Double turn

[chord]

1 hour ago, Overread said:

True but is it beneficial to the game itself? 

Does the fact that one person might suddenly get a second go without any comeback or prevention really enhance the game experience? Especially when that means the opponent now has a whole second turn of doing nothing save removing their models from the table and, if they are lucky, perhaps controlling an endless spell for a few moments. 

Also when most time whoever gets a double first wins or increase tehir win to an impossible to challenge point; is that really making the game overall more fun or is it ending it on a single role which could be very early in the game.

Doing nothing?  I'm sorry if I go second I get to control an endless spell (if any), attempt dispells, pile and attack.  now maybe if its just a pure shooting list I'm against and I'm too far away to do anything then thats a different story.  But most of the time I'm active and planning my turn or pile-ins. 

[TheCovenLord]

After playing Warcry for a little while. I have to say the solution to taking the initiative is elegant and I hope it finds its way to full age of sigmar. I do not think alternating activations will ever be a thing in aos as it would require quite a bit of effort and re-writing of a majority of warscrolls (which GW has already proven to shy away from touching). 

 

I like the idea of using singles to determine initiative. And any doubles or triples providing a CP with quads being allowed to be split into two doubles (2 cp effectively). This would give a tangible reward to the player going second (more CP) which is legitimately worth considering for several factions that rely heavily on those points (ex: FeC, IJ, LoN, skaven etc.) . 

 

I do not believe there is nearly enough reward for being the second player. Activating endless spells first is, frankly, garbage. The predatory spells are as a whole ineffective and due to their initial placement range often require the caster to be mispositioned to avoid the spell immediately flying back into your own forces (open avenues for charges etc.) which is why the non-directional spells like aethervoid pendulum are favored .  Most of the spells that ARE good are either not predatory (cogs/palisade/spell portals), cannot be taken control of (khorne prayers/Fyreslayer prayers), or the more disturbing trend of not affecting the allegiance they come from (several skaven and gitz spells). 

To make endless spells a real risk/reward they need to be DEVASTATING so that they at least disrupt the board or force the opponent to actually deal with them (via movement, wasting a spell to dispel) as it stands the predatory spells function more as blockers due to their base sizes than anything else. Why would I want to even use burning head giving my opponents a buff? Does leadership even matter with inspiring presence/battleshock immunities ubiquitous presence making gnashing jaws, the new shyish visage spell , the incredibly terrible doomflock and several other "leadership-bombs" non-optimal.  And to top it all off, you do not move all the endless spells. Just get to move the first one (if there are any). 

 

Yes there are exceptions (lightning vortex, wildfire taurus) but they are exceptions. Not the general rule.

[willange]

So I'm not really decided if I support or don't support the double turn.  My group isn't super competitive and we tend to do an OK job planning for double turns and so forth.  I'm curious though if there's a common way that people play w/o the double turn because I would be interested in trying it.  Do people just keep the round 1 turn order in all rounds?

[Dead Scribe]

As far as I know yes.  They just keep the same order.

Some people I have read also use alternate activation but that requires more house rules than I care to read or look at.

[pseudonyme]

18 hours ago, eekamouse said:

Oi. I kind of like that idea. Just leave the game as it is now, but remove the 1 CP per turn. Still keep the extra CP for 50 points (and extra CP for Battalions and other special abilities).

Now priority is rolling 6D6 every turn for priority. You also get one Wild Dice per battle round just like in Warcry.

But, instead of Doubles, Triples, Quadruples activating specific abilities they grant you X command points for the round. 

Double = 1 CP

Triple = 2 CP

Quad = 4 CP

-edit-

Or remove everything related to Command Points, and make the priority roll the ONLY way to get CP.

You either go first or you sow the whirldwind... theoretically.

 

I did not see someone already wrote what I was thinking about. The only limitation I would make is concerning additionnal commande points, as I would not want to have to manage too many. I would say that à double, à triple or à quad grant you 1 CP that you can sacrifice for the initiative. It makes the CP collection too unreliable.

[Dragobeth]

2 hours ago, willange said:

So I'm not really decided if I support or don't support the double turn.  My group isn't super competitive and we tend to do an OK job planning for double turns and so forth.  I'm curious though if there's a common way that people play w/o the double turn because I would be interested in trying it.  Do people just keep the round 1 turn order in all rounds?

While in our group we use alternative activations + random tokens (but it's more to getting  off the IGOUGO than  the double turn since we don't have a problem with the double turn itself) the times I've played with other game groups without the roll each round they keep the turn order from the round 1 for the rest of the game.

I should point out that all the groups where I play are non-competitive too, there's only some guys that I know that are competitive players and all of them use the double turn (not sure if they like it or not, I never asked them, they liked my custom system tho) If someone is interested in our custom system I think I could open a thread about it so I don't go too much into offtopic in this one.

Anyway, I think the most direct-to-the-head way (and more common, at least in my local gaming community) is just keep the round 1 order.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Dragobeth
forgot something

[Kasper]

5 hours ago, XReN said:

Let's go and discard every potential cause of "feels bad" from the game then, why stop on double turn? Let's remove all dice rolls, because they can cause just as much bad moments as double turn can. 

We can have fixed numbers for everything, wouldn't that be great? 

This is honestly such a weird reply.

Oh so you like the suspense and randomness? Why dont we introduce more! Lets roll off how many models you get to bring! How about Rolling for what models you get to put on the table! Etc.

Pretty much same logic - Just because people want something done to the dobble turn doesnt mean they want ALL randomness gone. Just like you dont want everything being random either, right?

Personally Im ok with the dobble turn, if they introduced more incentives to going second. Moving predatory Endless spells isnt enough. Most people I play with either dont bring any, or they bring non-predatory/spells that have no effect on their own army.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Kasper

[Belper]

12 hours ago, Someone2 said:

Exactly! Although going 2nd is actually the way to go.

You can make sure you get 1st turn charge that way or atleast make sure your opponent doesn't get 2 turns in a row (battleround 1 + 2 are the most important rounds).

As a FEC, IJ and BCR player I almost always opt to go 2nd for this specific reason. Making sure I win the game on round 2 or 3 at the latest. It is done with VP though. Most players forget that you can be wiped and still win... games don't end by a wipe, but by turn 5. If you make sure you get more VP by turn 2-3 for the enemy to even get even without your units on the field, you've won.

For this very reason I find double turns to powerfull. Way to easy to win the VP game early on without your opponent having a large enough counter force to get enough VP back

Most missions make later turn VPs worth more and limit your ability to jump ahead early with roughly mirrored starting objectives.

On the majority of missions if you leap out on mid board or opponent deployment zone objectives too early, they can devastate your forces and out score you regardless. Star strike for example is a mission where holding the center objective for turn 5 is the same value as holding it for turn 2+ turn 3.

 

I'm almost always down in points turn 1-turn 2 but by turn 3 I have enough board control that I can lock you out for the rest of the game.

[Vextol]

Oooo I just read the initiative system for warcry.  Love it!  That's what we need for Sigmar.  Something like that which either gives us a little control over the random or offers a kind of benefit that can be used throughout the round.  SOMETHING.  I love those kinds of mechanics. 

Plus, the more small simple mechanics, the more you can give armies special ways to mess with those mechanics thus granting more diversity.  Don't give me huge overarching mechanics that mess with the whole system, just small ones that can be implemented without really wrecking everything.  That's what points are for.  Reacting to these small mechanic changes.

[Battlefury]

I guess I am gonna playtest the initiative based on Warlord's Bolt Action sytsem:

Each players puts a dice of each unit he has into a bag. Then the bag is shaken and there is always one dice to be dragged form there. The player, whom belongs that dice to, activates ONE SINGLE unit to go. If we would maybe try this out, we would have nothing to change otherwise due to abse rules, endless spells etc. .

BUT

It would give the players, who's turn it is not, a possibility to interact with the enemy, once it is his turn. Of course somene could drag more than 1 of his dice form the bag, but he / she then knows, that the opponent will have it the same way. To even concider the backblast of the own actions should give the game much more concidering in actual tactics.

Gonna try that out soon I guess.

[AverageBoss]

If the double turn is going to stay, I would just say that all attacks are -1 to hit and all spells are -1 to cast, if taking that 2nd turn in a row, to represent your units overexerting themselves.

[T10]

The "competitive" play of AoS needs features that empower the player going second in the battle round.

Winning the priority roll should allow the player to carefully consider going first or second, it shouldn't be an automatic, no-brainer choice to go first. If about one in three rounds in a game gave a significant benefit to the second player I think the  priority roll mechanic becomes very interesting and not simply an unpredictable aspect of the game,

[XReN]

15 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

Dice rolls don't cause a player to stand there for up to an hour doing nothing but removing models for two turns in a row.

Losing a game because of failed charge roll sucks just as much as losing a game because of any roll, prove me wrong.

[XReN]

10 hours ago, Kasper said:

This is honestly such a weird reply.

Oh so you like the suspense and randomness? Why dont we introduce more! Lets roll off how many models you get to bring! How about Rolling for what models you get to put on the table! Etc.

Pretty much same logic - Just because people want something done to the dobble turn doesnt mean they want ALL randomness gone. Just like you dont want everything being random either, right?

Personally Im ok with the dobble turn, if they introduced more incentives to going second. Moving predatory Endless spells isnt enough. Most people I play with either dont bring any, or they bring non-predatory/spells that have no effect on their own army.

My reply wasn't about randomness, it was about the fact that for some people getting double turned sucks
I see only 2 complains about priority roll - it decides games and people get bored. And both are stupid.

And there is solution to both: why don't people who dislike the priority roll spend those 30 minutes of boredom thinking about how they should have played differently so double turn won't be decisive factor of a game?

I personaly don't get bored, how can I if I spent dozens of hours painting the very models I play with right now? Get some patience. And I rarely have games where double turn actually does decide the outcome of a game, because I and my opponents know what we are doing. 

 

[schwabbele]

1 hour ago, XReN said:

And there is solution to both: why don't people who dislike the priority roll spend those 30 minutes of boredom thinking about how they should have played differently so double turn won't be decisive factor of a game?

They can‘t  or most of them can‘t. They loose, they mad. Humans tend to take the easy route.

[Killamike]

Double turn promotes more tactical play.  

You have to be prepared for it on any new game turn.  

Positition so you can't lose based on that scenario. 

Take the risk and expose yourself on the hope you'll get it. 

Ive won multiple large events and can say that I've never lost a game because of someone double turning me. I've lost because someone outplayed me. 

[Xasz]

1 hour ago, XReN said:

And there is solution to both: why don't people who dislike the priority roll spend those 30 minutes of boredom thinking about how they should have played differently so double turn won't be decisive factor of a game?

This could come straight from https://www.reddit.com/r/thanksimcured/

There are armies, board states and what not where you cannot and could not play around it and it will be the game deciding factor not matter what (at least if you are actually trying to win).

Personally, I am not entirely sure what to do with the double turn mechanic. I am convinced that it should remain and it is not the worst but it will need some "massaging" in coming editions. One thing I can see and thought about a while ago (dunno if it was mentioned already) is extending the Command Point system and intertwine it somehow with the alternating turns. Like, you can spend CP to "steal" priority from your opponent. Possibly only if he cannot match your "bid". There is a lot that can be done to keep double turns in AoS and make it feel less swingy/random. Either way, each system obviously has a downside and it will be interesting to see how AoS will progress in the next 5 years.

[XReN]

2 minutes ago, Xasz said:

There are armies, board states and what not where you cannot and could not play around it and it will be the game deciding factor not matter what (at least if you are actually trying to win).

Well, when the situation is that bad, isn't getting double turn yourself is your only hope to win?

[Kasper]

1 minute ago, XReN said:

Well, when the situation is that bad, isn't getting double turn yourself is your only hope to win?

But is that a great mechanic? The issue with the double-turn isnt just being smashed, it is just as much smashing your opponent to the ground without them being able to do much. It feels bad winning like that IMO.

[XReN]

4 minutes ago, Kasper said:

But is that a great mechanic? The issue with the double-turn isnt just being smashed, it is just as much smashing your opponent to the ground without them being able to do much. It feels bad winning like that IMO.

Managing expectations is what makes my games good, when I go to a tournament, I do not care about how hard I will smash/get smashed, it's a competition, I enjoy every part of it, if I lose I always have something to think about. When I play outside of tournaments against people who are not that competetive or new I tone down my lists so I won't smash my opponent, I can also do stupid moves and deny myself of good opportunities, to provide better experience to my opponent and make a game more enjoyble to myself, I don't like it when friendly games end by turn 2 so I decide to not end them by turn 2.

[Battlefury]

The core of the problem is not particularly the random turn design. It is more the fact, that whoever doesn't get the turn, is helplessly standing beside, and that maybe for 2 turns in a row.

The game just needs any option to interact with the oponent players, while it is his turn. That could for example be, not to activate the entire army at the turn, but a single unit.
There is for sure more of an option.

@XReNI'd suggest you play Stormcasts on your tournaments, sont you?
Who is punished by double turns is also dependent on the army a players has. Stormcasts are well known for the fact, that they are resiliant, and no matter what you try to destroy from them, they destroy you first most of the times.

So you could potentially rely on the resiliance of that army. But what with other armies?
I'd suggest that might be an issue, too.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Battlefury

[XReN]

5 minutes ago, Battlefury said:

@XReNI'd suggest you play Stormcasts on your tournaments, sont you?

I haven't played them for the last year, right now I play with my FEC

[Battlefury]

Alright, fair enough.

I would summarize the double turn problem is reliant on:

a) no option to interact with the opponent, while it is his / her turn
b) army design / balance

[Xasz]

2 minutes ago, XReN said:

Well, when the situation is that bad, isn't getting double turn yourself is your only hope to win?

It is not only about getting the double turn yourself but your opponent potentially having it. The latter sometimes cannot be prevented or played around.

With my melee focused army (Khorne), I am pretty much forced to play a setup with as few drops as possible. I cannot let my opponent decide who goes first but even bringing such a setup is no guarantee. If worse comes to worst I have to decide to play overly defensive "around" a double turn and lose slowly or go for it and take my chances in not getting double turned on 2 or 3 (a bit of an over exaggeration but the point still stands). There is regularly nothing that can be done against the double turn except "thoughts and prayers".

The problem is, that the double turn in a vacuum doesn't seem that bad in its current state and some armies are even somewhat resistant to it, but you have to factor in so much more (e.g. scenarios, types of armies, drop counts...).

Either way, it can be really polarizing. From winning hard to losing hard or from winning to outright smashing your opponent, neither of which feels satisfying to me (from the tournament I recently attended, 2/3 of my games were decided by getting or not getting the double turn and drop count). That being said, some interaction besides rolling a die could go a long way.

[XReN]

6 minutes ago, Xasz said:

That being said, some interaction besides rolling a die could go a long way.

I agree