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40k has a first turn problem, and with 9th edition removing the prepared positions stratagem, my playgroup and I have started working on a replacement. This is intended for crusade and narrative missions, but it should work fine in matched play(I'm not promising balanced, just functional)

Please evaluate how powerful you think this is and feel free to suggest new abilities or retoolings for the ones here. Note that the player who uses these abilities is the one with fewer singles, so you should only be able to use the singles abilities a couple times. 4 at max and that's low odds.

This system should look familiar if you have played warcry. It might look truly bizarre if you haven't.

Instead of a roll off for first turn, each player rolls 6 dice and separates them into sets. So all 1s go together, all 2s and etc. The person who has the most singles gains the initiative, and chooses the player to go first. If players are tied, they each roll an extra die and add it to their pools untill they are not tied .The player who goes first now discard their pool of dice, as these abilities are only for the second turn player.

The second turn player may spend their dice on the following abilities. Note you cannot use an ability more then once, except for the first two. All buffs end at the start of your first command phase. (Except you keep your command points if you chose that one)

(Reusable) single: Get your heads down!: target non-monster or vehicle unit can reroll saves of 1 this turn.

(Reusable) single: Opening Salvo: target monster/vehicle rolls a die, on a 4+, do a mortal wound to a non-character within 36"

Double: Prepared positions: Each non-monster/vehicle gains the benefit of light cover this turn.

Double: Diffusion field: target monster/vehicle gains the benefit of dense cover this turn.

Double: Psionic preperations: target psyker can cast a power. It cannot be denied. It may only target a friendly unit, and may not cause mortal wounds to enemies by any means.

Triple: Requisition assets: gain +2 command points

Triple: Seize ground: target infantry or dedicated transport can take a normal move.

Quad: redeploy up to 4 units.

Example:

I wonder if it would be easier to do something like this.


Give every unit back an initiative rating.

Get rid of IGOUGO.

Each unit activates during a turn for movement, based on the initiative rating, counting down from 10.

Then, we do the psychic phase, from initiative 10 psykers, to init 1 psykers.

Then shooting same way, alternating between players.

Then charges and assaults.

It gives faster armies and units the ability to first strike some, and lets heavier units pick, chose and commit to fights.

 iGuy91 wrote:

Get rid of IGOUGO.

This is always going to be a core problem. Getting rid of this gak system that the white knights always defend does several things:
1. It keeps potential broken units in the future in check
2. Completely lessens Alpha strike
3. Makes for a game that's actually interactive
4. Less likelihood that you win because you just brought the better list

While I appreciate the ideas, I'm not looking to make fundamental changes to the game. I'm just looking to give a benefit to the second turn player.

Can we please discuss the rule I proposed above? I'm sure someone on the forum has looked into moving away from igougo. That's not what I want to do.

Yeturs wrote:
While I appreciate the ideas, I'm not looking to make fundamental changes to the game. I'm just looking to give a benefit to the second turn player.

Can we please discuss the rule I proposed above? I'm sure someone on the forum has looked into moving away from igougo. That's not what I want to do.

It's a neat idea. For someone who's only played Warcry once, though, it's also a little confusing-can you give some examples of how the dice pools would work?

Also, 1 MW feels a little low for your Opening Salvo. Perhaps up it to d3 mortals, but don't allow it to target the same unit more than once/reduce it to 1 MW if targeting a unit for a second time?

An example is a great idea.

So me and my opponent roll the 6 dice. They roll 1,2,4,4,5,6 and I roll 1,1,2,2,5,6

We split our dice into sets, and see that they have 4 singles and a double, while I have 2 doubles and 2 singles. Because my opponent has more singles, they choose who goes first. They choose themselves, and discard their pool of dice.

So now i, as the second turn player, can spend my dice. I decide to take prepared positions to protect my troops and I take diffusion field to protect my big vehicle. I decide to use heads down twice to help keep my two front line units safe.

Let's say i had rolled a triple and 3 singles, i could lob some mortal wounds, and activate sieze ground to move a unit into forward cover, close to my front line.


That being said, the damage might need turned up. We are playtesting the rule in my group and I'll keep that in mind. We haven't had much chance with this iteration just yet.

I think missions should fix any imbalance between who goes first and second and this is a lot of extra rules for missions making it a bad idea for mass implementation IMO.

Whether first turn is OP is still up in the air AFAIK since we haven't had several tournaments track winning and losing between going first and second, but it doesn't seem too bad in a tournament setting from the podcasts I have listened to.

I am leaning towards your suggested abilities being too strong, 4CP's worth of abilities for going second seems like a lot and I trust the tournament players saying it's more or less equal and going second has advantages over the Dakkanauts saying going first is auto-winning. Terrain is a big deal as it was in 8th and in one of my playgroups we absolutely needed house rules to nerf T1 because we did not have nova Ls and such to block lots of LOS so your mileage is probably going to vary quite massively from other players in terms of how much you need to buff going second.

I will give a rough estimation of value in terms of CP.

Get your heads down!: 1
Opening Salvo: 0,33
Prepared positions: 1
Diffusion field: 3
Psionic preperations: 2
Requisition assets: 2
Seize ground: 1
Redeploy: 3

It's a pretty hefty subsystem for something that will only be used for a single turn by a single player each game. If nothing else, you could probably get rid of the dice set generation thing and just say, "Whichever player is going second gets X points that may be spent on the following rules." That would speed things up quite a bit.

Also, I'm not entirely sure going second is actually a huge advantage this edition. It certainly was in 8th. Maybe it still is. But the games I've played and battle reports I've watched make it seem like the mission, battlefield, and army can really impact whether or not you want to go first.

Going first means you have to come out and start trying to claim objectives before your opponent if you want to max out on your primary points. That means you're likely exposing yourself to your opponent's firepower and/or putting yourself in charge range of some of their units. Plus, BLOS terrain being more prevalent means an alpha striking gunline might have its alpha strike neutered by a couple of terrain pieces that are more than 5" tall.

So I'm not sure player 2 actually needs the extra help. I'm pretty sure you'd actually end up with games where you're giving extra benfits to the player who's already in the more adantageous position in certain matchups. A melee-heavy army that has to cross the table, for instance, will spend its first turn mostly just coming out from behind its BLOS cover.

Now that said, it could be interesting to have some brief pre-game back and forth. Sort of like a slightly more in-depth version of the scouting phase from Kill Team. Give both players a few points to spend on rules similar to the ones you've pitched, and go back and forth scouting a unit forward or bombaridng the enemy position or putting up psychic defenses. Could be fun. You could even give extra points to armies that include certain warlord traits or characters. I could see certain GSC characters or the autarch either granting extra points or unlocking additional "scouting phase" abilities.

Awesome feedback, thanks.

The whole system doesn't seem complicated to me, but I'm very biased because I play warcry often lol. Its surely not for everyone.

We have also only used this for crusade so far, where the mission primary is your only source of victory points. Maybe that has influenced my perception of first turn power.

Evaluating the abilities in terms of command points is a good idea, and will definitely help balance things out more.

And I like using the abilities as a scout type system. Maybe an ability in that method could give you a bonus to the roll to go first?

I'll think on your feedback for sure, thanks again

Yeturs wrote:
Awesome feedback, thanks.

The whole system doesn't seem complicated to me, but I'm very biased because I play warcry often lol. Its surely not for everyone.

I don't think that the subsystem you've proposed is all that complicated on its own. It's just that 40k as a whole already is a bit complicated, and the rules you're proposing use mechanics that don't really exist elsewhere in the game. Like, instead of the matching dice thing, you could just do a roll-off for first turn like we do right now, and then give the 2nd player X number of CP that can only be spent on "Scout phase stratagems" or whatever you want to call them. And then you could make X either a flat number of a d6 roll or something. You'd still end up with a random number of points to spend on what are basically stratagems, but you don't have to introduce a dice matching mechanic to get there.

We have also only used this for crusade so far, where the mission primary is your only source of victory points. Maybe that has influenced my perception of first turn power.

It could be as simple as the amount and type of terrain you're using and the armies involved. A guard artillery gunline can still alpha strike pretty hard, but a few BLOS terrain features will seriously reduce the amount of alpha strike most armies have.

And I like using the abilities as a scout type system. Maybe an ability in that method could give you a bonus to the roll to go first?

Seems reasonable. A one-use stratagem that gives you a +1 to the roll to see who goes first.