NCE How we are trying Alternate Activation in NCE:

[Commissariat]

Hey all,

So. during this Quarantine situation the Tabletop Simulator community for Necromunda has been digging up NCE to play. This is both out of nostalgia and out of my frustration with the unwieldy volume of content that is out for the conceptually very fun Underhive edition. The enjoyment of the contemporary alt-activation system has provoked another experiment with alt-activation in NCE. This is the overview for how we run it in 2020:

Turn Sequence
Each turn is split into three phases:

1. Beginning Phase
2. Activation Phase
3. Hand to Hand Phase
4. End Phase

Beginning Phase
During the beginning phase, the following steps are performed:

1. Roll for Priority - in which the players roll off to see who has priority in the turn, ties going to the player who did not have it previously. They will activate first and decide the order of fights as if it were their turn in the standard game. Priority also determines the order for things like which gangs choose to bottle and who can trigger the monster first.
2. Bottle Rolls
3. Scenario Specific Events - finally, any events that would begin at the beginning of the turn, such as Reinforcements in Caravan or the Monster Roll in Scavengers, would occur at this time.

Activation Phase

• The player with priority starts activations by choosing one of their fighters and marking the model as activated. They now take that model through a full turn up until the hand-to-hand phase.
• If a model was pinned, and are able to test to escape pinning (ie: friendly fighter within 2"), they can do that first, just like if it were there own movement phase.
• If a model goes on Overwatch, they may use their Overwatch the turn they activated or the Activation Phase, however if they use their Overwatch during the next Activation Phase then it will count as their activation for that phase. Of course, they can be disrupted by being pinned as normal.
• If a model is broken, they must follow Broken protocol with until they have recovered their nerve.

Hand to Hand Phase

• As normal, but the ordering of fights is determined by the player with priority.

End Phase

• In the end phase, handle end of turn events for scenarios or equipment and roll recovery for all fighters who are down.
• Models may recover from pinning if they were pinned prior to their activation, to simulate the full turn passing for the model in question. If a model was pinned after their activation, then they would need to wait until the next end phase to automatically recover or have a friend in proximity at the start of their next activation.
• Similarly to pinning, models can recover from Broken during the End Phase if the model was broken before their activation in the preceding Activation Phase.

Specific Cases of Clarification

• Raid/Rescue - Sentries spend their activation to do their sentry movement. However, once the alarm is raised, all defenders who have yet to activate will activate as normal for the rest of the turn.

So far it has been doing a pretty good job of taking us through a game. Hand to Hand phase was left untouched to limit the amount of rules that we would have to make-up and thus completely disrupting the hand-to-hand mechanics that already existed. The phase is already pretty simultaneous so the only thing to clarify was that the player with priority gets to decide ordering. It could probably work with multi-combats determined by the one who charged, but so far priority is fine. Whenever a confusing situation comes up, we sort it out and add it to the clarification list.

I don't know how to end this post, so ummm: What if we could shoot lasers out of our feet?

 

[undertaker]

This thread deserves more attention!

I love the idea of taking NCE and making it a bit more streamlined with alternate activation. If it can really be done with as few alterations as you have listed, then I think you're on to a winner. I suspect some of the Wyrd powers will need rewording, but other than that it seems comprehensive.

I will tempt my brother into trying this out with me (once the lockdown ends).

A question about the overwatch rules. What do you mean by:
"they may use their Overwatch the turn they activated or the Activation Phase"
Do you mean in the activation phase?

 

[Ben_S]

FYI, this has received quite a bit of discussion before:

NCE - Alternating activation for Necromunda Community Edition

At least until Games Workshop finish releasing all the auxiliary rule supplements for N17, in our SOGG campaign we’re experimenting with porting a simple version of the alternating activation rules into our beloved NCE. To that end this thread will compile our attempts. So far our experience...

yaktribe.games

 

[undertaker]

Thanks for pointing me to that earlier discussion @Ben_S. It appears the main difference here is that @Llewy's set of rules resolved hand to hand combat as it happened, which led to a lot of problems for multiple combats. Resolving them all in a single separate phase as @Commissariat has proposed would probably work better overall.

I would also suggest allowing each model to do their moving and shooting in either order when they activate.