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For the last 15 years or so it has always been my dream to put all my Imperium armies together and play a massive Apocalypse battle where I take on a handful of other players in a ridiculous game. Part of the fun of having a massive collection is the thought of seeing how it would perform with everyone working together. Over the years I have played a handful of Apocalypse games, and the biggest force I ever fielded solo was 9000 points. Recently I wrote up a 15,000 point, fully painted (minus 2 models...) army list and dreamed once again how cool it would be to play it.

And then reality sunk in. The list I wrote would conservatively pump out about 600-1000 shots per turn (depending on range, variable shots, casualties, etc.) and I quickly realized that this would be impossible to try as it would require thousands of dice rolls per turn and take from now until the 41st millennium to get through a few turns.

So my question for y’all is this: what’s the biggest army you think you could play by yourself without it dragging on for days at a time?

For fun, here’s a pic or two...

A large game with a single player per side works much better than the multiple players per side game that some people seem to insist on trying to organize periodically.

I think 6 or 7K is a sensible upper limit for an all day game with only one player per side as long as you stay focused.

At that level, it’d probably be best to use a dice app to handle the rolls.

I’m not much for big games, but if I was insane enough, I could do a massive Marines (4 companies + support vehicles) + IG force. If I included my bolt action & dust models into my IG force, I might have enough to rival the marines...

I think this depends on how you scale up.

If you scale up is I take my 200 model 2K army and multiply that by 3 to get my 6K force, of 600 models, verus my 2K force of 200 guys then get another 50 guys with all the bells and whistles, and then my last 2K adds in 4 super heavy tanks and knights.

One is a 10 hour morass, the other is 5 hours of fun.

Reemule wrote:
I think this depends on how you scale up.

If you scale up is I take my 200 model 2K army and multiply that by 3 to get my 6K force, of 600 models, verus my 2K force of 200 guys then get another 50 guys with all the bells and whistles, and then my last 2K adds in 4 super heavy tanks and knights.

One is a 10 hour morass, the other is 5 hours of fun.

It’s kind of a mix of this. Roughly 350 infantry, 40 vehicles, and 4 Super Heavies. With deep strikers and guys embarked in transports I would have to deploy about 150 of the infantry, the rest would be “off table”. The hard part is the number of dice involved, not the model count IMO.

I think if you're playing larger point games the intent is to field those larger point models. If you set up for a 10,000 point game and don't have a 2000 point model, you're doing it wrong.

Back in 4th Ed I played 8- 9k points semi regularly. Now, I'd probably do 4-6k given my time constraints.

WAAAAY back in fourth, when Apocalypse dropped, my mates and I used to rather regularily play some large games. Most were 2v2s with about 10000-12000 point on each side. I remember my Marines and Guard had about 3500 and 2500, respectively and it was pretty much no problem fielding these armies and finishing games.

Drawing from that experience, I would say about 6000 is no real problem, yet I believe once you exceed 7000 points, you might run into trouble remebering wargear and such jazz. So i would draw the line at... about 7500 points, personally.

Most I would play solo is probably 25k. I've done 10k a few times, and it's pretty easy if you have a few superheavies lying around. Plopping down a few +500pt models and a few +1000pt models makes 10k seem pretty small. With my current *assembled* collection, 25K seems like it's the point where I would have too much on the table for a fun game.

As a group, I participate in 50-100k games at least 3 times a year. When 8th dropped, we had a 250k game. It was 18 hours of fun and I think we got to turn 3.

largest in 40K was 4,000 points.

largest GW game was 9K high elves. Squadrons of Sun Dragons are fun times.

no clue the points. but we generally play -200 points in my gaming den. 250 points a couple times. really though thats just a company and couple knights..

ssisal wrote:
no clue the points. but we generally play -200 points in my gaming den. 250 points a couple times. really though thats just a company and couple knights..

You mean to say, 200 power level?

5K I've done without trouble before, maybe 10K.

Biggest game I ever played was 16k a side, four players per side, board was 16x24. Completed 6 turns in 10 hours.

I once played a 5k game at our local store, we finished in 4 hours. This was because me and my opponent ( my brother) knew our codices and the rules like the back of our hands. We had lists and models ready at the open of the store and we played with such speed so that we didn't monopolize the table space. One of our better games.

 chimeara wrote:

ssisal wrote:
no clue the points. but we generally play -200 points in my gaming den. 250 points a couple times. really though thats just a company and couple knights..

You mean to say, 200 power level?

Yes i ment power levels, not points..!!

Wow. For me it is difficuld because of work and wife to play 1500 points. For playing a 4k or 5K match... Can imagine I would need holidays and that she work meanwhile.

I'd play 1000pts max. Maybe 1250 for those strange places that see it as normal.

But I'd never go any higher for 40k. It's too slow and too much like a chore than a game.

I'll agree with the consensus and say that six thousand points was nearing the upper limit without a ton of titanic models.

For Titans and the like, they really don't add too much complexity. A Reaver titan actually has fewer weapons than a tricked out LRBT! So using those to goose your points is gravy.

But with normal models, or god forbid, point optimized armies? I've done 6k, but much more would take more than a full day.

I would easily play a 10000 point game.....of knights and titans.

This'll seem pretty meek compared to some of the numbers others have posted, but my biggest games I've ever played are a couple of 3000-points (per side obviously) games, and those each took about 4 hours to play. No superheavies were involved, and it was 7th edition. I've always wondered what it would be like to field my entire collection of Dark Angels at once, with like 30 terminators, 25 bikes, over 100 grunts of various types, vehicles of just about every class, plus a ton of characters all going into battle together. Once I get all of my Knights built and painted I could even throw in some superheavies to speed up the game.

One problem I could foresee with large games is that whoever goes first would have the firepower to simply annihilate most of their opponent's good stuff in their first turn before the opponent can even do anything. Especially if there are Titans and such on the table. Is that in fact a huge problem?

Biggest and longest was against my son at Warhammer World a few years back. Roughly 15000 points of Ultramarines and 9000 of reycylable Tyranids. Took all day but was good fun. No Superheavies (not sure they existed back then): biggest things on the board were Land Raiders. It DID take all day but we had a blast.

Hey guys, nice looking armies you got there! I'm a huge fan of apocalypse, and my recent game was at the convention (with total of 140k points, 70k on each side, and my army was 12k). I was literally carrying as much as I could for the game (my collection is roughly 18k), and we played over night. Very fun indeed. Nowadays, I dont even actually plan smaller lists than 1000power because, if some units dont fit into that, theres no point to get it for smaller games, and I consider myself more as a collector.

6 games at 1500 each.
Then a 7th at 3000pts with Ao$ style deployment

I do not think there is a limit due to being alone. The limit is tablespace in relation to weapon ranges. Once you reach a certain distance between models on different parts of the table they might aswell be in different games anyway.

Most big games I have seen and/or played were sadly piles of stuff on each side and a huge amount of dice thrown for very predictable results. (The side going first wins)

And yes more players waste more time. If you want one advise: Stay clear of big games of 5000+ points. Unless you just want to durdle around, then they are perfect.

I think skill of the players and the attitude they have has a big effect on things. Low skill players having a laugh and casually playing won't get that far; decently skilled players (ergo you know what you are doing) who want to game all day an who want to play it out will play far quicker.
Sure you'll have break here and there; but overall if both sides are keen on the idea and know how to play you can typically play with way more points.