Double turn

[eekamouse]

9 hours ago, Sonnenspeer said:

Or  adapt the WarCry system for AoS:

Each one is rolling 7 (?) dices

The one with the most singles has the priority. Doubles can be used for spells, comand abillitys and summoning, Triples for elite abilities and endless spells.…

 

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.

 

Edited August 20, 2019 by eekamouse

[AverageBoss]

On 8/19/2019 at 9:38 AM, Vextol said:

1. Alternating activation WAS the problem with warhammer fantasy. 

Warhammer Fantasy did not have alternating activation's. At all.

[Vextol]

1 hour ago, AverageBoss said:

Warhammer Fantasy did not have alternating activation's. At all.

Of course.  Sorry.  I meant alternating turns.

[Kasper]

My issue with the double turn comes down to how punchy some armies are. Lets say a FEC player goes last. Buffs his dudes with 3+ attacks, then attacks twice ontop of that with Feeding Frenzy. The rolloff comes up and he wins. Im basically having to deal with him attacking 4 times between my 2 turns. Same with a Keeper getting to fight twice, 2 times in a row.

From my experience very few games last until round 3/4 because of how hard hitting and volatile the armies are with fight double mechanics. At my local VPs are irrelevant, because an army is crushed way before VPs start to matter.

Going second is therefore never a good choice, because by then a large chunck of your army is gone. Very few use meaningful Endless spells that are predatory. 

[Someone2]

1 hour ago, Kasper said:

My issue with the double turn comes down to how punchy some armies are. Lets say a FEC player goes last. Buffs his dudes with 3+ attacks, then attacks twice ontop of that with Feeding Frenzy. The rolloff comes up and he wins. Im basically having to deal with him attacking 4 times between my 2 turns. Same with a Keeper getting to fight twice, 2 times in a row.

From my experience very few games last until round 3/4 because of how hard hitting and volatile the armies are with fight double mechanics. At my local VPs are irrelevant, because an army is crushed way before VPs start to matter.

Going second is therefore never a good choice, because by then a large chunck of your army is gone. Very few use meaningful Endless spells that are predatory. 

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

[Kasper]

1 hour 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

I haven't experienced that you can already win by turn 2 by having too many VPs. We played Gift of Heavens yesterday (I think that's what it is called - The 2 meteors in each zone) and the later the turn, the more VP you earn. This means being wiped early game is 100% a loss since 2 captured points at the end of turn 5 easily outweights all the previous turns really.

I often times give my opponent the first turn in battle round 1, unless I can see that I can snipe something (playing Ironjawz). But it doesn't really matter, this just means that I might end up wrecking his face by getting 2 turns back-to-back without him responding. Again, with how punchy armies are, I feel this is not-so-enjoyable experience at times.

In general I feel it is very rare our games go past turn 3 at my local gaming group. Maybe it is a result of us playing rather punchy armies/lists. I'll admit it can be lack of better play, I just don't really see it. We are not tournament-level players I'll admit as much.

[Battlefury]

I absolutely dislike that mechanic.

it leads to a feeling of being helpless, when the opponent gets that turn. And it is really just due to one single dice roll, that will in most cases determine the entire game, as often core units are just taken out of any oppotunity to do their job.

That being saied, it is like rolling a dice turn one and determining, who the winner is. Important decisions are often not predictable due to that roll, wich gives the game a really big "beer and brezel" feeling, wich I absolutely dislike.
When there is the entire army to be activated, that mechanic should really be abandoned. If it would be alternating activations of one single unit each time, it would be fine.
In other game systems the initiative rolls work much better, and even 40k doesn't have it.

So why do we have?

[Jamopower]

On 8/19/2019 at 4:38 PM, Vextol said:

of games as well.  I believe that Warhammer should be the pinnacle war game, even though that isn't their intention.  Outside traditional board games, which I typically tire of quickly, I haven't seen 'turns' handled well by anyone.  Runewars had a pretty OK system except I found it hard to focus on a legitimate plan when the battlefield changed so dramatically from the start of the phase to the end.  However, I didn't enjoy it.  Don't know why.  I still enjoy Sigmar but I want them to explore much more unique ways of handling  turns.  They need to add an element of some kind to make it more interesting.  Give each player five set rolls numbered 1-5.  You choose your roll for the initiative.  Something like that. 

Alternating activation (i.e. units/detachments move one at a time) games, that have some sort of variation such as chance to react to opponent's activation (such as in Infinity), a randomized turn order (such as in Bolt Action), possibility to continue activating units if you succeed in a roll (such as in Epic, Batman or the various Rampant rulesets) or a semi-random, where e.g. you have a set of cards drawn randomly and you can arrange them to influence which units you want to activate first and which last, tend to work pretty well.

Still as alternating turns is a fundamental part of "Warhammer experience", I doubt that they will ever change it in their core games. Even when it starts to be quite an archaic way compared to newer games.

[pseudonyme]

I hope Meeting engagements and Warcry are they way to accustom the players to new ways

[Kasper]

I don't really believe in alternating activations for AoS. Reports from Warcry are already stating that horde forces have an advantage since you can out-activate your opponent. This could easily be the same for AoS where horde armies can activate random chaff units and force the enemy to move his key units, then capatalize on all of his units being deployed when you still miss doing yours.

 

I really just think they need more incentives to going second even when you have a choice of a double turn.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Kasper

[Jamopower]

That is the main problem with direct one at a time activation alternating between players. Typically this is avoided by allowing the player with less units to pass the activation.

 

For example  in The Batman miniature game, a match where one side has 10+ and the other has 3-5 models to activate works fine with the pass system.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Jamopower

[pseudonyme]

4 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

That is the main problem with direct one at a time activation alternating between players. Typically this is avoided by allowing the player with less units to pass the activation.

 

For example  in The Batman miniature game, a match where one side has 10+ and the other has 3-5 models to activate works fine with the pass system.

Could explain what is the pass system?

[Jamopower]

 

12 minutes ago, pseudonyme said:

Could explain what is the pass system?

The player who has less models/units can pass the activation turn by the number of times the difference between the units is. So in case the other has 10 and the other 5, the player with less models can force the one with higher amount of models to activate the first five before he moves.

 

My current favourite game is Saga, where players play the whole turn at a time, but the activation is more "free" in such way that you usually can't activate all of your units, but you might activate some of them for more times, for which they take fatigue, which is usually a bad thing. That way there is the strategic element of "double turn" in there, but it's not as crucial. Also there are reactions that you can do on the opponent's turn, such as cancel the opponent's actions in certain situations or move your own units on the opponent's turn etc. But everything is related to a resource that is fixed to a board situation. Sounds more complicated than it is, but it makes for a really fun and tactical game.

 

I also like Lord of the Rings system, which is similar to AoS, but you can influence the initiative and break the turn order by might points, that are a limited resource. That gives more skill based element to the game by resource management instead of just risk management. I think command points could function in similar way in AoS.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Jamopower

[pseudonyme]

Thanks.

Even If I think it might be too tedious to manage and would hurt the flow of any game, I like the idea of alternating chunks of army points instead of units.

As an example you could divide the 2000 points in 10 chuncks of 200 points, with the ability to stack the unused points (if you pass or activate a unit of less than 200 points). So in your alternative turn you can either: activate X units which combined are less than 200 points and stack the difference, activate X units which combined are less than 200 points + your stacking points.

I like the idea but I guess the whole game should be rewritten from scratch 😅

The 40k apocalypse rules seems to be pretty fluid also.

 

 

Anyway, I am not against double turn, and as I heard in a more or less recent Warhammer weekly episode, I agree that the excitement of the roll is cool.

[Jamopower]

I believe Epic had a detachment based army building, where a detachment (of multiple units) activates at a time (might confuse the details, as it's been a long time I have played it) and the number of detachments is quite limited forcing the both players to have pretty even number of them.  (I by the way hope quite eagerly that they would eventually reboot Epic.)

But yeah, it would require quite heavy rewriting. I also like the current system as well. It's far better than what was in WHFB and what is in 40k, but maybe some sort of CP based system to break the turn order would be fun and could reduce the downsides.

 

That said, I think one of the main advantages of the Age of Sigmar ruleset is how easy it is to tweak for your tastes (as can also be seen from all the expansions that GW releases themselves for the game).  I can't see much problems house ruling the turn sequence  to following:

Roll of initiative

Hero phase in initiative order for both players

Activation phase where each player activates one unit at a time and moves, runs, shoots and charges with them (I would perhaps allow only two of the above in a turn and give a +1 to hit shooting if the unit doesn't move). The activation could be random (drawing markers from  bag) or there can be passes, or players can be given playing cards for each unit that they put face down on the table and then the units are activated in ascending order by revealing the cards, or whatever the players fancy.

Close combat phase as it is now.

End step where players roll for battleshock, etc. then a new turn.

The major difference on this would be that there are less close combat phases than normally, so maybe a second round of combat should be done to settle the ongoing combats after the first end step.

 

The game would be quite different, don't know if it would be better or worse, but this kind of tricks give the players more "gaming value" out of their models. We played 40k this way for some time and it worked fine.

 

Edited August 21, 2019 by Jamopower

[Vextol]

I could appreciate some form of alternating phases with roll offs for each but unit by unit, activation by activation would become tedious and long.  I definitely don't want that.  But they would need to seriously increase the points of fast units and seriously decrease the points of shooting units.  

Even now though, I can hear people complaining "the charge phase roll is too random!" I believe it would probably be the most important but who knows.

I personally still just like the way it is with the initiative being tactically chosen instead of random.

[pseudonyme]

1 hour ago, Jamopower said:

I believe Epic had a detachment based army building, where a detachment (of multiple units) activates at a time (might confuse the details, as it's been a long time I have played it) and the number of detachments is quite limited forcing the both players to have pretty even number of them.  (I by the way hope quite eagerly that they would eventually reboot Epic.)

But yeah, it would require quite heavy rewriting. I also like the current system as well. It's far better than what was in WHFB and what is in 40k, but maybe some sort of CP based system to break the turn order would be fun and could reduce the downsides.

 

That said, I think one of the main advantages of the Age of Sigmar ruleset is how easy it is to tweak for your tastes (as can also be seen from all the expansions that GW releases themselves for the game).  I can't see much problems house ruling the turn sequence  to following:

Roll of initiative

Hero phase in initiative order for both players

Activation phase where each player activates one unit at a time and moves, runs, shoots and charges with them (I would perhaps allow only two of the above in a turn and give a +1 to hit shooting if the unit doesn't move). The activation could be random (drawing markers from  bag) or there can be passes, or players can be given playing cards for each unit that they put face down on the table and then the units are activated in ascending order by revealing the cards, or whatever the players fancy.

Close combat phase as it is now.

End step where players roll for battleshock, etc. then a new turn.

The major difference on this would be that there are less close combat phases than normally, so maybe a second round of combat should be done to settle the ongoing combats after the first end step.

 

The game would be quite different, don't know if it would be better or worse, but this kind of tricks give the players more "gaming value" out of their models. We played 40k this way for some time and it worked fine.

 

The new 40k Apocalypse rule set is like that. And you could easily transpose that with the Meeting engagements / Warcry detachements.

Also, the Warcry initiative roll would be a good way to control the turn priority roll.

Anyway, talking about alternatives is basically talking about a different game

Edited August 21, 2019 by pseudonyme

[Dead Scribe]

Anyway, talking about alternatives is basically talking about a different game 

That same sentiment was said when people were talking about houseruling things like forests blocking line of sight.  And then forests blocked line of sight in the core rules.  

Alternate ideas are a good thing if they can lead to change that can positively impact the game.  Yes there were people that were very angry at others for suggesting forests should block line of sight, but when they did actually block line of sight we saw that the game worked pretty well and did not explode like was being postulated would happen.

[chord]

Personally I really enjoy the roll off for initiative.  Adds some suspense to a game. 

[Overread]

12 minutes ago, chord said:

Personally I really enjoy the roll off for initiative.  Adds some suspense to a game. 

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.

[Dead Scribe]

I think a lot of people like the double turn simply because it sets AOS apart as its the only game that uses it, and its embraced for that good or bad.

[pseudonyme]

16 minutes ago, chord said:

Personally I really enjoy the roll off for initiative.  Adds some suspense to a game. 

A move for the Warcry initiative roll could be cool because it allows mitigating a little the randomness of the roll. but it works in Warcry because of the wild dice that you can add to secure the priority. Question: what could be the AoS equivalent of the wild dice: a command point?

[Wraith01]

In my local store we don't have any issues with Rolling for initiative every turn. We are either wishing for a double turn or dreading that our opponent will get it. The Randomness of it adds excitement and suspense to the game! I consider it an integral part of AoS.

[XReN]

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.

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? 

[Dead Scribe]

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.