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I realize that we've seen a large number of ideas on this subject but I've been pondering one myself and wanted to throw it into the ring.

Entering Operational Area

The player who has the first turn of the first battle round may move any models normally during the movement phase. However, all models will count as having moved during this phase (even those that remained stationary). Treat all movement during the first turn movement phase as having utilized the maximum move characteristic for each model. In addition, no units may be nominated to advance during the first turn of the first battle round

I realize that this wouldn't fix everything in the game, but I have a feeling it could tip the scales closer for each side. Factions that rely heavily on opening barrages of heavy weapons would have their effectiveness lessened on the first game turn and create a healthy 'hole' in reroll buffs to allow for a couple more misses. While this wouldn't mitigate opening turn deepstrike charges, it would help to slow down the other half of an assault army and give more breathing room for lists to maneuver and react to early charge threats.

This would not be as large as other proposals. "Blanket -1 to Hit", "No charges", "Cover for 2nd Player Units", "No Deepstrikes", etc. would have big impacts on most armies but could harm some disproportionately and/or offer no real benefit to others. I suspect it wouldn't take much to accidentally debuff the 1st turn so hard that going 1st would actually be a detriment.

Well would hurt some armies(IG, eldar) a lot, other assault based armies would mostly shrug it off.

I believe this would be a good start to try out and see if further adjustments are needed.

Allow Advancing, disallow charging

leopard wrote:
Allow Advancing, disallow charging

Might as well change 1st turn player to only shooting.

leopard wrote:
Allow Advancing, disallow charging

I'm not sure that removing an entire phase for an army on turn 1 would be healthy for the game's balance. The inability to charge would force any melee-centric concept to become a beta strike army and essentially disenfrachise them for Turn 1. Let's face it, shooting armies are at full advantage for the early turns of the game thanks to most heavy weapon stat-lines and the standard 4' x 6' play area. With the exception of some specialized faction combos, most armies that are focused on melee can't be 100% effective until Turn 2 or 3.

That said, I think many melee armies often combo off of the advancing concept to bring a larger percentage of their force to bare sooner. Combine with some units' ability to advance and still charge and there are more chances for opening turn close combats to start happening. Losing D6" of extra movement is a pretty big deal (even bigger when some armies can go even faster).

Disallow usage of stratagems for the first player during his first turn. Any pre-game stratagems may still be used.

I would probably be on board with the "counting as moving" rule.

I would also be okay with no deep-striking until the 2nd turn (we've had this in previous editions and it seemed to work well to me). I think it is important to give a player a full turn to situate themselves before they get dropped on.

Having just started using the Red Grief rules, I wouldn't be terribly fond of banning advancing or charging (or deepstriking) on turn 1. At that point, you're just handing a bigger advantage to shooty armies by allowing them to blast away at my stuff for an extra turn before I get to actually attack back.

Having vehicles count as moving isn't a perfect solution either though. Armies that retain their firepower after moving (I'm thinking of my ravagers and dark reapers here) will still hit the enemy just as hard. We'll just disproportionately punish armies without such capabilities.

Something I've pitched in the past is to have "escalation" rules. The idea being that you have blanket reductions to damage in the first game round, play normally for most of the game, and then possibly increase the damage output of units in the later part of the game. So for instance...

FIRST ROUND: Reduce the damage of all multi-damage attacks by 1 to a minimum of 1. Models automatically count as having rolled a 6 when advancing (to help scoot slow armies up the table and become relevant sooner.)

SECOND ROUND ONWARD: Play as normal.

FIFTH ROUND ONWARD: Characters gain +1 Attack and Damage as they finish up their dramatic final battles.

etb342 wrote:
I realize that we've seen a large number of ideas on this subject but I've been pondering one myself and wanted to throw it into the ring.

Entering Operational Area

The player who has the first turn of the first battle round may move any models normally during the movement phase. However, all models will count as having moved during this phase (even those that remained stationary). Treat all movement during the first turn movement phase as having utilized the maximum move characteristic for each model. In addition, no units may be nominated to advance during the first turn of the first battle round

I realize that this wouldn't fix everything in the game, but I have a feeling it could tip the scales closer for each side. Factions that rely heavily on opening barrages of heavy weapons would have their effectiveness lessened on the first game turn and create a healthy 'hole' in reroll buffs to allow for a couple more misses. While this wouldn't mitigate opening turn deepstrike charges, it would help to slow down the other half of an assault army and give more breathing room for lists to maneuver and react to early charge threats.

This would not be as large as other proposals. "Blanket -1 to Hit", "No charges", "Cover for 2nd Player Units", "No Deepstrikes", etc. would have big impacts on most armies but could harm some disproportionately and/or offer no real benefit to others. I suspect it wouldn't take much to accidentally debuff the 1st turn so hard that going 1st would actually be a detriment.

What's hurting turn 1 ?
- long-range/no line of sight cheap shooting
- turn 1 double movement / deepstrikes

It's easy to fix:
- reduce range of shooting to 36 maximum
- remove "no line of sight" weapons rules
- turn 1 deep strike forbidden
- turn 1 double-moves forbidden

They just don't want to.

Improved version of your suggestion

Siegfriedfr wrote:

- reduce range of shooting to 36 maximum
- remove "no line of sight" weapons rules
- turn 1 deep strike forbidden
- turn 1 double-moves forbidden

1. Shots fired beyond 36" or half the weapon's range, whichever is greater, suffers -1 to hit.
2. Weapons that can target units out of LOS suffers -1 to hit unless it can draw a LOS to it.
3. Agree and disagree.
4. Disagree - so easy to deny turn 1 mass assault with proper deployment.

Siegfriedfr wrote:
It's easy to fix:
- reduce range of shooting to 36 maximum
- remove "no line of sight" weapons rules

IOW, "remove long-range shooting". No.

Instead of having a first turn, have a first round, and have things occur (semi) simultaneously.

1. Movement
a. Roll off as usual to see who goes first this battle round (they will be Player 1, P1). That player moves one unit from his army in the usual fashion. Players take turns moving one unit each until both players have moved all the units they wish to move this round.
2. Psychic
a. P1, may manifest a psychic power as normal, followed by P2 and so on till all psykers that wish to manifest a power have attempted to do so.
b. Any casualties caused are only removed at the end of the phase, once all powers have been resolved (so yes, a psyker P1 killed could still get a power off right before dying!)
3. Shooting
a. P1 picks one unit to shoot with, and resolves all its shooting attacks, P2 then picks a unit to shoot with. Any models slain are laid down, or otherwise indicated to be dead – however they may still shoot this phase. Players alternate until all units that wish to shoot have done so.
b. Casualties are only removed after all shots from both players have been resolved.
4. Charge
a. P1 picks a unit to charge, then P2 does so. Continuing till all units that can charge have done so (so yes, this does mean that a unit that charged, could subsequently ‘be charged’ by another unit!)
b. Models killed by overwatch are removed immediately after resolving the overwatch shots.
5. Fight
a. P1 picks a unit to fight with first, units that charged get some kind of bonus against there target that I can't think of right now. P2 picks a unit.
b. Casualties are not removed till the end of the phase (so yes, this does mean that two units could indeed wipe each other out at the same time; close combat is messy stuff!)
6. Morale
a. As normal.

I’m sure there’s a bunch of special rules for things that would get extra complicated though. Maybe for 9e...

One could argue that alternating activation could just be the whole game... but that would be a different game entirely.

The FAQ certainly rolled out something to address 1st Turn Advantage and it remains contested how the new Tactical Reserves limits will alter the strategic balance that players have with one another. Personally I feel that it will actually work very well for friendly games and have a disproportionate upheaval in the competitive meta...but that's just me.

I actually believe that armies like Drukhari (having access to heavy weapons that can move and fire without penalty) should retain such abilities. I agree that they would escape such a Turn 1 nerf unscathed, but that does fit the Drukhari MO. That said, it is an interesting trade-off, the Drukhari player COULD take 1st turn and fight with full use of their firepower but have no access to advancing. Their opponent could then answer at full ballistic skill (since they would not be effected by the "Entering Operational Area" debuff. Alternatively, cleverly hiding your forces and allowing the opponent to go first would make one of their 1st turn much less effective and allow for the Drukhari player to advance as part of their opening move. Its hard to speculate too much, but there are some interesting emergent tactics for certain factions.