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This idea was inspired by my group's 2000 pt 2v2 games. The general limits were each player brings ~1000 points, single detachment.

Each turns are composed into first and second halves where the two teams alternating activating the halves of the armies at a time. The result was a "soft" revision to the existing IGOUGO, where the alternate turns are dictated by your detachment composition.

In a 1v1 setting, the deployments would occur at 'per detachment' level, with the side that deployed all of his detachments first gains +1 to roll off for who decides the turn orders.

The system begins to bring in a trade off where larger single detachment allows you to make bigger moves you make at the cost of CP accrual. Alternatively, taking smaller detachments allow you to make smaller moves and in turn you bring in more CPs you can spend. In order to facilitate this, there would be a new general strategem where it allows you to spend 1CP to move a unit out of turn.

In a scenario where its one detachment vs 3 detachment armies and the player with only 1 detachment goes first - although the resulting game is the existing IGOUGO, it hampers the first player (with only 1 detachments) from abusing CP's in his/ers alpha strike.

In a most optinal setting would be where the players bring armies that are composed of 1 main detachment and 2 auxillary detachments, and a single exisitng turn becomes three turns within.

So while not a complete alternating activation, we felt more 'tactical decisions' being made. I am looking to draft a full ruleset depending on the responses and C&C for further playtesting.

Consider how this can be min maxed with supreme command detachments or min requirement detachments to create mini death stars.

Just consider it.

Its a bad idea.

It has the same issue all alternating action systems have, it benefits MSU spam and not much else.

I have yet to come across an alternating system that fixes that issue without some form of resource tracking that bogs the game down horrifically.

We play by standard ITC rules with max 3 detachments.

The proposed system abides by all the existing IGOUGO rulesets except that your turns are divided by your detachment compositions.

I wasnt aware of any benefits to MSU spams in this edition. Can you elaborate?

As for the resource tracking, the only book keeping required in this system ( on top of exisitng system's) is keeping track of which unit belongs to which detachments.

I dont see how this essentially promotes minmax supreme command detachments any more than it does now? Care to elaborate on this as well?

Considering you didn't mention a detachment limit in your OP means you're not giving us the correct information to give you feedback.

The person with 1 detachment goes first? How does that fix any of the alpha strike problems? I bring a Brigade of IG with over 9000 basilisks, 12 CP and Catachan doctrines means I wipe your army out first turn, just like it is right now except I always go first.

YOU play with a max 3 detachments. But if i can take as many detachments as i want i can build those detachments out of incredibly brtual... Say... Tyrant spam. (Not the best example). So one detachment with 5 tyrants all sporting 2 sets of 2 deathspitters for a total of 120 bs 3+ heavy bolter shots in a single detachment. + 10 psychic powers/(5 smites + whatever).

Again, death star activation.

The advanatge of alternating activation is to limit the impact of a single player before the next player gets to act. But your not really limiting it. Your just making a new criteria for optimization. Not its not about how these smaller units fit into my whole army but instead how i can alpha/beta strike with each activation.

To my mind the issue with things like this is that they add extra rules to the game without making it much more interesting. The turn structure of 40k (run through the checklist of "have I done [thing] with [unit]" for every unit in the army two to four times a turn) is annoying enough without splitting the checklist up further, and as other people have pointed out further up the page the problems actually solved by alternating activations are kind of negligible.

Games that do alternating activations tend to have simple single-step unit activations as opposed to the "do thing, wait for other units to do that thing, then do another thing" tangle that is the 40k turn. I'd suggest starting the alternating activation discussion by looking at how the phases that make up the 40k turn could be compressed rather than slapping an extra batch of rules on top of an already somewhat unwieldy system and hoping for the best.

As an example, the order system from Bolt Action:

When giving a unit an order choose from the following six:
Fire: Stand still, fire at no penalty.
Advance: Normal move, fire at a -1 to hit.
Run: Double move, fight a round of combat if you come into contact with another unit during this move.
Rally: Remove pin markers
Down: Hunker down to avoid incoming fire, remove fewer pin markers
Ambush: Hold position, fire at a -1 to hit if an enemy enters your line of fire later in the turn.

Because each unit is doing exactly one thing each turn rather than doing somewhere between one and four depending on the circumstances the whole thing is a lot easier to keep track of, especially if you're expected to pass priority a lot during a turn.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
To my mind the issue with things like this is that they add extra rules to the game without making it much more interesting. The turn structure of 40k (run through the checklist of "have I done [thing] with [unit]" for every unit in the army two to four times a turn) is annoying enough without splitting the checklist up further, and as other people have pointed out further up the page the problems actually solved by alternating activations are kind of negligible.

Games that do alternating activations tend to have simple single-step unit activations as opposed to the "do thing, wait for other units to do that thing, then do another thing" tangle that is the 40k turn. I'd suggest starting the alternating activation discussion by looking at how the phases that make up the 40k turn could be compressed rather than slapping an extra batch of rules on top of an already somewhat unwieldy system and hoping for the best.

As an example, the order system from Bolt Action:

When giving a unit an order choose from the following six:
Fire: Stand still, fire at no penalty.
Advance: Normal move, fire at a -1 to hit.
Run: Double move, fight a round of combat if you come into contact with another unit during this move.
Rally: Remove pin markers
Down: Hunker down to avoid incoming fire, remove fewer pin markers
Ambush: Hold position, fire at a -1 to hit if an enemy enters your line of fire later in the turn.

Because each unit is doing exactly one thing each turn rather than doing somewhere between one and four depending on the circumstances the whole thing is a lot easier to keep track of, especially if you're expected to pass priority a lot during a turn.

The Beyond the Gates of Antares (Sci fi bolt action) order are...

Fire: stand still and shoot at +1 (game runs on a d12 system)
Advance: Normal move and fire normally
Run: double move
Rally: remove pins
Down: -1 to hit unit
Ambush: can use the ambush reaction

There is a thread with a really good blending of BtGoA and 40k. The system works real well.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It has the same issue all alternating action systems have, it benefits MSU spam and not much else.

I have yet to come across an alternating system that fixes that issue without some form of resource tracking that bogs the game down horrifically.

I play Battletech which I feel has a great alternating system. It gets around the MSU problem by dividing up the larger force and having double movements on the larger force pushed towards the back.

For example, a 4v6 would go like this with the 4 side being listed as Red and the 6 side being listed as Blue. This can be inversed on the exact level depending on who gets initiative per turn.

Red: Blue
Red: Blue
Red: Blue Blue
Red: Blue Blue

The second thing they do is damage and kills for the turn are calculated at the end of the entire turn. This ends up helping out a lot as focus firing down a unit on your turn to force the enemy to have less shots before they can fire back doesn't work.

The main issue would be Battletech is usually played on a lot smaller scale of unit numbers, but they also don't move in squads. So *shrug*

The idea is interesting, but I think is better applied if you use the Battlefield Roles as the addictional criteria to organize unit activation, instead of Detachments.