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In most 40K games I've seen or played in, most folks want to go first (there are a few exceptions).  This can be crippling for many who don't get first turn. Ideally, everyone wants to hide their armor so they don't lose it in the beginning, but terrain may not always be so forgiving.  At first, I thought if the 'Night Fight' rules were in effect for first turn, this could solve the problem. But, Tyranid players just got big ol' grins on their faces.

I've been looking at ways without altering game mechanics to try and minimize the 'must go first or probably lose' effect 40K seems to have (it may be real or imagined, but folks believe it). Has anyone come up with something that works and is fair for all the various armies involved?

 

Even in third edition, first turn wasn't always the best option. Scenarios like Cleanse and Nightfight definitely made it not always the way to go. GW did three things in the 4th edition rules which all reduce the importance of getting first turn.

1. Made the 25% of the table terrain guideline. Playing with a decent amount of terrain is one of the biggest ways to make sure 40k is an interesting and tactical game. Playing on an open table is the quickest way to ruin it.

2. Made the Omega scenario level, which by default you're supposed to play 1/3rd of the time. In Omega, the vehicles (unless they have Scout like Warwalkers and IG Sentinels), the monstrous critters, and most of the special types of units start off the table, and the infantry have the Concealment rule in the first turn, very much like your Nightfight idea.

3. Made the objectives in the missions (4 out of 5 of the standard missions) worth a LARGE number of VPs, so that last-turn objective grabs can really turn the tide. I played in a tournament on Dec 2 in which I was facing a space wolf player on a city table in Secure & Control. We had 3 objectives in am 1850 game, so each was worth 617 points. He seized 2/3 of the objectives early, but I grabbed one, then around turn four I took the second, and on the bottom of turn six I ran a squad in a transport up to contest the last one. I also got lucky and caused the squad holding objective #3 to break, mostly by rapidfiring the crud out of them and forcing a bunch of failed armor saves. If I had just contested the objective I would have denied my opponent 617 VPs; by taking it away from him it was a 1234 point swing! While first turn can mean a lot of damage on a table with poor terrain, paying attention to the scenario and grabbing objectives in the last turn can make a BIG difference.

All that said, the most important and consistent way to reduce the impact of first turn is just to play with more terrain. Under most circumstances this almost always makes the game better.

Terrain is key. One off games can be easily rectified. I have a pretty good collection. Tourneys can be problematic. Maybe as a collective we should look at adding more terrain for the store.

Interesting point about the objectives. I think we see a lot of the older RTT scenarios where the objectives aren't worth nearly as much. This is a very valid point that maybe locally we need to address. Missions need to be worth more.

Except for last year's Atlanta GD RTT, I've never participated in a tourney where Escalation was used. I typically don't mind Escalation, but I do have many folks complain about it. Not sure if it's supposed to be 1/3 of the games, however we typically roll a d6 (1-2 Alpha, 3-4 Gamma, 5-6 Omega) as there isn't really a hard and fast rule on it.

All good points. Appreciate the input.

I i dont know many necron player wanting to go first at all Its about there WWB roles and for me as a DE player I dont care if i go first or second. DUe to most of the time all i have on the table are 6 troop choices and mandrakes , while the rest of the army WWP or Deep strikes IN so its not whoses goes first it whose going too last until turn five or six with me.

I see your point with Necrons. WBB and Deep Striking Monoliths is more benefitted by going last. Dark Eldar; this sounds more like your type of army build. I know a few DE players who groan when they don't get first turn. They tend to have more Raiders in their lists, however. WWP's are a big factor to help alleviate this.

It can be I just see this as more of a problem during tourney play where the players (typically) don't get much say in the terrain. This is probably the biggest factor after review.

Oh no I have raiders i have two Ravager and three raiders in that list , It just keeps them safe for a few turns and plus If I have too i can run out and get those last minute table corners too with the WWP. ITs All about the cover savs for DE stick you troops in cover and they dont move.

with my deathwing since most of the army deepstrikes i usually want to go second just to avoid getting shot at for a couple turns and getting the last chance to attack at the end of turn 6.....but that aside in every army i play i actually expect to go second and try to use terrain to my advantage. rather it be to hide behind and walk into/jump over when i get to go, reduce enemy return fire lanes or hide in to get cover saves etc...

all dependant on what i am facing and what the terrain looks like.

I love going first with guard, as I get to drop ordinance on anything visible. The more I can shoot, the better

The game suffers from the "I go first" syndrome. But night fight first turn would kill a tau army.....and benefit a nids army too much.

carmachu-Yeah, I discovered some Tyranid builds really benefitted from not getting shot at 1st turn.

Kult-sounds like you play with sufficient terrain to keep 5 Raider sized vehicles from being shot at if you don't get first turn, or they are in the WWP like I suspect they would be.

With the right 25% of scenery the game tends to give a 2nd turn advantage, as this gives the 2nd player the ability to seize objectives with no response. Even seek and destroy offers significant advantages to the 2nd turn player, for certain factions anyway - so long as you can hide for the first turn. That said, there are some exceptions, such as nids, for example, although certain nid builds benefit from playing the 'long duree'.

What about Mech Eldar and Tau? With my Eldar, it's usually a hard choice to either go first and risk pen hits or get last turn to grab objectives.

when you play with raiders you do have the tendancy to learn how to hug terrain and use movement to your advantage. The Importance of first turn varies by how much terrain you got or by what the mission is. Some armies I think are too hungup on the 1st turn and sure night fighting can help but also Tau as I remember have a nifty little wargear known as blacksun filter. Most Armies have some form of nightfight wargear unless your eldar or Dark Eldar.

Yeah it really sucks for night fight with Dark eldar. If you have have a heavy Dakka dakka Army like mine I have to move up out of cover. But I do enjoy those Night shiled on raiders and ravagers when i have extra points. It just how you use terrian and how well you can hide your army first turn.

We tried using the LoTR turn mechanics in 40k.

Roll priority.
Player A move, Player B moves.
Player A shoots, Player B shoots.
Player A assault moves, Player B assault moves
Combat done all at once in the order chosen by the player who won priority that turn.

That's the overly simplified version. But all in all it was fun.

You did say "without altering" and that IS altering. You still get your "Phases" and it effectively gets rid of "FTS"

even niftier is tau smart missle systems which ignore nightfighting rules all together. >

Or just play a proper game like Epic

DaIronGob inspired me!

I actually tried playing a skirmish (about 500 pts per site) doing a priority system. Oddly enough (or maybe sadly enough!!!), it ran just as smoothly as a regular 40k game! 

Turn-
Priority (strategy dice)

-Player 1-Move, shoot and charge (if in range) one unit
-Player 2-Move, shoot and charge (if in range) one unit

-No more units...Assault phase
     Resolve combats.  Yes, this means that there are more than  a        few combats where both sides charged.
    Combat done all at once in the order chosen by the player who   won priority that turn.

The part that really gets the juices flowing using the priority system is the fact that there will eventually be more than one unit getting a charge bonus in the same combat.

Posted By torgoch on 12/19/2006 1:48 PM
With the right 25% of scenery the game tends to give a 2nd turn advantage, as this gives the 2nd player the ability to seize objectives with no response. Even seek and destroy offers significant advantages to the 2nd turn player, for certain factions anyway - so long as you can hide for the first turn. That said, there are some exceptions, such as nids, for example, although certain nid builds benefit from playing the 'long duree'.

I tend to agree, even when I am playing Tau where I would benefit from moving over 6"/glance rule I prefer to take 2nd turn. It is mostly the advantage of going last (on turn 6) that I am after.

In almost every game I play I can't help but bring up how flawed the "you go, I go" method is. I've never understood why GW still clings to this method when almost every other miniature war game uses much better systems. At the very least going unit by unit should be considered. Being able to move, fire, and assault an entire force without ANY fear is kind of silly. The only thing I can say though on GW's behalf is that a game of 40K goes much faster than it did back in the good old days. It also goes much faster than a game with similar sized forces in other game systems that use more popular turn methods like unit by unit, weighted, random, or action points. Getting through a game quickly is a definite advantage. If the game changed tomorrow the first thing we would probably see is people complaining about it taking twice as long to play now or something.

Aetherverse's "weighted method" is my favorite by the way.

Plenty of other games still use the "You go, I go" method (Flames of War immediately springs to mind and I know there are many, many others). While not necessarily realistic, it has the huge benefit of streamlining the basic rules and simplifying what is going on the tabletop. That is, you don't have to keep track of each unit's initiative value, which unit already moved, fired and/or assaulted and those that haven't, and so on so forth.

That said, my favorite ruleset of all time is Command Decision III, in which everything is done simultaneously and uses concealed order chits to determine what (if anything) the unit does. It sounds complicated, but in practice, it is quite simple and elegant.

Without going in to too much detail, there are four phases per turn: Movement/Opportunity Fire, General Fire, Command and Morale. Before the game there is a free command phase where every command stand (or self ordering stand) gets to place an order chit beside it or (if a command stand) beside any unit under it's chain of command and in radio/telephone contact or within visible distance. The order chits are concealed, either being one sided and placed face down or with a cover piece, and when revealed in the first step of the Movement phase, the unit must follow that order.

This is but the tip of the iceberg, but as I said, in practice it is really elegant.

With your comments in mind, I played a couple games yesterday. We both had mechanized armies (Eldar and Tau) so getting shot up first turn could be disasterous. I ensured we played with a decent amount of terrain with mostly Size 3 Area terrain (CoD buildings).

Game 1 my opponent took first turn and really did not do much ( I got win by extra VPs w/ Gamma Cleanse by last turn moves)
Game 2 I took first turn and dropped 2 Devilfish (Tau ended up winning by getting last move w/ Alpha Recon)

Lessons learned is ideally we (mech Eldar and Tau) want decent amounts of LOS blocking terrain to hide behind and then be able to go 2nd.

Glad to hear you had a couple of fun games.

With lots of terrain and objectives, fast-moving armies often find it advantageous to go second. The more LOS-blocking terrain, generally the better it is for Eldar (unless maybe you?re up against Tyranids). The art of table setup lies in making an attractive battlefield which allows maneuver to be important to the game without making the result a foregone conclusion.

The 'last turn objective grab' is something I dislike about 40k. It really detracts from whatever 'realism' the game has. I realize that it is somewhat of a sop for not getting the first turn of shooty death. However, as it has been pointed out, decent amounts of LOS - blocking terrain can help ameliorate that problem.

If every game were random game length, it would be much better - you'd never know if you were going to get shot/assaulted off of that objective.

Random game length is cool for that factor.

Note that it's not a 40k-specific problem. Pretty much every other you go/I go game has the exact same issue; even if you don't have a set turn length, a fixed time limit (as in tournament games) can have the same effect. Warmachine tends to demonstrate it when the player up last can make moves and attacks for a last-turn VP grab which would leave them terribly exposed if there was another turn.

Of course, even in alternating unit activation this comes up, just on a smaller scale.  Any competitive chess player will tell you that White moving first is a big advantage.

Posted By Sarigar on 12/24/2006 6:13 AM
With your comments in mind, I played a couple games yesterday. We both had mechanized armies (Eldar and Tau) so getting shot up first turn could be disasterous. I ensured we played with a decent amount of terrain with mostly Size 3 Area terrain (CoD buildings).

Game 1 my opponent took first turn and really did not do much ( I got win by extra VPs w/ Gamma Cleanse by last turn moves)
Game 2 I took first turn and dropped 2 Devilfish (Tau ended up winning by getting last move w/ Alpha Recon)

Lessons learned is ideally we (mech Eldar and Tau) want decent amounts of LOS blocking terrain to hide behind and then be able to go 2nd.

i totally disagree, but then i have a non standard tau force-i run it as a tank company

 

i always want fisrt turn, i like S3 area terrain as much as the next guy, but i want to stay moving with 3 hammerheads and 5 fishon the table. i try to hide as much as possible just in case i don't go first but even then if my opponant has say a basilisk etc...my skimmers could take penning hits even hidden. with my 12" move in turn 1 i am going to hit something even if it is hidden thanks to the smart missle system. my shortest effective range is my burst cannon with the effective range of 30"  when combined with my move.

I agree the first turn is risky with lots of skimmers/vehicles. I had 8 vehicles and the Tau player had 10. With the terrain set up as it was, it ended up not getting screwed if you didn't go first. We were able to hide enough to minimize getting pummelled. But, whoever went last was able to get their last push for objectives (table quarters/enemy deployment zone in this case). Shooting first was not a big issue.

But, your point is exactly my observation when I first posted this. It seems terrain is hugely dependent whether a person wants/needs to go first. I think in tourneys is where I probably will see this as more of an issue. I've got a tourney on the 13th of January. I'll post up my observations again afterwards.

Posted By Mannahnin on 12/25/2006 8:46 AM

Note that it's not a 40k-specific problem. Pretty much every other you go/I go game has the exact same issue; even if you don't have a set turn length, a fixed time limit (as in tournament games) can have the same effect. Warmachine tends to demonstrate it when the player up last can make moves and attacks for a last-turn VP grab which would leave them terribly exposed if there was another turn.

My wife got 'clue' for our family for christmas, funny thing is that I was sitting there thinking how much turn order matters in that game... I bit my tongue and didn't bother saying anything, lest my in-laws or wife would think I was a clue powergamer...

Posted By happypants on 12/28/2006 6:55 AM

Posted By Mannahnin on 12/25/2006 8:46 AM

Note that it's not a 40k-specific problem. Pretty much every other you go/I go game has the exact same issue; even if you don't have a set turn length, a fixed time limit (as in tournament games) can have the same effect. Warmachine tends to demonstrate it when the player up last can make moves and attacks for a last-turn VP grab which would leave them terribly exposed if there was another turn.

My wife got 'clue' for our family for christmas, funny thing is that I was sitting there thinking how much turn order matters in that game... I bit my tongue and didn't bother saying anything, lest my in-laws or wife would think I was a clue powergamer...

That's awesome.  I was thinking about it in Cathedral last night. 

I have a friend who doesn't play 40k anymore who used to be just about the best player in the area.  He and I would often go head to head in epic games during the leagues or the league finals.  We had a game of his Tyranids vs my Eldar in 3rd edition (probably 1750pts or so) which went for about five hours.  We took almost an hour just deploying.  These were the most chess-like 40k games I ever played.  Skill and planning were everything.  Not coincidentally, he had also been a tournament chess player.  He often referred to who had the "tempo" in the game, meaning the initiative- forcing your opponent to react to your moves.  In chess, White starts with the tempo and part of Black's challenge is stealing it.