On Activation Order and Random Chance

 Howdy y'all. 

Step right up, pull the string in my back, and watch me go "There's an inherent flaw in Age of Sigmar!". 

I'm nothing if not predictable.

I think I might have a full post about Age of Sigmar in me, but it is not this one. That post risks being nothing but me whining about a game system I have yet to play even one game of the latest edition of, and while I imagine that will be cathartic, I'm not in the right place for it right now.

So, let's talk about one of my biggest gripes about it, and how other systems deal with the same underlying question. Two underlying questions, really, but they come together in a lovely overlapping Venn diagram.

Yes. I'm more a maths nerd than a graphic designer. Litigation is futile.

Every miniatures game relies on some form of random chance (well, almost - there are some very few, extreme outliers that defy this statement. I acknowledge their existence, but do not grant them the title of master), whether it be dice or cards or something else. Mostly dice, though.

This is not only fine, but probably desireable. While random chance is detrimental to balance, it is not in and of itself detrimental to the enjoyability of a game. While there are defintitely games that use almost no chance whatsoever, and do so well (chess, go, rock-paper-scissors) they are not miniatures games, and one thing is not like the other.

However, there is a fine balance to be struck. On the one hand, some random chance may be a desireable element, but too much is almost certain to make a game more about luck than about managing that luck. Where exactly a game ends up on the scale says a lot about the game.

I would argue that in order to be balanced and to some degree skill-based, a game has to do one of a few things with its randomness (trigger warning for numbered lists):

1. It can put it in less important places.

2. It can minimize a random result's impact.

3. It can mitigate it by mass.

4. It can minimize deviation.

1 and 2 seek to ensure that uneven luck has limited impact, while 3 and 4 decrease the likelihood of significant unevenness. In reality, most games do all four to some extent. In short, 1 means not hinging the result of a game on a few instances of randomness. It is about making your random tables apply a bonus when you kill an enemy character, and not having those tables kill the unit holding an objective. 

2 is about compensating. It is giving the player who lost the roll to go first the advantage of picking deployment zones, for example. 3 is all about getting as close as possible to making enough random decisions that probability and reality become one. It is making forty hit rolls rather than four, and needing to fail three saves instead of one. 

4 is about making the extreme results occur less frequently, and the expected results more. It is using 2D6 instead of a D12, or using a deck of cards instead of dice (a dice could literally roll nothing but 1's a whole game, but if you draw more than four 2's out of a standard deck of cards - without having to shuffle in between - someone's in trouble).

That's an ace, but the point stands.

It's not necessarily the case that a game that does more is better. But a game that does none is almost definitely less balanced.

Now, deep breath, because we're not even halfways. 

Turn Structure

So far, this post has been nothing but a discussion about randomness in games, and that's only one half of the Venn diagram. the second should be obvious by now, but let me explain what I mean.

In every game involving more than one player, there needs to be a way of ensuring everyone plays. In football, everyone goes at once, chasing the same ball at the same time. In the hundred-metre dash, everyone goes at once, but each essentially plays their own game. In most cases, though, some kind of turn-taking is the solution, whether this is tennis players taking turns trying to make the other miss their next turn, or two chess players moving a piece each before handing over to the opponent.

In miniature wargaming, there are two commonly used structures: turn by turn, or activation by activation (with a less common phase by phase being some kind of middle ground). In games that go turn by turn, one player activates all of their models, and then the other activates all theirs. Games that go activation by activation are closer to the chess model, having one player activate only one model (or small group of models) before passing the controls to their opponent. 40k, Age of Sigmar, Warmachine and Flames of War are examples of the former, and Malifaux and Infinity are examples of the latter.

This is not a discussion of the merits of the two structures; they both have their pros and cons, and various games make each alternative work well.

This is a discussion of how that structure is established.

If it's ever this complex, I won't quit, but I will grumble.

Most turn by turn games establish a turn order from the start of the game (often, but not always, even before deployment) and then stick to it for the entirety of the game. This ensures that one player always has the chance to react to their opponent's actions before the opponent gets to go again. 

This initial assignment of turn order is usually done randomly, but games striving towards balance will try to make both positions in the order as evenly beneficial as possible. Warmachine gives a deployment and scoring advantage to the second player, 40k allows the second player to score after their last turn instead of before, and so on.

Activation by activation games often determine who goes first each turn; since whoever goes first has only a limited portion of their force to activate before the opponent gets to react, the advantage is lessened, and there is more leeway in allowing various factors to influence the result. A few games (most notably the Bolt Action family) don't even fix a turn order, but randomize each activation (I personally dislike this method, for reasons discussed briefly here - scroll down to Konflikt '47).

Like turn by turn games, assignation of turn order is usually done randomly, though since the game has progressed, any number of things may be allowed to affect the randomization. Malifaux allows players to use cards from their hand to skew the outcome. The late lamented Guild Ball added saved-up resources to a random roll, to let players decide how much they wanted to invest in the matter. 

I'm sure there are examples of activation by activation games that set the turn order at the beginning of the game, but I don't know any. There are lots and lots of these games, since the format lends itself well to smaller-scale games, with fewer models, and I cannot claim even passing familiarity with more than a handful. This choice would mean giving up the ability to let the game state affect things, and would make the initial randomization more important, but not more so than is the case for the turn by turn games mentioned above.

The last permutation is a turn by turn game that decides its turn order each turn. I am frankly baffled as to why any developer would choose this route; it creates the likely situation that one player gets to activate their entire force twice in a row - thus robbing their opponent of any chance to react - and provides very little benefit that I can see. Sure, some games it won't come up at all, and sure, players can try to mitigate the effects in advance, but I do not see the appeal.

And this is where we circle back to Age of Sigmar. The first edition of Age of Sigmar was a joke. Some effort was made during its tenure to turn it into an actual game rather than a footnote to its great predecessor, but if you build on rotten foundations, the whole house will suffer. With all the poor decision-making that went into that first iteration, the turn order was just one flaw among many. 

When the second edition came around, the developers tried their hand at 4 above. They made it slightly less likely that one player would get two turns in a row, and I will admit that this did nothing but infuriate me - they had clearly recognized that there was a problem, but rather than implement the obvious, simple solution of going back (remember, 40k does not do this) on their mistake and returning to a set turn order, they went half-ass.

Not how I would have halved an ass, but to each his own...

Third edition (which, as stated, I have not yet played) takes this even further. They're trying their hand at 2, by giving a small advantage to whoever doesn't go first in a given turn. I'm not sure if this means they've gone quarter-ass or three-quarter-ass, but it further confirms that they know they have a problem. And just so we're clear: in order to get the double-turn, you need to go second. So, while you will have slight disadvantage on your second turn in a row, you will have had that same advantage on the turn when you set it up.

This single decision is enough to make Age of Sigmar ineligible as a proper wargame in my book. It doen't matter how much they mess around with scenarios or army balance if a single dice roll can give one side the chance to devastate their opponent's force with impunity.

And that's my whining done for today.

Cheers, and ta, and DFTBA.