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The dreaded double turn


WoollyMammoth

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The Dreaded Double Turn
In AoS, the biggest point of contention is the dreaded double turn. Many a player has said "oh then he got the double turn and so I lost". You might argue all kinds of things about this, but the fact is, in some cases, its hard to deny.

Personally I'm for the initiative roll. I think that it is interesting and adds more complexity to the game, though I don't think its 100% perfect as it currently is. Experienced players know how to prepare for the double turn, to see it coming - to avoid those kind of mistakes that make the double turn seem overpowered. Here is a great article on that: 
https://aos-tactics.com/2017/01/08/how-to-optimise-for-the-double-turn/

Regardless, there are many players who despise the double turn, whether they often devastated not knowing how to manage it, or just hate the concept.

Armies start 24" apart, so the first turn is usually spent setting up with limited options. Most spells are capped at 24", a lot of shooting is limited to 24" effective range, etc. This means you are severely limited first turn. For many armies, and especially new players, the first turn is a big fat nothingburger. Worse, if you move up even 1", you are putting yourself in range of a lot of your opponents abilities. Many people run forward the first turn (often hoping to win the initiative) and basically put themselves in range of most everything their opponent can do. Therefore, Player 2 gets a full turn of shooting and abilities - maybe even charging - the first turn .. whereas all Player 1 did was move. Then when Player 2 gets the double turn, the score is basically 2-0 by the time you are ready to throw your first punch. This is typically the standard scenario with most new players, leading to the idea that AoS is a just a silly game of "whomever wins the first turn roll wins."

Personally I feel this hurts the game overall. Not necessarily because the initiative roll is bad, but because most players walk into it like a brick wall and have to get bloody enough times before they start to realize what is going on. I'm not saying we should make the game easier or more simple, but maybe its time to take a look at initiative and improve it without having to take away from the game.

The First Initiative Roll
The initiative roll is never so massively important as the first one. As the game goes on, everyone gets into brawls. With the turn taking in close combat, some turns have so many combats that you can forget who's turn it is. Very rarely are you desperately trying to get the double turn at the start of turn 3 or 4 - and if you are relying on the double turn to get ahead at that point, it is usually because you are in a bad situation and you are hoping for a double turn to save you. Typically in these cases if you reflect back to what happened in turn 1 and 2, you could have made better decisions.

Comparison to Warhammer 40k
Sometimes you have an awesome first turn and everything just goes for you. You make insane charges and everything is just working. In this case, your opponent will desperately need a turn to react. If you lose initiative you are really screwed. I have seen this many times, where the first player just has a phenomenal first turn, and there is so much the opponent needs to do to react - but the double turn comes down and, in many cases, solidifies the victory, compounding the success of one player to the extreme. 

This is not the case in 40k. If player 1  has a great turn, the player 2 can always react and do something. Sure, the player 1 is at an advantage, being able to take two turns between the player 2s single turn, but at least player 2 can react between and try to mitigate, as well as focus the biggest threats.

Notably, 8th edition 40k did not adapt the initiative roll.  Maybe they wanted to make the games different, maybe the way shooting and combat works, it just wouldn't work. But frankly, if the initiative roll was revolutionary, making the game much better, more fun or more competitive, then they would have added it into the new 40k. The fact is, the initiative roll does not make the game unarguably better (at least in its current, raw form).

Deployment
The concept of deployment is simple, when one player has an army with lots of little throw away units, they can 'scout' what the opponent is doing and force them to show their hand, thus setting up your counters in perfect place to give you the advantage.

Unfortunately, in AoS things can teleport around the map - this is an alternate form of deployment which happens after deployment, therefore you can dictate the flow of battle even if you finish first and are given the opportunity to dictate who goes first. Far too often going second is a total win-win with no drawbacks whatsoever, where even if your opponent goes first they are doing little more than moving into range of your abilities, and even if you don't get the double turn, you will still have had two good turns to your opponents one good turn by the end of round 2.

Then there are battalions. The solution for the new handbook is to make them more expensive, which does help a lot, but there is still the big issue that many armies don't have battalions, or any worth taking. This allows certain armies to fully set up and force the other to go first. With armies like Sylvaneth and Stormcast, they can force the first turn knowing full well they will have complete control over movement when they get their turn. For example, a Stormcast army could use a stormhost to deploy their entire army off the table and then force their opponent to go first against an empty table, then set up 2/3 of their army with a chance to charge and then a chance to get a double turn.

The New 2017 Meta
There is a clear push in the new handbook to prevent first turn charges. Things like Sayl and a Vampire Lord on Abyssal Terror are totally nerfed.  These were some of the best opportunities for melee heavy armies to get a first turn charge and put them in good position against a double turn. There are still plenty of options for 9" deployment, but that gives you a very low chance to get things going when you are forced with the first turn.

Solutions
The most obvious solutions to the double turn is to simply prepare for it. Create lists with a lot of good options to deal with the double turn. if you are forced to go first and don't want to, forfeit all your best laid plans and turtle the hell up, move back, cower in and behind cover and make sure your opponent is not going to be able to take the game from you. 

But there could be other solutions, improvements to the rules to make things go smoothly. Here are some ideas:

First Turn/Deployment
- Add a first turn initiative, with modifiers based on certain factors (-1 if your army contains more units, -1 if you have units off the table, -1 if you have a summoning pool) 

The Double Turn
- Create defensive options/skills/abilities for armies that activate when forced to deal with a double turn
- Each player gets a +1 to their initiative roll for each unit lost in the previous round
- Don't start initiative until the start of turn 3

These are just some ideas. The initiative roll is so massive in AoS right now, and the new changes make it even harder to get something going before faced with a double turn. Personally I like the idea but I think there needs to be some more tweaking of the concept to get it just right.


 

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depending on the circumstances, you could call sayls alteration a buff..

 

some armies particularly khorne would massively benefit from getting a boost towards double turn for loosing units.

 

"hey you killed that cheap rubbish squishy unit i sent at you to die, GREAT! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD..

also, thanks for pretty much ensuring i get the double turn now with my ultra killy units. 

more BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD."

The armies likely to get boosts to defence against double turns will be those already incredibly strong in shooting, precisely due to their nature... do we really need to boost shooting?

some games are pretty much won or lost by turn 3..

 

i feel that also to try help towards combating peoples fear of the double turn a decent battlefield can mitigate some concerns

playing on barren landscapes as often seen in tournaments speeds games up, makes shooting more powerful and allows those deathstars to really crush.

adding a proper landscape in will massively change peoples plans

games workshop recommends about 12 pieces of terrain on a 4x6

Of those 12 pieces i think 4 should be LoS blocking, (not on the ouside of the terrain... as is often done) 4, something like trees or garrison-able buildings, and the remaining 4 just stuff to get in the way and mix up the terrain, height, path blocking etc

 

looking at various tournament pics of table tops... its so barren, so flat so open so boring...

people fear the double turn, but set the entire battlefield up for it before the game starts then complain when it happens. 

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I've played in a lot of tournaments and have never had an issue with the double turn. 

It's part of the game so build lists accordingly. Chaff and screens of units that have no damage output are just as important as your heavy hitters. 

And the times were I have most wanted the double turn are late game when I need to do things to score points. 

The reason it's not in 40k is that the shooting phase currently is so extreme. If you got 2 turns of shooting you would kill everything. 

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Being able to choose who goes first exacerbates a lot of the problems with the double turn.  I think being able to decide who goes first should be taken completely out of the players' hands, and should be a straight roll-off (like they did with things affecting initiative). Why it's tied to number of drops and battalions is beyond me and makes no sense. I made a thread about this, but it's related to the topic and I'm secretly hoping a GW employee reads it and thinks it's brilliant and then hires me as a rules writer and problem solver.

I like how hype the roll for initiative is - and I get the feeling that part of AoS' brand is big, swingy, deadly, hype events. You mention early double turns being worse, but the late game ones tend to be closing the trapdoor and grabbing tons of points. The turn 4 initiative roll too often literally becomes: d6, on a 4+ I win by doing x that can't really be stopped, on a 3 or less my opponent wins doing y that can't really be stopped. Yes, it's a game built upon randomness, but that's a tough one single roll.

WoollyMammoth brings up a great point - the first turn of the game feels bad. You don't want to move forward and let your opponent get to use all his stuff on you - but you can't really use any of your stuff either. You either waste your turn completely, or dutifully move your guys within range of your opponent's meatgrinder. For the average player on a balanced list it just seems like an unfortunate feature of the game (kind of like in MtG where going second is probably a little too disadvantageous). Dakkbad's Cunning is an interesting attempt to mitigate this in some way, and so I feel GW is aware of it.

Killamike is completely correct - one of the main reasons rolling for init wouldn't work in 40k is because a double turn with ranged is way too powerful. 

 

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The article shared above illustrates the issue to me, there are many paragraphs illustrating how you can use the double turn to your advantage, and three bullet points on how to prepare.

The problem is that preparing for the double turn also puts you at significant disadvantage for the scenario. For my own armies this is vastly improved in ghb2 and the ability to take blood Knights which can fly over a screen is huge, but of all the people I have heard say 'you just have to prepare for it' I've rarely seen anyone articulate how they would do it in any great detail.

You can only castle up for so many turns until you're penned in and lose

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3 hours ago, Auticus said:

The double-turn doesn't apply to me any more because my community had a solid vote to abolish it for our campaigns that only saw a couple people (the tournament players that don't like houserules) vote in favor of keeeping it.

However I'll be very interested to read others' breakdown of how you can prepare for it so that it doesn't end the game for all intents and purposes when it happens.

Nice to hear you're having a bit more luck with houseruling. 

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4 hours ago, Auticus said:

The double-turn doesn't apply to me any more because my community had a solid vote to abolish it for our campaigns that only saw a couple people (the tournament players that don't like houserules) vote in favor of keeeping it....

We can only hope that the "Houserules Fans" will some day learn to leave AoS 40K behind and embrace Change.  B|(Tzeentch sends its Blessings to the nonbelievers .... no shunning here ... ;) )

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I love it.

its among many one of the best things about the game.  In old war hammer you could pretty much second guess the whole game by how that turn sequence panned out, now however good your list you can't second guess anything.

 

today I played 1250 against stormcast with my slaves to darkness.  I got four turns on the trot. I couldn't have scripted that and I couldn't have seen it coming.

nope, love it, even when I get my face caved in!

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12 hours ago, Marc Wilson said:

Let's hope this thread focuses on mechanics around the double turn on a practical level and doesn't wander into 'I don't like...' territory, because that has been done to death in other threads : 

 

etc etc

good comment dude, pre emptively complaining about complainers #positiveforumexperience

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I like the double turn, but I think that its a little OP in certain games, so I wish that there was a mechanic to prevent it from being way too OP, especially for new players. I think its a mistake to just house rule it out, because that only brings back issues with the old "whoever goes first wins" problem that the double turn is trying to prevent. 

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I've never found myself at any real disadvantage getting 'double turned', personally. I certainly have to think about it when I'm going first, but it's never caused me any serious heartache. I like the fact that it adds a random element to the battle which can totally change the result. I've been double-turned, and then i've double-turned them back and caused the same amount of carnage in return, and as another poster alluded to, it's usually later in the game that I really want the double.

Interestingly, I highly highly recommend using the Bolt Action method for a couple of games. It makes the game play very differently, but it was really good fun. For those unfamiliar, basically you get a dice of the same colour for every unit you have in your army, and your opponent does the same with a different colour (but make sure the dice are the same size). Stick them in a bag all together and shake it up a bit. You then enter the Hero phase as normal, but you pull one dice out the bag. If it's your colour, you choose a Hero to do something with. Then pull out another dice, if it's your colour again you can pick another Hero, or if it's your opponent, they pick one. Keep pulling dice out until all your heroes have done something (or not), and then put all the dice back and do the Movement phase, shooting, charging, fight etc and then roll battleshock as normal at the end. It's good.

Alternatively, you can go all out and just pull out a dice, choose a unit, and that unit can either carry out a hero action, cast a spell, move, shoot, charge and fight, or fight - but only one. Once the dice bag is empty, you put them all back in and go again. That makes the game very interesting indeed.

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Having played more games against more laid back players, I am updating my thoughts on the double turn - the Double Turn doesn't bug me at all.  Hear me out, because this is a big case of YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY, and is very anecdotal based on my experiences, but anyways...

In my about 40 games, I have only experienced super-shooty lists ONCE at any point, and it was at 1250 points.  In that game, it was ONE Thundertusk in a combined Ogor army that blasted my heroes away, and I wasn't able to close the distance fast enough to do much damage.  In that case, the double turn against me took out my two support Heroes, and whittled down my Brutes.  Sure, I whiffed my attacks and Battleshock rolls, but looking back on that game, I'm not sure that I was close enough to get into melee before that Thundertusk (and accompanying Stonehorn and Leadbelchers) would have done the same to me.

In the VAST majority of my games, it has been in more melee-centric armies, and mostly Khorne armies of some flavor.  In such games, once our battle lines meet (using the actual phrase, not the required unit tax) then it is a swirling melee of carnage and awesomeness.  But in such a situation, it is largely meaningless if you get a Double Turn or not.  Sure, you get to activate your choice of unit first, and you get to buff your guys in the Hero Phase, but it's a pretty even fight.  But with the alternating unit actions in the Combat Phase, I see it as AoS at its most tactical - weighing in my mind which units to activate first against his, whether I should use my Megaboss while I can, or use my Brutes to their most effective, etc.  Sure, it would make a difference if I wanted to retreat my units and to see if my Hero Phase abilities stay active or not.  But in the games I have played where it's 1850 points of Ironjawz versus Khorne Bloodbound, I have never felt worried about getting Double Turn or not.  Maybe that's a testament to the strength of alternative activation as a mechanic, but there you go.

However, as I mentioned, my experience with playing shooting-heavy armies is limited.  As such, I can't speak for everyone else nor tell them that their concerns are unfounded.  Heck, just one Thundertusk gave me a bad taste in my mouth, and I can see the issues.

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Haha! Appreciate the comment above about the other thread. It devolved exactly as I feared. There are some cool ideas in the OP. Probably all are worth considering, but there are two major things (imo) to point out before making any changes at least until the 2018 GHB.

On 9/14/2017 at 5:07 PM, Arkiham said:

looking at various tournament pics of table tops... its so barren, so flat so open so boring...

people fear the double turn, but set the entire battlefield up for it before the game starts then complain when it happens. 

First.... THIS! I've played a couple of tournaments now, and my god. When there's a table that's absolutely barren of LOS blocking terrain, I want to do a nut. I get it. I should be prepared for such eventualities with a list that can handle any terrain setup. OK fine. Sure. But, I want to play a miniatures game, not a card game. Go and look up a game from the 1980's called Up Front.... WW2 infantry skirmish... card game. That's what you're playing when you leave an open battlefield.

Put up some damn terrain.  I would have played WFHB if I wanted. We got AoSkirmish, let's play it as it's designed. It's just my personal feeling re: miniatures games, but I like terrain to a level of annoyance.

....

The second consideration has been mentioned in a few different ways in the posts above, but GW is certainly aware of this. They've moved in many ways to mitigate it, increasing points on shooting units, giving discounts on horde units, changing up the standard battleplans, adding some battalions and allegiance abilities to help mitigate against shooty armies, etc...

I agree that the late game double turn is equally as critical as the early game. Sure... against 48 skyfires or kunnin suck early game double turn is more impactful, but that's entirely because of the shooting meta (which will hopefully not be quite as prevalent). Late game double turns can most certainly decide a game. Hopefully, these changes will shift the game in such a way that the double turn becomes "objective deciding" and not "game deciding".... which is what you want I think. I'd love some of the sense that Maelstrom of War brings to 40k. The double turn can(should?) lend itself to this.

------

Finally, the only thing more annoying that folks who can't be bothered to prepare for a double turn, are people that just go, "Oh, it's fine. There's no way GW can improve on what we have now. Let's not listen to all these people who hate it and are having a terrible time of it and want to quit over it." 

Also, use terrain.

Have I mentioned terrain?

Edited by eekamouse
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I've seen in a couple of UK packs that they require players to bring 5 pieces of terrain each. Of course whether of not they stop LoS is another thing.  Placement of scenery does of course matter as well. Ten pieces all on the board edge won't help.  It is very much the key to dealing with the two most moaned about parts of AoS, shooting and the double turn.  Both of which are linked in the main.  I've not found a double truns from combat armies to be a surely fire win (though they are advantageous but reasonably so) 

Edited by Ollie Grimwood
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7 hours ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

I've seen in a couple of UK packs that they require players to bring 5 pieces of terrain each. Of course whether of not they stop LoS is another thing.  Placement of scenery does of course matter as well. Ten pieces all on the board edge won't help.  It is very much the key to dealing with the two most moaned about parts of AoS, shooting and the double turn.  Both of which are linked in the main.  I've not found a double truns from combat armies to be a surely fire win (though they are advantageous but reasonably so) 

You're right, the double turn is especially broken when shooting armies get to take advantage of it, because it's so much one-way damage that creates a large points disparity on the table. Though in certain matchups, Destruction and most Chaos armies can do a ton of damage by going twice. 

Regarding terrain, I really don't see it making that much of a difference. Perhaps if you have stuff like buildings that have no windows that you can start characters in... but otherwise the LoS is so open in AoS that you can almost always see stuff. I play shooting armies on tables that have around 14 pieces of terrain on them usually. About half of these are forests and hills, and the other half are completely solid, large buildings that easily block LoS. Someone I am almost always able to shoot to full effect though. 

Also, I've been keeping track since the last huge thread on the double turn. I play shooty Order/Wanderers. Every game where I've gone second and then gotten the double turn, I have won. I typically play 2-3 games each week. 

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