Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Orangecoke wrote: When I play a war game, FUN is the thing I prioritize. I don't need the "sweeping narrative" to take priority (especially in something fantastical like AoS) - I can get that from books and movies. AA is more fun imo, in that it is more engaging for both players moment-to-moment. It also has less likelihood of NPE where something like alpha strike or double turn just sucks the air out of the room.
I'd also argue (but have no data) that the majority of players want to have fun, not "forge a narrative". Ergo, the system that is more fun will grow the game faster.
I think you have a really valid point here, and one that cuts straight to the heart of the matter; some people find AA more fun, others find igougo more fun.
Overread wrote: No real army moves without input and feedback from the enemy; you move your horses toward their artillery and the enemy doesn't just stand there and let you; they sweep a unit in to protect the artillery or pull the artillery back if they can etc... They react.
AA allows you reactionary time and opportunity that is closer to real life; and also means that your plans remain more adaptive on the fly. You have a grand sweeping plan and the AA allows you to engage it whilst reacting and modifying to your opponents grand plan.
See this is just disingenuous; the unit sweeping in to protect the artillery doesn't make another unit in melee on the other side of the battle stop and let the enemy slaughter them because they haven't activated yet. AA does that. Each activation is at the expense of another unit which spends that period standing there taking it to the face--exactly what people ciriticse about igouo. All it does it break it down into pieces then stack them up in sequence. The problem is different, but still entirely present.
And to come at it from the other end, AoS has rules to represent such a situation already; the example quoted above would be use of a redeploy command.
While I agree with you, I understand Overread's concerns about IGOUGO. It's not a problematic activation mechanic in principle, but the way GW has developed their games the grand strategy aspect of it has been greatly diminished. For that to work and the clashing armies to feel like they're reacting to each other, you need a slower game. GW would have to remove run mechanics that can double a unit's movement, disallow cavalry, bikes and similarly fast units as core choices for armies, go back on the decreased board size, make impactful terrain rules, heavily restrict deep strike mechanics and more than anything, reduce damage output by a very large degree. In short, you can't give an army the ability to nuke enemy units where and when it pleases if you want interactivity between armies. It needs to be slower with opportunity for maneuvering and chipping damage so targeted units are actually around to react and a six turn game makes meaningful use of all six turns instead of effectively ending after the first turn or two.
Unfortunately especially in 40k you can clearly see that GW moves in the opposite direction, decreasing board size, increasing weapon ranges and killing power and enabling players to just strike whenever and wherever they want and removing whole units before they even get to act. Calls for alternate activation, in my opinion, have rarely been about the system being inherently superior to IGOUGO, although that is often how it's portrayed, but are deemed a means of mitigating the crippling effects GW's chosen game design has on IGOUGO. As such I'm wary of this grass is greener mentality that alternate activation is going to be a fix for everything. It could make dodgy game design less dodgy, if implemented correctly, But the argument falls flat if you consider that the same people who don't understand how to implement IGOUGO correctly are the ones who'd have to implement alternate activation. It's a question of competence of the designers and design direction rather than inherent superiority of one activation mechanic over another.
Also agree here. And it is getting to another very pragmatic point; people compare current igougo to an idealized version of AA. They don't compare it to a janky, poorly balanced and inconsistent AA. Which is what we would be getting.
Raise how many people talk about how AA could easily work better in Warhammer but no one actually making it happen. At best we get well-intended rulesets which only hold up when all players involved are actively trying to make it work. Which is all well and good, but if that is a prerequisite Warhammer is already a fantastic game when everyone involved is trying to make it work right.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/25 22:37:39
Raise how many people talk about how AA could easily work better in Warhammer but no one actually making it happen.
Do you mean the designers don't make it happen or do you mean no one at all makes it happen?
I published an alternate activation system for AOS on the TGA that was one of their highest rated downloads underneath Bottle's work.
It received a lot of positive commentary from a community notorious for hating houserules. It was for a while #2 on their downloads before I was removed and all my work along with it.
Thats not saying my work is the fix for everything and will make everyone happy (because thats impossible) but there have been attempts to highlight what that could look like here.
I found the people already inclined to like AA liked that system and those that really were fine with IGOUGO did not like that system - which was to say that it came down to taste when you boiled it all down to the brass tacks.
The designers could easily implement a version of AA but you hit the nail on the head when you question how worthwhile a GW designed AA system in AOS would be.
The problem is most people go for the GW rules - for better or worse. House-Rules do exist, but there's no real unity behind them. The only time that happens is when GW drops the game entirely or half (eg AoS at launch). Even then there's often several different groups at any one time; ignoring all the home-basement games that don't mingle outside of their group.
I'm sure it happens, but whilst GW have functional core rules there's no unity or drive behind homebrew rules sets.
The problem is most people go for the GW rules - for better or worse. House-Rules do exist, but there's no real unity behind them.
No argument from me. Official rules or bust is the environment I came from, which is saying something when I wrote a rule system for the game that had as much positive commentary and downloads as my AA ruleset did over on that site.
I was more interested in the statement that no one has tried before. If it was referring to the designers, that doesn't mean they can't - it just means they won't. They obviously can because they have their smaller games using them.
If its no one in general has tried - it has been tried. (and depending on your stance to house rules or your desire for AA will largely direct your opinion on the attempts made unofficially)
That doesn't really relate to the double turn though and is veering way off topic.
AA doesn't fix AOS. GW version of AA would not fix AOS because the problems with AOS are not just the double turn, its the bad balance and interaction between skewed units (both OP and boot eating under powered) that delivers a negative play experience.
The core ideas of AOS I think are fine, though not entirely my cup of tea - I'd play the game if double turn was gone and in a group that wouldn't abuse the bad balance so that I could buy a force and not have to buy new units every year to keep up.
Oh people have tried for sure, plenty of times. But making it succeed?
What Auticus is leaving out is that the alt activation system came along with a set of point costs for AoS at a time when GW produced none. Which was undoubtedly a huge factor behind it's popularity because the point costs were really well done. But presenting it like just the alt-activation alone led to it's popularity is really dishonest. Which is a dam shame because Auticus used to have more integrity than that.
Damn man. Seriously its like you're just on this headhunting spree with me lol.
The document I am talking about is NOT azyr comp the point system. Azyr Comp the point system was never hosted on TGA (that site was 100% behind the clash comp system which would go on to become the point system used by the ghb in 2016 to become official points).
The document I am talking about was 100% just an alternate activation system that had nothing to do with points, had no reference to points, and could be used in any point system. I have also shared it here on dakka a few times in the past in various threads whenever the alternate activation subject comes up (as have there been a handful of other individuals who have shared their own alternate activation systems on here to varying reviews dependent on the respondant's attitude toward house rules and / or deviation from igougo)
I remember the heated discussion on tga over it, and the vitriol it generated BECAUSE it was popular and people wanted any negative talk on the new game to go away.
I also had Azyr Empires on TGA which was #3, which was my Mighty Empires expansion for AOS (also points agnostic).
Azyr Comp was hosted on my website at the time and then through the Azyr Comp facebook group (which I pulled the plug on when GHB 2016 came out)
So I don't know what else to say to the rest of what you're talking about concerning you calling me a liar or questioning my integrity. There was nothing else in the document I am referencing other than an alternate activation system that I used in my campaign games that I took out and made its own document. As such it would not become #2 on TGA by virtue of Azyr Comp - because the two documents are two distinctly separate entities (and azyr comp the composition system was largely slagged on TGA because they were behind the scgt / clash comp and were making a push to make that official).
(and to address it as I know its forthcoming in someone's reply - I posted about it being #2 not to brag or gloat or whatever someone will come on here saying - but because its the only metric I can think about that actually exists that is somewhat objective in direct answer to "was it successful" - its the only hard stat that I know of to gauge a house ruled system)
My integrity is just fine. It would be cool if discussions on here could focus on the subject at hand and not turn into the ad hominem personal attacks that make internet discussions famous when you disagree with someone.
But making it succeed?
That depends on your metric for what would make it succeed. Barring having something become "official", I don't see how one measures a non official fan project's success. The closest I can come up with that is actually objective and not subjective was the TGA ranking structure on their downloads (and even that of course is limited to who all went there and voted / downloaded documents so is not super accurate either).
The only real way i see to gauge its success would be to have it made officially the way to play and monitor response to it. My gut says some would love it, some would hate it, most would shrug and play whatever because most of the aos fanbase isnt concerned as much about the rules and just want to push pretty plastic with a huge built in community. So in regards to this - I don't see a way to actually have a good solid objective conversation about what is and is not good unless its official since I find most people shun house ruling in general so you can't know if something is good or not good because people won't give it a fair shake.
This message was edited 8 times. Last update was at 2021/12/26 03:51:33
Orangecoke wrote: When I play a war game, FUN is the thing I prioritize. I don't need the "sweeping narrative" to take priority (especially in something fantastical like AoS) - I can get that from books and movies. AA is more fun imo, in that it is more engaging for both players moment-to-moment. It also has less likelihood of NPE where something like alpha strike or double turn just sucks the air out of the room.
I'd also argue (but have no data) that the majority of players want to have fun, not "forge a narrative". Ergo, the system that is more fun will grow the game faster.
I think you have a really valid point here, and one that cuts straight to the heart of the matter; some people find AA more fun, others find igougo more fun.
Overread wrote: No real army moves without input and feedback from the enemy; you move your horses toward their artillery and the enemy doesn't just stand there and let you; they sweep a unit in to protect the artillery or pull the artillery back if they can etc... They react.
AA allows you reactionary time and opportunity that is closer to real life; and also means that your plans remain more adaptive on the fly. You have a grand sweeping plan and the AA allows you to engage it whilst reacting and modifying to your opponents grand plan.
See this is just disingenuous; the unit sweeping in to protect the artillery doesn't make another unit in melee on the other side of the battle stop and let the enemy slaughter them because they haven't activated yet. AA does that. Each activation is at the expense of another unit which spends that period standing there taking it to the face--exactly what people ciriticse about igouo. All it does it break it down into pieces then stack them up in sequence. The problem is different, but still entirely present.
And to come at it from the other end, AoS has rules to represent such a situation already; the example quoted above would be use of a redeploy command.
While I agree with you, I understand Overread's concerns about IGOUGO. It's not a problematic activation mechanic in principle, but the way GW has developed their games the grand strategy aspect of it has been greatly diminished. For that to work and the clashing armies to feel like they're reacting to each other, you need a slower game. GW would have to remove run mechanics that can double a unit's movement, disallow cavalry, bikes and similarly fast units as core choices for armies, go back on the decreased board size, make impactful terrain rules, heavily restrict deep strike mechanics and more than anything, reduce damage output by a very large degree. In short, you can't give an army the ability to nuke enemy units where and when it pleases if you want interactivity between armies. It needs to be slower with opportunity for maneuvering and chipping damage so targeted units are actually around to react and a six turn game makes meaningful use of all six turns instead of effectively ending after the first turn or two.
Unfortunately especially in 40k you can clearly see that GW moves in the opposite direction, decreasing board size, increasing weapon ranges and killing power and enabling players to just strike whenever and wherever they want and removing whole units before they even get to act. Calls for alternate activation, in my opinion, have rarely been about the system being inherently superior to IGOUGO, although that is often how it's portrayed, but are deemed a means of mitigating the crippling effects GW's chosen game design has on IGOUGO. As such I'm wary of this grass is greener mentality that alternate activation is going to be a fix for everything. It could make dodgy game design less dodgy, if implemented correctly, But the argument falls flat if you consider that the same people who don't understand how to implement IGOUGO correctly are the ones who'd have to implement alternate activation. It's a question of competence of the designers and design direction rather than inherent superiority of one activation mechanic over another.
Also agree here. And it is getting to another very pragmatic point; people compare current igougo to an idealized version of AA. They don't compare it to a janky, poorly balanced and inconsistent AA. Which is what we would be getting.
Raise how many people talk about how AA could easily work better in Warhammer but no one actually making it happen. At best we get well-intended rulesets which only hold up when all players involved are actively trying to make it work. Which is all well and good, but if that is a prerequisite Warhammer is already a fantastic game when everyone involved is trying to make it work right.
I mean, GW has made AA work.
Heck, apocalypse was a genuinely better game them 8th edition. And had they given it any support, it would have been better then 9th too. I honestly think it is distinctly easier to craft a system around alternating activation then IGOUGO. There's just less moving parts you consider in a one turn pileup of combos and abilities that ends with nuclear ignition all over someone else's armies. If you changed literally nothing else, making the current state of the game use AA would make it a better game. But trying to get people to TRY that is impossible
No matter if AoS (or 40k) went AA or went IGUG, roughly the same amount of people would be playing it as they are now. If anything it might actually lure back more people from other games because how many IGUG systems do you see being made by companies that aren't historicals? Pretty much zero. Even GW's been splashing about in that pond with pretty much every new game, including Apocalypse and Kill-Team.
I feel like the only thing holding them back from it is "Well IGUG worked well for 30+ years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Although I would put money on 99% of people who actively dislike AA sticking around after any big change, the same way 99% of people who dislike IGUG do - because it's what GW said and what they say goes.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/26 12:25:41
End of the day, I'll believe it when I see it. I've yet to see an AA system that can get something as simple as coherent battlefield formation right. Even in AoS I can at least have my multiple front units work together as a single line, with supporters going behind them. AA I move one of those front line units and it opens up a charge lane for an enemy to roll right behind the rest--because yeah, my army's frontline TOTALLY wanted to move up piecemeal leaving gaping holes for the enemy to exploit.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/27 05:14:21
I'd have to see a diagram of what you are referring to really be able to comment.
I've not seen in AA one unit moving forward allowing an enemy to just charge through it with no repercussions. Especially in a game like AOS where there are no facings.
If I move a unit in my line forward and you are either A) close enough to have enough movement to pour behind me, or B) have something fast enough at a moderate distance to pour behind me, I'm going to regardless respond with one of those units in my line counter charging them since I can just move and charge in whatever direction.
Or I'm going to have reserve line behind me to counter charge that unit that just poured through that hole.
Either way that doesn't wreck me, but again I may just be missing the illustration and could use a diagram to show the flaw.
Granted based on previous conversation you may be referring to how it breaks your immersion to watch a unit move one at a time and by you moving a unit one at a time the enemy moves a unit to fill that hole breaking immersion - which fair enough.
It is equally immersion breaking for me to stand there for an entire turn doing nothing while the opposing army does their thing.
Fortunately for you - AOS will likely never go to an AA structure so the entire discussion is moot anyway. You won't have to worry about that.
Arbitrator wrote: No matter if AoS (or 40k) went AA or went IGUG, roughly the same amount of people would be playing it as they are now. If anything it might actually lure back more people from other games because how many IGUG systems do you see being made by companies that aren't historicals? Pretty much zero. Even GW's been splashing about in that pond with pretty much every new game, including Apocalypse and Kill-Team.
I feel like the only thing holding them back from it is "Well IGUG worked well for 30+ years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Although I would put money on 99% of people who actively dislike AA sticking around after any big change, the same way 99% of people who dislike IGUG do - because it's what GW said and what they say goes.
It all depends on how you define "AA" or "IGOUGO"
Infinity, for example, what is it? I take MY TURN, and I get a number of orders, and I sure as gak can have a unit go absolutely ham all over your business and dunk on a huge chunk of your army in one of the four turns that exist in the game.
...but every time I use one of those orders, you do *technically* get a chance to react with one of your models - even though very often those reactions do not result in very much difference.
So does that make it AA or IGOUGO?
or how about, to use an example, um...age of...sigmar.
We keep saying its IGOUGO, PURE igougo, but...how many armies in the game are highly melee focused? And the damage dealign portion of the turn for those armies...is actually AA, isn't it?
I understand that competitively it actually works out that armies that heavily focus on shooting and casting are quite powerful, and those armies mitigate the AA structure.
But what if we removed that?
Would the entire army moving as one still 'break the immersion of AA' even if ALL the combat alternated?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/27 17:10:25
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
In my limited experience, AOS played with melee-centric armies doesn't feel like IGUGO as real damage-dealing actions alternate. A double-turn with melee armies can be a big deal if a given unit has a charge bonus, but it doesn't necessarily break the game. A double-turn by a shooting army, though, isn't a lot of fun. My first 3rd Ed game was in a tourney where my Khorne dudes faced a double-turn by Kharadon Overlords at the end of Turn 1 and start of Turn 2. As I removed models by the handful I thought to myself - well, this is an interesting design feature...
All you have to do is fire three rounds a minute, and stand
auticus wrote: That is certainly a good way to put things into perspective.
AA is part of melee already yes. Now if we could get shooting / casting to follow something similar....
Easier said than done of course. If you simply made the shooting phase alternate activations for both armies every turn you would double the overall output of shooting. So you would need a complete rebalancing of shooting profiles to take that into account.
auticus wrote: That is certainly a good way to put things into perspective.
AA is part of melee already yes. Now if we could get shooting / casting to follow something similar....
My little experiment with it was to combine the charging and shooting phase into a second alternating phase that preceeded the melee combat phase - with the general idea that when a ranged army faced off against a melee army, the melee army would be 'responding' to the ranged attacks with charges into melee. The primary problem with this, was that it essentially ran into the issue of "Rocket Tag" that's so common in AA systems.
-our armies walk towards one another
-I declare a charge with my fast, glass cannon thing against your front line guys
-you then declare a counter-charge with your slower guys against my now much closer fast guys
-I then declare a counter-counter-charge with my guys who are now closer to your guys
-Our armies have now slapped together like two big giant hams and we have a big scrum in the middle.
Luckily, AOS is constructed with fairly lenient 'shooting while in melee' rules so this didnt result in shooting units feeling useless - just like they couldnt pepper an opposing unit at point-blank range with no response - but it did result in movement feeling a bit...trivial a lot of the time, what with move phase, charge phase, 3" pile in, 3" consolidate - units felt a bit like those rare earth magnets that as soon as you get them within a certain distance of one another they just shoot into one another.
it worked pretty good though.
I will leave you with a bit of a 'hot take' though: I dont actually think inter-unit balance is AS BAD as people like to make it out to be, I just think that the Gaze of the Competitive Hive Mind operates a bit like the corrupting eye of sauron when applied to pretty much any game system. Most of the time, when people bring up a system - like Apocalypse for example - and tout it as superior to 40k/AOS, I cant help but think to myself "If you REALLY tried to run a tournament with the real scuzzy scuzzbags that just really do not give one single flying feth whether or not their opponent has anything approaching a good time....just how balanced would this system end up feeling? Good? Really? You think so? Did you really take the time to crunch the numbers on what an army of 400 individual PL1 Krootox versus anything else would look like?"
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
auticus wrote: That is certainly a good way to put things into perspective.
AA is part of melee already yes. Now if we could get shooting / casting to follow something similar....
And even then, it wouldn't take much to make Movement from there, either.
A lot of rules are made to handle perceived deficits. A lot of the desire of going AA is how Warhammer deals with the Alpha Strike, particularly of the ranged and magic attacks. The changing Initiative emphasizes the problems inherent with Warhammer's traditional handling of Movement, Range, and Magic actions that one has access to in the game. Whereas with AA, even Phased AA, diminished the impact of changing Initiative by limiting how much Movement, Range, and Magic one can get out of their turn without reactions.
Infinity is a great point out. It largely is IGOUGO, but is so Reaction-heavy that it is almost a complete AA system. If it wasn't for the fact that so many Orders can be utilized on one model, it's almost X-Com in simplicity.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/27 21:30:12
Are you a Wolf, a Sheep, or a Hound?
Megavolt wrote:They called me crazy…they called me insane…THEY CALLED ME LOONEY!! and boy, were they right.
auticus wrote: That is certainly a good way to put things into perspective.
AA is part of melee already yes. Now if we could get shooting / casting to follow something similar....
Easier said than done of course. If you simply made the shooting phase alternate activations for both armies every turn you would double the overall output of shooting. So you would need a complete rebalancing of shooting profiles to take that into account.
I don't think thats necessarily true. When I wrote my AA document for AOS it didn't double the output or require rebalancing (lol - that word with AOS makes me chuckle) of the profiles.
But I'll diagram in case you see something I am missing which is possible:
Army A has five units, each does 10 shots. Thats 50 shots of whatever.
Army B has five units, each does 10 shots. Thats also 50 shots of whatever.
Current way of doing things each side shoots 50 shots of whatever in the shooting phase.
AA way of doing things, Army A unit fires 10 shots, then Army B has a unit firing 10 shots. That would also be 50 shots per side.
The issues you keep going round almost sound like you want the Middle-Earth turn organisation, except units not individual models.
Ex-Mantic Rules Committees: Kings of War, Warpath
"The Emperor is obviously not a dictator, he's a couch." Starbuck: "Why can't we use the starboard launch bays?"
Engineer: "Because it's a gift shop!"
auticus wrote: That is certainly a good way to put things into perspective.
AA is part of melee already yes. Now if we could get shooting / casting to follow something similar....
Easier said than done of course. If you simply made the shooting phase alternate activations for both armies every turn you would double the overall output of shooting. So you would need a complete rebalancing of shooting profiles to take that into account.
I don't think thats necessarily true. When I wrote my AA document for AOS it didn't double the output or require rebalancing (lol - that word with AOS makes me chuckle) of the profiles.
But I'll diagram in case you see something I am missing which is possible:
Army A has five units, each does 10 shots. Thats 50 shots of whatever.
Army B has five units, each does 10 shots. Thats also 50 shots of whatever.
Current way of doing things each side shoots 50 shots of whatever in the shooting phase.
AA way of doing things, Army A unit fires 10 shots, then Army B has a unit firing 10 shots. That would also be 50 shots per side.
Where does the doubling come from?
Actually when we did our full AA system the thing that happened was a halving. Each player took a movement phase to move their army together, then there was a shared shoot+charge and a shared fight phase. That actually wound up reducing the amount of damage-dealing that went on, which allowed the games to go fully to round 5. Kinda nice!
Its doubled relative to any melee output. Which is a huge advantage to a shooting heavy army vs a shooting light army.
havent had a chance to try it. Maybe! I do kind of suspect though that with the removal of the ability to double-turn the opposing army with a full barrage, a heavy shooting army would wind up not feeling particularly crazy.
The main issue in the melee vs shooting contest right now is the fact that the shooting army is allowed two full turns of firepower pretty frequently before the melee army is allowed to do ANY damage - not that the melee army isnt capable of outputting enough damage to take things down. MOST fights are fairly decisive in sigmar if you slam 2 units into one another, and the combined charge phase and lack of "OK its now MY TURN and I get to dictate ALL the engagements" mean that in the one, combined fight phase, you actually just end up with a lot more fighting taking place.
When I play default sigmar, typically what I wind up doing is on my turn, tactically choosing when and where to charge in order to minimize the use my opponent gets out of their melee activations. I'll usually pick a few of my opponent's nastiest units and decide "you know...Iiiiii Do not want to fight you this turn" and instead single out a couple units im pretty confident I can easily kill with my first activation or whose damage output im not worried about when they activate.
you cant exactly do that when your opponent is getting to declare charges at the same time.
auticus wrote: That is certainly a good way to put things into perspective.
AA is part of melee already yes. Now if we could get shooting / casting to follow something similar....
And even then, it wouldn't take much to make Movement from there, either.
A lot of rules are made to handle perceived deficits. A lot of the desire of going AA is how Warhammer deals with the Alpha Strike, particularly of the ranged and magic attacks. The changing Initiative emphasizes the problems inherent with Warhammer's traditional handling of Movement, Range, and Magic actions that one has access to in the game. Whereas with AA, even Phased AA, diminished the impact of changing Initiative by limiting how much Movement, Range, and Magic one can get out of their turn without reactions.
Infinity is a great point out. It largely is IGOUGO, but is so Reaction-heavy that it is almost a complete AA system. If it wasn't for the fact that so many Orders can be utilized on one model, it's almost X-Com in simplicity.
Right. But here's the thing: thats exactly the gameplay fantasy that Infinity is built to create. The GOAL of infinity is to replicate fight scenes like Ghost in the Shell or The Matrix or any given anime/cyberpunk film - where you have the potential to have the flashy main character hero leap in and take out a whole string of goons, and all the goons get to try and take a swing or shoot back at them or take cover, but where it's fairly likely that your badass anime protagonist hero is going to end up slicing/shooting them all to bits.
It's balanced around that, it's why you have the concept of "Cheerleader" models and why you can issue orders to the same guy multiple times. The same concept, applied to a WW1 historical simulation game (I have actually seen this, btw) results in just Yakkity Sax comedy idiocy.
IMO, there should be a moment where I get to coordinate and marshal my forces and have some guy yell a command heroically as my lines march forward into position. I'm fine with everything descending into chaos and a whirlwind of alternating bloodletting once the armies get within striking distance of one another, but most purely AA systems in my experience do not lend themselves well to feeling like a 'mass battle.' I DESPISED the gameplay of Warmahordes, I thought it felt like a card game with really expensive cards rather than a wargame
Theres a reason apoc wasnt actually AA, and there's a reason why all of GW's skirmish systems are AA while the larger scale they get, the less likely they are to be purely AA.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/12/28 12:37:13
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
I feel like in that example of a heavy shooting list versus a no shooting list, it's going to be almost like playing into a double turn for the shooty list though, unless the melee list has turn 1 alpha strike potential.
Example:
Turn 1: shooting army does all the shooting, melee army moves.
Turn 2: shooting army does another turn of shooting, hopefully the melee army gets into melee.
Now this isn't actually any worse than if under the current rules the shooting army went first, or the melee army went first but then got double turned against. But it does remove the possibility of the melee army going second and getting its own double turn. So across all possibilities its seems like the advantage is to the shooting list.
But of course we would need some games to assess this properly, as it's clearly a pretty broad simplification!
Its doubled relative to any melee output. Which is a huge advantage to a shooting heavy army vs a shooting light army.
I still don't see how their shooting doubles to melee. It shouldn't change at all. Everything in the army gets to shoot once if they have ranged attacks. Everything in the army gets to fight in melee if it has melee attacks.
Where do they get double the ranged shots? It should be exactly the same opportunity.
If I have 50 shots in my army with current system I shoot 50 times, and in AA version I shoot 50 times, not 100 times. In current system I can double turn giving me 100 shots before my opponent can move which is double the output, but not with AA. Unless you have a different AA system in mind.
Actually when we did our full AA system the thing that happened was a halving. Each player took a movement phase to move their army together, then there was a shared shoot+charge and a shared fight phase. That actually wound up reducing the amount of damage-dealing that went on, which allowed the games to go fully to round 5. Kinda nice!
That was ours too, and pretty similar results. In my system you could fight twice to represent being able to fight twice in current AOS, but we also tried it where you just exchanged melee once and it worked just fine as well, though had as you noted less damage output overall since nothing was going twice in a turn any longer.
We had the typical tournament lists running amuk in our campaign with heavy casting and shooting, and the AA made it more "fun" because you weren't just standing there. The main source of any disagreement I got in my system was from the shooting heavy or casting heavy guys complaining that they couldn't basically wipe their opponent out right away because their opponent could respond back and shoot back at them (so basically boiling that down to brass tacks - they were complaining that changing the rules made their optimized lists not optimized anymore - which yes ... that was expected since they were optimized for double turn tournament AOS and we weren't playing that with AA)
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/12/28 15:10:25
It doubles because currently each battle round you have potential for 1 set of shooting and 2 sets of melee. But with AA without other alterations you now do 1 set of shooting per turn and 1 set of melee. So the ratio of shooting to melee potential has doubled.
Ah ok so you're problem with it is that you lose the two melee activations a round.
In my system you didn't (you could melee twice) but that was something that when we didn't melee twice was complained about.
The outcome I saw from that was that the games weren't over as fast but that was a positive to me, but I can see how others may see that as a negative (mainly because in every game I play you don't get to fight twice in one round so it fits how I'm used to playing)
Stux wrote: It doubles because currently each battle round you have potential for 1 set of shooting and 2 sets of melee. But with AA without other alterations you now do 1 set of shooting per turn and 1 set of melee. So the ratio of shooting to melee potential has doubled.
Yes, potentially. However, you've got the sequence a bit off from what we actually played it as. It would be:
Shooting army moves (theoretically, into range)
Melee army moves (at least some units will probably be in charge range, given the low ranges generally in AOS)
Shooting army declares 1 unit's shooting attack
melee army declares 1 charge
etc, etc until shooting+charging phase is over
then fight phase commences again with each player committing one unit to fight.
One player gets to move before the other each round, but the other player gets 1 additional CP per round.
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
Sure, I can see how allowances can be made to rebalanced the power of shooting. It was really just a comment that without doing SOMETHING to tweak the rules it likely actually advantages shooting over the current system.
Also I'd say some armies would really struggle to get a T1 charge off against armies that can bring a lot or 30" shooting and are playing around you. Bit that's really more of a general game balance issue than a criticism of AA.
Plan-scheme:
-Use MSU to bleed all the opponent's activations
-Deep strike 9 stormfiends in front of them, shoot + charge without retaliation
-Activate stormfiends first on the next turn to do it again
That could work quite well with the dirt-cheap (point wise, god their monetary cost is disgusting) Skryre Acolytes. You're going to want them as spammed battleline anyways, to let you get up to 9 Stormfiends in a unit.
A quick mockup of a list to abuse that sort of AA activation could be something like...
Archwarlock
Grey Seer
Warlock Engineer
8 units of 5 Skryre Acolytes
1 unit of 9 Stormfriends. 3 ratling cannons, 3 shock gauntlets, whatever other gun tickles your fancy.
Soulscream Bridge
What holds this sort of list back in AA is... well, it costs 800$ CAD to buy just the Acolytes.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/12/28 20:24:05
15k+
Emperor's Spears 2500
Beastmen 10k
Skaven - 4500
OBR - 4250
- 6800
- 4250
- 2750