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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.

Don't know why it pains you to suggest it though. People have been pushing AA for 40k for years, there is nothing new about the sentiment.

Unfortunately, I feel this is the way 40k has to go with the way it is going. If it wants to be like Warmachine, with all of its buffs, auras, debuffs etc. then it needs to have the same turn structure was Warmachine. It is still IGOUGO, but you activate unit by unit as you describe above (if you don't know already). This is crucial for positioning and the order you activate things in is an art form all in itself. 40k wants to have its cake and eat it with all of these stacking things, but none of the tactical nuance that comes with games that do that.

You want to buff that unit? Well, you'd best activate the support character first to get them in range; but that support character is blocked in his movement by another unit which is in melee. etc etc.

Although, as for AA in 40k? I'll keep tilting at this windmill, but there is already a game that is very much like 40k with AA (and D10s too!), as you can see there the rules are free- It might be hard to swallow for some people, but minis can be game system agnostic. The rules are right there already to play 40k with AA (and D10s, it's BCBs wet dream!).

The scotsman's approach is pretty similar to what we've tinkered with.

I've also experimented with something more reminiscent of Epic. Basically works as follows:

(1) Each battle round, players roll off for the initiative. The player that wins choses to seize the initiative or give it to their opponent.

(2) Movement: The player with initiative moves all of their forces. Then the player without moves all of their forces.

(3) Shooting Phase, First Fire. Players alternate activating units to fire with units that did move. Casualties are removed/applied AFTER all players have finished first fire.

(4) Shoot Phase, Normal Fire. Players alternate shooting with units that moved. Casualties are removed after your opponents next firing activation (this means that Unit A can shoot unit B, and if player B activates unit B to shoot with next, the casualties unit B suffered from unit A would only apply after they resolve their shooting). Makes for more of a simultaneous fire simulation.

(5) Charge - players alternate declaring and resolving charges, starting with the player with the initiative.

(6) Fight phase, players alternate choosing units to fight with, as per normal.

My thing with alternating activations isn't that I think it would ruin the game or something like that, but it would completely change the game. People have already touched on it a bit, but to implement that kind of change would require a total revamp of essentially all of the game's rules to make it work in the world of alternating activations. That game and that world may be really fun for some people, but I already have a lot of fun with the current format. I would just hate to lose the current game.

I think it should go

Player A move
Player B move
(proceeding turn Player B move then Player A)
Players roll off to activate units to shoot or advance ether 1 by 1 or by detachments. If you advance or move into enemy units you immediately fight (no charge phase) (psychic done in shooting phase)

I think I like the detachment activation the best. The way you make it balanced is by forcing players to split their army into 3 equalish points detachments. You could even add things like an imitative value to units to add up for a bonus on your roll to see who acts first.

I think this would work fine.

 Mezmorki wrote:
The scotsman's approach is pretty similar to what we've tinkered with.

I've also experimented with something more reminiscent of Epic. Basically works as follows:

(1) Each battle round, players roll off for the initiative. The player that wins choses to seize the initiative or give it to their opponent.

(2) Movement: The player with initiative moves all of their forces. Then the player without moves all of their forces.

(3) Shooting Phase, First Fire. Players alternate activating units to fire with units that did move. Casualties are removed/applied AFTER all players have finished first fire.

(4) Shoot Phase, Normal Fire. Players alternate shooting with units that moved. Casualties are removed after your opponents next firing activation (this means that Unit A can shoot unit B, and if player B activates unit B to shoot with next, the casualties unit B suffered from unit A would only apply after they resolve their shooting). Makes for more of a simultaneous fire simulation.

(5) Charge - players alternate declaring and resolving charges, starting with the player with the initiative.

(6) Fight phase, players alternate choosing units to fight with, as per normal.

This is similar to how Kill Team works, and I don't think it works at all. In fact I have to say it's by far my most hated method of activation.

The player that goes second has essentially total control of the game.
1. If they don't want to get shot at, they can just move out of LoS.
2. If they think they're better at shooting that you, they can just stay still and shoot you first.
3. If they don't want to get charged, they can just back up out of range.
4. If they want any shooting to be at a particular range, they can just move to make that a reality.

The first player is almost entirely at the mercy of the second player and it's super super lame.
If you make players assign rough orders (like first fire, advance, charge, etc) secretly before the turn you at least mitigate that somewhat. But the problem is still there, and assigning orders brings problems of its own.

And that is why you roll for priority, like in LOTR, which has that exact turn structure (IIRC).

But it's a bit gak though isn't it?
"If you lose this one 50/50 roll, you have absolutely no agency for this turn. Your opponent controls everything".

IgoUgo is bad, but at least you have proper agency for half the turn.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
...This is similar to how Kill Team works, and I don't think it works at all. In fact I have to say it's by far my most hated method of activation.

The player that goes second has essentially total control of the game.
1. If they don't want to get shot at, they can just move out of LoS.
2. If they think they're better at shooting that you, they can just stay still and shoot you first.
3. If they don't want to get charged, they can just back up out of range.
4. If they want any shooting to be at a particular range, they can just move to make that a reality.

The first player is almost entirely at the mercy of the second player and it's super super lame.
If you make players assign rough orders (like first fire, advance, charge, etc) secretly before the turn you at least mitigate that somewhat. But the problem is still there, and assigning orders brings problems of its own.

LotR has a few key differences that mitigate the second player's ability to control the game:
-Priority rolls (as Grimtuff mentioned), so one player isn't the second player for the whole game.
-Charge in movement, so the second player can't back up out of charge range.
-Strict controls on moving and shooting (weapons are either move-or-fire or move-half-to-fire, so the fastest anyone can ever go and make any shooting attacks is 5"), so if someone's backing up and shooting the other side is still capable of closing the distance.

 Mud Turkey 13 wrote:
My thing with alternating activations isn't that I think it would ruin the game or something like that, but it would completely change the game. People have already touched on it a bit, but to implement that kind of change would require a total revamp of essentially all of the game's rules to make it work in the world of alternating activations. That game and that world may be really fun for some people, but I already have a lot of fun with the current format. I would just hate to lose the current game.

Not so much changes to the rules as to folks strategies. Biggest changes with AA concerns handling Assault - one you figure that out, everything else works pretty easily with only a couple minor changes. I've played several 40K games using a kit-bashed AA system and it works pretty well.

Grimdark Future handles assault by saying each unit gets to fight once per turn, and if it has to fight after that it only hits on 6s. Not a perfect solution but reasonably good.

Anecdotally, we found pretty much everything to be so deadly that having a shared fight phase was virtually identical to having there be a theoretical possibility of fighting in your opponent's turn IF they didn't fall back and IF you didn't just murder everything already in the first round of combat.

The distinction between having 1 fight phase and 2 fight phases between turns potentially maybe sometimes didn't ever come up.

I wouldn't mind alterative activation, if the game was built for it. But, I don't like the idea of trying to shoehorn it into an existing game. I'm happy with the turn structure 40k has, it's been a staple of the game. I wouldn't want to see that change.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

This is similar to how Kill Team works, and I don't think it works at all. In fact I have to say it's by far my most hated method of activation.

The player that goes second has essentially total control of the game.
1. If they don't want to get shot at, they can just move out of LoS.
2. If they think they're better at shooting that you, they can just stay still and shoot you first.
3. If they don't want to get charged, they can just back up out of range.
4. If they want any shooting to be at a particular range, they can just move to make that a reality.

The first player is almost entirely at the mercy of the second player and it's super super lame.
If you make players assign rough orders (like first fire, advance, charge, etc) secretly before the turn you at least mitigate that somewhat. But the problem is still there, and assigning orders brings problems of its own.

The player with the initiative gets to set the tempo, which is important. If I advance on you (as the first player) and you decide to move back (out of LoS), it may very well be the case that you just moved away from an objective and gave me free reign to sit there and not even have to take incoming fire (from the unit that moved out of sight).

If you're better at shooting and standstill to fire first, then you're at the mercy of return fire later on, or are left in a closer position and more likely to be charged, etc.. In cases where both sides move and shoot, the player with initiative gets to shoot first. If you shoot at someone at a range where they can't shoot you back, then it's a definite advantage for the player with initiative going first - again setting the tempo.

Honestly, I think the nature of objectives and scoring is such that players are going to end up needing to move up the field either way. And with movement and ranges as they are, things are going to happen still. If you're using units to cower and hide out of sight, they probably aren't really participating in the fight and I'm not sure it's a winning strategy.

 catbarf wrote:
Andy Chambers wanted to do exactly that for 4th Ed. GW corporate said no.

You got a source on that? I'd love to read about it.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:

This is similar to how Kill Team works, and I don't think it works at all. In fact I have to say it's by far my most hated method of activation.

The player that goes second has essentially total control of the game.
1. If they don't want to get shot at, they can just move out of LoS.
2. If they think they're better at shooting that you, they can just stay still and shoot you first.
3. If they don't want to get charged, they can just back up out of range.
4. If they want any shooting to be at a particular range, they can just move to make that a reality.

The first player is almost entirely at the mercy of the second player and it's super super lame.
If you make players assign rough orders (like first fire, advance, charge, etc) secretly before the turn you at least mitigate that somewhat. But the problem is still there, and assigning orders brings problems of its own.

The player with the initiative gets to set the tempo, which is important. If I advance on you (as the first player) and you decide to move back (out of LoS), it may very well be the case that you just moved away from an objective and gave me free reign to sit there and not even have to take incoming fire (from the unit that moved out of sight).

If you're better at shooting and standstill to fire first, then you're at the mercy of return fire later on, or are left in a closer position and more likely to be charged, etc.. In cases where both sides move and shoot, the player with initiative gets to shoot first. If you shoot at someone at a range where they can't shoot you back, then it's a definite advantage for the player with initiative going first - again setting the tempo.

Honestly, I think the nature of objectives and scoring is such that players are going to end up needing to move up the field either way. And with movement and ranges as they are, things are going to happen still. If you're using units to cower and hide out of sight, they probably aren't really participating in the fight and I'm not sure it's a winning strategy.

I disagree, if it isn't in player B's interest to move back, they just wouldn't. The ball is literally entirely in their court.
Shooting first isn't a significant benefit at all, firstly because it's only 1 unit. Secondly, if Player A has to move to set up a shot, Player B can just match it by standing still and getting First Fire.
The best Player A can hope to do is force Player B to make a decision, but all the decisions are B's to make.

Hecaton wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Andy Chambers wanted to do exactly that for 4th Ed. GW corporate said no.

You got a source on that? I'd love to read about it.

I'd like to see a source as well, but it makes sense given he worked on games afterwards that are more reactionary.

Hecaton wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Andy Chambers wanted to do exactly that for 4th Ed. GW corporate said no.

You got a source on that? I'd love to read about it.

Can’t find a source ring now, but it is fairly well known that the rules for Mongoose’s Starship Troopers game is what Chambers wanted for 40k.

When he left GW he used those concepts he already laid out to make SST. 40k’s own rules from 3rd to 7th are essentially based on a 15mm WW2 game that Rick Priestley was working on that he bodged into 3rd Ed at the last minute. If Chambers and Priestley got their way, 40k would be incredibly different.

I’ve been working on my set up for AA... incursion level to 1500 it seems to work okay... really simple solve too... I just put down a different coloured dice next to each unit as a phase token... each unit can spend 1 token per phase, and cannot spend another token until all units have spent the same number... as for abilities that work at the end of “X phase”, simply perform the required phase and get your bonus... if it’s important you’ll prioritise it ☺️

 GamerGuy wrote:
I’ve been working on my set up for AA... incursion level to 1500 it seems to work okay... really simple solve too... I just put down a different coloured dice next to each unit as a phase token... each unit can spend 1 token per phase, and cannot spend another token until all units have spent the same number... as for abilities that work at the end of “X phase”, simply perform the required phase and get your bonus... if it’s important you’ll prioritise it ☺️

To make sure I understand, when you activate a unit you can choose for it to act as if it were in a phase of your choosing? So each unit can activate the phases in an order of your choosing?
So for example;
I activate my Devastators and have them shoot.
My opponent does something.
I activate my Assault Marines and have them charge.
My opponent does something.
Now every unit as activated once, I can activate my Assault Marines again and have them fight.
Correct?

 Mezmorki wrote:
The scotsman's approach is pretty similar to what we've tinkered with.

I've also experimented with something more reminiscent of Epic. Basically works as follows:

(1) Each battle round, players roll off for the initiative. The player that wins choses to seize the initiative or give it to their opponent.

(2) Movement: The player with initiative moves all of their forces. Then the player without moves all of their forces.

(3) Shooting Phase, First Fire. Players alternate activating units to fire with units that did move. Casualties are removed/applied AFTER all players have finished first fire.

(4) Shoot Phase, Normal Fire. Players alternate shooting with units that moved. Casualties are removed after your opponents next firing activation (this means that Unit A can shoot unit B, and if player B activates unit B to shoot with next, the casualties unit B suffered from unit A would only apply after they resolve their shooting). Makes for more of a simultaneous fire simulation.

(5) Charge - players alternate declaring and resolving charges, starting with the player with the initiative.

(6) Fight phase, players alternate choosing units to fight with, as per normal.

the couple of games i tried AA, i did something similar to this except our phases were :

Movement,
Psychic,
Shooting/Charging,
Fighting,
Morale

We put shooting and charging together because this system made melee basically impossible to reach since the opponent would just unload their whole army in the unit that was positionned to charge in. This also removed the "double action" that some units can do (shoot real guns and fight in the same turn).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mud Turkey 13 wrote:
My thing with alternating activations isn't that I think it would ruin the game or something like that, but it would completely change the game. People have already touched on it a bit, but to implement that kind of change would require a total revamp of essentially all of the game's rules to make it work in the world of alternating activations. That game and that world may be really fun for some people, but I already have a lot of fun with the current format. I would just hate to lose the current game.

It really doesn't take much changes honestly, even with very little changes most strategies would still exist, even the "stack 20 buffs on a unit" that some posters seem to think would be invalidated by AA.

The thing is GW has never had a different system as far as I am aware and if they did make such a massive change to the rules and method of then really it’s a different game isn’t it. But they could put out a second official play style.

I always have thought that’s if both players omcpleted each phase at the same time. I’ve seen a lot of player complain that 40K can be over in the first round. But it would make it more realistic if one player moved all their units, then the other player moved in response

I think the partial AA system of Kill Team works well enough. There are also "strats" like decisive move/shot which allow you to act before your opponent even if you didn't win the advantage that round, and since the charges occur during the movement phase, you cannot back out of a charge just by moving second.

However, 40K is its own game so just swittching it to use KillTeam's partial AA is not going to work without collateral damage.

I'd love it if 40K used more AA aspects in its rules. Its boring to watch your opponent play out his full turn and all you do is roll a few saves here and there. When the game turn is shared, it keeps both players more engaged to the action. Feels good man

I don't buy the argument that 40k has always been this way, so it needs to stay this way.
40k has "always had" loads of different rules that are now not a thing. 40k is popular for many reasons, quality rules is not one of them.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.

Don't know why it pains you to suggest it though. People have been pushing AA for 40k for years, there is nothing new about the sentiment.

Unfortunately, I feel this is the way 40k has to go with the way it is going. If it wants to be like Warmachine, with all of its buffs, auras, debuffs etc. then it needs to have the same turn structure was Warmachine. It is still IGOUGO, but you activate unit by unit as you describe above (if you don't know already). This is crucial for positioning and the order you activate things in is an art form all in itself. 40k wants to have its cake and eat it with all of these stacking things, but none of the tactical nuance that comes with games that do that.

You want to buff that unit? Well, you'd best activate the support character first to get them in range; but that support character is blocked in his movement by another unit which is in melee. etc etc.

Although, as for AA in 40k? I'll keep tilting at this windmill, but there is already a game that is very much like 40k with AA (and D10s too!), as you can see there the rules are free- It might be hard to swallow for some people, but minis can be game system agnostic. The rules are right there already to play 40k with AA (and D10s, it's BCBs wet dream!).

That's great--do those rules come with an active local community where I can easily join a league or find pick up games every week? Because that has more to do with what game people play than anything. There are a lot of wargames I would LIKE to play, but in practice I will take a flawed rule system with players over a great rule system without them.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.

Don't know why it pains you to suggest it though. People have been pushing AA for 40k for years, there is nothing new about the sentiment.

Unfortunately, I feel this is the way 40k has to go with the way it is going. If it wants to be like Warmachine, with all of its buffs, auras, debuffs etc. then it needs to have the same turn structure was Warmachine. It is still IGOUGO, but you activate unit by unit as you describe above (if you don't know already). This is crucial for positioning and the order you activate things in is an art form all in itself. 40k wants to have its cake and eat it with all of these stacking things, but none of the tactical nuance that comes with games that do that.

You want to buff that unit? Well, you'd best activate the support character first to get them in range; but that support character is blocked in his movement by another unit which is in melee. etc etc.

Although, as for AA in 40k? I'll keep tilting at this windmill, but there is already a game that is very much like 40k with AA (and D10s too!), as you can see there the rules are free- It might be hard to swallow for some people, but minis can be game system agnostic. The rules are right there already to play 40k with AA (and D10s, it's BCBs wet dream!).

That's great--do those rules come with an active local community where I can easily join a league or find pick up games every week? Because that has more to do with what game people play than anything. There are a lot of wargames I would LIKE to play, but in practice I will take a flawed rule system with players over a great rule system without them.

Well, obviously it does not. It did 20-odd years ago when Void came out. I was merely pointing out how, for all of these people clamouring for 40k to have AA, D10s (or both!) there is already a set of rules out there for said people to try in their groups. Put their (proverbial) money where their mouths are as it were. There is literally no investment to try it. You have minis, you have the free rules. If the existing group wants to give it a go for a couple of games, nothing is lost.

 tauist wrote:
However, 40K is its own game so just swittching it to use KillTeam's partial AA is not going to work without collateral damage.

Doubtful. AoS 1.0 was a joke (and in the case of some special rules, a literal, actual joke) and it managed to shoot to the position of second most popular wargame just by virtue of GW pushing it.

If 10th edition introduced AA I imagine most of the detractors of it would be singing from the rooftops that going with AA was genius and any grogs who prefer IGUG should get with the times. If GW says jump, the fandom asks how high. What're they going to do, go play another company's game? Bwahahahahaha...

Anyway, I support AA. There's a reason pretty much every new game now uses it and IGUG is reserved for systems which, much like 40k, just 'always had it'.

GW made significant changes to the rules of AoS when they first released the General's Handbook, ostensibly 'matched play' rules but they were used universally because they made the game far more functional.

The "always had it" argument is so stupid as well, since it isn't like GW hasn't done drastic changes before.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Spoiler:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Alternate activation done by phase I can get behind (I often do it in AoS). What would cause me to quit 40k immediately is if one unit activated, did its whole turn, then the next unit activated to its whole turn, and so on. There is a lot of unrealism I can handle but having two whole armies stand idle while one unit takes all its actions is too much.

Don't know why it pains you to suggest it though. People have been pushing AA for 40k for years, there is nothing new about the sentiment.

Unfortunately, I feel this is the way 40k has to go with the way it is going. If it wants to be like Warmachine, with all of its buffs, auras, debuffs etc. then it needs to have the same turn structure was Warmachine. It is still IGOUGO, but you activate unit by unit as you describe above (if you don't know already). This is crucial for positioning and the order you activate things in is an art form all in itself. 40k wants to have its cake and eat it with all of these stacking things, but none of the tactical nuance that comes with games that do that.

You want to buff that unit? Well, you'd best activate the support character first to get them in range; but that support character is blocked in his movement by another unit which is in melee. etc etc.

Although, as for AA in 40k? I'll keep tilting at this windmill, but there is already a game that is very much like 40k with AA (and D10s too!), as you can see there the rules are free- It might be hard to swallow for some people, but minis can be game system agnostic. The rules are right there already to play 40k with AA (and D10s, it's BCBs wet dream!).

That's great--do those rules come with an active local community where I can easily join a league or find pick up games every week? Because that has more to do with what game people play than anything. There are a lot of wargames I would LIKE to play, but in practice I will take a flawed rule system with players over a great rule system without them.

Well, obviously it does not. It did 20-odd years ago when Void came out. I was merely pointing out how, for all of these people clamouring for 40k to have AA, D10s (or both!) there is already a set of rules out there for said people to try in their groups. Put their (proverbial) money where their mouths are as it were. There is literally no investment to try it. You have minis, you have the free rules. If the existing group wants to give it a go for a couple of games, nothing is lost.

Easier said than done I'm afraid. Both in terms of convincing people to try it and in giving it a reasonable trial. Getting multiple people to learn a new set of rules then play multiple games with those rules to the point of understanding them is a matter of weeks at the least. During that period people are losing out on regular 40k games with their limited time to play, not to mention if there is a league going on and they want to do games in that. If it really was as simple as whipping out some alternate rules and giving them a whirl people would be far more willing to do it.

I have done it though, in AoS. I came up with alternate-by-phase rules simple enough that they could be explained to someone during deployment and they would have enough understanding to use them by the time the game started. Once the effort required to learn the new system was eliminated people were more than happy to give it a go.

mrFickle wrote:
The thing is GW has never had a different system as far as I am aware and if they did make such a massive change to the rules and method of then really it’s a different game isn’t it. But they could put out a second official play style.

I always have thought that’s if both players omcpleted each phase at the same time. I’ve seen a lot of player complain that 40K can be over in the first round. But it would make it more realistic if one player moved all their units, then the other player moved in response

All four editions of Epic have been alternate activation of some flavour (although some of them split it up by phase). I prefer Epic 40,000 and Epic Armageddon's way of doing it rather than the order counters used in 1st and 2nd edition Space Marine - they're fiddly, take ages to place and tidy up, and look ugly). I think Man O' War also had some form of alternate or simultaneous activation, too.

As for changing the rules, they did that with Epic, from 2nd edition Space Marine/Titan Legions to Epic 40,000, and everyone complained.

Since Infinity and Starship Troopers have been mentioned, it's worth pointing out that SST's reaction rules were in place long before Corvus Belli started making 28mm spacemen instead of 15mm vikings.