Something I definitely hate from systems like 40k is the alpha strike, we will always lose models that is true but when your opponent just deleted 2+ units from your army before you even have the chance to use them once is really demoralizing and not fun at all
THIS! I would love to see lower damages, lower APs in general for Ravaged Star. Have units hang around long enough to be cool while everything is getting whittled down until it finally crumbles. Or maybe not universally low damage/AP, but those high numbers should feel really special, really unique, and maybe have USRs that specify how or when they apply. This is why I love the Anti-Armor USR. I like units feeling more paper-rock-scissors-y where they are meant to specifically counter other types of units, but don't have stats that make them ubiquitously powerful.
I've not played much IGUG but every argument I hear about it is basically against 40k, and how much damage can be done in that first turn. I'm sure there are ways to plan around it a bit, but I expect the terrain would be a huge part of that?
@@derekgarcia3069 yes but some units are just too big to hide with terrain mostly your very costly tanks and APCs. But with the sheer damage output many armies have it's hard to contend in some cases.
I played Warhammer (Fantasy, 40k and AoS) for the last 25 years - I switched to Onepagerules and recently Bolt Action, and I think Warhammer with it's IGOUGO will not ever get me back at this point. Alternate activation is so much more fun for me. I had my first games in Star Wars Shatterpoint and Sharp Practice just the other day, those activation systems were a bit too random for my taste, but the dice bag from Bolt Action really is the most interesting to me.
I've played a lot of Bolt Action and I do like the system but I don't prefer it to be honest. I actually enjoy the CP-system a lot, and I like thesystem of phases of the turns. Still, Bolt Action is fun.
I combine OPR with random draw like Bolt Action. But your opponent gets an extra point every time they wipe out one of your units. So you can have lots of little units and dominate initiative, but risk giving your opponent too many points. Or you can have fewer bigger groups, trying to deny your enemy points, and making a few big moves. Seems to balance out itself. Also just ignore all the unit limit rules. Whatever group sizes you want are up to you. I've been a fan of random draw mechanics since learning about the 1843 "black bean incident" as a kid in elementary school, so YMMV.
Onepagerules did alternative activation well, as they limit the number of total units you can have depending on how many points you play. It's to stop those spam of cheap activations like you just mentioned. For example in a 2000 point game, you can have a max of 10 individual units, and a max of 4 heroes, and those heroes count towards your max of 10 units. Also to stop spamming the same unit they cap it a max of 3 unit copies.
Kinda, not fully. You won't be able to take 120 models of one unit type, but you can take up to 60 of one unit type, then you could just take 60 more of a different but similar unit type. Which many Horde armies have.@@leesweeney8879
It also means that those playing with 10 activations are inherently at an advantage to those playing with less. Now, the significance of that advantage varies but it is nonetheless present.
I add Bolt Action style random draw to OPR. I also don't worry about group size, though each group wiped out is worth a point at my table. It all seems to balance out in the end.
IMO, I've seen more games use alternate activation with Malifaux, Legion, Marvel Crisis Protocol, OnePageRules and to the extent such as Battletech. And it seems to be a tried and true method with keeping everyone engaged
The way to solve the chaff unit situation us use what Battletech did each players total number of unactivated units is compared, and if one player has more units that player activates two (or three if the difference is quite large) This leaves the tactic of flooding the board with chaff units still viable without making big elite units useless
That makes sense. Warcry was not built on the basis that one side would have a handful of models and the other would have more than a dozen. All the boxsets tailored to it have roughly the same number of models for that reason.
Kill Team solves this pretty well in 2 ways: 1st, chaff units have a 'group activation', where 2 have to be activated one after the other, and that pair will be very roughly equivalent in power to a single elite activation. 2nd, once all your team have activated, you can use overwatches, alternating with your opponents' true activations.
Hey Matt, Fantasy Flight Games brought out a Horus Hersey board game a few years back. The activation system for that was each unit had an initiative value - space Marines =1, Terminators =2, Land Raiders = 3 and Titans = 4. There was an initiative track and each time a player activated a unit they moved their token around track the corresponding amount. Then whoever is behind on the track takes the next turn. Eg, if a player activated a Titan they move along the track 4. Then the next player keeps on taking actions until they are ahead. So they could move a space marine (1), another Space Marine (1) and then a Land Raider (3) for a total of 5. It is then the first players turn to activate a unit. This works very smoothly and allows the player to make tactical decisions - activate a single powerful unit or activate a few small units. (The same unit can activate multiple times in a row)
I am a Fan of Conquest Games by para bellum and there activation system. It involves having unit cards for each unit and then creating a command deck to order your unit activations. Then each player activates one unit at a time after an initiative role. It really is a great game and teh models are improving a great deal.
Our group started playing ASOIAF 3 years ago and a big reason it has grown and remained the top game in our area is bc of alternating activation system of the game. It’s also a 1-2 hour game which is also a big reason.
I haven't played ASOIAF myself (it does look cool) but I will say that total game time is a HUGE factor imo. One thing that makes IGOUGO worse is how long those games seem to always be.
@@nurglerider781 I highly recommend giving it a shot especially if you have someone willing to try it out with you. The barrier of entry is reasonable as every faction has a good starter box. Our local group started with 2 guys and it just started catching on like wildfire as people saw them playing at the FLG.
Yes! I didn't realize how big of a difference a 1.5 hour game is vs a 2.5-3 hour game until I played OPR grimdark. ASOIAF looks like an awesome game, I don't know anyone who plays, but I ever do I'd love to collect some of those mini's and try it
I like the Pass Token system in Malifaux. Each turn you gain Pass Tokens based on the model differential so you can force your opponent to go as many times in a row as you have pass tokens. Since they're calculated at the start of each turn, if you kill a bunch of their chaff, you don't get as many pass tokens. Also, if they summon a unit, you get a pass token. It's not perfect but it helps balance the elite crews vs the chaff/summoner crews. The problem comes when you can generate pass tokens as abilities, that starts to break things - but as a base rule, they're awesome.
I really like the alternate activation system used in Battletech. It's made me think about how you could create an alternate activation system for Warhammer Fantasy, as I think that could be a really interesting way to play that game too.
I like how OPR does it, for competitive play you have force organization rules that limit you from taking too many activations or the same unit too many times (normally activations end up being similar amounts), but if you don’t want to play like that you can ignore force organization, but this would be in a more casual setting so it’s less likely your homie would try to power game it.
My favourite activation system is the Frostgrave alternating style: You start with your wizard + 3 nearby models, then apprentice + 3 and then the rest. So both players are alternating, but going down a hirarchy. Also, if you spread to far, you don't get to activate your important models early since your heroes are out of position.
Stargrave has alternating activations of groups of units, which has some of the benefits of both igoyougo and alternating activations. The priority of the groups being determined by which officer is leading them is definitely something that could be applied to an army scale game.
Hounds of War uses a alternate activation system using a deck of cards. At the top of each turn, commanders receive a number of cards equal to the number of units they command. They then assign the cards to their units giving them a small control of when they activate... Activating ace through king, suits of hearts, spades, diamonds then clubs. Any unit not getting a card doesn't get to go
Something I would suggest looking at is the Middle Earth Strategy battle game. Every round there is an initiative roll and each phase (move, shoot, fight) is I go you go per phase. So your opponent would move then you would then they’d shoot then you would and so on. Additionally heros could use limited resources to break that initiative in a limited area around them.
I prefer alternate activation but I prefer it done by phase. So using 40k as an example, you would alternate activations for the move phase, then shooting, etc. Obviously this means changing things like charging to prevent shenanigins. But the method used by games like Grimdark Future where units alternate activation and do all "phases" or actions are fine but in my experience generally result in just playing whack-a-mole between opponents. You CAN have an overall strategy but it usually isn't going to play out because you end up having to just react constantly. Having said that, I'd rather have GDF's methodology than IGOUGO. In fact the ONLY reason my group is playing 40K 10th rather than GDF is because there are other factors of OPR rulesets we don't like. Your point of damage being done at the end of an alternate activating turn is a superb mechanic that should be used in every alternate activation game. In addition I have to say that your example of alternate activations in Wary Cry, while a problem, I think is less about the game system and more about the player and just how much of a competitive jackass they are. The person you played would never be an opponent again for me. If you need to win so badly you'll game the game system you aren't worth playing against. Finally, while I generally dislike the tokens-in-a-bag or card deck draw systems of unit activation they do meet a design goal that I think a lot of people miss because they care more about "balance" (a completely unrealistic expectation imo) than they do about having exciting/interesting games even if it means they lose. A slightly adjusted version of the famous G.K. Chesterson quote about Croquet; "You will never truly love playing the game until you love being beaten at it." Whatever it's flaws (and of course it has flaws) alternate activation is a superior system simply because it engages both players more evenly, thereby ensuring both have more enjoyment.
The problem that would inevitably occur if we switched to I go you go is that game times would at least double. This would make competitive games pretty much impossible as far as large tournaments go. I play 40K and Kill Team. Kill Team uses the I go you go system with only 10 models at most on each side. Most games of Kill Team I play still take about 2 hours. The first turn Alpha Strike problem in 40K right now has everything to do with lack of line of sight terrain. If your stuff is hiding, your enemy can't shoot you. This is supported by the current win rates amongst 40K factions on the competitive scene.
Very Insightful, thanks for the thought process. Yeah Alternatvive Activation works when the units are relatively of the same power level, it works for KillTeam. But for 40k it's not the same to activate a tank or I don't know an infantry unit. What I envision is to use a pool of command point, and you can use them to activate a unit, but everyone has the same number. That way you could even have elite units that cost 2 to activate. You could even activate multiple time the same unit with a penalty.
I used a system for Warcry when I wanted to play solo. I used playing cards, one side red, the other side black. Each figure was assigned a card, the cards were shuffled, and the cards determined which miniature was activated. Dead characters had their cards removed and the next round began after shuffling. This worked nicely for solo since I only had to determine what to do with the activated character. As a narrative, solo game I enjoyed it.
i prefer a bag of activation tokens, you fill the bag or bags with tokens equal to number of units and then you pull them one at he time till all are gone rinse and repeat, its super fun it works well (if you remember to put in all the activations)
I don't know what rules you are using but a good tweak is to make each unit lost count as one VP to the opposing army. Then you have to balance the number of units versus the number of potential points you want to risk. Seems to work when I tried it with One Page Rules.
For algorithm reasons, you might want to tag in "devlog" It's all about the feeling you're trying to put across to the player! But in general it's pretty clear that the industry as a whole is moving very heavily to AA, so unless you have a really good reason to not be AA, just go with the flow. The Old world rules revealed yesterday confirmed igougo, and yeah, rank and flank makes total sense for that. Anything else? Probably not tbh. But 40k not being AA has to be legacy issues.
@@miniwargaming Devlog is what people developing a game tend to tag their videos with, that's all. This is more common to find video game devlogs, but there are also boardgame devlog channels. So, if you were doing a devlog series, you MIGHT title is something like "Alternating Activations vs I Go You Go | Ravaged Star Devlog 1"
Lately I am really liking the mesbg activation style. Seems a good middle ground between the two systems with the phase based activations and the heroic shanenigans you can alter the flow of activation with.
I like how mythic battles: pantheon does it. Each player during their turn gets to activate a maximum of two characters and each of those get two actions, then there are restricted reactions during other players turn to keep you engaged outside of your turn. Obviously it would need to be scaled up but I also think it has one of the best combats for a dice rolling game as well
The random activation from Bolt Action for me is the most fun and unpredictable. It gives a constant "oh, it's me again!" "Oh, it's you!" Dynamic to the game. That is the most fun. Also, you can argue that is not such a good competitive mechanic, however the competitive argument makes no sense to me in a type of game where random dice rolls determine the outcome of battles. Sure there is a strategic a tactical aspect to these games, lots of braining going on, but I'm sure we all had games where we where losing and due to bad dice rolls from our opponent we won the game and vice versa. So the competiveness argument in these games really makes no much sense to me, and a game should prioritize it's mechanics and the fun the player has for engaging in them.
...by creating a predictable "i go-you go" system, while still better than warhammer, it does lock you into predictiveness as you know whatever your player does you will do something after. This is also great of course, however to me it's alot more fun not knowing if i will be immediately able to react to the adversary as he could pull the next dice. Again to me this keeps me on edge and makes things more unpredictable and fun, as I get that dopamine hit everytime I pull that dice a I go "oh! It's me! :D"
So many times in 40K i have seen the person who goes first, shoot and kill 2-3 units of his opponent. or kill a character/centerpiece and i was left with the thought/feeling : i wonder if it was reverse would the result have been reverse too ? it would also be interesting to see some statistics about player goes first wins or looses. as in how important is it to go first compared to winning ? One thought i had about you go i go 40K system.. what if the player who looses the diceroll for who goes first, gets a 4-5 up save for all his units in the opponents first turn ?? or a variation of this ?
I think bolt action style random single unit activations would be cool if combined with simultaneous damage. So models are removed by both sides at the end of the turn. That way both players are engaged and get to use their all their toys at least once. Edit: I’m looking through the rules, they’re looking good. I’m looking forward to the final version.
Alternative Activation is superior, though I also prefer it with "simultaneous damage" meaning every unit gets to act and all wounds/casualties are applied at the end of the turn.
I agree with your main point - so much depends on the type of game, size of game and even genre you are playing. As a grumpy old man, I must point out that Games Workshop has only been around for about half the history of modern wargaming. ;) There are any number of different activation systems out there including: Dice activation - WRG/DBX style Mass Battle Game: Players take alternate turns. Their armies are split into larger commands each controlled by a general or warlord unit. Each General rolls a die for the number of commands they can give to units in their command, with regular generals rolling an average die: 2,3 Dice activation Too Fat Lardies style - Chain of Command, Sharpe Practice: The starting player rolls and number of dice. The results of the dice determine what the player can do: 1 - activate a team of 1 - 4 men, 2 - activate a squad of 8-10, 3 - active a junior leader who can give 2 commands, 4 activate a senior leader who can give 3 commands, 5 - add 1 point to a dice that lets you do special actions, 0 or 1 6 - player turn ends, 2+ 6's player gets another turn. Straight card draw - this is what Bolt action really is: One card of the appropriate colour for each unit is shuffled into a deck. Draw one card, the player with that colour can activate one unit as they see fit. Card draw with Special Actions as used in The Sword and the Flame, Gruntz, and Wiley Games rules: One colour for each player, shuffle together and draw as above, but Court cards J,Q,K,A have special effects. E.g. Jack of your suit lets you activate one unit _and_ reload the same or a different unit. Specific card draw Too Fat Lardies I Ain't Been Shot Mum WWII company rules and Bag the Hun Air combat rules: A specific card is placed into a deck for each unit. When that card is drawn, that specific unit can activate. Other special cards added to the deck may allow special effects like ace pilots to activate twice, or high firepower weapons like gatling guns or MG42s to fire again. Break Cards: For any of the card draw activation systems, one or more cards can be added to the deck to determine when the turn ends and the cards are reshuffled. Break cards ensure any unit has the same chance of activating in a turn but not all units will activate. Some people like this, some don't. Jokers are common in systems using regular playing cards. Too Fat lardies use "tea break" or similar cards. Initiative: A die roll or similar determines who moves first each turn. There can be modifiers to this role for a better than average general. Usually the rules allow the reacting player to carry out some sort of offensive action like opportunity fire. Other variations are possible as in the Soldiers Companion Colonial / VSF rules where the natives can seize the initiative by declaring a charge by a unit in cover, and keep the initiative by killing more imperialists in hand to hand combat than they lose warriors. Chained activations: Determine who goes first. That player then activates one unit then rolls to activate another usually with modifiers to the roll. They keep going until they fail an activation roll and the other player takes over, the acting player moving back and forth several times. Bidding: A weird one I encountered recently. Each player starts the turn with a number of activations, say 5. The player then bids using these activations to go first, but can only spend their remaining activations to do anything. E.g. bid 4 of your 5 activations and you will almost certainly go first but you will only activate one unit. Bid 0, you will move second but you will have all 5 to use. There are many more but let me close with the granddaddy of all activation systems: Written Orders. These come in many different flavours but I'll give a simple and a more complex version. In the simple version, each turn the players decide what their orders are going to be for the _next_ turn. The current turns movement and fire are carried out, results determined and orders written for turn 3 and so on. Very popular for Age Of Sail Naval and Air Combat Board games where orders might look like 2LC3 - meaning move two hexes, turn to the left one hex side, climb one level and move three more hexes. In the complex version, we're looking at the stereotypical, men in smoking jackets sipping fine brandy, Napoleonics Wargaming (Known to the snobs as "Proper Wargaming") Orders are written out in long hand describing the objectives for each command. The Battle then unfurls majestically as if on autopilot, the Grand Plan affected only by the vagaries of the movement and combat dice rolls. Should a supreme commander decide to redirect his troops, then an appropriately painted messenger figure must be sent across the board carrying those orders, and if he should make it through enemy fire, a roll is typically made to see if the new orders are understood and carried out. Anyway - there was a lot of life before 40k and a lot of innovation since. Dig through history and check out other rules writers, the activation mechanisms are endless.
I love alternating activations, it's way better than GW full turn waiting forever for someone else to do. GW is a models company through and through, the only reason they haven't collapsed is because once in a while they listen to players. I find regular weapon jamming is always bad no matter the system. That bit about WarCry isn't the fault of the game, because he was exploiting it so that they got a more of a turn than you and wasn't playing in the spirit of the game. I love Chess, Chess is a great boardgame and should always be looked at when making a game. For Token pulling, I think separating out tokens makes sense instead After one person has gone the other person has to go. Basically just like chess but I would drop the unit type if it comes to this. Reaction mechanics are good, because it does allow for activating and works IF the reaction uses their actions. I don't want a perfect answer, but I do believe Balance is vital to making the game feel good. And at the end of the day, feeling like you get to play with the toys you bring is the most important thing. Can't wait to Get my Space Dwarves and maybe more Veil Touched.
The main factor of why i like Alternate Activation is the fun factor. you mentioned with larger wargames it does slow it down with alternate/simultaneous. However no one i've met really enjoys the fact that you can lose minis first round and not get to do anything with them. That's not fun, especially something like a psyker or vehicle. Most alternate games it's very hard to kill a unit in 1 activation.
The way to fix the alternative activation being spammed with small units is have a pass option so you activate a unit or pass when both players pass the turn ends
IgoUgo and Alternate Activation are the "granddaddies of them all" - whether they are useful, however, is debatable. There are other systems, however, and they work equally well. Take X-Wing for an example: Each fighter has a single score determining when the fighter is going to move and when it shoots. Knowing these values can make you go for pretty tactical decisions. There are other systems as well .. If I may, I'd like to present two sysems I developed in my skirmishers: In "Whack & Slaughter" you put each Hero's card into a stack. You place that stack with the cards face up. The Hero whose card is on top may act - no matter which player's Hero it is. First thing you do is, you place the Hero's card next to the stack, so you know, which Hero is going to act next. Initiative in W&S thus becomes slightly chaotic with a little bit of control (after all there are at most 8 Heros on the table ..) In "Duel" initiative becomes only interesting, when fighters are facing off each other. Each player places one die hidden, then both players reveal. A lower score means, you may shoot first but are more likely to miss. A higher score means, you have a higher chance of hitting, but if the other player has hit you first, you won't attack at all.. So technically you are bidding for your attack bonus. Initiative here represents the decision you make while going for your gun. Another quite interesting approach has been created in 2 hour wargames, which you play with a regular deck of cards and you draw cards for everything. However, once a joker is drawn, it has to be played as it finishes the turn immediately. No matter what was going on and who was left with soandso many units. This can (and will) cause highly chaotic games, as you always have to take care in some way for the troops left behind, while you still have to look for those ahead. In my eyes, an initiative system strongly depends on what you are going to achieve. (You already said so in the video..) Chess works perfectly with alternate activation, but would be a major mess with IgoUgo allowing each player to move his entire army on his turn. Most other wargames work quite fine with alternate activation systems.
I think it’s sort of more important what twists you put on top of the core skeleton of the game rather than which skeleton you choose. That said, there’s a few concepts I think could be really good here depending on what direction you go. Clan wars had a pretty cool one where you rolled a d10 for initiative of each unit but could adjust that using certain factors such as the command rating of the leader of that unit. The lotr minis game always felt like an improvement on the full army activation of 40k where one army moves, the other moves, then one army shoots, then the other and with various ways of interrupting that order. I also think there’s potential for activation based on what class of unit it is - for example “fast attack” type units would have the most flexibility able to act whenever was most advantageous, while heavy support would be lumbering and predictable (weather or not that means being activated first or last would depend on the rest of the game rules, or maybe its like x wing where agile units move last and shoot first). In any case, one design space that I think could be explored more is the concept of having a relatively straightforward turn system, but each player brings a deck of cards and those cards have your special or reactive abilities that would let your units do extra stuff when played. Regarding the chess like activation, I think there’s a lot of potential there even for unit based games. I would look at working with the idea by having many of the better actions available to units put a “fatigue token” (or two) on the unit that prevents them from using those actions again until the token is removed. So it’s not that you *can’t* activate the same unit back to back, its just that spamming that will usually not be the most effective use of your turn. Removing the tokens could come from activating a different unit offensively to cover them, using the original unit defensively instead of offensively, character abilities, terrain, etc. Or alternatively you could have almost an inverse of the previous idea. Perhaps each unit starts the game with one “blitz” token they can spend once to break the normal activation sequence but once it is spent it is gone forever. There’s lots of design space for defining how many and when you can use the tokens, if certain units get two or none etc.
I definitely agree with you about there's no best activation system because it depends on your goal for the game which system is best. I honestly really like the way things work in Age of Sigmar. I like that it's you go, I go, but the priority mechanic allows for skill expression in regards to whether to take the turn or give it away. I also like how the system changes to alternate activation in combat. Seems like the best of both world in my opinion.
I like what I see so far. The only other game I can recommend with alternate activation that seems interesting is "This is not a Test". Where your 2 actions can be one if you fail your mettle/morale test.
Check the old Rackham's Confrontatión (3.5). They used alternated activation but with cards and if you had high discipline you could hold more cards than the opponent before having to reveal and activate one. Besides, you could activate 2 at same time for comboes. So that army composition counts but it does not interfere too much with the plan of a good general.
Its not a full minatures game, but for the game that it is, memoir 44 has an interesting mechanic of having cards which tell you which part of the board you can make moves - with the card itself telling you how many units you can move
Something I noticed GW getting into with the release of the translocation shroud is the idea of enhanced movement. Taking large, line of sight blocking terrain and enabling a model to move directly through it. Adding, removing, or modifying terrain-I think-is really the next 'stage' of miniature war games. You have an army and the board, and while they do interact the board never really changes. GW did dip their toes into this with wreckage, both in older editions of 40k and the current Horus Heresy, but it could be so much more. Think Baldur's Gate 3 or the Divinity series-games where altering the movement characteristics is vital to a strategic fight. Hard vs soft barriers that challenge both the player and AI on if they want to dedicate resources to going around versus directly through. Systems like this, unique to each army but shared in what they achieve, might add an interesting layer of strategy. To alternate activation versus I go you go, I think that for a large-scale battle, it's better to follow a similar system to what 40K and AoS utilise. A big problem with initiative-based/alternating unit systems is that players can get sucked into the trap of 'reacting rather than responding', i.e., rather than responding to the overall enemy movement, they're reacting to the last action a particular enemy took. For more strategic players this might not be an issue, but for beginners it certainly can be. At the end of a turn in 40K or AoS, the opponent-with exception of course-has large made the majority of impact they'll have on your army. All through their turn you've been thinking about what to do next, how to counter their movements and actions WITH the context of how the entire army is moving-which impacts the actions you'll take on your turn. In my opinion, that enables a far more interesting and strategic game. My main issue with 40K and AoS is how the most interesting unit in your army can be shot off the board on the first turn, before you've had a chance to use it. This can really kill enjoyment for the rest of the game, and makes those centerpiece models essentially have a target on them from the first round on. Not that they shouldn't, but they should be able to have an impact on the game without having to cower behind a building. Damage gates are an interesting way to solve that issue, but rather unfun and takes you out of the immersive roleplaying elements. Maybe something like armor plating that can be chipped away before the important bits below are exposed to direct damage? Some food for thought.
The Issue I've always had with the 40k style I go/you go game is that it ends up too much just waiting for my opponent to tell me how many dice to roll. There's not enough interaction. What I enjoy about Star Wars Legion and Star Wars Armada is that I never have more than a minute or two where I'm not interacting with the game.
I was thinking about this, particularly from the idea of chaotic fog of war game design. Even with the bag approach, if someone builds a horde army, they are still at an advantage for alternate activations. So I was thinking that certain unit types such as "fast" units or "heavy" units could have additional tokens thrown in but for specific actions. If they've already been activated, a fast unit could only do a second move action or possibly a move and limited shooting. Versus the heavy being activated again would allow them to just shoot again. It gives elite armies more "control" than their horde counterparts without taking the chaos out of it. It wouldn't even require that much additional text for instructions. Example for a possible heavy rule: Heavy units provide two tokens into the initiative pool. When a heavy unit is activated beyond the first time, it cannot make a move action other than taking cover.
I like the random nature of a blind draw system like BoltAction as it provides the best balance between approaches. There can still be an element of spamming units for advantage but the draw reduces the impact on the table. The benefits of IGOUGO allows for army-wide control options like a command phase. Introducing a IGOUGO system for command actions (or even your chess example) on top of a blind draw system might be interesting to manage global effects. So long as the system is fun, I don’t really suppose it matters. Experimentation might lead to new innovations. Enjoy the opportunity!
Hello, first thing first , Bravo ! You Did a great job with the minis ! For the aspect of the rules, I must say that, on chest, alternate activation works because you MUST do something with the piece you wan't to play, and you can't do the same moove 3 times in a row, On ravaged star, it could work too if, when you choose a unit, it must do somthing, like, at least, at the choice of the player, go to an objective, fire, go to close combat, or moove in purpose of doing one of thooses things. By this way, no player could do what you discribed. I liked the idea of the bag of token, because it brings the pur aspect of a battelfield on the table : no general can really choose what is going on the battelfield, and luck is the only thing that really matter. But i would do it in a different way, like, activation of the units is alternate, but all "special" effects goes on random in the bag of token, like you can have a boost, but you also can have a nerf, and it goes on the unit you decided to activate, the terrain can have effects, and each turn or phase, you pick an effect in the bag, or whatever is independant of the will of the players. Also, by doing alternate activation or activation by the bag of tokens, it keep the simplicity for bringing more player at the table witch is always more fun. It give's you also the possibility of making Free for all tornaments wich is incredible. Excuse my English, I'm a little frenchy who tries to create is own card game, and which can say that seeing you creating your own wargame fill my heart with pur joy. Wich you the best, keep going like you always did !
Alternate activation. Keep everyone involved at all times. It feels like GW'S additional layers of bs are just covering up the stubborn sticking to igyg. Leading to rules bloat
Alternating activation is 100% better. It keeps both players engaged the entire game. I don't have to stand there for an hour and do nothing but remove my models.
There is the initiative track system. Whoever has the lower initiative, activates a unit, and increase their initiative by the cost of that unit. If they are still the lowest initiative, then they go again. That way if you choose you activate spam minions, you won't actually force your opponent to move their important units until you cross their initiative value. Chad Jensen did this in Fight Formations and then in Downfall. Mind you these are board games, not miniature games, but you could very easily adapt it. Now, you could have the initiative cost be for example tied to the point cost, but that seems fiddly; rather something like based on unit type, so minion 1 point, regular 2, elite 3, monster 5, and general 7 initiative points.
Inferno (Global Games) did something like this. With a small number of figures per player it worked great. There are many things I didn't like in Inferno but the activation system was really interesting.
Thanks for opening the discussion as developer diaries around game design is fascinating. My fav game is Advanced Squad Leader. It uses a hybrid activation approach where its I go you go at the turn level but within each turn there are active player components (prep fire, movement, advancing, advancing fire), passive player components (defensive fire) and mixed (rally, opportunity fire during movement, close combat). In this way, alpha strikes are avoided because the passive defender can fire during the movement phase, and both players are involved in each players' turns. While that rule system is way too complex to incorporate in full for a fun beer and pretzels game, the infantry side and philosophy could be leveraged in ravaged star. And it scales very well for small skirmishes up to battalions of grunts. Great vid, good luck with the launch, you guys are awesome
Great to see you Mat. This is a discussion that is very close to my heart, and for what it they worth here are my thoughts from an amateur board / war / RPG designer… For war-games alternative activation is great, however it tends to only really work better in war-games with very small model counts, and where as in your example you cannot ABUSE the system (with either lots of spam models, or a few incredibly powerful models that dominate when activated). It tends to need a lot more work in balancing to make it work. The opposite end of the scale is the 40k / Warhammer ‘taking turns’ model. The big, BIG advantage of this system is that it is SIMPLE. It walks you through your turn in phases which is very helpful for learning and for structuring your thought process through the turn, and one person does all their stuff then the other person does all their stuff. Rick Priestly himself has said that this structure of the original Warhammer was INCREDIBLY underrated as though it has it’s faults it was easy to learn and easy to play as high model counts, and MADE SENSE to players (My turn, then your turn, then my turn etc etc..). Next we come to the Warmachine/Hordes model, which is taking turns, but each unit can activate in any order. This is an excellent system for tactics and strategy, BUT it is much more complex for casual players, as it is HARDER to visulise your turn and EASIER to make mistakes (Oh i’ve already activated the Iron Fangs so I can’t give them Butcher’s aura bonus!). The big disadvantage of taking turns is that during one guys turn opponent can often feel bored and unengaged with the game, but with alternative activations that never really happens. Finally we come to what I consider the ‘BEST’ system if you can pull it off which is the MESBG system of 'Intertwined Turns’, which is taking turns but with split phases, so I move then you move, then I shoot, then you shoot, then I fight, then you fight etc etc. This is a kind of best of both worlds system, but can also be a WORST of both worlds system as you don’t get the simplicity of full taking turns, nor the full engagement of alternative activations. When you are thinking what to do, it can really help to go back to your design aims. If you want players to feel like their commanding big armies and throwing powerful magic, does Alternative activations really make sense? On the other hand if you want a deep tactical experience with some chaos involved then maybe drawing tokens from a bag to determine order could be an answer.
the game i'm working on, players will have to purchase slots for the units they want to include in their force, only requirements being that there must be a leadership slot for the leader, and 2 slots for objective control units. initiative is determined by a roll off to see who controls the 'first action unit', then an initiative to determine which order all the other units on the board do what they're going to do, determined by which action was selected for that unit to complete before after initiative is rolled. me and my sister tested this, and it alone turned out to be kinda fun in and of its self :)
The boost token are excellent. The token pulling is great in that you can potentially pull all your forces before your opponent (I know how unlikely that is 😂) but, if you pull a boost, you power up any one unit and then your opponent has to draw. Maybe add one more boost in some upcoming test reports.
I would be curious about a different type of alternate activations where it’s done by phase. So I move my whole army then you move your whole army etc.
I think the game is coming along just fine The rules seem easy to understand and I have watched most of all the battle reports that you guys have done for the play testing and honestly can’t wait to get my hands on some of the models to paint and play the game keep up the good work
The game I'm working on now, Early Imperial Romans on the Frontier. Uses alternate activations, and yes on your turn, you CAN activate the same unit several times, it just costs more and more, and they become more and more tired, and fragile. But if you want that one unit on the other side of the table, it can be done.
Thanks for sticking up for I-go-you-go. When I was testing out my board game (Illeria), tried both. I ended up going with alternate activation (for the reasons most people like it better), but it was close. I found that I-go-you-go actually sped up the game significantly. I think it was a combination of the fact that you could do everything at once, you could plan all of your moves at once (rather than reacting to your opponent all the time), and you didn't need to mess around with counters or things to remember who has activated this turn. The new game I'm working on now will have I-go-you-go.
Ever thought a system of I GO-You Go like Conquest or Confrontation? In Which you pile up your unit cards, so you know what comes next but you don't know about the opponent sequence. It might still feel a little about Bolt Action with if the opponent has more units it can activate more times, but if the armies have a relatively same size a difference of one detachment, usually regulars, might not affect that much?
I have been playing Flames of War using Bolt Action Activation Dice and true Overwatch and Opportunity Fire. By true Overwatch I mean a unit is designated as being in Overwatch at the beginning of the turn and does not move, but can fire at any time during the turn, simulating actual battlefield tactics. This has also been designated "Hold Fire" in other rule sets that use order chits. By Opportunity Fire I mean that units that haven't fired yet can fire at a target that becomes visible when your opponent moves. The unit firing Opportunity Fire either uses the stationary Rate of Fire (from FoW) if it hasn't moved or the moving RoF if it has moved or you plan on moving later when activated. These rules prevent units from moving from cover through open terrain to cover, or to run around the your flank without possible repercussions. I use the dice to show the status of the unit. "I Go You Go" acts like your opponent is asleep during your turn. If you use "I Go You Go" I believe you must have some sort of Reaction or Opportunity Fire. Also, you may want to consider different Rates of Fire for moving and stationary units and/or different hit rolls.
I really appreciate this conversation on rules, as a budding game designer myself, I often ponder this dilemma as well. I also like your descriptions of other games that I'm not too familiar with. Thanks.
7:08 interesting idea that. I can imagine a scenario where one player is spending all their turns making a particular unit run away and the other player has to choose to chase after it with a single unit or has to let it get a bit away, but is encircling it with multiple units. Also you can have legitimate guard units who stand around doing nothing, until they have to, rather than the feeling of wasting their turn and potential by being forced to take a turn with them but not doing anything with them.
Could you do an alternating activation system where both sides have a fixed number of activations? And the number changes depending on game size? So no matter how many units each side has, both players activate the same number of times so it encourages you to build your list to match that instead of spamming lots of cheap units? Combined with a force organization chart maybe?
The situation you describe as the idealized alternate activation - without rounds or turns - is actually the system used by Star Wars Shatterpoint. Even if you’re not interested in the game you should check out the rules. They are free online.
Alternate Activation is about a billion times better for balance and fun and for not getting the feeling of " You went fist shot half my army off the table I now have no way of winning, wow much fun" GW is behind the times with game flow. I'm 31 I've played Warhammer from the age of 10 like a lot of people and one thing I've learned is " He who goes first wins " 90% of the time it's that bad. Bolt Action ( random dice pick but still better ) , A song and Ice and Fire, Star Wars Legion are much more enjoyable games because of I go you go , you have a fair shot at having a more balanced game.
Have you guys ever looked at Warcaster: Neomechanika? They do an alternate activation system, but army sizes are generally smaller and you never run the risk of your unit just not doing anything because you can resummon any unit. But, that's very tied to their overall narrative. What do you think about a card/deck based system? You could have a deck of cards that represent activations as well as boosts/reactions and the like, and each player draws a certain number of cards or have a certain hand size, and you can make it alternate activations - but, since it's based on what you draw, you're more limited to what you can activate, but you still have some choice as to what to activate and how to activate them based on your hand. I think it's an interesting thought experiment for an alternate activation that's limited but still tactical. I think you would just have to make sure that you both have a similar deck size (and maybe that's the "points" for army building, too?) - and you could even have the opportunity to double activate units based on the cards that you've put in your deck. Oh, and maybe, if you don't have that unit on the field anymore, you can still play the card in some way as a boost or special action for a different unit? This is all just off the top of my head.
I play Star Wars Armada And its a alternate activation game system for spaceships. In the beginning there was no real issues, but after the introduction of more cheaper units such as flotillas . Activation spam was a real thing. So limitations was introduced for no more than two flotillas + they don't count when checking at the end of an round if there is any enemy/friendly ships left on the table. Still after that, people still tried to out activate their opponent with having more Corvette units or the like in their fleet. Then they introduced activation pass tokens, where the player with the fewest ships would get a number of pass token that was equal to the difference in number of ships between the two sides. This meant that in a crucial turn the out activated player, could through carefull management of his/her pass tokens avoid getting out activated. Once all pass tokens had been spend in one or more rounds, the player with more ships, could then for the rest of the game out activate the other player. All in all I found this crucial change very good for the game, as two ship lists could be more competitive against Multi ship lists, and therefore it improved the balance of the game. 🤔🤔🤔
I like that you mentioned thinking about rounds and whether they are necessary. I know that the randomness of Star Wars Shatterpoint isnt for everyone, but what about a system where you could alternate activating units, but when you run out of activations, you just refresh and start activating again? Even if your opponent still has activations left. Or, if you want to keep the round structure, maybe each player gets a set amount of activations each round. If your army has more units then activations, then not all of them get to go this round. If your army has fewer, then some of them get to go more than once. My problem with IGYG is that it forces players to have to sit around and just wait for way too long for their opponent to do all of their things before getting a chance to actually play the game. Unfortunately, reactions are not enough to fix that engagement issue for me.
I loved watching you guys play the demo game with the tokens in the bag. I feel it added something nice and different to the system. My intro to Wargaming was AoS so I've always loved that activation system, with the double turn and everything. But my favorite activation system I've played is Frostgrave; were it's alternate activation but the Wizard, his apprentice and the captain can each bring along another 2 guys with them, but they act independently and can separate in a way that they can't activate together in a subsequent round.
is it feasible to have both? could it be a strategem costing points, with lowest point total choosing activation type for the game? would alternating group activation ever pose a strategic advantage over IGO alpha strike? seems like it could if the same group could be activated multiple times in a row.
Summoner wars had an interesting way to do it. Players take turns, and a turn has a series of phases: draw, summon, play event cards, movement, attack, build magic. Draw: draw cards until you have 5 in hand. Summon: spend magic points to summon creatures. (Magic points are generated by killing enemy units and discarding cards.) Play event cards: play event cards from your hand. Think of these as stratagems. Movement: move up to 3 of your units. Attack: attack with up to 3 of your units, they don't have to be units you moved this turn. Build magic: discard cards from your hand to generate magic points (these points are used to summon more creatures) Because you can only move and fight with a limited number of units each turn, elite teams still feel elite, and horde teams still feel horde, but neither player has unfair ways to over-activate the other. Probably not the best system ever, but it was pretty fun and worthy of a mention. I like killteam, and alternate activations feels good. They used some great mechanics to mitigate over activations via chaff, and turn 1 alpha strikes are much more limited now.
Gotta give the shoutout to Saga and Chain of Command, both games where players take turns rolling a handful of dice to determine their order pool that they then use to activate various units, with some form of performance penalty to activating the same unit repeatedly on the same turn. In Chain of Commands case the order dice roll even goes so far as to determine when the round will end (which effects things like artillery bombardments and smoke to clear) and can also trigger random events such as shifts in the weather. Very engaging systems that keep you thinking on your toes and can allow for some cool emerging narrative!
love alternate activation. it for sure brings on a series of design challenges, but to me the feeling of always having something to do very soon instead of waiting 20 minutes until your opponents finishes moving his models is priceless. also I do not recommend the chess like activation system. you end up with a bunch of cool dudes sitting in the back of your deployment zone while the most advanced dude just sooms around doing everything most of the times. very hard design space
I have watched the 3 playtest battles that have been posted at this time. I feel the transport rules need work. It seems difficult to make use of a unit that has embarked. Perhaps if a unit onboard activates, the activation goes to the transport and the token goes back in the bag? The support token could be left out of the bag to place on the transport so activations aren't skewed. I feel like debarking taking two actions if rough. Units would practice rapid debarking. It kind of makes sense shooting would be an option after getting out.
How about bringing Unit Initiative stats into it? My suggestion would be Alternate Activation but with an Initiative built into the units - meaning a quick unit has a high Initiative stat and has to be chosen first. For example, my "army" has four units; One quick assassin, Two medium quick infantry squad, One tank. When it's my turn, I'd have to activate my quickest unit, the assassin first. Then my opponent has to activate their quickest unit, and in my next turn I get to chose between my two medium quick infantry units. I hope i managed to convey my thoughts - let me know if i should clarify.
Can't wait to check out your game! I've jumped into AOS and 40k lots of times, full of excitement...only to then get that awful feeling watching my opponent have to stand there for 45 mins while I shoot every one of my units and he can do nothing about it. Alternate activation with a twist is definitely the way to go. Firefight is an amazing system as is Conquest, Last Argument of Kings. The simple idea of units appearing out of the fog is genius. There has to be some mechanic like that at the game's very core.
One fun thing to do, is stand across the table, be honest, and say/ask what do you want to do next, and what would be fair, and ideas to make that happen. Just generically come up with a light system, that can be added to later. It can be either IGUG, or alternating. I prefer the latter, but how many or what can be activated, a unit, or everyone under a single commander?
2 most important things in my opinion are some kind of alternating activation and universal rules like GWs old USRs. Forgive a chaos player saying this but the chaos of each faction having its own names for the same thing is headache inducing for no gain
my absolute favourite activation system is Bolt Actions one. Whilst i completely agree with what you commented as the downsides of the system. I think the downsides are, kind of countered, by a couple of things. -Ambush: you can set a unit to ambush, which means in a future turn, you can interrupt an opponents action which a fire action from the ambushing unit, either damaging and pinning the unit, or i think the player as the option to go down as a reaction to opponent fire, therefore effectively cancelling the move they were making. Yes this means having less orders in the bag, but it also means you have a unit ready to fire as soon as an opponent moves. -Down: You can react to opponent fire by going down. Yes this takes your dice out of the bag, but it makes your squad very hard to hit, meaning they live to fight another turn -Snap to action: If you allocate your order dice to a commander model, you can snap to action and activate additional units nearby. The better your commander, the more units you can activate. Yes again, this takes your order dice out of the bag, but if youve been having bad luck and not getting many activations, when you finally draw your dice, all of a sudden you could be activating 2,3 or 4 units etc. So yes it is very luck based, and you could have situations where you just dont get an activation for ages, but i do feel it has good mechanics in place to "balance" it. Also i feel like it keeps both players attention in the game. If the game is just i go, you go, players can zone out, not really pay attention. But if you have a system where you could always be in a position to do something, Infinity is an excellent example. Then both players will hold their attention longer
You can check Fire and Sword game where inbalance in points beetwen armies is build in game. If you bring more points you can gain additional advatages for example move objective colser to you or enemy cannot move in first turn or even chose more benefitial scenario for you. So you cane take what you want and not be punish for it. It doesnt matter that enemy have 2 activations more.Scenario balance this. Otherwise you can play by D3 or D6 activations
Don't know if there is a system like this, but an IGUG system where everything had an activation value on its datacard. At the start of your turn you generate activation points to activate units, use special abilities, or use on your opponent turn for reactions. These activation points can be saved to activate your slower moving titanic units, but there should be a maximum number of activation points that can be saved.
Any thoughts on Warcaster's alternating activation (one unit and one solo) or Frost grave (Wizard and their models, Appreciate and their models, then remaining models)?
What about Conquest rules where it is alternate activation, but you choose the unit order each round? I think they use cards related to the units, order them top to bottom and then alternatively reveal the card to their opponent and move the unit.
I really like the turn structure of memoir 44 where it is x amount of units in a given area of the board can move as determined by a hand of cards. That said it is on a hex grid and not an open map so it may not translate.
Alternating unit activation is a much more in balanced system. I like the idea of action-reaction, a reacting unit may only do one action, an acting unit may do two. So player 1 selects a unit to activate. Player 1 activates and moves a unit then fires it. Player 2 reacts and may choose to move or fire. Once reaction is done player 2 activates a unit, then player 1 reacts. That’s the basic premise at least. EDIT: damage would be allocated at the same time too
6:30 Warhammer Underworlds has an "activate whatever you want" system. You have four activations, you can spend this on 4 guys or you can absolutely pop off with one guy who is in the right place at the right time. I think it does a really good job of balancing the action economy to let chunky warbands like 3 Stormcast and really spammy warbands like 7 goblins and a squig co-exist.
In the alternate activation (non-randomized, straight-up 'you go, I go' and so on) what you could do to counter the spam issue is that each player has an equal number of activations per turn irrespective of number of units. For instance, you each have 10 activations base and that never changes (very back-of-the-napkin here). Alternatively, each player could get equal activations, with the number of activations per round being pegged to the number of units in the player army that has the most units (i.e. Army A has 12 units, Army B has 7, each round, each army receives 12 activations). From there, you could either let people activate units more than once (that could even be a stat, determining how many actiavtions each individual unit is allowed to receive per round). Or, conversely, all units could only be activated once, but you're allowed to use the extra activations to 'pass', so you can't be spammed. Might even make it more strategic of what you move, when to pass, etc. The activation stat allows for interesting rules, in fact, as you could have a mediocre unit that allows for 2 activations per turn, but if you choose to 'super' activate them, they lose the ability to activate again that round but are able to do a special ability or get a stat boost. As a fan of Gwent, I love bluffing mechanics. Being able to pass or not pass and leaving the opposing player guessing (and vice versa) is such a fun element in that game. Can't think of it just now, but incorporating some sort of bluff mechanic (maybe each side has to preselect activations) could be a lot of fun! In the preselect model, you could even have like a once-per-round swap out, adding another element of anticipation into the game. Good luck, love the channel. I'm in Toronto and have always wanted to come out. I'm a huge 40k setting fan and have been meaning to get into the hobby (hard to find the time). Genuinely inspired by you all out there living your dream and making a living off your passion! Hope some of this helps!
I love the alternate activation of dropfleet commander. Basically, you build your fleet in battlegroups and you can have a maximum of 6 battlegroups in a standard game. In those groups you can choose a few of different groups of ships which each have a number associated to them refering how cumbersome they are to command. Bigger ships have a higher number. Before each turn you stack a deck with cards of your battlegroups and both players show their first card. The player with the lowest command value (those cumbersome numbers added and if groups are not in coherency you add one for example) choose which player goes first to activate that group. It is the best version I've ever tested and if 40k had a similar system I might start playing it more often than once per edition.
I hope someone has reminded you of the Blood and Plunder alternate turns. The type of "bidding" to see who acts next might work well for your balance of control v excitement.
I agree with what you stated. Can your game eventually have different types of play meaning a set of rules for mass battle and another for smaller skirmish play?
I have been developing (integrating) rules for a skirmish game. I am going with alternate activation where it is based on initiative, but with some twists (equal initiative is resolved at the same time, players alternate activations, etc). With a few ways to tweak initiative (spells, wearing armor, etc.). Prevents some of the main cheesing of "pure" alternate activation that you highlighted in the vid. This might not work for a more 40k-type ruleset though...
I'm glad you've called out that I go you go and alternative actions are different, but neither is better. I really liked your warcry example because I did something similar with OPR. one of my friends said "is way more balanced than Warhammer, it can't be broken" Basically Warhammer is only "broken" because there are more people actively trying to break it. The same thing can happen to any game.
You make a good point. I completely see his argument of issues that can happen in Alternate Activations, but it's never been my experience as I just don't play with people that would build a list like that (aka, "Try Hards", lol). If you're a comp player and enter tournaments, I get it; try and break the system as best as possible to your advantage. I (and those I game with) are pretty far from that mindset though, so it's not really an issue. Also, IGUG has the issue of sitting and watching your opponent do their thing for ages and keeping my focus while they do that is near impossible.
I have never played a game where the strategy of "all my models activate last" was a good idea. Almost every game system, getting your moves in early allows you to do the most damage before your opponent.
@@HeadCannonPrime Depends on the game. Battletech, for example, moving last is good as you can adapt to what your opponent does. 40K it's bad for the reason listed above. I'd assume, from my limited experience with Warcry, that going last is good due to a lack of range attacks (I don't play Warcry so this is just a guess). Going last allows the enemy to move into your range, or charge distance, while you kept out of theirs'.
I just cam across Ravaged Star thanks to Midwinter Minis. This makes me think all the way back to the GW video you did a long time ago calling GW out for its pricing and supply issues against smaller independent retailers and how MWG would have to go in a new direction. New direction solved! Create own wargame that is in direct competition with GW! I will 100% be a supporter. I wish you guys all the best and I hope this game will help to break up GW's monopoly in the mini wargaming space.
So cool very appreciate this video it will direct shutdown discussions in the gaming scene between AA and IGYG. So well done in the context of game design. Thanks
I did not go through all comments, was crossfire mentioned? That has a very interesting activation mechanism which seems to be perfect for platoon level wargame
Arena Rex has a great activation system. Player rounds are asymmetric despite model count being the same. A gladiator can either be Ready, Fatigued or Exhausted. At the start of a turn you remove a Fatigue token from one of you models, they can't activate this turn. Then you may activate any other Ready Gladiator. You get a free move, then Fatigue to perform an action or Exhaust to perform two (or a big action). Ready models can also use a Reaction in the opponent's turn at the cost of a Fatigue. Only once all your models are Fatigued/Exhausted do you have what is called a Clear Turn, where you step down each level of Fatigue one step, mount/dismount models and can perform a special bonus ability called a Tactic. So even in a 5v5 game you could just switch between two models each turn while your opponent might heavily exhaust all their models and have more Clear Turns. You could easily apply that to units/squads, maybe have units able to provide continuous effects while inactive such as Guard, Suppressing Fire, etc.
Bolt Action taught me that a randomized activation system takes the game to a new level. It makes you prioritize your actions and plan more. I've been experimenting with using Bolt Action's activation system in 40k.
Something I definitely hate from systems like 40k is the alpha strike, we will always lose models that is true but when your opponent just deleted 2+ units from your army before you even have the chance to use them once is really demoralizing and not fun at all
THIS! I would love to see lower damages, lower APs in general for Ravaged Star. Have units hang around long enough to be cool while everything is getting whittled down until it finally crumbles.
Or maybe not universally low damage/AP, but those high numbers should feel really special, really unique, and maybe have USRs that specify how or when they apply. This is why I love the Anti-Armor USR. I like units feeling more paper-rock-scissors-y where they are meant to specifically counter other types of units, but don't have stats that make them ubiquitously powerful.
And it's always the big tanks that you can't hide so they just obliterate you big expensive tanks immediately.
I've not played much IGUG but every argument I hear about it is basically against 40k, and how much damage can be done in that first turn. I'm sure there are ways to plan around it a bit, but I expect the terrain would be a huge part of that?
@@derekgarcia3069 yes but some units are just too big to hide with terrain mostly your very costly tanks and APCs. But with the sheer damage output many armies have it's hard to contend in some cases.
@paulshealy1863 that makes sense. It's also not ideal to have to setup like that just to avoid loosing a notable chunk of your army turn 1.
I played Warhammer (Fantasy, 40k and AoS) for the last 25 years - I switched to Onepagerules and recently Bolt Action, and I think Warhammer with it's IGOUGO will not ever get me back at this point. Alternate activation is so much more fun for me. I had my first games in Star Wars Shatterpoint and Sharp Practice just the other day, those activation systems were a bit too random for my taste, but the dice bag from Bolt Action really is the most interesting to me.
I've played a lot of Bolt Action and I do like the system but I don't prefer it to be honest. I actually enjoy the CP-system a lot, and I like thesystem of phases of the turns. Still, Bolt Action is fun.
I combine OPR with random draw like Bolt Action.
But your opponent gets an extra point every time they wipe out one of your units.
So you can have lots of little units and dominate initiative, but risk giving your opponent too many points. Or you can have fewer bigger groups, trying to deny your enemy points, and making a few big moves.
Seems to balance out itself.
Also just ignore all the unit limit rules. Whatever group sizes you want are up to you.
I've been a fan of random draw mechanics since learning about the 1843 "black bean incident" as a kid in elementary school, so YMMV.
Look at how Conquest functions they managed to have it be strategic but also has a just enough randomness to make it interesting
Onepagerules did alternative activation well, as they limit the number of total units you can have depending on how many points you play. It's to stop those spam of cheap activations like you just mentioned. For example in a 2000 point game, you can have a max of 10 individual units, and a max of 4 heroes, and those heroes count towards your max of 10 units. Also to stop spamming the same unit they cap it a max of 3 unit copies.
Does stop Horde armies though.
@@leesweeney8879 3x units of 20x models is still 60, but yeah, it can be limiting for armies like orcs
Kinda, not fully. You won't be able to take 120 models of one unit type, but you can take up to 60 of one unit type, then you could just take 60 more of a different but similar unit type. Which many Horde armies have.@@leesweeney8879
It also means that those playing with 10 activations are inherently at an advantage to those playing with less. Now, the significance of that advantage varies but it is nonetheless present.
I add Bolt Action style random draw to OPR. I also don't worry about group size, though each group wiped out is worth a point at my table.
It all seems to balance out in the end.
IMO, I've seen more games use alternate activation with Malifaux, Legion, Marvel Crisis Protocol, OnePageRules and to the extent such as Battletech. And it seems to be a tried and true method with keeping everyone engaged
The way to solve the chaff unit situation us use what Battletech did each players total number of unactivated units is compared, and if one player has more units that player activates two (or three if the difference is quite large)
This leaves the tactic of flooding the board with chaff units still viable without making big elite units useless
That's exactly how I'm doing it in the rules I'm working on.
That makes sense. Warcry was not built on the basis that one side would have a handful of models and the other would have more than a dozen. All the boxsets tailored to it have roughly the same number of models for that reason.
Kill Team solves this pretty well in 2 ways: 1st, chaff units have a 'group activation', where 2 have to be activated one after the other, and that pair will be very roughly equivalent in power to a single elite activation. 2nd, once all your team have activated, you can use overwatches, alternating with your opponents' true activations.
Hey Matt, Fantasy Flight Games brought out a Horus Hersey board game a few years back. The activation system for that was each unit had an initiative value - space Marines =1, Terminators =2, Land Raiders = 3 and Titans = 4. There was an initiative track and each time a player activated a unit they moved their token around track the corresponding amount. Then whoever is behind on the track takes the next turn. Eg, if a player activated a Titan they move along the track 4. Then the next player keeps on taking actions until they are ahead. So they could move a space marine (1), another Space Marine (1) and then a Land Raider (3) for a total of 5. It is then the first players turn to activate a unit. This works very smoothly and allows the player to make tactical decisions - activate a single powerful unit or activate a few small units. (The same unit can activate multiple times in a row)
I am a Fan of Conquest Games by para bellum and there activation system. It involves having unit cards for each unit and then creating a command deck to order your unit activations. Then each player activates one unit at a time after an initiative role. It really is a great game and teh models are improving a great deal.
Conquest really deserves more popularity.
I love the planning and mindgames of conquest, and would love to see it used more
Our group started playing ASOIAF 3 years ago and a big reason it has grown and remained the top game in our area is bc of alternating activation system of the game. It’s also a 1-2 hour game which is also a big reason.
I frickin love asoiaf. Plus you dont have to assemble or clean the minis. They are ready for priming right out the box!
I haven't played ASOIAF myself (it does look cool) but I will say that total game time is a HUGE factor imo. One thing that makes IGOUGO worse is how long those games seem to always be.
@@nurglerider781 I highly recommend giving it a shot especially if you have someone willing to try it out with you. The barrier of entry is reasonable as every faction has a good starter box. Our local group started with 2 guys and it just started catching on like wildfire as people saw them playing at the FLG.
Yes! I didn't realize how big of a difference a 1.5 hour game is vs a 2.5-3 hour game until I played OPR grimdark. ASOIAF looks like an awesome game, I don't know anyone who plays, but I ever do I'd love to collect some of those mini's and try it
I like the Pass Token system in Malifaux. Each turn you gain Pass Tokens based on the model differential so you can force your opponent to go as many times in a row as you have pass tokens. Since they're calculated at the start of each turn, if you kill a bunch of their chaff, you don't get as many pass tokens. Also, if they summon a unit, you get a pass token. It's not perfect but it helps balance the elite crews vs the chaff/summoner crews. The problem comes when you can generate pass tokens as abilities, that starts to break things - but as a base rule, they're awesome.
I really like the alternate activation system used in Battletech. It's made me think about how you could create an alternate activation system for Warhammer Fantasy, as I think that could be a really interesting way to play that game too.
I like how OPR does it, for competitive play you have force organization rules that limit you from taking too many activations or the same unit too many times (normally activations end up being similar amounts), but if you don’t want to play like that you can ignore force organization, but this would be in a more casual setting so it’s less likely your homie would try to power game it.
Kill Team has group activation mechanic so you have to activate 2 of your chaff units one after another so you don't over activate your opponent.
My favourite activation system is the Frostgrave alternating style: You start with your wizard + 3 nearby models, then apprentice + 3 and then the rest. So both players are alternating, but going down a hirarchy. Also, if you spread to far, you don't get to activate your important models early since your heroes are out of position.
Stargrave has alternating activations of groups of units, which has some of the benefits of both igoyougo and alternating activations. The priority of the groups being determined by which officer is leading them is definitely something that could be applied to an army scale game.
Hounds of War uses a alternate activation system using a deck of cards. At the top of each turn, commanders receive a number of cards equal to the number of units they command. They then assign the cards to their units giving them a small control of when they activate... Activating ace through king, suits of hearts, spades, diamonds then clubs. Any unit not getting a card doesn't get to go
Heavy Gear Blitz also does that!
Something I would suggest looking at is the Middle Earth Strategy battle game. Every round there is an initiative roll and each phase (move, shoot, fight) is I go you go per phase. So your opponent would move then you would then they’d shoot then you would and so on. Additionally heros could use limited resources to break that initiative in a limited area around them.
Seconding this system.
I prefer alternate activation but I prefer it done by phase. So using 40k as an example, you would alternate activations for the move phase, then shooting, etc. Obviously this means changing things like charging to prevent shenanigins. But the method used by games like Grimdark Future where units alternate activation and do all "phases" or actions are fine but in my experience generally result in just playing whack-a-mole between opponents. You CAN have an overall strategy but it usually isn't going to play out because you end up having to just react constantly. Having said that, I'd rather have GDF's methodology than IGOUGO. In fact the ONLY reason my group is playing 40K 10th rather than GDF is because there are other factors of OPR rulesets we don't like.
Your point of damage being done at the end of an alternate activating turn is a superb mechanic that should be used in every alternate activation game.
In addition I have to say that your example of alternate activations in Wary Cry, while a problem, I think is less about the game system and more about the player and just how much of a competitive jackass they are. The person you played would never be an opponent again for me. If you need to win so badly you'll game the game system you aren't worth playing against.
Finally, while I generally dislike the tokens-in-a-bag or card deck draw systems of unit activation they do meet a design goal that I think a lot of people miss because they care more about "balance" (a completely unrealistic expectation imo) than they do about having exciting/interesting games even if it means they lose. A slightly adjusted version of the famous G.K. Chesterson quote about Croquet; "You will never truly love playing the game until you love being beaten at it."
Whatever it's flaws (and of course it has flaws) alternate activation is a superior system simply because it engages both players more evenly, thereby ensuring both have more enjoyment.
The problem that would inevitably occur if we switched to I go you go is that game times would at least double. This would make competitive games pretty much impossible as far as large tournaments go. I play 40K and Kill Team. Kill Team uses the I go you go system with only 10 models at most on each side. Most games of Kill Team I play still take about 2 hours. The first turn Alpha Strike problem in 40K right now has everything to do with lack of line of sight terrain. If your stuff is hiding, your enemy can't shoot you. This is supported by the current win rates amongst 40K factions on the competitive scene.
Very Insightful, thanks for the thought process. Yeah Alternatvive Activation works when the units are relatively of the same power level, it works for KillTeam. But for 40k it's not the same to activate a tank or I don't know an infantry unit. What I envision is to use a pool of command point, and you can use them to activate a unit, but everyone has the same number. That way you could even have elite units that cost 2 to activate. You could even activate multiple time the same unit with a penalty.
I used a system for Warcry when I wanted to play solo. I used playing cards, one side red, the other side black. Each figure was assigned a card, the cards were shuffled, and the cards determined which miniature was activated. Dead characters had their cards removed and the next round began after shuffling. This worked nicely for solo since I only had to determine what to do with the activated character. As a narrative, solo game I enjoyed it.
i prefer a bag of activation tokens, you fill the bag or bags with tokens equal to number of units and then you pull them one at he time till all are gone rinse and repeat, its super fun it works well (if you remember to put in all the activations)
I agree, with the caveat that the tokens have to be non-descript so someone cannot "feel" who they are pulling.
I don't know what rules you are using but a good tweak is to make each unit lost count as one VP to the opposing army.
Then you have to balance the number of units versus the number of potential points you want to risk.
Seems to work when I tried it with One Page Rules.
For algorithm reasons, you might want to tag in "devlog"
It's all about the feeling you're trying to put across to the player! But in general it's pretty clear that the industry as a whole is moving very heavily to AA, so unless you have a really good reason to not be AA, just go with the flow.
The Old world rules revealed yesterday confirmed igougo, and yeah, rank and flank makes total sense for that. Anything else? Probably not tbh.
But 40k not being AA has to be legacy issues.
devlog tag added. Why is that significant? I'm curious. :)
@@miniwargaming Devlog is what people developing a game tend to tag their videos with, that's all. This is more common to find video game devlogs, but there are also boardgame devlog channels.
So, if you were doing a devlog series, you MIGHT title is something like "Alternating Activations vs I Go You Go | Ravaged Star Devlog 1"
Lately I am really liking the mesbg activation style. Seems a good middle ground between the two systems with the phase based activations and the heroic shanenigans you can alter the flow of activation with.
As a person with ADHD I hate "I go you go" becouse if I cant do anything for 10minutes i get bored
I like how mythic battles: pantheon does it. Each player during their turn gets to activate a maximum of two characters and each of those get two actions, then there are restricted reactions during other players turn to keep you engaged outside of your turn. Obviously it would need to be scaled up but I also think it has one of the best combats for a dice rolling game as well
The random activation from Bolt Action for me is the most fun and unpredictable. It gives a constant "oh, it's me again!" "Oh, it's you!" Dynamic to the game. That is the most fun.
Also, you can argue that is not such
a good competitive mechanic, however the competitive argument makes no sense to me in a type of game where random dice rolls determine the outcome of battles. Sure there is a strategic a tactical aspect to these games, lots of braining going on, but I'm sure we all had games where we where losing and due to bad dice rolls from our opponent we won the game and vice versa.
So the competiveness argument in these games really makes no much sense to me, and a game should prioritize it's mechanics and the fun the player has for engaging in them.
...by creating a predictable "i go-you go" system, while still better than warhammer, it does lock you into predictiveness as you know whatever your player does you will do something after. This is also great of course, however to me it's alot more fun not knowing if i will be immediately able to react to the adversary as he could pull the next dice. Again to me this keeps me on edge and makes things more unpredictable and fun, as I get that dopamine hit everytime I pull that dice a I go "oh! It's me! :D"
So many times in 40K i have seen the person who goes first, shoot and kill 2-3 units of his opponent. or kill a character/centerpiece and i was left with the thought/feeling : i wonder if it was reverse would the result have been reverse too ? it would also be interesting to see some statistics about player goes first wins or looses. as in how important is it to go first compared to winning ?
One thought i had about you go i go 40K system.. what if the player who looses the diceroll for who goes first, gets a 4-5 up save for all his units in the opponents first turn ?? or a variation of this ?
I think bolt action style random single unit activations would be cool if combined with simultaneous damage. So models are removed by both sides at the end of the turn. That way both players are engaged and get to use their all their toys at least once.
Edit: I’m looking through the rules, they’re looking good. I’m looking forward to the final version.
Alternative Activation is superior, though I also prefer it with "simultaneous damage" meaning every unit gets to act and all wounds/casualties are applied at the end of the turn.
I agree with your main point - so much depends on the type of game, size of game and even genre you are playing.
As a grumpy old man, I must point out that Games Workshop has only been around for about half the history of modern wargaming. ;)
There are any number of different activation systems out there including:
Dice activation - WRG/DBX style Mass Battle Game: Players take alternate turns. Their armies are split into larger commands each controlled by a general or warlord unit. Each General rolls a die for the number of commands they can give to units in their command, with regular generals rolling an average die: 2,3
Dice activation Too Fat Lardies style - Chain of Command, Sharpe Practice: The starting player rolls and number of dice. The results of the dice determine what the player can do: 1 - activate a team of 1 - 4 men, 2 - activate a squad of 8-10, 3 - active a junior leader who can give 2 commands, 4 activate a senior leader who can give 3 commands, 5 - add 1 point to a dice that lets you do special actions, 0 or 1 6 - player turn ends, 2+ 6's player gets another turn.
Straight card draw - this is what Bolt action really is: One card of the appropriate colour for each unit is shuffled into a deck. Draw one card, the player with that colour can activate one unit as they see fit.
Card draw with Special Actions as used in The Sword and the Flame, Gruntz, and Wiley Games rules: One colour for each player, shuffle together and draw as above, but Court cards J,Q,K,A have special effects. E.g. Jack of your suit lets you activate one unit _and_ reload the same or a different unit.
Specific card draw Too Fat Lardies I Ain't Been Shot Mum WWII company rules and Bag the Hun Air combat rules: A specific card is placed into a deck for each unit. When that card is drawn, that specific unit can activate. Other special cards added to the deck may allow special effects like ace pilots to activate twice, or high firepower weapons like gatling guns or MG42s to fire again.
Break Cards: For any of the card draw activation systems, one or more cards can be added to the deck to determine when the turn ends and the cards are reshuffled. Break cards ensure any unit has the same chance of activating in a turn but not all units will activate. Some people like this, some don't. Jokers are common in systems using regular playing cards. Too Fat lardies use "tea break" or similar cards.
Initiative: A die roll or similar determines who moves first each turn. There can be modifiers to this role for a better than average general. Usually the rules allow the reacting player to carry out some sort of offensive action like opportunity fire. Other variations are possible as in the Soldiers Companion Colonial / VSF rules where the natives can seize the initiative by declaring a charge by a unit in cover, and keep the initiative by killing more imperialists in hand to hand combat than they lose warriors.
Chained activations: Determine who goes first. That player then activates one unit then rolls to activate another usually with modifiers to the roll. They keep going until they fail an activation roll and the other player takes over, the acting player moving back and forth several times.
Bidding: A weird one I encountered recently. Each player starts the turn with a number of activations, say 5. The player then bids using these activations to go first, but can only spend their remaining activations to do anything. E.g. bid 4 of your 5 activations and you will almost certainly go first but you will only activate one unit. Bid 0, you will move second but you will have all 5 to use.
There are many more but let me close with the granddaddy of all activation systems: Written Orders. These come in many different flavours but I'll give a simple and a more complex version. In the simple version, each turn the players decide what their orders are going to be for the _next_ turn. The current turns movement and fire are carried out, results determined and orders written for turn 3 and so on. Very popular for Age Of Sail Naval and Air Combat Board games where orders might look like 2LC3 - meaning move two hexes, turn to the left one hex side, climb one level and move three more hexes.
In the complex version, we're looking at the stereotypical, men in smoking jackets sipping fine brandy, Napoleonics Wargaming (Known to the snobs as "Proper Wargaming") Orders are written out in long hand describing the objectives for each command. The Battle then unfurls majestically as if on autopilot, the Grand Plan affected only by the vagaries of the movement and combat dice rolls. Should a supreme commander decide to redirect his troops, then an appropriately painted messenger figure must be sent across the board carrying those orders, and if he should make it through enemy fire, a roll is typically made to see if the new orders are understood and carried out.
Anyway - there was a lot of life before 40k and a lot of innovation since. Dig through history and check out other rules writers, the activation mechanisms are endless.
I love alternating activations, it's way better than GW full turn waiting forever for someone else to do. GW is a models company through and through, the only reason they haven't collapsed is because once in a while they listen to players.
I find regular weapon jamming is always bad no matter the system.
That bit about WarCry isn't the fault of the game, because he was exploiting it so that they got a more of a turn than you and wasn't playing in the spirit of the game.
I love Chess, Chess is a great boardgame and should always be looked at when making a game.
For Token pulling, I think separating out tokens makes sense instead After one person has gone the other person has to go. Basically just like chess but I would drop the unit type if it comes to this.
Reaction mechanics are good, because it does allow for activating and works IF the reaction uses their actions.
I don't want a perfect answer, but I do believe Balance is vital to making the game feel good. And at the end of the day, feeling like you get to play with the toys you bring is the most important thing.
Can't wait to Get my Space Dwarves and maybe more Veil Touched.
The main factor of why i like Alternate Activation is the fun factor. you mentioned with larger wargames it does slow it down with alternate/simultaneous. However no one i've met really enjoys the fact that you can lose minis first round and not get to do anything with them. That's not fun, especially something like a psyker or vehicle. Most alternate games it's very hard to kill a unit in 1 activation.
Following this with GREAT interest. I love you guys and wish you every success.
Great video and really looking forward to the rest of the series!
The way to fix the alternative activation being spammed with small units is have a pass option so you activate a unit or pass when both players pass the turn ends
IgoUgo and Alternate Activation are the "granddaddies of them all" - whether they are useful, however, is debatable.
There are other systems, however, and they work equally well.
Take X-Wing for an example:
Each fighter has a single score determining when the fighter is going to move and when it shoots.
Knowing these values can make you go for pretty tactical decisions.
There are other systems as well .. If I may, I'd like to present two sysems I developed in my skirmishers:
In "Whack & Slaughter" you put each Hero's card into a stack. You place that stack with the cards face up.
The Hero whose card is on top may act - no matter which player's Hero it is.
First thing you do is, you place the Hero's card next to the stack, so you know, which Hero is going to act next.
Initiative in W&S thus becomes slightly chaotic with a little bit of control (after all there are at most 8 Heros on the table ..)
In "Duel" initiative becomes only interesting, when fighters are facing off each other.
Each player places one die hidden, then both players reveal. A lower score means, you may shoot first but are more likely to miss. A higher score means, you have a higher chance of hitting, but if the other player has hit you first, you won't attack at all..
So technically you are bidding for your attack bonus.
Initiative here represents the decision you make while going for your gun.
Another quite interesting approach has been created in 2 hour wargames, which you play with a regular deck of cards and you draw cards for everything.
However, once a joker is drawn, it has to be played as it finishes the turn immediately. No matter what was going on and who was left with soandso many units.
This can (and will) cause highly chaotic games, as you always have to take care in some way for the troops left behind, while you still have to look for those ahead.
In my eyes, an initiative system strongly depends on what you are going to achieve. (You already said so in the video..)
Chess works perfectly with alternate activation, but would be a major mess with IgoUgo allowing each player to move his entire army on his turn.
Most other wargames work quite fine with alternate activation systems.
I think it’s sort of more important what twists you put on top of the core skeleton of the game rather than which skeleton you choose. That said, there’s a few concepts I think could be really good here depending on what direction you go.
Clan wars had a pretty cool one where you rolled a d10 for initiative of each unit but could adjust that using certain factors such as the command rating of the leader of that unit.
The lotr minis game always felt like an improvement on the full army activation of 40k where one army moves, the other moves, then one army shoots, then the other and with various ways of interrupting that order.
I also think there’s potential for activation based on what class of unit it is - for example “fast attack” type units would have the most flexibility able to act whenever was most advantageous, while heavy support would be lumbering and predictable (weather or not that means being activated first or last would depend on the rest of the game rules, or maybe its like x wing where agile units move last and shoot first).
In any case, one design space that I think could be explored more is the concept of having a relatively straightforward turn system, but each player brings a deck of cards and those cards have your special or reactive abilities that would let your units do extra stuff when played.
Regarding the chess like activation, I think there’s a lot of potential there even for unit based games. I would look at working with the idea by having many of the better actions available to units put a “fatigue token” (or two) on the unit that prevents them from using those actions again until the token is removed. So it’s not that you *can’t* activate the same unit back to back, its just that spamming that will usually not be the most effective use of your turn. Removing the tokens could come from activating a different unit offensively to cover them, using the original unit defensively instead of offensively, character abilities, terrain, etc.
Or alternatively you could have almost an inverse of the previous idea. Perhaps each unit starts the game with one “blitz” token they can spend once to break the normal activation sequence but once it is spent it is gone forever. There’s lots of design space for defining how many and when you can use the tokens, if certain units get two or none etc.
I definitely agree with you about there's no best activation system because it depends on your goal for the game which system is best. I honestly really like the way things work in Age of Sigmar. I like that it's you go, I go, but the priority mechanic allows for skill expression in regards to whether to take the turn or give it away. I also like how the system changes to alternate activation in combat. Seems like the best of both world in my opinion.
AoS is a great system. The only change I’d like to see tested is making shooting alternate unit to unit like melee.
I like what I see so far. The only other game I can recommend with alternate activation that seems interesting is "This is not a Test". Where your 2 actions can be one if you fail your mettle/morale test.
Firefight?
I played Reality's Edge and found the randomness of that system so annoying that I didn t want to play anymore.
Check the old Rackham's Confrontatión (3.5). They used alternated activation but with cards and if you had high discipline you could hold more cards than the opponent before having to reveal and activate one. Besides, you could activate 2 at same time for comboes. So that army composition counts but it does not interfere too much with the plan of a good general.
Its not a full minatures game, but for the game that it is, memoir 44 has an interesting mechanic of having cards which tell you which part of the board you can make moves - with the card itself telling you how many units you can move
Alternative activations feels more balanced and allows both players stay engaged rather then either playing taking what feels like an hour turn each.
Something I noticed GW getting into with the release of the translocation shroud is the idea of enhanced movement. Taking large, line of sight blocking terrain and enabling a model to move directly through it. Adding, removing, or modifying terrain-I think-is really the next 'stage' of miniature war games. You have an army and the board, and while they do interact the board never really changes. GW did dip their toes into this with wreckage, both in older editions of 40k and the current Horus Heresy, but it could be so much more. Think Baldur's Gate 3 or the Divinity series-games where altering the movement characteristics is vital to a strategic fight. Hard vs soft barriers that challenge both the player and AI on if they want to dedicate resources to going around versus directly through. Systems like this, unique to each army but shared in what they achieve, might add an interesting layer of strategy.
To alternate activation versus I go you go, I think that for a large-scale battle, it's better to follow a similar system to what 40K and AoS utilise. A big problem with initiative-based/alternating unit systems is that players can get sucked into the trap of 'reacting rather than responding', i.e., rather than responding to the overall enemy movement, they're reacting to the last action a particular enemy took. For more strategic players this might not be an issue, but for beginners it certainly can be. At the end of a turn in 40K or AoS, the opponent-with exception of course-has large made the majority of impact they'll have on your army. All through their turn you've been thinking about what to do next, how to counter their movements and actions WITH the context of how the entire army is moving-which impacts the actions you'll take on your turn. In my opinion, that enables a far more interesting and strategic game.
My main issue with 40K and AoS is how the most interesting unit in your army can be shot off the board on the first turn, before you've had a chance to use it. This can really kill enjoyment for the rest of the game, and makes those centerpiece models essentially have a target on them from the first round on. Not that they shouldn't, but they should be able to have an impact on the game without having to cower behind a building. Damage gates are an interesting way to solve that issue, but rather unfun and takes you out of the immersive roleplaying elements. Maybe something like armor plating that can be chipped away before the important bits below are exposed to direct damage? Some food for thought.
The Issue I've always had with the 40k style I go/you go game is that it ends up too much just waiting for my opponent to tell me how many dice to roll. There's not enough interaction. What I enjoy about Star Wars Legion and Star Wars Armada is that I never have more than a minute or two where I'm not interacting with the game.
I was thinking about this, particularly from the idea of chaotic fog of war game design. Even with the bag approach, if someone builds a horde army, they are still at an advantage for alternate activations. So I was thinking that certain unit types such as "fast" units or "heavy" units could have additional tokens thrown in but for specific actions. If they've already been activated, a fast unit could only do a second move action or possibly a move and limited shooting. Versus the heavy being activated again would allow them to just shoot again. It gives elite armies more "control" than their horde counterparts without taking the chaos out of it. It wouldn't even require that much additional text for instructions. Example for a possible heavy rule: Heavy units provide two tokens into the initiative pool. When a heavy unit is activated beyond the first time, it cannot make a move action other than taking cover.
Tabletop CP tried it in Bolt Action for heavy tanks, second die with limited use
Seemed like a good idea imo
I like the random nature of a blind draw system like BoltAction as it provides the best balance between approaches. There can still be an element of spamming units for advantage but the draw reduces the impact on the table. The benefits of IGOUGO allows for army-wide control options like a command phase. Introducing a IGOUGO system for command actions (or even your chess example) on top of a blind draw system might be interesting to manage global effects. So long as the system is fun, I don’t really suppose it matters. Experimentation might lead to new innovations. Enjoy the opportunity!
Hello, first thing first , Bravo !
You Did a great job with the minis !
For the aspect of the rules, I must say that, on chest, alternate activation works because you MUST do something with the piece you wan't to play, and you can't do the same moove 3 times in a row,
On ravaged star, it could work too if, when you choose a unit, it must do somthing, like, at least, at the choice of the player, go to an objective, fire, go to close combat, or moove in purpose of doing one of thooses things.
By this way, no player could do what you discribed.
I liked the idea of the bag of token, because it brings the pur aspect of a battelfield on the table : no general can really choose what is going on the battelfield, and luck is the only thing that really matter.
But i would do it in a different way, like, activation of the units is alternate, but all "special" effects goes on random in the bag of token, like you can have a boost, but you also can have a nerf, and it goes on the unit you decided to activate, the terrain can have effects, and each turn or phase, you pick an effect in the bag, or whatever is independant of the will of the players.
Also, by doing alternate activation or activation by the bag of tokens, it keep the simplicity for bringing more player at the table witch is always more fun. It give's you also the possibility of making Free for all tornaments wich is incredible.
Excuse my English, I'm a little frenchy who tries to create is own card game, and which can say that seeing you creating your own wargame fill my heart with pur joy.
Wich you the best, keep going like you always did !
Alternate activation. Keep everyone involved at all times. It feels like GW'S additional layers of bs are just covering up the stubborn sticking to igyg. Leading to rules bloat
Alternating activation is 100% better. It keeps both players engaged the entire game. I don't have to stand there for an hour and do nothing but remove my models.
There is the initiative track system. Whoever has the lower initiative, activates a unit, and increase their initiative by the cost of that unit. If they are still the lowest initiative, then they go again. That way if you choose you activate spam minions, you won't actually force your opponent to move their important units until you cross their initiative value. Chad Jensen did this in Fight Formations and then in Downfall. Mind you these are board games, not miniature games, but you could very easily adapt it. Now, you could have the initiative cost be for example tied to the point cost, but that seems fiddly; rather something like based on unit type, so minion 1 point, regular 2, elite 3, monster 5, and general 7 initiative points.
Inferno (Global Games) did something like this. With a small number of figures per player it worked great. There are many things I didn't like in Inferno but the activation system was really interesting.
Thanks for opening the discussion as developer diaries around game design is fascinating. My fav game is Advanced Squad Leader. It uses a hybrid activation approach where its I go you go at the turn level but within each turn there are active player components (prep fire, movement, advancing, advancing fire), passive player components (defensive fire) and mixed (rally, opportunity fire during movement, close combat). In this way, alpha strikes are avoided because the passive defender can fire during the movement phase, and both players are involved in each players' turns. While that rule system is way too complex to incorporate in full for a fun beer and pretzels game, the infantry side and philosophy could be leveraged in ravaged star. And it scales very well for small skirmishes up to battalions of grunts. Great vid, good luck with the launch, you guys are awesome
Great to see you Mat.
This is a discussion that is very close to my heart, and for what it they worth here are my thoughts from an amateur board / war / RPG designer…
For war-games alternative activation is great, however it tends to only really work better in war-games with very small model counts, and where as in your example you cannot ABUSE the system (with either lots of spam models, or a few incredibly powerful models that dominate when activated). It tends to need a lot more work in balancing to make it work.
The opposite end of the scale is the 40k / Warhammer ‘taking turns’ model. The big, BIG advantage of this system is that it is SIMPLE. It walks you through your turn in phases which is very helpful for learning and for structuring your thought process through the turn, and one person does all their stuff then the other person does all their stuff. Rick Priestly himself has said that this structure of the original Warhammer was INCREDIBLY underrated as though it has it’s faults it was easy to learn and easy to play as high model counts, and MADE SENSE to players (My turn, then your turn, then my turn etc etc..).
Next we come to the Warmachine/Hordes model, which is taking turns, but each unit can activate in any order. This is an excellent system for tactics and strategy, BUT it is much more complex for casual players, as it is HARDER to visulise your turn and EASIER to make mistakes (Oh i’ve already activated the Iron Fangs so I can’t give them Butcher’s aura bonus!).
The big disadvantage of taking turns is that during one guys turn opponent can often feel bored and unengaged with the game, but with alternative activations that never really happens.
Finally we come to what I consider the ‘BEST’ system if you can pull it off which is the MESBG system of 'Intertwined Turns’, which is taking turns but with split phases, so I move then you move, then I shoot, then you shoot, then I fight, then you fight etc etc. This is a kind of best of both worlds system, but can also be a WORST of both worlds system as you don’t get the simplicity of full taking turns, nor the full engagement of alternative activations.
When you are thinking what to do, it can really help to go back to your design aims. If you want players to feel like their commanding big armies and throwing powerful magic, does Alternative activations really make sense? On the other hand if you want a deep tactical experience with some chaos involved then maybe drawing tokens from a bag to determine order could be an answer.
the game i'm working on, players will have to purchase slots for the units they want to include in their force, only requirements being that there must be a leadership slot for the leader, and 2 slots for objective control units. initiative is determined by a roll off to see who controls the 'first action unit', then an initiative to determine which order all the other units on the board do what they're going to do, determined by which action was selected for that unit to complete before after initiative is rolled.
me and my sister tested this, and it alone turned out to be kinda fun in and of its self :)
The boost token are excellent. The token pulling is great in that you can potentially pull all your forces before your opponent (I know how unlikely that is 😂) but, if you pull a boost, you power up any one unit and then your opponent has to draw. Maybe add one more boost in some upcoming test reports.
I would be curious about a different type of alternate activations where it’s done by phase. So I move my whole army then you move your whole army etc.
I think the game is coming along just fine The rules seem easy to understand and I have watched most of all the battle reports that you guys have done for the play testing and honestly can’t wait to get my hands on some of the models to paint and play the game keep up the good work
The game I'm working on now, Early Imperial Romans on the Frontier. Uses alternate activations, and yes on your turn, you CAN activate the same unit several times, it just costs more and more, and they become more and more tired, and fragile. But if you want that one unit on the other side of the table, it can be done.
Thanks for sticking up for I-go-you-go.
When I was testing out my board game (Illeria), tried both. I ended up going with alternate activation (for the reasons most people like it better), but it was close. I found that I-go-you-go actually sped up the game significantly. I think it was a combination of the fact that you could do everything at once, you could plan all of your moves at once (rather than reacting to your opponent all the time), and you didn't need to mess around with counters or things to remember who has activated this turn. The new game I'm working on now will have I-go-you-go.
Ever thought a system of I GO-You Go like Conquest or Confrontation? In Which you pile up your unit cards, so you know what comes next but you don't know about the opponent sequence. It might still feel a little about Bolt Action with if the opponent has more units it can activate more times, but if the armies have a relatively same size a difference of one detachment, usually regulars, might not affect that much?
I have been playing Flames of War using Bolt Action Activation Dice and true Overwatch and Opportunity Fire. By true Overwatch I mean a unit is designated as being in Overwatch at the beginning of the turn and does not move, but can fire at any time during the turn, simulating actual battlefield tactics. This has also been designated "Hold Fire" in other rule sets that use order chits. By Opportunity Fire I mean that units that haven't fired yet can fire at a target that becomes visible when your opponent moves. The unit firing Opportunity Fire either uses the stationary Rate of Fire (from FoW) if it hasn't moved or the moving RoF if it has moved or you plan on moving later when activated. These rules prevent units from moving from cover through open terrain to cover, or to run around the your flank without possible repercussions. I use the dice to show the status of the unit. "I Go You Go" acts like your opponent is asleep during your turn. If you use "I Go You Go" I believe you must have some sort of Reaction or Opportunity Fire.
Also, you may want to consider different Rates of Fire for moving and stationary units and/or different hit rolls.
I really appreciate this conversation on rules, as a budding game designer myself, I often ponder this dilemma as well. I also like your descriptions of other games that I'm not too familiar with. Thanks.
7:08 interesting idea that.
I can imagine a scenario where one player is spending all their turns making a particular unit run away and the other player has to choose to chase after it with a single unit or has to let it get a bit away, but is encircling it with multiple units.
Also you can have legitimate guard units who stand around doing nothing, until they have to, rather than the feeling of wasting their turn and potential by being forced to take a turn with them but not doing anything with them.
I am intrigued by the system that Ravaged Star uses, not 100% sold on it but im close.i do really like the miniatures, especially the Gorkog
Could you do an alternating activation system where both sides have a fixed number of activations? And the number changes depending on game size?
So no matter how many units each side has, both players activate the same number of times so it encourages you to build your list to match that instead of spamming lots of cheap units?
Combined with a force organization chart maybe?
The situation you describe as the idealized alternate activation - without rounds or turns - is actually the system used by Star Wars Shatterpoint. Even if you’re not interested in the game you should check out the rules. They are free online.
Alternate Activation is about a billion times better for balance and fun and for not getting the feeling of " You went fist shot half my army off the table I now have no way of winning, wow much fun" GW is behind the times with game flow. I'm 31 I've played Warhammer from the age of 10 like a lot of people and one thing I've learned is " He who goes first wins " 90% of the time it's that bad.
Bolt Action ( random dice pick but still better ) , A song and Ice and Fire, Star Wars Legion are much more enjoyable games because of I go you go , you have a fair shot at having a more balanced game.
Have you guys ever looked at Warcaster: Neomechanika? They do an alternate activation system, but army sizes are generally smaller and you never run the risk of your unit just not doing anything because you can resummon any unit. But, that's very tied to their overall narrative.
What do you think about a card/deck based system? You could have a deck of cards that represent activations as well as boosts/reactions and the like, and each player draws a certain number of cards or have a certain hand size, and you can make it alternate activations - but, since it's based on what you draw, you're more limited to what you can activate, but you still have some choice as to what to activate and how to activate them based on your hand. I think it's an interesting thought experiment for an alternate activation that's limited but still tactical. I think you would just have to make sure that you both have a similar deck size (and maybe that's the "points" for army building, too?) - and you could even have the opportunity to double activate units based on the cards that you've put in your deck. Oh, and maybe, if you don't have that unit on the field anymore, you can still play the card in some way as a boost or special action for a different unit? This is all just off the top of my head.
I play Star Wars Armada
And its a alternate activation game system for spaceships.
In the beginning there was no real issues, but after the introduction of more cheaper units such as flotillas .
Activation spam was a real thing.
So limitations was introduced for no more than two flotillas + they don't count when checking at the end of an round if there is any enemy/friendly ships left on the table.
Still after that, people still tried to out activate their opponent with having more Corvette units or the like in their fleet.
Then they introduced activation pass tokens, where the player with the fewest ships would get a number of pass token that was equal to the difference in number of ships between the two sides.
This meant that in a crucial turn the out activated player, could through carefull management of his/her pass tokens avoid getting out activated.
Once all pass tokens had been spend in one or more rounds, the player with more ships, could then for the rest of the game out activate the other player.
All in all I found this crucial change very good for the game, as two ship lists could be more competitive against Multi ship lists, and therefore it improved the balance of the game.
🤔🤔🤔
I like that you mentioned thinking about rounds and whether they are necessary. I know that the randomness of Star Wars Shatterpoint isnt for everyone, but what about a system where you could alternate activating units, but when you run out of activations, you just refresh and start activating again? Even if your opponent still has activations left.
Or, if you want to keep the round structure, maybe each player gets a set amount of activations each round. If your army has more units then activations, then not all of them get to go this round. If your army has fewer, then some of them get to go more than once.
My problem with IGYG is that it forces players to have to sit around and just wait for way too long for their opponent to do all of their things before getting a chance to actually play the game. Unfortunately, reactions are not enough to fix that engagement issue for me.
Yes, it's always better. More engaging and immersive. I quit 40k becase I got tired of waiting 15+ mins to actually do something
I loved watching you guys play the demo game with the tokens in the bag. I feel it added something nice and different to the system.
My intro to Wargaming was AoS so I've always loved that activation system, with the double turn and everything. But my favorite activation system I've played is Frostgrave; were it's alternate activation but the Wizard, his apprentice and the captain can each bring along another 2 guys with them, but they act independently and can separate in a way that they can't activate together in a subsequent round.
is it feasible to have both? could it be a strategem costing points, with lowest point total choosing activation type for the game? would alternating group activation ever pose a strategic advantage over IGO alpha strike? seems like it could if the same group could be activated multiple times in a row.
Alternatively activations or something like the end stage of Alpha Strike where the damage to both sides are applied at the end.
Summoner wars had an interesting way to do it. Players take turns, and a turn has a series of phases: draw, summon, play event cards, movement, attack, build magic.
Draw: draw cards until you have 5 in hand.
Summon: spend magic points to summon creatures. (Magic points are generated by killing enemy units and discarding cards.)
Play event cards: play event cards from your hand. Think of these as stratagems.
Movement: move up to 3 of your units.
Attack: attack with up to 3 of your units, they don't have to be units you moved this turn.
Build magic: discard cards from your hand to generate magic points (these points are used to summon more creatures)
Because you can only move and fight with a limited number of units each turn, elite teams still feel elite, and horde teams still feel horde, but neither player has unfair ways to over-activate the other. Probably not the best system ever, but it was pretty fun and worthy of a mention.
I like killteam, and alternate activations feels good. They used some great mechanics to mitigate over activations via chaff, and turn 1 alpha strikes are much more limited now.
Gotta give the shoutout to Saga and Chain of Command, both games where players take turns rolling a handful of dice to determine their order pool that they then use to activate various units, with some form of performance penalty to activating the same unit repeatedly on the same turn. In Chain of Commands case the order dice roll even goes so far as to determine when the round will end (which effects things like artillery bombardments and smoke to clear) and can also trigger random events such as shifts in the weather. Very engaging systems that keep you thinking on your toes and can allow for some cool emerging narrative!
love alternate activation. it for sure brings on a series of design challenges, but to me the feeling of always having something to do very soon instead of waiting 20 minutes until your opponents finishes moving his models is priceless. also I do not recommend the chess like activation system. you end up with a bunch of cool dudes sitting in the back of your deployment zone while the most advanced dude just sooms around doing everything most of the times. very hard design space
I have watched the 3 playtest battles that have been posted at this time. I feel the transport rules need work. It seems difficult to make use of a unit that has embarked. Perhaps if a unit onboard activates, the activation goes to the transport and the token goes back in the bag? The support token could be left out of the bag to place on the transport so activations aren't skewed. I feel like debarking taking two actions if rough. Units would practice rapid debarking. It kind of makes sense shooting would be an option after getting out.
How about bringing Unit Initiative stats into it?
My suggestion would be Alternate Activation but with an Initiative built into the units - meaning a quick unit has a high Initiative stat and has to be chosen first.
For example, my "army" has four units; One quick assassin, Two medium quick infantry squad, One tank.
When it's my turn, I'd have to activate my quickest unit, the assassin first.
Then my opponent has to activate their quickest unit, and in my next turn I get to chose between my two medium quick infantry units.
I hope i managed to convey my thoughts - let me know if i should clarify.
Can't wait to check out your game! I've jumped into AOS and 40k lots of times, full of excitement...only to then get that awful feeling watching my opponent have to stand there for 45 mins while I shoot every one of my units and he can do nothing about it. Alternate activation with a twist is definitely the way to go. Firefight is an amazing system as is Conquest, Last Argument of Kings. The simple idea of units appearing out of the fog is genius. There has to be some mechanic like that at the game's very core.
IGOUGO is fine as long as it doesn't give a player an absolutely overwhelming advantage whether they go first or second.
a key part being the scoring is at the end of the turn
One fun thing to do, is stand across the table, be honest, and say/ask what do you want to do next, and what would be fair, and ideas to make that happen. Just generically come up with a light system, that can be added to later. It can be either IGUG, or alternating. I prefer the latter, but how many or what can be activated, a unit, or everyone under a single commander?
2 most important things in my opinion are some kind of alternating activation and universal rules like GWs old USRs. Forgive a chaos player saying this but the chaos of each faction having its own names for the same thing is headache inducing for no gain
For real.
“I’m putting these guys on the table with warp strike!”
“What’s that?”
*checks book* “it’s deep strike. But chaos.”
Bruh.
This is GW trying to claim every Word they can as theirs alone no one else can use it.
Like the crap with Space Marine.
my absolute favourite activation system is Bolt Actions one. Whilst i completely agree with what you commented as the downsides of the system. I think the downsides are, kind of countered, by a couple of things.
-Ambush: you can set a unit to ambush, which means in a future turn, you can interrupt an opponents action which a fire action from the ambushing unit, either damaging and pinning the unit, or i think the player as the option to go down as a reaction to opponent fire, therefore effectively cancelling the move they were making. Yes this means having less orders in the bag, but it also means you have a unit ready to fire as soon as an opponent moves.
-Down: You can react to opponent fire by going down. Yes this takes your dice out of the bag, but it makes your squad very hard to hit, meaning they live to fight another turn
-Snap to action: If you allocate your order dice to a commander model, you can snap to action and activate additional units nearby. The better your commander, the more units you can activate. Yes again, this takes your order dice out of the bag, but if youve been having bad luck and not getting many activations, when you finally draw your dice, all of a sudden you could be activating 2,3 or 4 units etc.
So yes it is very luck based, and you could have situations where you just dont get an activation for ages, but i do feel it has good mechanics in place to "balance" it.
Also i feel like it keeps both players attention in the game. If the game is just i go, you go, players can zone out, not really pay attention. But if you have a system where you could always be in a position to do something, Infinity is an excellent example. Then both players will hold their attention longer
You can check Fire and Sword game where inbalance in points beetwen armies is build in game. If you bring more points you can gain additional advatages for example move objective colser to you or enemy cannot move in first turn or even chose more benefitial scenario for you. So you cane take what you want and not be punish for it. It doesnt matter that enemy have 2 activations more.Scenario balance this. Otherwise you can play by D3 or D6 activations
Don't know if there is a system like this, but an IGUG system where everything had an activation value on its datacard. At the start of your turn you generate activation points to activate units, use special abilities, or use on your opponent turn for reactions. These activation points can be saved to activate your slower moving titanic units, but there should be a maximum number of activation points that can be saved.
Any thoughts on Warcaster's alternating activation (one unit and one solo) or Frost grave (Wizard and their models, Appreciate and their models, then remaining models)?
What about Conquest rules where it is alternate activation, but you choose the unit order each round? I think they use cards related to the units, order them top to bottom and then alternatively reveal the card to their opponent and move the unit.
I really like the turn structure of memoir 44 where it is x amount of units in a given area of the board can move as determined by a hand of cards. That said it is on a hex grid and not an open map so it may not translate.
Alternating unit activation is a much more in balanced system. I like the idea of action-reaction, a reacting unit may only do one action, an acting unit may do two. So player 1 selects a unit to activate. Player 1 activates and moves a unit then fires it. Player 2 reacts and may choose to move or fire. Once reaction is done player 2 activates a unit, then player 1 reacts. That’s the basic premise at least. EDIT: damage would be allocated at the same time too
6:30 Warhammer Underworlds has an "activate whatever you want" system. You have four activations, you can spend this on 4 guys or you can absolutely pop off with one guy who is in the right place at the right time.
I think it does a really good job of balancing the action economy to let chunky warbands like 3 Stormcast and really spammy warbands like 7 goblins and a squig co-exist.
In the alternate activation (non-randomized, straight-up 'you go, I go' and so on) what you could do to counter the spam issue is that each player has an equal number of activations per turn irrespective of number of units. For instance, you each have 10 activations base and that never changes (very back-of-the-napkin here). Alternatively, each player could get equal activations, with the number of activations per round being pegged to the number of units in the player army that has the most units (i.e. Army A has 12 units, Army B has 7, each round, each army receives 12 activations).
From there, you could either let people activate units more than once (that could even be a stat, determining how many actiavtions each individual unit is allowed to receive per round). Or, conversely, all units could only be activated once, but you're allowed to use the extra activations to 'pass', so you can't be spammed. Might even make it more strategic of what you move, when to pass, etc. The activation stat allows for interesting rules, in fact, as you could have a mediocre unit that allows for 2 activations per turn, but if you choose to 'super' activate them, they lose the ability to activate again that round but are able to do a special ability or get a stat boost.
As a fan of Gwent, I love bluffing mechanics. Being able to pass or not pass and leaving the opposing player guessing (and vice versa) is such a fun element in that game. Can't think of it just now, but incorporating some sort of bluff mechanic (maybe each side has to preselect activations) could be a lot of fun! In the preselect model, you could even have like a once-per-round swap out, adding another element of anticipation into the game.
Good luck, love the channel. I'm in Toronto and have always wanted to come out. I'm a huge 40k setting fan and have been meaning to get into the hobby (hard to find the time). Genuinely inspired by you all out there living your dream and making a living off your passion!
Hope some of this helps!
I love the alternate activation of dropfleet commander. Basically, you build your fleet in battlegroups and you can have a maximum of 6 battlegroups in a standard game. In those groups you can choose a few of different groups of ships which each have a number associated to them refering how cumbersome they are to command. Bigger ships have a higher number.
Before each turn you stack a deck with cards of your battlegroups and both players show their first card. The player with the lowest command value (those cumbersome numbers added and if groups are not in coherency you add one for example) choose which player goes first to activate that group.
It is the best version I've ever tested and if 40k had a similar system I might start playing it more often than once per edition.
I hope someone has reminded you of the Blood and Plunder alternate turns. The type of "bidding" to see who acts next might work well for your balance of control v excitement.
I agree with what you stated. Can your game eventually have different types of play meaning a set of rules for mass battle and another for smaller skirmish play?
I have been developing (integrating) rules for a skirmish game. I am going with alternate activation where it is based on initiative, but with some twists (equal initiative is resolved at the same time, players alternate activations, etc). With a few ways to tweak initiative (spells, wearing armor, etc.). Prevents some of the main cheesing of "pure" alternate activation that you highlighted in the vid.
This might not work for a more 40k-type ruleset though...
I'm glad you've called out that I go you go and alternative actions are different, but neither is better. I really liked your warcry example because I did something similar with OPR.
one of my friends said "is way more balanced than Warhammer, it can't be broken"
Basically Warhammer is only "broken" because there are more people actively trying to break it. The same thing can happen to any game.
You make a good point. I completely see his argument of issues that can happen in Alternate Activations, but it's never been my experience as I just don't play with people that would build a list like that (aka, "Try Hards", lol).
If you're a comp player and enter tournaments, I get it; try and break the system as best as possible to your advantage. I (and those I game with) are pretty far from that mindset though, so it's not really an issue.
Also, IGUG has the issue of sitting and watching your opponent do their thing for ages and keeping my focus while they do that is near impossible.
I have never played a game where the strategy of "all my models activate last" was a good idea. Almost every game system, getting your moves in early allows you to do the most damage before your opponent.
@@HeadCannonPrime Depends on the game. Battletech, for example, moving last is good as you can adapt to what your opponent does. 40K it's bad for the reason listed above. I'd assume, from my limited experience with Warcry, that going last is good due to a lack of range attacks (I don't play Warcry so this is just a guess). Going last allows the enemy to move into your range, or charge distance, while you kept out of theirs'.
I just cam across Ravaged Star thanks to Midwinter Minis. This makes me think all the way back to the GW video you did a long time ago calling GW out for its pricing and supply issues against smaller independent retailers and how MWG would have to go in a new direction. New direction solved! Create own wargame that is in direct competition with GW! I will 100% be a supporter. I wish you guys all the best and I hope this game will help to break up GW's monopoly in the mini wargaming space.
So cool very appreciate this video it will direct shutdown discussions in the gaming scene between AA and IGYG. So well done in the context of game design. Thanks
I did not go through all comments, was crossfire mentioned? That has a very interesting activation mechanism which seems to be perfect for platoon level wargame
Arena Rex has a great activation system. Player rounds are asymmetric despite model count being the same. A gladiator can either be Ready, Fatigued or Exhausted. At the start of a turn you remove a Fatigue token from one of you models, they can't activate this turn. Then you may activate any other Ready Gladiator. You get a free move, then Fatigue to perform an action or Exhaust to perform two (or a big action). Ready models can also use a Reaction in the opponent's turn at the cost of a Fatigue. Only once all your models are Fatigued/Exhausted do you have what is called a Clear Turn, where you step down each level of Fatigue one step, mount/dismount models and can perform a special bonus ability called a Tactic. So even in a 5v5 game you could just switch between two models each turn while your opponent might heavily exhaust all their models and have more Clear Turns. You could easily apply that to units/squads, maybe have units able to provide continuous effects while inactive such as Guard, Suppressing Fire, etc.
Bolt Action taught me that a randomized activation system takes the game to a new level. It makes you prioritize your actions and plan more. I've been experimenting with using Bolt Action's activation system in 40k.