The worst rule I've ever seen: this operative moves 3 triangle. A triangle is 2 inches.

I find the fastest way to turn me away from ever playing a game is rules bloat. Not only the 300pg rulebook, but needing the 14 other rules supplements, FAQs, and updates before you can even get a game on the table. Not to mention if the opponent similarly has a library of rules necessary, I'm never going to be able to track all that so I'm just left hoping that they fully understand their own rules and are honest about them.

Not a wargame mechanic, but D6s with customised symbols for 1s instead of for the 6s cause me unnecessary confusion.

FFG designers are on record that custom dice are a way to skirt the fact that game mechanics aren't copywritable. I don't explicitly hate custom dice but that's a fact.

Uncle Atom: "I don't like Custom Dice." Every Single Blood Bowl Coach: "And I took that personally."

Battletech: play with 2 d6, no I go you go, full unit customization

"inches with extra steps" a la Kill Team 2021's stupid shape ruler. That idea should've been shot into the sun.

I hate one side moving the whole army first if they have initiative. So many games I have seen end with the initiative roll. Watching your army getting deleted before you get a chance to do anything, or having to hide them way back because you may lose initiative is just soooo fun. We do an alternating by phase where the winner of initiative, if they have a smaller force, may "pass" until both sides have equal numbers of units remaining to move.

I like Battletech Alpha Strike's version of "I go, you go"... Where each player moves their entire force before the other player, and in the attack phase each player performers all their attacks before the next player BUT with the distinction that all damage and damage effects are applied at the end of the phase. So even if you lost a unit to first/second turn combat they can still participate in battle so long as they were in a position to do so in the first place. It takes care of that awkward moment where you're big bad unit could die in one hit on turn 1 before you even had your first turn.

"The best part of Heroquest...is the custom dice!" 🧙‍♂️

I like how Bolt Action does weapons: everyone's rifles are 24", medium Howitzers are 60", etc. My opponent tells me what he has, and I know exactly what it's capable of doing. Hitting and wounding are easy to calculate, too. Base 3+ to hit, with cover modifiers, etc. Wounding is based on the hit unit's experience, and is either a 3+, 4+, or 5+. There's not a ton of special rules, either, and the rules are generally the same across the board, similar to how the weapons are. Basically, I don't like crunchy rules. I also like templates 😂.

The "Cool Mini or Not Business Model" line has me reeeeling hahaha

igougo is what made me stop playing 40k, in the end. Playing the people and lists that I did, it reached a point of. "Okay, I'm playing against guard and it's their turn. I'm going to go leaf through the RPG books out front. No, no, roll my armor saves for me, I trust you." Rolling your own armor saves is formality anyway, without any choices involved in it, so what's the point? Where there are no decisions being made, there is no gameplay occurring. The mechanic that most needs to go away is the mistaken belief that 'rolling dice' is 'doing something,' and a meaningful way to alleviate player boredom with executing your tedious processes.

Infinity N4's approach to activation is to give both players a lot to do on each other's turns. It makes it a little tough to comprehend (until you're actually playing) but it keeps you locked in and involved.

That's why, for me, Infinity The Game is still the best: you can react to every opponent's move when is not your turn, making it incredibly dynamic and fun.

I wanted to chime in here, in particular because you called out Fallout Wasteland Warfare for it's notoriously custom dice (I love the game and I still think it's a bit overkill). HOWEVER, they actually have a free, single-page PDF you can print out that has an easy 1-12 and 1-20 chart for every single dice in the game, so that you CAN avoid using custom dice if you want and just play it with a handful of d12s and d20s. It even comes with a range ruler reference on the same page so that you can use a tape measure instead of their little measure sticks. And to build on this point, I think that games that use custom dice SHOULD follow suit on this... provide a reference table so that the game can be played without the $20+ proprietary custom dice, that way players can enjoy the game easily and then get more into the hobby. Let the player decide after trying if they'd be interested in having custom dice for sake of convenience. I have no sales data to back it up, but I wouldn't be surprised if a player who starts the game with basic dice and loves it, ends up getting the custom dice down the line anyways.

I-Go-You-Go isn't bad by itself, it's when a whole lot of bloat gets added in that makes a single players turn take an hour it becomes bad. The bonus of the IGOUGO is the ability to coordinate your movement, to feel like you are executing a grand plan. Alternative activations leaves you really just reacting all the way through the turn (which can add even more mental load and slow down player actions). Kings of War manages IGOUGO really well because the actions are short and the resolution of attacks is pretty fast (hit, wound, nerve, done). Alpha strike does exist for IGOUGO, but that should be fixed with ranges in the game rather than blaming the turn sequence that enables that.

Custom dice was definitely a response to an abundance of tables in the old days. I'm OK if you could use regular dice with a table. personally. Like, for Blood Bowl, you could say 6 for you down, 5 for dodge or down, 3 and 4 for push, 2 for both down and 1 for me down easily enough, but the symbols are nice shortcuts.

I don't have anything against custom dice... as long as they're readily avaliable. Due to restructurization within Asmodee, special dice for Fantasy Flight Games TTRGPs (Star Wars, Genesys, L5R etc) became even more scarce than rulebooks for few years. There are rolling apps or conversion tables as those dice are d8s, but it's not the same. For activation/initiative - I agree. That's why I love playing Infinity with it's ARO mechanics - reactions makes game more tactically interesting and dynamic. The only downside of that it's really mentally draining if you're new to the game. Infinity also takes care of list customization pretty well - the amount of units, profiles, fireteams combination really makes it interesting. Obviously, there is a competetive meta going around, but the game really values terrain. It can seem a bit swingy with it's d20 rolls, but truth is that with your actions and planning you can stack up so many bonuses, that it heavily impacts the outcome of your action and yet a bit of luck will swing games. With initiative Gaslands does something fun as well - each round in a turn is basically a Gear Phase and everyone in that gear or lower activates. That means the higher Gear you're in the more activations in a turn you will have, but it also impacts what moves you can do, what gets riskier etc. So it's balancing between speed/amounts of activations AND precision :)

I really miss stuff like 5th edition 40k with the scatter dice. It felt like a missed shot was a more exciting event because anything could happen compared to now where the gun kind of just misses and it's a dud shot. I'm also a huge fan of Gaslands' custom dice, they really bring the lore of the game to the table! Bringing in the feeling of a reckless driver or a car malfunctioning, or hitting a random ditch on the road. They're used to great effect!

From a player perspective I think being forced to buy extra custom dice is definitely an issue, but from a pure design space, custom dice offer a far more focused functionality. It distills a table of outcomes into the dice rather than just rolling a 5+, You can put in so much flavor into a custom dice to make each roll feel more important than just rolling math cubes.

About activations: The thing that I think is the main tiring factor in GWs I go you go games isn't the pricipal of the activation sequence, but that you have to throw dice at more or less random points during your opponents turn. Also for some types of games, I think that "old" activation sequence still works really well. For example, in Kings of War (fantasy rank and file) you never pick up a dice during your opponents turn. While on first glance it seems even more boring, it opens up the opportunity to plan your next turn during your oppoents turn. The result (combinded with a rather sleek and streamlined rules set with emphasis on movement and positioning) is a very fluent and for the game size quite quick gameplay. On the other hand, for a SciFi combined arms game, I'm on your side with alternating activations. But than again, alternating activations force a lot of times a more reactive gameplay. So I guess, the preference depends quite a bit on someones own preffered game- and thinking style. You prefer a reactive gamestyle with lots of interactions between you and the other player? - Alternating activations probably suit you more. You prefer a grand strategy style where you have to deliberately position your units, lay traps and swallow your own mistakes? - I'd say I go you go could fit you better. But those are just my own thoughts and of course, everyone has the right to disagree with my view/opinion ;)

1. Custom Dice I don't know. Blood Bowl is iconic in no small part because of its unique mechanic using custom dice. Or, there is Star Wars Imperial Assault? In imperial Assault, the dice make sense and are actually quite intuitive. Red dice are close range but deliver a punch, greens are your all-rounders, blues are long range but nothing fancy, while yellow dice are for your trick shots, when you lean heavily on special abilities. You know what each dice is for, and can tell what a gun is good at and how it will likely perform just by looking at its dice pool. It is a genius system in my opinion, not a small part thanks to the custom dice... 2. I go, You go That is a fair point and you bring up really good examples. That antiquated play style really extenuates downtime. Bolt Action is a good example of a much better system. 3. This is also a fair point. So, I guess I only disagree with your first point. I think custom dice is not a problem. If well executed (and not just used as a gimmick), they can be a great benefit to a game.

Custom dice are great in a number of games. The question is whether it’s actually adding something to the game or just making another thing you have to buy from the developer. I feel like Necromunda’s custom dice add a lot to the game because it makes one roll easily readable, otherwise we’d constantly be checking tables. It also adds a certain level of engagement in a lot of cases. IGO-UGO can take a running jump. Except in a few cases. A good example is MESBG, which does a great job of interleaving actions in there with heroic actions and the turn is interleaved (I move, you move, I shoot, you shoot, etc). Bad list customization for sure, but I think it’s part of a bigger issue with ‘streamlining’ and ‘simplification’. Everyone says they want balance and streamlining, but they don’t seem to realize that comes at the cost of variety and player agency.

Custom dice: i'm midding about this one. while it's annoying to get custom dice, it does save the player time doing conversions from D# to Table, to Result type. it certainly could be a nightmare if not property restrained in type/count and proper distinction. ... as for IGYG: it's awful for anything with this long an activation time. only upside is that you have time to go get a beer during opp's move part. ... force customization is tricky from both sides: too much can overwhelm a new player and too little will underwhelm an older one. then there's the added mess of managing the benefits of each weapon/slot/load-out. it's something to be used contextually, usually in bigger scopes.

While I can see why you think current Kill Team's list-building is too restrictive I think it's one of the game's biggest strengths, and what allows it to be so well balanced competitively. Warcry is standing there right next to it for people who want those list building options (for the record I play and love both but for wildly different reasons) but you simply can't get the same competitive crunch from Warcry that you can from Kill Team. Solid points all around though. I especially agree about the custom dice!

I have two things: 1. Minimize the amount of dice that have nearly no effect on the game. For example "roll a D6 on charge. On a 6 this unit deals 1 wound. Just make it flat 1hit/wound on charge. 2. Is about how to present rules. Stop making armybooks for rules (GW). Just make free PDFs or Apps. The cost for this can be transfered to the model prizes.

I think Killteam customisation has its advantages. The compendium lists are terrible, ok. But the dedicated killteams where there's only one box are great. There isn't the eternal friction of 40k where you need the whole army to have all options. Buy a box, maybe two, and you have everything. Go for it

The "Full Thrust" starship game from GZG uses standard D6's and then results based on the score (1-3= no hits, 4-5 = 1 hit, 6= 2 hits + reroll). These results then change depending on whether the target ship has screens The "Stargrunt 2" sci-fi skirmish game from GZG uses a unit activation system, with the addition that a higher commander can use his action(s) during his activation to activate (or re-activate) a subordinate unit or units.

"The men are calling it Higo Hugo, sir. And they don't like it." "Don't like it? It seems pretty straightforward to me; rather like cricket! We get an innings, then the other chap does..." "Well that's all very well, sir, in cricket, sir but, begging your pardon, it just isn't like that in war. I don't think that Hitler fellow plays cricket." "Well, no... I suppose he'd like to go all the time!" "So you see sir, it's like this, sir... If it carries on like this... Higo Hugo - Me an' the lads won't be coming to your Friday night wargames. And that's the way it is, sir." TooFatLardies ad from the Meeples and Miniatures podcast.

I’m a big kill team player so I love the game and I’m ok with how they set it up. It’s less customizable but the game itself is one of the best systems I’ve used. Skill tends to be one of the ultimate deciders and after playing it since its release I still find ways to grow and enjoy it

I'm on board with custom dice when they improve flow. Gaslands for example is great. The custom dice make it flow really well. You CAN play it with regular dice using tables, but skipping that translate step improves the experience a lot. X-wing and armada could also have been tables with regular dice. But the custom dice keep the focus of the moment in the right place.

I've come around on custom dice. I think it's a convenience for your players that reduces mental load. Because numbered polyhedral dice are so common, I think it's easy to confuse results- especially across multiple games and game systems. They're not "necessary." You could map out a chart for all the Wasteland Warfare dice results, but the custom dice let you skip that step.

Unit activation by card drawing such as TSATF has the drawback of leading to very slow games. Our club of old guys can only last about 4 hours of play where in such systems we're lucky to get 5-6 turns completed before we have to end the game. Consequently, there is no time for tactical maneuver. Our games end up as head-to-head battles of attrition which I find dull.

I don't know how GW can eff up a perfectly good squad sized skirmish game, but they can. Kill Team should have just been 200 pt matches with a few alternate rules like, players move the same way they deploy. I know I-Go-U-Go means the whole turn, but to me it could just mean Each player takes turn moving 1 or 2 models, until all units are moved, then they take turn shooting, then charging and fighting. Units don't have to shoot in the same order they moved. Then you just use standard 40k combat rules, except when shooting, it is a by attack basis. If have 4 attack and you want to spread them out, either 4 on one model or two on two different models, then you can do that. With only 200 pts players are not likely to have expensive heroes or knights with a ton of attacks from a melee weapon.

Another system which had a neat way to use standard d6: Guildball. Soccer, except half the time you beat your opponent to death. You’d roll a fairly large pile of dice, and each player had a fairly long list of things they could do printed on their unit card. A push or a dodge to control space, damage, stealing the ball, special abilities. You’d pick one ability with a cost no higher than your number successes. The effects got better the higher on the list. One success might only be one damage, five might be three damage and a push and generating a point of momentum (which helps later on). Roll enough successes and you could wrap around, picking anything, and then up to the remaining number of successes. There wound up being a huge number of outcomes with a very simple mechanic of rolling lots of dice and hitting on 3+ or 4+.

I totally agree with your list. But I think that the new Kill Team's problem is not the "tailored" list building, but the fact that the specific Kill Team lists have 10 different units/models, each with a zillion special abilities. So you can chose between different units/models, but then your team is so complex you don't know what each unit/model does. For Harlequins Kill Team I still don't understand their faction abilities :(

I always get dogpiled by people who only play 40k when I say this, but I staunchly stand by doing away with pure IGOUGO turn systems (IE, you move/shoot/charge all your dudes, then it's my turn to move/shoot/charge all my dudes). Alternating activations of any flavor (Even group activation ala Frostgrave) is the only thing I wanna play. Currently playing Middle Earth SBG almost exclusively which alternates by phase, and melee Fights happen simultaneously, it's so so very good. EDIT: I definitely made this comment like, seconds into watching the video, I was pleased to find you're like-minded once I got farther in haha

Near the other extreme from "I go, you go" is the sustem used in Star Fleet Battles. There, the game uses an extenaive sequence of events that occur in precisely that sequence (activate tractor beams before launching shuttles, for example) and simultaneously among all participants (everyone records their activation or deactivation of tractor beams and then reveals them simultaneously). Each "impulse" (1/32nd of a turn) is an opportunity for a ship to move, use various systems, and fire or launch weapons, while the turns are important for energy generation and accounting, along with the fact that any particular system can generally only be used once per turn, and on successive turns only after certain delays. It was incredibly detailed and required a massive rulebool, but it did go a long way to making everything simultaneous.

I made a game that is 10-20 models per side that is one model activation alternating. That one model can move and or shoot/charge or sit still for better accuracy or to Ambush a unit once it moves. The concept is similar to Bolt Action but also like Sigmar and Kill Team I think. At the start of the round, the player with less models gets to pick who goes first or if you are tied, you roll a D6 and the highest roll must go first. This happens at the beginning of every model. Also hits/damage and unique abilities are taken on a 2D6 chart.

I enjoy custom dice a lot when they're packaged with a boxed game, it goes a long way to adding character to the rolling part of the game.

The custom dice doesn't bother me as long as it's doing what it's supposed to be doing, giving quick information on a dice result without having to siff through a bunch of different charts. The games that I play that use them just feel like they play much faster. I haven't come across anything yet where I feel it's gimmicky, knock on wood.

WYSIWYG - no, I do not want to magnetize my infantry just to be able to swap rifles to shotguns. And no, I am not buying 40 more models with how GW prices them. And then majority of players doesnt know how guns of other factions look like anyways

Historical wargame "Fistful of TOWs 3" is by default standard IgoUgo, but it has an alternate turn order that alleviates a lot of the problems with that: Attacker moves, defender shoots, then defender moves, attacker shoots. Over watch shots, artillery barrages, suppressing units, etc. plays out in a much more organic way than in a standard IgoUgo style, but without making the whole thing take a lot more time, introducing special mechanics, or otherwise complicating things. The designers have stated that they were originally going to use only the alternate turn order, but ended up using the standard turn order because it was closer to the one in V2. I honestly feel that that may have been a mistake, the newer turn order is much smoother and solves a lot of the problems with IgoUgo.

I'm fine with custom dice IF the core set of a game comes with all you will ever need for 2 players! Looking at you FFG X-Wing starter... (RIP X-Wing) Alternate activation is so much better, Kill Team nailed this as far as GW games go. X-Wing style games where there is a kind of initiative, but your pilot choice helps determine who goes when is also way more interesting. I find Kill Teams current edition does fix the one problem I saw happening with KT 1st Edition, was every team was just as many plasmas etc as possible etc, so you ended up with more or less what current KT does, but at least the current one has some forced variance I guess. I can certainly see both sides of this one though.

I don't mind custom dice if they can fit into the narrative of the game (I do mind the outrageous cost they can add, but that's not a mechanics issue). Using symbol types can reduce the memorisation of the mapping table step. They create icons that fit the narrative (look at the SAGA dice, you know your force based on all the symbols, even if the number distribution could easily be handled by just using 1-6 markers for each box). They help with conversions (I can convert a hit to a crit, to I have to find a die with a value 4-7 and convert to 8, or just locate the hit symbol and flip the die around till the standout crit symbol is shown). Even Bolt Action that was mentioned uses custom dice with the activation system. I may have played too many FFG and AMG games though and have just accepted specialised dice for what they are.

I really like the activation system used in Mortal Gods and TOH. It is much like Bolt Action, in that you are drawing tokens from a bag, but there are only two types of tokens (plus three "Fate" tokens added to the total): hero and troop. Each unit has a number of actions it can take in a turn. At the start of the turn you place a number of tokens in the bag equal to the number of actions available plus the Fate tokens. On each player's turn they draw a token from the bag. If it's a troop token, you activate a troop. If you have already activated all your troops, your opponent gets to activate one of his troops and then gets to draw from the bag. Same with heroes, though heroes can use their tokens to activate a troop that's within command range. If you draw a fate token you do nothing (though in MG you draw a card from the "Gods Get Involved" deck), unless it's the third one, in which case the turn ends and you start over. It works for skirmish games like these and I like that you never know when the turm ends. And you never know if you can activate all your forces in a turn.

In my opinion, custom dice is waaay better than "lookup a table every time you roll". For example, I would hate if I was playing Star Wars Armada, and went "Okay, so this was a blue die attack, so a 1-4 is a hit, a 5-6 is an accuracy, and a 7-8 is a crit." If your system is going to involve a tablelookup for EVERY roll, please, please just make custom dice instead. On the other hand, total agreement on the initiative. The only games that get away with I go - You go, is when they have very short turns. And yeah, listbuilding weaknesses on Killteam is what killed that game for me. It was real fun for like 1-2 games, and then you just ran out of interesting things to do with your team.

Something I just recently realized about IGYG mechanics is it removes any advantages or disadvantages related to the total number of Activations a list has. Star Wars Legion recently added a “pass” mechanic to combat the advantages MSU lists have.

I think custom dice are there to speed up the game. In order to use generic D6 a game like 40K has to introduce hit tables and have 2 stats a weapon skill / Ballistic skill and a toughness / strength stat to vary what units can hit. So now you need 2 dice rolls, a hit roll and a wound roll to express what Star Wars Legion does in a single custom dice roll. Yes you have to spend money on custom dice, but if you didn't have custom dice then you would have had to spend time looking up the standard dice value in a hit table, or just committing one or more hit/wound tables to memory. I'll take the dice.

In Reaper Mini's Warlord you would have a card of a particular suit for each unit in your army. Each game round you shuffled all the cards into a deck and If you drew your suit you would activate one of your units. There were several unit abilities that could affect that deck. Like a tactician would have an extra card in the deck while he was alive (each unit could only be activated once so he would increase odds that you have priority.) Or the spy could delay his turn so the next card would be drawn and activated as long as the spy was activated next turn. It was like "I'm unsure about this board state, maybe if you go first I can get a better move"

Statistically/mathematically there is zero difference between normal dice and custom dice. The only two reasons for custom dice is (1) sales and (2) ease of new player entry.

The third problem you mentioned is the main reason why I still play the Kill Team 2018 version. I like the freedom of choice, the ability to change my squad from game to game, and I like to kitbash different specialists. Put some bone antenna on my tyranid warrior to by the comm specialist, or vox caster to my neophyte to be the comms specialist etc. And both players know that this one is a comms specialist, which means it can do this and that. Im like the Kill Team 2018 even more than Mordheim, in which your options are limited to 1 leader and several number of smaller units, some of them limited as well. In the current Kill Team, you have a choice from like 8 to 10 different specialists, each with their own set of different abilities. This put a lot more pressure on a player during his or her turn, because it is bloody difficult to remember all the different options and to plan your turn accordingly. Also, these specialist´s abilities are highly situational. You can have a dedicated close combat warrior with two knives, but he lacks any pistol or other weapon except grenades - and he may be a killing machine in one game but completely useless in the other one, as it lacks some flexibility that your average JOE has. Even a basic unit like GSC neophyte has a lasgun, demolition charges and a close combat weapon. Tyranid warrior has a lot more options, but even if you run a melee fighter, it still has at least flesh hooks which acts like a better pistol.

Technically, you don't need custom dice to have non-numeric dice results in a game right? You can just use this very archaic tool, known as a table. If you know the faces of the dice, you can just map them to the numbers on regular die with an equal number of sides.

I definitely prefer alternating activation. At least if my guys are dying I can play an active role in punishing the person attacking me before my entire army is destroyed. There's nothing fun about sitting there and watching your entire army get deleted before you get a chance to do anything. That issue is what made my husband drop 40k. That and just really bad experiences with the community in general. Now we play Malifaux, which uses a standard deck of cards each in place of dice, does alternating activation and is much closer to the aesthetics we both enjoy.

I like how Infinity added player agency during opponent turns with the ARO reaction system. It is still mostly Igougo in turn structure, but your dudes aren't just standing there doing nothing when someone runs across their line of sight or takes a shot at them.

Now you've just made me miss playing 2018 Kill Team in a while. The system was a bit janky and sometimes wildly imbalanced, the Commanders and Elites weren't properly integrated so they were flat out not allowed with the competitive scene rules... but I loved it anyway, because it was individual and flavoursome.

I am a fair fan of the custom dice in games such as zone wars or gaslands, where there is a novel resource mechanic attached to the dice and they aren't just used for an overwrought task resolution mechanic. Pretty elegant way of introducing emergent elements that'll have impact beyond the current roll, and would be a headache to interpret with standard numbered dice.

Over the years i think the design thing in wargames that officially bugs me the most is "Regiments of Renown" style "sub armies" where one army list just arbitrarily ends up having wildly different rules and often are way better than the "vanilla" force they're tied to if you build them within some set of restrictions, typically some variation of "use lots of the good unit and you're unable to use the bad units you didn't want anyway". Narratively, i understand the purpose of Legendary Legions and Regiments of Renown and Historical Platoons and all their ilk, but in the context of just playing normal pick up games or tournaments it just doesnt sit right with me and feels like it sucks a lot of the personal element out of building a wargame army.

Simultaneous movement, ad hoc firing groups of infantry and support and vehicle/ heavy weapons firing via d20 randomisation. Sounds complicated but elegantly simple to apply...no dead time waiting.

You never have to buy custom dice, you just have to commit to being a bigger nerd than they think you are.

It seems with custom dice you are bothered that you have to buy dice from a single manufacturer. Gaslands for example doesn't have that limitation. IGOUGO is not just bad either. The goal of Hobgoblin was to make a really fast playing rank&flank fantasy game. Alternating activations slowed the game down significantly. So now in the movement phase one player moves everything, then the other player. This also felt more like a player's battle plan unfolding. Nothing dies/flees until the end of a round anyway.

I used to hate certain mechanics when I played mostly 40k. The more games I played, the more i began to appreciate even dreaded mechanics in certain games where they seem to work well. IGOUGO. Usually hate, but feels great in KoW, Mordheim and 90s Necromunda. Special dice are annoying, but they sure work well in K47/Bolt Action, Heroquest and Snap Ships Tactics. Bad list-building options..... well that just sucks.

I'm 💯% tracking with you. On custom dice, there is a situation where it can help, and that is for clarity and speed of play. In my Old West game, I'm Your Huckleberry, the shooting dice have 2 red faces and 2 blue games. Red means a hit and blue is some negative result. Visually you can read the results much faster than interpreting the pips. Also, you don't have to buy the dice. Just ink the 1 and 6 red, and the 2 and 5 blue, and you are good to go and you can still use them as D6 dice.

I've got your point with the custom dice, but I think there could be reasons to use them for a game, but not many. For example in Star Wars Imperial Assault, they use custom dice, but on those dices have 3 different symbols. Of course you can put card which list which dice rolls means what, but you already have a couple of cards in front of you especially in the late game. In this case I think that is condensed into the dice. So I can see a little usecase for custom dice, but of course you can argue that you can design your game around the normal numbered dice.

Ok, so an expansion of #1, custom dice. The point of custom dice is accessibility for non-gamers. Notice that all 3 of the games you mentioned are IP games that will likely draw in players from outside the traditional gaming community, and especially children. Math is intimidating for most people. Telling them "3 or higher" is more intimidating than "count the X symbols". Mathematically, they are the same. But instead of someone needing to keep track of what number they are looking for, instead they get told to roll the "white" dice equivalent to a 5+, "black" for a 4+, "red" for a 3+. It's less for players to track, and eases them into the gameplay. It also means if you have a system based on different actions rather than target numbers, you don't have to consult a chart each time you roll. Again, mathematically the same, but for an incoming player it's much easier to understand a symbol than tracking numbers.

I love the activation mechanic in Black Seas from Warlord. Activation order is dependent on each ship’s position relative to the wind.

One mechanic that instantly came to mind for me when I saw the title of the video: rules which forbit pre-measuring. What's the point? Being able to successfully eyeball 8" or 16" or whatever isn't interesting or fun. Furthermore, after the very first time you lay down your tape measure to measure anything on the table, you will have a visual reference for how far EVERYTHING is, which almost entirely defeats any possible point to the rule. Just allow pre-measuring and be done with it!

I really like the idea of "I go, you go" being alternating, by phase, with clean up done at the end of the phase. "I move one unit, you move one unit..." "I shoot one unit, you shoot one unit..." "Okay, now let's remove all of the models that died this phase." I think there could be a really cool wargame that follows the activation method from FFG's Game of Thrones boardgame, too, where every unit's actions are declared secretly and then revealed all at once and then resolved in a predetermined mechanical way.

I can see the argument for not liking custom dice but when it comes to games design I think they can’t be dismissed. Blood Bowl is absolutely iconic because of two things; the custom dice and the turnover mechanic.

I... _like_ custom dice. I think they're simply easier and quicker to read. Especially when they use different colors for each symbol like in Memoir 44. That makes turns go faster. Now what I _don't_ like is when a company stops making those dice, so I won't be able to play that game in the future. That, and when there are just too many symbols to learn or are hard to understand their meaning. At that point you're probably better off with standard dice.

I'll disagree on point one. I loved the dice system in Monsterpocalypse 1.0. white dice hit 50% with one crit, blue dice hit 2/3 with a crit, and red dice only miss 1/6 with a crit. Target defense was a number up 8 or 9. Seeing blank sides for miss made for a great visual on the table. It also made for quick math on how good (or hopeful) any particular roll migh be.

The Mechanic I most want to see gone from wargaming is Modifying the "Target Number" instead of the Roll

I've come to appreciate custom dice, because they seem to help new gamers relax a little. When I tell a new gamer that they have to roll a 4 or better to hit, it seems more difficult for them to grok than when I tell them "the sword icon means you hit".

New Kill Team's list "customization" is garbage, but it was never meant to be good. It was meant to make the Compendium garbage so you'd be forced to buy the new model lines when the "bespoke" teams were released. It was only ever a money-making ploy. That said, the rules for new Kill Team are infinitely superior to the rules for old Kill Team (with the possible exception of LoS), so I'm in the process of making a points-based system of building KT21 teams. I'm not the only one that has done so, either.

I just bought the Kill Team starter box recently and have no experience with table top wargaming. I have no intentions of getting into Warhammer 40k due to how expensive it is. But this war game format interests me so I took a chance on it.

Yeah, I strongly disagree with the first point I prefer the glancable and immediacy of a custom dice (and they usually look nice). You roll and immediately know if you did it or not. And, like mentioned, you can have crits/damage or special effects all with the same dice roll without need to read all the 500 bones you just rolled (at what point a game stops being a wargame and becomes a dice picking game?). I hate having the experience bogged down by checking tables or rolling 300 times just to know if I miss. I want the results and I want it right now so we can have that razor's edge, nail biting and tense experience of "all of this depends on this roll".

Its interesting how introducing reactions to 2nd edition Horus Heresy took what was a very rigid “I go, you game” and turned it into a very engaging hybrid system combining the best elements of alternating activations (player engagement) while avoiding the worst pitfalls of of random sequences (i.e. Bolt Action where a player doesn’t get an activation until their opponent has completed all theirs). Strong agreeon avoiding fiddly custom dice, although it can work very well if done eloquently e.g. MB Games Heroquest.

Not a fan of arbitrary card-based objectives that are randomly drawn and completed during games like a side quest for "victory points." It takes away from the narrative element. I feel like there needs to be clear reason for two armies to clash and will often make up a story as to what the objectives markers are, why we are trying to capture them, etc.

For a clean success/failure roll (with a crit maybe) custom dice are a totally unnecessary gimmick. But for bloodbowl or marvel crisis protocol with more varied outcomes it is a good thing I’d say.

That shirt made me shudder. Carry on.

I agree with Point 1 and Point 3 to an extent. But I guess I disagree a bit on Point 2. I think the Igoyougo activation system makes sense in a wargame. It makes more sense when you look at it as a real life simulation. You probably delegate commands to all your units at the same time and the enemy can't answer to every single unit immediately, like in OPR. I still think the system for Bolt Action is genius and the best compromise for fun gameplay (not waiting endlessly) and realistic real time battle feel. For things I like/dislike it would be the following: I really like fluffy rules and wouldn't want to play "boring" rules which feel the same across all the factions with just different selection of datasheets.

Your second one made me realize that's one of the biggest things I love about Fire Emblem. When it's the enemy phase, you don't just sit and eat hits, you counterattack, and that opens up a whole layer of planning for who will best be positioned to counter what on your opponent's phase.

I agree wholeheartedly with you about the activation order, I find that KT has really addressed this very well. As for the list building, I would argue that your criticisms of KT are a bit harsh. In my mind, KT is incredibly well balanced, in part due to the fact that list building has been simplified. Additionally, while some teams have very little flex in building lists, there are some teams which provide some flexibility. Good video!

Hard disagree with the 1st point. Look at a game like Fallout, their dice system communicates a lot of information quickly and allows way more nuance than a D6 system. You _can_ use a normal D10 with a reference chart but I assure you, it's much less enjoyable

Completely disagree about nr 1. Custom Dice are amazing for games. Shatterpoint is the best game I have ever played. Agree on 2 and 3.

I agree with your three points not so strongly on the last one. What I don’t like in a wargame mechanics is either a binary outcome such as roll a single D6 hits or misses or the opposite where your opponent rolls 40 dice.

1. Custom Dice 2. Random movement or too much randomness besides attacking and armor saves and such. 3. Premeasure

100% agree... Kill Team 2021 is an unplayable mess because it takes custom dice to a whole new level with their moronically manipulative measuring tools. It only exists to make you buy their stupid measuring tools. Anyone who believes something like custom dice or custom measuring tools (which Atomic Mass also loves), deserves to be suckered into terrible games and ruins the hobby for the rest of us. These suckers incentivize gaming companies to keep including manipulative marketing game elements. The army building rules in Kill Team 2021 are purposely designed to make you buy certain models. It has incredibly limited list building because they just want you to buy their box of miniatures, and play that box of miniatures. It's of course completely unbalanced because some kill teams need multiple boxes and some don't. It makes most armies have zero variation and games get stale a lot faster because you're always playing against the same exact army, even at large tournaments.

I don't think turn by turn play is a bad thing in itself so long as the turn is quick. The theory of 40k 3rd ed and Fantasy 6th was that these events are happening simultaneously but the turns are there to help the players. Yes going first is an advantage but if you know you're going second you can set up as such. While all the command point abilities in modern 40k allow an extra layer of tactics I wonder how much net effect it has when there are so many blows and counterblows. When I played 3rd ed folk I knew worked fast, declared all movement/shooting, then measured it, then rolled. Special abilities were special (and rare, or army wide), so you didnt have to spend 20min a turn looking up dozens of them. Just my humble view.

Not sure if i’m in the minority here, I really prefer the restrictions. Kill team has always been fun to me due to the nuance and competitive nature of the lists. (I can always just customize the mini to fit my theme). I actually disagree with the roll off at the start of battle rounds. 40k has been moving towards a more competitively consistent wargame which is something I like. However, I do understand that there’s a place for fun wargames with more variance and random chance. It’s a weird to me how the game is perceived now vs when I started playing in 6th edition.

I’m not a fan of custom dice, unless standard dice can be easily used as proxy. I’ll give Memoir 44 a pass because their custom dice come standard in the base game (and yes, I realize memoir 44 is a wargame/board game hybrid and several people don’t consider it a proper wargame).

I go U go is quite possibly one of my least favourite designs ever conceived. I don't play a ton of wargames anymore, but my particular order system is Battletech with alternating moves and end of phase resolution, so you take turns moving units, the phase ends, then all the attacks are declared and rolled but they all resolve at the same time at the end of the shoot phase so you don't get completely one-sided battles because the other guy went first and sniped an important unit before you even got to play.

Custom dice is a tricky one, lookup tables are good and if you're not packaging a healthy amount of custom dice in all your starter sets they're a must but they do slow the game down a bit when you have to reference the table after each roll when compared to being able to just read the dice at a glance. That being said the tables allow for more flexibility if that's what you're going for. I'd love to see tables provided for any games that can use the custom dice and then have the dice itself be the luxury add on that makes the game nicer to play but are never actually required.

The three biggest gaming system issues ive come across is, in no order: 1. Custom dice, both when the 1s have a unique image and the 6 has a unique image as its easy for someone using them to swap a crappy roll into a great roll secretly, and custom symbols on each side like bloodbowl, no reason for custom dice other than because they can, a simple d6 works fine. 2. Ingame currencies that force players to track something that generates differently based on faction, its just something else to track 3. System that force a complete stop to the game because you have to spend 10 minutes explaining something to your opponent. 4. Repetitive devide intervention in a system that has no rules for gods, how ghe crap does a gun suddenly get better for no real reason other than they rules let you, its not a different weapon, theres no ingame effect affecting your gun, theres no spell or curse or enchantment or any form of magic to provide a boost to your weapon, the system just dictates you can break the rules becausexthe games designer dont know what theyre doing to make the game fun Oh and rerolls, theyre just the default way for a designer to give up on developing theyre system properly. Well i guess thats 5/3 issues that irritate me about a wargame :|

I love custom dice and would have them as a key part of a well-designed game. Maybe because I grew up comparing strength and toughness in loads of tables in rulebooks - but comparing my results to your results just visually on the dice is so much better at not breaking the immersion. My swords versus your shields, much better than rolling to hit and save IMO. And cooler. If the dice are well-designed of course.

I actually am immediately way more interested in a game if it has custom dice, especially d8s, d10s, and d12s. Definitely agree about I go you go

Sorry but I think bolt action has "custom dice" (order dice) that are essential and unique to the experiance of a game of BA! I love the order dice❤

I mostly agree with this. I like Legion enough despite the special dice (the small army of tokens you need makes me far angrier), and I’ve played 40k for years, and just dealt with the general crotch-smashing competition that is offered with ‘you go, I go’. I do literally despise AoS because it can be “You go, you go again”, and even being the one to get that feels like the tabletop equivalent of domestic abuse. Now, I’ve hated Kill Team. I just freaking despise it. New and old. The old kill team felt like a game with no logical rules design, and the new kill team feels like a game with no army control. I feel like there’s a middle ground, but GW needs help finding it. For me, 10th edition is the first edition of 40k I won’t really touch that much. It really makes me angry. Something about the game being a worse version of PL (which I did like, especially for Crusade), and weapon loadouts not costing anything, on top of losing things like custom regiments and chapters, just broke my enjoyment. It’ll be rules bloated in a few years and they’ll reboot it again, invalidating every book they’ve printed… again. For me that might be the worst offender. Changing things to not make them better, and invalidate all the cool stuff you had.

I hate rules that require the player to have intimate knowledge of their opponents army to counter. You don't see this so much in 40k, but my big complaint against "A Song of Ice and Fire" ASOIAF, was their tactics cards that could be placed as a debuff on opponents units and presented your opponent with a wall of text and conditions that will either make the debuff worse or how to remove it. Made me quit the game as most people who played casually didn't even understand their own armies tactics cards.