Alternate Activation or I Go You Go - Which is Best? 

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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

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 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)

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

I like the alternate system. You've mentioned MCP , they are really good at balancing their games. 2 rules in particular that would work with your boost system are 1) If you activate the last unit of the turn, then you automatically go last starting next turn. 2) if you have less units to activate you can choose to pass to your opponent until you both have the same number of units to activate. I do like like the randomness of the draw and I would probably have random events added to the bag for my games. Something that would add a new objective to unit effects and or environmental effects. I know a lot of people won't find it interesting but I like the idea of a specific table of environmental effects depending on the actual terrain you setup. ie if your battle takes place in a jungle then only jungle effects will happen. I'll keep that for me lol

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Since you are reading every comment just wanna say it has been so amazing to see MWG evolution over the years and just wanna say amazing stuff you guys rock! Rule side wise yes alternative activation just gives so much strategic depth to otherwise straight forward games

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 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.

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.

I think MESBG does this so damn well and different with the priority roll off then with all the crazy things you can do with heroic actions, such a cool system

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

Recently had this discussion on stream and I totally agree. In a more general sense there are very few 'bad' game mechanisms. Any game mechanism needs to fit it's context and purpose within the framework of the game. Kings of War is my favourite defence of 'I go, You go'. The whole activation system facilitates playing on a clock for competitive games in a sublime way.

Alternatively activations or something like the end stage of Alpha Strike where the damage to both sides are applied at the end.

I don't know if it has too much control but the way Parabellum's Conquest system has unit activation seems nice for Ravage a Star. I like how in Conquest you build a deck based on the unit cards of your army then your opponent draws a card then you and it has the "priority system" of some skirmish games. I personally do not like dice bag drawing because a side could have 1 player draw 3 of their units for every 1 of the opponent's units they can't anymore. I do like how the boost system affects units and it could affect a deck building & drawing the card a boost could work like the CP system. You have 3 boosts for the round when you pull a card you can boost it to gain X rule, if your opponent is winning you get an extra boost token, and if you develop defensive boosts you can spend 1 boost to try to protect a unit. Granted you are determining the order of activation with the deck building (unless you shuffle the cards like it is MtG or YuGiOh) and might limit the amount of random/narrative fun you are trying to have. Anyways thank you for the video & Ravage Star and I hope you enjoy Halloween.

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

With 40k you roll to see who starts to set their units first and then roll to see who goes first…what happens is both sides try to hide all their units…b/c if they don’t theirs a good chance they could get shot off the table before they are even used…that leaves the person in turn who has to go first…with a move phase and little to no shooting…leaving you exposed for your opponents turn…essentially in a 5 turn game..one player is only getting 4 turns of shooting. I like the idea of having the number of units being set up by the person who has the fewest…making the more hordy army have to maybe set up 2-3 units at a time per opponents 1…I also like the idea of an initiative system like in D&D vs the YGIG…of one side moving and firing everything. The initiative allows one unit to move and fire and then the next unit and so on down the line…then the next turn…initiatives are rolled again for remaining units. As to playing what is fun too you as opposed to what the game dictates…40k’s objectives and secondary missions almost force you to play multiple small mobile units that have scout, infiltration or back line denial and trying to stay in cover holding objectives. The game is more about scoring points then battling armies….the purest form of 40k seems to be around narrative missions…for ex. defend this outpost while these people are being evacuated while opp. is to break through and capture/kill said evacuees.

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.

I'd seriously consider taking a look at LoTR SBG. It has a beautiful blend of the two methods, and I sincerely feel like it is being truly slept on. You still go through the phases but you go through them together. Each turn you roll to see is "going first" if you roll higher, you go first. If you tie, the person who was going second in the last turn now goes first this turn. You go through movement together like this, then shooting, then charge/fighting. It's brilliant, there is never more than 10 minutes of downtime before you get to do something, and it works for even high model count armies. It makes me so sad that it never gets mentioned.

Don’t know if it’s the right answer for Ravaged Star, but I LOVE the X Wing activations where you have to guess your opponent’s moves and reactions, then play it out by skill of the unit. Would love to see a Battlefleet Gothic of Ravaged Star lore use that system!!

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.

I always point towards Saga as an example of keeping IgoUgo interesting. Lots of fun ways to interact and react to every single enemy action, from planning out the battle board to manipulating the enemy's fatigue when they overextend.

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.

Some form of an alternate activation is my preferred method of wargame. However, i can agree that unit by unit activation can get very tedious and slow. I love frostgrave, and my favorite mechanic is that when you activate your wizard he can pull others into his activation. That to me is what I want in some form. For instance if you have a squad in a transport, to me, that means those to units are ment to always work together and support each other. So they should always activate together. Flank attacks are a staple on every military engagement. Unit by unit activation doesn't allow that to work at all, cause your opponent just counters it instantly. But some kind of group activation of 3 or 4 units would allow for a sort of pseudo flank attack or blitz toward an objective. Squads don't just act independently in modern combat. They work with other squads to fire and advance in tandem. I don't know how to work it, but some way to activate your army in groups of 2 to 4 units would be cool. Maybe just force a rule both sides have to have X amount of groups. That t would prevent activation shenanigans in early turns, maybe.

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 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

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.

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.

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

The infinity style of alternate activation where you switch between an active turn where you get full power and full decisions and the reactive turn where you have a more limited set of actions in response to visible/audible activities near your units. An issue for sure with infinity though is it's a skirmish scale game with ~10-15 models per army. How to effectively scale up the active/reactive turn mechanic to a 40k size massed combat is a challenge.

for quick play between ~50-100 figurines per side? multibases, multiple opposed die rolls followed by penalties on each participating unit, units which hit a certain number of penalties get lifted, and IGOUGO There is going to be some golden mean of just giving the different science fiction flavours of your setting intuitive inputs into an opposed die system where you feel like it feels like what you want it to feel like, but if you want it to be fast, you want it to be as abstracted as you possibly can while conserving your desired flavour. (rest of this is random brainstorming) The maximum point for abstraction- when you're playing the same kind of musket against the same kind of musket, or archers vs archers, gladii vs Halsted culture swords in a multibased mass combat system - is 1D6 plus modifiers, if you lose, you back up or you take a morale or fatigue token, and if you lose badly - usually as a result of too many morale or fatigue tokens - then you're done, los muchachos are going home no matter what you tell them. for space opera, where the different factions have different guns, body armour, etc., out of my ass, maybe each side rolls to hit, to wound, and to save for morale - like Black Powder - applying modifiers at each stage - per certain number of wounds taken, or per certain number of morale points inflicted, per the range to their targets, the cover in the way, the value and type of armour or equivalent defenses then depending as to the results applied, the rest of your attempted action might not happen. The most intuitive way to account for space flavour would be by "typing" the numbers used for each of these rolls. On the "to hit" role, I always thought it would be sort of cool to have a space opera system with a certain inspiration from Alien v Predator, where different races are visible or invisible to different ways of detecting them, and therefore easier or harder to hit - in the shooter for that franchise, marines were just obvious, Aliens were hard to see and had low thermal signatures, but had massive bioelectric signatures, and then Predators had the most access to all kinds of "vision." To rip off 40k lore, say a squad of weaker versions of Culexuses are sneaking up on some Warlocks, the Warlocks should really struggle to notice they are about to have their souls ripped out, and therefore to hit the weaker versions of Culexuses, since Warlocks would rely on their sixth sense more so than their firearms training, and Culexuses appear to be soulless to psykers. or say you have a squad of bee men who are pretty nasty guys but blind as bats if they fight somebody who is camouflaged from UV radiation. UV camouflaged guys should be able to beat the shit out of them with impunity. Synthesizing this rubs up against the principle of abstracting fire but arguably not any more than saying space mortars and space flame throwers reduce cover, space Javelins ignore most armour, or some effects might be a tractor beam or gravity ray that impose a penalty directly rather than by causing wounds first. It is also a question of whether you want any of that stuff in your setting. The "to wound" roll is where the flavour comes in most intuitively. Plasma should have an easier time against power armour, for instance. With multibasing for smaller miniatures, antitank should suck against infantry. It will hit one guy, who is a small target, not a metal box full of explosives and gasoline. In First Cold War gaming terms, they almost always give tanks different armour values depending on if they are hit by high explosive anti tank or kinetic rounds. In space opera, maybe I'm a monster who lives on a fire planet and think getting shot at by a flame thrower is a bit of a joke, or I'm an ooze and while I might be scattered away by explosions or set on fire, I really don't care at all about bullets. On the "morale save," in space opera, robots for instance wouldn't have morale, but they would have electronics, maybe some attacks are like small EMPs that potentially stack so much damage to their circuitry that they are less able to function. If one unit had tiny nuclear bombs as hand grenades, for instance, those would do EMP damage on top of morale and physical damage, regardless of the hit. You'd have to decide if you wanted cyborgs to have the weaknesses of both humans and robots if you wanted EMPs to be a thing in your setting if you were going this way - say they would have to take the worst of their two results. You might want to keep fighting, but half the controls in your suit are dark, or your robotic arm is a dead weight on your torso. If you're a creature from another dimension, a portal that opens next to you and starts sucking you back might have the same effect, even if your psychology is so alien that you don't really care about your friends being vapourized by space lasers.

AA, bolt action style has the advantage of avoiding the alpha strike problem, but suffers from the problem of turns taking longer (becomes a problem for very big games) and rewarding lists that have lots of chaff units. I’d suggest trying to have chaff units collected together under one activation pull, e.g. three, 5 model units are all activated by one token/dice pull. Another option for larger games is to have one token/dice pull activates two or more units instead of one. E.g. one activation dice/counter per brigade or company.

Great video and really looking forward to the rest of the series!

I much rather prefer playing with alternating activations. It just feels smoother, it’s more engaging, and I’m not waiting 20+ minutes for my opponent to finish their turn. 40k not having it is a legacy issue. GW are incredibly slow to change their ways, but with enough pressure I’d reckon we’ll see AAs by 15th edition

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 only have experience with MESBG. There one turn is divided into 4 fases. First both players roll a D6, highest roll gets priority. Generally the player with priority goes first for all the other fases: movement, shooting and combat. HOWEVER, you can spend limited might points of your hero models to "beat" priority. This adds a whole new dimension and resource mangament to the game. Really fun with a touch of random.

I think Infinity the game perfects "I go, you go," with the amount of reactive abilities. It's also small enough in the skirmish format that a turn doesn't take an hour. I also commend Bolt Action's random activation, letting the drawn dice decide who activates a unit in the turn. Makes things more chaotic, but forces a lot more flexibility in planning. I generally prefer the "I go, you go," but alternate activation in OnePageRules and Marvel Crisis Protocol does feel good.

I like the X-wing system of all Skill5 units shoot, than all 4 etc. Allows each player to chose how much they cair about activation order while building lists.

I really like Alternative activations, after playing OnPageRules with friends we ended up sticking to it as out main game. Benefits: It prevents issues like turn 1 advantage. And also last turn objective grabbing which opens up more mission types that only score on the last round (eg: take the city scenarios etc) It has a much nicer flow as waiting 30min on your opponents turn is fairly boring some times. 40k has some reactions and strategems to help keep you busy but they are so easy to forget that its frustrating. The back and forth flow of alternating is comparative very fun especially in a relaxed setting with friends. Teaching the game is far easier as watch me move and attack with this unit then you try is loads better then watch me go through multiple phases with my entire army and now you have to recall every step and then do your entire turn which is daunting and less fun for new players. It also adds a big element of strategy in the deciding of what order to activate in. It gives you the ability to react with any unit. If one unit is sticking out behind cover and starts getting blasted you can move it instead of watching it get decimated in one turn. If an enemy leader buffs a unit you have a chance to either move some chaf in to deflect the buffed unit or shoot it or move away or reprioritise your focus else where. Lots of interesting choices and strategies that dont require any complex rules to use. I have never seen the spam chaf strategy before but thats a good point. Force org charts or some rule that specifies x chaf units per leader may also be a way to resolve that issue. With all the benefits it continues to blow my mind that GW dont use it more for the larger games. The conspiracist inside of me has always wondered if they do this to keep the meta around list building which they can use to drive sales of units instead of players being able to rely on more strategic elements to win games.

Alternating activations work best when each side has 4-6 activations each and depending on the nature of the game a pass system to keep the total even particularly for the first round. I generally prefer it but things go very badly when the game isn’t aware of its limitations and applies it to a system with a lot of points disparity in its units.

As a person with ADHD I hate "I go you go" becouse if I cant do anything for 10minutes i get bored

I just want to say first off that i love what you guys are doing and i wish you the best! As far as my opinion on an activation system is concerned i have played a few games 40k, AoS, OPR, Bolt Action, Polyversal and Heavy gear blitz. I left 40k because of the expense and the imbalance of it all.... I transitioned to Heavy Gear Blitz and i absolutely love the system as a whole but sisnce we are focusing on activations the game has alternating activations with groups of units not just 1 unit at a time (between 4-9 actions split between models) you roll for initiative and then each player alternates in activating combat groups while the passive player(s) can use their models actions to react to anything the active player is doing. I would say the game is fairly balanced even when you rry and break it with many small or low quality models to stack larger groups so if one person brings 2 combat groups of 9 models each and you brought a total of 8 models the other player has more models on the table but you should** have more elite or better equiped models then your opponent and it juat changes how you need to play your force. The other game i have played recently that surprised me and my opponent was Polyversal. The activation system is done with an initiative roll like normal but if you roll higher than your opponent you take the difference between the rolls and the winner can activate that many units so if i roll 6 and my opponent rolls a 4 i can activate 2 units before we roll again for initiative. Each player also chooses orders that unuts they control will be doing before the round begins face down so it adds what i think is a layer of strategy and simplicity in how you take your turn. I will say that polyversal plays really fast compared to most other games if not all ive played. My preference at the end of the day would be alternating activations with a heavy emphasis on reactionary play to at least give the inactive player the ability to use all of the units they have. If i were to go back to igougo then adding in a reaction system similar to heavy gear blitz would appeal to me so alha strike wasnt as devastating.

Interrupts. The other thing you touch upon in your video is ‘Interrupts’. These are a very interesting game design concept which can mitigate some of the lack of interactivity in taking turns by giving opponent an opportunity to ‘respond’ to actions during your turn. These are good…HOWEVER…and we are going deep into game design territory here…each interrupt you put in SLOWS THE GAME DOWN, as it gives a decision point to the opponent where THEY MAY DO NOTHING. So the more interrupts you put in the longer the game can go and the more complex the design becomes. Equally you can have ‘interrupts’ to ‘interrupts’ and then things get very complex! The thing about interrupts is that they can be excellent when they are used correctly in the ‘real world’ space, but are absolutely awful in the digital space. Games designers have been drifting away from them as when you digitise a game, things that work in table top like counter spells, leaving mana open etc in MtG are a NIGHTMARE to try and implement online, so if you have digital aspirations for your game then stay away from them. I tend to stay away from them now. They get so complex, and when designing I much prefer to follow the Chess model of quick ‘I go you go’ for phases, rather than allow opponents counters.

Regarding spam of cheap units: that's why games such as Battletech have the player with more units move more units as once. If you won the Initiative for a turn in Battletech, you can always move the last unit and therefore react to your opponent. If your opponent now spams a list with e.g. infantry bases so they have 4 times the units, then they also have to move 4 units for every 1 unit you move. That GW hasn't quite figured that out for Warcry is more a measure of the lack of time their games get for playtesting rather than anything else. I'd encourage anyone to have a look at the "Alpha Strike" ruleset for Battletech, most fun I had playing a tactical wargame in a while.

I really like your token pull system. It reminds me a lot of BattleTech's initiative deck, where you trade activations back and forth like regular BT, but you draw randomly from a deck of cards that represent various mechs in your list. It solves BT's solved initiative problem where you always activate certain kinds of mechs in a certain order (disabled mechs, tanky mechs, then weak mechs) by forcing you to deal with the chaos of the battlefield.

The problem with alternating activation is the "tail end" effect, you described it well with your warcry examples, if I have 5 models and my opponent has 10, it's only really alternating until I run out of activations, then it's just a bit silly. I think the same individuals who have a dislike for igougo also largely played on sparse boards. The concern of igougo is alpha strikes or just large weight of fire removing unit after unit, but again, that's not really possible if the board is fairly dense or has enough center weighted los blockers. I think largely a big problem for games like 40k over the years is they've gotten further and further away from their wargame roots, damage output of units went stratospheric, and in addition core concepts like restricting moving and shooting to say vehicles went out the window as well. No amount of alternating activations or interrupts mechanics can save the state that it's in sadly. One aspect Iike about igougo is it seems to mesh better with different personality types, try playing alternating activation with someone who is a bit too indecisive or chatty, it's much much slower. Igougo I can acknowledge I may be distracting a player with conversation and say something "I'll let you finish your movement". Similarly, its much easier to gather concentration and make decisions when it's not a constant tit for tat.

IGOUGO is a fine system with a low model count. In a casual setting it caan be a little disheartening to have to wait 30 minutes until you have a meaningful decision other than reading your toughness characteristic (you could lie ;)). Alternate activation has its pitfalls, but my heart lies with simultaneous activation. It's hard to implement, but it's just so cool when it works properly. All of the tactical depth lies in reading your opponents moves and trying to calculate your own, but I doubt it works that well in a miniature wargame (though I haven't tried). That's not to say games without simultaneous turns does not have systems to try and figure out your opponents moves (*cough* chess *cough*), and that is truly what I'm after. This is a reason I love games like Frozen Synapse, Fighting Games and Werewolf

I like both systems in general. I think there is a place and time for both systems. I-go-you-go I find actually a bit more relaxing as I often play with friends and like to have some time where I don't need to focus so hard on the game (my opponents movement phase in particular) and can talk with the other people in the room or think about my strategy. What I would find intresting is if the Turn began with the Strategy and Movement phase of both Players going one after the other and than combining the shooting phase and Combat Phase into one (in Warhammery Terms). So that I move all my models and use any strategic related Abilities firsty then my opponent does the same. And afterwards we resolve any Firefights or Melee Engagements in alternate activation. Charging would work lile WHFB, and each unit could only either fight or shoot. Just an Idea

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 ?

A forgotten system that may or may not work for this is the way the MESBG functions, and its by far my favourite. It does use I go you go but it's compensated by the fact that ranged attacks are relatively weak and all melee combat is a duel system where both players go at the same time. It's very interactive, however I expect the ranged weapons in ravaged star to be far more powerful. That being said, I think there's definitely room to compromise and have a style where the combat phase is shared and no single unit is just wiped out without having a chance. Food for thought.

I 1,000% agree that the randomness of bag pull token activiations make it a less try-hard game. I was just saying that the rule of cool gets more power when list building and competition takes a back seat to chance. Also the chess style activation sounds cool too. I’m stoked to see your crunchy smaller scale rules. I really prefer smaller scale games but RS might make me a full table player.

How about a system similar to Legion, but eqch unit has their own unique token (maybe use numbers for simplicity), but each time a unit activates the token goes back into the pool. Stops the Warcry issue of having a bunch of chaff spam units, keeps the chaotic nature thst youre going for, and honestly sounds like a really interesting mechanic.

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.

I prefer "split" alternate activation where appropriate. That is to say we alternate but still have phases for different actions like moving and shooting. Like X-wing had where we alternate moves in one order, then perform our combat in another. Because if you have a unit do ALL it's activity at once it enabled super units to pull crazy shenanigans. This happens in some games such as Star Wars Armada with some ships and list builds like Demolisher or AckbarMC80 stuff can over perform. The challenge to this split, or maybe better called layered activation is that you still need to get use out of the units in their different phases. Godtier does this by having a major scoring mechanic happen in it's initial phase where some units are better and more strategic to use, and in the later phase more combat is better for different tactical scoring mechanics, and units can have strengths and weaknesses accordingly. To your point about multiple activation advantage in alternating systems I'm of the opinion that wargames are able to overcome this with activation count normalizing rules of various kinds, and again split activated games can do this even better. Going back to xwing, high activation had advantages in the moving phase but was offset by weaker shooting phase, and lower ship counts were better in combat despite being swarmed. Xwing further had the pilot skill/initiative system to help guide the flow of turns to maintain that gameloop. Armada failed to follow that really with it's systems because activation count was one major hurdle to over come in a gamestate where at round change a ship could act twice by always being the last and first to go in back to back rounds. Armada further had a separate issue (far less often discussed when I was a play tester for them weirdly) where higher unit counts could also gain what we called deployment advantage through a completely different alternating system and it has never been addressed by it's former or current designers to my knowledge. For your preference of IGUG but with reactions, I refer to those as prioritized activations. I took the name from my years playing mid-level Magic the Gathering where on your turn what's actually happening is priority is passing after every action you have to the next player, but then you get first priority back for the next action. It's alternating squared off you think about it. I doodled some rules down for a Gundam game once that used a priority activated system and called the game engine "Impulse-Reaction", as a funny engine pun.😂 Because we take turns acting out our impulse or reacting to the opponents impulse. So to me those are the two major styles of turn system: Mass versus Mass is IGUG, Component versus Component is Alternate turns, BUT then you add layers to those with Priority determination systems (or lack of) and separating action systems like ordered phases. I agree there will never be a perfect game system. And that it really depends on the player experience you want to provide to determine what elements of each of the styles of taking turns you should use and adopt and man together into a game engine. Because I think some blend of turn style rules will always be better to create engaging experience. In a way even chess has reaction rules and even double turn rules after all, so it's not even a pure alternating technically.

I like the idea of a limited activation system like Warhammer Underworlds has. Those warbands range in size from 3 to 9 but each player only gets 4 activations a round, which are alternated. This is one way to limit the abuse of the activation system. That said, underworlds also uses fixed size warbands and the customization is in the deckbuilding. However, I could see a similar system used in a larger skirmish game. With fixed activations you end up needing to decide what is important to use for that turn, not just what unit you have that's the best at killing stuff.

I'm a big fan of the activation system of Star wars legion, it has alternating activation but semi-random. List construction and faction choice can heavily influence it, and I think it's an opportunity to help differentiate factions. I go u go is an underrated system because it allows an army to operate more as a cohesive unit. Something I've never seen before, what if your special operations elite guys got a go first phase, and if your opponent has a unit or units with that abilities, you alternate those, before you go to the full IGUG for the mass of the army. Maybe the best or worst of both worlds?

We seem to be of one mind. Alternate activation and IGUG as well as the many permutations of both have both been with us for a long time, and their popularity goes up and down. But starting design work on a game with "I want to do AA/IGUG because it is the superior system" is putting the cart before the horse. You should choose the variant that works best with what kind of game you want to design, not because one variant is more fashionable at the moment.

I can see a 40K size game being better if units with line of sight got a reaction shooting phase for the oponents after the player who’s turn it is moved all their models, kinda like infinity, giving a chance for shooty army’s to fire at units moving at them, they’d need to have an increase In points I think for ranges units, but I think it would make the first turn advantage much less, say u have loads of heavy bolters in a sm army, playing against a swarm of nids, the nids all are going to be moving and charging as close to turn 1 if they have the first turn then at least after they all move the sm army has a chance to shoot them before they charge 🤷‍♂️👊🥰

Alternating activations is the way to go for most gaming. 40k would really benefit from this. I could argue this for hours and even enjoy it but I think most people here agree. Every 40k tournament player has a few stories that are basically I needed to go first or quite often I needed to go second and that pretty much cost me the game. Certainly you can break the edges but you can also create a game system that does not allow such easy exploitation. Where alternating activations start to hurt is on multiplayer games, say 3 or more per side. This can slow the game substantially. If you play an AH game with passing fire and full phases, allowing and defensive fire and/or reactions IGUG can work well but these are more complex rules. So for Sci Fi games with the majority of units engaging in ranged combat alternation activations are superior in my experience.

I really like the way Frostgrave and Stargrave play, its 3 separate phases of Igouho activation.

You guys have played MESBG back when it was known by other names including the LotRSBG. I'd highly recommend theirs as its a modified version of IGYG. Heroic actions shake up the "monotony" and limit alpha strike potential. I enjoy alternativing activations, especially at the skirmish level. However, even at that level it can be time consuming especially if you got people who wanna make the "right play". MESBG is still lauded as one of GW's best rulesets and it is funny enough, in IGYG format. Have you guys not already had a ruleset drafted for this game of yours when creating the figures?

last thing: Honestly though I would think about contacting Andy Chambers or Rick Priestly or another of the old Skool grognards to see if they would want to help at all with the rules. They have so much experience, talent, and a love for the hobby so may be able to help you out. I think Skarri even did an interview with Andy Chambers once so proabably knows how to contact him.

IGOUGO is fine as long as it doesn't give a player an absolutely overwhelming advantage whether they go first or second.

I think one of the worst things about the "I go you go" system is that it is so swingy. You can easily knock out vital units in your opponent's army on the first turn before they have a chance to act. Certainly feels bad when you have a newly purchased, newly painted unit that you are looking forward to using that gets annihilated on turn one. The classic new model curse. I enjoy bolt action's die pull system. There is randomness to it, but also strategy. It is inherently a balancing act in that you want to have more dice, so more, smaller units is nice in that regard, but your impact with each activation will be lesser because your units are small. Also, its easier for your opponent to score total unit kills whenever that matters in the missions. Warcaster has a neat activation mechanic, as well, even allowing you to go again with already activated units if your entire force has already activated. It also revolves around a respawning mechanic, which can certainly help against the new model curse, and is also a good thing for the game in general since everything dies quickly in that game.

I agree there is no perfect system. We will only have that when the AI can take in 1000 variables and then it lets you know who moves next. Even then Wargamers will gripe. I played a game called Tank Charts for many years, WW2, mostly armor with a bit of other. Great system, charts on every major tanks gave a decent historical feel. As it was mostly based on Tanks, they did I Go You Go, but the twist was every weapon system and Tank had a Speed factor. Loading time, Speed of Turret turning, Training also was factored in, other things as well. Fastest Systems shot first, one could Aim and add time to the shot, things like that. On the table it felt about right for the Tanks. Adapted it to 40k 2nd Ed. and I think it helped the game flow better. Used it playing 40k with epic minis keeping all ranges, half movement, as well, really worked well there. Felt like a war game, you had room to try feints and such, falling back made sense, those types of things. I GO You GO, is old and lazy. More so using d6s with Rerolls for half an army. No fun setting up a table, then Turn 1 most of your side is wiped out. Gets even worse when eye of the needle shots are allowed in a game. To make it work one side needs a bonus. Not always the first turn, many games have a few pop shots on turn one, the the side with best range and chance to hit has the best chance then dominates turn 2. If you have a army that excels in melee, you have to work much harder to get to use their melee. This leads to units moving 24" after setting up 12" in, across a 48" table to make melee viable. GW just has a large Alpha Strikes. I like the Card/Dice system, it feels more Fog of war to me, your orders do not always make it to the troops, when you want. Many historicals use some method of having orders lost, misread, or flat out ignored. The Bag and Boost you are doing is looking good. The Boost is a On No!, and a Hell Yeah! moment. That feels good. It is possible for one side to move everything. not likely but posso. But as most of the time it looks like you are not wiping out whole units with one shot, then your Foe will get the same. Then there are all the other scenario based tokens that can be added, like in Arkham Horror the Card game, which will allow random things to happen in quick ways is great, no rolling each turn for XXX which most folks forget half the time just load the bag. Oh and THANK YOU for dropping the die 6, it was fine 30 years ago. When that was what most folks could get easily. The range allows units stats to show differences. Want to show these Grots are weak, 2 STR, base Humans maybe 5, Tau and Eldar 4, Orks 6 and so on, now the melee can use that plus weapon and show a large range without extra rules. Easy to show that say Eldar will have a base of 3+ to hit with ranged or perhaps Tau that way, where base humans might be a 6+. Orks an 7+. With 2-5 you lose that spread and make up for it with rules. As 1 is a miss and 6 is a hit. You also do not auto fail 16% of the time. It is still 10%, which for a game on the table top is fine. Also the D10 allows if you want for a more detailed Skirmish system, less than 12 models per side, and up convert it to a d100 if you are feeling really snazzy, and the base stats do not have to change. May want to state clearly in videos that both sides have an extra Boost atm so you can see it in action more.

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'm wondering if some people in the pole were thinking of combat exclusively, instead of the turn? If it's that way then it is in line with GW games where players get to alternately pick what unit fights next.

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?

IGOUGO and Alternate activation are equal in my mind, as both can and do work for their respective games. If I had to choose, I'd pick Alternate Activations because IGOUGO has a massive con that bleeds into a second con. That being whoever goes first has a lot of power. My current Tyranid list is designed to sit on objectives and hold them for the game, if I go first my opponent will struggle to take those objectives back once I'm swarmed them. But the second con is that player one, turn one, can easily cripple the opposing army long before they get a chance to play. I played a game the other day in which my opponent took an hour for their first turn, compared to my ten minutes, crippling my army. That was not a fun experience waiting to do anything while my opponent slowly chewed through my good units. And this is not a one off experience either as most games I've played (Tyranids and Choas Knights) have this issue. As for Alternate Activations, I believe Battletech got it right, for the most part. Stop unit spam by making sure an equivalent number of activations happen. But, for Ravage Star I believe the activations could be improved by either using two bags (one for each army) and one player pulls from their bag, activates a random unit determined by the token drawn, then the other player pulls from their bag. Or one bag (current rules) but the tokens shouldn't dictate unit type but which army only, like Bolt Action. Boost tokens of the various color can (should) still be included in the bag. Why I prefer the activate random player/any unit (more control) over random player/random unit (less control) is because there would be nothing worse, in my mind, than watching a cool unit get gunned down as my opponent gets three goes in a row, focus fire on it, then I finally pull a token and its for a unit across the board or a unit that was already killed. Now there's a good chance my cool thing will be killed before I get a chance to save it. I, of course, could be completely and playtesting would be needed. Sadly I'm not in a position to test play Ravage Star, yet.

Great video, Matt!

Currently at 6:30, Personally, I still have a preference for alternating activation. To me, the scenario you've described with the "extra nobodies" feels like a play style mismatch. What you've got is yourself with the 5 models playing what I would consider a "narrative" list (something fun or thematic) whereas your opponent has created a (at least semi-) "competitive" list (where they've somewhat min-max'd the game mechanics to their advantage). My belief is that exactly the same thing would happen in a "I go - you go" system (or any other tabletop game for that matter, like EDH vs cEDH) if you were to pair up a competitive list with a fun/narrative list. As mentioned by others, the alternating activation style allows for avoidance of "alpha strike" mechanics, it's more engaging for both players as no one is just sitting there doing nothing, and it has more of a tactical "chess-like" feel to it. The only thing I can think of to match that in "I go - you go" would be to include a full set of reactive defensive actions that could be taken when units are targeted or moved close to. ie. having a player on offense and a player on defence.

OPR does alternating actions quite at full scale.

For big scale wargames i would like shared phases like Kill Team 2018. Like i move a unit or all, then my opponent moves a unit or all of em.

Yes, it's always better. More engaging and immersive. I quit 40k becase I got tired of waiting 15+ mins to actually do something

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)?