Poll: Double turn

[Gitzdee]

Double turn poll.

Like? Yes, no?

[Ejecutor]

The community have spoken. Now GW would remove double turn:

[Sarouan]

It has spoken indeed.



More seriously, this thread will actually prove nothing, since anyone can vote, there's no real control and no cadre either. It's just random numbers, and you can always twist them to whatever narrative you like.

[Tonhel]

32 minutes ago, Sarouan said:

It has spoken indeed.



More seriously, this thread will actually prove nothing, since anyone can vote, there's no real control and no cadre either. It's just random numbers, and you can always twist them to whatever narrative you like.

Only forum members can vote? So it does say something about the preference of the active forum members. That they play AoS a lot or not, isn't really important.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

For my personal experience, the more I play AoS, the more I appreciate the double turn and the dynamics it creates. It always feels impactful, but has not been the sole deciding factor in any of the games I played in the last 6 months or so.

In pretty much all games, there are two play styles that are naturally strong: Alpha strikes and ranged attacks. This is almost independently of the game in question. Alpha strikes are strong because of Lanchester's laws (even a small advantage in firepower gives you an big advantage when it comes to destroying opposing units; striking first gives you such an advantage by removing units from the opponent's side and the impact of this compounds over time) and ranged has an inherent advantage over melee to the point that ranged units in AoS attack half as often as melee units and cost 1.5 times the points and frequently still feel oppressive. The double turn is a mechanical that weakens both, because it allows the player going second to potentially catch up and makes it so that even slower armies have a chance to cross the gap/get through screens against ranged lists. If the double got removed from AoS as it is currently, I would predict that alpha shooting castles would just completely dominate.

With how priority interacts with list building and deployment (and apparently in 4th, scoring), I feel the mechanic is implemented well and leads to interesting decisions, which is why I overall think it is good to have in the game.

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

I went with 'yes'. It keeps me on my toes, stops me playing every game the same. Is it unfair sometimes? Probably... but bad dice rolls are always unfair. This ain't chess. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

The double turn can be pretty contentious at times, but we should not lose sight of the actual mechanic everyone truly hates: Mysterious terrain.

The one mechanic in AoS that everyone just always ignores without discussion and coordination, even though it's right there in the core rules.

[Satyrical Sophist]

27 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

The double turn can be pretty contentious at times, but we should not lose sight of the actual mechanic everyone truly hates: Mysterious terrain.

The one mechanic in AoS that everyone just always ignores without discussion and coordination, even though it's right there in the core rules.

I was playing a game last week where my opponent asked me about if I cared about terrain and was surprised when I said yes. I was then surprised when he started rolling for mysterious terrain because I had straight up forgotten it was a thing. I meant terrain placement in general. I was playing nurgle and my grand strat was blessed desecration which cares about whether terrain is fully in enemy deployment.

[dmorley21]

Yeah mysterious terrain needs an overhaul. 
 

I like the double turn. I mainly play in leagues where I have taught people AoS and then try to get to two GTs a year. With two young kids, it’s a lot easier for me to take two weekends for AoS gaming a year as opposed to weekly or bi-weekly game nights. 

Like others who play a lot, I find taking the double turn is often worse than giving the turn away unless you truly need it. 

[Sception]

I can't vote on this because my answer is completely binary based on game size.  At 2k, which in theory is the standard game size and should get priority, then yes, I like the double, keep it, at least so long as we're keeping separate player turns at all.  At anything less, though?  In spearhead where new players are likely to first experience the game?  or at 1,000 points which sees a lot more play locally than 2,000 points even among players who have 2k points painted for purely logistical reasons?  then no, I don't like the double in those games, as armies just aren't big enough to fit the tools you need to play around it.

[Grimrock]

I've been playing the game long enough that I'm in the resigned ambivalence towards the double turn. I know how to play around it to the extent that I don't usually just lose to one, but it can definitely still happen and I've definitely won off it far too often. The reason I voted against it however is the overall negative impact it generally tends to have on newer players.

In our little bubble here you'll probably see a lot of people that like it, but outside the bubble the double turn is the most quoted rule I've seen for why people have no interest in the game. It's so completely unintuitive that people hear about it and just shut down completely. To people that have played I go you go games the thought of just going twice in a row with their whole army is frankly ridiculous in concept. 

Not just that but if a new person does give the game a chance it takes quite a while to learn how to be defensive and play around the double turn, which causes a ton of friction. They struggle with list building to account for it, either by taking a battle regiment to take advantage of it or bringing sufficient screening to counter it, or they struggle to anticipate how their opponent might play if they have a potential double. I've seen a lot of new players get frustrated off of getting tabled on a double and sometimes those players just don't come back. 

Basically the hobby needs new players to survive and grow, but I think the double turn has a net negative impact on that growth. It creates this awful hurdle for a lot of new players that just doesn't need to be there. If someone gets past it they can absolutely love the game, but it's too difficult for far too many. 

Edited March 30 by Grimrock

[Sabush]

I dislike the double turn mechanic but I can respect if other people like it. However, for the sake of discussion, here’s why I have issues with it.

1. I feel that it makes lower point games unplayable. I understand that lower point games will never be fully balanced, and I’m fine with that. But losing or winning 90% of the time due to one dice roll is simply a terrible design.

2. It is very punishing for new players. In my experience the DT is the number one complaint from new players, and from people who tried AoS but quit.

3. I think it messes with the verisimilitude and immersion of the game. In a real battle both armies would of course act simultaneously, but this is hard to mimic in a tabletop game. But alternating turns does a better job, in my opinion. Having one army just allowing the other one to do twice as much in the same time just feels off to me.

One argument for DT that I see is very interesting. Its that competive and frequent players generally like the DT when asked. But to me that is obvious, why else would they play it so much? The people who dislike the rule have most likely moved on to other games, so of course they would be a minority at tournaments etc.

The interesting question is then, which players should GW cater to? Should they try and make the current most active players enjoy the game more, or should they try and make the game more attractive to players that don’t currently play AoS (or play a little)?

I think removing the DT would attract more players to AoS. But maybe that’s not only a good thing.

Edited March 30 by Sabush

[Sception]

7 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

Basically the hobby needs new players to survive and grow, but I think the double turn has a net negative impact on that growth. It creates this awful hurdle for a lot of new players that just doesn't need to be there. If someone gets past it they can absolutely love the game, but it's too difficult for far too many. 

This is an important point, and highlights that GW asking the most experienced players for feedback might be the wrong strategy entirely.  Those players are already locked in with big expensive collections, you'd have to ****** up the new edition /incredibly hard/ to drive them away.  Making the game more welcoming to new & inexperienced players specifically, even at the cost of established players, might have been the better call.

Though they're not ignoring the new player experience.  Again, still crossing my fingers hard that GW's devs learned enough from combat patrol for spearhead to be more successful.

[Tonhel]

3 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

The double turn can be pretty contentious at times, but we should not lose sight of the actual mechanic everyone truly hates: Mysterious terrain.

The one mechanic in AoS that everyone just always ignores without discussion and coordination, even though it's right there in the core rules.

😄 I am out of likes, but this is so true! Good one!

[Sception]

So far the two most contentious bits of 3e are staying around - the double turn, which many new & casual players complain about because they feel like the game boils down to a single die roll - not very interactive or narratively engaging - and battle tactics, which some more experienced & competitive players complain about because they feel like the game boils down to some random unit you otherwise wouldn't even want to field because their warscroll sucks doing a backflip in some random corner of the board - not very interactive or narratively engaging.

But the double turn is popular with veteran tournament players, and who are battle tactics popular with?  Not new/casual players who general don't bother with them, and not old/competitive players who complain about them.  No, battle tactics are popular with the devs because its the easiest and safest and most immediately effective way for them to tweak competitive stats.  An army is doing too good?  Make their faction battle tactics impossible and suddenly their win rate at events drops way down.  Some other faction not doing good enough?  Give them a free battle tactic or two and suddenly they're winning competitive games.  A unit isn't being taken enough?  Well fixing their points value or changing their warscroll would be hard and subtle and might not do enough or conversely runs the risk of going too far and suddenly making them too good, but if you leave the unit bad and just tie a free battle tactic to them suddenly people will take them even though they're bad, so usage stats go up without any risk of the unit suddenly dominating games out of nowhere.

I could take or leave the double turn (though lean towards ditching it purely for the barrier to entry it puts in front of new players), but I actively dislike battle tactics.  Both are staying around in 4e though, and being tied together even.

Oh, well.  I'll live.

Edited March 30 by Sception

[Satyrical Sophist]

One thing with the double turn that I’d be interested in seeing/testing resolving would everything coming down to one dice roll, and one that isn’t really interacted with.

I wonder whether it would make a difference if it was like warcry. Short summary is that in warcry you roll 6 dice, and separate out singles, doubles, triples and quadruples. The doubles, trips and quads can be spent on abilities. The player with the most singles gets to choose priority. You also get a wild dice each turn to either save or modify your roll. So you could add a single to try and get priority, or turn a single into a double to get an ability (but be less likely to go first).

I really think something like this would feel better, and it also opens up design space for you to interact with it. For example, a hero could add a wild dice, or count as an additional single for example. If you wanted to have an in game representation you could even have stuff like “unit wiped out, add a single to the next priority roll “ or something like that, to represent losses forcing a general to react to stuff.

What bonuses you would give for doubles, trips etc would need to be decided.

i don’t know if this would help, but I feel it might? It feels more significant than “well, this single dice had a huge impact”.

[Adalon]

Yep, I definitely like it. It took getting used to but it rewards good game knowledge. I find it very fun.

[Sarouan]

Results aren't really surprising. The more you play, the more you get used to game mechanisms. TBH, the question asking if you "like" or not wasn't especially the best to choose, which is why I said this poll will prove nothing. "Like" has a lot of different meanings for lots of people, after all.

[Gailon]

12 hours ago, Sception said:

This is an important point, and highlights that GW asking the most experienced players for feedback might be the wrong strategy entirely.  Those players are already locked in with big expensive collections, you'd have to ****** up the new edition /incredibly hard/ to drive them away.  Making the game more welcoming to new & inexperienced players specifically, even at the cost of established players, might have been the better call.

Though they're not ignoring the new player experience.  Again, still crossing my fingers hard that GW's devs learned enough from combat patrol for spearhead to be more successful.

But this also doesn’t consider how important these players are to get new players. My friend and I who play once a week and sometimes twice recruit people into the game we love all the time. 
 

without us no one is getting these people to play Warhammer. We have recruited about 6 people into playing occasionally. 

we love the double turn. I find it essential to keeping the game interesting and random and constantly challenging. 
 

double turn is a barrier to many new players (it was for me), but assuming the ‘whales’ of the game love it, that also helps get new players. 
 

It’s true we are incredibly unlikely to just stop. But we could easily slip away to play a few times a year, and in that case stop recruiting entirely. 

[mojojojo101]

As someone who actually plays the game maybe half a dozen times a year... I love the double turn.

It adds this unpredictability to the game that forces you to make more interesting tactical decisions, especially when moving your models.

When I first started in 2nd edition I hated the double turn, then I played a few games without it and I found the game to be slower, more predictable and found myself playing a predictable, established plan rather than what was on the table in front of me. It just wasn't as fun or interesting. After that I became a huge supporter of the priority roll / double turn.

I will acknowledge though that the pritoity is a hard sell, mostly because its downsides happen in a very obvious and dramatic way, where it's upsides are more subtle and spread through the whole game.

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

1 hour ago, mojojojo101 said:

When I first started in 2nd edition I hated the double turn, then I played a few games without it and I found the game to be slower, more predictable and found myself playing a predictable, established plan rather than what was on the table in front of me. It just wasn't as fun or interesting.

This, exactly. I'm a slacker when it comes to strategy... I've got a tendency to just stick to what I know works. The double turn challenges me and makes me think on my toes. 

Even if the dice like me and I get the double turn, it's not like I go "oh, there's an automatic win for me". I have to think about how to best exploit this piece of luck. That's a challenge in itself. 

[Clan's Cynic]

I've said this on various other threads before, but my point still stands. I've never known as many people get turned off AoS as when they find out or remember that Double Turn is a thing. Ultimately, if you're struggling to get people through the door due to a single mechanic that is already controversial among people actually playing the game, something is up. No amount of "trust me bro, you'll totally get used to it after you've played the game at 2000pts for a while!" is going to convince people who were already looking for an excuse to keep playing 40k or going to another game instead.

I also find the argument that people who dislike Double Turn need to "git good" very much contrary to what I've seen many of the same people try and sell AoS on - that it's a far more accessible, casual friendly, relaxed wargame compared to 40k.

Frankly, if the designers believe Double Turn is this amazing, unique mechanic that all their playtesters and influencers adore, why I have I pretty much never seen anybody pushback or gripe when it's been increasingly neutered every edition going forward? Everybody knows a GW hobbyist's favourite thing to do is complain about basically everything, so it's funny that - anecdotal as my experience may be - watering it down is largely seen as a positive. Why do they feel the need to do that if it's so good as the marketing insists?

Edited March 31 by Clan's Cynic

[Chikout]

57 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:

I've said this on various other threads before, but my point still stands. I've never known as many people get turned off AoS as when they find out or remember that Double Turn is a thing. Ultimately, if you're struggling to get people through the door due to a single mechanic that is already controversial among people actually playing the game, something is up. No amount of "trust me bro, you'll totally get used to it after you've played the game at 2000pts for a while!" is going to convince people who were already looking for an excuse to keep playing 40k or going to another game instead.

I also find the argument that people who dislike Double Turn need to "git good" very much contrary to what I've seen many of the same people try and sell AoS on - that it's a far more accessible, casual friendly, relaxed wargame compared to 40k.

Frankly, if the designers believe Double Turn is this amazing, unique mechanic that all their playtesters and influencers adore, why I have I pretty much never seen anybody pushback or gripe when it's been increasingly neutered every edition going forward? Everybody knows a GW hobbyist's favourite thing to do is complain about basically everything, so it's funny that - anecdotal as my experience may be - watering it down is largely seen as a positive. Why do they feel the need to do that if it's so good as the marketing insists?

I think the thing people like is the priority roll, rather than the double turn specifically. The thing people like is the variability of the turn order, the three moves ahead planning and the risk reward mechanism. Making the double turn less effective doesn't really affect these things, unless it's nerfed to the point of not being effective at all which hasn't happened yet. 

I don't want to make grand assumptions but if someone was to make a ven diagram of "does losing really upset you?" and "do you like the priority roll?", I wonder how close the overlap would be. There are people who really hate randomness, and those who love it. Again I wonder what the overlap would be with this discussion. 

As for the appeal to newcomers, I'd much rather have game be fantastic for  a small audience than be fine for a large audience. There are so many games now even if you don't go outside GW's catalogue, that I think it's actually a positive to have a game that's a bit marmite. GW makes IGOUGO games, fully alternating activating games and AoS. There are also dozens of other games that use a variety of mechanics and many of them are perfectly happy for you to use GW models of that's what you want to do. 

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

On 3/31/2024 at 12:53 PM, Clan's Cynic said:

I've said this on various other threads before, but my point still stands. I've never known as many people get turned off AoS as when they find out or remember that Double Turn is a thing. Ultimately, if you're struggling to get people through the door due to a single mechanic that is already controversial among people actually playing the game, something is up. No amount of "trust me bro, you'll totally get used to it after you've played the game at 2000pts for a while!" is going to convince people who were already looking for an excuse to keep playing 40k or going to another game instead.

I also find the argument that people who dislike Double Turn need to "git good" very much contrary to what I've seen many of the same people try and sell AoS on - that it's a far more accessible, casual friendly, relaxed wargame compared to 40k.

Frankly, if the designers believe Double Turn is this amazing, unique mechanic that all their playtesters and influencers adore, why I have I pretty much never seen anybody pushback or gripe when it's been increasingly neutered every edition going forward? Everybody knows a GW hobbyist's favourite thing to do is complain about basically everything, so it's funny that - anecdotal as my experience may be - watering it down is largely seen as a positive. Why do they feel the need to do that if it's so good as the marketing insists?

I think this is a good point. It would definitely be better for double turn enjoyers to be more enthusiastic about it. I think people are too defensive when talking about the mechanic: For me, it's not just "you get used to it", I actually think it's interesting and fun. I think the game is better for having the priority mechanics it has.

But of course, taking two turns in a row is super strong. And, accordingly, you should have to pay a price to do it. This is already the case right now, by having to take Battle Regiment and being forced to give away the first turn.

I think the new rule where you also can't score a battle tactic is a good addition, too, because I think the double turn has a problem that is mainly psychological: If you are on the receiving end of a double, you feel like you have probably just lost the game. In my experience, that's not actually true most of the time and if you play the game all the way until turn 5, there is always a chance to still win. I hope the fact that the player taking the double needs to give up points to get it will make people feel like they have more of a chance to still win when it happens. Because I think that's how it is in reality.

[Sarouan]

On 3/31/2024 at 12:53 PM, Clan's Cynic said:

I've said this on various other threads before, but my point still stands. I've never known as many people get turned off AoS as when they find out or remember that Double Turn is a thing. Ultimately, if you're struggling to get people through the door due to a single mechanic that is already controversial among people actually playing the game, something is up. No amount of "trust me bro, you'll totally get used to it after you've played the game at 2000pts for a while!" is going to convince people who were already looking for an excuse to keep playing 40k or going to another game instead.

I also find the argument that people who dislike Double Turn need to "git good" very much contrary to what I've seen many of the same people try and sell AoS on - that it's a far more accessible, casual friendly, relaxed wargame compared to 40k.

Frankly, if the designers believe Double Turn is this amazing, unique mechanic that all their playtesters and influencers adore, why I have I pretty much never seen anybody pushback or gripe when it's been increasingly neutered every edition going forward? Everybody knows a GW hobbyist's favourite thing to do is complain about basically everything, so it's funny that - anecdotal as my experience may be - watering it down is largely seen as a positive. Why do they feel the need to do that if it's so good as the marketing insists?

I dunno, when I see new players trying AoS, Double Turn isn't really the turn off : it's more about prices, rule bloat or player's mindset of the community they're playing in (like deemed too "competitive" or too "casual", it really depends where you learned to play TBH).

Remember, when you question the AoS designers to think Double Turn is "this amazing", it also goes both ways : people can also ask why you're so focused on Double Turn being "this bad".

Your post there sounds more like personnal belief about what game mechanism is good or bad than hard data / numbers, and a reaction to the poll numbers not going your way of thinking, IMHO.

Edited April 2 by Sarouan