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I’m really interested in it. Especially because the rules look pretty solid to me. To anyone who’s played it, how are you finding it so far?

I will never play standard 8th 40k again.

I have played as low as 90 pl and up to 150. Got about 5 games in. Its more engaging. Less down time. More strategic and tactical.

I'll echo lance as to the fact I really like the flow of gameplay better. I feel like there are more meaningful choices and less lagtime between making a choice and resolving the action. I also like the lack of downtime.

I dislike the way hero characters feel incredibly unimpactful and dislike the loss of the generic "reroll for a point" particularly with the low numbers of dice involved. a bad 1 really feels like a whammy in apoc.

I also dislike how GW seems to have made some decisions based on very simple math-costing formulas that lead many units to feel incredibly good and well balanced - seriously, crunching the numbers on the sliding scale of durability vs damage dealt a shocking number of units in the game fall really nicely on a linear scale - but where they seem to have lost their edge is with shared weapon profiles. A large number of the balance issues I've found have come from a unit like the Ironstrider Balistarii that has a shared profile weapon like a lascannon or Autocannon, and those units are the ones they seem to have tried to price manually...and failed.

There are other head-scratcher units (Why are all the imperial assassins sooooooooooooo bad?) but in general...I'm pretty happy. Happier than with 40k at least.

The core rule set is strictly better. The unit to unit balance can be off, and will hopefully get gw to adjust in the coming future. This is where my fear is though, apoc is unlikely to be picked up by the competitive community at large, unlike kill team, which is often a generator of balancing decisions, and there’s already a collection of folks going “well you could just take literally nothing but the best units from every army”

It's probably because I have not fought the armies or units with the biggest imbalances but I can say in the matches I have played the unit balance seems to be over all better than in 40k. Not perfect mind you. Things are not 100% tuned. But better.

Characters can be weaker. But the protector units are significantly more valuable and make the characters much more survivable. Lychguard, tyrant guard, etc... much better units in apoc and I like that. Not just because they do their protector job and that job is now more valuable but because they are also good units in and of themselves (lychguard are BRUTAL with warscythes).

The missions seem good, and the random mission generator is a nice addition in the book to keep things fresh.


While I would like a competitive element to take off because more people playing is better, I also don't participate in that so I don't actually care at all about it.

You can easily just say "1 army only" for competitive. Or "no more than 2 armies per player". The most egregious issues in apocs core rules are fixed with the easiest of house rules.

It's the best non-skirmish wargame. Period.

I'm enjoying it a lot, it's the only non-skirmish game I'm playing right now, it scratches the mass-battle itch for me better than 40k.

 Lance845 wrote:
It's probably because I have not fought the armies or units with the biggest imbalances but I can say in the matches I have played the unit balance seems to be over all better than in 40k. Not perfect mind you. Things are not 100% tuned. But better.

Characters can be weaker. But the protector units are significantly more valuable and make the characters much more survivable. Lychguard, tyrant guard, etc... much better units in apoc and I like that. Not just because they do their protector job and that job is now more valuable but because they are also good units in and of themselves (lychguard are BRUTAL with warscythes).

The missions seem good, and the random mission generator is a nice addition in the book to keep things fresh.


While I would like a competitive element to take off because more people playing is better, I also don't participate in that so I don't actually care at all about it.

You can easily just say "1 army only" for competitive. Or "no more than 2 armies per player". The most egregious issues in apocs core rules are fixed with the easiest of house rules.

They would be, but man is it not fun for the jerk to show up with his 20 faction army whining loudly about how no one wants to play his perfectly mathmatically optimized lists and how the tournies are pandering to casuals because they do something so heinous as demand at least one faction key word in common for lists.

But again, what is worse is if no tournies pick this up, I don't see much balancing being done at all. I dunno if anyone else has noticed, but GW tends to balance as a result of tourney abuse. "Oh people showed up at adeptecon with 10 flyrants in their list" *implements rule of three* "Wow that plague flail is rolling people in a death guard kill team" *Plague flail's attacks and damage reduced*.

Sure, but thus far nothing in apoc is drastically overhwelming the competition like that. Again, maybe i just havent seen it, but in apoc no unit matters as much as a cohesive synergistic detachment.

And the detachments built well balance well.

Some few units or options are complete crap (looking at you lictors/deathleaper). But auto not include is a significantly smaller issue than auto include.

I dunno, I do feel like my hurricane bolters are running a biiiit rampant, but that might change if I run into someone that's put more thought into their lists.

The core rules are solid. The CCG mechanic of the stratagem deck is easily the game's biggest flaw, but it's also something you don't need to use as long as you're willing to house rule a replacement for psychic powers. Other than that there's nothing that stands out as an obvious game-breaking problem like normal 40k's IGOUGO system. If you're playing small games you might consider moving to a unit-by-unit system for alternating activations since a single detachment becomes a much larger percentage of your army and moves the game closer to IGOUGO, and if you go too small you'll probably find that the all-or-nothing system for resolving attacks makes the game excessively swingy and prone to slap fights. But needing minor changes like that is way better than 8th.

The datasheets are definitely lacking. There's some balance issues and a lot of units with nonsensical rules. Superheavy tank destroyers being outgunned by a basic LRBT, weapon options that are strictly worse than other options the unit can take, and various things like that which make you wonder if anyone at GW knows how math works. But from what I've seen so far nothing stands out as blatantly overpowered like some of the stuff in normal 40k, and agreeing on house rules to fix a few nonsensical datasheets (if you even have those models in your collection) is much easier than trying to make a functioning game out of 8th edition.

The cards are an important part to split up purely mathematic gameplay. Plugging in the highest damage to cost ratios and spamming it out.

I do however not want to see them actually CCG this game, and continue to produce cards. The cards are the cards, we have enough. Done (even if I have much salt about how few custodes cards there are).

I could see them releasing another 1-2 card packs. I wouldn't mind a few more generic army cards and an additional 1-2 sub faction cards each.

stratigo wrote:
The cards are an important part to split up purely mathematic gameplay. Plugging in the highest damage to cost ratios and spamming it out.

How exactly do they do that? The CCG mechanic is just one more set of math to optimize. Unless you mean that, with limits on how many cards you can draw per turn, the RNG factor overwhelms player agency sufficiently that it doesn't matter what your army is?

He was talking about these cards no longer being available and future new cards being sold.

 Lance845 wrote:
Sure, but thus far nothing in apoc is drastically overhwelming the competition like that. Again, maybe i just havent seen it, but in apoc no unit matters as much as a cohesive synergistic detachment.

And the detachments built well balance well.

Some few units or options are complete crap (looking at you lictors/deathleaper). But auto not include is a significantly smaller issue than auto include.

The Deathleaper is actually finding its way into some of my lists as a cheap character to lead entirely deepstriking detachments. I’d probably be better off using the Red Terror though

Yup. I use the red terror with raveners. They are great. Many dice hitting on 2+ in melee.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Deathleaper has no synergy with anyone and not alot of attacks. The -1 ld aura is good if something else is doind the work of putting down blasts. But hes frankly. Incapable.

If they gave lictors rending claws AND grqsping talons so they got 2 attacks that would at least be something. Or if vrasping talons were destroyer so they were more effective at hunting specific targets.

But they are not.

While I am personally ok with the deck system, I can understand Peregrine's view. I am not sure what the change would be though.

I agree with Perigrine that at smaller games (sub 100PL) it should be unit by unit instead of by detachment.

I also agree with Perigrine that weapons should never be strictly worse than another in the same situation. For example, Heavy Bolters are strictly worse than Plasma Cannons and thus anything that has access to either will never have a reason to take Heavy Bolters.

 Peregrine wrote:

stratigo wrote:
The cards are an important part to split up purely mathematic gameplay. Plugging in the highest damage to cost ratios and spamming it out.

How exactly do they do that? The CCG mechanic is just one more set of math to optimize. Unless you mean that, with limits on how many cards you can draw per turn, the RNG factor overwhelms player agency sufficiently that it doesn't matter what your army is?

Card mechanics are sufficiently difficult to math that no one is gonna keep it in their head. They break up the basic ease of target priority by injecting chance (nothing is purely chance everything is statistics of course, but good luck finding someone who is that good a card counter. They'll be winning poker games in vegas) of a card to counter purely mathematically optimal target selection, or shift the order of operations of an army.

It makes the math sufficiently difficult that you can't simply do in your head except to a rough degree, making you have to plan around the possibility of a card, or take the risk of the oppenent not having the card and doing a more optimal strategy otherwise. Which is important for breaking up basic purely optimal statistical target selection. I'm terrible at math and can easily stat out the amount of damage a unit is going to do to another unit on average.

It also allows for a bit of bluffing and psychological play.

stratigo wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

stratigo wrote:
The cards are an important part to split up purely mathematic gameplay. Plugging in the highest damage to cost ratios and spamming it out.

How exactly do they do that? The CCG mechanic is just one more set of math to optimize. Unless you mean that, with limits on how many cards you can draw per turn, the RNG factor overwhelms player agency sufficiently that it doesn't matter what your army is?

Card mechanics are sufficiently difficult to math that no one is gonna keep it in their head. They break up the basic ease of target priority by injecting chance (nothing is purely chance everything is statistics of course, but good luck finding someone who is that good a card counter. They'll be winning poker games in vegas) of a card to counter purely mathematically optimal target selection, or shift the order of operations of an army.

It makes the math sufficiently difficult that you can't simply do in your head except to a rough degree, making you have to plan around the possibility of a card, or take the risk of the oppenent not having the card and doing a more optimal strategy otherwise. Which is important for breaking up basic purely optimal statistical target selection. I'm terrible at math and can easily stat out the amount of damage a unit is going to do to another unit on average.

It also allows for a bit of bluffing and psychological play.

Agree with all that. Also, card counting in poker is based around knowing what cards are in the deck. You don't know for sure which 30 cards your opponent has unless you spent time inspecting and studying their deck.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
While I am personally ok with the deck system, I can understand Peregrine's view. I am not sure what the change would be though.

I agree with Perigrine that at smaller games (sub 100PL) it should be unit by unit instead of by detachment.

I also agree with Perigrine that weapons should never be strictly worse than another in the same situation. For example, Heavy Bolters are strictly worse than Plasma Cannons and thus anything that has access to either will never have a reason to take Heavy Bolters.

You could do that but I don't think you could without heavy bolters having a different profile for different units. SO MANY units have lascannons, heavy bolters, etc. For a hb to be balanced against a plasma cannon for marines, a twin hb would be overpowered vs plasma cannon on dreadnoughts.

They went with consistent profiles over perfect balance. And be honest if they'd gone with inconsistent profiles you would say "lololol the same gun is different if a different unit fires it stoopid gw!!!"

I'd have made a heavy bolter a 6 plus SAP. It is still worse than a plasma cannon, but not offensively so

the_scotsman wrote:
And be honest if they'd gone with inconsistent profiles you would say "lololol the same gun is different if a different unit fires it stoopid gw!!!"

But they have gone with inconsistent profiles in some cases.

 Peregrine wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
And be honest if they'd gone with inconsistent profiles you would say "lololol the same gun is different if a different unit fires it stoopid gw!!!"

But they have gone with inconsistent profiles in some cases.

Name 10.

With all this feedback, Apocalypse definitely seems like something to get involved in. I’ll check it out.

 Peregrine wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
And be honest if they'd gone with inconsistent profiles you would say "lololol the same gun is different if a different unit fires it stoopid gw!!!"

But they have gone with inconsistent profiles in some cases.

Only in the case of basic weapons that have different numbers of models using them. A storm Bolter will deal less than 5 storm bolters, 5 bolt pistols vs 10 bolt pistols etc.

It's as bad as WHFB's end times fiasco. Just a stupid way to shoehorn all of the 40K toys (IK, flyers, etc.) into a single game but this topic has been already discussed to death without any of GW's suits becoming any smarter.

 Strg Alt wrote:
It's as bad as WHFB's end times fiasco. Just a stupid way to shoehorn all of the 40K toys (IK, flyers, etc.) into a single game but this topic has been already discussed to death without any of GW's suits becoming any smarter.

What? lol. You think apoc is as bad as the launch of end times?

The general opinion of Apocalypse around here is that it's fantastic.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
It's as bad as WHFB's end times fiasco. Just a stupid way to shoehorn all of the 40K toys (IK, flyers, etc.) into a single game but this topic has been already discussed to death without any of GW's suits becoming any smarter.

What? lol. You think apoc is as bad as the launch of end times?

Yeah, I saw the unit bases like they were used in good old Epic.
Pretty stupid. If you want to simulate mass warfare you play Epic. You want to play skirmish? Fine, play 40K.
And now GW's suits brainwashed their customers to play Epic but with 40K models. Only people with half a brain will fall for this most foul ploy.