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Klickor wrote:
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.

If GW did switch turn order and modify units, that would be yet another break in continuity, and it would also open up additional opportunities for churn because after a six years, GW could always go back again. Gotta keep that product cycle moving!

In the end, if we (quite reasonably) assume the churn drives sells and is what GW precisely tries to achieve, nothing will ever get better because the will to set the table upside down every 3 years will annihilate any improvments on purpose... In that case, as you said, it's a dead end argument.

Hopefully we're mostly here to have a tchat and not hoping to have got any meaningful impact

But you can add things to a game without needing the churn.

Of course, no putting htis in question, that's what we hope they'd do, as many said in this thread earlier: slowly build up you functionning core rules over the years.

But they need the competence and will to carry this out.

A page back, there was some talk about whether GW caters to the tourney crowd or tries to cater to everyone.

From my perspective, I think GW is still TRYING to cater to both, and they are having some success at doing that, but personally I feel 9th did a better job of it.

10th is still in its early days so a lot remains to be seen, but so far, there's been no Crusade content in White Dwarf; the ultra-frequent balance updates now apply to both game modes, and many options have been removed.

Having said all of that, there are some things about the new Crusade core mechanics I really like- making Battle Scars matter more, capping non-character experience at Blooded without burning RP- these were great innovations that make it easier to pace a campaign. I also really like the idea of only one campaign book per season rather than two hardbacks that include both Crusade and Matched content on top of two mission packs that are Crusade specific. I hope they stick to that format beyond the Tyrannic War.

Usually I'm all for alternative activation as well but I think stratagems are actually already a step away from IGOUGO and becauseof that I wouldn't want to miss them. I'd focus them more on that.
Rapid Ingress, Heroic intervention, overwatch and the interruption stratagem (forgot the name) are actually really nice to break the rigid turn structure and I'd go so far as to make these the only stratagems (some other reactions are okay as well). Smoke and grenades should be unit abilities, insane bravery and every "kill better"-strat shouldn't exist.

Which would make strategems actually being about planning and tactics for the most part so sounds good.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Making IGOUGO work is simple

genuinely curious how would you make it work?

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
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.

So you think IGoUGo is a problem.....

Not so much that it is a problem, as in, the flaw that kills it all, but that also playing BA activation and project Z's alternate phases/decks of trap cards are fun and very functional.

So, not that I don't like igougo as a defective turn structure, but as as one that can get boring or frustrating as you can't really react "in time".


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To that extent Cortez's point about how strategem could be used as a way to make the turn somewhat more reactive sounds good to me.

What's more, modifying it -for example by saying A moves B moves A shoots B shoots etc- is that you would suffer from the alpha strike issue less, since you'd have time to reposition. Because let's be fair, a game that start with say a third of your army getting wiped out while you watch helplessly is not really fun.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(sorry that's a lot of next appended posts right there)

I'd add that the issue with the alpha strike influence in that game is how it can snowball out of control really quickly.

Obviously, it's not happening every game, and hopefully so, because it would otherwise be literally unplayable.

But if you take 25% casualties going second, then you are literally playing at disadvantage almost before you made any actual move besides deployment and from point on recovering is more than tricky. When you return fire, you're already at minus 25% and so are likely to make way less damages than what you took, say 10% of his list. Now you're turn 2 and 75 Vs 90 percent of your lists and the 90 get a second go at your remaining dudes, widening the gap... Then the same repeats every turn. Possibly simply because you rolled worse.

Makes for very unfun games in my opinion.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Making IGOUGO work is simple

genuinely curious how would you make it work?

One page Rules, Warpath Firefight, Kings of War, Lord of the Rings, Deadzone, 3rd Edi 40k
IGoUGo works fine in general

in case you talk about alternating player turns for 40k, go back to 3rd

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Not so much that it is a problem, as in, the flaw that kills it all, but that also playing BA activation and project Z's alternate phases/decks of trap cards are fun and very functional.

So, not that I don't like igougo as a defective turn structure, but as as one that can get boring or frustrating as you can't really react "in time".


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To that extent Cortez's point about how strategem could be used as a way to make the turn somewhat more reactive sounds good to me.

What's more, modifying it -for example by saying A moves B moves A shoots B shoots etc- is that you would suffer from the alpha strike issue less, since you'd have time to reposition. Because let's be fair, a game that start with say a third of your army getting wiped out while you watch helplessly is not really fun.

And once again you've just said that IGoUGo is a problem.
Look, everything you listed is literally what everyone else claims is the IGoUGo problem.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
What's more, modifying it -for example by saying A moves B moves A shoots B shoots etc- is that you would suffer from the alpha strike issue less, since you'd have time to reposition. Because let's be fair, a game that start with say a third of your army getting wiped out while you watch helplessly is not really fun.

or for alternating turns, simple add that the one who deploys first is also the one with the first turn
the other player can respond by placing his units accordingly

PS: and A move B move, than A shoot, B shoot, is still IGoUGo

It is, but from my experience playing project z which uses this method, it actually is enjoyable because you can immediately react to the movements of your competitor. Plus as the game has you roll for.initiative each turn, you need to carefully think about placements and targets as you're not guaranteed to go first next turn.

Granted it is a way smaller game, but I doubt it would not be possible to implement it in 40k.after all. This is still igougo, yes, but better implemented in my view.

It was clear in my mind since I am comparing 40k's turn's sequence to.others I.know that I was specifically talking about how igougo is made in 40k proper. Maybe I should have stressed it to avoid confusion.

First player deploys first is also a sound thing to have, but a few turns down in the it won't totally be impervious to the "watch helplessly" situation.


So, the problem I see with 40k's igougo amounts to saying that 40k drives an old Lada when it could have a brand.new Peugeot. Sure, the Lada will carry you from point a to point B, but you could have a brand new car doing it with more confort.and performance.

lord_blackfang wrote:

 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

Same here as well.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
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!"

Worth noting that after rewriting the entirety of 40K to create 3rd Ed, Andy Chambers wanted to iterate further for 4th, and was rebuked by management who had cold feet about radically changing their cash cow again so soon. He left not long after.

His subsequent 28mm projects, chiefly Starship Troopers and Dust Warfare, are still IGOUGO games- but with greatly streamlined combat resolution and reaction systems as a core mechanic, so they not only play faster than 40K, they also completely avoid the 'your turn, I'm going to go make a sandwich' cadence of 40K.

GW's had a host of competent designers who have gone on to design better systems after leaving. When it comes to 40K, GW is afraid of drastic change and not particularly interested in innovation, so it takes really bad financials to provoke any sort of paradigm shift. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that it's the specialist games on the margins that tend to be more modern in design, but even then the company has a tendency to cargo cult older GW titles rather than learn from current industry trends.

 catbarf wrote:


Worth noting that after rewriting the entirety of 40K to create 3rd Ed, Andy Chambers wanted to iterate further for 4th, and was rebuked by management who had cold feet about radically changing their cash cow again so soon. He left not long after.

His subsequent 28mm projects, chiefly Starship Troopers and Dust Warfare, are still IGOUGO games- but with greatly streamlined combat resolution and reaction systems as a core mechanic, so they not only play faster than 40K, they also completely avoid the 'your turn, I'm going to go make a sandwich' cadence of 40K.

I really liked Dust Warfare. When it came to turn order, I liked how every unit on the table generated a die that on a success (33% chance) the player could basically make a half action in a Command Phase. At least I think there was a die roll involved there. It's been a long, long while. But the player that had the fewer successes was the initiative/active player in the turn proper. This not only benefitted elite army lists, but also the player that suffered the worst losses, since they would generally have less remaining units. But at the same time, it wasn't automatic either, so a player with fewer units didn't know they had initiative next turn.

And splitting a units action in these phases could be risky. Because even if it allowed a unit to attack twice, they did it with a weaker chance of success (compared to taking a full action to attack) while also giving up half the action before the main phase. Which would reduced their options, especially factoring in suppression mechanics, and both player knew it.

This led to a game of several calculated risks and assessments of the situation to do well playing it. All the while making it difficult for games to be a blow out one way or the other.

But aren't all those games played with like max 40 models? Skirmish system can function, with a reaction or rotation system. For battle systems what happens is that at best RNG takes the reigns and uninteractive ways of playing start to dominate or at worse it becomes even worse then with a regular turn system. To anyone who thinks a rotation system would help to make w40k better, try playing against necron or orcs going first a few times, or against something like eldar, who can trade up like no other army and have ways to break up turns of other armies.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:


So, the problem I see with 40k's igougo amounts to saying that 40k drives an old Lada when it could have a brand.new Peugeot. Sure, the Lada will carry you from point a to point B, but you could have a brand new car doing it with more confort.and performance.

This sounds so bizzar in my part of the world with climate and roads here. A Lada is a tank. A french or italian car, stops to function as soon as winter comes, gets bogged down in mud, can't use it to drive offroad or in a forest. A small bump and the cars fall apart, while I have seen Ladas roof, be turned over by a few lads and drove back home.

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

If over an edition of playing you generate enough store credit to either get multiple armies for non GW games or one army for a GW game how is that not meaningful. With an army costing around 800-1000$ that is like getting between one or two monthly salaries. Now I know different countries have huge differences in income. But I can asure you that getting 2 saleries for "playing" can very much be considered meanigul

Starship Troopers is similar sized as 40k and works much better simply because the units have limited options and therefore are "touched" less often

one problem exclusive to 40k is that units act in each phase, you move, you shoot, you fight.
compare that to 3rd were the option often were to either move and fight, move and shoot or shoot at long range
the less often you touch 1 unit, the faster the game is.

keep alternating turns but remove phases and activate units with 2 actions max (move, shoot, fight) and any combination even the same twice and you speed up gameplay by a lot simply because you handle each unit only once per turn

I don't know how starship trooper is played. I have never seen the game. I also don't know how 3ed worked, aside for stories from people about how certain builds looked like.

I think people have this odd hope that, if AA was a thing, GW wouldn't add faction rules to some armies to break then thing.
Again just imagine pre or post change phantasm in an AA setting. Or the teleporting avatar. Eldar player drops in kills something with his spiders or FW lance dudes, and now you have to counter, but if you do they will teleport in the avatar and tag or destroy your next unit. Necron player could camp objectives with their unkillable, to many armies, warrior stack and while your units would be coming one by one, he would be trading up and then regenerating. An AA system would require a full edition rewrite, like from zero. GW can't even get a transition from 8th to 9th or 9th to 10th right.

 kodos wrote:
Starship Troopers is similar sized as 40k and works much better simply because the units have limited options and therefore are "touched" less often

one problem exclusive to 40k is that units act in each phase, you move, you shoot, you fight.
compare that to 3rd were the option often were to either move and fight, move and shoot or shoot at long range
the less often you touch 1 unit, the faster the game is.

keep alternating turns but remove phases and activate units with 2 actions max (move, shoot, fight) and any combination even the same twice and you speed up gameplay by a lot simply because you handle each unit only once per turn

Agreed. Again, I'm not fundamentally against I go you go but I'm not fund of how it's made in 40k. But without removing it wholesales and starting anew, there are already a couple changes to it that could make the experience way better.

Karol, allow me to rectify your mistake! I drove through tank tracks half the car size in Peugeot P4 in lettonian half mud half sand soil, bumpy but managed no problem. Berlier and Renault iteration Grand Berlier Cargo are unsinkable, in fact the only time in 5 years I saw one broke it litteraly took a pontoon falling apart under it, and it still went like 3 kilometers with broken chassis. Peugeot 205 were used in rally and in my part of France in grapesvignes hills getting chewed at by rocks and still going. My brother took a ride through the fields with a Citroen C15 and trying to drift in said field with no other issue than getting soil all over the car. We have very sturdy stuff.

PS: I have got absolutely no grudges against ladas and actually like them a lot too. But when I draw this analogy, I'm talking about a toy soldiers game where what I want is a fun and comfortable experience, not all terrain capabilities

point is, alternating activations are much easier to break than alternating turns

a rule like split fire is much stronger with alternating activation than it is with alternating turns
something that has not a big impact now would break the balance in such a system, hence why it is no real solution
not just because a full re-write is necessary but because it needs much more work to balance the individual units within the armies

something more simple like going back to 3rd weapon rules, or 5th deployment (without stealing first turn) would help much more.

 kodos wrote:
a rule like split fire is much stronger with alternating activation than it is with alternating turns

Nope. It's exactly the opposite. Split fire is strong in IGOUGO because if you do partial damage to multiple units you can just finish them off with other units before any of the enemy units get to act. In an alternating activation system split fire is of very low value outside of things like an anti-infantry squad with a single anti-tank weapon (which is rarely a good unit) because you're heavily incentivized to kill an enemy unit before it can act and that means focused fire to maximize your chances. If you split your fire and do partial damage you've very likely done nothing of immediate value with your activation, leaving the targets free to activate and get their shots off before you can finish the job.

And the same is true of the system in general. IGOUGO has very little room for error because getting to act without interruption means you can script out your perfect combo and execute it without any worry about failure, you know exactly what your opponent's board state is and there's very little they can do to change it unexpectedly. It's very easy to create overpowered combos and very easy for alpha strike armies to end games before they really begin. An alternating activation system, OTOH, has some built-in forgiveness for design and balance mistakes because your opponent always gets a chance to react to each step of your plan before you can do the next piece. You may have the combo in your list but can you coordinate getting all of its pieces in place and activated in the right sequence without your opponent making a counter-move that disrupts it? And you certainly can't just list off a bunch of buff stacking and tell your opponent to remove half their army on turn one. Even if the system rewards offense over defense you can only trade units, making it far more likely that both players have roughly equivalent surviving forces for multiple turns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
Eldar player drops in kills something with his spiders or FW lance dudes, and now you have to counter, but if you do they will teleport in the avatar and tag or destroy your next unit.

In an alternating activation game stratagems like this would have no need to exist and would be removed. Out-of-turn actions only exist to give some level of interactivity to IGOUGO, if you already have a more engaging system you don't need them. In this case the Eldar player would have to wait until their unit's next activation to react to your threat.

(And TBH stratagems should be removed entirely anyway. They're a bad mechanic that exists to cover up the lack of depth in the core rules and their removal is long overdue.)

Mostly agree, only note I'd stress is that there are steps between 40k's igougo (of which your analysis sounds on point to me) and alternate activation.

Tweaks like having people move one after the other, allow strategem/cards/whatever to be used in reaction, making it so that you can't be sure you'll be the one going first next turn... all can help on giving the opposing player this room for action and reaction that makes the game, I think, more tactical, and less frustrating etc. While technically still being igougo.

In 40k's case, this would allow for better experience without starting a whole new set of rules.

No system will be ever perfect but there are really some that are better than others. Would he up to GW's team to make it happen.

But I very much so agree with you.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Nope. It's exactly the opposite. Split fire is strong in IGOUGO because if you do partial damage to multiple units you can just finish them off with other units before any of the enemy units get to act. In an alternating activation system split fire is of very low value outside of things like an anti-infantry squad with a single anti-tank weapon (which is rarely a good unit) because you're heavily incentivized to kill an enemy unit before it can act and that means focused fire to maximize your chances. If you split your fire and do partial damage you've very likely done nothing of immediate value with your activation, leaving the targets free to activate and get their shots off before you can finish the job.

first of all, if the activation is random or alternating has nothing to do with, although random activation the chance of multiple activations in a row is there, and withit split fire is less important
2nd, your first sentence is true in a alternating turn environment as well as in an alternating activation system
being able that a single unit activates and damage/finish off multiple enemy units before the opponent can do anything about it is the very core of alpha strike

activating the whole army in one turn reduces the value of split fire because you are shooting with multiple units anyway before the opponent can react
yet if there is a unit by unit based system were a single unit is activated at once, being able to shoot more than 1 target is much stronger and on a level of double activation


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Karol wrote:
Eldar player drops in kills something with his spiders or FW lance dudes, and now you have to counter, but if you do they will teleport in the avatar and tag or destroy your next unit.

In an alternating activation game stratagems like this would have no need to exist and would be removed. Out-of-turn actions only exist to give some level of interactivity to IGOUGO, if you already have a more engaging system you don't need them. In this case the Eldar player would have to wait until their unit's next activation to react to your threat.
(And TBH stratagems should be removed entirely anyway. They're a bad mechanic that exists to cover up the lack of depth in the core rules and their removal is long overdue.)

alternate activation is still IGoUGo, so why should GW remove the options to break that?
because people like you always ask for IGoUGo to be removed, so such stratagems are the first thing GW would add to the game to break IGoUGo up, as they do now

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:


Snip

A few things. It is not the case, if there are no factions that split fire to kill two things or have a huge over kill in the damage they do. As soon as there is one , there will be a huge problem of trading up. Epecialy if the faction ends up aggresivly undercosted for what it can do.
Buff stacking would be a problem for factions that require multiple activiations. Turn a character on, buff a unit, do X with the unit. Those armies would not work. On the other hand an army where buffs are just a pasive thing handed out by the army rules, or being within X" of another unit, would gain a huge buff because in their case the units of such an army would be getting 1.5 or more turns in one go. Then there would be the problem of any interupt rules, shoting through other units, shoting outside of LoS, moving shoting then moving or shoting then moving. Against such armies, an army with a regular turn sequance would be at a huge disadventage. And as for X rule existing only in IGUG, there is again is a thing of what maybe should be and what is, and how GW writes their rules. For 3 editions GW writes their top armies as breaking core rules and stuff that is normal for other armies. You would have to replace the whole design team , and then their higher ups, to change their rules writing. Which means we are starting to talk about very hypothetical things and not the reality of GW rules writing.

As the stratagems goes. You may not want them. I may not like them. But GW can sell cards for them, so for at least the next 2-3 editions they will stay.

Karol wrote:



As the stratagems goes. You may not want them. I may not like them. But GW can sell cards for them, so for at least the next 2-3 editions they will stay.

Wise words.

But strategems as a concept are by no means bad in and of themselves. I mean, commissar von Toussaint May make a better testimony about it, but I'm not sure they were breaking 2nd edition. Yet there were strategem cards.

8th edition take on them on the other hand is dull and bland.

Stratagem used as actual tactical options plus one or two boosts here and there lost in the crowd are even valuable in providing a fun and thoughtful experience. Things that make you manoeuvre, prepare traps and or deceive the opponent.

The strategems used in 4th ed apocalypse are a blast on my mind and they provide just that, at least turned out great each time we included them.

Survivors of the Virus Bomb strategem might remember their implementation in 2nd ed. differently

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Survivors of the Virus Bomb strategem might remember their implementation in 2nd ed. differently

Wasn’t that banned basically everywhere where it wasn’t a friend group playing, I am sure it was still banned at the club I went to even all though 3rd edition for 2nd edition games.

It was so balanced, it was basically treated as a real world war crime.