I'm hoping that future units help temper the spam advantage. I'd like to think some new armor or adjustments to the existing vehicles is the answer. I don't think it's time to panic yet.

I don't think it would be a good idea:

There are multiple mechanics that mean a single powerful unit is better at killing stuff than multiple less powerful (ie cover rules)

The activation rules favour multiple smaller units, as do the objectives.

So smaller units more tactical / strategic, bigger units more powerful. If you give the more powerful units the activation advantage I suspect it would make them too good and the pendulum would swing too far the other way.

I think the correct mechanic for adjusting power levels etc is points. That's why the system is there. A slight increase in some core/spam units and a reduction in some of the bigger ones would balance things up nicely.

11 hours ago, armada439 said:

So it feels to me that the reason people want a pass mechanic, or to weaken trooper spam activation advantage - is because they want to play the cool 'queen' pieces, and also not be too disadvantaged to win games.

Seems like easy fix to me: change the max points to 1200 - but don't change the min-max unit requirements.

At that range I bet you'll see a lot more diverse commander/heavy/support combos. And you'll have to because 6x trooper spam even with all the upgrade toys only gets a player to 600 points. Then they have 600 points of awesomeness to pick.

Probably still won't save the airspeeder though, lol

I don't see changing the points cost helping things. You'd just end up with very similar lists across the board with only slight changes simply because the first 13 activations (Leia/Veers+Corps+Support+Strike Team Special Forces) come in at about 900 points. At that point, pretty much everyone ends up with slight variations of a 15 activation list. 800 points is a good place for list diversity if point costs can be adjusted because you can't bring everything and the kitchen sink.

One stopgap measure might be to make certain strike teams and the e-web take up a corps slot in addition to their special forces/support slot. That would make them less appealing to lists that already can afford 6 corps units, but allow lists that built tall to grab a few more activations cheaply. Edit: slightly sleep deprived list building at 4 AM suggests this might cause too many headaches to be worth it. *shrug*

I'm not fan of pass, if you give it as an all time choice, then it becomes a better standby. Why would you activate your troops now when you could pass and wait for the opponent to come into range? Its effectively giving elite armies more control of the battle field with better units.

If you do the Pass due to more activations then you add a whole new mess of rules. Do you get Pass only if you start round with less? If you start with less and then kill more of your opponents units during a round, do they now get a pass ability that round ?

The game is less than a year old, I know from other model games, big changes to rules early on seem in line to make it balance but as more stuff comes out it tends to flip back the other way.

5 hours ago, Squark said:

I don't see changing the points cost helping things. You'd just end up with very similar lists across the board with only slight changes simply because the first 13 activations (Leia/Veers+Corps+Support+Strike Team Special Forces) come in at about 900 points. At that point, pretty much everyone ends up with slight variations of a 15 activation list. 800 points is a good place for list diversity if point costs can be adjusted because you can't bring everything and the kitchen sink.

One stopgap measure might be to make certain strike teams and the e-web take up a corps slot in addition to their special forces/support slot. That would make them less appealing to lists that already can afford 6 corps units, but allow lists that built tall to grab a few more activations cheaply. Edit: slightly sleep deprived list building at 4 AM suggests this might cause too many headaches to be worth it. *shrug*

Not much different than right now (post scouts) where everything is a variation on a 10 act list

I think objectives that punish having multiple could potentially help a bit, such as scoring based on number of infantry unit leaders killed, but that might just lead to the activation spam lists dropping a unit to put in a hefty bid for first to guarantee their Objective deck is used, but now they are also disadvantaged on points. Future unit releases might have more of an impact if they are able to more effectively destroy small, cheap units.

10 minutes ago, armada439 said:

Not much different than right now (post scouts) where everything is a variation on a 10 act list

Agreed, and changing how activations work would likely just lead to a new "best" list that everyone makes variations on. To be fair, with the relatively limited number of units available to both sides once all announced units are released (4 Commanders, 2 Corps units, 1 Operative, 2 Support, 3 Special Forces, and 1 Heavy) the lists are going to look very similar. As more units are released, and more factions with different weapon options, we'll see what happens.

18 hours ago, armada439 said:

So it feels to me that the reason people want a pass mechanic, or to weaken trooper spam activation advantage - is because they want to play the cool 'queen' pieces, and also not be too disadvantaged to win games.

Seems like easy fix to me: change the max points to 1200 - but don't change the min-max unit requirements.

At that range I bet you'll see a lot more diverse commander/heavy/support combos. And you'll have to because 6x trooper spam even with all the upgrade toys only gets a player to 600 points. Then they have 600 points of awesomeness to pick.

Probably still won't save the airspeeder though, lol

problem then is pace of game and game length it already to long with the amount of units on the table.

3 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Agreed, and changing how activations work would likely just lead to a new "best" list that everyone makes variations on.

This is a general problem with post-internet official/organized/tournament wargaming.

I don’t think it’s a problem that having more activations conveys an advantage. Right now the high cost units are plenty valuable (except the airspeeder), except there is an opportunity cost to taking them: less activations.

Adding a pass mechanic would remove that opportunity cost, and you would get something like 40k where the only reason to take “cheap” troop units is to fill out your mandatory force org minimums.

Personally I really like how list building feels right now. 9-11 activations feels “right;” if you have too many activations, you have too many low impact cheap units. If you have too few activations, you are trying to fit in too many expensive toys.

1 hour ago, TauntaunScout said:

This is a general problem with post-internet official/organized/tournament wargaming.

Wargaming, TCGs, RPG characters (among some people), some board games, basically anything people can try to optimize. Takes some of the fun out of list/deck building or playing to discover what strategies work for you.

5 hours ago, Gridloc said:

I'm not fan of pass, if you give it as an all time choice, then it becomes a better standby. Why would you activate your troops now when you could pass and wait for the opponent to come into range? Its effectively giving elite armies more control of the battle field with better units.

If you do the Pass due to more activations then you add a whole new mess of rules. Do you get Pass only if you start round with less? If you start with less and then kill more of your opponents units during a round, do they now get a pass ability that round ?

The game is less than a year old, I know from other model games, big changes to rules early on seem in line to make it balance but as more stuff comes out it tends to flip back the other way.

1 hour ago, Orkimedes said:

I don’t think it’s a problem that having more activations conveys an advantage. Right now the high cost units are plenty valuable (except the airspeeder), except there is an opportunity cost to taking them: less activations.

Adding a pass mechanic would remove that opportunity cost, and you would get something like 40k where the only reason to take “cheap” troop units is to fill out your mandatory force org minimums.

Personally I really like how list building feels right now. 9-11 activations feels “right;” if you have too many activations, you have too many low impact cheap units. If you have too few activations, you are trying to fit in too many expensive toys.

These are a solid argument that are making me rethink things. I'm wondering what you guys are seeing on the table locally?

Im thinking sniper strike teams are the problem. So cheap, hard to deal with, and deadly that make the initial problem of being out activated feel so much worse than it is mechanically without snipers around. Feels bad for conpedative play locally where everyone here is taking as many sniper teams as they can afford with real world money.

1 hour ago, Orkimedes said:

Adding a pass mechanic would remove that opportunity cost, and you would get something like 40k where the only reason to take “cheap” troop units is to fill out your mandatory force org minimums.

Simultaneous fire (like in D6 SW) would eliminate some of that. It's a big problem in 40k. When a 300 point squad of 10 space marines fights 300 points of gretchin over on the northeast table corner... the marines gun down a bunch of gretchin right away and now it's 180 points of gretchin left, and that's not enough dice rolling to put a dent in a space marine squad... The fire combat mechanic in 40k rapidly destroys the points equivalencies in list building. Luckily the objective system in 40k now does a good job at compensating for that. Back in 2nd edition, the Victory Point system tended to make it worse.

I think (hope) the stand-by order is the pass mechanic for this game and as more releases develop the game, it'll make better sense.

8 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

Simultaneous fire (like in D6 SW) would eliminate some of that. It's a big problem in 40k. When a 300 point squad of 10 space marines fights 300 points of gretchin over on the northeast table corner... the marines gun down a bunch of gretchin right away and now it's 180 points of gretchin left, and that's not enough dice rolling to put a dent in a space marine squad... The fire combat mechanic in 40k rapidly destroys the points equivalencies in list building. Luckily the objective system in 40k now does a good job at compensating for that. Back in 2nd edition, the Victory Point system tended to make it worse.

I think (hope) the stand-by order is the pass mechanic for this game and as more releases develop the game, it'll make better sense.

180 points of grots are still 60 grots

11 minutes ago, Qark said:

These are a solid argument that are making me rethink things. I'm wondering what you guys are seeing on the table locally?

Im thinking sniper strike teams are the problem. So cheap, hard to deal with, and deadly that make the initial problem of being out activated feel so much worse than it is mechanically without snipers around. Feels bad for conpedative play locally where everyone here is taking as many sniper teams as they can afford with real world money.

If snipers are completely dominating your tables, you might need more heavy cover. They are extremely inefficient vs. heavy cover.

9 minutes ago, Orkimedes said:

If snipers are completely dominating your tables, you might need more heavy cover. They are extremely inefficient vs. heavy cover.

Heavy cover doesn't prevent them from placing suppression, and on most infantry (outside of a commander's influence) 2 suppression is enough to cause a panic. Turn one panic has a real chance of leading to a dead unit. LoS blocking terrain can help a bit. Heavy cover will of course help with wounds, but reliable long range suppression can really hinder infantry movement, which is a big deal in objective based games.

Well, on the subject of snipers v terrain, thou should learn from the tao of video games.

Been playing a lot of Valkyria Chronicles 4 lately, Snipers are still quite a powerful unit for both player and the COM (since they are one of the few things that can for sure one-shot a soldier from basically across the map with an open line of sight) and the game gives you one as a plot character right away. But you can't use them to solve all your problems, because the map design will throw up walls and fortifications, clusters of buildings, trenches, canyons, hills etc or these like extra tall fences (dead imperial soldiers for scale)

When the game really wants to reward you for using snipers, it places ladders, guard towers or natural slopes on your side of the map. But basically, break up LOS more, and design perches which make sense for snipers but hopefully don't involve turn zero "I can see the whole map from here!"

If Snipers are such a dominant strat, I do expect at least for the time being we will probably then start to see a lot of counter-sniping? The tactical question will be do you fire on enemy corps to suppress or panic them away from objectives, or do you fire on enemy snipers to prevent them from doing the same to you. That does lead to the kind of "saminess" problem we're talking about but I think that's just a symptom of a game with a narrow unit list where if you want to do something you need to take a specific unit to do it, we don't have a lot of "similar but not the same" units for more variety. Also if FFG gives us a cheaper platform for mortars, or gives us an indirect fire effect, that might sort some sneaky snipers.

1 hour ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Heavy cover doesn't prevent them from placing suppression, and on most infantry (outside of a commander's influence) 2 suppression is enough to cause a panic. Turn one panic has a real chance of leading to a dead unit. LoS blocking terrain can help a bit. Heavy cover will of course help with wounds, but reliable long range suppression can really hinder infantry movement, which is a big deal in objective based games.

Hmm, those opportunities are pretty rare. Most players keep their courage 1 units close enough to their commander(s).

Don’t get me wrong, I think snipers are good. They aren’t the hand of god though like some people think.

1 hour ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Heavy cover doesn't prevent them from placing suppression, and on most infantry (outside of a commander's influence) 2 suppression is enough to cause a panic. Turn one panic has a real chance of leading to a dead unit. LoS blocking terrain can help a bit. Heavy cover will of course help with wounds, but reliable long range suppression can really hinder infantry movement, which is a big deal in objective based games.

My all-snowtrooper list shoots and moves while suppressed

Also they hunker down on static objectives and return fire while suppressed...

I’ve actually never tried the sniper strike teams. I’ve only done the full teams with them. Didn’t think the strike teams were that great as they’re usually only doing maybe 1 wound per round

10 minutes ago, lukecook said:

I’ve actually never tried the sniper strike teams. I’ve only done the full teams with them. Didn’t think the strike teams were that great as they’re usually only doing maybe 1 wound per round

Yeah but it's one wound and one suppression exactly where you need it from so far away that the enemy can't retaliate. Kill the one leader left in a squad running away with an objective. Suppress the one unit that wins the enemy the game if they can move twice on the final turn. On early turns you can do something useful with a unit while you delay your main force so the enemy has to choose between moving into range of your main force before they activate or staying back delaying their approach to objectives.

I like this idea and it sounds like a pass mechanic would fix the problem. I see three options:

1. Increase point totals from 800 as someone else mentioned. This would allow players to add heavy units and still have points left over to add enough cheap trooper units to get near equal activations. There is a possibility though that some players will then put 2 AT-ST’s, Vader, The Emperor and the Royal Guard in a list, then whine about their activations (you can just see it happening).

2. Create a rules change that takes each player’s starting forces and for every 2 units player A (player A being the player with the greater number of units) has in excess of player B, player B gets one pass/round. This gives the pass ability, but doesn’t over do it and also doesn’t nessesarily help those who start to lose, by giving further activations later in the game, as it’s a static number taken from starting troops. Also it shouldn’t give so many passes that players that play heavy units would become op.

3. Create a card that costs 5-10 pts (not sure how much would be fair) that gives 1 pass. The only problem here is that someone with high activations can also take this card. And this could be really abused way more easily than the other options.

Either way, I think a “Pass” option would be a good mechanic, if it’s not over done. Every game starts to build a house of cards starting from inception and each new rule and new card is another level to that house. At some point that house will collapse on its own weight and we get version 2.0, but until that happens, everything added needs to be measured carefully against everything that came before.

Just a thought.

14 hours ago, Orkimedes said:

Hmm, those opportunities are pretty rare. Most players keep their courage 1 units close enough to their commander(s).

Don’t get me wrong, I think snipers are good. They aren’t the hand of god though like some people think.

I've encountered quite a few situations where either I or my opponent end up deploying courage 1 units away from the commander(s) due to objective placements, so it isn't unheard of for them to be outside of command radius.

Overall I agree, but 2+ suppression on a 1 courage unit means it has a decent chance to be suppressed for at least one turn, which can be the difference between your opponent scoring an objective, and you getting the objective. Being able to do that before most units can fire is also very good. Of course, the sniper team is fairly fragile, which can be mitigated somewhat by keeping the non-leader model out of LoS.

14 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

My all-snowtrooper list shoots and moves while suppressed

Also they hunker down on static objectives and return fire while suppressed...

Very true, but they aren't shooting with aim tokens (2 aim tokens if you use Veer's ability) or moving as far as they could were they not suppressed. You also aren't taking a Dodge token to help keep them on the objective and also firing. So yes, they are less affected than other corps units, they are still affected.

12 hours ago, lukecook said:

I’ve actually never tried the sniper strike teams. I’ve only done the full teams with them. Didn’t think the strike teams were that great as they’re usually only doing maybe 1 wound per round

I will admit the full team gives them more survivability and they can still splitfire should you need to reach out and touch a lone leader holding an objective, need just one more undodgeable wound on Luke or Vader, or just need a suppression on the other side of the board.

@JediPartisan

1) Unless the high activation lists are already filling their force org slots, they can just add more units as well, potentially just keeping the difference in activations. Adding more points will also likely increase the time required to play a game.

2) If it doesn't check during the course of the game, then if player B is able to use their more expensive units to destroy enough of player A's units that the players are at the same number of activations, or player B now actually has more, player B still has a way of forcing player A to move first/multiple units.

3) As you point out, if it's a card, both sides have access to it. A caveat could be added to the card "only if you have fewer remaining activations" but the points would be hard to determine then.

With the low courage value of corps units meaning a single suppression token has a 2/3 chance of suppressing, giving your opponent more chances to place suppression before you activate units is generally a disadvantage. Automatically removing one suppression at the end of a turn makes placing suppression prior to a unit's activation more effective than suppression placed after the unit has activated.

Additionally, the ability to pass means in a turn where both players might want to be bidding for second, the player with less activations automatically gets it, regardless of what card they play.

20 hours ago, Orkimedes said:

180 points of grots are still 60 grots

Whatever it is, it changes every edition so I just made the numbers up. The point is, 40k rapidly turns a 1,000 or 2,000 point game into lots of little 200 or so point encounters in which the small hard unit always wins. The points are generally well balanced on paper, but the simplistic nature of the game hands an automatic "inside line" to any small hard unit. Just by being on the table, an elite 40k unit brings many points to bear against very few points, and destroys them. Like I said though, objectives have changed this quite a bit. My big light infantry armies have won or tied on objectives and VP's despite being horribly killed off by the end of the game.

Quote

If snipers are completely dominating your tables, you might need more heavy cover. They are extremely inefficient vs. heavy cover.

The debates on this forum do suggest to me that there is a worldwide trend of using too little scenery. Which is a shame cause decent scenery is dirt cheap, even free if you are just willing to try. Here's an easy cover solution. It takes 648 sq inches of heavy cover to fill 25% of a 3x6 table.

Step 1: Go buy a bag of batting or cotton balls for anywhere from $1.50 to $5. Or finagle some for free some how, you don't need a whole bag.

Step 2: Buy a half a yard of 60" wide white felt. If you aren't impulsive you can buy that for about $3. If you are in a hurry it can be had for $6 probably. It has double the surface area you need to cover the table in 25% scenery. Now cut it up into circles and ovals with scissors or pinking shears.

Step 3: Put the ovals on your table and scatter batting or stretched out cotton balls on them. You know have "fog" to take cover in. Treat as woods for cover purposes. The fog gives cover to those inside it, blocks LOS through it even for tall vehicles.

So for $5 you can cover 25% of a table in visually obvious "stuff that interferes with shooting".

But the fun doesn't end there!

Another $3 gets you half a yard of brown felt to cut into irregular shapes of "rough terrain". Then $3 more, for way more blue felt that you'll ever need to make ponds, rivers, and shoreline that totally block infantry movement. $6 for a couple yards of grass or sand colored felt to put it all on.

Now you've got a visually and tactically interesting terrain table for a total of $17. No painting, no gluing, no skills or tools that a 2nd grader doesn't possess. You can always make better looking stuff later: having things that block LOS but don't give cover, or only hide infantry but not vehicles, will make things more interesting down the road. But time and money are no excuse (even for newbies) for a weak terrain table. Weak terrain will tend to make a weird game regardless of the system you are playing. A whole wargaming terrain table takes a $20 bill, one trip to Jo-Anne's Fabric, and 30 minutes of cutting up felt while you watch TV. Later on when you try a different game, all your fog and mud and ponds will still work. If you really hate the idea of fog instead of woods, use dark orange felt that looks like dead leaves and put some twigs and rocks on it from your yard, or buy lichen (also called Reindeer Moss) to put on the woods instead of cotton.

If you're really feeling like a cheapskate just buy a yard and a half of green and 1/2 a yard of brown: brown felt is rough terrain, brown felt plus twigs and gravel is forests. $9 scenery table.

If you want elevation, cheap-as-free buildings and cliffs is another subject.

The best part is, the above table's worth of textile scenery is very easy to store and transport.

I just use the core and expansion boxes as well as the boxes i store paints in

Little late for this but,

Icould see a card such as this : Feint, tap this card to skip a single issue order. 10 points

Seconding @TauntaunScout's information regarding cheap, easy ways of indicating area LoS blocking terrain. My FLGS has brown and green irregular felt patches for woods, with cheap tree models on washers (like plastic fir trees mixed with some of the nicer flock trees) to place on top for an easily moved 3D visual element.