I really dislike the idea of alternating initiatives. The fact ships act by their initiative alone is, in my view, enough to give some balance to the game

2 hours ago, Manolox said:

I disagree, if you create an anti-I6 card like the one that you are talking about no one will ever fly soontir without the same upgrade on him. It would be an auto include card on I6 pilots and so only a way to waste points that you could use elsewhere.

Would you realy even only think to fly soontir or vader (even worst) if you know that you could easely lose the initiative toward an I6 or 7 "mister no one"?

The time of Veteran instinct is over.

VI isn't over. As I argued when people wanted a PS limit of 9 or whatever to prevent the "PS arms Race". When it comes to aces, it will just switch to a bid arms race. Nothing has changed.

If FFG really wants people to be able to make the most of their ships with upgrades and such, switching init is the best option. I do understand that it could could be a problem remembering to switch the token each round and what not.. I know we forget to actually pass the token in Legion all the time. But in the sake of a balanced game, it IS the best option.

On the other hand, when I am not flying aces, I love seeing an opponent with VI on all his ships and a build of 90 points to get that bid. It means they wasted a ton of upgrade potential just to get high PS which they would have anyway. In 2.0 it will be no different when I see the guy with a 180 point list.

44 minutes ago, Vector Strike said:

I really dislike the idea of alternating initiatives. The fact ships act by their initiative alone is, in my view, enough to give some balance to the game

It doesn't resolve anything in case of opposing ships having equal initiative and same initiative bid, then OUTCOME of the whole game is decided by ONE ROLL, there are no skill, only blind luck.

I really hate bidding for initiative--I want to build the list I want, rather than cut things which still fit within the 200 point limit. I don't want to cut Predator from Soontir Fel for a bid. That just feels wrong to me.

But I can totally see the first player switch being awkward. I mean, staggered PS lists can get awkward sometimes in 1e. I mostly trust FFG when they say they didn't feel it added much after testing.

2 hours ago, SOTL said:

You'll get a lot of games that are all about dancing initiative rather than locking that state down and just playing a game.

Again, having actually played this way a few times, this doesn't happen. There's limited space to work with and if you're busy trying to waste a round so initiative falls the way you want it, your opponent is busy shooting at you anyway. And if it's a competitive environment, time becomes limited in addition to space as well.

10 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

I know it sounds easy, but you have to remember that the two other alternating initiative games, Rune Wars and Legion, use a set game length that has to be tracked. I other words, if both players forget, you can backtrack pretty easily. If both players forget in X-Wing, that's a much more daunting proposition.

If people can remember to clean up the round tokens at the End Phase, they can remember to "pass the big-*** X-Wing token to the other player" as well.

I love games that throw variable contraints at players. Variable initiative would change the game in BIG ways that I would enjoy.

I would handle it this way. At the BEGINNING OF THE SYSTEM PHASE, players roll 1 red die +1 for each 10pts of bid (or part there of) above the opponent

You would have to set dial before knowing initiative. Mathwingers would hate it.

I think the main reason they didn't implement this change is because "it's not X-wing." Changing initiative is really fun in other games, but so might "no defense dice," like Armada and Runewars. I think they were afraid that people coming back to the game would say, "this isn't X-wing."

That said, I really want to tray a bunch of games with passing player 1 as a rule, and see how it goes. I love the idea that one round Soontir acts as arc dodger, and another round he could function as blocker. That versatility sings to me.

1 hour ago, kris40k said:

If people can remember to clean up the round tokens at the End Phase, they can remember to "pass the big-*** X-Wing token to the other player" as well.

So you've never gone into the activation phase and realized a ship still had a focus/evade from last round? Impressive, but that makes you an anomaly because even some of the best players I've witnessed forget some small detail of cleanup. But cleaning up a stray focus token is super easy, what do you do if it's been multiple turns since you forgot to pass initiative?

I've played a lot of Legion and I still routinely to pass initiative until it matters for something.

The game would also be a mess from order of activations if you had conflicts at multiple initiative numbers instead of just one. Just imagine an Inferno Squadron mirror match with all those different initiatives constantly shuffling every turn.

Objectively, I don't feel the benefits of alternating initiative are worth the added complexity.

17 hours ago, Embir82 said:

Inspired by topic about missed opportunities I think we can talk about one opportunity that was truly missed - a chance to introduce switching initiative.

Since the early days of X-Wing initiative is one of the most important things in X-Wing - it can determine the outcome of the matches and strategies. It is no coincidence that "initiative bid" is one of the most important aspects when it comes to list building.
Having said that, current rules in regards to initiative are very frustrating and didn't change from X-Wing 1.0 - the player with lower points list get to pick who gets initiative, and in case of a tie a roll decides, then initiative stays with THE SAME player for the WHOLE game.
I cannot tell enough how frustrating is the fact that initiative in X-Wing is unswitchable and stays with the same player the whole game. In some cases, aces vs aces match up for example, having initiative is huge handicap, magnified by invariable initiative, also in situation where both players trimmed down their lists and have equal initiative bids player losing initiative roll also, in practice, lost all his unused points that went into initiative bid.
Thus I don't understand why FFg didn't introduce switching initiative in X-Wing, especially given the fact that it was already introduced in their other miniatures game, Runewars. In Runewars switching initiative is great solution that prevent either player from being screwed by single roll on initiative or losing bid at the list construction step, so even before game begun.

Dear FFG do we have to wait for 3.0 for this change?

Sounds like somebody got outbid.

2 minutes ago, player3010587 said:

Sounds like somebody got outbid.

Sounds like somebody completely missed the point of this topic.

I believe the reasoning it was not used is because x-wing is a maneuver based game that you have to plan several turns in advance (or you should) and having alternating initiative made multi-turn in advanced planning much more difficult. Fixed forced maneuvers are much harder to coordinate than movements in other games.

If you lost the initiative in a mirror match you need to change your playstyle and use your ability to move first to your advantage land some key blocks. You land the block with your ship you get your actions and the ship you blocked gets nothing. (1ship vs 1ship is much harder but it's a squad game) leverage your movement advantage and outfly your opponent blocking him/her out.

47 minutes ago, Icelom said:

I believe the reasoning it was not used is because x-wing is a maneuver based game that you have to plan several turns in advance (or you should) and having alternating initiative made multi-turn in advanced planning much more difficult. Fixed forced maneuvers are much harder to coordinate than movements in other games.

If you lost the initiative in a mirror match you need to change your playstyle and use your ability to move first to your advantage land some key blocks. You land the block with your ship you get your actions and the ship you blocked gets nothing. (1ship vs 1ship is much harder but it's a squad game) leverage your movement advantage and outfly your opponent blocking him/her out.

Or you get the same bid, roll a die, lose the roll, shake hands, concede and go play Loopin' Chewie for an hour instead of swimming upstream for a likely inevitable loss, considering skill near equal.

I like the idea of the back-and-forth play in a fight between two Ace lists, both getting a momentary advantage over their opponent and trying to capitalize on that advantage, instead of the outcome being like 75%/25% determined by bid/player order random roll.

3 hours ago, Parakitor said:

That said, I really want to tray a bunch of games with passing player 1 as a rule, and see how it goes. I love the idea that one round Soontir acts as arc dodger, and another round he could function as blocker. That versatility sings to me.

I encourage you to try it. It's everything it sounds like it will be.

2 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

1) what do you do if it's been multiple turns since you forgot to pass initiative?

2) The game would also be a mess from order of activations if you had conflicts at multiple initiative numbers instead of just one.

1) Same thing you do with other missed opportunities and triggers: back the game up to the most recent possible unchanged game state, then continue playing because oops you done goofed.

2) For the third time, having actually played this way, there is virtually no difference. One side has initiative, so their ships will activate first, same as it is now. The only part that's different is that alternates round-to-round. Hardly "a mess".

1 hour ago, Icelom said:

I believe the reasoning it was not used is because x-wing is a maneuver based game that you have to plan several turns in advance (or you should) and having alternating initiative made multi-turn in advanced planning much more difficult. Fixed forced maneuvers are much harder to coordinate than movements in other games.

If you lost the initiative in a mirror match you need to change your playstyle and use your ability to move first to your advantage land some key blocks. You land the block with your ship you get your actions and the ship you blocked gets nothing. (1ship vs 1ship is much harder but it's a squad game) leverage your movement advantage and outfly your opponent blocking him/her out.

It's not much more difficult. It's only a little bit more of what you should already be doing: planning in advance.

As to the bolded part, that's the whole point of alternating initiative. Now both players will be challenged every game on their ability to both arc-dodge and block. Something that requires both players to elevate their play every single game should be a most welcome addition.

53 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Or you get the same bid, roll a die, lose the roll, shake hands, concede and go play Loopin' Chewie for an hour instead of swimming upstream for a likely inevitable loss, considering skill near equal.

I like the idea of the back-and-forth play in a fight between two Ace lists, both getting a momentary advantage over their opponent and trying to capitalize on that advantage, instead of the outcome being like 75%/25% determined by bid/player order random roll.

Exactly this.

16 hours ago, FlyingAnchors said:

The developers have been pretty vocal about X-wing 2.0 being designed in such a way that you do not auto lose during the list building phase. While rotating initiative would have probably become a reality for 1.0 had it continued on, the fact this mechanic is absent in 2.0 pretty much says it’s not needed.

Of course, initiative in X-wing is just a rule defined in a pdf, that could always be changed in the future if it needed to be.

Same Devs created every issue in 1.0.

I think they mean well but they arent infallable.

I like the general nerfing and rebalancing in 2.0, but we wouldnt even need a 2.0 at all if the development team didnt jump the shark repeatedly. I think its naive to assume 2.0 was play tested sufficiently to accurately predict everything

FFG tried this during Armada's development and dropped it before the final release. Now, Armada and X-wing are pretty different games, but Armada* wouldn't balance well with alternating initiative. Initiative is much more important on certain turns. In particular, having initiative turn 1 is if anything a disadvantage, but it can be a huge advantage turn 2 (Or, if both players slow roll, turn 2/3). With alternating initiative, one player can get the benefits of going first and the benefits of going last two turns, which is a huge chunk of a game of Armada.

Now, without a fixed turn limit of six, you wouldn't see as much of this in X-wing. It would probably factor into strategy only during engage/disengage cycles. The problem here is that those were rather problematic in 1.0 (E.G. The 75 minute sequence of jockeying for a favorable opening engagement during last year's Gencon finals between Nathan and Zack**) and adding another strategic layer to those situations would only prolong something a lot of players really disliked (So much so that they put an enormous ammount of effort into creating an alternate competitive format which added significant strategic consequences to disengaging).

*For the purpose of this discussion, assume that Armada's objectives would be rebalanced with minimal to no bias towards the second player).

**Just to be clear, I'm not throwing either of them under the bus. Getting the opening engagement right was genuinely that important to winning the match.

7 hours ago, SOTL said:

I think flipping Initiative is probably a gameplay improvement but I can also see that it became too complicated to implement.

At a competitive level in particular I think the changing initiative would become TOO important as players take turns trying to block each other, or to arc dodge or whatever. You'll get a lot of games that are all about dancing initiative rather than locking that state down and just playing a game.

Personally I think this is the entire point of rotating first player.

Both players have to switch between the different aspects of the game instead of only playing one and occasionally losing when they don’t get to play that game.

Obviously it can be stated that it is important to learn both aspects for those games when you are the first player.

There is also hope that the meta is more diverse. In an Ace heavy meta the bid will go way up, maybe to 15pts, but if efficiency squads are good enough then high I squads will probably need more tech to compete and they won’t be able to strip down so far.

In my experience of a very small meta of two players using at least one I5 or higher ship that really wants to move second, bids of 7-10 are not uncommon. This is massively higher than 1.0 where 3pts might have been the most the Empire could ever bid. Scum could get lower with the hyper efficient OldManFenn but that would be point fixed in 2.0.

In fact point fixing might be another way to force ace lists to have smaller bids.

Now while I think it was a missed opportunity I haven’t tested it. I do see that it might be complicated and that if you had it you might only want it competitively, but you want tournaments to be open to everyone. I do see why they left it out. I’ve also found that every game of 2.0 is so close. In a timed game the half points on everything generally mean that both players have a win condition every game. For games where you are playing Aces and are forced into the first player role you need to figure out an optimal win condition early in the game. Choose whether your win condition relies on removing their high I ace or whether you can ignore them and get points a different way.

So yes. I definitely wanted rotating initiative but it isn’t the worst thing that we didn’t get it.

I think switching initiatives is a trash-fire level idea, but before I commit, can someone clarify to me what, if any, advantage there would be to having a bid if initiative swapped back and forth? I can't find any way to have a swapping initiative that doesn't destroy the bid model.

Switching initiative sounds terrible in a game where taking initiative into account during list-building (before the game even begins) is a thing.

11 minutes ago, enigmahfc said:

Switching initiative sounds terrible in a game where taking initiative into account during list-building (before the game even begins) is a thing.

The entire point of switching initiative is to eliminate initiative problem during list building.

As I said in first post unchangable initiative brings up two problems to this game:

1) It often makes games decided even before start of the game (Aces with bigger bid won vs. Aces with lower bid, for example), diminishes importance of flying and increases importance of list building, thus strenghtening rock-paper-scissor model.
2) In case of an equal initiative bid game often is decided by BLIND LUCK, and player losing roll for initiative got his bid utterly wasted.

15 minutes ago, JasonCole said:

I think switching initiatives is a trash-fire level idea

Nah, truly trash-fire idea is invariable initiative.

8 minutes ago, Embir82 said:

2) In case of an equal initiative bid game often is decided by BLIND LUCK, and player losing roll for initiative got his bid utterly wasted.

Well, that's completely untrue. In the case of matching bids (i.e. both players bring a 196 point list), there is a roll off for initative, but it was bringing that bid that got them the chance to have initiative at all. The player that brings a 200 point list vs the 196 point list doesn't have a chance at initiative, and shouldn't be rewarded by alternating initiative. Holding back points is a viable strategy in planning to gain an upper hand, the entire point of list building to begin with.

22 hours ago, Embir82 said:

Inspired by topic about missed opportunities I think we can talk about one opportunity that was truly missed - a chance to introduce switching initiative.

Since the early days of X-Wing initiative is one of the most important things in X-Wing - it can determine the outcome of the matches and strategies. It is no coincidence that "initiative bid" is one of the most important aspects when it comes to list building.
Having said that, current rules in regards to initiative are very frustrating and didn't change from X-Wing 1.0 - the player with lower points list get to pick who gets initiative, and in case of a tie a roll decides, then initiative stays with THE SAME player for the WHOLE game.
I cannot tell enough how frustrating is the fact that initiative in X-Wing is unswitchable and stays with the same player the whole game. In some cases, aces vs aces match up for example, having initiative is huge handicap, magnified by invariable initiative, also in situation where both players trimmed down their lists and have equal initiative bids player losing initiative roll also, in practice, lost all his unused points that went into initiative bid.
Thus I don't understand why FFg didn't introduce switching initiative in X-Wing, especially given the fact that it was already introduced in their other miniatures game, Runewars. In Runewars switching initiative is great solution that prevent either player from being screwed by single roll on initiative or losing bid at the list construction step, so even before game begun.

Dear FFG do we have to wait for 3.0 for this change?

i'm sure all 3 people that play runewars love it!

Amazing how many game designers are in this thread, who know for absolute certainty better than FFG's designers who do designing for a living...

Rolling for initiative every turn is terrible. It is some kind of fun in pure "beer&pretzel" games like Man o War. But otherwise, here we really have the situation that loosing the initiative to a random roll in a critical round makes or breaks your game.

7 hours ago, Embir82 said:

It doesn't resolve anything in case of opposing ships having equal initiative and same initiative bid, then OUTCOME of the whole game is decided by ONE ROLL, there are no skill, only blind luck.

Sorry but that's BS. That would only ever be true with players if exactly equal skill, fatigue-, hunger/thirst-, distraction level. Otherwise the player without ini still can outplay the other by skillz.

I actually believe FFG here. Changing initiative elongates and complicates unneccesarily. You know this game us not only for high level tournament play. Home players neither have a time limit, easy to get bored by a game that just jockeys around for aeons.

20 hours ago, gadwag said:

Tracking alternating player order would give me a headache. No Thanks.

That's really the only drawback, and it's something that players would get over.

FFG should have done it.

35 minutes ago, Managarmr said:

in pure "beer&pretzel" games like Man o War.

X-wing is much more a "beer&pretzel" game than man o war or any other GW game has ever been.