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I'm really out of the loop. But I love the idea of 40k, and frankly GW plastic kits are a joy to put together. So a couple questions:

1) Do apocalypse games happen anymore? Or is this a better question for my FLGS? Or is "apocalypse" just a hold-over term that is now used to refer to games of 10000 points or more?
2) For normal games, can I build an all Imperial Knight army?
2a) If I could an did, would anyone actually want to play against me or would I just be "that guy?"
2b) If it'd be an unpleasant experience for my opponent, what could I do to make it less so, while still keeping the model count to a minimum, and emphasizing enormous kits?

 Bloviator wrote:
1) Do apocalypse games happen anymore?

Depends on the people in your area. They're certainly rarer than normal games, but some people are masochists and enjoy "playing" Apocalypse.

2) Can I build an all Imperial Knight army?

If you have enough money. The army construction rules for Apocalypse consist of "bring whatever you want".

2a) If I could an did, would anyone actually want to play against me or would I just be "that guy?"

Probably not? An army of nothing but knights would be little more than target practice against a good Apocalypse army, reducing the game to rolling some dice each turn to see how many knights you remove until they're finally all gone. And that's really just a boring experience for everyone involved.

2b) If it'd be an unpleasant experience for my opponent, what could I do to make it less so, while still keeping the model count to a minimum, and emphasizing enormous kits?

Bring titans. Nothing but titans. The game will still be a miserable slog, but at least both players will be participating.

The problem with Imperial Knights as an army in a normal game is, as it was in 7th, skew. If you put an army of all heavy armour on the table against an all-comers list they won't have enough anti-armour to handle it.

However given the dramatic improvement in 8th of small arms' ability to interact with Knights and the removal of the 6-to-RFP Destroyer tables I don't expect the skew problem to be anywhere near as significant if you wanted to start bringing Knights in 8th, and you may run into the opposite problem (your Knights aren't as tough as you'd like) and need to start using AdMech allies for repairs. From the math and my limited experience running Knights (my Knight-Acheron has seen the table in one game) I don't expect a Knights army to make you "that guy" in anything short of the most casual environments.

You can easily fit 3 knights into 2,000pts, perhaps less. But it will lose to most competitive lists, and will have almost no flexibility or variety since you have so few units to work with. Any lists that brings enough anti tank to fight Guard will have enough to kill 3 Knights.

The problem isn't so much that your army will be all Knights, it's that Knights themselves don't really measure up vs equivalent pts costs of other units. They just aren't that good. And they definitely fall short of other superheavies that can get faction traits and more stratagems. Khorne Lord of Skulls can benefit from both CSM and Daemon buffs, and doesn't cost much more. Similar for the Eldar Wraithknight.

If Knights got House traits of some sort, then they'd be more competitive. I'd love to run one as I love the look. If I did, I'd do it in games larger than 2,000. 2,000 is about where dealing with tons of normal units gets tedious, so super heavies area good way to expand past that without needing to move around a bajillion models. My game group started with 1,500 pt armies, then once we build those up move to 2k, then after that move to 2.5k but you have to field a superheavy, then 3k and 2 superheavies, etc.

 Bloviator wrote:

1) Do apocalypse games happen anymore? Or is this a better question for my FLGS? Or is "apocalypse" just a hold-over term that is now used to refer to games of 10000 points or more?

Apocalypse is now Open Play where you can bring literally anything you want. It's usually a special event/not very common in my experience but it would be best to ask your local group(s).

 Bloviator wrote:

2) For normal games, can I build an all Imperial Knight army?
2a) If I could an did, would anyone actually want to play against me or would I just be "that guy?"
2b) If it'd be an unpleasant experience for my opponent, what could I do to make it less so, while still keeping the model count to a minimum, and emphasizing enormous kits?

Knights have their very own army list and are completely legitimate in normal Matched Play games. You need to get hold of a copy of Index Imperium 2 for the options, rules, points, etc.

The best way to keep your opponents happy is to inform them beforehand that you play Knights. Then it's their choice whether to take up the challenge and prepare/tweak their list if necessary.

Personally I'd have no problem playing against a Knights list. I regularly take an Eldar Cobra to games upward of 1,500 points and it would welcome the target practice

 Bloviator wrote:
I'm really out of the loop. But I love the idea of 40k, and frankly GW plastic kits are a joy to put together. So a couple questions:

1) Do apocalypse games happen anymore? Or is this a better question for my FLGS? Or is "apocalypse" just a hold-over term that is now used to refer to games of 10000 points or more?
2) For normal games, can I build an all Imperial Knight army?
2a) If I could an did, would anyone actually want to play against me or would I just be "that guy?"
2b) If it'd be an unpleasant experience for my opponent, what could I do to make it less so, while still keeping the model count to a minimum, and emphasizing enormous kits?

1) No. It has been replaced by a mode of play called "Open play" where anything goes

2) Yes. I would not advice it, but you can definitely build an all-knight list for regular matched play.

3) An all knight list would be super-boring to play against. It would stomp all casual players, and be stomped by all competitive lists.

4) Not really. The game suffers a lot without infantry in my opinion.