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In the current state of the game, going first is a major advantage.
Players routinely "roll off to see who gets first turn". Then that is automatically followed by the seize roll.
But did you know, you are actually rolling off to see who decides if he wants to go first? As if this was a choice, right? There is no possible downside to going first ever.
With the upcoming proposed beta rules to limit deepstriking on the first turn, this effect is only to get reinforced.

But it does not have to be this way. These beta changes present a great opportunity to balance out the advantage of going first.
I propose we alter them like this:

"Only the player going first is subject to these limitations to deepstriking. The player who goes second can use deepstrike without any limitations."

This would finally make going first a real decision:
- do you want to be the player who gets to move and shoot first? Take out primary targets with shooting alpha strike, take up important positions on the board, we know why this is valuable.
- or do you want to be the player who fully gets to utilize deepstrike first?

The choice you make would depend on your battleplan and the army you are facing, making it an interesting and deeply tactical descision.

In addition, the intended effect of the beta rules is still intact:
Each player gets exactly one turn, to prepare for the arrival of enemy reserves near his army.
On top of that, it is exactly one turn, not 1-2, again depending on that all important roll-off.



Disclaimer:
Yes, I know that in certain tournament formats, going second is a valid strategy. But this is only because these tournament organizers too have realized the imbalance of giving that much importance to a single dice rolloff and are trying to compensate with what is essentially house rules.

There needs to be some kind of going-first handicap. I would say the deep strike limitation is a good start, I would also go so far as to re-institute night fighting, and have all models count as being in cover the top of turn 1.

the_scotsman wrote:
There needs to be some kind of going-first handicap. I would say the deep strike limitation is a good start, I would also go so far as to re-institute night fighting, and have all models count as being in cover the top of turn 1.

I know the night fighting idea is popular for this, but in my opinion, it would give too much of a boost to horde armies not relying on deepstrike.
These would just take that free turn without much opposing fire and advance across the board, making them near unstoppable.

HMint wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
There needs to be some kind of going-first handicap. I would say the deep strike limitation is a good start, I would also go so far as to re-institute night fighting, and have all models count as being in cover the top of turn 1.

I know the night fighting idea is popular for this, but in my opinion, it would give too much of a boost to horde armies not relying on deepstrike.
These would just take that free turn without much opposing fire and advance across the board, making them near unstoppable.

Plus would be nice to have way to balance that doesn't require something convoluted idea as battles always happening in night or some weirdo reason...Do armies really duke it out only at night?

Making it so 1200 points of Plasma cannot hide in the air and then smash my face in on turn 1 while being all-but-immune (Auspex scan and Forewarned are not GREAT counters) to me if I win first turn....

Yeah, that was a big step towards fixing the "I got first and win" mentality.

HMint wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
There needs to be some kind of going-first handicap. I would say the deep strike limitation is a good start, I would also go so far as to re-institute night fighting, and have all models count as being in cover the top of turn 1.

I know the night fighting idea is popular for this, but in my opinion, it would give too much of a boost to horde armies not relying on deepstrike.
These would just take that free turn without much opposing fire and advance across the board, making them near unstoppable.

Things to consider though:

1) Horde armies benefit less from cover than hard targets in general. The most punishing recipient of a gunline turn 1 is a mechanized army, because lascannons, lances, basilisks etc tend to be much higher range than anti infantry weapons like bolters and lasguns, so often a gunline with top of turn 1 is capable of blasting open many transports and leaving the units inside hopeless to do anything. Hordes rarely take a huge amount of heat turn 1 anyway, and are also naturally disadvantaged when it comes to actually winning the turn 1 roll because they have lots of buff characters increasing their drops.

2) no non-shooting, non-deep striking horde currently exists in 40k's meta, and we have yet to see one in a major event. We wouldn't know if they were good or bad because at present, they simply get picked apart with ease by gunline hordes. Try playing pure khorne daemons with letters running up the field or orks with no da jump and you can definitely see the damage that gunline hordes will put on you before you get to their lines if you don't have some unit ready to go in and tie them up turn 1.

This definitely disregards super fast hordes (stormboyz, which we have seen in major events, wyches, slaanesh daemons I suppose) but those are also not terribly common. Admittedly in the case of the wyches we'll see, I do expect Red Grief to make more of a splash than people are anticipating, but in general, I don't think the introduction of a poor matchup to a gunline horde style army is necessarily a bad thing. Mechanized armies, properly played, would be the natural predator of slow melee hordes, using things like flyer bases and emptied transports stuck into pillow-fisted areas of the horde to slow the advance and pick apart the horde, wheras mechanized armies currently don't really have a good matchup anywhere.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

HMint wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
There needs to be some kind of going-first handicap. I would say the deep strike limitation is a good start, I would also go so far as to re-institute night fighting, and have all models count as being in cover the top of turn 1.

I know the night fighting idea is popular for this, but in my opinion, it would give too much of a boost to horde armies not relying on deepstrike.
These would just take that free turn without much opposing fire and advance across the board, making them near unstoppable.

Plus would be nice to have way to balance that doesn't require something convoluted idea as battles always happening in night or some weirdo reason...Do armies really duke it out only at night?

No, the idea being that you're starting the battle as dawn breaks and the very first turn it's still a bit more difficult to see. But you could feel free to chalk it up to something like a fast but uncoordinated first strike, or a preliminary bombardment before the enemy positions are fully scouted out.

This definitely would be far better than the current beta rule, especially when combined with half ot the PL of the army having to start on the table. I think going first would still generally be preferred, but at least there would be some tangible advantage for going second.

HMint wrote:
"Only the player going first is subject to these limitations to deepstriking. The player who goes second can use deepstrike without any limitations."

False. From the Big FAQ (emphasis added):

Furthermore, in matched play games, any unit that arrives on the battlefield during a player’s first turn must be deployed wholly within the controlling player’s deployment zone (even if its ability would normally let it be set up anywhere).

Player A goes first. It is his first turn. Can he set up a unit arriving on the battlefield outside of his deployment zone? No, because it is "... a player's first turn..."

Player B goes second. It is his first turn. Can he set up a unit arriving on the battlefield outside of his deployment zone? No, because it is "... a player's first turn..."

 Ghaz wrote:

HMint wrote:
"Only the player going first is subject to these limitations to deepstriking. The player who goes second can use deepstrike without any limitations."

False. From the Big FAQ (emphasis added):

Furthermore, in matched play games, any unit that arrives on the battlefield during a player’s first turn must be deployed wholly within the controlling player’s deployment zone (even if its ability would normally let it be set up anywhere).

Player A goes first. It is his first turn. Can he set up a unit arriving on the battlefield outside of his deployment zone? No, because it is "... a player's first turn..."

Player B goes second. It is his first turn. Can he set up a unit arriving on the battlefield outside of his deployment zone? No, because it is "... a player's first turn..."

This a proposed change to the new matched play beta rules.

And it was the Matched play beta rule that I quoted. The OP is incorrect in what he believes the rule says.

HMint wrote:
There is no possible downside to going first ever.

Going to nitpick this a bit, because it isn't really true.

I go second in about 1/2 of the times I get to choose, because if i'm facing a BL bomb I want them to make the first move for me to react to.
And I also get the last say on scoring and objective control.

Ghaz - the OP is *suggesting* that we modify the rule to work that way, not claiming that the rule *currently* works that way.

This is an (interesting) proposed rule.

I love the idea of making go first / go second more interesting. Scoring last is helpful, but I'm not sure it does enough typically.

Bharring wrote:
Ghaz - the OP is *suggesting* that we modify the rule to work that way, not claiming that the rule *currently* works that way.

This is an (interesting) proposed rule.

I love the idea of making go first / go second more interesting. Scoring last is helpful, but I'm not sure it does enough typically.

I blame That's why posts like these should be in Proposed Rules.

Didnt stats come out from recent tournament that going second won 55% of time?

End game scoring is a big bonus, certainly in friendly games. Going last could easily win the mission if you plan for a last ditched attempt to grab an objective.

I've even had games/lists where my goal was to have far more drops - so I could let him commit and then place my stuff.

THere are certainly ways to use the current rules to your advantage if you go second.

I just wish the rules were such that there was more variance to it.

In 6th/7th, I often felt going second meant i could pick matchups. Place my armor across from his anti-infantry and such.

Nemesis234 wrote:
Didnt stats come out from recent tournament that going second won 55% of time?

End game scoring is a big bonus, certainly in friendly games. Going last could easily win the mission if you plan for a last ditched attempt to grab an objective.

This is probably again a situation where tournament results are skewed by their houserules. They usually have strict time limits, and have no time to play a full length game, so chances of getting wiped are lessened and grabbing objectives matters more.

Might work. Try it out.

I was just thinking about posting something similar. I think its the way to go. Alternatively, the second player might have to play some CP to deepstrike normally if there's a need for it to cost a little something.

I must say I like your suggestion.

Before the FAQ, I proposed a few times to restrict Deepstrikes to turn 2+, but people seemed to hate the idea. Your idea seems to be a good compromise. Hopefully GW is still listening...

What if a gunline faces off against a deepstrike assault army (the scenario everyone is framing this discussion against) and the gunline player wins the roll? The logical thing to do is pick to go second, costing the deepstrike player his T1 deepstrike and making turn 2 the equivalent of the pre-faq turn 1, with a free game turn of shooting for the gunline player.

 greyknight12 wrote:
What if a gunline faces off against a deepstrike assault army (the scenario everyone is framing this discussion against) and the gunline player wins the roll? The logical thing to do is pick to go second, costing the deepstrike player his T1 deepstrike and making turn 2 the equivalent of the pre-faq turn 1, with a free game turn of shooting for the gunline player.

If the gunline chooses to go second, the deepstriking army idles around on turn 1 (that's what they get for only running deepstrike ), then gunline gets 1 turn of shooting and spreading out, then the deepstrikers come in.
So it is still one round of shooting, equivalent to the gunline getting first turn in the old rules.

More realistically, with 50% points on the board, the assaulting army will still do something first turn. Most likely it will move up some supporting units, maybe in transports, that will coordinate their attack later on with the deepstrikers and shoot at screens.
In Maelstrom and progressive scoring missions, giving your opponent a weak turn like this is probably a good strategy. But on the other hand you give them a chance to get into cover and prepare some defense before your first shooting phase, so it's not an automatic decision one way or the other.

This rule is the best change ive seen yet. I think this may actually make it not an autochoice to take the first turn

I think that's a pretty good rule and certainly adds a pro for going second. The only advantage to going second I can think of now is that if you both have flyers, your flyer has the chance to shoot theirs out of the sky rather than the other way around, since often I've found that if one brings on a flyer it usually only lasts a turn if the opponents flyer then comes in and blows it away. But your proposal could certainly make the going second a less disadvantageous position to be in.

I find this a very good idea. It might be interesting To try

Would suggest sending this over to the GW team. This i could get behind if it the new FAQ rule

It's a serious tactical decision with this rule. As going first means you can do some striking and prepare for a turn one deep strike, while at the same time gives the second player a distinct advantage in terms of battlefield flexibility.

This would actually make polarizing armies (the all melee and all ranged) armies actually more evenly matched as it allows the Melee to engage at the opportune time, while ranged can also have the advantage of a turn.

The only problem i can see is indeed the ranged army using his roll off win to make his opponent go first, which in itself might be an advantage or dissadvantage for the melee army (extra mobility, using cover to hunker down, Tactical objectives)

In a way, i would find this a much more fair rule than the current beta rule, which frankly; is terrible

HMint wrote:
In the current state of the game, going first is a major advantage.
Players routinely "roll off to see who gets first turn". Then that is automatically followed by the seize roll.
But did you know, you are actually rolling off to see who decides if he wants to go first? As if this was a choice, right? There is no possible downside to going first ever.
With the upcoming proposed beta rules to limit deepstriking on the first turn, this effect is only to get reinforced.

But it does not have to be this way. These beta changes present a great opportunity to balance out the advantage of going first.
I propose we alter them like this:

"Only the player going first is subject to these limitations to deepstriking. The player who goes second can use deepstrike without any limitations."

This would finally make going first a real decision:
- do you want to be the player who gets to move and shoot first? Take out primary targets with shooting alpha strike, take up important positions on the board, we know why this is valuable.
- or do you want to be the player who fully gets to utilize deepstrike first?

The choice you make would depend on your battleplan and the army you are facing, making it an interesting and deeply tactical descision.

In addition, the intended effect of the beta rules is still intact:
Each player gets exactly one turn, to prepare for the arrival of enemy reserves near his army.
On top of that, it is exactly one turn, not 1-2, again depending on that all important roll-off.



Disclaimer:
Yes, I know that in certain tournament formats, going second is a valid strategy. But this is only because these tournament organizers too have realized the imbalance of giving that much importance to a single dice rolloff and are trying to compensate with what is essentially house rules.

This is exactly how the beta rule should work. It would make it so you might actually want to go second in some circumstances.

Just to point out I recently did the very thing you say people don't do and went second after winning the roll off.
Depends on the scoring and terrain and deployment options for the mission. But when T1 deepstrike was a thing going second was not usually a good idea.