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IgoYgo can work, but only for short turns, or when rules present significant counter play mid turn (eg held actions like overwatch).

Bloodbowl is IgoYgo and I feel it works very well, probably better than AA for that game.
You have only a few minutes (almost never more than 5) whilst your opponent considers and executes their turn, many people play with a 4 minute timer.
There's also limits on what players can do with their turn, there's only one Blitz (basically a charge action) allowed per turn across the entire team.

But something like 40k should NOT be IgoYgo. As the inactive player you can easily be sat down with nothing to do except roll saves and remove models for over half an hour, even up to an hour in some circumstances.
How many times have people seen their opponent wander off during your turn in a game of 40k?
On top of that there's no restriction on unit actions at all, in fact they've steadily removed restrictions so units can move further and attack more than ever before.
That like text book "how not to IgoUgo"

Some great responses here, following along, taking notes.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
@kirotheavenger: Can you give an example of 'simple mechanics that leads to advanced gameplay?'

Turnip 28's morale?

If you lose you automatically retreat, it's a simple morale system utilising "panic" markers to determine the distance + a D6 directly in opposite of the unit it lost too.
This can lead to morale juggling, it makes powder weaponry not always the best option despite being more damaging.

A good player can use it to jugle an opponents units and punish him, it also makes corner camping automatically dangerous. And makes initial movement into engagement range quite difficult. It also facilitates a use for light infantry.

This is interesting. I don't know if it qualifies as "Advanced Gameplay" but I really appreciate a simple mechanic that inspires strategic decision making.

An Example From Song of Blades and Heroes, my favorite fantasy, small warband, fast skirmish game.

-The gambling activation mechanic. Player chooses 1,2 or 3 dice to roll to activate each figure rolled against a quality number. However, roll two failures and play passes to the opponent. It's not a hard mechanic to grok, but that simple mechanic makes the order in which you activate important and each activation has a risk-and reward built in so you're always thinking about whether to play it safe or push your luck.

Further, once a decision is made, combining several results or effects into one dice roll or decision is a plus in my book.
Why should their be rolls to hit, damage and save? Those rolls are actions that a ruleset may require you to take, but in most situations, none of those is a separate decision or choice a player is making. The choice was to shoot and the faster one can see the results of that choice, the faster the game can move to the next meaningful decision.

An example of doing this sort of thing right, again from Song of Blades, a single opposed combat roll (plus or minus modifiers) determines:
1) The winner of combat -Bigger number
2) Whether the opponent falls down or falls back -Even or odd result
3) Whether the loser survives, dies or is so brutally slain as to cause nearby friends to roll for morale -magnitude of difference in results.

3 useful results coming from one chosen action/decision.

Both of those are what I would call elegant mechanics in that they that maximize meaningful decision making and minimize the process of results determination. Put another way "More action, less meaningless dice rolling."

It's nice when simple actions or decisions do lots of work, and less so when you need to follow a 15-minute procedure that ends up not changing the state of the game.

 infinite_array wrote:

I'll make the case for IGOUGO if it's either restrained (by some sort of command points that limit how much of your force can go, or test-based activations that randomize which units will activate in a given turn) or gives the opponent some sort of reaction mechanic.

Only "restrictive" IGOUGO game I've played was Pikeman's Lament, and I honestly hated how the game handled this activation mechanic. In order to activate units during your turn, you had to roll tests. The rule was, if you fail a single activation test, your turn ends. Which led to me receiving a beating with no way to retaliate two turns in a row because I've failed my first rolls both times.

I'm ok with IGOUGO if the game is fast enough for it to not result in a long wait and/or if it's intentional.

KoW IGOUGO is very fast, enables chess-clock play and is a true IGOUGO in that there are NO actions taken by the opposing player during your turn. They can actually go grab a beer while you play if you have access to their stats. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it exists for a reason, makes some sense and moves fast.

Most other IGOUGO however is a mess where it lowers game interaction without noticeably speeding up the game and doesn't seem to exist for any reasons other than tradition or the laziness of the game developer.

 SgtBANZAI wrote:

Only "restrictive" IGOUGO game I've played was Pikeman's Lament, and I honestly hated how the game handled this activation mechanic. In order to activate units during your turn, you had to roll tests. The rule was, if you fail a single activation test, your turn ends. Which led to me receiving a beating with no way to retaliate two turns in a row because I've failed my first rolls both times.

Funny enough I was thinking of the latest implementation of the Rampant series of rules (of which Pikeman's Lament is one). Rebels & Patriots has that same system, but it only stops that one unit and not your whole force. I think it'd be worth applying that to previous versions.

I still hold up 2nd Ed Epic as a brilliant game.

Each army had its own perks and downsides, despite the relative simplicity of the rules.

Victory was determined by a First Past The Post VP system.

VPs were awarded for breaking enemy units, and for holding Objectives, and the target was tied to game size. Objectives were a solid way to get close to your target, but you still had to damage the opponent.

Combat was also really simple. Each unit had weapons, with range, to hit and armour modifier. Close Combat was 2D6, plus your CAF. If you rolled higher, the enemy unit or stand was removed.

Even the biggest games were pretty quick to play, and rarely frustrating.

It had alternating activation, tied to Orders. The orders determined what actions the unit could make, and importantly when they could do them. They were also placed secretly, so there was a lot of strategic guessing as to what your opponent might be up to.

Marines were pretty Vanilla, but really fast.

Eldar could wait to place orders for units near Warlocks.

Orks were a sod to break, as army selection was by Big Mob, with any supporting units being added to it, increasing the break point accordingly.

Imperial Guard were stupidly shooty, but needed a chain of command to place orders.

Squats were slow, but had excellent firepower and a higher than average break point.

Chaos got bonuses so long as they had more VPs.

Tyranids? They were weird. They couldn’t benefit from Objective VPs, but scored twice for destroying units, once for breaking, again for a wipe out.

These relatively minor differences really changed up how each army approached the game.

I loves it, I do!

I feel like Epic Armageddon made a number of crucial improvements over Epic Space Marine 2nd ed:

1. The actions - no longer just Charge (double move into combat), Advance (move, shoot), and First First (move, shoot first) but Advance (move, shoot), Double (move, move, shoot in any combination), March (move, move, move), Overwatch (shoot after an enemy move), Sustained Fire (+1 to hit, indirect fire), and Engage (move, initiate engagement!).

2. Engagements - instead of charging double speed into combat and surviving first fire, and only fighting with stuff in base-contact, Epic Armageddon has engagements, where each unit rolls either its CC for base-contact or FF for within 15cm - and it doesn't need to be part of the attacking unit to contribute that FF within 15. This is crucial, because small detachments of Space Marines can surround a vast Ork mob, shoot at it, and then another small detachment can engage to push the Orks back while supported by the surround detachments. I loved how Devastators were FF3+ and CC5+ while Assault Squads were FF5+ and CC3+. Extremely rewarding play

3. Initiative system, so you activate detachments, but you roll for their initiative (1+ for SMs, 3+ for Orks) modified by stuff like combat stress (blast markers) and whether you had previously activated a detachment, to see if you could do one of the actions above. But if you failed, you could still do actions involving a move or an attack - it just wasn't optimal, and usually helped you shed blast markers.

4. Air units - you would choose a role for aircraft, including ground attack, landing, or combat air patrol. If someone chose ground attack and activated their squadron, your CAP fighters could drop on their 6 and try to shoot them down, and likewise you could have a CAP squadron escort a landing craft by activating when someone tries to shoot it down. Thunderhawk Gunships worked!

5. Orbital support. Choose from the range of Battlefleet Gothic ships to provide ortillery fire to soften up those big Ork mobs, or pin down a Space Marine detachment while you eat their friends.

6. Crossfires! I can't stress this enough, but an additional -1 to saves when shooting the enemy because you can draw a LOS through the enemy to your own, combined with the above ability to support attacking detachments in engagements made position so important. Where each unit in a detachment had a 5cm area of control that an enemy unit couldn't enter unless engaging, area control and position were as important as shooting and saves.

7. Blast markers! Combat stress added up. Being shot at sucked, adding a blast marker, and a blast marker on a detachment meant one of its constituent units couldn't shoot. Space Marines, naturally, required 2 blast markers to prevent their units from shooting, but they rolled around in such tiny numbers they really needed it. Add a blast marker for units being destroyed, coming under a barrage, etc, and having a detachment broken once they had a blast marker for each surviving unit meant that spreading the hurt was a better strategy than just concentrating fire on each enemy unit in turn.

8. The unit typology (infantry, light vehicles, tanks, aircraft, war engines; correspondingly anti-infantry, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and macro-weapons). Space Marines in particular felt like they were supposed to, with a company's sized force able to re-position and chew apart forces several times larger if you were well-supported (transports, artillery, good mix of Tactical/Assault/Devastator/Terminator), clever, and the dice supported you.

Sadly Epic 40K left such a bad taste in my mouth (oooooeer!) I never really got into Epic Armageddon.

I’ve got nothing against it like. Just that Epic 40K, like 3rd Ed 40K took everything I loved about a game and lobbed it out the window.

It was like being used to having a three course steak dinner, then someone only ever serving you kale and avocado. What I was used to wasn’t necessarily good to me, but what replaced it was so anaemic and boring.

You really should try it then. It's meatier than 2nd edition.

Fair. I think I’ve got the rule book in my extensive archive of Stuff.

But 2nd Ed Epic was still The Mammeries.

Well if you are in the vicinity of London can give you a game Alternatively there are events all over.
http://epic-uk.co.uk/wp/

Includes all the rules as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and check out the free wargames illustrated for best wargame mechanics.

https://www.wargamesillustrated.net/get-wi400-for-free/

 infinite_array wrote:

Funny enough I was thinking of the latest implementation of the Rampant series of rules (of which Pikeman's Lament is one).

Well, my overall opinion of Rampant rulesets is that they are very lacking in rule variety and too stiff/abstract for my tastes, but some ideas like commander traits and oaths given before battle are neat. Original Lion Rampant is the only one which got some traction around here, though.

@sgtBANZAI- Too stiff? Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

 Easy E wrote:
@sgtBANZAI- Too stiff? Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

Very little unit variety, units all feel the same due to full = 12 dice/half = 6 dice mechanic, their interactions with terrain and each other are pretty limited. I guess it wins in sheer simplicity, but not my preferred type of game.

MDG and Nurglitch - just thought I would wade in on the Epic discussion!

I think both games have got something going for them! When I first played Armageddon I was blown away by how 'tight' the rules were. Nurglitch has put a really good list there, but I think it's probably the most 'tactical' game GW have ever made. You really, really have to think about combined arms, ranges of weapons, support, crossfire and things like that. I can totally understand why it is the predominant Epic tournament game because it excels in that environment. But, for me it lacks some of the 'soul' that SM 2nd Ed/NetEpic has (I'll clarify that before I just sound like an donkey-cave ) A friend of mine I think summed it up best when he said it feels like a range measurement exercise, or a simulation of warfare.

The armies in Space Marine had a lot more variety, and some in particular (Orks and Chaos) are so much fun, they managed to pull all of the character of those armies as described in the background into the unit choices; Evil Sunz, when their command chain is removed, will go roaring across the battlefield. A Weirdboy tower absorbs the energy of Orks around it to make one of the most devastating weapons in the army, but pack too many Orks around and it explodes taking your clan with it! In EA it just 'counts as' a macro-weapon (I think, something like that). War Engines and Titans in SM have hit charts and damage tables, while in EA they just essentially have a hit-points bar. In SM your titans can be stumbling having weathered massive amounts of incoming fire, with no arms and trying to step on stuff, or can get taken out with a single lucky shot to the head. Gargants sit there on fire, you know it's going to pop but you just want one more shot with the belly gun before it goes! Things like that, I'm sure there are more that will come to mind, make SM a much more fun game to play for me. I also think it's a more strategic game in terms of ordering of troops (and therefore represents the 'epic' scale of commanders trying to give orders from high up above) as you have to place your order tokens and guess what your opponent will do with their units.

But, like I say I enjoy both games. For the purposes of this thread, it really shows you can have quite different mechanics and produce a very different type of game even when you are using the same miniatures and representing the same setting.

I wouldn't have gotten into Epic Armageddon if it hadn't been for Epic Space Marine, and a fun variant of the game is to assign orders before the game, as playing through those constraints as the faecal-fan interaction unfolds is hilarious.

I am reminded of a phrase used by a certain game reviewer, about how certain games are, to use the technical terminology: "pissing-about simulators."

This discussion on Space Marine, Epic and Epic Armageddon got me thinking about a key element for me of what makes a Good Wargame - flavour. This might be related to the old gaming concept of chrome.

Epic deliberately stripped out the flavour of Space Marine/Titanicus. The mechanics were tight and dare I say innovative, but it was like eating a bowl of sand compared to the old game in terms of flavour. Battlefront did a similar thing to Flames of War when they transitioned to V4 from V3.

I liked Epic, but I couldn't get the Space Marine/Titanicus players to engage. I kept all my stuff and would happily play, but they killed the system with the 97 reboot.

Epic 40k stripped out all the flavour that, while fun, made the game something of a crap-shoot, and turned it into a much more systemic wargame rather than the creative conglomerate of rules it had become. I liked it, but then I prefer systematic and holistic rules over, shall we say, pissing about. Epic Armageddon added it all back in and then some. Warhammer 40,000 is a very successful commercial product because it straddles this line between wargame and pissing-about simulator, and straddles it well enough, rather than doing either well.

Nurglitch wrote:
Epic 40k stripped out all the flavour that, while fun, made the game something of a crap-shoot, and turned it into a much more systemic wargame rather than the creative conglomerate of rules it had become. I liked it, but then I prefer systematic and holistic rules over, shall we say, pissing about. Epic Armageddon added it all back in and then some. Warhammer 40,000 is a very successful commercial product because it straddles this line between wargame and pissing-about simulator, and straddles it well enough, rather than doing either well.

Good points. I feel that with a wargame the whole is more than the sum of the parts. I am not a game designer, but I think its a bit like alchemy. There are a lot of "perfect" wargames collecting dust.

This might sound funny, but things like the box art matter. Look at the OG Warhammer box art - makes you want to get into the game. The art on the Space Marine box had a similar effect. Showing my age I suppose, but it speaks to flavour. I have to want to play your "good wargame." I could care less about the mechanics - I don't care how I get there. I just want to enjoy it. So the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

I think this "systematic wargame" and "pissing-about simulator" discussion has established a false dichotomy - as though both exist on opposite ends of a common spectrum. To refute that, I present to you Battletech - a game that is at once both a pissing-about simulator AND a serious wargame.

Nowadays though, if you don't have buddies who will even try non-GW (heck non-40k actually) games, it doesn't matter about flavor, mechanics, artwork, whatever. The inertia is in GW's favor and there's a good chance it will be for decades to come.

Even knock-off games like Grim Dark Future largely cater to green alien horde savages, power armored dudes, space elves, and so forth because that's what people have in their collection and what people expect off brand stuff to support.

Case in point: Reign in Hell by Uncle Atom apparently has stuff so your four classes of chaos demons (plague, lust, violence, and change/deceit will feel right at home.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/798620.page
I get why it's done but it's fundamentally difficult to be different with your stuff when their IP is so saturating in the fantasy/sci-fi market

GW’s market dominance (which has really always been there since the 90s, even at their pre-CEO change nadir) has long been an issue for the fantasy and sci-fi miniatures wargame scene. Unless you go whole hog on We Are Not Gw it is going to ensure some degree of conformity.

But it is also an aspect of what GW has sold since their inception - being very rooted in older and well established tropes and concepts. The four demon flavors are, after all, just a framework for long-established demonic tropes. At heart, GW embraces a fairly «generic» set of concepts, tweaked slightly to look just a bit different.

Deviate from that style/framework at your own risk... That said, there's stuff well outside the GW house style of Tolkenoid fantasy: anime and all its various permutations is probably more popular. Then there's styles like in the boardgame Root, or even Kingdom Death that are appealing and have no direct GW analog.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I like how nobody described 40k but probably everybody plays 40k

I like short rules with lots of tactical depth and everything that's not about making tactically meaningful decisions filed off.

My holy trinity are X-wing, Monsterpocalypse, Deadzone (all first editions)

Warhammer Underworlds is pretty close for a GW game.

Huh. I was extremely extensively into Monsterpocalypse 1E for a long time and I would NOT have ever described the rules of that game as "short". "tactical depth" yes, tons, but INSANELY complicated and bloated to all hell in that classic PP fashion of giving you tons and tons and tons of choices most of which are always or almost always bad ones.

Also, the joy of having such a limited strategic layer was almost entirely based on the blind-box system. Monpoc 1e games where either player had unlimited access to whatever buildings they wanted to use would be utterly miserable experiences.

Might be because my group got in on Day 1 and played literally every week until the game got axed, adding a sheet of new abilities every 3 months we were never overwhelmed by too much at once. Getting in later was tough for sure. We did have all the things, all the buildings, all the Megas including the box topper promos, everything, and we never felt this was in any way a detriment. And there were some useless models for sure but the rules were slick as all gak, you just had to really understand the timing of different types of powers.

I understand that they cut out most of these 'dead' choices in the 2nd edition of Monsterpocalypse?

 Da Boss wrote:
Cyel: Sorry, I don't quite get the joke. I don't know anything about the ASOIAF game.

It's not a joke. The game ticks off all the boxes that you mentioned in your previous post. Maybe you should try it out, then ?

 Da Boss wrote:
Relatively streamlined mechanics that still give some idea of simulation.
Morale is important.
Killing stuff is not the only way to win the game.
List building is not a major part of the game, most lists can do reasonably well against most other lists, edge cases excepted.
Decisions matter more than dice rolls, but dice rolls throw interesting wrinkles in the way of plans forcing creativity. This is important to remove the "chess" element of always doing a certain opening and so on that makes wargames more engaging.
I prefer alternating activation to IGOUGO these days, but IGOUGO is fine for games with limited "alpha strike" capability.

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Nurglitch wrote:
@kirotheavenger: Can you give an example of 'simple mechanics that leads to advanced gameplay?'

I say - Gloomhaven action cards

What a player does can by summed up in one sentence - choose 2 cards from your hand to play this turn. That's all you'll ever do.

But the decisions involved are abundant:
-which cards to use this turn. They will go to the discard and you'll not have access to these actions for some time
-which actions to choose from each card (each has 2 and you have to choose one top one bottom), which can be used to their maximum potential this turn?
-which Initiative value do you need?
-do you want to use "one use only" powerful actions or do you want to save them for later
-how many turns you have before you run out of cards
-quick rest or long rest to recover spent actions. Which card to sacrifice to rest.
-how does it combine with what the other players are doing
-what kind of back up plan the cards offer if the situation changes before you activate

Yeah, card-based action systems are cool. I've used them, and what got me hooked was Tactical Assault: Combat Cards. I've heard good things about Gloomhaven too, and managing hands of cards works in lots of other games.

I would slightly disagree with Da Boss' assessment of dice though, as they just add extra cognitive load because they don't do anything truly unpredictable. If you have enough going on in the game, like more than 9 elements, I think dice just become a hassle.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
Epic 40k stripped out all the flavour that, while fun, made the game something of a crap-shoot, and turned it into a much more systemic wargame rather than the creative conglomerate of rules it had become. I liked it, but then I prefer systematic and holistic rules over, shall we say, pissing about. Epic Armageddon added it all back in and then some. Warhammer 40,000 is a very successful commercial product because it straddles this line between wargame and pissing-about simulator, and straddles it well enough, rather than doing either well.

Good points. I feel that with a wargame the whole is more than the sum of the parts. I am not a game designer, but I think its a bit like alchemy. There are a lot of "perfect" wargames collecting dust.

This might sound funny, but things like the box art matter. Look at the OG Warhammer box art - makes you want to get into the game. The art on the Space Marine box had a similar effect. Showing my age I suppose, but it speaks to flavour. I have to want to play your "good wargame." I could care less about the mechanics - I don't care how I get there. I just want to enjoy it. So the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

I agree, 2nd edition Space Marine boxset had just the coolest bit of art on the cover of the box. It didn't matter that the miniatures inside were mono-pose and 6mm tall, when you played that was what you imagined.

That actually brings forward another consideration which is the importance of imagery and atmosphere created, especially for Fantasy and Sci-fi games. I know a lot of people still enjoy 40k because of that very strong imagery and the universe that has been created for the game, and want to be involved with it despite the game mechanics and any impendence they create for the experience (I was certainly in that category for some time!)

Less of a consideration for the most part in historical games as most of us have grown up watching WW2 films and don't have to think too hard to imagine a Tiger vs. Shermans or Vikings pillaging a Saxon village.