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In the past, you would roll to see who went first. They would deploy their entire army first. Then the player going second would deploy their entire army. Then Seize the Initiative is rolled to give the second player a chance to jump the gun and go first. Okay.

However, we now have a situation where both players alternate deploy their units. Then they roll to see who goes first. And then they immediately roll Seize the Initiative to see who really goes first.

Why? What is the point? It has literally no tactical or strategic benefit whatsoever. There's no new information. Nothing is being subverted. It's just a 1/6 chance to render the previous roll entirely pointless for no reason.

Am I missing something here?

You are 83.33% correct, a literal difference of 1/6th.

I think the main point is that you can design an army with very few drops in order to maximize the chances of going first, but 16.67% of the time, that won't matter.

Also, remember that the RAW used to be that if you finished deploying first, you simply WENT FIRST, except for 1/6th of the time that the initiative was stolen on you.

I feel like it's meant to add a small random element, to try and prevent building a list designed to be few drops so you can go first (before it was changed to a +1, which also remember is by RAW only for the Chapter Approved missions; the BRB missions are still first to deploy chooses. ITC, of course, made it a +1 across the board). Even if you build a list to table your opponent in one turn if you go first, there's a small chance you won't. So, the intent is to encourage a more well-rounded list building approach.

This allows larger armies to still have a 41.7% chance of going first instead of just 30% Or something around those percentages. So that your winrate is less affected by the amount of units you're bringing. As going first affects your winrate quite significantly.

Though i think gw just forgot about it. Still better than w/o sreal the initiative.

Doesn't it just counteract the +1 you get from finishing deploying first? Because 1/6 of the time, you roll the same as your opponent abd win, but 1/6 of the time they win anyway. In which case it would appear to be completely pointless.

 koooaei wrote:
This allows larger armies to still have a 45% chance of going first instead of just 35%. Or something around those percentages. So that your winrate is less affected by the amount of units you're bringing. As going first affects your winrate quite significantly.

Though i think gw just forgot about it. Still better than w/o sreal the initiative.

I'm still not seeing the point. If they want to remove the penalty for having a large army, why not simply drop the +1 bonus for whoever finishes deploying first?

Because at first they thought it'd be logical to have a smaller army have the initiative. But than it quickly turned out that going first is often an autowin for many alphastrike armies and they had to mitigate it a bit by introducing the rolloff and nerfing 1 turn deepstrike. Instead of fixing the cause of the problem of course.

Would make sense if it was the first army to finish deploying goes first, with a chance for the opposition to seize. Would cut out a dice roll and help more elite armies.

The idea as others have said is that seizing benefits the person less likely to win the roll more than the person more likely to win it. So it evens the odds a bit.

The person with less drops still has an advantage, but it's smaller than it would be without the seize rule.

That said, I'm not convinced that having more drops is an advantage anyway. Not to mention it's totally your choice how many drops you want in your army. So maybe it should just be an even roll off and that's it.

STI should be removed.

The bonus for smaller army should be changed from +1 to (you win a tie roll to go first)

It would have about the same effect without the need for 2 dice rolls + stale tastes in mouth.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Stux wrote:
The idea as others have said is that seizing benefits the person less likely to win the roll more than the person more likely to win it. So it evens the odds a bit.

The person with less drops still has an advantage, but it's smaller than it would be without the seize rule.

That said, I'm not convinced that having more drops is an advantage anyway. Not to mention it's totally your choice how many drops you want in your army. So maybe it should just be an even roll off and that's it.

Any advantage that army has - which isn't actually an advantage necessarily - is gone. It's not balancing anything out.

The army going second does get a small advantage if they have a larger army - because they got to deploy a good portion of their army without the opponent being able to react. When that army goes first - it really has an unfair advantage.

To ensure my knights go second even if by some miracle i win roll off

Well more seriously just out of tradition probably. Though does give odds different from what single dice roll could much like rerolls work around d6's limitations

An altenative option entirely would be to reverse the "+1 roll off for going first" addition to go back to the player who finished deploying first goes first, but then make StI a 5+.

So you could build a list with few drops to ensure going first, but you have a 33% chance you won't. Possibly higher if you can reroll StI with a CP.
This may be enough to discourage/reduce the skew of having going first be basically determined in the list building stage.

But if it stays as-is, yeah StI is basically a pointless roll.

-

 Xenomancers wrote:
STI should be removed.

A doctor should be able to give you a cream to help with that.

 IronBrand wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
STI should be removed.

A doctor should be able to give you a cream to help with that.

Can he cure my bad luck?

 Xenomancers wrote:

 IronBrand wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
STI should be removed.

A doctor should be able to give you a cream to help with that.

Can he cure my bad luck?

You may need to throw some virgins into a volcano to fix that. I think that's how it works.

I think its just one of those things that's been part of the game long enough they wouldn't want to remove it unless it was a problem. Vestigial rule.

 IronBrand wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 IronBrand wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
STI should be removed.

A doctor should be able to give you a cream to help with that.

Can he cure my bad luck?

You may need to throw some virgins into a volcano to fix that. I think that's how it works.

I use goats. The dice gods like goats.

 Xenomancers wrote:
STI should be removed.

The bonus for smaller army should be changed from +1 to (you win a tie roll to go first)

It would have about the same effect without the need for 2 dice rolls + stale tastes in mouth.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Stux wrote:
The idea as others have said is that seizing benefits the person less likely to win the roll more than the person more likely to win it. So it evens the odds a bit.

The person with less drops still has an advantage, but it's smaller than it would be without the seize rule.

That said, I'm not convinced that having more drops is an advantage anyway. Not to mention it's totally your choice how many drops you want in your army. So maybe it should just be an even roll off and that's it.

Any advantage that army has - which isn't actually an advantage necessarily - is gone. It's not balancing anything out.

The army going second does get a small advantage if they have a larger army - because they got to deploy a good portion of their army without the opponent being able to react. When that army goes first - it really has an unfair advantage.

That's not true. It doesn't remove the advantage for finishing deployment first, it just reduces it. You are still about 60% to go first if you finishing deployment first if you take into account STI.

I feel like it was put in as an attempt to balance armies with small number of drops (e.g. Knights, Custodes, Primaris) against hordes so that they don't always go first.

Honestly I feel like the mechanic should have been first to complete their drops goes first, but the opponent could sieze the initiative on a 5+ (lowered to a 6+ if they have at least twice as many units as their opponent). That lowers it to one roll, but gives more armies a 1/3 chance of going first instead.

Small armies need boost in your opinion then?

tneva82 wrote:
Small armies need boost in your opinion then?

It's more that I feel we should have less rolls to determine who goes first. I'd rather give the sieze roll a boost with it decreasing based on how much the smaller number is outnumbered by (maybe make it a 4+ but if you double it's 5+, triple it's a 6+, I dunno, this was an off the cuff thought on how it could be done).

tneva82 wrote:
Small armies need boost in your opinion then?

Generally speaking the fewer models you have the more you have to lose going second. Anything that is taken out is going to be a larger portion of your army.

Seize the initiative can't be looked at in a vacuum. It is part of an equation to determine who gets first turn.

Without the seize roll, the person who finishes deploying first goes first 70% of the time. Seize the initiative reduces this to 58%.

So deploying first is essentially a 60-40 game versus a 70-30 game to get first turn. Worth thinking about but not worth specifically designing a list around.

It exists because it existed in previous editions, nothing more.

A bit of fun? A little drama of will you seize? I like it. It’s cheeky but not a major thing.

Probably the easiest to remove it without changing things too much is to make it 2d6+1 vs 2d6 to go first instead of 1d6+1 vs 1d6 followed by a 6 to seize. Haven't ran the numbers to compare it to the current system but it still would give an advantage for finishing deploying first while not making it too great.

It made sence when it was finish first get first turn, now that obly gives you a +1 it's too littlw reward when your only talking an 8% improvement in chance of going first.
Also gets even worse if they reroll the sieze dice.

 IronBrand wrote:
A bit of fun? A little drama of will you seize? I like it. It’s cheeky but not a major thing. .

until you play a low count army that has to reach cover or LoS blocking terrain turn 1, so if your opponent steals the initiative the game is done turn1. Yeah

Karol wrote:

 IronBrand wrote:
A bit of fun? A little drama of will you seize? I like it. It’s cheeky but not a major thing. .

until you play a low count army that has to reach cover or LoS blocking terrain turn 1, so if your opponent steals the initiative the game is done turn1. Yeah

We are a friendly group who tend to play nice and use a lot of terrain suited to the armies we are playing. So it’s ok. Still a bit fun. It’s great if someone rolls the six. Happy times.

Karol wrote:

 IronBrand wrote:
A bit of fun? A little drama of will you seize? I like it. It’s cheeky but not a major thing. .

until you play a low count army that has to reach cover or LoS blocking terrain turn 1, so if your opponent steals the initiative the game is done turn1. Yeah

Don't build an army that requires going first.