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^^^

I did a subforum search and was surprised to not find a thread on this.

To elaborate, especially with the Chapter Approved Matched play missions, I think Seizing the Initiative is a massive disruption to the game's balance.
If you are setting up your entire army first not knowing where any opponent unit will go, and then your opponent can fully counter-deploy against what you have set up you are at a clear disadvantage. This is counterbalanced by allowing you to choose who gets the first turn, giving you the ability to react to your opponent's deployment by acting first or making them act first if it is more advantageous to you. Though as far as ive seen, usually taking the first turn is what you want to do.

Enter seize. On a freak chance, the player who chose what the deployment zones are, which side of the board to take and who got to counter deploy against your completely blind deployment now also gets to rob you of your one advantage that is meant to counter-balance all of the above. It's unlikely, sure, but this is the kind of random element that cancels any planning and strategy and replaces it with dumb luck whenever it goes off.

So my "proposed rule" is to cut it entirely without replacement.

Seize the Initiative is supposed to enter a degree of uncertainty into deployment so that players can't be 100% confident that they'll go first or second. I think the goal is to make sure that they'll deploy as though it could go either way, just in case, instead of optimising their deployment for first strike or reaction.

That might make sense for alternating deployment. If each army deploys everything at once, the first player to deploy already has all of the uncertainty as they don't know what their opponent will do. So they don't know whether they will want the first or second turn at the point of deployment. And the second player to deploy does not know whether the other player will let them have first turn or not.

All of this uncertainty comes out of placing your units strategically. All seize does, is throw a wrench into the works after the fact.

Seize was the counter for 'greedy' deployments - a player who knew for certain they were going first could deploy everything out of cover, bunched up (in previous editions where it mattered) all along the deployment line.

A.T. wrote:
Seize was the counter for 'greedy' deployments - a player who knew for certain they were going first could deploy everything out of cover, bunched up (in previous editions where it mattered) all along the deployment line.

And as a greedy bastard who's been punished by this, yeah, it really should stay. I've had a couple times where my deployment was so reckless it caused my opponent to waffle on his own deployment for an extended period, and when they manage to seize the initiative without surrendering the field to me I generally paid for it pretty hard. It's the reward for not totally turtling as second player as much as it is to punish the greedy guys. If I'm allowed to just constantly bum rush the enemy because I happened to roll higher initially it'd be far less interesting to do.

Yeah, I think it's one of the best aspects of the game. You can never be too certain about anything in 40k.

40k has many MANY worse rules than sieze.

I would however agree that in the alternating deployment method, its a largely unnecessary roll as the dice off for first turn is basically just before it. And only really lessens the impact of a player having lower drops.

 Lance845 wrote:
40k has many MANY worse rules than sieze.

^^^This. Seize is a long way down the list of things to complain about. I would say the problem of seizing is exacerbated by 40k's extreme lethality and tendency towards alpha strikes, which means being seized on often leads to a very demoralizing situation where you feel like you're getting massively punished because your opponent got lucky. If 40k wasn't so heavily weighted in favour of alpha strikes and front-loading damage, losing the first turn wouldn't be such an issue. With the current set-up rules I would argue you could easily dispense with the rule without too many problems.

Seizing is a feel bad moment only if you get overly greedy in how you deploy.

I've always deployed assuming i'd go second and seize doesnt bother me since most of the time, my important units will be hidden away.

Instead of asking for it to be removed, you should start playing around it. Hide your tanks and move them out instead of deploying them in plain sight.

As has been said many times in my local FLGS, seize is there to keep your deployment honest, or to invite a bolter right where the sun don't shine.

Personally not a fan of seize the initiative, I know it keeps deployment "honest" but I think there does need to be less random in the game that things like this add. I do think there are worse rules though, but I'd be happy if it went away.

It's a great counter that mitigates - but does not remove - the issue with 'First Turn Wins' in 40k

I prefer the old rules (or at least how my group used to play) where you alternate deploying units, and then roll off for first turn. whoever finishes deploying first gets +1 to their roll.

Seize the initiative can make a mockery of the whole "whoever puts down their army first on the table has first turn" rule.

But unless you're putting everything on being able to asault the frst turn and have no defensive strategy in place it shouldn't matter TOO much having to go second.

Never liked the rule myself, as mentioned above alternate unit placement with a roll off was much better.

If you wanted to keep deployment honest and you hate seizing then you could introduce a rule that lets your opponent seize the initiative by paying 3CP. That lets you know without a doubt that your opponent can pay those 3 CP if he wants to go first but still gives the advantage of 3 CP to the player that deployed first. Alternatively it could be pay 2 CP and give your opponent 2 CP or paying 3 CP and giving your opponent prepared positions for free or whatever you feel like.

You can also just house rule Seize out of existence, it's no big deal. It comes up in less than 1/6 games since one in every 10 games people will just hand over first turn anyways.