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Hey all, tomorrow is my first (real) Apoc game with official Apoc rules and the whole bit. I've read the rules (and have some questions), but the tactics of fighting in a battle with several people with guns that insta-gibble any normal tank (the D str ones) and the new rules have me a bit worried that I'll burden more than help (this concludes a month long campaign with this battle being the necessary tie break and thus matters to my team). I'm hoping you guys can help me out with a summary of To-dos and Not-To-dos, things to watch for, sneaky tactics, and perhaps some suggestions on what to bring (I have a straightforward list below). So, that said, I have no idea who will be participating tomorrow from both my team and the others, so I can't even tell what armies I will be facing. I fully expect at least 1 IG and a few Marines, but everything is in the air to create some semblance of a "surprise attack" coming, and the defenders scrambling to muster what they can. Anyway...

My (rough) List:
2x Footslogging Farseers
Lelith Hesperax
1x Farseer on a Jetbike
7x Jetlocks
1x JetAutarch

10x Harlequins, Shadowseer, Kisses

2x Fire Prisms
1x Nightspinners

10x Firedragons

My strategy is straightforward enough; park all the footslogging ICs with the Harlequins and use their VoT to avoid dying to all the nasty long range guns. Autarch goes with the Jetlocks and Jetseer forming an anti tank Seer council. The dragons are the dedicated Anti-Supertanks.

Do I need troops?
Thoughts?

Hi there,

I'm afraid I don't know the Eldar codex particularly well, but that doesn't look like a huge amount of units/points for an apocalypse force. Are you under any points or force org restrictions? If not, bring everything!

I've found you want to have as many units as possible. Try to avoid the temptation to really tool each one up though; apocalypse really does live up to its name, particularly in the first turn. Be prepared to be pulling a lot of units off the table wholesale, there will be an awful lot of firepower incoming and you will lose stuff! So you need plenty of backups and flexibility to make up for the losses.

Likewise I find it helps to be a bit more aggressive than in a normal 40k game, concentrate fire and try to obliterate enemy units. It's a bit difficult to describe but the mindset is different, a bit more like chess in a way, you have to be less concerned about the safety of individual pieces and more about whether a move puts you in a good position.

On more specific elements, I would actually advise you to ignore enemy super heavies unless you have some of your own, or a really heavy duty unit like assault terminators. I know they make for a big juicy target and will be giving you a lot of hurt, but they are really difficult to kill with normal firepower. Even disabling weapons is hard, as the primaries get a 4+ save. You'll waste a lot of shooting on them for little benefit, but it's unlikely they will win the game by themselves, so concentrate on wiping out as much other stuff as possible.

Secondly give careful thought to the use of apocalypse stratagems, both yours and your opponents. Some of them can be game changing, even broken (one of the imperial ones gives them 36" of defence line that gives a 3+ cover save; we don't allow it as it makes our IG player almost invincible) so make sure you've got agreement on which ones can be used and how they will work (some of the wording is a little loose).

In actual fact organisation is one of the keys to apocalypse, as it says in the introduction to the rules. There will be so much going on you really need to have laid out all the rules and interpretations before you start.

Finally apoc is a whole lot of fun, but you can't take it too seriously. You have to be prepared to laugh yourself silly when your insanely expensive deathstr unit gets wiped in a single turn by some ridiculous effect, just marvel at the spectacle!

Apologies for the wall of text, but I hope some of my rumblings helped, have fun!

Apoc is rather different from 40k.

Reserves don't need to roll, they come in simply when you say they do, unless they changed it with the latest apoc book (haven't had chance to really look at it) everything not a vehicle / superheavy / gargantuan creature is scoring, the ranges are crazy, the points and armies are crazy, the whole things just nuts.

It's certainly fun though.

My main advice is this:
There's a lot of armour in apoc, but generally titans you can ignore - leave them to other titans or titankilling units (superheavies, haywire wyches, etc) to kill, focus all your regular firepower on normal tanks and soft targets. Focusing on them is often a major waste of resources for what they actually do, compared to everything else on the table.

If you actually want to go for the win, hold something deep-strikey in reserve to take a few objectives, and sit your troops on as many objectives as you can. Soft targets will often be semi-survivable as people are focusing on the big targets a lot, and generally just intent on shooting the crap out of each other, so if you quietly put some units on some obejctives, and then have a couple of things held back to contest / hold objectives late game, when the thing ends you'll win.

But frankly, most of the time people are just there to watch everything burn.

Just have fun. Do crazy things. Blow up.

I realize I forgot to mention that it is a 2k per person limit. Haha oops. Thanks for the advice guys. I think I'll drop the Fire Dragons then, and pick up two small pathfinder units just to park on objectives. I'll let you all know how it goes!

How many people/ points are playing per side?

No idea. It's all a surprise/mystery/I figure they aren't actually too sure themselves as some members have a tendency not to show up after they said they will.

Edit: Although we do know it is 2k points per person.