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 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

I don't agree with the premise here. I don't think GW is biased towards competitive play. They do at least a minimum to support competitive play but I don't think that support is disproportionate to the percentage of their market that is competitive players. I don't think their support of competitive play represents bias any more than, say, publishing a new Crusade book is a bias towards a narrative mindset.

I mean their main public facing event is a grand tournament, where tickets are giving to those wining competitive events to enter a winners only competitive event. They also have a metawatch articles based on analysis of competitive play for game balance, no such equivalent is used or exists for crusade. Back in 9th PL was rarely updated, but points were on a regular cadence.

It's pretty clear they listen to their market and in turn they actually invest far more heavily into the competitive scene. Their partnership with ITC and other bodies, primarily competitive, show this again.

Dudeface wrote:
I mean their main public facing event is a grand tournament, where tickets are giving to those wining competitive events to enter a winners only competitive event. They also have a metawatch articles based on analysis of competitive play for game balance, no such equivalent is used or exists for crusade. Back in 9th PL was rarely updated, but points were on a regular cadence.

It's pretty clear they listen to their market and in turn they actually invest far more heavily into the competitive scene. Their partnership with ITC and other bodies, primarily competitive, show this again.

That's support, not bias. And yes, they have a championship tournament but the same event is also hosting a major narrative campaign using the Crusade rules, giving no awards for win/loss records, etc.

And here I thought Vipoid was being sarcastic...
Just you all wait until my list of Shadowsun, Ghostkeels and stealthsuits becomes OP! Then it is I who will have the last laugh! Except it will be a laugh shrouded in stealth, like a smirk or perhaps a snicker.

I just really wish GW was delaying their codex releases until after several rounds of balancing using indexes, cards, etc.
At this point I can only hope 3rd party 3D printing will knock some sense into them and adopt a better business model.
I almost feel bad for local GW store manager as I haven't bought anything retail in quite some time.

And Miss out on the repeat monetisation?

As for the store manager, only core boxes count for their statistic anyway, so don't feel bad as the stuff you might have bought does not matter at all of the store is rated successful

The tournament scene is fascinating to me. GW has the weirdest notion of a tournaments I've ever encountered.

I get the whole "free style" thing, where army/card deck composition is part of the challenge.

But has GW ever had a "fixed army/fixed deck" tournament designed to measure just skill?

I've not perused a current White Dwarf in a long, long time, but back in the day it was axiomatic that you could predict the outcome of any battle report by simply seeing who had the newest stuff. That always won because that was how you sold new product.

Someone mentioned the "Waterloo guys" and that's a great comparison. Historical game designers face considerable challenges because they have to be able to repeat history, but if that's all they do, the game is a failure. People also want to be able to plausibly change it. Thus they have to model actual people and events, and make them work.

GW, by contrast, has a completely free hand. They get to decide what is awesome and what sucks in the fluff, and then all they have to do is translate that onto the tabletop.

And yet, they keep struggling to do this. I'm pretty sure that every one of the 10 (or 11, depending how you count) editions of 40k has had the killer combo, the hack to the army lists that crushes all comers. It moves around, but it's always there.

An iterative design built on continuity would have eliminated this problem after the 2nd or 3rd edition at the latest. After that, it's just minor tweaks and expansion modules.

Yet the evergreen thread that sustains a thousand gaming forums is "OMG, this unit is total cheese!"

If not that, it's "WHY DID MY ARMY GET WRECKED?!"

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I mean their main public facing event is a grand tournament, where tickets are giving to those wining competitive events to enter a winners only competitive event. They also have a metawatch articles based on analysis of competitive play for game balance, no such equivalent is used or exists for crusade. Back in 9th PL was rarely updated, but points were on a regular cadence.

It's pretty clear they listen to their market and in turn they actually invest far more heavily into the competitive scene. Their partnership with ITC and other bodies, primarily competitive, show this again.

That's support, not bias. And yes, they have a championship tournament but the same event is also hosting a major narrative campaign using the Crusade rules, giving no awards for win/loss records, etc.

If you market and support one more than the other, that's bias.

Overread wrote:

Here's the thing though

If GW actually catered properly to the competitive crowed and built a balanced game system that competitive people could use well, then it would 100% benefit the narrative crowd as well.

Dunno about that. Its not just in-game mechanics here either. For a good conpetitive franework, You're talking about things like set lists, defined terrain/maps, limited rosters and limited/zero options to facilitate sonething like this.

I know a lot of folks who would feel straight jacketed by this approach.

Overread wrote:
thing is GW doesn't actually cater to any real crowd. They "kind of" cater or at least focus on competitive because its a lot easier to do so; but even then the balance isn't anywhere near where it should be for a 30 year old game. Things like minimum board size weren't based on competitive nor narrative players it was based purely on the size that fit into GW's existing boxes.

Agreed that they dont cater to any specific crowd. Theirs is a 'big tent' kind of thing. I'd qualify they are catering to 'conpetitive' because its 'easier' - id argue its more 'pick-ip game culture' you are referring to than 'competitive' (but there is overlap) - its the pick-up-game that is the lowest common denominator. But i would also argue their hesrts arebt entirely in ot either -their personal preferences would be rooted in 'older' styles of games, not pugs.

Overread wrote:
The focus on using competitive stats for balancing makes perfect sense because its easily harvested data and at least should have most people playing the game right. You can't really harvest independent player data the same way because its highly unreliable.

It gives a useful snapshot but the data is qualified. It's basically drawn from a subset of the game. It can tell you what factions are played and the win/loss ratio but not why, for example.id add 'It's not powerful enough' isn't the only metric. I remember tourney analysis was all the rage back when I played wmh but it was really difficult to draw any definitive conclusions from it, even with sone really km pressure atatistical analysis by the posters.

Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:Market wise, do you think a reason why GW could potentially have got a certain bias towards more competitive mindset be that those palyers are more likely.to buy more?

In thr short term, sure. In the long term they burn out quicker (after an edition or two) and need to be replaced whereas the basement players tend to buy less, but consistently over 30 years.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Someone mentioned the "Waterloo guys" and that's a great comparison. Historical game designers face considerable challenges because they have to be able to repeat history, but if that's all they do, the game is a failure. People also want to be able to plausibly change it. Thus they have to model actual people and events, and make them work.

I'm not sure. Can you elaborate? Maybe I'm picking you up.wrong here.

Hipefully you agree - Historicals aren't about 'recreating' or 'replaying' known and already fought battles like Waterloo and 'changing it' any more than 40k is about replaying the 'battle of orks drift'. Historicals are about reflecting the era and the played battles are typically 'something like this could have happened'.

I'd argue historicals and 40k narrative has a lot of common ground.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

An iterative design built on continuity would have eliminated this problem after the 2nd or 3rd edition at the latest. After that, it's just minor tweaks and expansion modules.

Disagree, but funnily, you're not wrong!

You could iterate and refine for 10 editions but you would necessarily have a slick machine - remember, stuff has been added constantly for those ten years by loads of different people wiyh different ideas. It's not the same game.

The problem I see is that at best you have the slickest take on a game built in the 80s. Great. But Its the 2020s. Games are different now. Movies/tv/music/games/books/comedy etc have changed dramatically in that time. What worked then might not work now. Ttgs are no different. Compare infinity to early avalon hill. Refining an old idea can only go so far. Sonetimes you need to burn it all to the ground and reboot to account for how tastes change. Whilst it's at its core a 90s gsme, privateer press' warmachine is a really good example of a game that indicated one of the 'shifts' in game design with its inclusion of resource mechanics (focus/fury) and a more 'hybrid' approach by drawing in ccg elements. You can see those some of those shifts in gw's previous editions (3rd to 5th, 6th to 7th, 8th to 10th). All share the core name of 40k but I'd argue they're all based on different engines and ideas of their time. Games evolve. Tastes change. Iterative has its place but its not the only driver.

It's the difference between 'drifts' and 'shifts'.

Dudeface wrote:
If you market and support one more than the other, that's bias.

But I don't see that happening. Narrative play gets new narrative books regularly with new content, tournament play gets to buy a new copy of the same book with a few balance tweaks. Tournament play gets a greater share of the US events, narrative play gets a greater share of the WHW events. And TBH the one US narrative event gets more effort than the bland and unambitious tournament events combined. I will grant that tournament play gets more articles by word count, but mostly in the form of half-assed "metawatch" articles that are routinely mocked for being overly-simplified self-congratulatory fluff pieces where few people pay attention to them outside of hoping GW will hint at upcoming changes. But OTOH GW's in-store material is 100% focused on narrative/casual play, when it even bothers to mention playing the game at all. There's no equivalent of the organized play kits other companies send out to local stores to build competitive communities.

And besides that a more useful standard for bias is how much support is being given relative to needs. Competitive play needs significant support because standardization and organized events are essential for it to function. A tournament by definition needs to get a bunch of people in one place to play games under a standardized rule set, narrative play is far more often about small local groups doing highly customized things where "what is official" is a meaningless question. By that standard there definitely isn't a bias towards competitive play as GW still falls well short of what would be considered full support, while the biggest issues with narrative play seem to be finding people who are interested in doing it.


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Deadnight wrote:
You could iterate and refine for 10 editions but you would necessarily have a slick machine

If that's true then either you don't understand game design or your "iteration and refinement" process is badly broken. The whole point of iterating and refining is that at each step you get closer to having a polished final product. If you understand game design and have a clear vision of what you want your game to be then you should be improving the product at every step and bringing it closer to your goal.

remember, stuff has been added constantly for those ten years by loads of different people wiyh different ideas. It's not the same game.

That would be an example of a broken process. Having a single unified design goal is a basic concept of good game design.

Games are different now.

But 40k isn't, and that baggage is why it continues to fail. GW is stuck on the obsolete IGOUGO system, the original 1980s fantasy game stat line (complete with things like marines always needing a 3+ save), a D6 system where half the values are never used, and incredibly shallow core mechanics. If GW genuinely rebooted 40k into a modern game set in the same universe we'd be in a better place. But instead we get the worst of both words: all the baggage of obsolete mechanics and legacy code but also the aimless fumbling around trying the whim of the moment to see if maybe this time it works. And so we never get a well-designed modern game but we also don't even get the perfect 80s wargame for people who love that concept.

IGoUGo is not the problem people are making it

Having alternating player turns works perfectly fine if you are able to write a good game

GW changing from alternating turns to alternating phases or alternating activation won't change anything as they don't want to write a working game

And switching from IGoUGo to a random system will even do more harm

The problem is GW does not care, and this does not change just if other designs are used

 kodos wrote:
IGoUGo is not the problem people are making it

It absolutely is a problem. It's a poor fit for the fluid and reactive modern combat 40k is based on, it creates major problems with the inactive player being disengaged from the game and having no meaningful choices to make, and it makes the game extremely prone to alpha strike problems. Removing IGOUGO wouldn't solve literally every problem GW has ever had but it's an essential start and as long as 40k clings to the obsolete mechanic it will continue to be a badly functioning game.

I don't know if IGoUGo IS the problem but I believe 40k would only benefit from using a more dynamic and fluid system, as BA dice activation, or project z phases where A moves B moves A shoots B shoots... If anything, for the imple fact that you would no longr happen to have turn that drag on endlessly will you do nothing but roll saves.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:


But I don't see that happening.

I don't know what to tell you in that case, it certainly is and irrespective of how its justified or handwaved away, there's a reason 9th was dubbed "warhammer 40,000: tournament edition" on here, despite introduction of crusade etc.

Dudeface wrote:
I don't know what to tell you in that case, it certainly is and irrespective of how its justified or handwaved away, there's a reason 9th was dubbed "warhammer 40,000: tournament edition" on here, despite introduction of crusade etc.

It was dubbed that because some people confuse "X is not strictly essential for narrative/casual play" with "X is bad for narrative/casual play" and think things like unambiguous rules or improved balance are tournament-only things that come at the expense of everyone else. The only thing GW did with 9th that was dedicated to tournament play was officially support it at all, and that was only in the tournament mission packs and event partnerships. The core game didn't have any meaningful focus on tournament play.

OTOH even outside of the narrative supplements 9th did introduce or continue some elements that were very bad for tournament play. The rules bloat involved with sub-factions was horrible for competitive play and pretty obviously driven by narrative concerns, while the increasing move to pseudo-PL created major balance issues for competitive play but had relatively little effect on the popular concept of narrative/casual play where people build models without any care for what is most powerful and use a random mix of weapon choices. And GW spent the entire edition struggling to tone down codices that were horrifically unbalanced for competitive play because the authors wrote rules that seemed cool regardless of how powerful they ended up being.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 kodos wrote:
IGoUGo is not the problem people are making it

It absolutely is a problem. It's a poor fit for the fluid and reactive modern combat 40k is based on, it creates major problems with the inactive player being disengaged from the game and having no meaningful choices to make, and it makes the game extremely prone to alpha strike problems. Removing IGOUGO wouldn't solve literally every problem GW has ever had but it's an essential start and as long as 40k clings to the obsolete mechanic it will continue to be a badly functioning game.

how does replacing bad rules writing solves the problem of bad rules writing?

and how does adding something like a AoS style double turn solve the problems of 40k?

what you want is not removing IGoUGo, you want the alternating turn based removed by something more dynamic, which would need more skill writing rules in the first place otherwise you end up with a worse gameplay situation

PS: people asked for IGoUGo being removed, GW did that for AoS by adding the double turn mechanic, simply because IGoUGo is not the opposite of Alternating Activation but just means that one player does something, than the other player is doing it. If this is 1 activation, 1 phase or 1 full turn does not change IGoUGo, but if it is random who activates (Bolt Action), whos phase is first (Lord of the Rings) or whos turn it is (AoS) than it is not IGoUGo any more

so be careful what you ask for as what you mean and what you GW understands by those phrases is something very different
and "IGoUGo is whatever 40k is currently using" is not an argument, this caused the addition of double turn in AoS which is officially by GW not IGoUGo any more despite still having alternating player turns

PPS: add random activation on a unit by unit bases and than GW adding the possibility for Space Marines to activate 3 units in one go because of the "fluff", or IG can use orders to activate platoons. Never underestimate the the ways you can screw up a system
alternating turns is the most simple version that works best with a large amount of units to handle, if a company is not able to make that thing work, don't count that a much harder to balance system will work better if done by the same people

that other games work better with using those mechanics is simply because those designers care about the game and how it plays and not because of the basic design choices
Warmachine/Hordes uses IGoUGo with alternating turns, and it works fine despite being the same Fantasy/SciFi mass-Skrimish as 40k
Bolt Action uses random activation and the game is limited to 1000/1250 points because as soon as you add another FOC/Platoon or allow a free FOC for larger games it does not work that well any more
Mantic FireFight works with alternate activation and IGoUGo, and even they had big balance problems with the first 2 versions and needed a 2.5 to solve that

if GW would to something like that, needing 3 Editions to get the basic mechanics right is nothing you can expect there because after 2 it would already see a change in the core rules that makes any previous adjustments useless

 kodos wrote:
how does replacing bad rules writing solves the problem of bad rules writing?

It doesn't, but who cares? If I point out that your car has a flat tire the sensible response is to fix the flat tire, not to protest that there's no point in fixing the problem because some people can't afford cars at all. Complaining that GW sucks at game design and will screw up everything they touch no matter what rules they use may be emotionally satisfying but it doesn't offer anything useful to this discussion.

@Kodos.

On the topic of alternate activation a la bolt action i'd like to underline the good point you make, after having made a big test game, that it works poorly for larger battles with lots of units. The BA rulebook suggests making 1 dice to allow a group of units instead of a single squad to move but that becomes quite clunky. No repraoche to BA though, as it is clearly not intended to work a that scale.

GW would undoubtably need to come up with a variant specifically designed to encompassed the potential large scale their game offers.

However, I'd be less afraid about skill demanded. I can think of no particular issue or rule interaction that would prove hard to solve with anther activation system that would be more dynamic.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 kodos wrote:
how does replacing bad rules writing solves the problem of bad rules writing?

It doesn't, but who cares? If I point out that your car has a flat tire the sensible response is to fix the flat tire, not to protest that there's no point in fixing the problem because some people can't afford cars at all. Complaining that GW sucks at game design and will screw up everything they touch no matter what rules they use may be emotionally satisfying but it doesn't offer anything useful to this discussion.

if the dealership sold you 10 times a BMW with a broken engine, saying "this could be solved if the dealership is selling Porsche in future" is not solving the problem of the broken engine at all, you need to go to a different dealership if you want a working car and not asking the same dealership for a different brand in hope that the problem was the brand of car and not the company selling them


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 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
@Kodos.

On the topic of alternate activation a la bolt action i'd like to underline the good point you make, after having made a big test game, that it works poorly for larger battles with lots of units. The BA rulebook suggests making 1 dice to allow a group of units instead of a single squad to move but that becomes quite clunky. No repraoche to BA though, as it is clearly not intended to work a that scale.

GW would undoubtably need to come up with a variant specifically designed to encompassed the potential large scale their game offers.

However, I'd be less afraid about skill demanded. I can think of no particular issue or rule interaction that would prove hard to solve with anther activation system that would be more dynamic.

well, BA is not alternate activation (IGoUGo) but random activation and which naturally has a problem with too many units simply because of the randomness of the system

but for GW, I could also not think of alternating turns being a big problem because if you write the rules to fit that basic design, it is not broken as many other games show
yet GW is unable to write their army rules to fit the basic design of the core rules and this does not change by changing the core

activation based system can be broken in different ways, and for example Alpha Strike can be a problem as well, simply by having either 1 unit being strong enough to kill multiple units or by adding multi-activations allowing to kill several units
while alpha strike is not a natural problem of turn based systems either, it is a problem if threat range and killing power of units does not fit the table size, is this does not change by having a different activation system

give Bolt Action Artillery the strength and killing power of some 40k artillery units and you get the same problems despite you only activate 1 unit (make it a german one allowing 2 units to activate and you successfully added an alpha strike problem to Bolt Action)

 Prometheum5 wrote:
That's fine. I've seen those players and that attitude decimate our local player communities and reduce it to a shell of what it was, so I'm not interested in encouraging that type of play.

This has been my experience as well.

Competitive 40k is like grown men walking into a school playground and thinking that swinging higher and harder than the kids means they're "dominating" in some meaningful capacity

@kodos.

Little to comment on, I agree with you.

I'd just add to the comparison of BA system of, as you more correctly said, random activation, that even when you play multiple units at once at the begining the mechanics makes it a choice to make. If you play a lot of units at once, you statistically reduce your chances of playing several dice in a raw afterwards.

While it's about chances and by no means hard facts, it has to be taken into account especially when your army has already got less dice

Long story short: what is good about the system is that even when benifiting from alpha strike advantage, it's not a full no brainer.

The idea that removing IGOUGO will be some miracle panacea for all of 40k's problems is a myth.

Turn structure isn't 40k's biggest failing, or its biggest problem.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The idea that removing IGOUGO will be some miracle panacea for all of 40k's problems is a myth.

Turn structure isn't 40k's biggest failing, or its biggest problem.

With GW's style of often dealing with many problems by increasing lethality; taking away whole turns and going for unit by unit alternating activation would at least mean that you remove the current insane power of alpha strike turns. Right now its possible to destroy insane amounts of your opponent's army in one single good turn. Be it through shooting or close combat or both. The result of which is the game state makes a dramatic change within a single turn.

GW already has alternating close combat in AoS and that makes a huge difference in terms of how powerful close combat rounds are. Having fully alternating unit structure would work better with their heavy hitting approach to models and the game flow.

 Overread wrote:
With GW's style of often dealing with many problems by increasing lethality; taking away whole turns and going for unit by unit alternating activation would at least mean that you remove the current insane power of alpha strike turns.

how?
because the ever increasing lethality, combining with split fire and some random stratagem to activate twice just means that a single activation will deal the same damage in 11th as did a whole army in 3rd

Alpha Strike is the directly caused by increased lethality, increased ranges, less options to deploy and decreased table size
it has nothing to do with alternating activation vs alternating turns, as to solve it you need to change the things above first otherwise the problem will still be there

activation does not decrease lethality of single units

 kodos wrote:

 Overread wrote:
With GW's style of often dealing with many problems by increasing lethality; taking away whole turns and going for unit by unit alternating activation would at least mean that you remove the current insane power of alpha strike turns.

how?
because the ever increasing lethality, combining with split fire and some random stratagem to activate twice just means that a single activation will deal the same damage in 11th as did a whole army in 3rd

Alpha Strike is the directly caused by increased lethality, increased ranges, less options to deploy and decreased table size
it has nothing to do with alternating activation vs alternating turns, as to solve it you need to change the things above first otherwise the problem will still be there

activation does not decrease lethality of single units

It doesn't reduce the lethality of single units no - but what it does do is mean that instead of your 10-15 units attacking all in one go; you get to attack once; then your opponent does; then you then your opponent etc... It spreads out that lethality and allows the other player a chance to be lethal back before their entire force is reduced.

Now granted it still won't solve when a ranged player faces a close combat one on a table with too little terrain and too little space so the ranged player can fire with impunity; however it does at least mean that the alpha strike damage is fragmented. Ergo both players are alpha striking together instead of just one.


Of course reducing lethality; increasing defence; making min-boardsize larger; increasing terrain quality and line of sight rules etc... These would all help AS WELL. However I still maintain that having alternate unit activations would work better with GW's style of balancing and approach to rules in general.

Plus it allows for much more pro and reactive gaming for both players

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The idea that removing IGOUGO will be some miracle panacea for all of 40k's problems is a myth.

Turn structure isn't 40k's biggest failing, or its biggest problem.

This is correct. If GW did alternating activations they would screw it up because that's what they do. Making IGOUGO work is simple, and the problems blamed on it would be magnified. As others noted, GW would immediately offer bonus rules for extra activations,(and reactivations!) because they love to tinker and screw things up.

Not only that, but the way 40k is built would be difficult for alternating activations given the asymmetry of maneuver elements within the various factions. Anyone remember MSUs? Well, they'd be back because more of them give more activations, or more units per activation and now there's be a whole new frontier for metagaming.

It's a cultural problem, which is why competent game designers refused to work there.

GW had at least two (maybe three) opportunities to refine 40k. The first was near the end of 2nd. ed. when they had been using the same core design for 10 years and were pretty close to perfecting it. Instead, they created 3rd, and while it had problems, 4th tried to fix them and perhaps if GW had stayed with it, they would have gotten somewhere. But that's not their focus, selling models is, and that's where the design staff is focused.

"How can we improve game play?" is not a question asked much (if at all).

"How can we create and sell more models at higher prices?" gets asked a lot.

 Overread wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 Overread wrote:
With GW's style of often dealing with many problems by increasing lethality; taking away whole turns and going for unit by unit alternating activation would at least mean that you remove the current insane power of alpha strike turns.

how?
because the ever increasing lethality, combining with split fire and some random stratagem to activate twice just means that a single activation will deal the same damage in 11th as did a whole army in 3rd

Alpha Strike is the directly caused by increased lethality, increased ranges, less options to deploy and decreased table size
it has nothing to do with alternating activation vs alternating turns, as to solve it you need to change the things above first otherwise the problem will still be there

activation does not decrease lethality of single units

It doesn't reduce the lethality of single units no - but what it does do is mean that instead of your 10-15 units attacking all in one go; you get to attack once; then your opponent does; then you then your opponent etc... It spreads out that lethality and allows the other player a chance to be lethal back before their entire force is reduced.

Now granted it still won't solve when a ranged player faces a close combat one on a table with too little terrain and too little space so the ranged player can fire with impunity; however it does at least mean that the alpha strike damage is fragmented. Ergo both players are alpha striking together instead of just one.

Of course reducing lethality; increasing defence; making min-boardsize larger; increasing terrain quality and line of sight rules etc... These would all help AS WELL. However I still maintain that having alternate unit activations would work better with GW's style of balancing and approach to rules in general.

Plus it allows for much more pro and reactive gaming for both players

looking at current 40k, is the problem the combined lethality of 15 units, or is the problem the combined lethality of 1-3 units?
does it matter that 7 units of Eldar Guardians are shooting in addition to 3 Wraithknights?
how do formations fit into it, some armies have the possibilities to combine their forces into one unit meaning activating a single tank on one side and the other activates 3.

than again, multi-activation is a thing and something GW would use for sure to add the "command & control" elements, be it via stratagems or other rules (activate 2 units instead of 1 is a no brainer stratagem GW would add for sure)

so ending up that you activate 1 unit, I activate 2 Wraithknights
the problem does not really go away, one may does a little damage before his army wrecked, but it does not change the outcome


just as an example, Mantic is doing a SciFi Skirmish game, called Firefight and it is roughly equal in size to 1000-1500 points 40k. Uses Alternate Activation and an Order System.
one would say Mantic knows how to write rules and know what they are doing, but even they run into an Alpha Strike problem, but not with shooting but with melee, simply because they assumed Alpha Strike is not possible with AA and yet going 2nd and wrecking the opponent with melee units was a thing (that they needed to change)

if someone that actually tests the rules in house and plays the games runs into problems because it is not that simple and easy as it might look like, how you would assume that GW who struggles with a much more simpler system can avoid tuning it into a complete mess

Simpler and shorter turns each with less lethality and then just play more turns would also work.

When all the damage for an entire game needs to be done in 5-6 turns (but more like 2-4 in reality) each model needs to be quite lethal. In a 10 turn game you could turn down the damage a lot more and then it doesn't matter as much who goes first or if they get to activate their entire army at the same time or not. Add in lower ranges, better LoS rules and slower movement so it is less likely for all units to shoot at full power each turn IGOUGO in itself is not going to lead to the massive snowballing we have now. Better cover/terrain/flanking mechanics might make up for losing 5-20% of your army in an alpha strike but if you can kill 50% or more like now something like that doesn't matter.

You can also have more interesting morale or pinning mechanics. If it were to be too easy to pin a unit or do something else that negatively affects a units performance in a 5 turn game it might easily be too strong since taking a unit out for 1-2 turns might as well be the entire game due to how short and decisive it currently is. But if we had 10 turns then you could easily have a lot of abilities that locks down units for 1-2 turns and create interesting game decisions rather than just focus on killing.

Changing the turn structure is just one way to solve the problems with 40k but not the only one.

Klickor wrote:
Add in lower ranges, better LoS rules and slower movement so it is less likely for all units to shoot at full power each turn IGOUGO in itself is not going to lead to the massive snowballing we have now. Better cover/terrain/flanking mechanics might make up for losing 5-20% of your army in an alpha strike but if you can kill 50% or more like now something like that doesn't matter.

You can also have more interesting morale or pinning mechanics. If it were to be too easy to pin a unit or do something else that negatively affects a units performance in a 5 turn game it might easily be too strong since taking a unit out for 1-2 turns might as well be the entire game due to how short and decisive it currently is. But if we had 10 turns then you could easily have a lot of abilities that locks down units for 1-2 turns and create interesting game decisions rather than just focus on killing.

Changing the turn structure is just one way to solve the problems with 40k but not the only one.

The point is that there is nothing compelling GW to make the game they have now. They could improve LOS, cover, tone down lethality, force more use of tactics, but they don't. And they won't, no matter what turn method they use, which is why this is a dead-end argument.

People seem to forget that they had some solid game designers working for them, who knew about all of this. They quit.

Ultimately 40k is the way it is because that's what GW wants. It's long past the time where we can say "if the Higher Ups only knew!"

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The idea that removing IGOUGO will be some miracle panacea for all of 40k's problems is a myth.

Turn structure isn't 40k's biggest failing, or its biggest problem.

After playing a few games of 3rd edition that months after starting at the 9th ed debut, I thing I agree. 3rd edition obviously uses alternating turns, but it goes quick because: Only 3-4 phases depending on who you ask (Move, shoot, charge/fight), and for basically every unit, the more you move, the less you can shoot meaning the less you have to do later in the turn. This greatly speeds up gameplay.

It's not that alternating turns is bad, it's that GW has slowly added onto or removed restrictions that kept the game flowing.

I agree with that.

The problem with 40k is how GW treats it and has really nothing to do with if its IGOUGO or any other kind of activation system. A change might lessen some of the problems with the current version of the game but nothing guarantees that they won't mess it up in another way that is just as bad in the future but due to not being IGOUGO it will just look vastly different from now.