <TALLARN> keyword even if they're not in a <TALLARN> detachment. For the same reason you can use <ALAITOC> stratagems on Ynnari reapers. No need to bring 3 HQs.

Super heavies should not be able to outflank or deep strike, just from a balance standpoint.

interesting, so if I took a shadowsword in a Super Heavy Aux detachment and said it was Cadian, I wouldnt get the doctrine but it could still benefit from relics and such?

Riggs wrote:
Played a game today where the advantage to going first was painfully obvious. Each of us had shooting style titanic units, and it honestly felt like the game was decided after we rolled to see who goes first. Are there any ideas to combat this? One thought I had was the strategem below for Lords if War

"This strategem can only be used during the first battle round. If your Lord of War is destroyed, it may either fight as if it's the fight phase, or shoot as if it's the shooting phase." 3CP

This would allow the side that went second a chance to somewhat even the odds before losing a ton of their firepower before their first turn.

Stock 40k has a blatant turn 1 advantage.

My group plays almost exclusively ITC, even for narrative games where we'll often implement the turn by turn scoring structure, and it helps a lot. With ITC you score points every single turn and there are certain goals like "kill more" and "Hold More" than the opponent being scored at the end of the round meaning that whoever goes second has a major advantage.

Although to be 100% honest, some sort of alternating activation NEEDS to be implemented. Its a major stumbling block holding the game back and it really needs to be addressed.

Pancakey wrote:
Welcome to a super broken game! The best part is you will be blamed by the community for being dissatisfied with a lazy product!

Could you detail a system that is perfectly balanced when two models face each other and are almost always capable of killing each other when they activate? It must also not unbalance any other aspect of the game.

I eagerly await your reply.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:


Although to be 100% honest, some sort of alternating activation NEEDS to be implemented. Its a major stumbling block holding the game back and it really needs to be addressed.

Sure, but how does alternating activation solve a Shadowsword vs a Castellan?

 Daedalus81 wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:


Although to be 100% honest, some sort of alternating activation NEEDS to be implemented. Its a major stumbling block holding the game back and it really needs to be addressed.

Sure, but how does alternating activation solve a Shadowsword vs a Castellan?

The Castellan gets to shoot before the second Shadowsword gets to fire. A single Shadowsword isn't dropping a Castellan in a shooting phase, neither is a Castellan dropping a Shadowsword in one shot. That problem is therefore about as solved as you can get in a board game unless you want to try and work in some sort of "simultaneous" activation system where both players activate a unit and have them act at the exact same time. Which would be very interesting, but I'd imagine quite tricky to pull off with a game that is the scale of 40k.

Alternating activations give you the chance to do at least some counterfire with high value models before the opponent's entire army just nukes it, unlike now where if you go second against some armies you just have to accept that certain models are going to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

Allow all units to activate 1st turn even if they have already been destroyed?

A little tricky for melee units but at least the person who goes second isn't looking at a 20%+ disadvantage that can just snowball the rest of the game.

We already use wound counters to keep track of wounds so they could be applied to units. A couple of unit/model destroyed tokens and the booking shouldn't be too arduous.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Pancakey wrote:
Welcome to a super broken game! The best part is you will be blamed by the community for being dissatisfied with a lazy product!

Could you detail a system that is perfectly balanced when two models face each other and are almost always capable of killing each other when they activate? It must also not unbalance any other aspect of the game.

I eagerly await your reply.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:


Although to be 100% honest, some sort of alternating activation NEEDS to be implemented. Its a major stumbling block holding the game back and it really needs to be addressed.

Sure, but how does alternating activation solve a Shadowsword vs a Castellan?

Well, if you have another anti-armor unit you activate that to take out the shadowsword if it attacks the castellan. Of course, that only really works if you kill it in one turn, which is hard to do with a single unit.
Super Heavies really feth up the game...

It's the same syndrome that is in the 2nd Avengers movie. It takes a super heavy to fight a super heavy. They've become so prolific in my meta that I'm shelving my GK until at least December. As it is now GKs can't deal with a super heavy in any reasonable manner.

Maybe if we send enough emails to them they'll nerf Super Heavies or at least give armies the means to fight them without super heavies of their own.

Suggestions go the FAQ address, right?

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
It's the same syndrome that is in the 2nd Avengers movie. It takes a super heavy to fight a super heavy. They've become so prolific in my meta that I'm shelving my GK until at least December. As it is now GKs can't deal with a super heavy in any reasonable manner.

Grey Knights can’t handle any competently made army in any reasonable manner.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Thing is a knight with 18 wounds is as good as dead, it's crippled so badly with a degrading bs

1cp, shoots at full. Eat volcano lance and cawl's wrath puny shadowsword. Oh and il'' reroll all 1's.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Thing is a knight with 18 wounds is as good as dead, it's crippled so badly with a degrading bs

They have a stratagem that lets them ignore that.

Oh I know, but if you do that to 2 of the knight

Then you haven't destroyed 1 knight. 1 shooting at full strength, 1 at bs4 is better than 1 at full strength and 1 dead.

Knight player WANTS you to be silly enough to split fire against his knights. The more you split better it's for knights


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:


Although to be 100% honest, some sort of alternating activation NEEDS to be implemented. Its a major stumbling block holding the game back and it really needs to be addressed.

Sure, but how does alternating activation solve a Shadowsword vs a Castellan?

The Castellan gets to shoot before the second Shadowsword gets to fire. A single Shadowsword isn't dropping a Castellan in a shooting phase, neither is a Castellan dropping a Shadowsword in one shot. That problem is therefore about as solved as you can get in a board game unless you want to try and work in some sort of "simultaneous" activation system where both players activate a unit and have them act at the exact same time. Which would be very interesting, but I'd imagine quite tricky to pull off with a game that is the scale of 40k.

Alternating activations give you the chance to do at least some counterfire with high value models before the opponent's entire army just nukes it, unlike now where if you go second against some armies you just have to accept that certain models are going to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

Actually raven castellan pretty much WILL one shot shadowsword. Dam 3 plasma gun and rerolling 1's make that uber vehicle buster.

Arguably, the best solution at this point would be that all units do everything at the same time. Both players shoots/fights simoultaneously.

This way, both shadowsword will blow up the castellan and each super tank will be killed by one of the arms of the castellan! Woooo!!

People just need to play with more tall, line of sight blocking terrain. It forces gunlines to move while allowing melee armies time to close. It also hides tall models long enough to trade shots against less enemies. Until people realize this fact, the b!tching will continue.

Once you stop playing on Planet Bowling Ball, you stop worry about 1st turn advantage.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
People just need to play with more tall, line of sight blocking terrain. It forces gunlines to move while allowing melee armies time to close. It also hides tall models long enough to trade shots against less enemies. Until people realize this fact, the b!tching will continue.

Once you stop playing on Planet Bowling Ball, you stop worry about 1st turn advantage.

SJ

While I agree in general, it takes quite a large piece of terrain to hide a castellan/2 shadowswords/another superheavy

shortymcnostrill wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
People just need to play with more tall, line of sight blocking terrain. It forces gunlines to move while allowing melee armies time to close. It also hides tall models long enough to trade shots against less enemies. Until people realize this fact, the b!tching will continue.

Once you stop playing on Planet Bowling Ball, you stop worry about 1st turn advantage.

SJ

While I agree in general, it takes quite a large piece of terrain to hide a castellan/2 shadowswords/another superheavy

if the terrain does not influence your battle plan/deployment/movement, you're doing something wrong.

It's quite easy to make something(scratch built or kit) big enuff.
a well placed hill or bunched together something else that blocks LOS (whether it actually does or not) is the solution.

It's very hard to find a piece of terrain that is both solid and big enough to hide a Castellan behind. You can put large building/ruin models on the table but unless they don't have windows/holes in them you can still see the Castellan and therefore shoot it. Finding a hill that tall isn't easy and it would dominate the entire table.

So it's not so easy to hide a Castellan.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
It's very hard to find a piece of terrain that is both solid and big enough to hide a Castellan behind. You can put large building/ruin models on the table but unless they don't have windows/holes in them you can still see the Castellan and therefore shoot it. Finding a hill that tall isn't easy and it would dominate the entire table.

So it's not so easy to hide a Castellan.

I cover the windows of my terrain with stained glass and piles of rubble and dusty glass and all sorts of things, including blood spatters. Do you really think a modern tank could see through a house from one window, across it, to an open doorway? There's bound to be everything from wrecked furniture to cowering civilians in the way. Block those windows!

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
It's very hard to find a piece of terrain that is both solid and big enough to hide a Castellan behind. You can put large building/ruin models on the table but unless they don't have windows/holes in them you can still see the Castellan and therefore shoot it. Finding a hill that tall isn't easy and it would dominate the entire table.

So it's not so easy to hide a Castellan.

I cover the windows of my terrain with stained glass and piles of rubble and dusty glass and all sorts of things, including blood spatters. Do you really think a modern tank could see through a house from one window, across it, to an open doorway? There's bound to be everything from wrecked furniture to cowering civilians in the way. Block those windows!

Does a tank need to see that well? I'd imagine the giant laser/shell/goblin being fired would go through said house.

pm713 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
It's very hard to find a piece of terrain that is both solid and big enough to hide a Castellan behind. You can put large building/ruin models on the table but unless they don't have windows/holes in them you can still see the Castellan and therefore shoot it. Finding a hill that tall isn't easy and it would dominate the entire table.

So it's not so easy to hide a Castellan.

I cover the windows of my terrain with stained glass and piles of rubble and dusty glass and all sorts of things, including blood spatters. Do you really think a modern tank could see through a house from one window, across it, to an open doorway? There's bound to be everything from wrecked furniture to cowering civilians in the way. Block those windows!

Does a tank need to see that well? I'd imagine the giant laser/shell/goblin being fired would go through said house.

Depends on the house really. Sadly, long gone are the days when 40k cared if the house was made of wood or solid adamantium. It's just TLOS. So if the house is made entirely out of paper mache, it still blocks titanic laser cannons.I have no answers. *shrug*

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
It's very hard to find a piece of terrain that is both solid and big enough to hide a Castellan behind. You can put large building/ruin models on the table but unless they don't have windows/holes in them you can still see the Castellan and therefore shoot it. Finding a hill that tall isn't easy and it would dominate the entire table.

So it's not so easy to hide a Castellan.

I cover the windows of my terrain with stained glass and piles of rubble and dusty glass and all sorts of things, including blood spatters. Do you really think a modern tank could see through a house from one window, across it, to an open doorway? There's bound to be everything from wrecked furniture to cowering civilians in the way. Block those windows!

Does a tank need to see that well? I'd imagine the giant laser/shell/goblin being fired would go through said house.

Depends on the house really. Sadly, long gone are the days when 40k cared if the house was made of wood or solid adamantium. It's just TLOS. So if the house is made entirely out of paper mache, it still blocks titanic laser cannons.I have no answers. *shrug*

All Imperial houses now come with a built in Divine Field preventing all heretical and xenos weaponry from damaging them* and loyal Imperials will never risk damage to your home!

*Field takes several days to activate and will only protect your home after the invasion begins.

pm713 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
It's very hard to find a piece of terrain that is both solid and big enough to hide a Castellan behind. You can put large building/ruin models on the table but unless they don't have windows/holes in them you can still see the Castellan and therefore shoot it. Finding a hill that tall isn't easy and it would dominate the entire table.

So it's not so easy to hide a Castellan.

I cover the windows of my terrain with stained glass and piles of rubble and dusty glass and all sorts of things, including blood spatters. Do you really think a modern tank could see through a house from one window, across it, to an open doorway? There's bound to be everything from wrecked furniture to cowering civilians in the way. Block those windows!

Does a tank need to see that well? I'd imagine the giant laser/shell/goblin being fired would go through said house.

Depends on the house really. Sadly, long gone are the days when 40k cared if the house was made of wood or solid adamantium. It's just TLOS. So if the house is made entirely out of paper mache, it still blocks titanic laser cannons.I have no answers. *shrug*

All Imperial houses now come with a built in Divine Field preventing all heretical and xenos weaponry from damaging them* and loyal Imperials will never risk damage to your home!

*Field takes several days to activate and will only protect your home after the invasion begins.

Forge the Narrative!

Unit is right, you should block the windows on tall buildings in the center of the map.

Without significant LOS blocking terrain in the middle of the map, games are really, really bland. You should be able to shield a decent portion of your army from enemy fire on turn 1.