Response to the edit: I do remember comparing Valkyria Chronicles to this one tabletop skirmish game called Infinity. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to translate that into a Valkyria Chronicles tabletop.

There aren't really "phases" per se. It's more like incrementing each characters turn count by whatever their speed is per each tick of the clock, then figuring out who would reach 100 first (and thusly hold their turn). In the previous example (knight = 5 / ninja = 7) the math would be: - by tick 15 K = 70 N = 105 Ninja takes turn then resets to zero - by tick 20 K = 100 N = 35 Knight takes turn then resets to zero - by tick 30 K = 50 N = 105 Ninja takes turn then resets to zero - by tick 40 K = 100 N = 70 Knight takes turn then resets to zero - by tick 45 K = 25 N = 105 Ninja takes turn then resets to zero - by tick 60 K = 100 N = 105 Ninja speed > Knight speed Ninja takes turn then resets to zero Knight takes turn then resets to zero More simply put, the ninja can take an action every 15 seconds while the knight can every 20 seconds (and the game pauses while someone is taking an action). With 10 characters on you'd need an excel spreadsheet to keep up with who activates in what order and it would need to be adjusted each time someone was hasted (double speed), slowed (half speed) or stopped (no speed) and you'd need to keep track of how many ticks of the clock each status effect would last so you'd know when they wore off. Alternatively, you could have a stopwatch for each character but that would be a hassle. The other option would be to scrap the ATB system in lieu of something else but then you might as well use a game that already uses alternative systems such as [i]Disgaea[/i], [i]X-COM[/i] or [i]Valkyria Chronicles[/i].