So I've been a bit unlucky. In all the games we've played, I've been FIRST PLAYER only twice. One of those times, my opponent had the "steal initiative" zone literally a step or two from his deployment. As a result, I don't go first very often.

I am playing Capitol, mostly against the Dark Legion, but occasionally against Bauhaus. My more flexible but wimpy army has trouble being second player against the DL heavies. What tends to happen is that with first attack, he eventually catches me and rolls well, killing a puny Capitolian, and then starts out activating me, taking advantage to move vulnerable units up after my last guy has gone, and then using that powerful unit to crush a guy or two before I can go again.

I enjoy the gold/silver/copper order markers because of the choices about how much you want to do. I would enjoy this game a lot more with a different initiative system.

From a scale of 1 to 10

1 - worst - Games Workshop style you go I go. An entire army moves before I even get to respond. Bleh. It's what makes Hordes so oddly lopsided at times, too.

6 - current MC rules - 2 characters per turn (barring combined fire, etc) and swapping back and forth until we run out of activations.

7 - Heroscape's silly order markers, with exchanging who goes first on a D20 roll, planning ahead of time, move only three per round.

8 - old Warzone, with one figure/squad per activation, roll initiative on a D20.

9 - VOR, with one figure/squad activated, MPs to allow variable runs, multiple shots, etc.

I am wondering if anyone has ideas about why the first player system works the way it does for this game. Does anyone regularly change the rules with a house rule?

Have you discussed with him/her about simply removing command tower since it seems to be unbalancing the game? You can also agree to move it more toward the center if it appears close to a starting point. A random roll to determine which is traded would work.

Knocking THE RELIC down to + 1d3 vp is another house rule I have encountered.

For having played larger games than skirmishes, the initiativ rule is toned down with large number of units. The guard action is more used from round to round to counter the first player advantage (the second player must pay attention at the end of the round to not discover its units).

If you are playing to maps together (that would be a big battlefield), being first or second looses a bit of importance. Problem is playing in a single map, were the first player can move and guard two minis that can shoot the enemy just as they move their first square, but in a larger map, with longer distances and all, I think it's not such a great advantage.

A friend and I have discussed this change to initiative:

The last player to activate units at the end of a round becomes the second player in the following round.

It's a very minor change, actually, but we think it will help balance things when one player has severe unit advantage over the other. I'll post here when we finally get to try it out.