First turn change idea

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

I see mixed thoughts on the first turn, some love it, some want it removed. I think this idea kind of meets in the middle whilst keeping with the current Command Point theme of AoS. 

 

1 CP can be spent by the player who finishes deploying first to decide who takes the first turn. Otherwise it’s treated as a normal turn priority roll but the player who finished deploying first wins in the case of a draw.

 

This essentially gives a 50 point tax to those wanting the first turn and can only be done if the player has a battalion or specific points used for CP.  This should slightly limit one drop army or at least make it a harder decision to make. 

[Sactownbri]

I am not a big fan of the idea since the battalion benefits are purposely built in now. As a result I feel you would need an across the board points drop to battalions. But I am very resistant to any change just two weeks in to the edition. After a year or so we should have a better idea how the new game plays and can then suggest this as one of the GH 2019 beta rules.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Sactownbri said:

I am not a big fan of the idea since the battalion benefits are purposely built in now. As a result I feel you would need an across the board points drop to battalions. But I am very resistant to any change just two weeks in to the edition. After a year or so we should have a better idea how the new game plays and can then suggest this as one of the GH 2019 beta rules.

The first turn has been played this way since the very beginning though, so is more testing time really needed on this one?

I like Jabber's idea. It's true to the spirit of the new edition whilst also being a fair and effective compromise between the two camps. It's so sensible that you can be sure GW will never implement it. 

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

35 minutes ago, Sactownbri said:

I am not a big fan of the idea since the battalion benefits are purposely built in now. As a result I feel you would need an across the board points drop to battalions. But I am very resistant to any change just two weeks in to the edition. After a year or so we should have a better idea how the new game plays and can then suggest this as one of the GH 2019 beta rules.

They “built in” the cost last year supposedly but it didn’t make any difference really.  Now they’ve added the free CP to be battalions so this just matches and counters that really. 

[Skabnoze]

I would rather see the whole round swapped to both players alternate activation within each phase.  Basically take the current close-combat pile-in sequence and apply it to the movement phase, the shooting phase, the hero phase, etc.  That way this whole thing becomes a non-issue and the game becomes more interactive between both players as a whole.

But, that sort of thing would need to wait until another edition.

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

29 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

I would rather see the whole round swapped to both players alternate activation within each phase.  Basically take the current close-combat pile-in sequence and apply it to the movement phase, the shooting phase, the hero phase, etc.  That way this whole thing becomes a non-issue and the game becomes more interactive between both players as a whole.

But, that sort of thing would need to wait until another edition.

Another edition? That’s another game entirely it’ll never happen to AoS

[Skabnoze]

18 minutes ago, The Jabber Tzeentch said:

Another edition? That’s another game entirely it’ll never happen to AoS

You never know.  It is honestly not that big a change mechanically, you could play the game like that right now with very little modification if you wanted.  AoS already has alternate activation within it's combat phase, which no GW game previously has done.  It looks like they are exploring the use of alternate activation with Shadespire and now Killteam it seems.  So who knows what they do further down the line.

I won't say never, but I will agree that it won't be soon.

[blueshirtman]

What if the game was something like, I move one unit, then my opponent moves one unit. Till all units complet movment and then do it for every other phase. This way msu swarms would have their flexibility of multiple units, while lower count armies wouldn't feel punished for being played.  Plus there is a good chance that some sort of mid range , unit wise, army would start existing.

[Skabnoze]

10 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

What if the game was something like, I move one unit, then my opponent moves one unit. Till all units complet movment and then do it for every other phase. This way msu swarms would have their flexibility of multiple units, while lower count armies wouldn't feel punished for being played.  Plus there is a good chance that some sort of mid range , unit wise, army would start existing.

That was basically what I was saying.  I prefer when games play like that.  Other people may disagree.  It's just my opinion & preference.

[amysrevenge]

I guess there are a couple adjustments you'd need for alternate activation in AoS

One is that you'd end up with only half the combat phases - in normal play each player gets to fight in two combat phases per battle round.  That would throw off the balance between magic, shooting, and combat damage.  This could be corrected for purely within turn management rules (perhaps by doing two combat phases one after another? Maybe one on either side of the movement/charge/shooting phase block? That could be interesting.).

The other is that the hero phase would be tricky.  There are mandatory and voluntary actions, there are actions that take place at specified portions of the phase.  I think this one would be the actual deal-breaker.  You'd probably need to do warscroll by warscroll updates, and maybe even rethink how the hero phase works from the ground up.

[Skabnoze]

3 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

The other is that the hero phase would be tricky.  There are mandatory and voluntary actions, there are actions that take place at specified portions of the phase.  I think this one would be the actual deal-breaker.  

That would be fairly easily handled by the concept of the old "compulsory phase".  So you split the hero phase into 2 phase, the first one is the mandatory effects (compulsory effects) and the second would be the back & forth between players manually triggering abilities & spells.

The reduced number of combat phases is an interesting point though.  I'm sure it could be solved if people were serious about playing the game that way.  It is quite interesting to think of though.

[blueshirtman]

Sounds nice. mechanicly it would work a lot like it does now, but without the super edge msu get over more elite armies. But then again this is only the 2ed, with new people doing design of a new game, there will always be things that could be done better. Plus with GW policy of little steps, it is hard to imagine that they would suddenly go out and test different modes of unit activation.

[Skabnoze]

26 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

Plus with GW policy of little steps, it is hard to imagine that they would suddenly go out and test different modes of unit activation.

It appears that they are testing this with the new Killteam game.  I have played most of the skirmish games that GW has made in the past and they have never used full alternate activation rules.  They almost always used the same I-go-you-go turn system that the main games use.  It could well be the case that they want to explore these mechanics in smaller games.  It also appears that some ideas that they have been using in the main games, like strategies/command-abilties are being brought over to Kill Team.  So who knows if at some point they do the reverse and bring ideas from the smaller games up to the main games.

We will just have to wait and see.  But this thread is about the first turn - so we should probably stop derailing it.  I started this conversation, so my bad.

[Sleboda]

41 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

It appears that they are testing this with the new Killteam game.  I have played most of the skirmish games that GW has made in the past and they have never used full alternate activation rules. 

I think the same people that designed Shadespire did Kill Team, so that might explain it.

[Skabnoze]

13 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

I think the same people that designed Shadespire did Kill Team, so that might explain it.

Yeah, I read that as well.  They have mentioned that enough times that it sounds like they are quite impressed by the Killteam rules crew.  If those guys continue to be viewed as successful who knows how much else they can influence over time.

[NemoVonUtopia]

8 hours ago, The Jabber Tzeentch said:

This essentially gives a 50 point tax to those wanting the first turn and can only be done if the player has a battalion or specific points used for CP.  This should slightly limit one drop army or at least make it a harder decision to make. 

I don't think that it would change that much. If you have a one drop army then you are already using a battalion so you have a spare command point so if you depend on choosing who goes first you still can. It seems like it would only be a hard decision to make if you didn't really care who goes first.

 

About alternating more phases I think the main downside is scalability. Shadepire, kill team, and necromunda all have very few models and do their entire turn at once. In AoS, especially at 2000 points, I sometimes struggle to remember who has attacked so having to remember every phase seems like a pain. It would also be more complicated to keep buff auras, for example keeping skeletons in range of deathless minions if they move but all the heros dont move at the same time. 

It would probably be excellent for skirmish though.

[Skabnoze]

39 minutes ago, NemoVonUtopia said:

About alternating more phases I think the main downside is scalability. Shadepire, kill team, and necromunda all have very few models and do their entire turn at once. In AoS, especially at 2000 points, I sometimes struggle to remember who has attacked so having to remember every phase seems like a pain. It would also be more complicated to keep buff auras, for example keeping skeletons in range of deathless minions if they move but all the heros dont move at the same time. 

I don't see the issue with auras unless you have a movement aura maybe.  Those could potentially be changed to a pulse type effect rather than a constant aura.  But if you consider that we were talking about having the phases still exist, and then models alternate activating within each phase, then all movement would still happen in the movement phase and then all shooting would happen, etc.  So if you have a combat aura you just need to make sure the guys are in the right spot when they start to fight - etc.  So deathless minions would work the same as it does now unless somehow you were taking damage in the middle of the movement phase.

As for keeping track of stuff, use activation tokens.  It can help even in the current rules.

[NemoVonUtopia]

14 hours ago, Skabnoze said:

I don't see the issue with auras unless you have a movement aura maybe.  Those could potentially be changed to a pulse type effect rather than a constant aura.  But if you consider that we were talking about having the phases still exist, and then models alternate activating within each phase, then all movement would still happen in the movement phase and then all shooting would happen, etc.  So if you have a combat aura you just need to make sure the guys are in the right spot when they start to fight - etc.  So deathless minions would work the same as it does now unless somehow you were taking damage in the middle of the movement phase.

As for keeping track of stuff, use activation tokens.  It can help even in the current rules.

True, I was thinking that it would be like shadespire or necromunda where each model does an entire turn for some reason. 

 

[daedalus81]

What about secret CP bidding?

The player that REALLY wants to go first will have to gamble off 2 or even 3 CP.

You could even do the same for priority with ties going to previous person with first turn.

[Skabnoze]

1 hour ago, NemoVonUtopia said:

True, I was thinking that it would be like shadespire or necromunda where each model does an entire turn for some reason. 

I think that works well for smaller skirmish games, but for larger games like GW ones I think maintaining the turn sequence and then alternating within those phases is much more interactive and interesting.  Think of it sort of like a big game of X-wing.