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 Eilif wrote:

Kagetora wrote:

I focused on Fantasy after that, which had it's own unique problems depending on edition (Heroes are Gods! Heroes suck and units rule in the next edition! Magic is Godly! Magic sucks in the next edition! then, 8th, where if you didn't bring a L4 mage you didn't win), but at least the game wasn't over before it began based on a single die rolled.

I've played everything GW, Confrontation, Wargods of Aegyptus, SFB, and many other games. The best of them are still earlier editions of Mordheim, Necromunda (because of the concepts of carrying over gangs from one game to another with experience, wounds, better gear, etc.), and Epic, because of the activation sequence/trying to retain initiative concept of the games. Or Wargods, with face-down activations, and similar games.

I agree with most of what you've said. However, a few threads I'd like to pull on, mostly about WHFB, Mordheim and Necromunda.

In my opinion WHFB and Mordheim are probably less-bad options for IGOUGO because you don't have the majority of an army being able to shoot, charge on turn one. Fantasy and KoW (My preferred mass fantasy battle rank and flank game) just don't have the same "Alpha Strike" advantage that going first gives you in 40k.

As for Necromunda 1995, if played properly, with heavy multi-level terrain (Ideally Mordheim would be similarly dense), each player is usually going to get at least a turn to move around, spread-out, etc before being in the direct line-of sight of the majority of the opponent's force.

Which leads me back to 40k and other IGOUGO games in general, I left 40k well over a decade ago and I will never defend IGOUGO as the best option, but....

Is IGOUGO significantly "less-bad" on tables where a higher amount of cover, and/or minimal interaction on turn 1 is the norm?

Also both sides fight both turns (though the charger has some advantage, there's other parts baked into stats and certain units can go before chargers thanks to the initiative stats which are often balanced with the durability or sheer cost of most units that take advanatage of it.

With shooting there's no such thing.

Though another thing with IGOUGO is that in practice it's faster than AA. 40k (modern) is slowed down more by every unit having semi-unique abilities and reactions with spending command points on, and it would significantly speed up if that part of the game were removed from it, and pull it more away from playing virtual cards throughout the game, breaking it up (which can be even more disruptive than even the phase of using real cards in prior editions).

I kinda do think it would be interesting if there were different versions of 40k. Battletech has the classic rules, and it has alpha strike, you can use the same mechs, similar mechanics, but different structure of the stats/rules. I could see a "classic" 40k remaining in place with the YGIG format, and a new/different version of 40k existing with alternative activation style. Let both versions exist, same armies, same units, change some things where needed to make them work better in both formats, and see what the players like better.

If anybody is interested in an AA version of 40k after all that talk, I would like to shamelessly point towards the link in my signature.

Most if not all problems that were raised in this thread are a non-issue on the actual game table and I have yet to meet someone saying they did not enjoy the rules after a game or two.

 xeen wrote:
For me the main problem with AA, which I believe several people have already discussed as well, is that I don't think it works well with what 40k is. AA doesn't work well with high unit counts (and lets face it I don't think unit counts are going down in 40k), and it really doesn't work well when there is a vast disparity in unit power between units that can be activated. For example, the difference in activating a tank squadron and an infantry squadron in old style epic did not have the same gap in power that activating a Rogal Dorn tank and a single infantry squad has in 40k, let alone the extreme of a unit of cultist compared to a knight. You could group some units together, but that just adds levels of complexity, and doesn't fix the issue (how many guardsmen need to go to equal a knight?) I just don't see AA working in 40k as I think it would just push the game to only bring the biggest baddest units and have as minimal activation as possible which isn't good either.

That's not been my experience. I've played Grimdark Future and Bolt Action. They have different implementations of AA, but have similar impacts on army building. In Grimdark it's straight alternating activations with one caveat that the player who activated last in the previous turn doesn't go first in the new turn. BA has a semi random activation system that uses a dice bag to determine who activates. In both systems, however, the player feels incentivized to maximize the number of activations he can get. In Grimdark, for example, having 15 units to your opponent's 10 gets you the ability to out activate him.

Generally, you hold your powerful units back wanting to activate them after your opponent commits with his powerful units. So with more units you can start your turn activating your rear echelon units, the objective campers. Mostly you're putting them on overwatch or hunkering down. Your opponent does the same until he runs out of them and has to commit his big guys first and you get to react to those moves with multiple activations of your big guys knowing that he won't be able to respond. In BA having more dice in the bag gets you more opportunities for multiple back to back activations. Your force will feel more flexible and dynamic. In neither system did I ever feel that having the smallest number of powerful units was the best option.

 Arschbombe wrote:
In neither system did I ever feel that having the smallest number of powerful units was the best option.

And that will always be the issue.

That happened in the original Warmachine, when people started buying infantry and using them as activation sinks vs. Warjacks.

This isn't limited to Warmachine, AA in BattleTech works when it's Mech on Mech combat, because its roughly the same number of models. But once you fight the infantry Brigade and their artillery friends... there will be one less Lance in the Inner Sphere.

Small Elite armies will always be out maneuvered by horde armies in AA games.

And that will cause frustration.

I could win more games if I had more models. Is a thought I've had before.

I couldn't afford to buy tons of models so I would lose a lot.

That's why if I play an AA game I look for games with roughly the same model count per side, otherwise the game isn't worth playing.

 Arschbombe wrote:

 xeen wrote:
For me the main problem with AA, which I believe several people have already discussed as well, is that I don't think it works well with what 40k is. AA doesn't work well with high unit counts (and lets face it I don't think unit counts are going down in 40k), and it really doesn't work well when there is a vast disparity in unit power between units that can be activated. For example, the difference in activating a tank squadron and an infantry squadron in old style epic did not have the same gap in power that activating a Rogal Dorn tank and a single infantry squad has in 40k, let alone the extreme of a unit of cultist compared to a knight. You could group some units together, but that just adds levels of complexity, and doesn't fix the issue (how many guardsmen need to go to equal a knight?) I just don't see AA working in 40k as I think it would just push the game to only bring the biggest baddest units and have as minimal activation as possible which isn't good either.

That's not been my experience. I've played Grimdark Future and Bolt Action. They have different implementations of AA, but have similar impacts on army building. In Grimdark it's straight alternating activations with one caveat that the player who activated last in the previous turn doesn't go first in the new turn. BA has a semi random activation system that uses a dice bag to determine who activates. In both systems, however, the player feels incentivized to maximize the number of activations he can get. In Grimdark, for example, having 15 units to your opponent's 10 gets you the ability to out activate him.

Generally, you hold your powerful units back wanting to activate them after your opponent commits with his powerful units. So with more units you can start your turn activating your rear echelon units, the objective campers. Mostly you're putting them on overwatch or hunkering down. Your opponent does the same until he runs out of them and has to commit his big guys first and you get to react to those moves with multiple activations of your big guys knowing that he won't be able to respond. In BA having more dice in the bag gets you more opportunities for multiple back to back activations. Your force will feel more flexible and dynamic. In neither system did I ever feel that having the smallest number of powerful units was the best option.

I get it, I don't think it is impossible, but I think it will lead to issues.I have not played Grimdark or Bolt Action, only some of GW's AA games and some board games. But even in those, where there isn't such a broad power difference, I found that you almost always just activated your "best unit" first, and quite frankly similar to what you said, weaker units just felt like administration for the sake of completion. But part of your quote, "Mostly you're putting them on overwatch or hunkering down" really sounds like it makes the game boring and has less interaction. Right now, other than like one or two camper units, I use all of the units in my army actively. But again this is just my opinion and perhaps a viable AA rule set that is balanced, interactive, fun and not overtly complicated could be created, but in my opinion, I think that would be a tall order.

But like I previously stated, I am very glad 40k has started to add in reactive moves and out of order actions as during 3-7 when it was really just purely IGOUGO the game was not as much fun or interactive.

Alternating Activation systems, particularly if they don't have a pass mechanic, tend to make expensive things unplayable pretty quick and devolve into a red rover mechanic that I personally find very gamey and not really what I want.

That's not to say I don't like Alternating Activations, just that they work so much better when there's only around 5 activations a side and each activation is similar in power level. Even then, a pass system is often incredibly important. 40k's unit structure just doesn't conform to it well.

It would be more complicated, but I feel like there might be room for an Activation Cost stat. Like, when it's your turn to activate some units, you choose one, do that unit's stuff, then choose another unit and do it's stuff, etc. until you've activated X Activation Cost worth of units. So functionally you're still able to pull off multi-unit maneuvers like having a transport drop off its passengers and have those passengers shoot, but there's still generally some back and forth on activations to avoid the IGOUGO problems *and* it gives you a way to avoid some of the red rover issues that come with big disparities in unit count.

Plus, it could be fun to experiment with things like having crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units have lower AC so that you can activate a bunch of them at once. Or have your commander type characters treat a unit's AC as being lower meaning you can activate more units at a time.

AA in no way has to push players into playing safe at the beginning of the turn nor does it have to reward spamming low cost units in order to get control of the end of turn.

Alpha Strike and some other games have players with more units activate more until the numbers average out.

Also, games like Grimdark reduce a unit's effectiveness after the first close combat of a given turn. In the AA context this rewards aggressive action early for both players as you prioritize where you really need to be the first attacker. Simultaneously, it rewards good tactics as you strive to keep other units out of these situations to effect your late turn goals.

None of this is made better with IGOUGO.

 LunarSol wrote:
Alternating Activation systems, particularly if they don't have a pass mechanic, tend to make expensive things unplayable pretty quick and devolve into a red rover mechanic that I personally find very gamey and not really what I want.

That's not to say I don't like Alternating Activations, just that they work so much better when there's only around 5 activations a side and each activation is similar in power level. Even then, a pass system is often incredibly important. 40k's unit structure just doesn't conform to it well.

Tell me you haven’t played Kill Team without saying you haven’t played Kill Team

But seriously, Kill Team is AA with 6-10(14) units per side with the occasional basic units that activate as groups. It has a mechanic that allows the player with less activations make ‘minor’ activations with units after all have been activated and his opponent has in activated units. I find it very fun and engaging. I can only hope 40K becomes more like it.

yes, but in kill team it is not easy to kill an opposing unit per activation and definitly not multiple ones. Objective also function different. Imagine a custodes or GK or IK army having to do big activiation, while their opponent have 16-17(normal for even msu marines) activations and just wait for their opponent to stand on an objective to be blown up after the elite player runs out of their activations. And if they don't go in and take objectives? great the swarm player takes them, and with the elite player being unable to kill stuff was enough they practicaly lose turn 1. We had something like that happen in 9th ed with DE, when a ton of armies were in a lose/lose situation, if they didn't go pro active the DE player was trading up (a lot) and would win unless some abyssal rolls were involved, and if the DE opponnt was pasive the DE player would just win on objectives.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:

Plus, it could be fun to experiment with things like having crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units have lower AC so that you can activate a bunch of them at once. Or have your commander type characters treat a unit's AC as being lower meaning you can activate more units at a time.

What about armies that don't have "crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units" though? Those would be left in a situation where combining stuff would be rather hard to pull off, their opponents had more activations to bait out actions/movment.

Plus in a system like that GW, the very next codex would go "You see this units is in Heavy Support, but because it is X it actualy shots like FA, but only for this one army/detachment. Everyone else gets the bad HS version".

 xeen wrote:

I get it, I don't think it is impossible, but I think it will lead to issues.I have not played Grimdark or Bolt Action, only some of GW's AA games and some board games. But even in those, where there isn't such a broad power difference, I found that you almost always just activated your "best unit" first, and quite frankly similar to what you said, weaker units just felt like administration for the sake of completion. But part of your quote, "Mostly you're putting them on overwatch or hunkering down" really sounds like it makes the game boring and has less interaction.

It's quite the opposite actually. There is no my turn or your turn. It's just the turn and it belongs to both players. You are fully engaged because you are an active player every turn. Every move changes the board state and what your next move might be. Just because both players have chaff units hiding in the backline and those get activated first doesn't make the game boring.

Yep plus having features like splitting fire and such can mean that even if you've an elite army with fewer squads you can still project a lot of power against an opponent who might have a very chaff heavy army, but where most have a close combat weapon or only one weapon.

There are lots of ways to deal with the imbalance in squad counts




But yeah you get to be fully invested for the whole turn sequence. There's no half hour where you're watching your opponent play and your only input is to roll dice in a defensive situations that you are forced into (because its your opponents turn and they choose who and what they charge).

The whole argument of "well you might have a few more activations than your opponent" is undone by the fact that currently you have a whole ARMY more than your opponent if you go first in a turn sequence.

AA games you can't do that sweeping "I just obliterated your whole army and you couldn't do anything about it" as commonly and often if you DO manage it its because you've either done something masterful or there's a huge skill divide between you and your opponent.



Personally I also find the flow of an AA game easier to learn and easier to see mistakes in to grow and learn from. 40K and AoS have big turn sequences and that can somewhat make it harder to see what went wrong/right from your actions because its muted by the blur of "it was your opponents turn and they did EVERYTHING that hurt you".

Instead AA is like lots of micro-situations where you can really see very quick results from your actions and very quick retaliations.

Of course higher level play still focuses on those long term goals/plans not just short term; but again I feel like the AA flow really works better to make a game that's honestly easier to advance skill wise with.

I looked at the last couple games I played and compared that list to a bunch of meta chasers who play locally.

I have 10 units in my IK force... if I was a meta guy it would be 12.

I compared that to 8 different SM and CSM lists. That's what my shop has MEQ for days.

Most of their armies were 15-19 units.

That's not a huge difference.

But, for the sake of argument, here's a balancing point that could be used, in order to push units into a more aggressive 40k playstyle.

Every model that Activates goes into Overwatch at the end of its turn and may fire its ranged weapons (still needing 6s) at an enemy that activates later that turn.

What do you think?

I think AA definitely increases accessibility because new players only have to deal with one unit at a time. It breaks the game into more manageable chunks. If a new player gets first turn in IGOUGO they need to manage their entire force at once, but in AA they can try a relatively low risk unit, watch what the opponent does in response, and then move on to the next unit.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think AA definitely increases accessibility because new players only have to deal with one unit at a time. It breaks the game into more manageable chunks. If a new player gets first turn in IGOUGO they need to manage their entire force at once, but in AA they can try a relatively low risk unit, watch what the opponent does in response, and then move on to the next unit.

Also when you start to build plans for your actions AA allows you to do so much more readily every full game turn; whilst at the same time adapting to what your opponent does.

the IGOUGO has a huge barrier which is that if you get the turn at the right moment you can do your whole gameplan in one turn OR your opponent does. If you do then great you get to do what you want; if not then you have to watch as your whole game plan goes out the window along with a good chunk of your army. So suddenly you're having to react to major loss and major game state change. That actually takes a good chunk of experience to work through and learn how to deal with and its tricky in a game where you might get 1 game a week a best for many people.

Now its obviously not stopping people learning and having fun and having deep strategies and such; but again I'd argue that its harder to get to grips with.

Karol wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Plus, it could be fun to experiment with things like having crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units have lower AC so that you can activate a bunch of them at once. Or have your commander type characters treat a unit's AC as being lower meaning you can activate more units at a time.

What about armies that don't have "crummy, unimpressive battleline/troop units" though? Those would be left in a situation where combining stuff would be rather hard to pull off, their opponents had more activations to bait out actions/movment.

The way I'm picturing it, AC would roughly correspond to how powerful a unit is. So a marine player might only be able to activate 2 or 3 units at a time while a tau player might be choosing between activating either 1 crisis squad or 3-4 pathfinder/stealth suit squads. And then a guard player might have the option of activating like 5 units together provided they're all unimpressive chaff.

You'd probably need a mechanic to compel people to activate more than one or two low AC units at a time to avoid action baiting though. Maybe make it so that you *must* keep activating until you hit at least X AC or something. The details would need to be hammered out, but I think there might be something there.

Plus in a system like that GW, the very next codex would go "You see this units is in Heavy Support, but because it is X it actualy shots like FA, but only for this one army/detachment. Everyone else gets the bad HS version".

I mean, every idea is a bad one if we assume GW goes out of there way to mess it up somehow. But even then, I think we might still get a better result than what we have now. If loyalist predators are using less AC than chaos predators, that's probably going to hurt the overall balance, but you'd still have an end result of players activating smaller portions of their army at a time with limited ability to action bait or wipe out the other side with a big alpha/beta strike. So still an improvement even if an imperfect one.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I looked at the last couple games I played and compared that list to a bunch of meta chasers who play locally.

I have 10 units in my IK force... if I was a meta guy it would be 12.

I compared that to 8 different SM and CSM lists. That's what my shop has MEQ for days.

Most of their armies were 15-19 units.

That's not a huge difference.

But, for the sake of argument, here's a balancing point that could be used, in order to push units into a more aggressive 40k playstyle.

Every model that Activates goes into Overwatch at the end of its turn and may fire its ranged weapons (still needing 6s) at an enemy that activates later that turn.

What do you think?

It's a solution looking for a problem, no offense intended.

A simple pass mechanic is all that is needed to solve unit count discrepancy.

 a_typical_hero wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I looked at the last couple games I played and compared that list to a bunch of meta chasers who play locally.

I have 10 units in my IK force... if I was a meta guy it would be 12.

I compared that to 8 different SM and CSM lists. That's what my shop has MEQ for days.

Most of their armies were 15-19 units.

That's not a huge difference.

But, for the sake of argument, here's a balancing point that could be used, in order to push units into a more aggressive 40k playstyle.

Every model that Activates goes into Overwatch at the end of its turn and may fire its ranged weapons (still needing 6s) at an enemy that activates later that turn.

What do you think?

It's a solution looking for a problem, no offense intended.

A simple pass mechanic is all that is needed to solve unit count discrepancy.

No offense taken.

I was trying to think of a method that rewards aggressive gameplay.

Karol wrote:
yes, but in kill team it is not easy to kill an opposing unit per activation and definitly not multiple ones. Objective also function different. Imagine a custodes or GK or IK army having to do big activiation, while their opponent have 16-17(normal for even msu marines) activations and just wait for their opponent to stand on an objective to be blown up after the elite player runs out of their activations. And if they don't go in and take objectives? great the swarm player takes them, and with the elite player being unable to kill stuff was enough they practicaly lose turn 1. We had something like that happen in 9th ed with DE, when a ton of armies were in a lose/lose situation, if they didn't go pro active the DE player was trading up (a lot) and would win unless some abyssal rolls were involved, and if the DE opponnt was pasive the DE player would just win on objectives.

You must be playing a different version of Kill Team than me. I've not experience that much trouble dropping an opposing model in Kill Team. Heck, I find it harder to kill a unit with just one unit in 40K than I do in Kill Team.

But there are many possible ways to deal with Big Unit vs MSU in an AA system. You can use proportional activations where one player gets multiple activations when they have significantly more activations available than their opponent.

In a more sophisticated way, you can use an Activation Tally system where every unit gets an Activation Cost (AC). Starting at 0 for both players, you add the AC to your Activation Tally each time you activate a unit. If your Activation Tally remains below your opponents, you activate another unit until it either equals or exceeds theirs. At that point, they take over activating units until their Activation Tally exceeds yours. If AC is roughly 1 per 50 points, there is no issue of the Custodes, Grey Knight, or Knight player having to activate their entire army before their opponent gets to meaningful activations. Both players will activate a similar proportion of their army strength at the same time.

But the real issue with AA and 40K is that too much happens in a current 40K turn then a good AA system allows a single unit to do in an activation. A Kill Team unit gets 2-3 actions (move/charge, shoot, fight, special ability) while a 40K unit can move, shoot, charge, fight (including pile in and consolidate). A lot of the game would need to be remastered to be much leaner than it is today for AA. But that's a good thing in my mind!

Activation per phase, as it keeps a decent flow of interaction between the players.

Most of the arguments I hear against AA are arguments against a bare-minimum implementation of AA. Issues like army sizes or uneven numbers of units are readily solvable and have been addressed numerous different ways by other wargames.

People keep talking about AA as a single thing, but alternating activation is an umbrella term for a host of mechanics that can add different things to the gameplay. Sometimes they're structured around modeling command and control, sometimes they're intended to create unpredictability and friction, sometimes they convey faction identity, sometimes they're just there to add an additional tactical layer. There are a bunch of different ways to implement it depending on what you're going for.

But IGOUGO also has a variety of implementations with different gameplay implications. Modern wargames that make use of IGOUGO tend to employ concepts like sequential activation, action economies, or reaction systems to add interesting tactical considerations and mitigate some of the problems that 40K still struggles with. I certainly wouldn't mind an AA rework of 40K, but my issue with 40K's turn structure is less that it's IGOUGO, and more that it's a sucky holdover of 1980s game design that doesn't do anything interesting for the gameplay and creates a bunch of problems in the process. You could do a lot better even without going AA.

To continue what catbarf said, most issues people raise with AA are either oversimplifications or empirically disproven. There are plenty of ways to interleave activations over the game round in a way that fits the chosen themes of the rest of the rules framework.

Straight AA, risk-assessment sudden death initiative, phased activations, deck or token draws, initiative order series, secret orders in timing priority, activation around commanders, activation in groups, asymmetric activation elements and passing options... all of these work fine in games big and small and arguing they don't is frankly just fighting the windmills. Personal preference is one thing, such as my dislike of IGOUGO, but lumping all AA as one thing unsuited for X is simply misguided.

40k in particular is not any exception. I've played it with various AA modifications (like Bolt Action inspired token draw group activations) in multiple editions and it definitely improved the game for our group.

 Sherrypie wrote:

... all of these work fine in games big and small and arguing they don't is frankly just fighting the windmills.

I'm sorry, I thought someone called for me.

 Sherrypie wrote:
To continue what catbarf said, most issues people raise with AA are either oversimplifications or empirically disproven. There are plenty of ways to interleave activations over the game round in a way that fits the chosen themes of the rest of the rules framework.

Straight AA, risk-assessment sudden death initiative, phased activations, deck or token draws, initiative order series, secret orders in timing priority, activation around commanders, activation in groups, asymmetric activation elements and passing options... all of these work fine in games big and small and arguing they don't is frankly just fighting the windmills. Personal preference is one thing, such as my dislike of IGOUGO, but lumping all AA as one thing unsuited for X is simply misguided.

40k in particular is not any exception. I've played it with various AA modifications (like Bolt Action inspired token draw group activations) in multiple editions and it definitely improved the game for our group.

I feel that a vocal minority in the 40k Community had become accustomed with list-tailoring for Alpha-Striking being the norm, and even tho this kind of gameplay has been toned down a little, many have an unhealthy attachement to the dated turn sequence, out of habit and fear of change ("my army's strenght will be broken with AA!"). I mean technically, the 40k community already has a love/hate relationship with the permanent ruleset-shift occuring every 3 years, but still continue to play the game nonetheless.

GW has already introduced AA in almost all the other game system (Epic/Imperialis, KT, Apocalypse), so we know for a fact it works even within the company.

Also, from the corporate GW point of view, maybe modifying the way the turn sequence works in 40k might seem like a jump into a big unknown.

I don't think most people would drop 40k if AA was introduced, simply because there is no equivalent universe and miniatures, but the higher ups are probably completely adverse to change it and potentially hurt sales/growth.

Siegfriedfr wrote:
but the higher ups are probably completely adverse to change it and potentially hurt sales/growth.

We know this has been the case for over twenty years; Andy Chambers left GW because he wanted to significantly iterate on 3rd and the suits wouldn't let him. 8th was the big reboot of 40K and it still was about 90% the same game, with the same dated IGOUGO and the same dated phase structure and the same dated sequential dice rolls to resolve everything.

40K is full of atavisms because the degree to which GW is willing to change the game is inversely proportional to how profitable it is at any given moment, and for all its problems it isn't struggling the way WHFB was. Specialist titles and spin-off games are where GW's designers are free to actually design.

I like being able to plan my army's coordinated movement rather than have the army's plan being interrupted by a countermove after every move I make.

As others have pointed out, there are ways to come close to this even with AA- group activations might be okay. Using the old multi-detachment system of 8th/ 9th and alternating between detachments would have added another consequence to choices about army composition/ organization.

But straight "you move one unit then I move one unit?" No thanks. By the time I got to my last unit every turn, the table wouldn't even remotely resemble what it was when the turn began. IMHO, it defeats the purpose of playing with many units if the system doesn't allow them to effectively coordinate their actions.

I understand why people would like AA.

In 40k, I just prefer the "BIG TURN" feel that I get from IGOUGO. I like the downtime afforded by my opponent's movement phase, and I find my level of participation in the shooting and fighting phases sufficient with saves, counter attacks and out of turn strats.

My group's solution to alpha strikes was always put lots of LOS blocking terrain in deployment zones. Now often, on tables with lots of LOS blocking terrain, there can be significant advantages to deploying in the open... But that sets up positioning and risk/ reward.

With swarm armies, or Towering armies, I acknowledge that isn't always easy to do. Building terrain big enough to completely block LOS to a Knight or a Baneblade takes up a lot of table real estate, and it would have to be scratch built, because few if any manufacturers make anything of the sort.

But unit for unit AA feels like the whole game is a single, ongoing turn. I want Big Turn Rhythm. It's what 40k has that skirmish games don't. Just my preference.

 PenitentJake wrote:
IMHO, it defeats the purpose of playing with many units if the system doesn't allow them to effectively coordinate their actions.

As opposed to 40K of today, where coordination as basic as 'unit A shoots the single Grot in the way, unit B advances through the gap' requires 40% of the entire duration of the game to execute, and in between those actions your opponent's entire army has the ability to interrupt and counter you.

Warmachine has IGOUGO but also permits sequencing within a turn, because the designers had a clear vision of combo-focused gameplay and designed the turn structure around it. You can activate unit A to kill a unit in the way, activate unit B to move into the gap, and activate unit C to cast a spell through B and exploit the breakthrough.

40K has IGOUGO with a rigid phase structure because that's how games were written in 1987, even as the game keeps running into problems that directly or indirectly stem from its turn structure. IGOUGO can be a good structure for a game designed to promote army-wide coordination, but this ain't it.

 catbarf wrote:

As opposed to 40K of today, where coordination as basic as 'unit A shoots the single Grot in the way, unit B advances through the gap' requires 40% of the entire duration of the game to execute, and in between those actions your opponent's entire army has the ability to interrupt and counter you.

Warmachine has IGOUGO but also permits sequencing within a turn, because the designers had a clear vision of combo-focused gameplay and designed the turn structure around it. You can activate unit A to kill a unit in the way, activate unit B to move into the gap, and activate unit C to cast a spell through B and exploit the breakthrough.

40K has IGOUGO with a rigid phase structure because that's how games were written in 1987, even as the game keeps running into problems that directly or indirectly stem from its turn structure. IGOUGO can be a good structure for a game designed to promote army-wide coordination, but this ain't it.

Perhaps not focusing exclusively on the part of my post where I said:

 PenitentJake wrote:
IMHO, it defeats the purpose of playing with many units if the system doesn't allow them to effectively coordinate their actions.

And instead recognizing that in the same post I also said:

 PenitentJake wrote:


As others have pointed out, there are ways to come close to this even with AA- group activations might be okay. Using the old multi-detachment system of 8th/ 9th and alternating between detachments would have added another consequence to choices about army composition/ organization.

But straight "you move one unit then I move one unit?" No thanks. By the time I got to my last unit every turn, the table wouldn't even remotely resemble what it was when the turn began.

Would help you to see that I've already conceded that a system like Warmachine's could definitely work- even for me. I'm not arguing anywhere that I'm set on GW's turn structure. I'm saying that I like it better (for me) than the version of AA that is "You move a unit, I move a unit, repeat."

You're a smart guy. Read my posts before you reply please.

I do feel that alternating by phase gets you a lot of the way there for both styles. Most of the co-ordination is through movement anyway, so moving all your stuff with perhaps some reactive counterplay (like Heroic Moves in LOTR) gets you that "grand plan" feel, and then having shooting alternate means you have to be a bit careful about how you manage it. I think simultaneous resolution is even better than alternating for shooting but the book keeping would be a pain. Melee is already essentially simultaneous/alternating so no problem there.

Would not require much extra work to implement this.