Alternating Activation

[mlkr]

Hi everyone,

Has anyone tried playing Warmaster using Alternating Activation (AA) instead of IGOUGO?
The idea surfaced earlier today in another thread where Epic40K was mentioned. I got to try Epic this March and I very much like the (AA)-system that is employed. It adds a lot of strategy and choice in what to activate and when to do it. Also gives your opponent possibilities to react to your moves in a more fluid way of play...

So - Got me curious - would it work? Pro's and Con's?


I am thinking you could use (AA) between characters on each side? Like so:

- Player A activates character 1 out of 4 and manages to move 3 out of 20 units, failing in the 4th causing a turnover (for you BB-players) and passing initiative to Player B. Player A has 3 characters left that can give orders with 16 units left to give orders to.

- Player B can now activate its character 1 out of 6 and manages to move 2 out of 25 units and stops at that not wanting to show hand just yet. Initiative is passed back to player A who can now activate 1 of the 3 remaining unactivated characters that can give orders to unactivated units.

- This continues until all characters have been activated and then the next turn begins.

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Having characters be an important part in the activation system might lead to different armybuilds, different tactics and such. Do I move these up now risking my opponent activating this or that unit to counter. Do I only activate one unit to force my opponent with fewer units to move them first? Downside is I have fewer characters left to move more units still not activated. High Elves could probably use this to good effect. Orcs, not so much.
It might also break the balance between the armies? Not sure - OnG would of course be able to field a lot of characters giving them more activations but not sure if it would help them supermuch since their command is pretty low anyways.

How would one solve magic? initiative-charges and homebacks? Moving characters?
- Magic could possibly be resolved for both players at beginning/end of turn?
- Same for moving characters.
- Homebacks to I suppose.
- Initiative charges might also only be allowed at start of a new turn. Problem is deciding who has the initiative and gets to charge... No good thoughts on this one.

It would be interesting to hear what others think about something like this. Not proposing a change of rules to how we ususally play, but for me it's an interesting idea

Cheers

[Geep]

Good idea on moving this here- I decided not to reply on Stormwind's topic, though I think there's a lot to talk about mentioned there.

Alternating activations sounds like an interesting idea to try- one of the main issues I see is that you'd need to have activated units and characters both move and shoot/magic- and maybe even fight combats- before the activation passes over (same as in Epic). In other words- the character issues all orders, then any units that were activated (or targeted for activation) shoot and fight any combats they are now in.
The reason for this is because of the relatively small shooting ranges of most things (15/30cm) compared with the usual movement distances (20/30cm). If you work out all movement from both sides first, then any shooting unit will need to expose itself to a likely charge before it has had a chance to shoot. The only way around that would be to target units that have already activated.
It would be similar for combat- If I charge my unit (eg. a Giant) into the front of your infantry brigade, and we hand over the activation before resolving anything, you are very likely to get an easy flank on my Giant. The downside to this is that getting proper support in a combat round would be difficult- the attacker would need the same character to issue orders to all units you want in that combat.

I agree that all homebacks and initiative moves should happen before other activations. I'd dice-off to determine the first player each turn, then alternate homebacks and initiative moves on a unit by unit basis. The issue would arise here though- do you fight a combat as soon as contact is made? If not, you can almost guarantee an initiative move flank charge on your unit. If you do fight the combat immediately it becomes impossible to provide proper support for the attacking unit (even if you have 2 units lined up to initiative charge). You could wait until all initiative moves are done, then fight the resultant combats- to avoid the easy flank charges players would need to have multiple units all close to each other, so that any flank charger can then be flank charged themselves.
This raises the question though- when do you check to see if an initiative move is possible? If something only just moved within 20cm this turn, on initiative, is it now a valid target for an initiative charge? I would have to go with yes, to keep consistency with the equal scenario- if something evades out of 20cm on initiative, it should not be a valid charge target even if still in movement range (ie. initiative range should be measured at the time the initiative action happens).

I'd move characters and cast spells once the characters have issued their orders- magic done at the same time as shooting, as usual. If you were doing the 'immediate combat' idea this would be the only good way of getting a character into a combat. If you were doing the 'immediate shooting' idea this would be the only good way to make use of some spells (eg. Heaven's Fire).

[cjbennett22]

not to long ago I had my brother play a game of man o'war with me and he liked the alternating movement so much he actually found a ruleset for warmaster on how to play that way considering shooting phase and shooting at chargers and everything like that.....I will have to see if he can share it with everyone.

[mlkr]

Please do! would be fun to see how it plays ^_^

[CrankyDragon]

I didn't find alternate rules, I made up my own just to see how it plays.
I tried it out by my self once but didn't prepare properly and quickly lost track of who had already gone and which characters had failed orders and just gave up on it.

Roll to see who goes first each round.
Initiative and homeback moves are resolved first.
A unit is only allowed to make a single move per round.  Brigades are still allowed and commands are issued as normal.  Shooting phase is eliminated, and instead a shooting unit may shoot as soon as it's move is finished even if its command roll failed, standard shooting rules apply.  Characters are moved last after both players have run out of units that can move or characters that can issue orders and signals the end of the Command phase.  Mages may cast spells after moving.
Combat phase is pretty much the same as usual.

Pretty basic, not many changes needed.