That sounds like a much better method

That sounds like an interesting idea. Wouldn't mind giving that one a go. I agree the game is rather too favoured towards many small formations at present. Even at 4K that holds in my experience.

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+1 to this. We might give this a go too.

Another thing I've been considering is looking at porting over some of the Age of Sigmar missions from the General's Handbook matched play section.
Things like 5 or more units to control an objective, different number of victory points per objective, more points the longer you control it etc.
Plus the locations of the objectives is dictated in the scenario, so they are super balanced.

It's something to think about anyway. Tournaments with more than one scenario isn't really that radical a concept after all!

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.'.
http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

I ported the E40k Battles Book objectives over to EA, and also took a stab at some additional victory conditions for the EA Battles Book. If you're intersted PM me and I'll share them.

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Dave

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NetEA Tournament Pack Website

Squats 2019-10-17

No interest in making them public?

An interesting problem to solve no doubt. I suspect the biggest challenge is to balance armies that depend on activation advantage (Eldar and Space Marines spring to mind) against any change to the core rules. The situation is similar to the cavalry in Warmaster which was deliberately made very powerful by the designer originally. Since the game has since been built around this, any nerf will presumably favour armies without cavalry access that were balanced against a more hostile environment shall we say? (The issue being that cavalry flank charging everything every single game quickly becomes samey).

I'd suggest some hard capping of activations in some friendly or test games. It's not really activations that cause the problem, it's the activation disparity. If I get 12 to your 10 and I focus early on stripping your chaff I can end with 10-12 vs your 7 in the final turns and that's huge.

I think maybe try 1+(3 per 1k points). So a 1k game each player can have 1-4, at 2k 1-7, 3k 1-10 etc.

9 vs 10 is not too bad.

It does risk some balancing though, some factions are designed with activation advantage as a big deal, such as the Dark Eldar or Titan legions who are counter balanced by having fewer comparatively.

They are:
viewtopic.php?p=556880#p556880

viewtopic.php?p=559575#p559575

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Dave

Blog

NetEA Tournament Pack Website

Squats 2019-10-17

I think a hard cap will significantly affect balance and maybe not fully solve the problem. Like the passing idea which would actually remove entirely the "wait until theyre finished before doing anything interesting" strategy. Either way, inevitably there will be some armies that will have big issues with balance afterwards. For example Tyranids really need to have multiple formations in assault range in turn 2 as they are going to lose strategy, this becomes difficult if they can't move them up at the end of the turn.

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I think if passing was to be allowed it would have to have limits (which is why I was thinking of tying activations to command models, so you have a limited number of activations based on what you choose to be in your army—with the bonus of putting in more command and control elements). An alternative is to make passing an initiative/action test for a formation (and if they fail, they have to take a Hold action, as normal; if they pass, the player doesn't activate anything).

That is an interesting thought-scenario, @Kyrt! My question would be, "Why wouldn't a commander wait for their opponent to come closer?" But, by the same token, why wouldn't the Tyranids wait for the opponent to do something interesting? And this isn't accounting for the fact that the army commanders can't see everything we do (so they might not have such a clear idea of what the enemy are doing).

It seems to me that passing must be restricted in a way that reflects the strategic options of the army (whatever we imagine those to be) or else it's only as meaningful as the problems in the current system.

I wonder if anyone's tried using the EA system with hidden enemies? It's tricky to do (most of the time you need two rooms, two tables, and a maybe neutral co-ordinator) but I hear it makes for very interesting historical gaming! In the end, it seems like many alternative activation systems would work well with the core rules, which is only a good thing for making Epic games interesting!


Anyway, some food for thought,
Thinking Stone

Yes I don't think it can just be unlimited, the game would never end I quite like the "activate to pass" idea as it also captures the concept that armies with poor command and control are least likely to be able to act in this coordinated way. But in some ways this could actually make it worse: consider marines with initiative 1+ will always get to pass, which means they could actually wait until everything has activated before doing anything at all. So obviously needs other limits too, eg can only pass once, or twice by "retaining". Might also be good to combine with the "only if you have fewer activations" method, the downside being you have to count activations all the time.

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The ideal is for fewer, larger formations to be about as viable as many smaller ones. The 1 BM/turn limit for coming under fire would really help that, imo. And maybe some of those 100 point formations are undercosted if they're so popular. I think I'd rather look there than in capping activations. A pass or two could be alright, maybe tie it to a strategy roll.

It'd be great if large formations were more attractive, vs. trying to make small ones less attractive. Take Leman Russ companies - are they not destructive enough for 650 points?

Just a left field suggestion :

If the concern is that you very rarely see upgrades (which i agree is a concern) particularly in armies with big lumpy companies (eg guard) could it be solved by amending the lists themselves instead? Would it work for the army lists to have more options to swap units rather than just add them?

Eg,

Swap 3 Leman Russ for 3 hellhounds -75pts

Swap 6 infantry for 4 ogren +50pts

Swap 2 tactical marines for 2 dreadnoughts -free

etc.

Works for many other lists - how many times have you seen falcons without firestorms?



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Another thing to think about is perhaps having a point at which an activation buys you a "pass".

So say every formation in the army over 500pts gives you its activation and a free pass activation where you don't have to do anything. Obviously things would need tinkering and it might cause a wierd effect where having multiple just 500pt formations is better than mor 350pt odd formations, but still an idea.

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Why not just reduce the points of upgrades? something radical for e.g. steel legion might be 100pts gets you any 3 (different) upgrades