The odds are not in your favor if you lose that all-important dice roll, here’s a simple suggestion to make going second in 40k suck less!
Today we have an article by guest author Brian Powell. Check out his thoughts on taking the second turn not suck so much in 9th Edition 40k
Anyone that has played 40k more than a few times knows that the single most important role in the game is the roll to determine the first player. According to some Goonhammer statistics, the person who goes first has a 57.9% win rate. That’s a giant advantage when you consider it’s all based on one role.
Here are a couple of assumptions that I follow for the eventuality of going second: I know that when I am building my army, I assume that I am going to lose anywhere between 10% and 20% of my force before I get to act if I go second. I am going to assume that the players are using the eternal war mission from the core book.
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Making it More Fair
We can make the choice of attacker/defender matter more on the largely symmetrical tables usually seen in competitive games. Here are three ideas to change the dynamic of the attacker/defender:
1.) Add the following text to rule 9, the Defender then selects one piece of terrain on the table and sets it up anywhere on the table outside of his own deployment zone. The attacker always gets the first turn.
2.) Another way to make going second fairer is to auction off the first turn. Players still roll-off in step 12. The winner of the roll-off gets to make the first bid. There are two ways to bid, one is for each player to offer to remove progressively more points. The winner of the auction must then remove a number of models whose points value at least equals the bid. The warlord cannot be selected.
Bidding off your own units sounds like something a Commissar would jump at the opportunity to do…
3.) A final way to bid for the first turn is to bid away specific units. The player who gets the first bid (PlayerA) may nominate any number of units (including 0) to remove if they get to go first. The other player (PlayerB) may then either let PlayerA have the first turn or bid a number of units whose points value exceeds those of the units bid by PlayerA. PlayerA may then raise his initial bid by adding more units to it.
Any models removed do not count as destroyed for objectives or morale purposes but do count as destroyed for any other purpose like determining half strength.
Final Thoughts
Just a few fun ideas that could negate the effects of going second, or making it based on who is willing to give up power to capture the first turn. It just seems crazy for one roll to account for 8% of games…
What do you think about going second? Should one roll have such a big impact on games? do you have any ideas to make going second suck less?
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