Rationale
Perceived issues with traditional turn structure in Warhammer are many, described as “I go, you go” (IGOUGO for short), this structure results in issues with alpha strikes and less tactical gameplay when compared to Alternating Activation Systems (AA for short).
This has been exposed and discussed at length in numerous forum threads of which I will link a few as reference, so that I can keep this document as objective and summarized as possible.
A few referenced discussions
DakkaDakka: Suggest me some alternative activation system for 40k
DakkaDakka: Alternating vs IGOUGO Turn Methods
DakkaDakka: WHAAT - Warhammer Alternate Activation Turn...
Frontline Gaming: In Favor of Alternates
Pillars and constraints
Added Complexity: Players that want AA are looking for added tactical depth in the play/counter-play nature of AA, meaning that the game will be perceived as more complex and require more cognitive load from players. Any proposed rule will move the core game system away from a “beer and pretzels”, sit and relax game experience.
Full Compatibility: The proposed system must be compatible with all codex, units and stratagem rules as much as possible, meaning that all players need to play this variant is to understand the new turn structure. No changes to datasheets or core rules outside of the turn structure will be required.
Balance via “levelled playing field”: Balance is always a shifting concept and hard to grasp, especially if you are comparing apples to oranges. Old strategies may be invalidated by a change and new exploits will be found. What AA advocates seek for, however, is to address the powerful alpha-strike potential of certain shooting army compositions when they are able to position and shoot indiscriminately and with no reaction possible. There will always be an advantage in any system to the player who “goes first”, only simultaneous activation systems truly prevent this, but the extent of that advantage is greatly diminished in an AA system versus IGOUGO, thus the “levelled playing field” removing so much power from the initiative roll, which is a “no player agency” roll that should have less of an impact on the tactical options a player has.
Practical considerations
The proposed rules system below aims at achieving the following goals on top of the aforementioned assumptions:
Maintain unit action density vs traditional 40k: Meaning that all units should move, fight, shoot and all other actions as many times as they would have. This is especially challenging due to the nature of the fight phase, in which players will actually have alternating activations inside of the IGOUGO structure.
In the proposed revised turn structure below the only real impact is at the Morale Phase, being much more impactful for armies that cannot ignore/mitigate morale. However, players will overall make less morale checks (since it triggers 5x in a standard 5-turn game instead of 10x). I have decided to leave it as is for now instead of knee-jerking a solution without more proper playtest.
Avoid reactive movement preventing charges: one of the hardest elements to balance properly in 40k is that of melee vs shooting, and in moving to a true AA system where every player can immediately react to an opponent’s movement becomes even more apparent. In order to preserve melee armies ability to close the distance before the enemy has a chance to escape the movement aspect of a turn for the reactive player happens at the end of a turn, after shooting. This lets melee armies move and charge before the enemy reacts, but also forces shooting armies to move in and stay within charge distance after getting range to shoot their weapons.
Lower the impact of Alpha-striking: Alpha Strikes are much less efficient since a maximum of 3 units can shoot at a single target before the target has a chance to react. This is lessened (and stays closer to current 40k balance) if the shooting army has range and can stay still, thus shooting with a few more guns before the enemy can retaliate.
Another side-effect of this structure is that focusing firing an enemy unit, but failing to destroy it can result in an opportunity to fire at a secondary target before they get a chance to shoot. This can have a great impact on the flow of the game as the rules of target priority, which aligns with the Added Complexity pillar.
Battle book-keeping: with any AA system there will come the necessity to clutter the field with some form of book-keeping counters. It is recommended that players use colored counters to mark which units they have already “activated” in any mixed sub-phase.
Lower impact of activation denial: AA rules have a major issue when players can out-activate their opponent and deny good target opportunity. The proposed system denies players that option by removing the main component in which players can deny their opponent by not having an alternated movement component, so you cannot keep key units out of harm's way until your opponent is finished, to only then expose them in optimal position because the underlying rules simply prevent that by not having an alternated movement component, which is an interesting turn of events as a result of the core 40k rules.
Alternate Activation rules
Revised Battle Round Structure
Command Phase
Active Player Command sub-phase
Reactive Player Command sub-phase
Active Player Movement Phase
Active Player Movement sub-phase
Active Player: Move units
Active Player: Reinforcements
Mixed Fall-back Sub-phase
Reactive Player: Reinforcements
End of Active Player Movement Phase
Psychic Phase
Mixed Activations
Players alternate activating up to three psyker units at a time, selecting a psyker to manifest a power and resolving that power.
End of the Psychic Phase
Shooting Phase
Mixed Shooting sub-phase
Players alternate selecting up to three units to shoot with.
End of the Shooting Phase.
Active Player Charge Phase
The Active player can declare charges with all eligible units, executing charges one at a time.
The Reactive Player can declare and execute Heroic Interventions after the Active Player has finished all of his charges.
End of the Active Player Charge Phase.
Initial Engagement Fight Phase
Players alternate in fighting with eligible units. Any units that have charged or performed a heroic intervention during the Active Player Charge Phase are eligible to fight.
End of the Initial Engagement Fight Phase.
Reactive Player Movement phase
Reactive Player Movement sub-phase
Reactive Player: Move units
Reactive Player: Reinforcements
Active Player: Reinforcements
End of Reactive Player Movement Phase
Reactive Player Charge phase
The Reactive player can declare charges with all eligible units, executing charges one at a time.
The Active Player can declare and execute Heroic Interventions after the Reactive Player has finished all of his charges.
End of the Reactive Player Charge Phase.
Counter Engagement Fight Phase
Players alternate in fighting with eligible units. Any units that have charged or performed a heroic intervention during the Reactive Player Charge Phase are eligible to fight.
End of the Counter Engagement Fight Phase.
Ongoing Engagement Fight Phase
Players alternate in fighting with eligible units. Any units that are within engagement range of an enemy unit and have not yet fought in either the previous Engagement Phases are eligible to fight now.
End of the Ongoing Engagement Fight Phase.
Morale Phase
Mixed Morale Checks: Players alternate making Morale checks for 3 units at a time.
Mixed Coherency Checks: Players alternate removing models from units that are out of coherency
End of the Morale Phase
Active Player and Reactive Player
The Active Player is the player who would be the player of the first Player turn.
The Reactive Player is the player who would be the player of the second Player turn.
Active and Reactive player assignments alternate between full Battle Rounds, so players swap their Active and Reactive roles on odd Battle Rounds from the initial assignment.
Sub phases
Many of the main phases of a Battle Round are divided into sub-phases. For the purposes of Stratagems and Abilities, all sub-phases of a single main phase are considered to belong to the same Main Phase.
Some sub-phases are described as either Active, Reactive or Mixed phases. In either Active or Reactive phases, the player who is in that role executes that phase’s activations for all of their qualifying units. In Mixed phases, however, players must alternate activating up to three (or less if they have already activated all other units) of their units, starting with the Active Player.
Example: Mixed Shooting Sub-phase, for example, the Active player activates and shoots with three of his units, then the Reactive player does the same, with both players alternating until they have done so with all of their units.
Staggered Movement phase details
Players have two Reinforcement and two End of Movement phases. Players may bring in reinforcements at either of these sub-phases, and any abilities that trigger “at the end of the movement phase” may be activated in either of these.
Notice that reinforcements can be brought at either of the phases, and that the Active Player may bring reinforcements after the Reactive on that player’s movement phase.
There is also a special mixed Fall-back sub-phase where both players, starting with the active player, can perform fall-back movement with their units.
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