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2 nids tau and orks. 150 pl. 125ish is roughly equivalent to 2k points. 4-5 non specialist detachments in each army.

There is also a way to read things with out making others sound like a douche. Start by assuming nobody is posting with ill will. Then a statement is just a statement, free of snark.

Drager wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Drager wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
You are not considering that terminators Know no fear, which is a huge defensive boost in Apoc.

My math is much simpler here:

1 blast on said harley squad inflicts 0,5 wounds from the damage and 0,16 wounds from morale, for a total of 0,66 wounds. 1 wounds is worth 7,5 PL, so 0,66 wounds are worth 5 PL. A small blast inflicts 5 PL of damage.
The same blast on terminators inflicts 0,25 wounds from the damage, and no wounds from morale. Each wound costs 5,5 PL. A small blast inflicts 1,375 PL. Terminators are 3 times more resilient in this scenario.

Let's repeat for a large blast.

Harley again take 5 PL of damage.
Termis take 0,5 wounds, so suffer 2,75 PL of damage.

Large blast and small blast:

Harley take exactly double from damage and double from morale, so they take 10 PL of damage.
Termis take 0,75 wounds from damage and 0,027 from morale. 4,28 PL of damage.

Double large blast?

Harley take 10 PL
Termie take 5,5 PL.

You can see that in no scenario harley have even something resembling the durability of termies.

This is Apoc, not 40K. Units have no defensive stats with interaction (like S vs T or Sv vs AP). Don't try to look at possible attackers versus possible defenders, a blast is a blast.
Use that as a basis, the math is much easier.

You are missing the -1 to hit and to wound, which make a big difference. Therefore, in this case, a blast is not a blast as there are defensive differences. Further Harlies have a 6+ save, not a 7+ so it's not a 50 % save, it's 58%. If you redo the maths and include these modifications you'll find I'm correct. Your calculations are simpler, true, but also incorrect.

I hate to ask this...but if we are including the -1 to wound, surely we are including the cost of the Shadowseer granting the buff with the cost of the Harlequins (possibly only 2.33PL if we're talking about 3 squads of harlequins benefitting), right?

It would be silly to give a 15PL unit a 7PL buff and compare them, right?

The terminators will have a commander too. It just applied no defensive buff. I'm mostly thinking on the scale of a battalion so the cost of the commander is moot. It's more like a 50 pl group of models (3 troops and a shadowseer). I'm just zooming in to make the demonstration easier to follow.

In the case of the terminators it's probably 4 units plus a commander so they are roughly equally durable, hence mentioning the Harlequins are more durable but cost more.

Sure. I still think the primary thing you're ignoring in your analysis is that units with access to deep strike and units without (meaning they cannot arrive and immediately be in melee) seem to have very different budgets they're working with.

Compare a Deff Dread, Murderfang, Khorne Bezerkers, full melee helbrutes, etc to any melee unit with deep strike. They seem to deal roughly 2x-3x the damage. I can't imagine that's an accident - anything without deep strike your opponent either gets a chance to kill or you have to pay for a transport to guarantee it getting to fight (costing extra PL and making it turn 2+ only). So you get some reward out of not getting to attack with them up front.

Drager wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
You are not considering that terminators Know no fear, which is a huge defensive boost in Apoc.

My math is much simpler here:

1 blast on said harley squad inflicts 0,5 wounds from the damage and 0,16 wounds from morale, for a total of 0,66 wounds. 1 wounds is worth 7,5 PL, so 0,66 wounds are worth 5 PL. A small blast inflicts 5 PL of damage.
The same blast on terminators inflicts 0,25 wounds from the damage, and no wounds from morale. Each wound costs 5,5 PL. A small blast inflicts 1,375 PL. Terminators are 3 times more resilient in this scenario.

Let's repeat for a large blast.

Harley again take 5 PL of damage.
Termis take 0,5 wounds, so suffer 2,75 PL of damage.

Large blast and small blast:

Harley take exactly double from damage and double from morale, so they take 10 PL of damage.
Termis take 0,75 wounds from damage and 0,027 from morale. 4,28 PL of damage.

Double large blast?

Harley take 10 PL
Termie take 5,5 PL.

You can see that in no scenario harley have even something resembling the durability of termies.

This is Apoc, not 40K. Units have no defensive stats with interaction (like S vs T or Sv vs AP). Don't try to look at possible attackers versus possible defenders, a blast is a blast.
Use that as a basis, the math is much easier.

You are missing the -1 to hit and to wound, which make a big difference. Therefore, in this case, a blast is not a blast as there are defensive differences. Further Harlies have a 6+ save, not a 7+ so it's not a 50 % save, it's 58%. If you redo the maths and include these modifications you'll find I'm correct. Your calculations are simpler, true, but also incorrect.

True, there are modifiers to apply, especially the -1 to hit.
The -1 to wound i'm not sure, because as has been said, it comes from another model.
Problem for the hit modifier is that in Apoc there are a lot of ways to put blasts around without hitting, especially if you want them spreaded on multiple models. How do you consider those?
Also, even if you apply a factor of 0,57 to the PL suffered by harley, which is the correction factor for the correct save and the -1 to hit (considering the worse case of a BS4+ attacker), harleys are still sligthly worse than termies, even in the best scenario with 2 large blasts dropped on top of each.

By the way, i'm using 4+ termies here, but the melee ones are actually 3+.

 Lance845 wrote:
2 nids tau and orks. 150 pl. 125ish is roughly equivalent to 2k points. 4-5 non specialist detachments in each army.

There is also a way to read things with out making others sound like a douche. Start by assuming nobody is posting with ill will. Then a statement is just a statement, free of snark.

That's not a big enough sample size to make such a definitive statement as you did, not to mention the fact that even had you played 100 games, you have no credentials that we know of that make you the end all be all of game testers. To bring this back on topic, I think this is WAY too early to tell if the "Detachments are fine" as is at lower points levels. As it says in the rules Apoc was designed to be played at over 300PL, so it stands to reason that they made the detachment requirements reflect that. This whole thread is about how to scale the game down.

At a lower points level, making large detachments is still viable, but the opposite is not true. Reducing the requirements by one, for example, would only allow for more tactical flexibility, theoretically.

jamshaman wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
2 nids tau and orks. 150 pl. 125ish is roughly equivalent to 2k points. 4-5 non specialist detachments in each army.

There is also a way to read things with out making others sound like a douche. Start by assuming nobody is posting with ill will. Then a statement is just a statement, free of snark.

That's not a big enough sample size to make such a definitive statement as you did, not to mention the fact that even had you played 100 games, you have no credentials that we know of that make you the end all be all of game testers. To bring this back on topic, I think this is WAY too early to tell if the "Detachments are fine" as is at lower points levels. As it says in the rules Apoc was designed to be played at over 300PL, so it stands to reason that they made the detachment requirements reflect that. This whole thread is about how to scale the game down.

At a lower points level, making large detachments is still viable, but the opposite is not true. Reducing the requirements by one, for example, would only allow for more tactical flexibility, theoretically.

Apoc is designed for minimum 300 PL overall between the players, so 2 players at 150 PL are already a standard apoc game.

jamshaman wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
2 nids tau and orks. 150 pl. 125ish is roughly equivalent to 2k points. 4-5 non specialist detachments in each army.

There is also a way to read things with out making others sound like a douche. Start by assuming nobody is posting with ill will. Then a statement is just a statement, free of snark.

That's not a big enough sample size to make such a definitive statement as you did, not to mention the fact that even had you played 100 games, you have no credentials that we know of that make you the end all be all of game testers. To bring this back on topic, I think this is WAY too early to tell if the "Detachments are fine" as is at lower points levels. As it says in the rules Apoc was designed to be played at over 300PL, so it stands to reason that they made the detachment requirements reflect that. This whole thread is about how to scale the game down.

At a lower points level, making large detachments is still viable, but the opposite is not true. Reducing the requirements by one, for example, would only allow for more tactical flexibility, theoretically.

Once again someone has bought into the GW marketing buzz of unlimited access to everything is best.

If anything at Lower Power levels a reduction on max cards dawn would be a far better balancing mechanic that allowing factions with cheap detachments to have even more cheap detachments for maximum impact of the cards.

Limiting player to 6,7 or even 8 cards per turn would limit the amount of them you can cram into a single turn and the speed at which wombo combos can be gamed. At 5 cards it's once per 6 turn game at 7 it's twice but turn 5 is the earliest for the repeated combo.

Spoletta wrote:

Drager wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
You are not considering that terminators Know no fear, which is a huge defensive boost in Apoc.

My math is much simpler here:

1 blast on said harley squad inflicts 0,5 wounds from the damage and 0,16 wounds from morale, for a total of 0,66 wounds. 1 wounds is worth 7,5 PL, so 0,66 wounds are worth 5 PL. A small blast inflicts 5 PL of damage.
The same blast on terminators inflicts 0,25 wounds from the damage, and no wounds from morale. Each wound costs 5,5 PL. A small blast inflicts 1,375 PL. Terminators are 3 times more resilient in this scenario.

Let's repeat for a large blast.

Harley again take 5 PL of damage.
Termis take 0,5 wounds, so suffer 2,75 PL of damage.

Large blast and small blast:

Harley take exactly double from damage and double from morale, so they take 10 PL of damage.
Termis take 0,75 wounds from damage and 0,027 from morale. 4,28 PL of damage.

Double large blast?

Harley take 10 PL
Termie take 5,5 PL.

You can see that in no scenario harley have even something resembling the durability of termies.

This is Apoc, not 40K. Units have no defensive stats with interaction (like S vs T or Sv vs AP). Don't try to look at possible attackers versus possible defenders, a blast is a blast.
Use that as a basis, the math is much easier.

You are missing the -1 to hit and to wound, which make a big difference. Therefore, in this case, a blast is not a blast as there are defensive differences. Further Harlies have a 6+ save, not a 7+ so it's not a 50 % save, it's 58%. If you redo the maths and include these modifications you'll find I'm correct. Your calculations are simpler, true, but also incorrect.

True, there are modifiers to apply, especially the -1 to hit.
The -1 to wound i'm not sure, because as has been said, it comes from another model.
Problem for the hit modifier is that in Apoc there are a lot of ways to put blasts around without hitting, especially if you want them spreaded on multiple models. How do you consider those?
Also, even if you apply a factor of 0,57 to the PL suffered by harley, which is the correction factor for the correct save and the -1 to hit (considering the worse case of a BS4+ attacker), harleys are still sligthly worse than termies, even in the best scenario with 2 large blasts dropped on top of each.

By the way, i'm using 4+ termies here, but the melee ones are actually 3+.

I don't think a comparison of PL per blast really makes sense due to how the units work, you don't see so much loss of efficacy as in 40k, that's why I was looking at the effort to remove/probability of them dying. Let's use your methodology and look at it that way.

My stance, by the way, is not that Harlies are 100% perfectly as tough as terminators on a PL for PL comparison, it's that on a unit by unit or, more importantly, detachment by detachment comparison it's very close, which shows that Harlies are not squishy at all (although they are a little more expensive. I'm going to assume something BS3+ is applying the blast marker and that we are trying to remove both units completely. For this reason the Harlequins will have a dmage reduction of 3/4 applied (derived from 0.5/(2/3)).

If only 3 blast markers are placed (the minimum to remove either unit):

The probability of the Harlequin unit dying is (5/12 * 5/12 + 2*(5/12 * 7/12 * 2/6)) * 3/4 = 25.1%

The probability of the Terminator unit dying is 3/6 * 3/12 + 3/6 * 9/12 * 1/36 + 3/6 * 3/12 * 1/36 = 13.8%

If 4 blast markers are placed (quins lose the 3/4 reduction because 3 or 4 blasts is the same to them):

The probability of the Harlequin unit dying is 5/12 * 5/12 + 2*(5/12 * 7/12 * 2/6) = 33.5%

The probability of the Terminator unit dying is 3/6 * 3/6 + 2*(3/6 * 3/6 * 1/36) = 26.38%

So against focus fire, that is, actually trying to kill the unit they are a little softer than Terminators, but still very durable, even without the -1 to wound, ignoring that seems odd though as in real game situations it will usually be in place. This means that Harlequins are nearly as tough as terminators against focus fire, but more expensive, and not as tough against spread fire, which was my original conclusion.

Working with the same maths and adding the -1 to wound against, say a 6+ SAP weapon there is a further 0.86 modifier that needs to be applied in both scenarios, giving:

If only 3 blast markers are placed (the minimum to remove either unit):

The probability of the Harlequin unit dying is 0.251 * 0.86 = 21.6%

The probability of the Terminator unit dying is 13.8%

If 4 blast markers are placed (quins lose the 3/4 reduction because 3 or 4 blasts is the same to them):

The probability of the Harlequin unit dying is 0.335 * 0.86 = 28.8%

The probability of the Terminator unit dying is 26.4%

This further underscores my point that harlequins are tough units. I think they are fine and not at all broken, but they are not squishy by any stretch, which is the point I have been making. They are comparable to Terminators in toughness against focus fire, whilst being ~ 60% as tough against spread fire.

Spoletta wrote:

They hit really really really hard, but i don't know what math you have been using, because they are stupidly squishy by all possible metrics. Sure, you should never focus fire a single unit, but who cares about that when a single small blast has about 50% chances (between save and morale) to wipe out 8 PL of units!

This is the comment I was disagreeing with in my initial analysis. 1 wound units of them are far less tough as they don't need to be focussed, but between saves and morale (and a 3/4 reductionf or -1 to hit) they have a (5/12 + 1/6)*3/4 = 43% chance to die to one blast. They are far squishier when taken this way, but it's also a bad way to take them.

Let me point out that i'm trying to be constructive here, we don't have a mathematical model to settle this, so discussing the method itself has a merit.

Remember that the -1 to wound does not apply to the whole detachment but only in a 6" bubble, and keeping the whole detachment under it with 0,5" coherency is not a given. It would be a big limitation on movement (and makes them a really juicy target for those effects that strike 6" from a point).

Spoletta wrote:
Let me point out that i'm trying to be constructive here, we don't have a mathematical model to settle this, so discussing the method itself has a merit.

Remember that the -1 to wound does not apply to the whole detachment but only in a 6" bubble, and keeping the whole detachment under it with 0,5" coherency is not a given. It would be a big limitation on movement (and makes them a really juicy target for those effects that strike 6" from a point).

Which holy freakin moly are you going to want to throw at any battalions of Harlequins on the board. I didn't even think about those lol.

The more I look at harlequins the more I think maybe 5s in Skyweavers and skip the Shadowseer is a better bet than 10s with a shadowseer. They cost basically the same, put out 3 shots that wound infantry on 6s turn 1, which is fairly respectable, and then pretty much no matter what your opponent does to them turn 1, you get 5x8 attacks into their lines turn 2.

Is there REALLY that much running around that's going to be your opponent's frontline and is going to require 8 blasts instead of 4 blasts to take out? Because there's a very strong possibility unless you spend a turn shooting it up (say, with a trio of starweavers and the harlequins' pistols) your clowns will be punching cheap chaff turn 1. They move through models, but remember in apocalypse unless you can end your move in proper 1/2" coherency with two other models in the unit you're not allowed to make the move at all. It's going to be way easier to get to combat, but it's also going to be way easier to block combat with your own bodies.

The coherency thing is weird as you are just going to end up with models like this, surely:

M*M*M*M*M*M*M*M
*M*************M*

Where Ms are models and *s are just empty space. Doesn't really stop daisy-chaining much.

jamshaman wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
2 nids tau and orks. 150 pl. 125ish is roughly equivalent to 2k points. 4-5 non specialist detachments in each army.

There is also a way to read things with out making others sound like a douche. Start by assuming nobody is posting with ill will. Then a statement is just a statement, free of snark.

That's not a big enough sample size to make such a definitive statement as you did, not to mention the fact that even had you played 100 games, you have no credentials that we know of that make you the end all be all of game testers. To bring this back on topic, I think this is WAY too early to tell if the "Detachments are fine" as is at lower points levels. As it says in the rules Apoc was designed to be played at over 300PL, so it stands to reason that they made the detachment requirements reflect that. This whole thread is about how to scale the game down.

At a lower points level, making large detachments is still viable, but the opposite is not true. Reducing the requirements by one, for example, would only allow for more tactical flexibility, theoretically.

You are welcome to whatever opinion you want to have. However, my 2 games with 3 armies is more experience then your none. So how about you try playing before you start coming up with ideas for how you think it might need to change? I am not even saying there wont be problems that crop up. Just that what you are saying right now is based on nothing with experience doing nothing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Drager wrote:
The coherency thing is weird as you are just going to end up with models like this, surely:

M*M*M*M*M*M*M*M
*M*************M*

Where Ms are models and *s are just empty space. Doesn't really stop daisy-chaining much.

If the unit has more than 5 models every model has to be within 1/2" of at least 2 other models.

You basically have to make them like the movement trays. Daisy chaining works in double rows now.

Drager wrote:
The coherency thing is weird as you are just going to end up with models like this, surely:

M*M*M*M*M*M*M*M
*M*************M*

Where Ms are models and *s are just empty space. Doesn't really stop daisy-chaining much.

In my experience it really does. Remember that not only are you making the ends of squads blob up, you're cutting the total space between each model by 3/4. "proper formation" in apoc seems to be a zigzag column for melee units with the narrow end pointing toward the enemy, and a line as you've shown for screens. But a lot of your time you'll be working wiht min units for your chaff because that's how you get card draw, so having 2/10 of your cultists or whatever having to stand behind the line does actually reduce your screen capabilities a lot.

A single layer of guardsmen goes from covering approximately 28" of linear area in 40k to 11.5" in apocalypse.

Also, you create a tricky situation for your opponent when they're trying to screen against units with Fly. Lets say you have a theoretical unit of artillery you want to screen from some melee deep strikers/infiltrators.

You need to place your screen in such a location where they can't pass over/through them and touch your tanks. but you also want them in a different detachment so they can fall back while your tanks still aim fire. so they have to be B2B with the tanks forming their screen.

If your opponent drops down and gets B2B with them, then when its your activation you can't fall back with your screen (The tanks are in the way) and you can't move the tanks because they're aim firing. So the melee unit is guaranteed to be able to bop your tanks on its next turn.

You also have to be extremely complete in your screening which means blobbing up in "please artillery barrage card me" formation, because most flying deep strikers will be dropping 9" away and moving at least 24" with their assault move.

5 man jump pack assault marine squads are going to be serious PITAs for gunline armies in apoc. Give 'em a jump chaplain to help them reliably carve up chaff units, they're only 5PL apiece but they're just durable enough that you want to get two blasts on them to have any real assurance they'll stop being alive. You could even bring a jump librarian in there as a wildcard unit that could have some really powerful close range psychic powers. Your opponent does not want you to be holding Null Zone on the turn that guy jumps in and yeets himself right into the middle of your backline artillery.

Lance845 wrote:

jamshaman wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
2 nids tau and orks. 150 pl. 125ish is roughly equivalent to 2k points. 4-5 non specialist detachments in each army.

There is also a way to read things with out making others sound like a douche. Start by assuming nobody is posting with ill will. Then a statement is just a statement, free of snark.

That's not a big enough sample size to make such a definitive statement as you did, not to mention the fact that even had you played 100 games, you have no credentials that we know of that make you the end all be all of game testers. To bring this back on topic, I think this is WAY too early to tell if the "Detachments are fine" as is at lower points levels. As it says in the rules Apoc was designed to be played at over 300PL, so it stands to reason that they made the detachment requirements reflect that. This whole thread is about how to scale the game down.

At a lower points level, making large detachments is still viable, but the opposite is not true. Reducing the requirements by one, for example, would only allow for more tactical flexibility, theoretically.

You are welcome to whatever opinion you want to have. However, my 2 games with 3 armies is more experience then your none. So how about you try playing before you start coming up with ideas for how you think it might need to change? I am not even saying there wont be problems that crop up. Just that what you are saying right now is based on nothing with experience doing nothing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Drager wrote:
The coherency thing is weird as you are just going to end up with models like this, surely:

M*M*M*M*M*M*M*M
*M*************M*

Where Ms are models and *s are just empty space. Doesn't really stop daisy-chaining much.

If the unit has more than 5 models every model has to be within 1/2" of at least 2 other models.

You basically have to make them like the movement trays. Daisy-chaining works in double rows now.

It doesn't need to be double rows. In the example I posted, all models are within 1/2" of at least 2 other models with only 2 being behind the lines.

the_scotsman wrote:

Drager wrote:
The coherency thing is weird as you are just going to end up with models like this, surely:

M*M*M*M*M*M*M*M
*M*************M*

Where Ms are models and *s are just empty space. Doesn't really stop daisy-chaining much.

In my experience it really does. Remember that not only are you making the ends of squads blob up, you're cutting the total space between each model by 3/4. "proper formation" in apoc seems to be a zigzag column for melee units with the narrow end pointing toward the enemy, and a line as you've shown for screens. But a lot of your time you'll be working wiht min units for your chaff because that's how you get card draw, so having 2/10 of your cultists or whatever having to stand behind the line does actually reduce your screen capabilities a lot.

A single layer of guardsmen goes from covering approximately 28" of linear area in 40k to 11.5" in apocalypse.

Also, you create a tricky situation for your opponent when they're trying to screen against units with Fly. Lets say you have a theoretical unit of artillery you want to screen from some melee deep strikers/infiltrators.

You need to place your screen in such a location where they can't pass over/through them and touch your tanks. but you also want them in a different detachment so they can fall back while your tanks still aim fire. so they have to be B2B with the tanks forming their screen.

If your opponent drops down and gets B2B with them, then when its your activation you can't fall back with your screen (The tanks are in the way) and you can't move the tanks because they're aim firing. So the melee unit is guaranteed to be able to bop your tanks on its next turn.

You also have to be extremely complete in your screening which means blobbing up in "please artillery barrage card me" formation, because most flying deep strikers will be dropping 9" away and moving at least 24" with their assault move.

5 man jump pack assault marine squads are going to be serious PITAs for gunline armies in apoc. Give 'em a jump chaplain to help them reliably carve up chaff units, they're only 5PL apiece but they're just durable enough that you want to get two blasts on them to have any real assurance they'll stop being alive. You could even bring a jump librarian in there as a wildcard unit that could have some really powerful close range psychic powers. Your opponent does not want you to be holding Null Zone on the turn that guy jumps in and yeets himself right into the middle of your backline artillery.

Very good points. I think that makes 30 man conscript blobs a lot better as they have ~40" horizontal coverage, compared to the ~35" of 3 IS squads.

Youre right. My bad.

OP- no interest in apoc will never try it. I wish they'd spend the effort elsewhere personally.

30 man blob with officer in a patrol is definitely the superior stand around and screen detachment IMO.

If you're taking infantry squads I think you want them with a heavy weapon in an Aimed Fire detachment. Though I think Heavy Weapons squads are strictly better for that purpose and, honestly, I do not know why you'd consider a Basilisk at all compared to a 3PL 3-mortar HWS. THAT'S a high quality warlord-bopper detachment. I do think there's a place for Wyverns led by a Master of Ordnance, but I'm super unimpressed by Basilisks (and the master of ordnance himself TBH, other than as a buffer who can also be warlord, he's glass cannony and he gets totally outperformed by a mortar HWS.)

Here's a Detachment O Doom i just came up with though. Set your army up to have the mega card draw engine and the double firing baneblades, and make sure you've got the Vortex Missile, "pick the number on any one dice" and "Rearm one-use weapons" card, and take a Master of Ordnance, a single Deathstrike, and the rest Manticores.

Every turn:

-Pick the number card for The Hour is Now on your deathstrike
-Vortex Missile
-Manticores fire all their rockets at once
-Use the rearm one-use weapons card.

We realised earlier that the card draw engine caps at 10, so it's once every 3 turns you get the cards. The rearm one use means you get to fire 3/5 turns though (draw it or a tutor in your first 20 for T1 and T2 firing, skip T3, draw it or a tutor in T4 or worst case T5.) Still very interesting though. EDIT: I missed the followup. Engine does work.

I'm liking the look of a simple Drukharii setup for 64 PL, giving +3 card draw on top of whatever else is in your army and all the anti-infantry you can shake a stick at.

Battalion 48 PL
Archon
4x 5 Kabalites
5x Venom
Raider

Patrol 8PL
Archon
5 Kabalites
Sslyth

Patrol 8PL
Archon
5 Kabalites
Sslyth

That gives you 5 venoms with Kabalites in and all the Venoms are ObSec (although some of the Kabs inside aren't, plus a raider with all 3 Warlords in, 5 Kabalites and both Sslyth to protect the Warlords from exploding transport damage.

The Venoms are very fast (and the raider can just about keep up), particularly if they are Flayed Skull and can use the Double Your Move and Advance asset. On a turn with that asset, you can move 32", which has a good chance of getting you into the 12-18" sweet spot, even on Apocalypse scaled boards. If these 6 vehicles are all within 12" of infantry you average 9 blasts in one shooting phase without using any cards. At 18" you average 7.5 blasts. Even at 24" it's 4.7. On top of that, you can confidently split fire against light infantry as each of the 16 rapid firing splinter shots has a 48% chance to deliver a Blast, so splitting across 8 targets gives each target a 73% chance of taking a save and ~ 50% of having a large blast and no save. Against IS squads, and similar that's dynamite shooting.

Drager wrote:
We realised earlier that the card draw engine caps at 10, so it's once every 3 turns you get the cards.

You realized incorrectly. You can draw an unlimited number of cards, you just have to discard down to 10 cards at the end of every phase. So if you have 30 draws per turn you would draw the entire deck, play any assets that can be used in the orders phase, and then discard down to your 10 best cards. Next turn you try to draw from an empty deck, shuffle everything back into a fresh deck, and draw all 30 cards again. As long as you don't lose too many draw sources and fail to draw the entire deck you're guaranteed to have 10 assets of your choice every turn (and even below 30 draws the chances of getting your key asset are extremely high).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
I do not know why you'd consider a Basilisk at all compared to a 3PL 3-mortar HWS.

Because range matters. The mortar squad is limited to 48", which can cover a surprisingly small amount of the table when you're trying to deploy as far back as possible for defensive reasons. The Basilisk can hit any unit in the entire room, and (potentially) gets the Armageddon double tap anywhere on the table and probably on some of the adjacent tables.

 Peregrine wrote:

Drager wrote:
We realised earlier that the card draw engine caps at 10, so it's once every 3 turns you get the cards.

You realized incorrectly. You can draw an unlimited number of cards, you just have to discard down to 10 cards at the end of every phase. So if you have 30 draws per turn you would draw the entire deck, play any assets that can be used in the orders phase, and then discard down to your 10 best cards. Next turn you try to draw from an empty deck, shuffle everything back into a fresh deck, and draw all 30 cards again. As long as you don't lose too many draw sources and fail to draw the entire deck you're guaranteed to have 10 assets of your choice every turn (and even below 30 draws the chances of getting your key asset are extremely high).


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the_scotsman wrote:
I do not know why you'd consider a Basilisk at all compared to a 3PL 3-mortar HWS.

Because range matters. The mortar squad is limited to 48", which can cover a surprisingly small amount of the table when you're trying to deploy as far back as possible for defensive reasons. The Basilisk can hit any unit in the entire room, and (potentially) gets the Armageddon double tap anywhere on the table and probably on some of the adjacent tables.

48" is a small amount of the table is a fairly hot take when tables are 6' wide. I think I could probably manage to find targets within 48".

Also, the doubletap card only affects one detachment, and baneblade equivalents are just way, way more effective for their points with it than basilisks. 4 basilisks with the double tap and aimed fire hit 3.55 small blasts on a tank. 1 Banesword with 2 lascannons gets 9.88.

Plus, manticores are also a thing. Basilisks sound great, but I think I'd rather have 8x the shots and just reload the one-use weapons with the card that lets me do that.

Still sounds like the best balance patch is to just limit maximum card draws to say 12 absolutely no more than 15 cards per turn to combat this shenanigans.

 Peregrine wrote:

Drager wrote:
We realised earlier that the card draw engine caps at 10, so it's once every 3 turns you get the cards.

You realized incorrectly. You can draw an unlimited number of cards, you just have to discard down to 10 cards at the end of every phase. So if you have 30 draws per turn you would draw the entire deck, play any assets that can be used in the orders phase, and then discard down to your 10 best cards. Next turn you try to draw from an empty deck, shuffle everything back into a fresh deck, and draw all 30 cards again. As long as you don't lose too many draw sources and fail to draw the entire deck you're guaranteed to have 10 assets of your choice every turn (and even below 30 draws the chances of getting your key asset are extremely high).

Oooo that sounds like a fun way to play... wait you play?

Why would anyone want to play against that type of army? if my opponent is going to run thru the entire deck/turn WTF is the point in playing unless you're equally douche`? It just devolves into whose the bigger bag.

I understand that for some the game is a math equation/beat stick, but how can ultimate list efficiency be achieved with an obviously terrible & inferior point system("that should be taken out back & shot")? I mean, there are hundreds of pages of certain people going on and on that PL isnt woth the paper it's printed on, etc...

Racerguy180 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Drager wrote:
We realised earlier that the card draw engine caps at 10, so it's once every 3 turns you get the cards.

You realized incorrectly. You can draw an unlimited number of cards, you just have to discard down to 10 cards at the end of every phase. So if you have 30 draws per turn you would draw the entire deck, play any assets that can be used in the orders phase, and then discard down to your 10 best cards. Next turn you try to draw from an empty deck, shuffle everything back into a fresh deck, and draw all 30 cards again. As long as you don't lose too many draw sources and fail to draw the entire deck you're guaranteed to have 10 assets of your choice every turn (and even below 30 draws the chances of getting your key asset are extremely high).

Oooo that sounds like a fun way to play... wait you play?

Why would anyone want to play against that type of army? if my opponent is going to run thru the entire deck/turn WTF is the point in playing unless you're equally douche`? It just devolves into whose the bigger bag.

I understand that for some the game is a math equation/beat stick, but how can ultimate list efficiency be achieved with an obviously terrible & inferior point system("that should be taken out back & shot")? I mean, there are hundreds of pages of certain people going on and on that PL isnt woth the paper it's printed on, etc...

Power does make sence when your trying to play games at the equivalent of 2000 to 5000 or more points list building in points would be rather tedious, especially when your building an army out of blocks of 5 or 10 dude who get 1 statline for all of them.

Oh look, right on schedule it's the same old whining and rule #1 violations about how people are "TFG" because they might make good strategic decisions in list construction.


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Also, PL is stupid in 40k where many units have options of significantly different strength. It's much less bad in a game where units have fewer options, most options are roughly equal in strength, and most of the obvious strongest options cost more points.

 Peregrine wrote:
Oh look, right on schedule it's the same old whining and rule #1 violations about how people are "TFG" because they might make good strategic decisions in list construction.

You only equate good with mathematically superior and if someone picks the "suboptimal" choice, they are obviously inferior.
I have never said the way you play is wrong for you, yet it's kinda obvious that anyone who is not "playing"(cuz you dont) your way is an imbicile.


Big question for you tho, Are you going to play a single game of it? If so, why dont you regale us with how the game goes.

and no rule #1 issues.

Racerguy180 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Oh look, right on schedule it's the same old whining and rule #1 violations about how people are "TFG" because they might make good strategic decisions in list construction.

You only equate good with mathematically superior and if someone picks the "suboptimal" choice, they are obviously inferior.
I have never said the way you play is wrong for you, yet it's kinda obvious that anyone who is not "playing"(cuz you dont) your way is an imbicile.


Big question for you tho, Are you going to play a single game of it? If so, why dont you regale us with how the game goes.

and no rule #1 issues.

I mean, I know Perri is one of the biggest "Love to hate" people on the forums, but I gotta point out you jumped in right as we were discussing how he'd still take a mathematically inferior option (A basilisk) because of the higher range on its gun.

And I gotta say, stuff like the infinitely reloading manticore battery does seem a little tough to deal with, but having not played Apoc I don't know, for example, how much of an impact it would have on the overall performance of my list to spend 10% of my points on models whose ONLY function is making sure I get the cards I need every turn, versus just having about 10 cards per turn with a fairly standard list. Does that matter? I don't know.

Earlier in the thread, I noted how the only point of comparison I've so far pulled up against the Baneblades we've been chatting about, the Castellan knight, deals roughly 30% less damage than the baneblade does...when the baneblade is shooting twice, and the Knight is roughly 30% more durable.

The first apoc game I'll be playing is at 150pl per side. We're discussing roughly 300PL per side if you want to bring the crazy baneblade trick plus the full card draw.

I don't really know how much of an advantage it is because I don't know what another army would likely have at that points value.

Racerguy180 wrote:
if my opponent is going to run thru the entire deck/turn WTF is the point in playing unless you're equally douche`? It just devolves into whose the bigger bag.

Yeah, definitely not a rule #1 violation there...

Sounds to me like the easiest house-rule fix to the card draw engine is to just not re-shuffle the command decks when they run out.

If you design an army to blow through the whole deck on the first turn or two, too bad, no more cards for the rest of the game.

 Peregrine wrote:

Drager wrote:
We realised earlier that the card draw engine caps at 10, so it's once every 3 turns you get the cards.

You realized incorrectly. You can draw an unlimited number of cards, you just have to discard down to 10 cards at the end of every phase. So if you have 30 draws per turn you would draw the entire deck, play any assets that can be used in the orders phase, and then discard down to your 10 best cards. Next turn you try to draw from an empty deck, shuffle everything back into a fresh deck, and draw all 30 cards again. As long as you don't lose too many draw sources and fail to draw the entire deck you're guaranteed to have 10 assets of your choice every turn (and even below 30 draws the chances of getting your key asset are extremely high)..

Yep, I even said as much at the end of the sentence you quoted. I edited it after I realised I was wrong. Maybe read the whole post next time? The edit was 10 minutes before your reply.


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Spoletta wrote:
Let me point out that i'm trying to be constructive here, we don't have a mathematical model to settle this, so discussing the method itself has a merit.

Remember that the -1 to wound does not apply to the whole detachment but only in a 6" bubble, and keeping the whole detachment under it with 0,5" coherency is not a given. It would be a big limitation on movement (and makes them a really juicy target for those effects that strike 6" from a point).

Sorry missed this, wasn't ignoring you! I am also trying to be constructive. I don't think characterising the Harlequins as squishy makes sense. I also don't think they are broken or unkillable. My point is that they are probably fine.


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More on topic, played another game last night, Aeldari vs Dark Angels. This was 100 power a side.

Aeldari List:


Dark Angel Army


We played the basic Apocalyptic Assault mission on a 6x4 board deploying along the 4' edges. I'll describe the first turn.

Dark Angels (the attacker) won initiative and deep struck Belial's detachment in front of the Aeldari lines, aiming for a Raider containing the warmaster and a second warlord with one squad of terminators and the Conclave with the other.

Orders were issued and immediately at the start of the action phase the Conclave cast Guide to moving 16" and leave one unit of Deathwing knights with nothing in charge range.

The Dark Angels activated Belial's detachment and charged, putting 1 large blast and one small on the Raider. The other unit of Knights garrisoned a nearby building to hold an objective.

The Aeldari activated the big battalion, moving the vehicles out of combat and shooting at the Knights, putting 4 large blasts on them.

The Dark Angels then activated their Spearhead and put a large blast on a Talos and another on a Venom and a second Large Blast on the Raider. The Landraider also put a large Blast on Urien.

The Aeldari activated the Drukharii patrol, shooting from inside the raider and did nothing.

The Dark Angels activated their remaining Vanguard and made sure to be holding 2 objectives with the terminators as well as moving them into a good position for the following turn.

The Aeldari then activated the Asuryani patrols, shooting form the council and the Guardians putting 2 large blasts on Belial and one on the company ancient as well.

Lastly the Aeldari Spearhead activated and Assaulted the Deathwing Knights garrisoning the building, putting 5 Large blasts on them!

In the damage phase, the Deathwing Knight garrisoning the building died, but the ones in the open managed to live on one wound (Which would later be removed with medical Supplies). The raider had Telekine Dome cast on it and managed to stay alive on one wound. Both Belial and the Company ancient were killed and Urine failed his save, but passed Ignore Damage! Something he would do 3 times in the battle.

The whole game was very dynamic and fun, ending in an Aeldar victorry, but with so much interaction that play never stopped or even really paused.

Interesting reading people's opinions.

Personally I haven't even got the rules yet despite preordering (grrr) but my friends and I are really excited about trying Apoc at around 2k points initially.

We're all old men (40+) who don't play often, most of us don't even go to clubs anymore, and we're sick of the rules of 8th but we still love the 40k models/lore and so we've looked at other rule sets but we've not jumped ship.

We're hoping streamlined rules, less "clutter" and fiddly rules to worry about the whole time, alternating activation, every unit always getting "a go", and less dice rolling is just going to make the game more fun to play... and easier for old gits who have a lot of models and love the painting but get worked up by 8th rules.

The 8th Ed Alpha strike has just decided too many games for us for it to be any fun. RIP that element of the game in Apoc.

Sounds like it's working for some of you, hope that's what happens for us!

Just finished my first game of apocalypse at 100 PL per side. We played 2v1 marines/scions/inquisition vs death guard. The format actually accommodated this quite nicely as it was 2 50pl detachments vs 2 ~50pl detachments. Fittingly enough given the inquisition presence we rolled the exterminatus mission.

It was a bit of a mixed bag but overall quite enjoyable and I definitely prefer it over standard 40k just because it has better pacing. The mission we played in particular added extra cards per turn so cards definitely ended up playing a big role in both sides, but this didn’t really bother me at all. If anything the heavier influence of the cards made list building less consequential which I personally like.

Oddly enough units in general seem more resilient than in 40k. A tough unit is actually hard to kill no matter what you throw at it. I actually really liked the simplicity and abstraction of the terrain rules. I found the terrain to be much more impactful than in normal 40k.

This is definitely my go-to ‘grab some models and rolls some dice’ game right now. It totally works at 100pl if you’re looking to just have some fun.