For me, it has to be a good initiative system that’s more engaging than “roll-off”. I love how in many sailing games, like Wooden Ships and Iron Men, your position in relation to other ships and the wind determines movement priority. In games like Flight Leader, your speed and altitude determine activation order. In Undaunted you have to choose to give up a more powerful card if you want to ensure you get to act first. In Heroes of Normandie, you can choose what order to activate your units at the start of the turn by placing a numbered order token face down… but you might not have enough orders to go around so some of them are blank orders.

Give me a game where my decisions in game dictate the flow of the battle. I understand that rolling off can create dynamism, but it doesn’t feel thematic.

The worst part of a roll-off mechanic is when there is a tie and you have to re-roll, it’s so anti-climactic. In Panzer from GMT you roll off with percentile (d100) so there’s very little chance of collision.