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Throwing this out there to see what people think.

While it's true you can build armies to be resistant to first turn bias, the vast majority of army lists would prefer to go first rather than second. This stems from the fact that Player 1 will always either be a full turn ahead or tied with Player 2 in terms of percentage of army utilized.

To balance this, I propose giving Player 2 a micro turn before the start of Turn 1 where they can activate (Move, Psychic, Shoot, Charge, Fight) with X number of units before Turn 1 starts (for sake of argument lets say 2 units at 2,000 pts). You can tweak the number of units activated or potentially put restrictions around this (maybe no stratagems can be used) to achieve a better balance. The goal is to shift it from Player 1 always being a full turn ahead to the players alternating being ~half a turn ahead. Player 2 can use this to micro turn to cast critical defensive buffs, move units out of LOS / threat range, first turn charge with highly mobile units or do a mini-alpha strike of their own.

While this would certainly be meta shifting, I don't think it would be rules breaking like alternate activation would be (which I think would require a full new edition). I also think it would be fairly easy for players to understand and straightforward to implement.

Main downside I see is it potentially extends the time needed for a game a little bit. This can be counteracted by, instead of giving Player 2 a micro turn, saying Player 1 can only activate X number of units on their first turn (for example X number of units up to half his army pts total). It achieves the same effect but I find it a more drastic change conceptually so I prefer the micro turn.

Open to suggestions.

I think players going second have a slightly higher win rate in ITC.

I would suggest granting a movement phase to both players and then roll for stealing initiative succeeding on 4+ or 5+.

That would be very tactical, allowing both players to make use of the terrain outside of the deployment zones, allowing for risk vs. reward choices and making units, that were bad because they are slow, better.

Martel732 wrote:
I think players going second have a slightly higher win rate in ITC.

Automatic LOS blocking terrain. You hide most or all of your army turn 1 and the person who moves out of cover first gets blasted. Way she goes man.

The problem with turn one is white room alpha strikes that you can actully pull off once you get to the table. And those only work becuase the randomness is gone.

You can flip through your book and figure out a way to get the most fire power concentated on 1 or 2 units and blow them away.

You know its going to work beacuse your opponent can't respond and everything works every time. Theres no randomness.

Before, reserves came in semi randomly. And often scattered. You could white room toyour hearts content, and sure you had a great plan on paper but if your ds scattered the wrong way well your ass was swinging in the breeze.

You can't drop reserves turn 1 in an alpha strike anymore.

Honestly the only real fix is alternating unit activation or whatever the hell it is called

Bolt action...bolt action...bolt action...bolt action...
No need to complicate matters.

Either Night Fight rules on Turn One, or forced Reserves where half of each players army doesn't show up on the board until turn 2.

It all boils down to GW using Narrative Game Play as an excuse to not balance the rules or the missions, and then finding out during the tournament circuit that they've got a total Dog's Breakfast of a rules set.

Honest to God, if they got a professional game designer like a Steve Jackson to work on 40k he could have the whole thing, main rules book & all army books, hammered out flat in 6-8 weeks.

Stop playing IGOUGO. Problem solved. (and it's easier than you think...)

PS: GW has no vested interest in a proper rules set...that's one of their bottom priorities. They're in the business of selling plastic, not games.

ITC.

What if casualties were only removed after both players took their turns for the round? To represent both sides shooting at each other almost simultaneously. Kinda like the old close combat rules for models with the same Initiative.

 Orodhen wrote:
What if casualties were only removed after both players took their turns for the round? To represent both sides shooting at each other almost simultaneously. Kinda like the old close combat rules for models with the same Initiative.

It works better in games where there are many wound models and less of them and you simply tic off damage as you go.

With the scale and lethality of 40k you start needing to do a lot of book keeping. How many tyranid warriors died? How many wounds do they have left? How many Ork boys died? How many wounds were lost from the Trukk?

Book keeping isn't fun. It's a nightmare.

Krezzlar wrote:
Throwing this out there to see what people think.

While it's true you can build armies to be resistant to first turn bias, the vast majority of army lists would prefer to go first rather than second. This stems from the fact that Player 1 will always either be a full turn ahead or tied with Player 2 in terms of percentage of army utilized.

To balance this, I propose giving Player 2 a micro turn before the start of Turn 1 where they can activate (Move, Psychic, Shoot, Charge, Fight) with X number of units before Turn 1 starts (for sake of argument lets say 2 units at 2,000 pts). You can tweak the number of units activated or potentially put restrictions around this (maybe no stratagems can be used) to achieve a better balance. The goal is to shift it from Player 1 always being a full turn ahead to the players alternating being ~half a turn ahead. Player 2 can use this to micro turn to cast critical defensive buffs, move units out of LOS / threat range, first turn charge with highly mobile units or do a mini-alpha strike of their own.

While this would certainly be meta shifting, I don't think it would be rules breaking like alternate activation would be (which I think would require a full new edition). I also think it would be fairly easy for players to understand and straightforward to implement.

Main downside I see is it potentially extends the time needed for a game a little bit. This can be counteracted by, instead of giving Player 2 a micro turn, saying Player 1 can only activate X number of units on their first turn (for example X number of units up to half his army pts total). It achieves the same effect but I find it a more drastic change conceptually so I prefer the micro turn.

Open to suggestions.

Shooting armies have been OP for years, its your turn to suffaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I like the idea of something like night fighting rules for first turn. And its been done before, so it is hardly unprecedented.

However, many armies already have minus one to hits going for them, and they would get exponentially tougher with more modifiers added.

What about something like if you go second, on turn one, you get a bonus to your saves against shooting. The player who went first gets no such bonus. Could justify it as narratively as the army that is going second sees that the other army has the jump on them and all dive for cover or dig in. Would have less impact than a -1 to hit and Wouldn't hurt assault armies at all either.

rooster92 wrote:
I like the idea of something like night fighting rules for first turn. And its been done before, so it is hardly unprecedented.

However, many armies already have minus one to hits going for them, and they would get exponentially tougher with more modifiers added.

What about something like if you go second, on turn one, you get a bonus to your saves against shooting. The player who went first gets no such bonus. Could justify it as narratively as the army that is going second sees that the other army has the jump on them and all dive for cover or dig in. Would have less impact than a -1 to hit and Wouldn't hurt assault armies at all either.

Its been suggested. It doesnt scale well. So a whole sm army gets a 2+ save, but nid infantry become 5+.... Great?

Also, again, anything that limits the impact in turn 1 simple shifts the big advantage to turn 2. Your not addressing the problem your only moving the goal posts.

@Lance845

Hmmm. That's true that it could give differing advantages based on faction. However that"s kinda true of any turn one rule change implemented. (not to disregard your input, just my take).
I see what you are saying with moving the goal post to turn 2, but I still think having the opportunity to kill enemy assets on turn one and leave them with less units to retaliate with has much more of an impact than a relatively paltry plus one to save.

Edit:

And as for the example with marines, I think elite type armies could stand to take some kind of advantage when going second, considering that in the current meta, marines and their ilk are suffering more than armies that have options for high body count troops.

 Lance845 wrote:

rooster92 wrote:
I like the idea of something like night fighting rules for first turn. And its been done before, so it is hardly unprecedented.

However, many armies already have minus one to hits going for them, and they would get exponentially tougher with more modifiers added.

What about something like if you go second, on turn one, you get a bonus to your saves against shooting. The player who went first gets no such bonus. Could justify it as narratively as the army that is going second sees that the other army has the jump on them and all dive for cover or dig in. Would have less impact than a -1 to hit and Wouldn't hurt assault armies at all either.

Its been suggested. It doesnt scale well. So a whole sm army gets a 2+ save, but nid infantry become 5+.... Great?

Also, again, anything that limits the impact in turn 1 simple shifts the big advantage to turn 2. Your not addressing the problem your only moving the goal posts.

The answer is in introducing a random advantage for turn 2. Lets say a rule that turn 1 has nightfighting on a 3+, rolling for it after seizing the initiative. Suppose you win the initiative, what you would choose? Go first or second?

The Deer Hunter wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

rooster92 wrote:
I like the idea of something like night fighting rules for first turn. And its been done before, so it is hardly unprecedented.

However, many armies already have minus one to hits going for them, and they would get exponentially tougher with more modifiers added.

What about something like if you go second, on turn one, you get a bonus to your saves against shooting. The player who went first gets no such bonus. Could justify it as narratively as the army that is going second sees that the other army has the jump on them and all dive for cover or dig in. Would have less impact than a -1 to hit and Wouldn't hurt assault armies at all either.

Its been suggested. It doesnt scale well. So a whole sm army gets a 2+ save, but nid infantry become 5+.... Great?

Also, again, anything that limits the impact in turn 1 simple shifts the big advantage to turn 2. Your not addressing the problem your only moving the goal posts.

The answer is in introducing a random advantage for turn 2. Lets say a rule that turn 1 has nightfighting on a 3+, rolling for it after seizing the initiative. Suppose you win the initiative, what you would choose? Go first or second?

If you have a deep cut on your bicep arm you don't fix it by applying lotions and ointment to the forearm and hand. You treat the problem.

Every time you add a patch over top the problem, without addressing the root cause, you move farther and farther away with more and more complex answers. Fix the problem.

Use Kill Teams turn sequence activating units rather than individual models.