Matty_C wrote:
How much did the activation count difference come into play here?
If you had used the non-evolution rule set do you think it would have been so one sided. I know that's a difficult question to answer, but I'm thinking that the massive difference in activations is the issue, which is more important in evolution than in ne5/gold, so adjusting points to balance might be required in one system, but not so much in others.
Then again, army selection is going to be different now, as new units become viable, and other units become more valuable, depending on what the opponent brings, as their army selection changes too.
Food for thought anyway.
Edit: did you play that command units have to be activated along with a detachment? Things like that might make a difference, as well as taking a warlord in an activation count light army, against an activation count heavy army.
Good questions, both of which I can deal with in one handy answer!
There would have been more activations for both forces - even more so for IG - under Gold because Command Units get their own activations in Gold while in Evolution I had spotted quickly that forces with CUs such as Marines & IG have an activation advantage over the likes of the Eldar. It's in the Evolution rules that CUs MUST be activated along with one of the Detachments that they command. This also applies to all of those Commissars so you could easily add another 5 activations to IG under Gold.
Under Gold the IG still would have had a huge activation advantage in the movement phase (just as they did in Evolution) but what isn't as clear is whether the FF & Advance firing phases would have levelled the playing field much. My feeling is that it wouldn't have made much difference; from memory we both were firing everything on Advance on turn 1 while turn 2 saw more of a mix of FF and Advance firing from both forces. Possibly the Marines may have had a little better fortune under Gold in turn 2 because a lot of my forces were advancing which mean all of Craig's FFs would have fired before they got the chance to do so.
I'd invite Craig to share his thoughts on this in case I am playing this down, he may be more objective on this matter than me.
