Escalation: A suggestion and discussion

[MidasKiss]

I've been thinking about Escalation a little.

We've played it a few times in store and found it to be a mixed experience. It obviously suits some armies better than others, but it also encourages people to think about their list which is a plus for me, even though I'm in the camp who doesn't enjoy it as much as the other scenarios.

I was curious what the effect would be of changing just one rule though. What if both players had to set up their armies before rolling for priority for each turn?

It seems a the moment in certain matchups / lists, winning priority for turn two lets people bring on some ridiculous amounts of shooting or damage output, which they deploy as far forward as necessary because they know that it's their turn and they have the damage to kill off the enemy so there is very little risk. Often, if the other side has decent range, they will be able to shoot off your larger units that had to deploy turn one, leaving you with a few models to try and contest the objectives against a fully fleshed out force. Player two is also forced to deploy 12" back from wherever the new units were deployed/moved to (often right in the middle of the board) and forces the game to become a bit one sided.

This seems a little boring, at least to me anyways. If it wasn't clear who was going to get priority I think it would be very interesting. People would actually have to think of the risk/rewards of placing their units, placing them super forward would be high risk high reward for many. If you place your gunlines further back then maybe they can't reach the objectives that turn. You would still be limited to not deploying 12" near whatever was down at the end of the previous turn.

Players who have played this / enjoy this scenario, would this rule change make it worse? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Normally I would follow the guideline of waiting far longer and playing more games. But it seems like for many people, including me, Escalation is not very enjoyable compared to the other scenarios and I don't want to really waste my limited time on it.