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I GM'd my first apoc game with the new rules and have to say Wow.
The game was small, around 4k per side. The only requirement was that you had to have at least one named HQ.
Instead of picking the mission we rolled for it and ended up with Exterminatus.
One side was Huron ( IA9 ) with a mix of marines, both Chaos and regular. Including 4 heldrakes, a baneblade and a Thunderhawk loaded with cultists.
The other was as motley as you could get. Mordrak of the Grey Knights led a coalition force that featured Necron wraiths and flyers, Tyranid Tervigons and a Harridan, GK strike squads and assassins, and random DE elements.
This was the first battle in a campaign based on the Badab war ( IA9/10). Our last one, using the Crusade of Fire rules, took a year to complete and everyone loved it. So we've adapted those rules to work with the IA9/10 story. It's map based and although force makeup can be changed, named characters can be killed or captured so that they are unavailable in later missions.
The story is simply that the loyalists are making their first inroads into the badab theater. This first battle was for the hive world of Sagan and we decided that any apoc game we do ought to be in the spirit of that book, meaning any unit from any codex is fair play. Whereas most of the games will be locked down to units from IA9/10, and the various SM codices plus IG.
I won't go into the full details; however Exterminatus was brutal. The game actually went 6 rounds that took about 6 hours to complete. The mission special rules helped speed things up by wiping entire units off the board. Certainly the book was right in that this is not for the "feint of heart". For example, In one Exterminatus strike, 50 termagants and a few tac squads simply disappeared.
It was a very close game that came down to the last turn. Huron was all that was left of the Seccessionists and he faced the last remaining loyalist: the Harridan. The harridan managed to fail to hurt Huron ( really bad rolls). On Huron's turn he used his last strategic asset to call down an orbital strike. The strike hit ( both times ) wiping the harridan off the map.
We decided pregame that you had to win on victory points. Tabling wasn't an option.
Even with that, the Secessionists managed to pull a very close victory forcing the loyalists to go lick their wounds. I think the strategic point spread was 2. If the harridan had lived the loyalists would have won by 1.
At first I was worried that the Exterminatus rules would interfere with enjoying the game. However both sides thought it was fun and added to the story. At one point we stopped trying to put models away and simply pushed them into a corner of the board that was unoccupied. I should have taken a picture of that. The pile was huge.
Ultimately a good time was had by all. I think having a GM for games this size is very important to keep things moving. As i was able to pitch in by by helping with movement and looking up rules while other actions were taking place. We didn't use the time limit recommendations, because this mission type is spent removing models more than anything.
If you haven't played an Apoc game yet under this system I highly recommend you do. There are a few things we are considering integrating into regular 40k games in this campaign such as scoring objective points each game turn instead of only at the end. Also potentially allowing the players to spend them to get certain models, like generic troops, back into the game.
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