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This thread was inspired by another one of "in the preceding turn" mechanism at YMDC.

Deployment should count as having moved, or for units with minimum move characteristics, having moved its minimum move. Heavy weapons counts as having moved for the purpose pf shooting its weapons.

Because when you have an entrenched position waiting for an enemy to attack, you do doughnuts with your basilisks first to make it fair. /s

Better solution is to make Turn 1 use the Night Fight battlezone rules in matched play.

Means nothing to drukhari.

How about no.

How about something like - units that are destroyed on the top of turn 1 (without having a turn) can immediately shoot all it's weapons as it was the shooting phase or move / charge / and attack in the fight phase.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Because when you have an entrenched position waiting for an enemy to attack, you do doughnuts with your basilisks first to make it fair. /s

Better solution is to make Turn 1 use the Night Fight battlezone rules in matched play.

Whilst they may not be moving themselves, they may be scrambling to load/arm/aim the weapons upon contact with the enemy.

The basilisk would only gain benefit of being entrenched if its gun is facing the exact right direction it needs to be to hit those onrushing gene stealers.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Because when you have an entrenched position waiting for an enemy to attack, you do doughnuts with your basilisks first to make it fair. /s

Better solution is to make Turn 1 use the Night Fight battlezone rules in matched play.

Whilst they may not be moving themselves, they may be scrambling to load/arm/aim the weapons upon contact with the enemy.

The basilisk would only gain benefit of being entrenched if its gun is facing the exact right direction it needs to be to hit those onrushing gene stealers.

You are using a realistic argument.
Realisticly the Basilisk would not even be on the battlefield, and or the lines would've broken quite some time and the incoming direction would be easily known.
So they would know where a assult would come from.
So no it does not make sense that T0 counts as moved.

I think the whole "Blanket -1 to hit outside x number of inches helps" but makes more difference to armies like orks. Guard and Drukhari probably wont care.

 iGuy91 wrote:
I think the whole "Blanket -1 to hit outside x number of inches helps" but makes more difference to armies like orks. Guard and Drukhari probably wont care.

But Orks shuld not be a shooting army. I feel it right if they meet problems with shooting

The Deer Hunter wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
I think the whole "Blanket -1 to hit outside x number of inches helps" but makes more difference to armies like orks. Guard and Drukhari probably wont care.

But Orks shuld not be a shooting army. I feel it right if they meet problems with shooting

There are two full major Klanz devoted to shooting, there are fluff Bigmek Kanz armies, Freebootaz like their Posaz.
Yes shooting should be viable for Orks with the right build of an army.
Additionally if an army lacks the capacity to shoot and relies on melee too heavily but get's their means of movement crippled (read Chaos Daemons) then the whole codex will be for a full edition nearly unplayable. Granted Nurgle Daemons do fine but that has more to do with the high durability then anything else.

1) realism isn't a good reason to argue for or against a game mechanic. Is the game better because of the mechanic? Then it doesn't matter how realistic it is.

2) Anything that only effects first turn only moves the goal post for when the powerful "problem" happens.

So first turn gets night fighting rules? Great. Well whoever gets to have their turn first on turn 2 is going to unload on you just like they do now on turn 1.

You can't fix a problem with the core mechanics of the game by trying to put a band aid over the spot where it looks the worst.

3) the real issue is moving shooting and assaulting with your entire army before the enemy has any chance to respond. IGOUGO is the problem. Not the first turn.

 Lance845 wrote:
1) realism isn't a good reason to argue for or against a game mechanic. Is the game better because of the mechanic? Then it doesn't matter how realistic it is.

2) Anything that only effects first turn only moves the goal post for when the powerful "problem" happens.

So first turn gets night fighting rules? Great. Well whoever gets to have their turn first on turn 2 is going to unload on you just like they do now on turn 1.

You can't fix a problem with the core mechanics of the game by trying to put a band aid over the spot where it looks the worst.

3) the real issue is moving shooting and assaulting with your entire army before the enemy has any chance to respond. IGOUGO is the problem. Not the first turn.

Honestly IGOUGO is a problem especially when you play bigger volumen of pts. respectively when you are playing in the sweetspot pts. wise for an army.
Frankly alot of it can be circumvented if you use a lot of LOS cover aswell as the old cover system.

 Lance845 wrote:
1) realism isn't a good reason to argue for or against a game mechanic. Is the game better because of the mechanic? Then it doesn't matter how realistic it is.

Of course it matters how realistic it is. We play the game because we enjoy the fluff of what the game is representing, not as an abstract exercise in strategy and dice rolling. If a game mechanic doesn't represent the fluff then it hinders the thing that makes 40k worth playing in the first place. Obviously balance is important too, but realism matters.

IGOUGO is the problem. Not the first turn.

This, however, is true. IGOUGO needs to die. It's bad for balance, it's bad for realism, and the sole reason for keeping it is GW's inability to learn from modern game design.

IGOUGO isn't bad when there's lots of cover (LOS BLOCKING COVER) and the armies are relatively small.

When you start getting into large games and LOS blocking terrain gets overwhelmed by larger and larger models, then you start to see problems.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
IGOUGO isn't bad when there's lots of cover (LOS BLOCKING COVER) and the armies are relatively small.

When you start getting into large games and LOS blocking terrain gets overwhelmed by larger and larger models, then you start to see problems.

Disagree. It's always a problem. The problem just becomes less pronounced when being patched by LoS blocking terrain and small points. It doesn't actually go away. It just gets band aided until it becomes tolerable.

If the mechanic was sound it wouldn't matter what terrain existed or what point level you played at.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
IGOUGO isn't bad when there's lots of cover (LOS BLOCKING COVER) and the armies are relatively small.

When you start getting into large games and LOS blocking terrain gets overwhelmed by larger and larger models, then you start to see problems.

Disagree. It's always a problem. The problem just becomes less pronounced when being patched by LoS blocking terrain and small points. It doesn't actually go away. It just gets band aided until it becomes tolerable.

If the mechanic was sound it wouldn't matter what terrain existed or what point level you played at.

Isn't it more the problem that the player that get's the first shot off has a huge advantage, technically it does not matter if one person goes second if he get's the first proper battlephase in the game.
Anyway the main problem is that beyond overwatch there is literally nothing you can do in an enemy players phase.
For as much as it would pain certain armies, but walking into the fireline of an enemy unit should allow the unit to take potshots at the enemy, or decide a charge.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
IGOUGO isn't bad when there's lots of cover (LOS BLOCKING COVER) and the armies are relatively small.

When you start getting into large games and LOS blocking terrain gets overwhelmed by larger and larger models, then you start to see problems.

Disagree. It's always a problem. The problem just becomes less pronounced when being patched by LoS blocking terrain and small points. It doesn't actually go away. It just gets band aided until it becomes tolerable.

If the mechanic was sound it wouldn't matter what terrain existed or what point level you played at.

Isn't it more the problem that the player that get's the first shot off has a huge advantage, technically it does not matter if one person goes second if he ge's the first proper battlephase.
Anyway the main problem is that beyond overwatch there is literally nothing you can do in an enemy players phase.

It's only a problem because the first shot involves the entirety of the enemies army. If the enemy can only use a single unit to move, shoot, psychic, assault and then their opponent can respond in kind it becomes more like chess. It's not a problem in chess that one player can take another players piece first or that white has the advantage of claiming a space on the center board first. The opponent needs to be able to respond. Tactically and regularly in order for there to be an even playing field. Otherwise the second player is always fighting an uphill battle, loosing swathes of models or diminishing their bigger models before getting to act at all.

The main problem you state is a direct result of the IGOUGO turn structure. It would all go away if the game used alternating unit activation.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
IGOUGO isn't bad when there's lots of cover (LOS BLOCKING COVER) and the armies are relatively small.

When you start getting into large games and LOS blocking terrain gets overwhelmed by larger and larger models, then you start to see problems.

No, it's always bad compared to alternating activation systems. Alpha strike is only part of it, IGOUGO promotes shallow and non-interactive gameplay even when alpha strikes don't end the game on turn 1.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Because when you have an entrenched position waiting for an enemy to attack, you do doughnuts with your basilisks first to make it fair. /s

Better solution is to make Turn 1 use the Night Fight battlezone rules in matched play.

That's what I do with my regular play group. We have been testing it for a month now and we're really happy about the results. Now going second is sometimes a good thing! We only apply the Night Fight rules for the first player's turn, so if you go 2nd you won't get the -1.
Also we're still figuring out a solution for the excessive -1s and its effects on some armies. Although none of us plays any army with worse BS than 4+, I'd still like to fix the issue for all armies. For now we have a rule that limits the max -1s applied to any hit rolls to 2 and we might add that a 6 is always a hit but if you're hitting on 7+ you can't re-roll. That might actually work quite well imo. Anyway I will make a post in the future when we get all this changes tested.

 Lance845 wrote:

It's only a problem because the first shot involves the entirety of the enemies army. If the enemy can only use a single unit to move, shoot, psychic, assault and then their opponent can respond in kind it becomes more like chess. It's not a problem in chess that one player can take another players piece first or that white has the advantage of claiming a space on the center board first.

I mean, white does have an established advantage in chess, but your point stands.

I'd also point out that many of the nerfs to turn 1 shooting that still allow shooting might actually favor gunlines facing less-shooty-but-still-shooty armies. If you impose a blanket -1 to hit penalty on turn 1, then my Guilliman gunline is still going to shoot up your well-balanced marine army's most important units more efficiently than they'll shoot me back. Especially if I opt to take out your shooty units first.

Pretty much any board game that uses turns will, to some degree as far as I know, favour the player who goes first. The job of the game designer is to then work out the extent of this advantage, and factor in something within the rules to counteract that.

Hearthstone did it with the Coin, Go does it with Komi, Games Workshop, up-and-coming indie company working out a flat in Nottingham is only 4 decades old, so give them some slack!

GW's job is to write their rules to try and lower (since totally negating is not possible due to free will and player choice) the advantage going first gives. The fact they haven't even attempted to do so speaks volumes. Going first in every edition since 3rd has been a massive advantage, and it's only gotten worse in 8th because they didn't bother to playtest the AP modifier system correctly, meaning shooting is orders of magnitude more lethal than any edition prior. Add to that their push to lower points costs so they can sell little Timmy more 5 cent plastic models for 9001% profit and the bizarre (admittedly player driven) inflation to make 2k the standard game size means you have MORE, EXTRA LETHAL shooting than ever before to unload on turn 1. Bad design decisions like making First Blood a thing for victory points (i.e. not only do I get to cripple your army by going first I also get an automatic victory point) smacks of either maliciousness or incompetence.

The attacker directs his forces into firing positions, sacrificing accuracy to ensure that his troops strike while the enemy is still unaware of their presence.

Attacker-The player who takes the first turn in the first round is the attacker.

All the units in this army count as moving, even if they remain stationary.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

It's only a problem because the first shot involves the entirety of the enemies army. If the enemy can only use a single unit to move, shoot, psychic, assault and then their opponent can respond in kind it becomes more like chess. It's not a problem in chess that one player can take another players piece first or that white has the advantage of claiming a space on the center board first.

I mean, white does have an established advantage in chess, but your point stands.

I'd also point out that many of the nerfs to turn 1 shooting that still allow shooting might actually favor gunlines facing less-shooty-but-still-shooty armies. If you impose a blanket -1 to hit penalty on turn 1, then my Guilliman gunline is still going to shoot up your well-balanced marine army's most important units more efficiently than they'll shoot me back. Especially if I opt to take out your shooty units first.

This is my exact thoughts. Armies that can shoot through an extra -1 to hit will end up with a net buff since they got more resistant to turn 1 alpha. Armies with a natural -1 to hit will also be silly hard to touch with a -2 on turn 1. I would rather see a universal +1 to armor save that can be stacked to +2 if a unit is in cover on turn 1. Unfortunately that is unhelpful for armies that rely on invuln saves instead of armor saves.

 DominayTrix wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

It's only a problem because the first shot involves the entirety of the enemies army. If the enemy can only use a single unit to move, shoot, psychic, assault and then their opponent can respond in kind it becomes more like chess. It's not a problem in chess that one player can take another players piece first or that white has the advantage of claiming a space on the center board first.

I mean, white does have an established advantage in chess, but your point stands.

I'd also point out that many of the nerfs to turn 1 shooting that still allow shooting might actually favor gunlines facing less-shooty-but-still-shooty armies. If you impose a blanket -1 to hit penalty on turn 1, then my Guilliman gunline is still going to shoot up your well-balanced marine army's most important units more efficiently than they'll shoot me back. Especially if I opt to take out your shooty units first.

This is my exact thoughts. Armies that can shoot through an extra -1 to hit will end up with a net buff since they got more resistant to turn 1 alpha. Armies with a natural -1 to hit will also be silly hard to touch with a -2 on turn 1. I would rather see a universal +1 to armor save that can be stacked to +2 if a unit is in cover on turn 1. Unfortunately that is unhelpful for armies that rely on invuln saves instead of armor saves.

don't get me wrong but additional armor isn't going to save that much on armies that have bad armor to begin with. Also many long range weapons have tendencies for high ap values, therefore the additional 1+ on armor will end up less effective for some armies then others and not really solve the problem.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 DominayTrix wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

It's only a problem because the first shot involves the entirety of the enemies army. If the enemy can only use a single unit to move, shoot, psychic, assault and then their opponent can respond in kind it becomes more like chess. It's not a problem in chess that one player can take another players piece first or that white has the advantage of claiming a space on the center board first.

I mean, white does have an established advantage in chess, but your point stands.

I'd also point out that many of the nerfs to turn 1 shooting that still allow shooting might actually favor gunlines facing less-shooty-but-still-shooty armies. If you impose a blanket -1 to hit penalty on turn 1, then my Guilliman gunline is still going to shoot up your well-balanced marine army's most important units more efficiently than they'll shoot me back. Especially if I opt to take out your shooty units first.

This is my exact thoughts. Armies that can shoot through an extra -1 to hit will end up with a net buff since they got more resistant to turn 1 alpha. Armies with a natural -1 to hit will also be silly hard to touch with a -2 on turn 1. I would rather see a universal +1 to armor save that can be stacked to +2 if a unit is in cover on turn 1. Unfortunately that is unhelpful for armies that rely on invuln saves instead of armor saves.

don't get me wrong but additional armor isn't going to save that much on armies that have bad armor to begin with. Also many long range weapons have tendencies for high ap values, therefore the additional 1+ on armor will end up less effective for some armies then others and not really solve the problem.

Correct. -1 to hit and +1 to sv only look good when your thinking about marines. But what happens to orks? You have crippled an entire army.

Alternating activations, plus using an action system like the one used in Necromunda would limit units from being able to move, shoot, assault all on one turn. Activations become more aim/shoot, move/shoot, move/move, or assault. If you port this over to 40k it works quite well at limiting some of the strange things you see with a strict alternating activation system where each unit can move, shoot, assault while everyone watches. We've tried it playing around and it definitely is more engaging and destroys the concept of Alpha or Beta strikes.

 Lance845 wrote:
the real issue is moving shooting and assaulting with your entire army before the enemy has any chance to respond. IGOUGO is the problem. Not the first turn.

Igo-Ugo isn't the problem. It's GW's implementation of Igo-Ugo that's the problem.

Actually, it's not even GW's implementation of Igo-Ugo that's the problem.

When you get right down to it, the problem is the players.

Players are playing too many models in too small a space with too little LOS-blocking terrain. All of those are player-caused problems.

Play 1/3 to 1/2 the points on the same battlefield, but with 2x the terrain, and shooting won't be a problem at all.

Alt.Act has its merits if the game involved two equally represented players/models/capabilities i.e. chess.

If the game could be overhauled and new gamesystem be implemented, there would be no point in having this discussion. This thread was started to brainstorm and discuss soft changes/rule overlays to diminish certain odd interaction pertaining to the models' state at the beginning of the game, not as another Alt.Act is better than IGOUGO.

As above, no changes are necessary if players would just show restraint on the number of models and have more terrain...

 skchsan wrote:
Alt.Act has its merits if the game involved two equally represented players/models/capabilities i.e. chess.

Why do you need equal capabilities per model? Plenty of alternating activation games have a variety of power levels for models and can accommodate MSU and death star strategies just fine.

This thread was started to brainstorm and discuss soft changes/rule overlays to diminish certain odd interaction pertaining to the models' state at the beginning of the game, not as another Alt.Act is better than IGOUGO.

And the answer to your question is "no, this doesn't address the root cause of the problem, to do anything useful you need to get rid of IGOUGO". Sorry if you don't like that answer, but you're wasting your time unless part of your solution is removing IGOUGO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
As above, no changes are necessary if players would just show restraint on the number of models and have more terrain...

IOW, don't play 40k. Like it or not 40k is clearly intended to be played in the 1500+ point range, turning it into a 500 point skirmish game with 2-3 units per player is not a viable option. Fortunately Kill Team is coming soon, because it sounds like that's the game you want to play.