What’s it like playing huge games with titans?

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.

**Peregrine**

ewar wrote:
This remark irritated me into joining after several years of lurking, so well done I guess.

Unfortunate that you went to all the effort to register just to post something that misses the point so thoroughly. I don't know why you're mentioning balance in your reply when nothing I said has anything to do with balance. My objections are entirely about the logistics issue of playing with orders of magnitude more points (and models) on the table than the system was designed to handle. You can't enjoy the game by "shutting off the competitive mindset" when the problem is that IGOUGO means sitting around waiting for an hour before you get to do anything, or that there are so many models per square inch of table space that the "game" consists entirely of exchanging dice until one side runs out of models because there's no room to move anything. And I find it hilarious that your proposed solutions essentially come down to "don't play the game, just move your models around and make gun noises as you tell a story about what cool things are happening". If you have to "fix" the game by ignoring all of the rules and declaring an arbitrary outcome instead of rolling dice that's a concession that you've got way too much stuff on the table and the game isn't functioning at that scale.

It's also amusing to see you talking about the story being the primary appeal when the vast majority of large games I've seen and participated in have been anti-fluffy exercises in cramming as many models as possible onto a table. No story for why every faction in 40k is on the same battlefield, no space to do anything but line up everything 24" apart in ridiculous anti-fluffy parking lots, no effort invested into terrain, no mission or characters that mean anything once it's 12 hours in and you're struggling to stay awake enough to even roll the correct dice, etc. Maybe you're the rare exception to the rule, but most of the time if you go into a game like this expecting a good story you're going to be disappointed.

**ewar**

Peregrine wrote:
ewar wrote:
This remark irritated me into joining after several years of lurking, so well done I guess.

Unfortunate that you went to all the effort to register just to post something that misses the point so thoroughly. I don't know why you're mentioning balance in your reply when nothing I said has anything to do with balance. My objections are entirely about the logistics issue of playing with orders of magnitude more points (and models) on the table than the system was designed to handle. You can't enjoy the game by "shutting off the competitive mindset" when the problem is that IGOUGO means sitting around waiting for an hour before you get to do anything, or that there are so many models per square inch of table space that the "game" consists entirely of exchanging dice until one side runs out of models because there's no room to move anything. And I find it hilarious that your proposed solutions essentially come down to "don't play the game, just move your models around and make gun noises as you tell a story about what cool things are happening". If you have to "fix" the game by ignoring all of the rules and declaring an arbitrary outcome instead of rolling dice that's a concession that you've got way too much stuff on the table and the game isn't functioning at that scale.

It's also amusing to see you talking about the story being the primary appeal when the vast majority of large games I've seen and participated in have been anti-fluffy exercises in cramming as many models as possible onto a table. No story for why every faction in 40k is on the same battlefield, no space to do anything but line up everything 24" apart in ridiculous anti-fluffy parking lots, no effort invested into terrain, no mission or characters that mean anything once it's 12 hours in and you're struggling to stay awake enough to even roll the correct dice, etc. Maybe you're the rare exception to the rule, but most of the time if you go into a game like this expecting a good story you're going to be disappointed.

I feel like you didn't actually read any of my post - which part of 'it's up to the players to make it a success' did you misunderstand? If you're not interested in story you won't have a successful narrative game, regardless of scale.

Also there is no game tabletop game I can think of that scales successfully by a factor of 10-20x without some modification. There is no need for pew pew noises - you just learn to only chuck dice for the important stuff. Having 1 hour turns is really not much different to a regular scale game - all the players are participating and it forces players to focus, ignoring the pointless stuff.

I'm sorry if you've played in crappy Apocalypse games - but that is entirely the organisers and players fault. Maybe look for successful solutions others have found and give them a go, you never know you might be pleasantly surprised.

**slave.entity**

Sterling191 wrote:

This is where I'm a huge fan of the "only Troops can hold objectives". I came in with 2000 points of Deathwatch troops, on the Titan table. I knew going in I was going to have zero impact on the overall slugfest, but if I could take and hold one or two primary objectives for the full day it could potentially do more than the Titans. What ensued was a point/counterpoint over one of the bridge objectives like I've never seen, and in which I had a bloody amazing time.

One player swarmed in with four Demon princes to sweep off some scouts that had infiltrated up, when I proceeded to drop three full Vet teams and swept them off the bunkers. The opposing alliance retaliated with a combined drop pod + teleport strike, plus outflanking Knights, which was then countered by a double Orbital Strike + Deathstrike nuke and counter-counter drop pod strike. All told I think something like ten thousand points were committed to that single sliver of board. What ended up clinching it was the fact that drop pods cant fall back, so my surviving Vets charged the enemy drop, then consolidated into the Pods and held their ground the rest of the game.

I can't imagine how incredible that scene must have been. All of the house rules you've mentioned make perfect sense and I will be sure to refer back to them when I try tackling something like this some day. Thank you for sharing your experiences and providing all of these helpful tips. Those organizers you have over there must be some serious hobby heroes!

Peregrine wrote:
slave.entity wrote:
And specifically what factors and house rules were in place to enable those experiences.

Set limits and stick to them. The thing that makes a huge game a miserable slog isn't the balance issues (half your players are just going to roll dice and ignore the objectives), it's all the standing around doing nothing for an hour or two while your opponents take a turn, getting the owner of your target to stop chatting with their friends (because it's not their turn and they're bored as hell) and roll some saves, trying to figure out what's going on and whether you've moved from shooting to charges, etc. Limit the number of points each player can bring, limit the number of players, limit the number of non-LoW models and, most importantly, limit the amount of time per phase. Don't just set timed turns and let people figure out how to divide it up, give 10 minutes to move, 10 minutes to shoot, 15 minutes for combat (at the end of 10 minutes you stop attacking, but the other side gets bonus time to finish resolving as many of their own attacks as they want). And dedicate a person to running the game, making clear announcements about when the phase has ended and it's time to move on to the next one, etc. The logistics of keeping the game running are a full-time job.

These are all great tips. But especially that last line. Having a single person dedicated to running the whole thing seems like a very worthwhile sacrifice if the goal is to have a successful event. Maybe that person gets to participate in some small manner with a limited force so they're not completely out of the game. Definitely details worth considering.

ewar wrote:

- every player gets a free one use stratagem PLOT ARMOUR they can play at any time. Gives a unit a 2++ save for that turn. That way everyone's pride and joy minis get to see some game time.

ewar,

Welcome to Dakka! All fantastic tips but I especially love this one. This stratagem totally captures the spirit of such an event. I'd make it a mandatory rule that players have to come up with their own custom fiction and name for their PLOT ARMOUR stratagem before they're allowed to use it. Anyway brilliant first post and I'm glad you're here. I suppose we'll all have to thank Peregrine for this one...

Automatically Appended Next Post:

generalchaos34 wrote:
Fun! We just had our yearly Apoc game at our FLGS. We reserved the back room and had tables equaling a 6' x 24' play area and we had 80,000 points total. Between the two sides we had 3 Warlord Titans, 1 reaver, and 1 Warhound. I only fielded 7000 points of guard myself and it was all artillery, 10 Russes, , a combination of flyers (valks, vendettas, thunderbolts, vultures) and 6 knights. Its a bit of a mess at first but once you get the swing it can go quickly. The "rules" are what you make them and if everyone thinks something sounds cool....we do it! Took 2 days to play but it certainly was a blast! I suggest having more people per side (minimum 3) in order to make sure more people can roll off with an opponent at the same time. The titans themselves mostly shot at each other since it was overkill on anything else except when they kept killing my shadowswords!

Also note that 20,000 points of Tyranids is COMPLETELY UNKILLABLE. They just keep coming....

"Only" 7000 points.... so good

I really like the idea of having multiple people per side so people can be rolling off against each other simultaneously. I've actually tried this before with smaller games and it actually works surprisingly well in an environment that's not focused exclusively on just brutalizing your opponent. Also seeing 20,000 points of tyranids at play sounds like a dream.

**Waaaghpower**

If you want to play a good Apocalypse game, you desperately need a good Event Organizer who can balance things appropriately both before and during the game. At the bare minimum some rules need to be in place for organization and turn length, but it's also extremely useful to add some extra abilities for the players with turn 2 to use, so that they're not caught completely dead in the water and crushed by the turn-2 disadvantage. (Give them some free Void Shield generators, 10-20% more points, some kind of other abilities so that too much of their army doesn't get wiped off the board before they can act.)

Most of the Imperial Titans are also very poorly balanced, costing far too much for their utility except when firing at other titans, where they're far too cheap. If their point cost was cut down by about 25% and all the Macro weapons were significantly nerfed against titans we'd get much better balance.

**Peregrine**

ewar wrote:
I feel like you didn't actually read any of my post - which part of 'it's up to the players to make it a success' did you misunderstand?

The part where no amount of effort or motivations from the players can fix the problems I was pointing out. You can't just willpower your way to making it a success when the root of the problem is that you have orders of magnitude more models on the table than the rules were designed to cope with.

Also there is no game tabletop game I can think of that scales successfully by a factor of 10-20x without some modification.

Well yes, that's the point. 40k doesn't scale up that way and it's unreasonable to expect it to do so.

There is no need for pew pew noises - you just learn to only chuck dice for the important stuff.

If a unit is not important enough to follow the rules for it instead of making up some arbitrary number of wounds for it to inflict then it isn't important enough to put it on the table in the first place. Your mindset of throwing irrelevant garbage on the table is why huge games work so poorly, you get bogged down dealing with stuff that isn't contributing anything to the game besides letting you brag about how many points you had on the table.

Having 1 hour turns is really not much different to a regular scale game - all the players are participating and it forces players to focus, ignoring the pointless stuff.

Except in an IGOUGO game all players aren't participating. Rolling saves is not participation in any meaningful way, you aren't making any decisions or executing any part of your strategy (or story). If you replaced the save roll with a mathematically equivalent roll to defeat a save the entire opposing team could go off to lunch for an hour and just remove the dead models when they come back. Nothing at all would be lost, and the game would probably run even faster.

**cuda1179**

The largest game I ever played was something like 400,000 points, and I think that was 5th edition. We ended up having something like 80 superheavy walkers on the board. By "board" I mean the floor, as it's the only way to have depth (literally) to the game. And, yes, there were times when even a Vortex missile launcher was far out of range, which I believe was 480 inches at the time.

**Karol**

Never played anything bigger then 2000pts, and I have a question. Do bigger games have some sort of a rule that stops the opposing side just from deleting your whole army in a single turn, and then making you wait for multiple hours for the game to finish, or do you have to be tricky and hold of stuff in perpetual reservs, or do normal lists just don't work in big games?

**HoundsofDemos**

Karol wrote:
Never played anything bigger then 2000pts, and I have a question. Do bigger games have some sort of a rule that stops the opposing side just from deleting your whole army in a single turn, and then making you wait for multiple hours for the game to finish, or do you have to be tricky and hold of stuff in perpetual reservs, or do normal lists just don't work in big games?

Like 40k in general, the game works better if you and your opponent have a talk first. Back in the day there were ways to weather the first turn bombardment. I once played an Apoc game with a house rule that instead of all of one side going, one player from each side got a shot first turn. It helps mitigate alpha strike a bit. Mostly though, it comes down to Apoc should not be viewed as a competitive event but the ultimate beer and pretzels game. Its for everyone to just take models they like, tell a story of a true pitched battle and see were the chips fall.

**admironheart**

Played a few in 2nd and 3rd ed. We are planning to play one this winter.

First Set Up and the first turn would make the game unfun if all the units set up.

We ALWAYS played that units arrived in groups over 5 to 10 turns. Games normally go about a dozen turns and takes about as many hours.

Most Times you brought 10k points. If you stagger turns for deployments the game moves FAST. since there is rarely 5k points on the board til after 5 turns.

the most we have done is 4 vs 4.

We used 8' x8' table, 9'x4' table or currently 6'x 16' table.

I remember hearing about a Floorhammer game in Chicago that used a Basketball court as the game map.

**Sorcererbob**

A lot of people are saying the game won’t scale, and that makes sense to me. I always want to play with my 40k models, such that I get the most return on my investment (KT > Necromunda in that respect). Has anyone tried artificially limiting the minimum size of the model in play such as to help the scaling? I.e. squads of guardsmen breaks the game scalability, but what if we set the minimum wounds for a model at 3? Or 5? Or the minimum toughness at 5 or 7? Your guardsmen can’t come, but their tanks can.

I’ve never heard of such a game.

**Peregrine**

Sorcererbob wrote:
A lot of people are saying the game won’t scale, and that makes sense to me. I always want to play with my 40k models, such that I get the most return on my investment (KT > Necromunda in that respect). Has anyone tried artificially limiting the minimum size of the model in play such as to help the scaling? I.e. squads of guardsmen breaks the game scalability, but what if we set the minimum wounds for a model at 3? Or 5? Or the minimum toughness at 5 or 7? Your guardsmen can’t come, but their tanks can.

I’ve never heard of such a game.

It's the de facto way to play Apocalypse, you might put a squad of guardsmen on the table but it isn't going to accomplish much besides taking up space. The only relevant stuff is the tanks and titans, and most people pretty quickly figure out that the only cannon fodder worth taking out of the box is a token screen that you never bother to attack with. Which is its own sort of problem, I guess, since most people have ideas of heroic battles that involve the common troops as well as the titans.

**ewar**

Peregrine wrote:
Sorcererbob wrote:
A lot of people are saying the game won’t scale, and that makes sense to me. I always want to play with my 40k models, such that I get the most return on my investment (KT > Necromunda in that respect). Has anyone tried artificially limiting the minimum size of the model in play such as to help the scaling? I.e. squads of guardsmen breaks the game scalability, but what if we set the minimum wounds for a model at 3? Or 5? Or the minimum toughness at 5 or 7? Your guardsmen can’t come, but their tanks can.

I’ve never heard of such a game.

It's the de facto way to play Apocalypse, you might put a squad of guardsmen on the table but it isn't going to accomplish much besides taking up space. The only relevant stuff is the tanks and titans, and most people pretty quickly figure out that the only cannon fodder worth taking out of the box is a token screen that you never bother to attack with. Which is its own sort of problem, I guess, since most people have ideas of heroic battles that involve the common troops as well as the titans.

What do Guardsmen achieve in regular games? Are you decimating your opponents with volleys of lasgun fire? No? Then stop constructing faults to suit your narrative. Infantry sit on objectives in Apocalypse and screen against deepstrikers - in exactly the same way they do in small games.

In fact, your every criticism of apoc can also be levelled at vanilla 40k - which makes me wonder why you play a game you seemingly can't stand?

If you get no pleasure from putting down 10s of thousands of points of painted models on a huge, cool battlefield then OBVIOUSLY apocalypse is not going to be fun for you. Yes, you have to make sacrifices in game play - but this isn't a tournament. You either want to make it work or you don't - blithely stating that it can't be done is nonsensical as there are some of us who do make it work.

Would I play that way every game? Of course not. But once a year to get 6 to 8 mates together and deploy your whole collections can be a blast - it just needs some organisational discipline to make it function (see the suggestions in previous post).

**Blackie**

Peregrine wrote:
It's a miserable experience and you aren't missing anything. You spend an hour or more deploying, take a lunch break while the other side takes their turn, and by the time you get back everyone has lost interest and started packing up to leave. IGOUGO is bad at 2000 points, it's unplayable at 200,000 points. And in the typical large game there's little or no room for movement because everything is packed in as densely as possible, so you're just exchanging dice until one side runs out of models or everyone gets tired of it and goes home.

I don't think IGOUGO is that bad in regular games, aka 2000 points or smaller formats, since there are plenty of combos to mitigate alpha strike. Only a few armies that have a garbage codex can't handle alpha stike against the most competitive lists, but that's all.

However I absolutely agree about games that size that involve titans; those dudes cannot avoid alpha strike at all and all the game turns into: first player kills enemy's super dude, half or more the points of the list are shot off the board, game ends. Alternatively if an army has a titan and the opponent adopts an opposite tactics just fielding 10000 infantries the game is already over before turn 1 as the army with a titan can't deal at all against that many enemy models.

I also despise models that huge and to spend 1+ hours just to deploy the models, so those type of formats are "avoid like plague for me"

**Gir Spirit Bane**

Sorry for such a late response Slave.Enity.

So with your game you've mentioned:
- 10k points per side
- At least 50% of each side must be superheavies (Makes perfect sense. This was the first house rule I thought of for making a game like this work.)
- Generator buildings that modify invulns (How did those work exactly?)
- Custom stratagems (Any examples? Sounds awesome!)
- Nids with replenishing monsters (This sounds... really awesome.)
- Tech priests awakening more titans (Simply... wow.)

Generator type buildings - So each side got 2 'generator' type buildings, which whilst standing give certain benefits whilst on the battlefield. These range from all Superheavys get 6++ or +1 to invuns against shooting (to a max of 5), an additional command point or nearby TROOPS can replenish d3/d6/2d6 models/ return whole units on a 4+. Idea is to really create powerful areas that need defending and to subtract all the shooting from the closest superheavies at a time.

Custom Strategems were things we all liked the idea of and someone wrote up. One of my favourite was 'Spore Expulsion' where counting all the 'Infestation Spore' units/fortifications (Toxicrenes, venomthropes, spore chimneys and so on) and pick one of them, all non vehicle enemy model within X distance (the bubble is bigger with more units) roll a D6, on a 6 the unit that model belongs to suffers a mortal wound.
Also for use in the scenarios such as giving a Tech Priest a bonus on his attempts to awaken the machine spirit on a titan.

The sky really Is the limit, just have a chatroom with all interested players, share a pack of ideas and TALK BEFORE you even begin setting up. Let people voice concerns if something is too unfun. In my experience both teams should have stratagems that stick to a theme with none that should 'counter' out the other sides, but rather explore a new theme.

God I really want to write my own rules for this now and post them up XD

**buddha**

As a lover of Apoc sized games and have ran many, Titans just aren't fun for either the user or those they are against.

I'll start by putting my $.02 that knights, stompas, and large tanks like baneblades are about as big and powerful as the 40k ruleset can handle. Titans are so powerful and durable they aren't balanced (nor perhaps they should be) for the normal ruleset. You could make a warlord Titan 6k points and it would still be worth more in opposing models. That is why it isn't really fun for facing knights.

Now for those using their $2k reain monsters is isn't really fun on their end. Beyond the grief they get from other players, those poor scaling rules means most of the ranges, movement, and really tactics arnt able to be used. Specifically, most any Apoc game I've ran or played is at most two table lengths long. Titans are meant for even bigger boards. What this means in gameplay is the Titan user usually just sits on the deployment line and evaporates enemy models. Now that can be fun for a few rounds but I assure you it gets boring.

Tl;dr Even in Apoc Titans do no scale well for the 40k rules and are not fun for the user or those against it. Play Titanicus if you want to play with Titans.

**Blndmage**

You can play Apocalypse level games without super heavies.

Theresa a decent amount of weapons (mostly IG, who knows why) that have really long ranges. Playing in a massive space really lets movement speeds be a factor, as well as weapons ranges.

**NurglesR0T**

As others have mentioned, any balance that is left in 40k is thrown out the window. You spend half a day just deploying both sides and it is near impossible to keep everyone engaged and paying attention during the second half. Each turn can take anywhere between 3-6 hours depending on who is playing and with what.

My friends and I tried a few apoc games when it first came out several editions ago, and tried it again recently with the 8th Ed "streamlined" approach and it was still a clusterfeth to the point of never wanting to play such a game again.

Throwing titans into the mix? Either you get first turn and the titan wipes out entire units before they can move, or you get second turn and pray that your titan can withstand 20k+ points worth of shooting. They are tough, but not unkillable.

I'm sure there are exceptions out there but that's been my personal experience.

**slave.entity**

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:

Generator type buildings - So each side got 2 'generator' type buildings, which whilst standing give certain benefits whilst on the battlefield. These range from all Superheavys get 6++ or +1 to invuns against shooting (to a max of 5), an additional command point or nearby TROOPS can replenish d3/d6/2d6 models/ return whole units on a 4+. Idea is to really create powerful areas that need defending and to subtract all the shooting from the closest superheavies at a time.

Custom Strategems were things we all liked the idea of and someone wrote up. One of my favourite was 'Spore Expulsion' where counting all the 'Infestation Spore' units/fortifications (Toxicrenes, venomthropes, spore chimneys and so on) and pick one of them, all non vehicle enemy model within X distance (the bubble is bigger with more units) roll a D6, on a 6 the unit that model belongs to suffers a mortal wound.
Also for use in the scenarios such as giving a Tech Priest a bonus on his attempts to awaken the machine spirit on a titan.

The sky really Is the limit, just have a chatroom with all interested players, share a pack of ideas and TALK BEFORE you even begin setting up. Let people voice concerns if something is too unfun. In my experience both teams should have stratagems that stick to a theme with none that should 'counter' out the other sides, but rather explore a new theme.

This stuff is so cool. Who knows if it's balanced but hot damn that sounds like a good time. Really appreciate the responses man!

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:

God I really want to write my own rules for this now and post them up XD

Please do. Seems like giant apocalypse games are the perfect atmosphere and environment for player made rules to thrive, and perhaps shore up any of the major problems with scaling up the 8E ruleset to these absurd levels

**admironheart**

NurglesR0T wrote:

I'm sure there are exceptions out there but that's been my personal experience.

I assume you guys placed all your toys on the table turn 1. perhaps a few reserves.

that was your mistake. Ive watched some of those games and chess seems more of a spectator sport.

40K players need to make the scenario and the battleboard AS WELL as the pieces fun to play. It is your responsibility to understand how a game will play out and to make the decisions necessary to have fun.

**NurglesR0T**

admironheart wrote:
NurglesR0T wrote:

I'm sure there are exceptions out there but that's been my personal experience.

I assume you guys placed all your toys on the table turn 1. perhaps a few reserves.

that was your mistake. Ive watched some of those games and chess seems more of a spectator sport.

40K players need to make the scenario and the battleboard AS WELL as the pieces fun to play. It is your responsibility to understand how a game will play out and to make the decisions necessary to have fun.

I agree to an extent, but at that point you're no longer playing "normal" 40k, but some homebrewed scenario you've created to fit around the models to make it enjoyable for everyone.

**HoundsofDemos**

NurglesR0T wrote:
admironheart wrote:
NurglesR0T wrote:

I'm sure there are exceptions out there but that's been my personal experience.

I assume you guys placed all your toys on the table turn 1. perhaps a few reserves.

that was your mistake. Ive watched some of those games and chess seems more of a spectator sport.

40K players need to make the scenario and the battleboard AS WELL as the pieces fun to play. It is your responsibility to understand how a game will play out and to make the decisions necessary to have fun.

I agree to an extent, but at that point you're no longer playing "normal" 40k, but some homebrewed scenario you've created to fit around the models to make it enjoyable for everyone.

Besides normal 40k essentially needing this to work as a system, yea Apoc requires a conversation. 40k doesn't scale well and really never has. Over the years GW has just done more and more to blur lines between what should be present in a standard game and what really should not.

**Excommunicatus**

I've read about people deploying in waves, rather than all in one go, to mitigate alpha-strike issues.

**HoundsofDemos**

Excommunicatus wrote:
I've read about people deploying in waves, rather than all in one go, to mitigate alpha-strike issues.

Besides alternative deployments, assuming multiple players on each side, have one player from each side go after the other. Another way I've seen is to divide the board up into zones and have activation work off of that.

I had one game where the middle zone went first and that slowly extended outward. It meant by the end of "turn 1", the most damage was close to the center of the board since that was were most of the objectives were.

**Peregrine**

Blndmage wrote:
You can play Apocalypse level games without super heavies.

You really can't. The only way to make Apocalypse even vaguely functional is to require that most points be in LoW, or at least expensive LoW-type units like terminator death stars. You absolutely need those units that cost tons of points but roll relatively few dice, if you try to put 50,000 points of "normal" units on the table with no LoW you're going to get bogged down in trying to resolve that many dice.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

slave.entity wrote:
Seems like giant apocalypse games are the perfect atmosphere and environment for player made rules to thrive

You might think that, but 95% of the time those player-made rules are just adding to the rules bloat and slowing down the game. Apocalypse is the place for streamlining and stripping the game down to its core so that you can play at a semi-reasonable pace. If you're going to slow the game down with additional rules you'd better make sure that they're doing something really damn important and you aren't just adding "fun" rules because you think you had a cool idea.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

ewar wrote:
What do Guardsmen achieve in regular games? Are you decimating your opponents with volleys of lasgun fire?

Actually you are decimating opponents with lasguns. In 8th edition guardsmen with FRFSRF are one of the most point-efficient offensive threats you can bring. And at that scale it's certainly worth resolving their dice, you're never going to decide it's not worth shooting with them even though you have a target or tell your opponent "don't bother rolling, I'll just remove the whole squad" if they declare the guardsmen as a target.

If you get no pleasure from putting down 10s of thousands of points of painted models on a huge, cool battlefield then OBVIOUSLY apocalypse is not going to be fun for you.

Well yes, it isn't for me. It's a masochistic slog, and I'm here to warn people that their grand ideas about how fun it can be are wishful thinking and the reality is unlikely to be anything even vaguely enjoyable.

(Also, in my experience "tens of thousands of points of painted models" is pretty optimistic and the more likely scenario is "a couple of normal 40k armies, maybe mostly painted, and a bunch of $5 walmart toys with 40k guns glued on pretending to be titans".)

Yes, you have to make sacrifices in game play - but this isn't a tournament.

Again, being a tournament has nothing to do with it. Narrative games of normal 40k can be great fun even though they are nothing like tournaments. Trying to make a rule system intended for 2000 point games work at 200,000 points is an exercise in masochism.

**chrispy1991**

I attend the Adepticon Apocalypse battle every year and have a blast. It all comes down to the organizer. Others are correct that it is not a competetive event, and there should be a dialogue between players and the organizer. For example, despite a 5k point cap per player, there were still multiple warlords and a whole bunch of reavers and warhounds running amuck as the TO's worked it out with those players to use them and still have balanced teams.

It's what the players make it. My biggest rule is honestly "don't sweat the small stuff". Timed rounds and deployment blind bidding seem the way to keep the game from taking too long. There are balance issues with alpha strike, but a good TO can adapt to that situation as long as they set the expectation that's it's not a competition.

Also, the apoc games I've played at Adepticon and elsewhere were in fact large enough that I actually ran into the maximum ranges on my deathstrikes and basilisks, and it was awesome.

**G00fySmiley**

we used to do larger games at my FLGS. they were done on an 8' by 48' board which was really just a bunch of 8x4 tables pushed together. all had the same height so it was cool. Last one we did was finishing out the Gathering storm games, we did all 3 books and have unfortunately not done another event since the flgs moved so lacks the space in the new location

**Cheex**

ewar wrote:
Apocalypse is an experience the players have to really own themselves. More than any other type of battle in tabletop gaming, you will only get out of Apoc what you put in - it is the ultimate narrative game and has provided some of the most memorable and best visual games I've ever played. I played a game last weekend where I deployed all my marines and knights - 11,000 points of fully painted glory in a planetstrike mission against my friends equivalent IG. It was so much fun and seeing it all laid out with a whole battle company deployed against a fortress of baneblades and leman russ companies was epic. But it only works if you are playing with a narrative mindset - it is incredibly easy to break if you just want to pound your opponent into the dust.

This guy gets it. Great post, ewar. I particularly love the 'Plot Armour' stratagem idea!

The single biggest problem I've had in Apocalypse is that everyone has to be on the same page. I've had players rock up to an Apoc game, bringing their hardest tournament list and their typical tournament mindset with it. Everyone has to understand that it's about the spectacle of the game for its own sake - not about the 'winning' as much.

Everyone also has to know what they're bringing and how they work. If you don't know all the stats by heart (and fair enough if you don't!), make sure you have some easy-to-access cheat sheets - no rifling through codices and rulebooks and FAQs on the day. If you're not sure how something works and don't have it on a cheat sheet that you can access in seconds, then you can't use it and just move on. Use your downtime during your opponents' turn to figure it out.

If you're worried about not being able to play the game in the hour or so it takes the other team to play their turn, then relax - it's a social game, so socialise. The game is so much more than moving models and rolling dice.

If you're worried about alpha strikes, remember that Apoc has rules for putting things into reserve - so use them!

If you're worried that titans cost too many points, remember that Power Levels exist specifically for games like Apoc.

As the organiser, I suggest dictating how many CPs each team gets to use (rather than basing CPs on detachments and special characters), and restricting (or even outright banning) players from gaining, regenerating or refunding CPs in any way before or during the game. I also suggest keeping the table no deeper than 4ft, otherwise it's a pain to reach the middle of the table - plus it also forces objectives to be closer to each side.

On the topic of objectives, I'm even considering an additional rule for objective markers in my next Apoc game: units arriving as reserves reduce their 'distance from enemy models' restriction to 1" if they arrive entirely within 12" of an objective marker. Too often I've seen batreps where backfield objectives are literally unreachable. Those objectives need to be hotly contested!

**Huron black heart**

JamesY wrote:
Had a massive game once and it was awful. It was a great social get together, but the game was dire, and I'd never do it again.

Exactly my experience. Took an age to set up, let alone the time to play each turn, people lost interest, didn't care, absolutely no tactics to speak of. Waste of a day.

**tneva82**

ewar wrote:
Peregrine wrote:
It's a miserable experience and you aren't missing anything. You spend an hour or more deploying, take a lunch break while the other side takes their turn, and by the time you get back everyone has lost interest and started packing up to leave. IGOUGO is bad at 2000 points, it's unplayable at 200,000 points. And in the typical large game there's little or no room for movement because everything is packed in as densely as possible, so you're just exchanging dice until one side runs out of models or everyone gets tired of it and goes home.

This remark irritated me into joining after several years of lurking, so well done I guess.

Apocalypse is an experience the players have to really own themselves. More than any other type of battle in tabletop gaming, you will only get out of Apoc what you put in - it is the ultimate narrative game and has provided some of the most memorable and best visual games I've ever played. I played a game last weekend where I deployed all my marines and knights - 11,000 points of fully painted glory in a planetstrike mission against my friends equivalent IG. It was so much fun and seeing it all laid out with a whole battle company deployed against a fortress of baneblades and leman russ companies was epic. But it only works if you are playing with a narrative mindset - it is incredibly easy to break if you just want to pound your opponent into the dust.

My recommendations for making Apocalypse fun:
- have a story and characters prepped in advance, maybe make it the summit of a campaign

- be organised, know the other gamers well and to have everything prepped in advance (know what is going in transports, what is going in reserve, which armies are deploying on which sides/quadrants etc). There should be minimal decision making once you start to unpack models.

- every player gets a free one use stratagem PLOT ARMOUR they can play at any time. Gives a unit a 2++ save for that turn. That way everyone's pride and joy minis get to see some game time.

- TIMING is all important. Each side gets 1 hour to do everything. When the timer runs out play goes over to the other side, no matter what. This means you won't get to do everything you want, so choose wisely.

- don't worry about rolling everything. If 20 conscripts need to shoot something just say 7 hit, 2 wound, roll saves. Save the dice for the important stuff.

- RULE OF COOL if something fun should happen, let it happen. In my last game my opponent was obviously losing and everything was exploding. So I didn't try to kill his last deathstrike and we said it could launch without rolling the dice. My fellblade got to level his fortress and then in return got destroyed by the deathstrike. Everyone has a laugh.

- the players need to actively engineer fluffy situations. Would it be more sensible for a damaged knight gallant to retreat away from friendlies to avoid hurting them when he explodes? Probably. In Apoc he should kamikaze the deamon prince and detonate his reactor for funsies and screw the friendly casualties.

If following any of the above advice sends shivers down your spine, then Apocalypse is definitely not for you. You need to be able to switch off a competitive mind set and try to ensure each side gets to do cool stuff. If you can, you will honestly have a blast. Plus, seeing 40k scale titans and tank companies in battle over a 20' wide table is just hands down glorious gaming.

And all that and the battle still won't represent like what battles with that number of soldiers would be in 40k...Ie it's not actually all that narrative as it won't fit at all narrative(or logic) of 40k.

**H.B.M.C.**

All the Apoc games we played (except for the first) were highly structured affairs with specific narrative objectives set out long before a single model was deployed. Tables were made to represent specific things relevant to the narrative of the game we were playing rather than just a random board, and forces were themed around the characters we had invented for the narrative.

Why?

Because competitive Apoc didn't work. That was the first game we played, and when you've got 8k-10k points per player in a 2v2 game it just comes down to "Wallethammer $40,000", and he who owns the most superheavies, tanks and super units wins. That first game might have been the quickest, but only because one side filled the table with all the best units with no real restrictions and just steamrolled the other (who didn't own enough to compete).

Narrative is the way to go.