14 hours ago, cnemmick said:

1) the TI player needs to pay more of a cost than exhausting Threepio or a regular Imp o  fficer;

I did some basic testing on this back in the day and it was promising. You can require a certain value of cards to be exhausted (eg more than 6 points or something in that range) that makes TI much more balanced. That's the whole problem with TI in the first place: its effect is much better than its cost so it makes sense to me to increase its in-game cost, such that you wouldn't always play it at the start of round 2 even if you weren't getting initiative. This kind of limit also makes it less valuable in the late game when you might not good deployments that you can safely exhaust for more than 6 points.

Again : It's not Take Initiative that's overpowered, but this situation:

It is extremely overpowered , if a player knows for sure, that he has the last activation in one round AND the first activation in the next round.

49 minutes ago, DerBaer said:

It's just one of those three options:

- Keep the basic initiative mechanism as is / maybe reduce Negation to 0 points to make it negatable => more random

If the goal is to never have a situation where a player knows they'll have last/first activations, this won't prevent it. If I have TI and negation, I know my TI is going through.

49 minutes ago, DerBaer said:

- ban Take Initiative / roll for initiative every round => totally random

Obviously, the option I suggested is the best.

49 minutes ago, DerBaer said:

- ban Take Initiative / the player, that had the last activation this round, does NOT have initiative next round => not random, but never two activations in a row with the same figure

Of the three, this might have the potential for the most unintended consequences. Initiative determines more than just who goes first. In this scenario, you could potentially have a player have the initiative every single round.

I can't theory craft how that would impact your games specifically, but I could see that popping up in weird ways you may not have thought about.

13 minutes ago, Jaric256 said:

I can't theory craft how that would impact your games specifically, but I could see that popping up in weird ways you may not have thought about.

It would definitely mess with some of the map rules, as lots of them have things like "in order of initiative, do X Y and Z". Whether this is a big enough deal to matter kind of depends on the map.

In the current rotation the only noticeable difference would be who moves the gangsters first on Maul's map, which matters but isn't usually game-defining.

1 hour ago, Jaric256 said:

I can't theory craft how that would impact your games specifically, but I could see that popping up in weird ways you may not have thought about.

We've tested that, and it didn't happen. But if you have at least one example for a situation, that doesn't work with that rule, I would be more than happy, because it would make the decision so much easier.

1 hour ago, ManateeX said:

It would definitely mess with some of the map rules, as lots of them have things like "in order of initiative, do X Y and Z". Whether this is a big enough deal to matter kind of depends on the map.

In the current rotation the only noticeable difference would be who moves the gangsters first on Maul's map, which matters but isn't usually game-defining.

Good call. I will check every map that was in rotation ever ...

Possible Problems:

Raiding Party (Moisture Farm)

Constant Motion (Nelvaanian Warzone)

Concealed Treasures (Mos Eisley Back Alleys)

Raining Freight (Nal Hutta Swamps)

What do you think? Any of these cause more problems with the alternative mechanism than with the current mechanism?

3 minutes ago, DerBaer said:

Possible Problems:

Raiding Party (Moisture Farm)

Constant Motion (Nelvaanian Warzone)

Concealed Treasures (Mos Eisley Back Alleys)

Raining Freight (Nal Hutta Swamps)

What do you think? Any of these cause more problems with the alternative mechanism than with the current mechanism?

There's also the issue of the order in which start of round and end of round effects are resolved.

Again, I have no clue what impact this would have on the game, which would likely be very context specific. Just more of a "keep this in mind" whenever you implement a possible solution.

41 minutes ago, DerBaer said:

We've tested that, and it didn't happen. But if you have at least one example for a situation, that doesn't work with that rule, I would be more than happy, because it would make the decision so much easier.

I don't unfortunately. Although on the flip side, since generally I'd assume the player with the fewer remaining activations would be getting the initiative with this rule set, it might give them a chance to come back getting the first attack of every round.

Of course bringing fewer activations might game the system to consistently have the initiative each round.

Personally, if I was going to implement a change, I'd go with completely random because it's simpler and (I think) less likely to create unintended consequences, but it's hard to tell without testing.

If you do implement totally random I'd be curious to hear how that turned out

50 minutes ago, Jaric256 said:

I don't unfortunately. Although on the flip side, since generally I'd assume the player with the fewer remaining activations would be getting the initiative with this rule set, it might give them a chance to come back getting the first attack of every round.

Of course bringing fewer activations might game the system to consistently have the initiative each round.

Personally, if I was going to implement a change, I'd go with completely random because it's simpler and (I think) less likely to create unintended consequences, but it's hard to tell without testing.

If you do implement totally random I'd be curious to hear how that turned out

With the current power level of deployments, i think random would be a very bad way to go. You can straight up loose games with two or three lost coin tosses.

I'm most interested in people experimenting with the "last player in previous round goes 2nd in next round" thing. Take Initiative would then become the only way to go twice in a row end/start of round instead of it happening sometimes normally. It seems like this would help out fewer deployment armies a little, since they could always go first or pass each round.

There is the possibility of splitting "Initiative for who goes first" and "Initiative for other game effects" if you're worried about those kinds of things. Though that feels a little weird.

Random sounds like it would be awful.

28 minutes ago, Ram said:

With the current power level of deployments, i think random would be a very bad way to go. You can straight up loose games with two or three lost coin tosses.

Losing games due to bad dice rolls is kinda par for the course here though. I essentially lost a regional match in the first round because Ezra dodged two attacks in a row.

Personally, I'm fine with the current initiative rules and have absolutely no plans to change them at my table.

5 hours ago, DTDanix said:

I'm most interested in people experimenting with the "last player in previous round goes 2nd in next round" thing. Take Initiative would then become the only way to go twice in a row end/start of round instead of it happening sometimes normally. It seems like this would help out fewer deployment armies a little, since they could always go first or pass each round.

There is the possibility of splitting "Initiative for who goes first" and "Initiative for other game effects" if you're worried about those kinds of things. Though that feels a little weird.

Random sounds like it would be awful.

My (main) concern here is that this house rule would consistently give initiative to exactly the types of lists that would most benefit from it. Lists with fewer deployment counts would have more points in each of those deployments (such as Vader/IG88/Rangers/etc), and thus would theoretically be able to do the most harm by reliably going first. Lists with multiple deployments would then essentially be doubly punished (at least, after Round 1). Also, most support figures would be passed over, because the cost of losing initiative each. and. every. round. would be far too great. And there would be more 'fortress' single-figure deployments (taking Jedi Luke instead of Rangers) because a Rangers deployment with one figure still counts as a full deployment for activation (and, therefore, initiative) purposes yet hits with one-third the power, while a Hater Vader with one hitpoint is still almost as big a threat as he would be unwounded. At least with alternating initiative, you don't have to worry about that single ranger -also- acting essentially as a "Take Initiative" for your opponent!

This rule would just exacerbate the current issue in that it's almost always best to concentrate your points into a few hard-hitting deployments and the minimum support that makes them hit harder, rather than spread squad points around among multiple units. (I call it the "build Build BUILD BUILD SMASH!!! " meta.) This is a bad idea, imo.

And what about version including "totally random" as a first step only?

I mean something like that:

1st round, of course, initiative is random

2nd round, initiative is random

3rd round: IF the same player has initiative during last two rounds, his opponent gets the initiative; if not, initiative is random

4th round: IF the same player has initiative during last two rounds, his opponent gets the initiative; if not, initiative is random

and so on

If you change something about Take initiative you make some deployment (spies, Thrawn,....) and some command card less effective-
Signal jammer works perfectly against the situation where a player knows they'll have last/first activations (paying the cost to cannot use first command card).
I believe the best way to work is to make some new command cards that have effect on turn order( spend an action : "last player in previous round goes 2nd in next round cost 1 Timing :last activation )

20 hours ago, DTDanix said:

I'm most interested in people experimenting with the "last player in previous round goes 2nd in next round" thing. Take Initiative would then become the only way to go twice in a row end/start of round instead of it happening sometimes normally. It seems like this would help out fewer deployment armies a little, since they could always go first or pass each round.

When we test that, then I Make My Own Luck and Take Initiative are banned. Actually, our community screamed for a ban of Take Initiative, and this rule was more of a byproduct, because the Initiative mechanism is too unbalanced, if you ban TI but do not change the basic mechanism.

We did run some test games, and this rule works better than I thought. That rule was my idea, but actually I thought this change is a little bit extreme. So I have lot of doubt. And community approval is very important for me. But there will be a lot more testing, before we decide that.

It helps armies with fewer activations a little, but in control missions it's still better to have the last activation.

Armies with more activations had two strengths with the original initiative mechanism (going last for scenario control / going last for those double activations) and no weaknesses. This is evened out a little when using the alternative mechanism.

Target priority is harder. Right now, you'd always want to kill ready deployments. That changes a little bit, when the opponent has one ready deployment left and you want to go first next round. More and harder decisions are to be made.

Tested again yesterday. Empire Trooper Spam vs my Merc Hunters.

The Trooper Spam had the last activation every round, and was able to score a lot of points on the Mission.

I had the first activation every round, but it wasn't overpowered, because I didn't have double activations.

Trooper Spam won. Both of us had fun.

18 hours ago, DerBaer said:

Tested again yesterday. Empire Trooper Spam vs my Merc Hunters.

The Trooper Spam had the last activation every round, and was able to score a lot of points on the Mission.

I had the first activation every round, but it wasn't overpowered, because I didn't have double activations.

Trooper Spam won. Both of us had fun.

I think it will be interesting to see how SC and Vader lists react to this change. Perhaps a 5 act Vader will become viable.