Personally, I'm a little hesitant to try alternating turns in a traditional game of Infinity where two players are duking it out with each other. This is for the reasons @Teslarod and @Robock mentioned, being that it could slow the game down (my biggest concern) and dramatically changes the balance of the game in ways that the system might not be able to handle (or it might handle the new balance just fine. I don't know). That being said, I would be curious to try an Alternating Turns system for a single-player system that I've been kicking around in my head for a few years. It might work nicely there. I'll have to test it out when I take the time to work on it.
if this game was the type where each model, unit, or group, could activate once per turn. then alternating activation vs i go you go, could be equal, or equally interesting.
HGB! uses alternating group activations, with each trooper typically having a Move and then an action.
Exactly, but the game breaks if you take away the opportunity to reholo/recamo after doing something. At the same time ARO pieces that can absolutely demolish a regular Active Turn trooper when they switch from Active to Reactive become a problem. It's impossible to make Infinity work with alternating turns Order by Order, you need some sort of batching system. Easy Version to just try as is: - Each player activates 5 Orders of any kind then the other Player does. Whoever has less Player Turns gets to be first next turn (on a tie the player going 2nd goes first next) If this was an electronic medium and I was trying to make stuff more balanced: - get rid of Combat Groups and only have one Order Pool - add Maximum Activations per Trooper per Turn (similar to Guided), probably 5 from Regular/Irregular Orders and letting LT Order, TA, Impetuous exceed that limit. That would improve the game by a mile in my book. But would be horrible to track so the easy option is what I would recommend trying to anyone interested in the concept. Entirely new game, nothing is going to be priced correctly anymore under that limitation. Also - you couldn't get anything done in 3 turns, games would have to be a lot longer.
exactly. at its core, Infinity is a game where a unit can spend 14 orders. I think it doesn't lend itself to ATI, it has to be IGYG. But if Infinity at its core was different, say if it was like HGB (my 1st wargame) or Dystopian Wars (my 2nd game) or Warhammer (which I never played), then you could consider trying out Alternating Turns vs IGoYouGo. All of these game only see a single activation per model (or sometime two if you take risk / special skill) and I think this is critical to have before allowing per-order alternating activation vs activating a whole player at once. Like Aristeia is 1 activation per Aristos. You could try a version where 1 player activates fully. or try a version where player must absolute alternate between each other (which i'm not sure it might already be, I think it has a Iniative system where it could happen that the same player activates twice in a row?) PS - as a compromise you could play Infinity with activating only 1 group per side at a time, which is how some 2v2 games are already played.
To me the ARO is already close to alternating. Actually better. Instead of I go, you go, it's We both go!
There was an idea: After counting orders, the player assigned one troop (wherever he was) like a stormtrooper. For 1 turn, a player can spend 5 regular orders on a stormtrooper. The rest of the troops can spend only 2 regular order on themselves. In general, this limits situations when 14 orders are spent on 1 unit in vanila. But it allows sectorials to spend all orders on a fireteam (but not to 1 unit), but at the same time they will have to be careful when choosing which of the units to spend the order on.
