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if AA is slower because you cannot keep track which unit already activated, you will have a lot of troubles and much slower games with phases

as you need to keep track which unit already moved, which unit can shoot after moving, which unit has used its movement for a special action etc.

just from that point of view, AA will speed up AoS by a lot because you don't need to argue with your opponent which unit moved and which used the movement phase to aim, as the unit will do it all at once and you just need to mark the unit as activated after)

and not talking about the time it tacks to get close combat done as it will take much more time to keep track of which units charged in previous phases and than resolve alternating combats

For all those things you mentioned, AA would speed up AoS by a lot

I’ve just found AA games take longer due to the lack of being able to properly plan ahead. Each activation requires thinking and consideration. Puts on an extra few minutes to each activation and it quickly adds an extra half hour to an hour to the game.

But that’s my experience, and I probably should’ve said it depends on the people playing it. As a whole though I believe AA is a far healthier way to play games, much more engaging.

 Tiberius501 wrote:
I’ve just found AA games take longer due to the lack of being able to properly plan ahead. Each activation requires thinking and consideration. Puts on an extra few minutes to each activation and it quickly adds an extra half hour to an hour to the game.

But that’s my experience, and I probably should’ve said it depends on the people playing it. As a whole though I believe AA is a far healthier way to play games, much more engaging.

Yeah, this is what I meant previously. I think AA is more engaging, but if you playing an opponent that just sits there and only start thinking about what he's going to do when his turn starts and need a 15 minute "thinking phase", you are fethed.

We recently started playing games with a speed chess timer next to the player to simulate "in the heat of battle" decision making and it's an overall very pleasant experience.

There are those players yes, they take 20-30 minutes in normal AOS before every turn for the same reason, so yes in AA they are infuriating as well.

However chess clocks are a great enhancement to the game so you can't just sit there forever in analysis paralysis.

 Tiberius501 wrote:
I’ve just found AA games take longer due to the lack of being able to properly plan ahead. Each activation requires thinking and consideration. Puts on an extra few minutes to each activation and it quickly adds an extra half hour to an hour to the game.

But that’s my experience, and I probably should’ve said it depends on the people playing it. As a whole though I believe AA is a far healthier way to play games, much more engaging.

This makes sense, and I agree on both points.

For tracking activated units just put a token next to them. Hell, ASOI&F even sells some faction-specific banners (which look quite nice) for that purpose.

 auticus wrote:
There are those players yes, they take 20-30 minutes in normal AOS before every turn for the same reason, so yes in AA they are infuriating as well.

However chess clocks are a great enhancement to the game so you can't just sit there forever in analysis paralysis.

Just 1-2 minutes each activation adds up. 10+ units on both sides takes up 20-40mins a turn roughly. Compared to a game of IGOUGO, where you’d spend 5mins finalising your whole army’s plan, making it take up about 10mins.

I can only refer to my group’s experience, and I know my group don’t like chess clock pressure, since we’re pretty casual. As I said before, I should’ve stated in my original post that it definitely based on the players, but it just seems to take up more time than IGOUGO imo. Which is literally my only potential issue with AA for warhammer, compared to every other healthy bonus that comes with AA.

I can't discount your experience, but I can't reconcile it with mine either as we were getting 2000 point AOS games done in 2 - 2.5 hours for several years, which is the same amount of time normal AOS games were taking us at 2000 points.

Conquest I can get done in 2 hours as well and thats roughly same amount of figures, though its block / rank and file not individual models moving skirmish style.

Would need some analysis to see where that time is coming from. If you have players that wait until the start of their activation to analyze then yes I can see that as the same as the guy that waits to the beginning of his turn in normal AOS to start thinking as well.

Most of my group knows what they are going to do roughly before they start their activation or take a very little bit of time before hand to make a choice. But not enough to drag the game into over time.

Obviously if you have people that say it can happen than it happens, but I still don't think its THAT bad, and like you've said the benefits far outweigh the little bit of extra time.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I'm still not seeing how alternate activation takes longer. Arguements about which units have taken their turn? Really? Does that show up as a factor when playing Kill Team, Warcry, or when resolving an AoS combat phase?

I feel like there is a joke going over my head.

We've long had the ongoing joke in my circles that the turn sequence goes:
Argument phase,
Hero phase,
argument phase,
Move phase,
argument phase,
shooting phase,
argument phase,
etc etc etc
*There's also the option to insert a new argument phase directly into any other phase. Including an argument phase.
**Obviously the names of the phases shift by edition or system.
*** And there's no requirement that the argument must pertain to the phase it's following/interrupting.

Oof...

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I'm still not seeing how alternate activation takes longer. Arguements about which units have taken their turn? Really? Does that show up as a factor when playing Kill Team, Warcry, or when resolving an AoS combat phase?

I feel like there is a joke going over my head.

I've tried building AA systems for 40k, and I've found that arguments about which units have taken their turn are far less of a problem than the extra thinking time required when players have forgotten what their plan was or need to adjust it based on new developments. You may mock, but I'd note that alternating activations within phases (ex. Kill-Team, Titanicus) only ever shows up in small games, and even GW has started moving to a system where a unit activates and does its entire turn in newer releases (War Cry, Necromunda).

I've started moving to something like the Bolt Action system in my 40k-based projects (when a unit activates it either gets to: shoot, move and shoot at a penalty, move double and fight in melee (units charged do get to fight back), hold to make a reaction shot later, hide, or rally to remove pinning markers). The system is more shooting-focused so it obviously won't translate entirely, but the principle of one "phase" where you alternate activating units and doing their entire turn does make the game run much faster.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

I've tried building AA systems for 40k, and I've found that arguments about which units have taken their turn are far less of a problem than the extra thinking time required when players have forgotten what their plan was or need to adjust it based on new developments. You may mock, but I'd note that alternating activations within phases (ex. Kill-Team, Titanicus) only ever shows up in small games, and even GW has started moving to a system where a unit activates and does its entire turn in newer releases (War Cry, Necromunda).

This. The reason why alternate activation takes longer is because it's more reactive to what your opponent just did in the previous activation. When in a IGOUGO system, since the interaction is lighter, you can stick more to an overall plan and apply it.

That's why some people "lose a lot of time" thinking when it's their turn. They take into account your move and try to see what's to do next - as well as maybe trying to know what you would as reaction to their own activation afterwards. And it's repeated every activation, actually. Not everyone can think at the same speed.

And it's to me the reason why it applies more easily to skirmish size games involving not a lot of activations. When that number goes up too much, it quickly becomes a nightmare.

Reason why Apocalypse in 40k uses alternate activations is because players alternate whole detachments, not just individual units. If that was the case, it would be horrible to play !

Which is also what I said. Also less things die as fast, at least from testing it out in 40 with lots of shooting, you have more time to shoot with units.

Reason why Apocalypse in 40k uses alternate activations is because players alternate whole detachments, not just individual units. If that was the case, it would be horrible to play !

Speak for yourself. Bolt Action, Warlords of Nowhere, and Conquest all employ army level pure unit AA and there are a lot of people that play those games that like that just fine.

I guess my experience with people needing time to think has been different from others. I am glad to have heard about it.

 auticus wrote:

Reason why Apocalypse in 40k uses alternate activations is because players alternate whole detachments, not just individual units. If that was the case, it would be horrible to play !

Speak for yourself. Bolt Action, Warlords of Nowhere, and Conquest all employ army level pure unit AA and there are a lot of people that play those games that like that just fine.

The number of units involved is totally not the same on the scale of an Apocalypse game. Try to play these games with a hundred or more units on each side, and tell me you don't have difficulties to do an alternate activation for each unit.

I've never played a game of apocalypse that had 100 or more units on each side.

I've never even seen a table big enough to accommodate an apocalypse game of that magnitude.

A game of that magnitude sure, alt activation wouldn't work very well. But then again a game of that magnitude by itself wouldn't work very well IMO.

 auticus wrote:
I've never played a game of apocalypse that had 100 or more units on each side.

I've never even seen a table big enough to accommodate an apocalypse game of that magnitude.

A game of that magnitude sure, alt activation wouldn't work very well. But then again a game of that magnitude by itself wouldn't work very well IMO.

People do all the time thou, there are .... was yearly events with 40+ players bring full armies. There also is floorhammer were you play on the floor b.c there is just to much for the tables. But lots of places push tables together side my side in a "S" shape so you have room to move around. Also you can shoot from 1 table to another b.c its 1 giant battle, its not "5 independent tables" which makes Titans more fun.

When we do Apoc we push 2 4x6 tables together to make a 8x6 table instead. We played a small game to practice the new Apoc rules, i had something like 40 units and this was a small list, we also each did 5 detachments.

180 gants
90 Hgants
21 Rippers
3 Neurothropes
5 Hive Tyrants
3 units of Zoans
2 units of Hive guard
5 Carnifexes
Venomthrope
Manaltnrope
2 Harpies
3 Trygons
30 Gargoyles
80 Genestealers
3 Broodlords
Barbed hierodule
2 Warrior Primes
12 Warriors
3 Biovores
2 Exocrines
2 Tyrannofexes
2 Tervigons


But with new Apoc rules full units normally are getting 1/20th the attacks and are only 1/10 the wounds, so its more like a unit of 20 gants are 2 gants in a normal 40k game. If i were to play 40k as Apoc converted a full battalion would still be 15 so or units but each unit would be 1/10 the models.

Ok cool. I'm not going to debate that they do or do not happen, if you say those size games are regular for you great.

Now lets talk about normal 2000 point games that have around 10-12 units in them per side, and alt activation since I think that was the primary focus of the conversation.

You are the one that brought it up. It was an example as what is needed sometimes and people are using another game system that does have some type of AA's compare to a full igougo so it is inline with what we are talking about. If you don't want to talk about Apoc then don't talk about Bolt Action or Warcry. As my example it MADE 20k points feel like 2k points, heck it feels smaller" when talking about rolling dice. When 20mans are rolling 2-8 dice compare to 80-100 dice, that is a large difference. So yes it is like smaller pointed games, you are just moving more models,

I've also play Apoc for a normal 40k game with 2k points, but we played 3 detachments. It actually worked out great. I actually enjoyed that more than what 40k 8th was.

Could that worth for AOS? Not really, only b.c there are not detachments.

But if you combine Apoc and Warcry to make "3 groups" and alternate actions group by group. Would this work better than full AA per phase?

Sarouan wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Reason why Apocalypse in 40k uses alternate activations is because players alternate whole detachments, not just individual units. If that was the case, it would be horrible to play !

Speak for yourself. Bolt Action, Warlords of Nowhere, and Conquest all employ army level pure unit AA and there are a lot of people that play those games that like that just fine.

The number of units involved is totally not the same on the scale of an Apocalypse game. Try to play these games with a hundred or more units on each side, and tell me you don't have difficulties to do an alternate activation for each unit.

No, but the number of units in a Bolt Action game is pretty similar to the number of units in an Age of Sigmar game, so perhaps alternating individual unit activations might be a reasonable comparison when we're talking about Sigmar. I'm sure if we were to go back and try and build an Apocalypse-scale Sigmar game where there were a hundred units on each side we'd have different considerations to talk about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
...I've also play Apoc for a normal 40k game with 2k points, but we played 3 detachments. It actually worked out great. I actually enjoyed that more than what 40k 8th was.

Could that worth for AOS? Not really, only b.c there are not detachments.

But if you combine Apoc and Warcry to make "3 groups" and alternate actions group by group. Would this work better than full AA per phase?

That'd be another way to do it, certainly. The problem, I think, is that Warcry forces you to balance your groups by making it random which group you get where when, which can make it feel like the random deployment of groups has an undue impact on the game. You can't force balanced groups by number of units because the price of one unit varies so much, so you'd have to do it by points, which makes for unduly complicated bookkeeping and applies some soft restrictions to list-building (it's much harder to run an army with one big unit and a bunch of small units, for instance). And even then you'd still probably want to do restricted actions rather than letting everyone cast/move/shoot/charge/fight every turn (Apocalypse lets you move/attack or move/move, Warcry lets you do two actions).

 Amishprn86 wrote:
You are the one that brought it up. It was an example as what is needed sometimes and people are using another game system that does have some type of AA's compare to a full igougo so it is inline with what we are talking about. If you don't want to talk about Apoc then don't talk about Bolt Action or Warcry. As my example it MADE 20k points feel like 2k points, heck it feels smaller" when talking about rolling dice. When 20mans are rolling 2-8 dice compare to 80-100 dice, that is a large difference. So yes it is like smaller pointed games, you are just moving more models,

I've also play Apoc for a normal 40k game with 2k points, but we played 3 detachments. It actually worked out great. I actually enjoyed that more than what 40k 8th was.

Could that worth for AOS? Not really, only b.c there are not detachments.

But if you combine Apoc and Warcry to make "3 groups" and alternate actions group by group. Would this work better than full AA per phase?

Well it sounds like you are discounting AA because you are injecting an example where we are playing some massive 50,000 point game of 40k with 100+ units per side, which is definitely not a normal game.

Fully AA works just fine with normal scaled 2000 pointish type games. If you are trying to play a game at 50,000 points with 100+ units per side, then sure pure AA is not going to work very well. But I was never even remotely getting close to discussing games of that magnitude and Alternate Activation. I wouldn't even consider playing games of that magnitude period.

Bolt Action and Warlords of Nowhere and Conquest have the same magnitude of game, very similar model / unit count in a default setting and those are the examples I am using to discuss because a 2000 point game of AOS and a 2000 point game of Conquest or Warlords of Nowhere are very much in the same ballpark, whereas a 50,000 point 100+ unit point game of 40k is not, and sure that would not be a game for AA at all if we're going to play that type of game.

That doesn't discount or make AA not viable for AOS. It makes it not viable for 50,000 points of AOS or makes it not viable for people that like to take a game that defaults at 2000 points and pump it up to 50,000 point version of it, which I guess would be another discussion.

I did inten for the rough premise of this thread to be 'assuming you were playing alternate activation how would you go about it' so I think the apocalypse tangent has gotten off-topic. The discussion of IF people want to use AA is something I'd like us to keep to the side if possible.

doing alternating phases is the easiest way and you even can keep the double turn for those who like it
there is not really a change to anything else needed

for a full alternating unit activation I only see it working if there are limited amounts of actions a unit can do and some of them using the whole activation up
(yet using hero abilities, were the hero uses up his activation to activate another unit twice will still work and become an intresting option)

I think AoS can very much support an Alternating Activation system. My experience has been that AA systems work perfectly fine as long as armies don't regularly have more than 20 units in them and the player with the fewer non-activated models has the ability to pass. I do find the ability lower number of unactivated units having the option to pass greatly prevents unit and activation spam. I also think it makes lore sense has it is much easier to command and control less units. Which in points based games tend to be more elite/veteran type units which should be easier to command.

That said, I am less inclined for AoS to have an AA system than 40k. There is something to be said for Black Powder and earlier era games to be IGOUGO even if they are more a skirmisher type game like AoS. I am not opposed to the idea of AoS going AA, just that I think it fits 40k's scope better.

Hm, I've never thought about the importance of a pass element like that before. Good point.

You do have to take into account activation economy when crafting an AA system. You can see this in games like ASOIAF game or inifinity, where activation numbers really do have an effect on the game that people build around

stratigo wrote:
You do have to take into account activation economy when crafting an AA system. You can see this in games like ASOIAF game or inifinity, where activation numbers really do have an effect on the game that people build around

I think it's worth distinguishing between three different types of AA system.

1. Straight I activate a unit, you activate a unit, and so on. Then once one player is done, the other activates their remainder. This can incentivize hordes, since you wind up with a large portion of your army able to activate at once.

2. Randomized, unit-count-based activation a la Bolt Action. So if I have ten units and you have twenty, I get ten green tokens in a bag and you get twenty red tokens, and we draw at random. Hordes aren't necessarily a straight buff, since the rate at which they activate is proportional to their size, but you can skew this a lot by having one really good unit and a ton of chaff. The ton of chaff gives you more opportunities to activate the one good unit just when you need it.

3. Pure random individual activation. Each unit has a corresponding chit in the bag. When you draw a unit's chit, it activates then and there. There's no player agency involved so it doesn't incentivize or disincentivize any particular build- and, IMO, it does a great job of representing battlefield friction and the difficulty of coordinating an army's moving parts- but players may dislike the randomness of it.

Lately I tend to feel that #2 or #3 are the most effective implementations, but requires some additional overhead (tokens/chits) compared to #1.

Part of what makes AA difficult to retrofit onto a game is that any implementation can have unintended consequences. While #3 prevents the 'gaminess' of activation economy, it throws a big monkey wrench in mechanics that rely on the synchronization of simultaneous activation.

Here's a thought on a variant: Each unit has a chit that goes in the bag. When you draw a chit, the owning player can either activate the corresponding unit, or save it for later. On any successive activation, a held chit can be activated with the newly drawn unit. That way players can hold their activations if they need a unit to activate with another one or just stay in reserve, but it affords the enemy opportunity to intervene.

There are probably dozens of ways that an effective AA system can be implemented.

Any of them I feel would be miles ahead of what we have right now in this game.

AA is straight up more involving and therefore more fun way to play games. IGOUGO is like another relic of the 80s game design,like relying on RNGesus for reserves.