The Dread Double turn

[mmimzie]

On 12/20/2019 at 3:31 PM, Overread said:

not sure that is true at all considering that you can play games right now and the double turn never appears during the match and nothing goes wrong. You don't have to rebuild any part of the game to remove it because no part of the game actually relies upon it to work. Every part from the turn sequence to the abilities and such all work without a double turn ever happening during a game. 

This I think is the problem anti double turn folks have. 

 

You don't see it as an element that you can interact with as you've said a few times. 

 

You also don't see how little control and one sided this melee base game becomes with out possible doubles. 

 

The double turn should impact how you play your turn and how you build your army.  

 

Your army should have units in it to help defend against doubles, multiple layers of screens, movement shenagens that let you keep units safe, and spells that when cast can make two turns in a row feel terrible. Cheap min sized squads or tough anvil units can make a double turn useless. 

 

Your player should be impacted in that you know what units you are giving the potential to charge you when you move your models. You can controls what units your opponent has access too in his next turn, and you can predict what would happen if they got a double. 

 

I've had games where I charged tanky unit into most of my opponents lies and then gave away a double turn  to let my opponent waste turns spinning his heels. I've seen opponents leave hero's open to double turns when they could have been easily screened by other units. 

 

Without the double turn you can just mindlessly push all your models up the table and if your units are fast you can just move such that you get any charges you want and your opponent gets none.  Armies like deepkin and other very fast glass armies  will dominate the meta. The only thing that keeps them truely honest is if they over commit a double turn could ruin thier game. 

[stratigo]

On 11/26/2019 at 3:07 AM, Sedraxis said:

The double turn is a big part of what makes AoS so good despites it's simplicity. Without it we'd have another 40k style game where winning by tabling an army through mathhammer is easier then actually scoring points through objectives.

The uncertainty of what happens next forces you to make tough decisions instead of autopiloting on track, which makes for a very interesting game.

Besides that, the excitement of that one roll is always fun! Unless it gets overtaken by salt I guess.

I have to ask, why do you and people in general here insist 40k must be an inferior product? It always feels like tribal chest beating to slag off the terrible other who dares to play that other game

[Thamalys]

7 minutes ago, stratigo said:

I have to ask, why do you and people in general here insist 40k must be an inferior product? It always feels like tribal chest beating to slag off the terrible other who dares to play that other game

I play both, and I like them both. They're different games, and I think that's a good thing: it wouldn't be so great to simply swap e.g. Space Marines for Stormcast Eternal and that's it, I enjoy the different mechanics - not just the absence or not of the double turn. Some AoS peculiarities, including the possibility of a double turn, I personally find "better" than 40 K, some others (40 K stratagems are more interesting than command abilities [very personal opinion] and tactical objectives via cards are fantastic fun... the list goes on) I think are "better" in 40 K compared to AoS. Making comparisons is always a bit silly (pears with pears and apples with apples...), I brought in 40 K just to highlight how good the double turn is (again, in my very personal opinion), that's all!

[stratigo]

9 minutes ago, Thamalys said:

I play both, and I like them both. They're different games, and I think that's a good thing: it wouldn't be so great to simply swap e.g. Space Marines for Stormcast Eternal and that's it, I enjoy the different mechanics - not just the absence or not of the double turn. Some AoS peculiarities, including the possibility of a double turn, I personally find "better" than 40 K, some others (40 K stratagems are more interesting than command abilities [very personal opinion] and tactical objectives via cards are fantastic fun... the list goes on) I think are "better" in 40 K compared to AoS. Making comparisons is always a bit silly (pears with pears and apples with apples...), I brought in 40 K just to highlight how good the double turn is (again, in my very personal opinion), that's all!

Sure, you can like both. But so many people hate on 40k with no particular logic or reasoning behind it. Like, the idea that tabling in the first turn is a regular win condition in 40k as compared to aos. Aos which has only continues to increase the importance of alpha strikes, in part because of the double turn. You’re more likely to be tabled in aos than 40k these days if you’re playing on the competitive level

[Kadeton]

6 hours ago, stratigo said:

I have to ask, why do you and people in general here insist 40k must be an inferior product? It always feels like tribal chest beating to slag off the terrible other who dares to play that other game

No doubt for some there's a kind of tribalism, sure. For me personally, it's just an opinion based on my experiences - I've played a lot of 40K, and a lot of other games, and I have a keen interest in game design. 40K feels to me like a dull, clunky system that's very much a relic of old wargame design. Once the course of the game is set, it's almost always a slow grind towards an inevitable conclusion. I imagine a lot of players here would have similar experiences.

That's not to say that 40K can't produce it's own exciting, surprising or hilarious moments, and it still has great models and one of the richest and most interesting settings in all of wargaming, so I totally understand why people stick with it. But I can't play it any more, I get too bored and frustrated by the mechanics to enjoy the game.

[RuneBrush]

14 hours ago, stratigo said:

I have to ask, why do you and people in general here insist 40k must be an inferior product? It always feels like tribal chest beating to slag off the terrible other who dares to play that other game

I think it's the same issue that in other environments people criticise AoS - because the bit that's generally promoted about each hobby is dominated by the competitive side of the game where many of the "flaws" of the game system are laid bare.

That's not me saying that competitive play is bad!  I just think it can show things in a bad light a lot of the time.

[XReN]

Jesus, are we doing this topic AGAIN? XD

I'm going to tell you folks about the game that happened last Sunday, my friend and I were participaiting in 2 vs 2 teams tournament and went against Mawtribes pure Beastclaw with Warclans pure Bonesplitters. I played FEC with a ton of endless spells and my teammate had Seraphon with Gotrek

Our opponents had less drops than us so they were deciding who goes first. Right from deployment stage we decided to gamble on our opponents either taking first turn or not getting double turn. Our opponents got the double turn and we got our asses handed to us.

Why so?

We haven't set up screens properly even though we had the models to set up 2 layers of chaff, instead we went wide - that was a mistake.

I proposed setting up a ghoul king at the front just to hit Savage orks on boars with gemenids turn 1 but in the end decided not to because of possibility that enemy team will take first turn - that was a mistake.

Instead of debuffing those Boar boys with -1 to hit from skink hero we did arrow boys - that was a mistake. 

 

This game could have went differently, instead we overexposed and misplayed our positioning and magic. Getting everything tabled except Gotrek is not the double turn's fault, it's fully on us.

[stratigo]

On 12/23/2019 at 8:48 PM, Kadeton said:

No doubt for some there's a kind of tribalism, sure. For me personally, it's just an opinion based on my experiences - I've played a lot of 40K, and a lot of other games, and I have a keen interest in game design. 40K feels to me like a dull, clunky system that's very much a relic of old wargame design. Once the course of the game is set, it's almost always a slow grind towards an inevitable conclusion. I imagine a lot of players here would have similar experiences.

That's not to say that 40K can't produce it's own exciting, surprising or hilarious moments, and it still has great models and one of the richest and most interesting settings in all of wargaming, so I totally understand why people stick with it. But I can't play it any more, I get too bored and frustrated by the mechanics to enjoy the game.

I mean, I agree with you on all your points. But I dunno why aos is seen as the better game in this regard. It inherited almost all the same problems you just outlined. Gw was too timid to truly innovate the basic structure of the game, and so they added in half measure. One which is just bad, eg the double turn, and one that worked well, eg alternating combats

I’d have adored it if gw had the gumption to really upset the IGUG balance of their main games and done it either the way they did sbg, or done alternating Activations the way almost all more modern war games do these days. But gw has always felt way too conservative a company for that and, honestly on a rules level, I don’t feel their main products have earned the overwhelming success they enjoy. But literally all their specialist games I have played or seen played have been a joy. Either very tightly balanced and competitive, or extremely thematic and wacky. 

[Kadeton]

7 hours ago, stratigo said:

I mean, I agree with you on all your points. But I dunno why aos is seen as the better game in this regard. It inherited almost all the same problems you just outlined. Gw was too timid to truly innovate the basic structure of the game, and so they added in half measure. One which is just bad, eg the double turn, and one that worked well, eg alternating combats

I’d have adored it if gw had the gumption to really upset the IGUG balance of their main games and done it either the way they did sbg, or done alternating Activations the way almost all more modern war games do these days. But gw has always felt way too conservative a company for that and, honestly on a rules level, I don’t feel their main products have earned the overwhelming success they enjoy. But literally all their specialist games I have played or seen played have been a joy. Either very tightly balanced and competitive, or extremely thematic and wacky. 

Heh. It's a valid point.

For me, AoS looks like a team driven by a very conservative design philosophy taking its first tentative steps into a new paradigm. Yeah, a lot of the old clunky stuff is still there, and overall it might be hard to notice what's changed. But I think the changes there have been are significant.

The double turn is a great example of that, but it's probably been talked to death by this point. In brief: yes, it feels a lot like a tentative half-step away from IGYG predictability rather than a brave leap, but even taking that step shows an acknowledgement and understanding of the problem. That's a really important change in perspective, and hopefully suggests better things to come.

Another example is damage allocation. 40K's damage process is a finicky, pedantic, gameable mess that slows down the game, locks weapons into specific roles, promotes certain classes of weapons to be "OP" or "garbage" depending on meta shifts, and thus makes balance even harder to achieve. AoS smoothes all of that out with a dead-simple damage abstraction that transitions away from "What types of enemies is this weapon worthless against?" and towards "How reliable or spiky is this unit's damage output?" It's still got a lot of clunk, but it's a step in a good direction.

Unfortunately, the bigger the game, the more unwilling a big company like GW is going to be to "mess with the formula". They can afford to take a lot more risks and be more experimental with their specialist games (and I think it's worth noting that they experiment simultaneously in different directions - Warcry and Underworlds have taken a very modern route, while Necromunda is a polished-up throwback to earlier times). 40K is their golden goose, so it will always change the slowest. AoS represents the middle ground - small enough to take a few conservative risks, but big enough for GW to sit up and take notice when those risks pay off. Even though it's a long way from perfect, that's why I still think it's important to talk about those elements that do genuinely make the game better (even in small ways) than its big, plodding brother.

[Bayul]

On 12/24/2019 at 10:51 AM, XReN said:

Jesus, are we doing this topic AGAIN? XD

Well, no wonder if the community tries to solve this controversy with anecdotal evidence like your short battle report. I am pretty sure there's more context to your defeat and your opponents made mistakes as well. You are aware that you did not prove anything, right?

What I did not see yet (and probably won't ever) is a deep analysis based on numeric values of a significant number of matches , that might prove that a double turn makes a significant difference. As long as this isn't available this debate stays subjective and we will answer anecdotes with counter-anecdotes and compare apples with oranges.

[XReN]

1 hour ago, Bayul said:

You are aware that you did not prove anything, right?

But I might have influenced someone to re-think how they approach their losed games. We might not have solid data to draw conclusion from, but we certanly can solve the problem without it. Houserule priority rolls out of your local games or swallow it if you want to be competetive player and get better at the game. 

[SleeperAgent]

What about if each person did their phases alternating but there was one shared combat phase? Would that be a better solution? Because I absolutely cannot see the game being balanced like in 40k where the first person always goes first.

[stratigo]

3 hours ago, SleeperAgent said:

What about if each person did their phases alternating but there was one shared combat phase? Would that be a better solution? Because I absolutely cannot see the game being balanced like in 40k where the first person always goes first.

Going first is easier by far to mitigate than a double turn. 
 

but your suggestion is literally just lord of the rings, which is one of gw’s best rulesets