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Hello,
I've watched a few Apocalypse games online and they look awesome but reading reviews they seem to be really hated. From what I hear, a lot of the hate comes down to some players taking gigantic forge world titans that just decimate the feild and make things less fun. Also the time it takes to complete a game can often be too much for people. I see the games as a neat one off event you might do a year at your club to just make some cool scenes with 5-20k points. In terms of titans, my club banned forge world models at events for many years now( it's a private none gw owned gaming club) and (in my opinion) the games look a lot cooler if you bring lots of infintry and fluffy armies rather than 1 gigantic model (apart from tyranids because their forge world stuff looks cool climbing over so many troops) so I can see why people dislike them. What are your experiences and opinions of apocalypse for 40k?

As with most things.

Cool in theory. Normally bad, boring, or long in practice.

Rules are coming in December in the new Chapter Approved book.

We play Apoc a lot in my group and it's usually the most fun we have gaming.

The big ridiculous FW stuff really helps speed along the game and provides epic scale threats and theme.

It boils down to this I think; if you're one of those people that can't have fun when your stuff is getting killed, don't play Apocalypse. If you go in expecting, everything, on both sides, to get killed, you'll have a good time.

I've been lazy with batreps but there are still a few good Apoc games on my blog if you're interested. I love it and I'm almost always on the losing side.

Old Apocalypse suffered from the fact that Titans and Superheavies were on a completely different scale from normal units, to the point that it was like 10 boxers having a fistfight in a pit of brown ants; the only thing that really mattered was the handful of really big stuff, while the small stuff were basically fighting their own battles and the outcome had about as much effect on the overall game as a squirrel fart against a hurricane.

Not to mention true apocalypse games tend to last for days. I've only played one in my life and it took three days to finish (and it technically happened on two different floors of the same shop).

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Old Apocalypse suffered from the fact that Titans and Superheavies were on a completely different scale from normal units, to the point that it was like 10 boxers having a fistfight in a pit of brown ants; the only thing that really mattered was the handful of really big stuff, while the small stuff were basically fighting their own battles and the outcome had about as much effect on the overall game as a squirrel fart against a hurricane.

Not to mention true apocalypse games tend to last for days. I've only played one in my life and it took three days to finish (and it technically happened on two different floors of the same shop).

Actually, this is how we play our Apocalypse games. Basically the big stuff and the small guys have two totally separated battles with different objetives, but they interact with each other on indirect ways.

For example, one time one of my Company Comanders and all of his Honour Guard died during a duel with a rival Chaos Lord when a Reaver Titan died and fell on top of the building they where inside, fighting killing in the fall and the explosion after it like 50 models. It was EPIC.
For that you need to have some house rules and play to objetives, not kill points. Is best if you have things like Anti-Titan batteries that your small guys can destroy with charges or infiltrating so they stop shooting your big stuff, etc...

Having hosted nearly all of the big Apoc games for my group, I can tell you that organization is the key... have a schedule and stick to it. The previous big Apocalypse book was pretty good and had great suggestions for time management...

The last game we did, in my mancave was over 40,000 points, but we did do deployment on a previous day... on gameday though;

everyone arrives on time, eats a bagel sandwich
turns 1 and 2
eat lunch
turns 3 and 4
eat dinner
turns 5 ...and if there's a 6.

Starting after lunch add Environment disasters to speed things along, stuff like that etc etc... We might finish late and spend a full day on our feet getting really drunk, but we always finish and it's so darn fun. It's not as fun if you can't finish... so be organized.

This was a pic from the last game, my camera work was terrible (thus no batrep).

Yeah mine was just a straight up slugfest. I brought something like 2500 points of Iron Warriors and a bunch of daemons (because that was the upper limit of IW I had and I didn't know you could mix factions at the time) and I got deployed in a corner facing off against, I think, Ultramarines or something.

we took 3 turns moving towards each other, exchanging the occasional artillery fire. When we finally got close enough to each other to engage in melee and rapid fire, a reaver accidentally scattered a void missile or something over us and both our armies evaporated in a single turn.

It perfectly punctuated our position in the pecking order of the game. i.e: squirrel fart.

The problem with Apocalypse is not FW models, big or small. They look cool on the table, and having lots of titans around is the only thing that makes Apocalypse even remotely playable. Titans put a lot of points into a single model that rolls relatively few dice, so a titan takes less time to run than thousands of points of "conventional" units. And TBH, banning FW models is a pretty TFG move, so you should really stop doing it.

The real problem with Apocalypse is that 40k does not scale up well. Mechanics that are already fairly tedious to resolve at 2500 points become an unmanageable mess at Apocalypse scale. There are just too many models to move, too many dice to roll, too many players to try to coordinate ("whose model is this, roll some saves"), and way too much time spent doing all of this while the other side stands around watching. RAW you're taking several hours per turn, and even a house rule of 15-30 minutes per phase (which is necessary) only gets it down to a point where one side is getting really bored with IGOUGO but not literally walking out to go have dinner while the other side has their turn. And what do you get in exchange for all of this misery? A game with zero strategy because the table is too packed with models for anything to move, distances are too long for 95% of the units on the table to be relevant in the objective game, and most players are too busy trying to roll dice fast enough to stay within the time limit to bother paying attention to whatever mission objectives someone mentioned 12 hours ago.

TL;DR: if you want to play Apocalypse just have everyone put all of their models on the table, and then put them back in their boxes. Same experience, but much less frustration and time wasted.

Hah, not my experience at all. Though it does help to allow anyone on your team to roll saving throws, especially if one player's army is the vanguard taking most of the shots in a given turn for example.

So here is a list of things you need to either do, or understand to have a good apoc game

-its a social effent, not a game, so have stuff the people are not up and moving can do, IE talk or eat, good to have as like a weekend party thing.
-they are fething LONG! Expect 6 hours plus.
- you are gonna need to house rule stuff, 8th ed is freaking aweful for apoc games because of command points, you need to set aside an aloted amount to use as a team
- alternating combat is also stupid in apoc, best to house rule it so all chat happens at once.
-if it's narrative it's better.
-put your foot down and set up a list and sign up times, if you don't sign up by x date, your not getting in the game.
-set a strict point limit. I personally like 4k, and specify in there, that is before Titan class models.
-evenly balance Titan class models on both sides, I'd people don't like it to bad, they can run their own game.
-if possible, this is hard, have the oginize play one side, ie of he has orks bring an all Ork army for one side and the rest of the players play on the other side.
-be very strict with the turns, tell people we are in theovment phavea, move now and tell me when you are done. Go down the row and make sure each person is good to go then move on.

APOC games can be a blast, but you have to be stern with running them and keeping gak organized.

One additional rule: you MUST have a time limit for phases. Movement phase is 15 minutes long, after 15 minutes moving ends, period, and you move to shooting. Maybe you can have a bit of flexibility and allow someone to keep moving a bit into the shooting phase, but they're spending their shooting time on it and the turn absolutely will end when it is scheduled to. Obviously you're going to slip a bit over the length of a full game, but if you leave everything open-ended you'll be lucky to finish more than a single turn.

Command points are super easy... everybody only gets what they bring in detachments (no 3 free points even IF they stay battle-forged for example).

What was a huge pain was the Psychic Phase in 7th edition, glad that's fixed it.

I think 8th is way better suited to apoc really.

Apocalypse is a mixed bag. I've played in about 10-12 games ranging from 4500 points per side to 20000 points per side and the fun factor was an even split. I've had Apocalypse games that we're absolutely the best, most exciting, and memorable games of 40k I've ever played and I've had others that were a huge waste of time that resulted in 6 guys being pissed off at each other.

Fun Apocalypse REQUIRES balance between the teams, period full stop. If one side has 2-3 Titans and the other side doesn't the game is over on turn 1 and that's lame. Narrative missions are also a huge plus. The two best games I played in were narrative and had a lot of interesting rules that limited the destruction during the early turns to keep the team going first from steamrolling. One was a beach assault, the team going first had to move on from the table edges which cut way back on the shooting. There wasn't much cover but to help balance it out the defenders were not allowed to move any models on turn 1 but they could shoot as normal. The objectives were to destroy a massive defense laser and seize a great big bunker. The second great Apocalypse game had an I shaped table and the deployment zone were 8 feet away from each other. The center of the I was the primary objective. It was super strategic and going first didn't matter because with the massive gap between armies shooting didn't do much for the first few turns. Both sides had to race across no man's land while simultaneously defending their own backfield from deep strikers and outflankers. The game lasted like 8 turns which was probably an Apocalypse world record...

What was cool about those two games was that the side with the best plan for accomplishing the mission won, not the side with the biggest toys.