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PenitentJake wrote:
The other thing that frustrates me about AA advocates is that they already have solutions to their problems, because they could just choose to play Apocalypse and be happy, but for some sick and twisted reason which I fail to comprehend, they prefer to play 40k, hate every minute of it, whine endlessly about it on the internet and bring everyone else down.

I don't think AA advocates actually want the thing they claim to want, since they already have it and aren't happy. I think what they actually want is for no one else to be able to enjoy the game unless it is on their terms. It's a case of "I can already play the game the way I like, but I want everyone else to be forced to play the game I like."

If you want the ability to get up and order pizza or change the music or whatever while playing a game, why don't you play Yahtzee?

What's that? It's not the same game, and that single trait isn't the sole criterion on which you decide what game to play? Please, tell me more.

Maybe Dakka gives you a skewed view of people, but I think most of us do actually enjoy 40K for what it is; we would just enjoy it more with a more modern turn structure. Apocalypse is a completely different game that I find fun every once in a while, but isn't skirmish-level and doesn't scale down to the 1k-1.5k games I play most in 40K. It is not '40K with AA'. If such a system did exist as an officially supported system, I would happily play it and stop engaging with old-school IGOUGO 40K at all.

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PenitentJake wrote:
An if Apocalypse is allowed to die, that brings up another hole in the AA argument. If AA is as much better than IGOUGO as all these AA advocates claim, why isn't Apocalypse the hottest selling system in the range?

Sales volume is hardly the best metric for objectively determining quality, especially when comparing two dissimilar games with different price points and entry requirements. Very few players will have an Apocalypse army but not play 40K, while plenty of 40K players will never own an Apoc-sized army.

I don't for a second believe that you actually buy into this logic, unless you're ready to die on the hill that says Transformers is a better movie than Citizen Kane on account of sheer sales volume.

PenitentJake wrote:
But of course an armchair game designer on Dakka knows better, right?

I mean, I hold a degree in Game Design & Development and have worked as a designer on a couple of fairly high-profile videogame projects, but appeals to authority are intrinsically worthless.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh! And I shouldn't leave out that Andy Chambers- the lead architect of 3rd Ed, which is when 40K exploded in popularity, and laid the groundwork for the game system ever since- upon leaving GW immediately designed a system that added AA elements to IGOUGO, and then went on to design several directly AA systems.

He has said in interview that he wanted to change up 40K, but the suits wouldn't let him, and those ideas were what he took to Mongoose.

So I mean, if you want to pull the 'designers know better than you' card, there's a prolific and skilled designer with substantial industry impact who wanted 40K to have AA circa 2004.

PenitentJake wrote:


IGOUGO isn't great for tournaments and playing with strangers in stores, because you aren't in control of the environment and you usually don't know your opponents very well. I know many posters on Dakka only play this way, so I understand why they feel this way.

But for home players, the break between turns is awesome. It gives you a chance to breathe, to talk to everyone else in the room, to change the tunes, order the pizza, make the drinks, etc.

If 40k demanded my continuous attention for the amount of time it takes to set up, play and teardown, I would hate it.

I fully agree, I have the same feeling. Overly competitive 40k has never been appealing to me. It's also very easy to balance lists, even competitive ones, if you play with a friend. Gaming against strangers can be fun, I also do it sometimes, and adds variety but I don't feel like a have to prove anything when I play so I'm not interested in winning at any cost. IGOUGO has never been an issue for me.

Well, it depends on what you expect from the game. Due to IGOUGO 40K is not a very deep, tactical system like lotr for example. With the new CC rules and stratagems in 8th it has become more tactical than previous versions, but overall 40K is still more for watching the carnage. 40K is mainly about the narrative experience, you make up a cool scenario, build fitting lists for that and then watch all those funny hilarious TV-Tropes fight it out. Unlike in 6th and 7th edition you have more control over the actual game and decisions to make, but as I said, it's really more about the funny situation. Goblins fighting WW1 tanks fighting Aliens(tm) fighting Terminators(tm) fighting Zombies fighting Gundam and so on. Artillery firing point blank range - at a plane and a guy with a chainsaw is hacking at an ogre. That's 40K. Drink a beer, make up your plan for the next round and then do it without that much thinking about every possible move and reaction.

You can literally just take a break and order a pizza real quick. It doesn't take 30 minutes. It also doesn't take 30 minutes to throw on a new playlist, go to the restroom, and mix a drink. All of these activities together are 15 minutes max.


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Also once again Baseball and Football are NOT IGOUGO because the players don't sit their twiddling their thumbs when the ball is thrown or hit.

@Catbarf:

Okay, didn't know about the degree in game theory/ design, and sorry to assume. I'd like to point out that calling someone an armchair designer is about as personal as I tend to get. Thanks for correcting my unfair assumptions about your expertise.

As for Citizen Kane vs Transformers, no, relative numbers don't mean one is better than the other, but if someone was suggesting that Transformers was terrible, and broken and needed to be changed, I would suggest that its box office numbers seem to suggest that there is no problem with the movie for the people who enjoy it, and that's really all I'm saying about 40k.

As for the first little rant where you criticize the wanting a break as not being a valid singular reason for choosing a game... Good. I'm glad you saw that. Because I've been trying to convince AA people on Dakka for MONTHS that the AA/IGOUGO debate IS only one element of lethality.

The fact that you can tell me it's only one element of a game or a problem when I talk about it, but you don't see it the same way when you talk about it is the part that still confuses me.

Finally, I would say that of the categories of games (millions of ways to categorize; not suggesting that the classification system I'm about to employ is perfect or complete)- Pen and Paper RPG's, Tabletop Wargames, Collectible Card Games, Board Games and Video Games, the latter is the one with which I have the least experience and expertise.

But as a video game guy, I thought I'd dust off my football vs basketball analogy and try one from the videogame world. Because I admit less experience here, I may have to reference a franchise that isn't as popular as a lot of others, because with minimal videogame experience, I'm only really familiar enough with my favourite franchise to do it:

Dynasty Warriors vs. Dynasty Warrior Tactics.

I loved both. Clearly DW represents AA games, and clearly DWT is more IGOUGO. Again, it's about intensity. DW raises your heartbeat, makes you sweat, and FORCES you to pay attention the entire time you are playing. DWT gives you time to think, allows multitasking and has a rhythm that doesn't monopolize 100% of your attention the whole time you are playing.

Also, I want you to know that I do see the validity of what you've said about Apocolypse not being the perfect substitute for 40k- especially your point about it not scaling down, and about how many 40k players will never have Apocalypse sized forces. All of those points are valid.

I'm also genuinely grateful for you pointing out the thing about Andy Chambers (what's the name of his game BTW, and is it still played?). I do appreciate that there is a spectrum between AA and IGOUGO and that it's not a strict binary, and I do like hearing suggestions that play to a spectrum solution.

But see how I acknowledge the validity of the points of view?

That's kinda what I'd like from the rabid AA crowd. All I want is the simple acknowledgement that if you get your way, there will be three games set in the 40k universe that are AA and none that are IGOUGO, meaning people who have liked that rhythm and stuck by it for 33 years will have nothing. I'd also like to see acknowledgement that, yeah, there are some people who prefer IGOUGO, and that while you personally are not one of those people and you would prefer AA, you do understand that different people may have different preferences and that's okay. At that point, you can launch into all the reasons why you prefer AA, and I would hazard a guess that I'd probably see the validity of all of them, even if I continued to maintain my own preferences due my differing priorities.

You don't have to agree. Acknowledge the legitimacy of the point of view, and I'll shut up. Heck, I further promise to not come back to this thread, because I'm not going to change anyone's mind anyway.

I think I'm pretty fair about acknowledging the validity of points of view with which I personally disagree. I also tend to apologize or at least acknowledge when I've judged a person or point of view unfairly.

While I will happily retreat from the debate in this thread, I will of course continue express my opinion in other threads where this comes up- it has a way of doing that at least once every week or two.

(As a sidenote, it's never IGOUGO people who bring this up. You won't find any threads where we we advocate making KT or Apocalypse IGOUGO; you won't find any threads where we suggest that nobody should be able to play an AA game ever because it's inherently bad game design.)

That's because the IGOUGO people know their system is worse.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That's because the IGOUGO people know their system is worse.

No, it's because 40K is the Main Event and we don't like to gloat over our overwhelming victory in popularity.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That's because the IGOUGO people know their system is worse.

Well Slayer, thanks for proving my point about how insensitive an intolerant some in the AA crowd are. I'm pretty sure not all of them are as bent as you are, and to be fair, there are some folks on Dakka who hit back pretty hard at you on here, and I get how a person can be jaded over time. I may even be getting there myself.

Quarantine has left me spending too much time on Dakka.

PenitentJake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That's because the IGOUGO people know their system is worse.

Well Slayer, thanks for proving my point about how insensitive an intolerant some in the AA crowd are. I'm pretty sure not all of them are as bent as you are, and to be fair, there are some folks on Dakka who hit back pretty hard at you on here, and I get how a person can be jaded over time. I may even be getting there myself.

Quarantine has left me spending too much time on Dakka.

The problem is you haven't MADE a single good point. I calculated everything you could do in that half hour to take up 15 minutes. Chances are you won't need to order another pizza again you know. You try comparing to certain sports that aren't actually like IGOUGO because defense doesn't sit their twiddling their thumbs when the ball is hit or kick. So what's the real defense for IGOUGO? The only reasonable one made was "shorter game", and quite frankly that's solved via "play a smaller game" which has been the solution to people already complaining about a long game to begin with.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That's because the IGOUGO people know their system is worse.

Well Slayer, thanks for proving my point about how insensitive an intolerant some in the AA crowd are. I'm pretty sure not all of them are as bent as you are, and to be fair, there are some folks on Dakka who hit back pretty hard at you on here, and I get how a person can be jaded over time. I may even be getting there myself.

Quarantine has left me spending too much time on Dakka.

The problem is you haven't MADE a single good point. I calculated everything you could do in that half hour to take up 15 minutes. Chances are you won't need to order another pizza again you know. You try comparing to certain sports that aren't actually like IGOUGO because defense doesn't sit their twiddling their thumbs when the ball is hit or kick. So what's the real defense for IGOUGO? The only reasonable one made was "shorter game", and quite frankly that's solved via "play a smaller game" which has been the solution to people already complaining about a long game to begin with.

One has to say though, you don't really do nothing in the opponents phase. There are stratagems to activate, saving throws to make, overwatch, CC, heroic intervention, rolling to explode.
Aside from strats these aren't really reactions that need a lot of thought, but they're still things you have to do.

Honest question to the people claiming they "do nothing" during their opponent's turn: Are you not playing with people you would consider friends? Even when you're not activating stratagems, rollings saves, and all the other things Sgt. Cortez mentioned, are you not chatting with your opponent? This is intended to be a social game. You should try using it as an excuse to socialize.

PenitentJake wrote:
I'm also genuinely grateful for you pointing out the thing about Andy Chambers (what's the name of his game BTW, and is it still played?). I do appreciate that there is a spectrum between AA and IGOUGO and that it's not a strict binary, and I do like hearing suggestions that play to a spectrum solution.

His first post-GW game was Starship Troopers, which was then adapted into Battlefield Evolution. I would argue that it was an excellent game system, but Mongoose wasn't able to support the hobby and logistics side of things, and it died in the late-2000s.

SST was IGOUGO at its core, but with one wrinkle: when you do something within 12" of the enemy, they can perform reactions. So you shoot a unit, and it can either shoot back or immediately move. You melee, they immediately melee back (much like 40K, really). It made for games that started out slowly from a distance, but when the two sides get close then the instant reactions start piling up.

He was subsequently the chief designer on Dust Warfare, which took things in a slightly different direction. Dust has four phases, and within each phase its IGOUGO. However, similarly to SST, if you get shot at or an enemy moves near you you can immediately make a reaction, but this comes at the cost of being able to make an action in a subsequent phase.

He also wrote Dropfleet Commander, but I'm not familiar with that system.

PenitentJake wrote:
But see how I acknowledge the validity of the points of view?

That's kinda what I'd like from the rabid AA crowd. All I want is the simple acknowledgement that if you get your way, there will be three games set in the 40k universe that are AA and none that are IGOUGO, meaning people who have liked that rhythm and stuck by it for 33 years will have nothing. I'd also like to see acknowledgement that, yeah, there are some people who prefer IGOUGO, and that while you personally are not one of those people and you would prefer AA, you do understand that different people may have different preferences and that's okay. At that point, you can launch into all the reasons why you prefer AA, and I would hazard a guess that I'd probably see the validity of all of them, even if I continued to maintain my own preferences due my differing priorities.

You don't have to agree. Acknowledge the legitimacy of the point of view, and I'll shut up. Heck, I further promise to not come back to this thread, because I'm not going to change anyone's mind anyway.

Hey man, I will absolutely recognize that IGOUGO is simpler to design (MUCH simpler to design), simpler to play, and doesn't require the same level of investment and commitment from players that AA does. IGOUGO systems with AA elements do require you to pay close attention to what's going on, and pure-AA systems have much shorter 'turns' with less down time. But to be honest, from a design perspective I see that as a feature rather than a bug- and I think GW is starting to feel the same way, given all the defensive stratagems that require you to have some degree of investment in your opponent's turn, and their commitment to having saving throws be rolled by the owning player rather than the attacker.

The thing is, if you want to get more interaction in an IGOUGO system, you have to basically rewrite the rules to add reactions or full-blown AA or whatever other alteration fits your interests. If you want to have more down time in an AA system, you can always just take a break from the game between rounds or activations, or even strip out the AA elements to turn it into IGOUGO. Take something like Bolt Action- that's a pure AA game. Normally each player puts a token into a bag for each model on their side, then you randomly draw a token, and whoever's color is drawn gets to activate a model. Want to convert it to IGOUGO? Just have each player do all their activations sequentially. It's really that simple. Converting 40K to AA, on the flipside, is a lot more of a headache.

Consider also the venue element you mentioned earlier. You can play with whatever house rules you want, right? But players who are doing tournament play or mostly play pick-up games at stores are largely limited to rules as written. If, as you said before, AA is better-suited to their style of play, everybody wins if the core rules accommodate them but give you the tools to adjust the game to your liking. GW could even include IGOUGO as an optional variant directly in the core rules.

FWIW, I'm not a tournament player- most of my gaming is done with friends, in my house, over a few beers. But like, we can do that with Bolt Action, Apocalypse, or Dust too; it's just more along the lines of 'lemme go put in the pizza order while you resolve that one trooper's activation', and less 'lemme go file my taxes while you resolve your Ork horde's movement phase'. It's still doable in a casual context.

I will admit that I am a strong AA fan (in the context of skirmish wargaming- it is not appropriate for genres like naval warfare); partly because it's increasingly become industry standard for good reason, and partly because I find that many 40K players who defend the IGOUGO structure haven't had much experience with non-GW games. I know there are people who have given it a fair shake and genuinely prefer IGOUGO, but I think they're a minority compared to those who have done both and prefer AA, and in all honesty a majority of players probably don't really care and will go with whatever GW publishes.

Just my $0.02.

 EnTyme wrote:
Honest question to the people claiming they "do nothing" during their opponent's turn: Are you not playing with people you would consider friends? Even when you're not activating stratagems, rollings saves, and all the other things Sgt. Cortez mentioned, are you not chatting with your opponent? This is intended to be a social game. You should try using it as an excuse to socialize.

There are people who like chatting while playing but there are also people who don't like being distracted.

Strategems is the only thing you mentioned that the defending player has any agency over. You make no decisions about any of the other things you mentioned. You're not DOING anything. It's requires no brain power. The other guy tells you how many dice to roll for saves.

As for the igougo crowd getting acknowledged. I acknowledge that you don't like change and you say that repeatedly while making up nonsense arguments about why igougo is great design wise like "I enjoy taking long breaks to order pizza" which anyone could just do at any time anyway.

There is no acknowledgement of your points because you are not making any on the discussion we are having. AA says this is the design elements that suck the fun out of the game, make it less engaging, have consequences like first turn advantage and alpha strikes, etc...

And your rebuttal is "but I don't wanna". Which is.... Whatever.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That's because the IGOUGO people know their system is worse.

Well Slayer, thanks for proving my point about how insensitive an intolerant some in the AA crowd are. I'm pretty sure not all of them are as bent as you are, and to be fair, there are some folks on Dakka who hit back pretty hard at you on here, and I get how a person can be jaded over time. I may even be getting there myself.

Quarantine has left me spending too much time on Dakka.

The problem is you haven't MADE a single good point. I calculated everything you could do in that half hour to take up 15 minutes. Chances are you won't need to order another pizza again you know. You try comparing to certain sports that aren't actually like IGOUGO because defense doesn't sit their twiddling their thumbs when the ball is hit or kick. So what's the real defense for IGOUGO? The only reasonable one made was "shorter game", and quite frankly that's solved via "play a smaller game" which has been the solution to people already complaining about a long game to begin with.

One has to say though, you don't really do nothing in the opponents phase. There are stratagems to activate, saving throws to make, overwatch, CC, heroic intervention, rolling to explode.
Aside from strats these aren't really reactions that need a lot of thought, but they're still things you have to do.

Literally none of those have any thought besides Interventions. Everything else is a result of what the opponent did. It isn't reactionary, but rather it's triggered.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
Honest question to the people claiming they "do nothing" during their opponent's turn: Are you not playing with people you would consider friends? Even when you're not activating stratagems, rollings saves, and all the other things Sgt. Cortez mentioned, are you not chatting with your opponent? This is intended to be a social game. You should try using it as an excuse to socialize.

There are people who like chatting while playing but there are also people who don't like being distracted.

That just sounds boring to me.

 EnTyme wrote:
Honest question to the people claiming they "do nothing" during their opponent's turn: Are you not playing with people you would consider friends? Even when you're not activating stratagems, rollings saves, and all the other things Sgt. Cortez mentioned, are you not chatting with your opponent? This is intended to be a social game. You should try using it as an excuse to socialize.

I don't need 30 minute breaks to socialize. I can socialize while my opponent is moving a unit, not all 20 of them.
Also rolling saves isn't interaction because literally nothing changes if I just let my opponent do it instead. Also pretty much all Strats you use in the opponent's phases are either "I'll make my deathstar harder to kill" or "better overwatch".


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 EnTyme wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
Honest question to the people claiming they "do nothing" during their opponent's turn: Are you not playing with people you would consider friends? Even when you're not activating stratagems, rollings saves, and all the other things Sgt. Cortez mentioned, are you not chatting with your opponent? This is intended to be a social game. You should try using it as an excuse to socialize.

There are people who like chatting while playing but there are also people who don't like being distracted.

That just sounds boring to me.

And trying to distract the opponent for 30 minutes isn't boring somrhow?

To be honest in the opponent's turn the other player still has to roll saves, decide what models to remove as casualties, try to deny psychic powers, roll overwatch, fight with units locked in combat, and some stratagems, a few of them even game-breaking (who says Agents of Vect?), can be activated in the opponent's turn. It's nothing like watching someone playing while doing nothing.

Nothing would change if my opponent rolled the saves or overwatch or anything, so calling that interaction isn't so much a stretch so much as it is just plain inaccurate.

I've never been a fan of IGOUGO, but I haven't really had a chance to try any of the AA systems, either. The only tabletop games I've played are Battletech, 40K, and Warmachine, and while Bolt Action exists around here, I haven't seen anyone actually play it. The closest AA game I've seen played is X-Wing, but while it is big in popularity, it really isn't big in terms of models on the table (when compared to 40K or Warmachine).

IGOUGO does provide the ability to develop puzzles/alpha strikes during your turn, which is great when you do it. The downside is that you can end up losing a lot of units while having zero ability to counter act it aside from reaction systems (if any). IGOUGO in 40K has also lead to some very interesting and frustrating breaks from military strategy, such as wiping out a unit in melee and just standing their to be shot up on your opponent's turn.

AA does prevent the ease of developing puzzles/alpha strikes, unless you're lucky or game the system (having high initiative pilots in X-Wing, for example). It does provide for a more active scenarios to work with.

However, I still feel the best system was Battletech. That may be because I'm a stick-in-the-mud about my first tabletop game, but I'll attribute it to everyone being able to make choices in a phase, and only the end of Phase sees the damage realized, taking the pain out of those alpha strikes.

@Catbarf:

" If, as you said before, AA is better-suited to their style of play, everybody wins if the core rules accommodate them but give you the tools to adjust the game to your liking. GW could even include IGOUGO as an optional variant directly in the core rules."

I'll take it. That's enough of a compromise for me. It's all I'm going to get. And now, as promised, I retire from this thread.

You don't even have to block me. :-P

 Charistoph wrote:
I've never been a fan of IGOUGO, but I haven't really had a chance to try any of the AA systems, either. The only tabletop games I've played are Battletech, 40K, and Warmachine, and while Bolt Action exists around here, I haven't seen anyone actually play it. The closest AA game I've seen played is X-Wing, but while it is big in popularity, it really isn't big in terms of models on the table (when compared to 40K or Warmachine).

IGOUGO does provide the ability to develop puzzles/alpha strikes during your turn, which is great when you do it. The downside is that you can end up losing a lot of units while having zero ability to counter act it aside from reaction systems (if any). IGOUGO in 40K has also lead to some very interesting and frustrating breaks from military strategy, such as wiping out a unit in melee and just standing their to be shot up on your opponent's turn.

AA does prevent the ease of developing puzzles/alpha strikes, unless you're lucky or game the system (having high initiative pilots in X-Wing, for example). It does provide for a more active scenarios to work with.

However, I still feel the best system was Battletech. That may be because I'm a stick-in-the-mud about my first tabletop game, but I'll attribute it to everyone being able to make choices in a phase, and only the end of Phase sees the damage realized, taking the pain out of those alpha strikes.

If you look back a few pages i gave examples of variations of AA systems. and they do play much better and both players are much more involved than the igougo system 40K still uses. they are not quite as involved as infinity's total reaction system, but that system is designed as a skirmish system and as such that it does not lend itself to 40K sized play

I never get bored during the opponent's turn. I'm busy planning my next one following every steps he makes.

Spoletta wrote:
I never get bored during the opponent's turn. I'm busy planning my next one following every steps he makes.

I'm in the same boat. It speeds up game play since I don't have to think re-actively every move like I'm trying to have a large scale chess match of some kind.

Honestly I just don't think AA is the magic cure all people say it is. Experiance has shown me that no matter the system people will game it and they'll find ways to break it. I'm not saying it to be pessimistic, but rather realistic: we'll only trade one set of complaints for another and everyone will just blame GW anyways.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Nothing would change if my opponent rolled the saves or overwatch or anything, so calling that interaction isn't so much a stretch so much as it is just plain inaccurate.

What about choosing what casualties to remove, fighting with engaged models (maybe even against multiple targets) and the possibility of using stratagems?

From your perspective even rolling to hit, to wound, etc is never an interaction because the defending player can make all those rolls for the attacking player and nothing would change as well. Basically the entire dice rolling wouldn't be an interaction

The difference is having agency and making decisions that matter.

If you kill 6 of 30 hormagaunts guess what picking casualties is? A nothing action. Rolling saves? No choices there. Fighting? Only if engaged with 2 units and even then how often is that choice non obvious? Overwatch? You can't even choose to NOT overwatch. You have to do it.

Strategems sure. In the rare case that someone has a strat to use on the enemies turn AND it's worth doing the defending player has A choice to make. To use it or not to use it.

 Lance845 wrote:
The difference is having agency and making decisions that matter.

If you kill 6 of 30 hormagaunts guess what picking casualties is? A nothing action. Rolling saves? No choices there. Fighting? Only if engaged with 2 units and even then how often is that choice non obvious? Overwatch? You can't even choose to NOT overwatch. You have to do it.

Strategems sure. In the rare case that someone has a stray to use on the enemies turn AND it's worth doing the defending player has A choice to make.

By this logic a player has very little interaction even in his own turn. Basically movement (if you need to move), psychic phase (if you have psykers), declaring stratagems and chosing targets in shooting or assault phase. Anything else can be done by the opponent as well, including all the dice rolling, which is what really takes time in 40k.

And removing casualties isn't a nothing action at all. Still matters for negating enemy charge range to units behind the target, for avoiding breaking buffing auras, removing from behind in order to be closer and get easy charge next turn, etc...

 Blackie wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
The difference is having agency and making decisions that matter.

If you kill 6 of 30 hormagaunts guess what picking casualties is? A nothing action. Rolling saves? No choices there. Fighting? Only if engaged with 2 units and even then how often is that choice non obvious? Overwatch? You can't even choose to NOT overwatch. You have to do it.

Strategems sure. In the rare case that someone has a stray to use on the enemies turn AND it's worth doing the defending player has A choice to make.

By this logic a player has very little interaction even in his own turn. Basically movement (if you need to move), psychic phase (if you have psykers), declaring stratagems and chosing targets in shooting or assault phase. Anything else can be done by the opponent as well, including all the dice rolling, which is what really takes time in 40k.

Hence why 40k isn't particulary deep game tactialy speaking.
It doesn't need to be but atm we have a bit of a puddle instead of a swimming pool situation going on.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
The difference is having agency and making decisions that matter.

If you kill 6 of 30 hormagaunts guess what picking casualties is? A nothing action. Rolling saves? No choices there. Fighting? Only if engaged with 2 units and even then how often is that choice non obvious? Overwatch? You can't even choose to NOT overwatch. You have to do it.

Strategems sure. In the rare case that someone has a stray to use on the enemies turn AND it's worth doing the defending player has A choice to make.

By this logic a player has very little interaction even in his own turn. Basically movement (if you need to move), psychic phase (if you have psykers), declaring stratagems and chosing targets in shooting or assault phase. Anything else can be done by the opponent as well, including all the dice rolling, which is what really takes time in 40k.

Hence why 40k isn't particulary deep game tactialy speaking.
It doesn't need to be but atm we have a bit of a puddle instead of a swimming pool situation going on.

Ding ding ding! A winner!

But when you switch it to AA your first choice is who to activate in what order. Then where you move trying to anticipate how the enemy will react. Maybe even trying to bait them into a situation for your next activation. Tactical meaningful decision making goes WAY the feth up the moment you ditch this igougo bs.

hence why we switched it around alot in 8th with KT like activation and cover rules (not bad but required a bit of downsizing of the game to 1.5k or 1k.)
Or adapted terrain rules like KT which made shooting overall a lot less deadly.