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So, my friends and I are considering charity raiser options, and one of us had the bright idea of 24 hours of straight Warhammer. One game, 24 hours, and probably a whole lot of dead models.

My question: is this possible? Can the length of a game be artifically extended, perhaps with reinforcement roles, continuing battles across multiples tables, shifting perspectives of the wider war? Or is 24hours simply impossible to do?

Oh its possible!

Look up 40K Apocalypse - far as I know they've not done a similar system for 8th edition yet, but you can certainly adapt the core concepts used in that for 8th edition.

Then you just need a LOT of models and gamers, food, pizza, drinks and stuff!

If you can't throw down enough models then consider doing something like a siege, whereby one group of players have heavy fortifications and a large defensive force and the other players run a rolling army. Ergo every time they lose a unit it reappears at the table edge, representing the army rolling forward with wave after wave of models.


In general be a bit fluid with things, if it looks like the game is coming to an end change it up with some reinforcements and suchlike. As the intent is to keep the game going rather than find the winner. The greater part isn't so much keeping the game going, but keeping the gamers going.


A few thoughts on that:
1) Make sure you've got access to food and drink. Warm and cold of both. Energy drinks are fine, but don't bring any alcohol (tired + booze = broken models). Bring some with you and then check out the ordering times of local eateries, remember they do close at some point.

2) Heating - its wintery and can get chilly at night, to keep people going make sure the place is heated (not too hot or everyone will get sleepy). Then you can still crack open a window for some fresh air every so often and keep things rolling without chattering teeth and the pizza getting cold.

3) Rolling armies. Not everyone might be able to stay for the full 24 hours. So try to work out who has to leave early or might arrive late. If you get a rough idea you can balance the sides so that they remain mostly normal. You can also then account for any who will take their army home/bring one with them or any who are going to be happy to leave their army for the duration under anothers control.

4) Be flexible with the game. If it looks like you're going to end up with one side winning too early throw down reinforcements, introduced a 3rd faction made up of those who died etc... Ergo keep the game fluid.

5) Bring some additional games too. Yep big games can mean that some people end up not playing for a bit, so be sure there's something else for them to drift in and out of. Card games (AoS Champions - Magic the Gathering); board games (Catan, Munchkin, etc...) heck if you've got a projector/TV then a console with some casual fighting games or racing ones can be a nice distraction. Basically ensure there's something to do when its not your turn in the mega-game, or if someone's models are all blasted off early and they are waiting a reinforcement slot to get stuckback in the fight.

6) If you're being really casual another angle is instead of two armies squaring off; go for total Free For All. It will devolve into personal grudge matches and ganging up, but it can make it more entertaining as everyone is tackling everyone else; alliances formed over shared pizza broken upon the battlefield only moments later etc....

7) Consider how everyone gets home from the event. Esp any who are staying for the full 24 hours because they WILL be tired and should not be driving home. A lift or such or walking back in a group etc... is ideal. Ergo make sure everyone has a sensible safe plan for how to get home. It might seem a bit pedantic, but it means everything wraps up nice and fun in the end; everyone finishes the whole event and gets home to bed safe and sound.

8) Take pictures through the event to document it!

Sustained Assault. At least I think that's what it used to be called.
Basically, every time a unit is removed as a casualty, you can put it in Reserves instead, at full strength, to be available in the next turn.
Just keep recycling units in this way and the game can last as long as you need it.

-

Maybe for some extra grind, double the wounds on all models but characters still count as having their original wound count. Or even just double the wounds on characters (still count original) to make them feel a bit more epic in such a huge game(s).

it's very possible just play Vs index Orkz with no movement trays


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:
Sustained Assault. At least I think that's what it used to be called.
Basically, every time a unit is removed as a casualty, you can put it in Reserves instead, at full strength, to be available in the next turn.
Just keep recycling units in this way and the game can last as long as you need it.

-

what the hell is the point of doing that for 24 hrs straight

Overread, 8th Apoc is in Chapter Approved 2017.

In all honestly, itd probably be more interesting to run a campaign of some description for 24hrs.

I second a siege type battle, assuming you have the terrain. Several lines of defense verse and endless way of attackers.

Did a 24k vs 24k apoc game in 12 hours (over 2 days) a couple months ago that went all the way to turn 7. (Hilariously, turn 7 took 5 minutes for both teams’ turns combined!)

Bearing that in mind, if you wanted to brute-force it and have a game outright big enough for 24 hours without special rules, it seems like you’d want at least 50 grand per side.

No, it isn't possible to do this in any reasonable way. There just isn't enough legitimate content to fill that much time. Taking a 2-3 hour game and trying to drag it out into a 24 hour game requires doing one of two things:

1) Increasing the point level to obscene levels where it takes 24 hours to move all of the models and roll all of the dice. You aren't really adding new events or strategy or anything, you're just increasing the number of dice you have to roll. And with IGOUGO the "game" turns into a tedious slog where by the end of it everyone is just praying that it finally ends so they can go home. And the same goes for your charity audience. Who is going to give you any attention when you're saying "tune in again in 3 hours when we have finished the movement phase and start to roll shooting dice"? Worse, you probably don't have enough decent models to hit 24 hours, so you're talking about a huge room-sized game full of unpainted models and $1 toys from walmart where you don't even get the spectacle of an epic battle between awesome armies.

or

2) Adding recycling unit rules that give you a mindless meat grinder devoid of any fun or purpose. Yeah, you can continue rolling dice for 24 hours if every unit immediately respawns when it is destroyed, but what exactly are you accomplishing besides masturbatory execution of the 40k turn sequence over and over and over and over again? Who cares about the heroic victory of the humble sergeant taking down the enemy warlord when the warlord just respawns next turn like nothing happened? What's the use in claiming an objective when the next wave of reinforcements just takes it right back? How can you have a desperate last stand if dying just means getting to respawn at full strength? Strip away the consequences of any events in the game and you're left with nothing but "3+ to hit, 4+ to wound, roll some saves" until the madness finally claims you and you beg for the release of death.

If you want to have a 24 hour 40k event you're far better off making it a marathon series of normal games. Yeah, it's still an endurance test and you'll probably stop having fun long before you reach 24 hours, but at least there's some level of entertainment going on.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
So, my friends and I are considering charity raiser options, and one of us had the bright idea of 24 hours of straight Warhammer. One game, 24 hours, and probably a whole lot of dead models.

My question: is this possible? Can the length of a game be artifically extended, perhaps with reinforcement roles, continuing battles across multiples tables, shifting perspectives of the wider war? Or is 24hours simply impossible to do?

Well yes and no...Issue here will be that 40k is so ridiculously overpowered in terms of damage output in 8th ed in first 2 turns you will have most of the army dead. This means that frankly 20k will wipe each other very fast. So to get 24h you would need HUGE armies just so that resolving 1 turn takes very, very, very long time.

Then we come to issue that the IGOUGO means that the starter will cause HUGE casualties right off the bat and this is compounded in apoc games. More so if large amount of big stuff is included. Consider titans. Warlord vs warlord or reaver vs warlord(or reaver vs reaver) it doesn't really matter what class but who gets first turn. Barring ridiculously bad dice rolling reaver starting will criple warlord, suffer some damage and then finish warlord off. Huge chunk of points.

Oh and for that reason don't bulk up points with titans. Those are very bad if you want things to go slowly as they a) cost lots of points b) are quick to play c) either are taken out quickly by opposing titans or ignored. 24k sounds impressive. Unless 3 of them are warlord titans...

Also there's no real way to QUARANTEE 24h with any point value unless you don't mind quitting after 24h regardless of game status. Then sure 100k per side.

Also this kind of huge pts total will not be particularly impressive looking as it will be very static looking...

Thus I would be leaning toward recycling troops to keep stuff in table. Things seems to be happening(units changing place, units being wiped out etc) for both sides, IGOUGO crippling effect less apparent and you can control more easily game length as turn speed doesn't dramatically go up toward the end.

Just do 24hrs of consecutive games. Make up a narrative as you go along.

I'd agree with others that 24 hours of the same battle might not turn out too fun or interesting, whereas a series of more traditional games would. Then again, if you aren't against creating up fun scenarios and rules, one possibility is to have several tables with smaller battles, results of which will then influence a larger main battle.

Classic examples from White Dwarf would be stuff like the second war for Armageddon, where they had a large central table of Guard, Blood Angels and Salamanders taking on Ork invaders, while three smaller tables fought to affect it. On some distant foothills, an artillery battery of Basilisks rained fire down on the main battle as a company of Catachans tried to shield them from Orks intent on stopping the big guns. On nearby plains, White Scars fought a running battle of speed with Speed Freeks about who got to reinforce the main battle and who was left bleeding in the ditches. In the orbit, a Kill Kroozer was blasting the main table from above and a suicide boarding party of Black Templars crashed in there to silence the guns. It was awesome.

There was a similar game during the Eye of Terror. Abaddon's Lost and the Damned mutie horde fought over a ruined basilica against Guard and Dark Angels, Maugan Ra and Ulthwe fought Dark Eldars in the jungles for the right to teleport in there and Space Wolves 13th company hijacked a Thunderhawk from a traitor guardsmen (one of which turned out to contain a Bloodthirster surprise) held airport to drive by. There was a third sideboard too, can't remember what it was.

If you're doing this for show, I'd rather watch something like this than a continuous slog of ground meat unless you heavily, heavily modify the basic game, which scales badly upwards. I'm not against the idea of a huge siege with recycled attackers and defender getting reinforcements from time to time, but the IGOUGO system has to go out by that point or everyone in the audience is asleep by the time one side finishes, not to even account for the one-sided swings that produces. Bolt Action style token activation (I like to call it Boltgun Action, Elbows calls it Tokenhammer and so forth) would work, I think, as you get to alternate between the players in smaller pieces and actually engage with the game instead of merely throwing dice in their thousands (also helps to avoid weird close combat lockdowns of half an army). Though even there I'd say it would need some preplanning in the scenario. Stuff like, say, perhaps the defenders have two or three reinforced lines (imagine scifi city walls) of defensive positions the attacker needs to overrun and the dug in defenders get +2 cover from shots below them, gun embankments, machine gun nests, light artillery, a small reinforcement contingent every four turns or so (appropriate stuff like a hot drop of space marines outside the walls where guardsmen are dying in their droves to keep chaos mutants from climbing over them) while the attacker gets to constantly recycle their casualties, order artillery fire from afar, dig sappers under the walls and what not. Why not have a side table of underground sappers and tunnel rats desperately trying to do their bit, actually? Add narrative elements like stupid orders from high command (who can be another player without an army, too), faulty machinery, sudden sainthood or daemonic ascension for the marine who stood as the only survivor of a forlorn hope assault on the first breach or whatever. Season to taste.

I'd watch that, really.

Ignore those saying just playing the same meatgrinder for 24 hours isn't fun. Anything is fun with the right attitude. Problem is unless you are gods of game design there will be a somewhat artificial reinforcement of both sides. If one side pulls off a fantastic feat and rolls the other army up, you have to make it so they don't win as you are only on hour 13...

How many people playing and with they be there for the whole 24 hours? If you expect some people to drop in and out you need to cater for that. If you are doing a meatgrinder they just come on when they arrive. If a linked series of games is what you decide on (as it allows people to 'win' through the day) you could schedule them to arrive at certain times.

My personal ambition would be to have a Battlefleet gothic game - stopping for any interesting boarding actions to be played out as a zone mortalis/shadow wars/kill team game - culminating in a successful planetary invasion, with the invding player 'calling' it when they want to switch to Epic (you land x troops as can either let them amass for a one sided game in your favour or go early for a tough battle if the planetary assault is faultering). During the Epic game any good engagements can be fought out as 40k battles. If the invading payer wins the defender can play a 40k game to try and force them back ('targetted strike'), or you progress to the final Epic game which is the attack on the capital which determins who gets a minor win. Following that it is a 40k game allowing the loser to either get it back to a draw or the winner of the last game to make it a Major victory and then finally the loser of that game gets to play kill team to try and assainate the enemy commander to claw something back.

Multiple players means games alongside each other and more multiplayer games. So say the planetary invasion is a game of epic and 2 of 40k with the Epic game counting as two 40k games for the purposes of seeing who wins that round, etc.

Terrifyingly enough I have enough models to do this needing just players and some last minute painting...

Rolling armies works best with a longer table, so that there is ground to cover. The defender has space to fall back into and the attacker can push them back further into their fortifications or trenches. Then the attacker can try to push forward to retake the walls or the trenches etc.. Ergo its a continual push and shove.

You can add some elements like key objectives. Whoever owns the forward tower by turn 3 or at 1pm gets to have their pizza paid for by the other side etc...

Another idea is that named heroes don't come back. So you have powerful units that you have to protect and keep alive as you won't get them returned to you when they die. Though you can balance that by adding medical areas and such. Move your hero forward for battle then retreat them back to heal up. If they die they die but if you can yo-yo them back and forth well they can keep going .

Something btw you will need to figure out if you go for one big battle is CP's and strategems. Many units are dependant on strategems so if CP's are limited or you can only use once per phase some units just are crap to bring more than 1.

I second the idea that a campaign would be more fun than one huge, drawn out battle.

I would suggest you use a planetary empires board, and have 2 factions (good and evil) waging war on each other through a series of games.

If you allow a set time limit for each game, and make a timeline for the game depending on whether one side is winning or it's mostly level, you can orchestrate an engaging campaign without losing the interest of the gamers. You can also use the timings to give people slots to go and have a break, get food etc.

So, for example, you have 24 players and allocate 2 hours per game, so that's 12 games running every 2 hours.
You can then have 11 games running every 2 hours, with 2 people having a break & getting something to eat in each 2 hour slot. Everyone would get 2 breaks, 12 hours apart, but the games would keep going.

You could also run an apocalypse game in amongst the smaller games, with a 6 hour slot. that's 4 sequential apocalypse games, with smaller games going on around it. each smaller game is fighting for some advantage in the next apocalypse game - make them secret, so (for example) one table fights over what turns out to be a teleport jammer - they may place one of the opponents units when they deepstrike, instead of them in the next apocalypse game.

This makes the smaller games meaningful, whilst still making the central apocalypse game matter.

You could also have a facility on the apocalypse game board, with a killteam game going on to determine who controls it each turn (assuming the apoc game is large enough, a killteam game could be completed within each turn). facility could be a nuclear reactor to overload, or a forcefield to deactivate, or an AA battery to aim.

This'll keep each apocalypse round fresh, and the players interested, and engage people with small armies ill sited to apocalypse - a pure infantry marine army with no superheavyes would get very bored by an apocalypse game once all their stuff is dead (turn 2). So you can unclude a wide variety of people, and provided the central games keep going, other people can drift in and out if they can't commit to the full 24hrs.

 some bloke wrote:
I second the idea that a campaign would be more fun than one huge, drawn out battle.

I would suggest you use a planetary empires board, and have 2 factions (good and evil) waging war on each other through a series of games.

If you allow a set time limit for each game, and make a timeline for the game depending on whether one side is winning or it's mostly level, you can orchestrate an engaging campaign without losing the interest of the gamers. You can also use the timings to give people slots to go and have a break, get food etc.

So, for example, you have 24 players and allocate 2 hours per game, so that's 12 games running every 2 hours.
You can then have 11 games running every 2 hours, with 2 people having a break & getting something to eat in each 2 hour slot. Everyone would get 2 breaks, 12 hours apart, but the games would keep going.

You could also run an apocalypse game in amongst the smaller games, with a 6 hour slot. that's 4 sequential apocalypse games, with smaller games going on around it. each smaller game is fighting for some advantage in the next apocalypse game - make them secret, so (for example) one table fights over what turns out to be a teleport jammer - they may place one of the opponents units when they deepstrike, instead of them in the next apocalypse game.

This makes the smaller games meaningful, whilst still making the central apocalypse game matter.

You could also have a facility on the apocalypse game board, with a killteam game going on to determine who controls it each turn (assuming the apoc game is large enough, a killteam game could be completed within each turn). facility could be a nuclear reactor to overload, or a forcefield to deactivate, or an AA battery to aim.

This'll keep each apocalypse round fresh, and the players interested, and engage people with small armies ill sited to apocalypse - a pure infantry marine army with no superheavyes would get very bored by an apocalypse game once all their stuff is dead (turn 2). So you can unclude a wide variety of people, and provided the central games keep going, other people can drift in and out if they can't commit to the full 24hrs.

2h games better be small. 3h is appropriate for 2k games. And here we are talking about tiring marathon game

I love this idea, hope you do it, and post a HUGE batrep with lots of ridiculous pictures (including, perhaps, photos of friends who fell by the wayside, passed out and drooling, perhaps with sharpie-graffiti on their face: "<their faction> sucks!". Etc. Etc. Etc.)

Good luck!

I'd say drop the idea of making a single game last 24hrs. Seem's it'd be much more fun and creative to run a custom open ended scenario. With potential bonuses / negatives rolling over in to the next battle, they don't have to be OP could just be funny to keep spirits up through the 24hrs.

I like the idea of making one big campaign style event rather than 1 big game, escalation wise.

Game 1, nice, quick skirmish of say 500 points per player, then end up with like 5,000 or even 10,000 points apiece for the last game depending on the amount of players involved. It also allows a mix of armies and units to be played across the day.

I think you can (for a 24h game, you essentially have to) recycle units if you set the mission goals accordingly.
Either some important objective holding or just a meatgrinder. Does not matter if units keep coming back, you can win because you kill the enemy more efficiently.

For those who say it's pointless - perhaps. But one should put himself in the shoes of the viewer. I doubt the same people will be present for 24 h. You do this to "show off" for them. Attract their interest and curiosity. All painted please!

If you go this route, you have to be incredibly slow and relaxed and present everything in a casual manner, or you are going to burn out.

Another idea you can do is have a "large" game going with the players that will be playing for the longest.

While other players that are jumping in-and-out playing side missions

Seige Campaign happening while the defenders have a void shield.

A 500/1000pt side campaign on another table can be a strike force trying to sabotage the generator. If they destroy / damage the generator the defenders lose it.

A 500/1000pt side campaign of defenders teleporting to an enemy cruiser to destroy / damage it to prevent orbital bombardments.

Attacking a landing pad to destroy bombing runs.

Sneaking through the sewers to flank the enemy. Etc.

Keep the side missions short for other players. But have them affecting the large table.


Heck. Even players playing on the apocalypse table could take part of said 500pt "side" missions. While they wait

My friends and I used to assemble all of our fantasy armies across 4 tables to play one super game. It worked well in fantasy due to movement restrictions, less obscene damage, etc. One game involved an epic contest between a 300 zombie unit vs 120 imperial swordsmen. Although, I recall having 1400ish models in my collection, so...While that worked in fantasy, there is no way it would work in 40k. Any super game we played in that would end in half the time due to the incredibly long-range attacks and much faster movement. While recycling units to play a meat-grinder type scenario is fun, it would become tedious over 24 hours i'd imagine. I agree with the other posters that it would be better to run a mini-campaign. Make a series of scenarios related to conquering a hive city, planet, etc.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Just do 24hrs of consecutive games. Make up a narrative as you go along.

Id ditto this like a few others are saying.

make a big Campaign with a map and set pieces. each game might take like 2-4 hours each and as it progresses you could come back to lost ground or whatever. but the point is that a single large game wont have enough content for a stream.

segmented campaigns will give you a break to also talk about the game and also interact with whom ever is watching which is also important.

Some crazy dudes in the US rented a gym for a 40K battle in the 90s. This idea would certainly appeal for your 24 hour game.

Here's how I picture it:

One big, complicated table with several side tables. Not just one long 4 foot by 25 foot table with the armies blasting each other from point blank range. Make it twist and turn, with wider and narrower bits. The gaps for the players to pass through can represent canals, etc, and could be fired over by artillery and flown over by flyers.

Basically make it a themed table with various deployment zones. Like maybe there's a star port where one side can deploy, but they're also trying to break the siege around the port so they can deploy elsewhere as well.

It's not necessary to have continuous battles all over the board. The fighting can progress from one area to another depending on the story. This would mean that units respawn in a meaningful fashion, not just to add to the meat grinder.

Equally, there can be side games which influence the course of the main battle. Like a Kill Team game where one side has to defend/ destroy an objective, which in turn will mean that they will receive more reinforcements the next turn in the main game, or the secondary objective moves to another part of the table. This would make the main game last much longer and keep the interest alive.

Maybe you could aim to finish the main game in like 18 hours and for the last 6 have a whole new table prepared which is completely different (which the players don't know about in advance), such as a webway-themed board. That way it's like the first game has some kind of consequences and we get to see the narrative developing. Also to break the monotony and give players a bit of a morale boost for the final push to hour 24.

This would obviously need a lot of time and organisation, not to mention a lot of terrain, models and players. Good luck with whatever you decide to do!

I'd do a campaign of escalating battles instead honestly. It allows for breaks, has more story and it's less of a grind in general.