Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

A recent Apoc game at the FLGS had a Necron player taking Imotek and Cryptecs with Solar Pulses.

Needless to say, this doesn't work well on a huge Apoc table. It is easy to hide Imotek and the Crypteks against most armies shooting, and it
gives a massive advantage to the Necrons.

Thoughts on this? The old Apoc book said army wide effects should cap at 72". I am thinking 72" range limit from Imotek or the Cryptek, or just banning
night fight in Apoc all together.

Unless they have some kind of drop units that come in. But 72" sounds good.

You can use Night Vision to ignore the Night Fighting.
You can have the game more entertaining by actually assaulting instead of skipping movement for 5 turns and do nothing but shooting.
Or you can point out that all but one missions play without the Night Fighting rule and thus it cannot apply.

Night fighting is completely broken in Apocalypse, and the only solution is to remove it entirely. Having played a "game" with Necron night fighting my new policy is that if someone brings it and insists on using it I'm just going to pack up my stuff and go home.

We have him a bubble of I think 60 inches when we had that come up.

I witnessed this last weekend in an Apoc game I played too. It was Grey Knights, Necron, and Dark Eldar vs IG, IG, and Orks.

The Necrons had a Pylon which he'd give Night Vision and snipe the super heavy tanks with. Suffice to say, the IG players were pretty unhappy about it.

It didn't really bother me since I play GK and was heading across the board to assault anyway, I think they should have pressed forward and stopped playing defensively, but I definitely understand they frustration.

for apo its simple, if someone plays Immothek, just ignore nightfithing but let him keep his lightning, noone will complain and it stays characterfull...

A cap of 48"-60" should be fine. The former wouldn't cover the table in a normal game of 40k, but Apoc isn't normal 40k, and it'd take into account the possibility of more than two players, with two or more players having Imhotek or Pulseteks. It also forces the player to actually move Imhotek and his Pulseteks in order to gain the most benefit, so having them stuck behind terrain for the game will just put him at a disadvantage.

A 60" range might be more suitable if there's only one Necron player, perhaps with only Imhotek, or only Pulseteks.

72" Might also suffice if the table size is greater than just an 8'x12', but it'd also depend on how many other pulses/Imhoteks are present if it's a larger game with multiple players, as well as any scenarios being used.

Anything over that would probably be pretty excessive.

My solution: No night fighting in Apoc. I don't believe the engine is made to support it properly.

Part of the Apoc rules and order of battle is to discuss house rules at the start of the game. This is one of them.

dlight wrote:
My solution: No night fighting in Apoc. I don't believe the engine is made to support it properly.

Seeing as all missions but one LACK the Night Fighting, I think that is the best solution

Oddly enough I had this exact problem last weekend in a Apoc game. He had Imotek and Cryptecs in the formation that allows 100+ necrons in it. Needless to say our Baneblade did not do a single thing the entire game since it could not see out of the 36".

All that IG whining...
Where did all the searchlights go? Is it so hard to actually advance with chimeras up the table and light up the night? Outflank or use flank march with platoon and get yourself targets?
I mean, you are up against necrons. Night fight is necrons solution to enemy's liong-range shooting, seeing as they do not have much of it themselves. Is it so hard to come prepared for night fighting?..

Instead of nonsensically limiting range of night fighting to force necron players to come closer, get out of your comfy trenches and get closer yourself.

Survivor19 wrote:
Where did all the searchlights go?

You know that searchlights don't let you shoot at a target more than 36" away, right? They just remove the cover bonus, your Basilisks still won't be able to shoot at anything.

Is it so hard to come prepared for night fighting?..

Yes, because:

1) On a cluttered Apocalypse table it's very hard to get everything within range to shoot. Even if you're willing to move your Basilisks up to suicidally close range there's a good chance you won't have enough space to get them within 36" of the things you want to shoot at.

2) The usual counter to Necron night fighting is to force them to spend it early and win the game once it runs out. But this doesn't work in an Apocalypse game since the Necron player can bring an unlimited amount of the "one use" night fighting item, so it will be one-sided night fighting every turn.

Instead of nonsensically limiting range of night fighting to force necron players to come closer, get out of your comfy trenches and get closer yourself.

The point of limiting the range of night fighting isn't to make the Necron player come closer, it's to keep a single cheap model from shutting down the entire table. It's a compromise that allows a Necron player to protect their own army, but not to give that benefit to their entire team.

(IMO this is too complicated and it's much easier to just remove night fighting entirely.)

People seem to have issues on table wide abilities because they tend to effect a lot more units. One time a daemon ally was insistent to waste like 20 minutes every shooting phase to do his warp storm thingy, which I thought was pointless. This is the same daemon player who wouldn't accept that my runes of warding (We capped at 60 range) effected him and quoted 'its in the FAQ'. But everytime I asked him to show me this FAQ he walked off 'busy', not a fun dude. Also the fact that they never let me use Vect to seize the Initiative, which I find quite unfair.

As many have said, most missions do not allow Night Fighting. Done and done.

I am starting to realize that most of the frustration with Apoc stems from people not understanding the game enough so they just bash it nonsensically, just like Forgeworld in normal games of 40k.

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:
As many have said, most missions do not allow Night Fighting. Done and done.

Please cite the rule that says that if night fighting is not part of the mission you can't use items that create night fighting.

(You can't, because night fighting being part of the missions just means you roll to see if it happens, its absence doesn't mean that nobody can force it to happen anyway.)

 Peregrine wrote:
Please cite the rule that says that if night fighting is not part of the mission you can't use items that create night fighting.

It's quite simple! The entire Night Fighting-section is an extra effect when the Mission uses the rule.
The section tells us:
-That we roll to see if the effect comes into play.
-What the effect actually does.
A Mission without Night Fighting doesn't have any of those two.
So you could activate the Night Fighting-rule all you want, the Mission does not have the rule that tells us what it does and thus nothing happens.

The BRB literally says: "Some Eternal War missions use unique special rules. These confer extra abilities, restrictions or effects onto your games."
So a game without Night Fighting cannot have it turned into Night.
Just like a game without the Reserve-rule cannot have models kept in Reserve.

(You can't, because night fighting being part of the missions just means you roll to see if it happens, its absence doesn't mean that nobody can force it to happen anyway.)

No, the rule actually also tells us what it does.
The rule is non-existent in Missions without Night Fighting.

tl;dr - Apocalypse Missions do not have Night Fighting. You cannot activate a rule that does not exist.

Actually Kangado, you can. This is because the units that introduce NF do so by inserting the NF special rule. It's not hugely comparable to reserves as no unit has a rule that introduces the reserves usr.

That said, I wouldn't pay much mind to Peregrine. He keeps saying vehicles are useless in Apoc because of mass Str D, then says it's unfair artillery cannot fire with impunity across the board, even though to allow them to actually do so means they are vulnerable to D weapons. Plus I'm yet to see a group where searchlights don't just totally negate NF rather than the extremely strict RAW that it only says to remove benefits, not that targeting is allowed.

Who knows, maybe it is fair to face an army where almost all guns are 24" range with a bunch of artillery and super heavies with no means to protect themselves from them. Or, maybe it's just people who play gun line IG moaning that they have to move. I know which one I'm betting on.

One must remember that Apoc isn't the regular 40k competitive games where one must be ready for anything. You'll most likely know you're gonna play Necrons and should be ready for Imotek.

Deep striking units, pods, flyers, searchlights, infiltrating units, outflanking units, strategic assets etc... All those things can help you counter Imotek. Some flyers can even drop flares that will make units visible at night within a certain radius.

Have a tactic, use allies, make it fun.

That is all.