The Bissler wrote:
Reflecting on the new Alternating activation system:
Play seemed to move faster and there was more of a feeling that something was happening all the time.
We were both much less sure of which units to move when. In general terms, you want to put out your weakest units first in turn 1, leaving your Titans until last, whereas from turn 2 onwards you want to activate the good stuff immediately and get them fired!
The +1 to First Fire rolls was partly responsible for increased speed of play. The +1 made a significant difference to the number of shots hitting enemy units.
I was never happy in the previous system that units had to snap fire at pop-up units and suffered that -1 to hit roll (the mainstay of my Marine forces, the Land Raiders, were reduced to sixes to hit, making them completely ineffectual against Eldar). The fact that the -1 for snap fire could be negated by the +1 for first fire worked for me as a good fix to the problem.
Instead of a -2 for snap fire, we decided to keep the penalty at -1 for all units on snap fire (for simplicity's sake). I did have concerns that the allowing of snap fire for units on Advance orders may have been a step too far as these units would not normally be able to fire at units popping up or fire at all at units engaging them in close combat. The -1 worked well in this regard. While there was always a chance that a unit could score a hit, it was unlikely, and in practice made little difference to the outcome of these situations. Maybe that's an argument to drop the rule completely, but I think it is nice to give players the option even if in all likelihood it won't make much difference. I still think the -2 is probably preferable to a -1 for Adavancing units snap firing, but am open to hearing what everyone else thinks about this.
Another reason for allowing Advance units to snap fire was because Close Combat is resolved at the end of a turn. Advance units used to be able to mop up survivors from Close Assaults so it seemed fair to give them a new option as this would now be denied to them. I was also concerned that Close Combat units could essentially "hop" from one unit to the next from turn to turn. There has to be the chance that they'll get shot down in their tracks.
The one major flaw that I spotted in the system related to activations and army compositions. Because of their HQ units, Marines had more units to activate and could use this to their advantage. As it happened, I didn't do this as I didn't feel it was the sporting thing to do. But something will have to be done about evening up the number of units in various armies, even if it just means giving Eldar some kind of HQ units to even the score. Of course, they could just do it by buying a mountain of Prism Cannon!
The main plus for the changes was that we felt the flow of the game was greatly improved and we felt we had more fun playing. I expected my nephew to give it a go but then want to revert back to the usual way of playing as he doesn't like messing around with the rules, but he said he definitely wanted to continue playing this way! I was chuffed with that!
Anyway, thoughts and observations are very much welcomed!
Hi!
I would say that HQ units should not count towards using an activation. In other words HQ unit need to be activated either as part of another unit in the company they belong to OR let them move and shoot but it doesn't count as an activation.
As I think of this, why don't we count moving ALL HQ's as ONE activation? That would be another way of solving the issue.
In any event the HQ issue needs to be resolved since I can see it easily abused. All depends what is the most efficient method (no activation or all in one activation).
I was initially skeptical of +1 for normal first fire, but given the nature of activation it compensates for the disadvantage of not moving (these alternate rules make moving MORE important, that's a good thing!).
So to be clear, if a weapons base to hit is 4+, it would first fire at 3+, and snap fire at 4+. Correct?
If on advance orders it snap fires at -2 or -1? I think a -1 would be okay given the new dynamics. -2 may be too much.
Primarch
