Discussion: Should shooting be "I go, you go"?

[Shoe]

I was having a discussion with a friend about what rules we would like changed in the future. The concept of "I go, you go" combat came up, and then we compared that to entire turn shooting. On one hand, shooting can only occur during the shooter's turn unless there's an out of phase rule (such as a gryph hound) so compared to combat, shooting happens way less often. 

But on the other hand, an entire army's volley from shooting attacks can pose the situation where a double turn is particularly devastating. We have the sense that shooters fire in volleys that are less frenetic than combat, which we like, but mechanically we don't have the dynamic of shooters trading fire, which is also pretty interesting. 

If shooting were "I go, you go" then winning initiative would still award the player the choice over who gets their hero phase, movement phase, charges and alpha strike for both shooting & combat, but it gives enemy ranged a chance to fire back during the shooting phase. 

So what do you think? Should shooting be "I go, you go" like combat is?

Do you think the impact of this change would be positive or negative?

[Turragor]

I think this requires a bunch of thought. It's a big change.

Think about how it means there's always a double shooting turn for a shooting list and the only way to see any action to counter this is to bring your own shooting units.

Khorne or Ironjawz lists, or lists with fewer shooting units are up against an opponent who gets to shoot each and every turn in the shooting phase double turn or not.

 

 

[Andreas]

I like it. More player interactions and lots of tactics (who shoots first, should I move within range to get and easier charge etc...). But it's a huge change in that you need to make shooting a lot less effective since they would shoot in both player turns ie change warscrolls. I dont think just making them cost would be a good way to do. They would be so expensive and powerful so the game could end up only revolving around who can take out the other players shooting units first.

[Squirrelmaster]

I think the game is currently balanced around each unit getting two rounds of combat for each round of shooting.

In short, you'd have to completely re-write the game from the ground up to make it work.

But yeah, I was playing around with my own ideas for a homebrew game based loosely on WFB and AoS — one of the ideas I liked was to make every phase alternate like this. The movement phase is probably the one where this works the least, but if you give players the option to "pass", and let their opponent go (and the phase ends if both players pass), I think it could work quite well.

[Shoe]

1 hour ago, Turragor said:

I think this requires a bunch of thought. It's a big change.

Think about how it means there's always a double shooting turn for a shooting list and the only way to see any action to counter this is to bring your own shooting units.

Khorne or Ironjawz lists, or lists with fewer shooting units are up against an opponent who gets to shoot each and every turn in the shooting phase double turn or not.

 

 

That's interesting. We were thinking of it as a Call & Response situation - if there's no shooting in the alpha player's army, no shooting happens. They would have to initiate in order for shooting to happen during their turn. I don't know how we reached that conclusion though! 

[Oppenheimer]

Shooting does need to be looked at but I don't think that is the answer. For armies with no shooting (death, Khorne, Ironjaws, daughters of khane, etc) that wouldn't solve their inability to deal with a gun line.

I think the solution is stricter line of sight so you can screen heroes behind infantry. Or look out sir rules.

[Turragor]

3 hours ago, Oppenheimer said:

Shooting does need to be looked at but I don't think that is the answer. For armies with no shooting (death, Khorne, Ironjaws, daughters of khane, etc) that wouldn't solve their inability to deal with a gun line.

I think the solution is stricter line of sight so you can screen heroes behind infantry. Or look out sir rules.

This would in turn have a massive impact on the strength of buff synergistic armies.

It's an interesting debate but I don't think shooting is so strong right now that it requires base mechanics tweaking as opposed to points tax on the most popular ranged units.

Just imo.

8 hours ago, Squirrelmaster said:

I think the game is currently balanced around each unit getting two rounds of combat for each round of shooting.

In short, you'd have to completely re-write the game from the ground up to make it work.

But yeah, I was playing around with my own ideas for a homebrew game based loosely on WFB and AoS — one of the ideas I liked was to make every phase alternate like this. The movement phase is probably the one where this works the least, but if you give players the option to "pass", and let their opponent go (and the phase ends if both players pass), I think it could work quite well.

You mean initiative rolls for phases? I think that is interesting. But again the knock on effects could be many.

8 hours ago, Andreas said:

I like it. More player interactions and lots of tactics (who shoots first, should I move within range to get and easier charge etc...).

This is the part I think is really cool.

[TerrorPenguin]

7 hours ago, Shoe said:

That's interesting. We were thinking of it as a Call & Response situation - if there's no shooting in the alpha player's army, no shooting happens. They would have to initiate in order for shooting to happen during their turn. I don't know how we reached that conclusion though! 

This would encourage larger units of shooting which may not be a bad thing. I would prefer this option as my whole grand alliance has no shooting, so the idea of getting kunnin rukked in their hero phase, shooting phase and then again in my shooting phase is a bit much.

Arguably that's the extreme example, the problem with that situation is that the rukk is broken 

[Davariel]

This sounds a lot like how GW's Lord of the Rings system worked - you rolled for priority each turn to see who went first, then each turn was resolved through "I move, you move", "I shoot, you shoot", then a shared combat phase. It made for some interesting tactical choices - if you shoot first, do you go for the threatening melee troops before they reach you or do you go for the enemy archers so they can't shoot back? However it was also balanced by the corresponding advantages of *moving* second. If you moved second, you knew where the enemy archers were and could hide your units out of range/in cover, and so on. (if you're interested in seeing how such a mechanic might work in practice, I'd recommend checking out LoTR/Hobbit rules and batreps - it's a very underrated ruleset IMO)

However... AoS is obviously a very different system and would probably need major design changes to make such a shooting system viable. Not saying this sort of mechanic wouldn't have advantages or wouldn't be interesting - but if you wanted to get it right you'd probably end making so many changes they resulted in a different game entirely!

[RuneBrush]

I think that potentially doubling the amount of shooting an army is capable of could really upset the balance of the game.  Largely the only thing stopping a unit using a ranged weapon is distance.  True line of sight means that if you can see a unit through another models legs, then you can shoot it.

Having a "both go" style shooting phase would massively increase the number of heroes being sniped off to the detriment of some armies and the benefit of others.  It would also add in even more "thumb twiddling" if your army doesn't contain any ranged models - for normal two player games, both sides get to attack in the Combat Phase, the Shooting Phase is inherently one player.

Hopefully that didn't come across as me being bitter that I don't have much ranged ability in my army!

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

It's a nice train of thought, but it's the core rules so the likelyhood of it being changed is extremely low. 

The main impact of your idea will be to double the damage output of all ranged units in the game. This has such huge implications that would likely require a rework of many other area of the game and all points values for matched play. 

Currently ranged is of similar overall value to melee, you can project damage with impunity for four to five turns generally.

Compared to combat where you probably could get more overall turns if you're fast, tough or lucky. But from what I see more than six (three turns) lots of damage per game is about the average. 

Overall the idea could work if you don't play with points, but for the amount of work it would take to make it anywhere near balanced, I would not bother. 

[Ollie Grimwood]

Ive always like the idea of having the whole game with alternating units in each battle phase. However the points being made of how the current system moderates the power of shooting in comparison to combat are well made and convincing. I suspect that it's by design rather than accident as well. 

@TerrorPenguin I think it's less the Rukk and more the Arrowboyz themselves the +1 attack in numbers is what really pushes it over the edge, and it is a bit of a strange addition as they removed it for straight up Bonesplitterz Boyz who like Orruks really need it but added to Arrowboyz. 

[KHHaunts]

If we were to change it to that i would want an advantage set in place for when its your turn.

A simply one i can think off is limiting or removing the use of abilities (perhaps not passive buffs, But things like arrow storm. Not sure on that one) when its not your go.

So one players army has a chance to make organised and more powerful strikes during his/her turn while the other player makes quick counter attacks in the form of "Vanilla" shooting.

I feel that this would lend a decent advantage to the pirority with it being OP

[Squirrelmaster]

Hmm… If I was trying to change the existing rules, instead of a total re-write, I think for starters I'd rule that a unit can only make one round of shooting attacks per battle round, to keep some semblance of the existing game balance. If a unit shoots in your turn, it can't shoot in your opponent's and vice-versa sort of thing.

[Sleboda]

13 hours ago, Oppenheimer said:

I think the solution is stricter line of sight so you can screen heroes behind infantry. Or look out sir rules.

The lack of ability to tuck heroes away safely as they advance across the table is one of the best things about AoS compared to Warhammer. 

I like how even big nasty powerful dudes have to fear shooting and spells.  It lets the designers make really outrageous heroes without herohammer becoming a thing. 

I'd not enjoy the game nearly as much with Look Out, Sir rules. 

[RuneBrush]

6 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

The lack of ability to tuck heroes away safely as they advance across the table is one of the best things about AoS compared to Warhammer. 

I like how even big nasty powerful dudes have to fear shooting and spells.  It lets the designers make really outrageous heroes without herohammer becoming a thing. 

I'd not enjoy the game nearly as much with Look Out, Sir rules. 

I'm veering on the other side of this, I actually think it's too easy to snipe off characters with shooting attacks.  Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the hero scale models, 7ft tall Slaughterpriests and the likes.  However it's a bit demoralising when you have every hero model removed by the end of turn two and might not have even got into combat.

In fairness the answer is much more simple than changing the rules - we should all be playing with more line of sight blocking terrain: houses, towers, fortifications, monuments etc.  They create a much more interesting game than a couple copses of trees and some long grass.  I actually think this applies to 40k too, I've had far more enjoyable games when there has been a high saturation of scenery in comparison to a sparse and empty battlefield.

[Sleboda]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

 

In fairness the answer is much more simple than changing the rules - we should all be playing with more line of sight blocking terrain: houses, towers, fortifications, monuments etc.  They create a much more interesting game than a couple copses of trees and some long grass.  I actually think this applies to 40k too, I've had far more enjoyable games when there has been a high saturation of scenery in comparison to a sparse and empty battlefield.

A thousand times this! 

Too many games are stuck in 2 hills, 2 woods, 2 houses, 1 other small feature. 

That was Warhammer, where blocks of troops needed room to maneuver.  AoS has soooo much more freedom, but must tables don't take advantge.

When AoS was first released, a local shop ran demos on awesome, beautiful, dimensional (peaks, valleys, settlements, and more)  scenery that really sold the game.  It was a vision of the new possibilities and it helped me make the metal leap to it being a brand new game, not just The Next Warhammer. 

 

[Oppenheimer]

You're right. More terrain does help, although I still think it's silly to have a 5 wound hero able to be killed by a war machine which doesn't even require line of site.

But, the other problem is that AoS line of scenery is that it usually has big holes in it. My local GW doesn't even let you put on homemade terrain so you're stuck with those hideous Chaos forts as the only really reliable blocking terrain. They need to make the fortified manor again. Or back off with the rules preventing non-GW stuff in their stores.

[daedalus81]

A thought on the problem of extra shooting.  

Current player chooses unit to shoot.

Opposing player may choose a unit to shoot for each enemy unit that does so (still alternating).

Any units that shoots this turn may not shoot next.  A sort of "reload". 

This gives the difficult decision of choosing to shoot closer targets or wait until you enemy moves for a better shot.

[Gauche]

I'm not sure I have a witty solution but I do think something need to be done about the double-turn for Shooting armies. I play a list just like that and against most opponents if I get the double turn the game just ends. Combat is very equal regardless of who has the turn, the active player goes first but it's not that huge. Shooting is all "me" though, so I batter your army and you do nothing to me. Then you get to try and fight with what is left over.

Combine that with shooting into combat, even your own combat, and AoS is a very shooting favored game. That's why I think you see a lot of shooting armies, and a lot of alpha strike armies. Other types of lists have issues and that could definitely be a problem over time unless there's a rules change, or shooting Units start paying a heavy tax for guns.

[daedalus81]

What list are you running?

[wayniac]

I think that all that is needed to fix shooting is to limit it.  True LOS is trash IMHO, you shouldn't be able to shoot something because you see a part of it sticking out.  You shouldn't be able to shoot something behind a forest, or behind another unit.  If AOS can't use base to base measuring like Warmahordes (a 100x better approach IMHO), it needs to use something beyond what it currently is.  I also think you should not be able to shoot out of combat (perhaps into the combat you're engaged in would be fine, but not shoot out of combat at a unit halfway across the board).  The AOS shooting rules are too simple so as to be essentially freeform.

[Gauche]

3 hours ago, daedalus81 said:

What list are you running?

Kunnin' Rukk with additional shooting elements. It's a very powerful list but when you start playing extremely competitive games of AoS you see some of the cracks in the ruleset. I very much support some shooting Units getting a points increase, with Arrowboys being a prime example. That is just my opinion though.

If GW is unwilling to change the rules, which is likely, and want the game to have a competitive future, which they may or may not, then a shooting tax is appropriate. Otherwise the game will continue to revolve around huge shooting lists and huge alpha strike lists. They could add some extremely resilient armies, like Nurgle or maybe the "new" Fyreslayers but that brings its own set of challenges. AoS plays extremely well with minimal shooting elements and a lot of melee which is how Fantasy played for the most part. The problem comes when admitted power gamers like myself recognize the exploitable flaws and...well exploit them. This isn't an issue that would touch MOST players but it will hurt the competitive scene. Comp and other things can augment that, but that's not a topic for this thread.

[TrexPushups]

Regarding the more terrain solution:

Right now I know of 2 non chaos fortresses pieces of terrain that might work:

Ophidian Archway & numinous occulum.

The rest don't even have walls.


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[Veterannoob]

REALLLLLY hope 40K picks this up!