I've been using individual initiative so far. I might change, because one of my recent readings (Ironclaw 2) has made me re-think my aversion to group initiative. Basically, IC2 states that one group acts, then the other does, rinse and repeat. Whoever starts the fight acts first, and when in doubt, PCs act first.
But
- in the first round of combat (only), everyone rolls a manoeuver. The outcome determines if the character is reeling (unbalanced), normal, can get ready (such as draw a weapon) at the cost of reeling, can get ready without penalty, or get focus [which is the most important thing].
- when a character gets to act, they can perform two actions, and both actions must be different. Or they can choose to focus if they don't have focus yet.
- if you have focus, you can interrupt someone, essentially acting out of turn just before they do - but you can only perform *one* action. You can interrupt someone who interrupted someone else.
- if you act in your turn and you *do* have focus, you immediately lose focus, but can perform *three* actions (once again, all different).
And I realised that this system used a very simple round-robin group initiative, but used a special status (focus) to spice things up in a major way, providing opportunities to interrupt and perform bursts of actions and putting the sequencing back into the hands of the protagonists.
And I wonder - is it not what I want from a combat sequence system ?