We from WIP 12 are trying something new: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/kiFgG75COzb Introducing ATI: Alternating Turns Infinity. where you take turns spending 1 order. With a simultanious states phase and Impetious phase. We are fully experimenting with this. A new way of playing Infinity, and we like you to try it as well. We like to hear from your experience. How does alternating turns affect your game? the rules? let us know.
Tried that in the past so can give some feedback: - Slow. No way to sugarcoat this, but having the ability to mess with an action and potentially having to reevaluate your plan every Order slows down the pace by a lot. - Benefits durable units. 1 W stuff becomes less effective at spending Orders, since they are easier to disrupt or kill. High durability becomes a lot more valueable - Balance changes a lot. Something like a Marut is suddenly a lot deadlier when it has the ability to cut in and respond to enemy turns. Would not recommend switching every Order, but the idea itself seems worthwhile to explore, Batches of 5 Orders per player seem to flow better and allows to retain more of what makes Infinity Infinity. If I was experimenting, I'd start with that.
it really nerf down the ability to maneuver. If you need to spend more than 1 order to accomplish a task, and especially if the task was to kill something, then expect the mouse to flee before the cats reach it. And alternatively, if your task was to move to an objective (1 move-move order) and grab it (1 order to move-grab), expect an ARO piece to pop out in-between your 2 orders. Now suddenly, your model is caught in the open and you need to spend orders doing the intermediate task of getting rid of the ARO. Which you better accomplish in a single order as if you need to move first, then the enemy will already kill your specialist in the open. Basically, grabbing an objective now needs you to consider existing ARO as well as potential ARO that could overwatch the Console. Smoking the console becomes the only way to play the game. edit: no, i haven't played it yet. i just imagine this is how the game will go. trying to get my head around "how would play a game with those rule". I'm sure if I would play it against an experienced player, that is the conclusion I would quickly reach. Just like how beginners quickly realize to be careful about bunching up their troops in a neat shotgun template formation.
A ruleset of Epic had the same format. It was the best thing ever. But as stated it would require a full recost of A LOT of things and a complete rewrite of a lot of rules. (and maybe Veterans could spend orders back to back and a lot of new rules)
Why not just design a whole new wargame from the ground up that happens to utilize infinity (and other sci-fi) miniatures if you're going to do that? Alternating activations is the future of wargaming design, but Infinity is a game deeply rooted in the past--I doubt you'll be successful in slapping the mechanic onto the old frame.
Yeah :) Newer wargames have learned from the past and mostly use alternating activations as a default now. A lot of developers are old enough to have experienced the days of waiting 30-60 minutes or more for their opponent to finish a turn. Infinity has the ARO system--which is very cool--but it's not the same as alternating activations: the player with the active turn is still usually dominating the play, while the reactive player is waiting a while for their chance to really shine.
I disagree alternative activation "is the future" it is one of the oldest activation methods in wargaming and boardgaming, I Go You Go is preferred when the designer wants to allow more coordination and less disruption in gameplay. Both methods have well established pro and con and both are ancient as far as game design goes.
They may not have been the norm, this may indeed be true. I wouldn’t say that most people only knew about Warhammer though. Other games did exist and there were indeed those with such alternative action mechanics and quite far back. 1st edition Adeptus Titanicus (1988?) and 1st ed Space Marine had alternative activations I believe and as far as I can recall they handled it better than current incarnations do. AK-47 republic from ‘97 had alternate activations too. There are many historical Wargames that were popular before 90s (GW becoming main stream) and even pre-GW (40K is effectively a rip off of ‘80s laser burn written by Bryan Ansell who merged citadel minis with GW). Laser burn was also not you go I go. As most of the other historical games are/were small firms without control of IP (ww2 and naps are open source as it were) these have been replaced with newer games as time has gone on. There was also Battle Tech in 1984 which was very well known and loved but became obscured in the mid ‘90s due to the rise of GW. So, GW was certainly influential in establishing mainstream tabletop gaming though other games did exist, were definitely known about and some had alternative activations. I will accept though that this may indeed be dependent on where in the world you were based at the time. I can only give experience from what I saw here in Britain. Now, if you’ll excuse me I need to actually do my work and not scan the forums for something to talk about/scan the internet for Zelda exploits…
Maybe it is a bit harsh, but... WHO CARES??? Let's go on with the original proposal, it may end not balanced but it's something our group thought about too. The main problem to solve, is the different number of activations. The number of orders can vary A LOT from list to list, and you can end up with your list in position and unable to react when your opponent barely moved his spearheads...
As far as I understood Malifaux, the player with less models (in Infinity: less orders) gets a set of „pass tokens“. So if my list has 10 orders and your list has 15, I get 5 pass tokens. So I can decide when I let you use your orders in a row and you can not make preparations and run the last 5 orders „uncontested“. Maybe Infinity needs a second set of pass-tokens for impetious orders? edit: pass token = I pass and do not use an order
My personal guts reaction is that everything will likely be so vastly different with alternating turn order that everything might turn out to be much the same. The one thing that might get difficult to manage is the value of melee. Who knows, this might even provide an answer to the often raised spectre of alpha striking. And yes, Pass Tokens // Empty Orders. Absolutely.
Funny that's there's a thread on the same subject from a year ago (still on the 1st page) and they already addressed the issue of pass tokens to deal with order imbalance. Which makes me wonder if the Bolt Action system of dumping all the orders in a bag and drawing them randomly would be a good starting point for an AA infinity.
@Robock 's criticisms of alternating-action tactical games are accurate. It's good for stuff that involves high-speed simultaneous motion like cars (thus Gaslands, etc.). It tends to create stasis with infantry games unless the single activations can be used for long distance maneuver. BTW agreed with others that calling alternating actions "the future of wargaming design" is hilarious. Like others have pointed out, its a very old mechanic, going back to tin soldier games devised in the 1800s. And there are plenty of IGYG games coming out constantly, proportionally probably about the same as ever. The actual "future of wargaming design" is digital. Those of us choosing to remain in the tabletop era (self very much included) are more re-arranging pieces from the past into new and interesting patterns than coming up with anything really revolutionary. The hybrid I-go-you-go with reactions like Infinity uses is pulled from another older source (Advanced Squad Leader). If you like granularity and rules that you can mess with in a very measured fashion, try that system out sometime. Still a lot of players online and at conventions (I'd recommend learning it in person). The first-session intro game is storming the tank factory in Stalingrad, very fun.
