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Has anyone tried to play a really large game size? If so, how did you handle it, and what kinds of limits did you use?

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Has anyone tried to play a really large game size? If so, how did you handle it, and what kinds of limits did you use?

That falls into the Apocalypse realm usually, and is either played with adjusted point limits or using the 8th edition apocalypse rules.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Has anyone tried to play a really large game size? If so, how did you handle it, and what kinds of limits did you use?

That falls into the Apocalypse realm usually, and is either played with adjusted point limits or using the 8th edition apocalypse rules.

The book explicitly has rules for 150PL per side/3,000 point games, there's missions too!

You can even do them with the Open Play Hostility Mission Pack, as the missions are based on relative PL, roughly equal, 1:(1.33-1.9), 1:2+. If your base is 150PL, you could, at the smallest for the Death or Glory mission, be facing a minimum of 300PL!

Still using just the core book!

It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

I disagree, and we do these regularly. Now; are you going to have tournament-level balance? No, probably not. But can it be a lot of fun? Absolutely!

If we're in the mood for a big battle we usually do a team game, with each player bringing a 1500-2000 point list. Then we just generate a Tempest of War mission to play and use the cards for secondaries.

Each player has their own pool of cp and gains 1 cp during the command phase, and their army operates more or less independently of their ally (my buffs can only affect my units. Debuffs I used only apply when I'm attacking. IE: If I cast Doom on a unit, I get to reroll against it but my ally doesn't).

Core rulebook stratagems can be used once per player per game turn.

I think its really fun, but not everybody has the same opinion I guess.

apogats wrote:
I disagree, and we do these regularly. Now; are you going to have tournament-level balance? No, probably not. But can it be a lot of fun? Absolutely!

The problem isn't balance, it's scaling. 40k at 2000 points already has major issues with complexity and IGOUGO disengaging the inactive player from the game, and you're talking about adding a minimum of 50% more stuff on the table, potentially 100% more. That's 50-100% more dice to roll to resolve everything, 50-100% more time waiting to finally have the chance to do anything besides remove your casualties, etc. That three-hour game is now a six-hour game, and that's assuming the best case scenario where the scaling is only linear. If, as is often the case, 50% more stuff on the table means more than 50% more time, it drags on even longer. And where's the fun in waiting an hour to finally have a turn?

What 40k needs to function beyond 2000 points is something like the 8th edition Apocalypse rules. Strip out most of the rules bloat, add some form of alternating activation system, and reduce as many mass D6 rolls as possible to single D12/D20/etc rolls. And casualty removal at the end of the turn is absolutely necessary.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Has anyone tried to play a really large game size? If so, how did you handle it, and what kinds of limits did you use?

In order:

Yes. It isn't fun. Lots of stuff breaks down, and its a lot of set up and tedium for potentially deciding the whole thing on a good first turn.

Let someone else organize the mess.

Largely no limits. The more limits, the fewer people that can participate. Probably the best thing to limit is the collectors/whales/veterans with huge collections that can leverage that power to just dominate the whole thing. That isn't fun.

----
Mostly its something the game can theoretically do, but its really bad at it. Just drop down a couple scales and play Epic if you want that sort of experience to actually be fun.

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

So I guess it'll blow your mind to learn that one of my local shops hosts a giant game every few months. And that even though play is a bit slow that everyone playing has a good time.

The one at the beginning of July only had 6 or 7 players each with about 2500 pts.
The one back in the spring? 16 players & around 50k pts +/- total. We had everything from grots to a Warlord Titan on the table(s).
Turn 1 happens on Friday evening.
Turn 2+ is played on Sat.

Hiw victory conditions, Turn order, strats/cp & reserves are handled vary by the game.

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

How are you getting "too small a space" to be a thing? Scale the board to the game, and ignore the "minimum table size we want you to use so you buy our boards" table from the rulebook - after all, you're already ignoring parts of it to be playing at over 3k a side...

Yeah, a couple sheets of plywood and some saw horses will get you whatever size battlefield you want

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

You dont have to play with 500+ models. Use 2-4 LOWs and 1000-2000 points are already gone.

 p5freak wrote:

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

You dont have to play with 500+ models. Use 2-4 LOWs and 1000-2000 points are already gone.

Exactly right!
High PL/points games let you actually use the big stuff without being able to take only that.

Don't listen to the negativity.

 Blndmage wrote:

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Has anyone tried to play a really large game size? If so, how did you handle it, and what kinds of limits did you use?

That falls into the Apocalypse realm usually, and is either played with adjusted point limits or using the 8th edition apocalypse rules.

The book explicitly has rules for 150PL per side/3,000 point games, there's missions too!

You can even do them with the Open Play Hostility Mission Pack, as the missions are based on relative PL, roughly equal, 1:(1.33-1.9), 1:2+. If your base is 150PL, you could, at the smallest for the Death or Glory mission, be facing a minimum of 300PL!

Still using just the core book!

They OP said really large battles, 3000 points being really large is arguable

 Dysartes wrote:

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

How are you getting "too small a space" to be a thing? Scale the board to the game, and ignore the "minimum table size we want you to use so you buy our boards" table from the rulebook - after all, you're already ignoring parts of it to be playing at over 3k a side...

Because most people and most stores/clubs don't have that much space. It's hard enough getting a 6x4 table, a 12x8 just isn't a realistic goal for most people. And past a certain point you can't expand the table without hitting the limits of how deep into it you can reach. It's great in theory to have a huge table but can you reach units in the middle of it without awkward leaning or having to move sections of table out of the way?


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 Blndmage wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

You dont have to play with 500+ models. Use 2-4 LOWs and 1000-2000 points are already gone.

Exactly right!
High PL/points games let you actually use the big stuff without being able to take only that.

Don't listen to the negativity.

Assuming you have that many LoW. How many people other than knight players buy multiple LoW that won't get used in normal games?

Ok, so obviously that puts it outside Matched Play then.

But the Open Play mission pack is still a great guideline and, as noted, can scale comfortably.


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 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:

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 Blndmage wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

You dont have to play with 500+ models. Use 2-4 LOWs and 1000-2000 points are already gone.

Exactly right!
High PL/points games let you actually use the big stuff without being able to take only that.

Don't listen to the negativity.

Assuming you have that many LoW. How many people other than knight players buy multiple LoW that won't get used in normal games?

I have 2 Monoliths, and would love a third if I could find a classic one for old school Silver Tide. Let alone my love of Gauss Pylons (slowly building 3 proxies).

 Blndmage wrote:
Ok, so obviously that puts it outside Matched Play then.

But the Open Play mission pack is still a great guideline and, as noted, can scale comfortably.

What does anything I said have to do with matched play? Table size is table size regardless of which version of the game you're playing, and we're already talking about having to use table sizes other than the ones listed in the matched play rules. Open play will have all of the same scaling issues as any other format.

I have 2 Monoliths, and would love a third if I could find a classic one for old school Silver Tide. Let alone my love of Gauss Pylons (slowly building 3 proxies).

You are the exception to the rule here. Most people don't have multiple LoW and some factions don't even have LoW. SoB don't have any options at all, space marines have only ridiculously expensive and impractical FW options, Tau technically have a small LoW but our "real" LoW are also impractical FW kits. Necrons and guard are really the only factions that have affordable LoW that can reasonably be used in a normal game.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

How are you getting "too small a space" to be a thing? Scale the board to the game, and ignore the "minimum table size we want you to use so you buy our boards" table from the rulebook - after all, you're already ignoring parts of it to be playing at over 3k a side...

Well if you play at a store you ain't going to get a larger big table then two, maybe three regular tables. And the way how w40k scales it can become really bad. Be in the group that goes second and get your army killed off before having a turn, ain't very fun. It gets even less fun, when you are left with 3-4 models and have to stay because scoring, scenarios etc. So you are waiting for hour+ to play for 1-2min, and often the playing is stuff like rolling saves etc.


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 p5freak wrote:


You dont have to play with 500+ models. Use 2-4 LOWs and 1000-2000 points are already gone.

You would have to first own multiple of those and that is assuming your army actualy has access to LoW in the first place. I can't take 6 draigos.

Karol wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

How are you getting "too small a space" to be a thing? Scale the board to the game, and ignore the "minimum table size we want you to use so you buy our boards" table from the rulebook - after all, you're already ignoring parts of it to be playing at over 3k a side...

Well if you play at a store you ain't going to get a larger big table then two, maybe three regular tables. And the way how w40k scales it can become really bad. Be in the group that goes second and get your army killed off before having a turn, ain't very fun. It gets even less fun, when you are left with 3-4 models and have to stay because scoring, scenarios etc. So you are waiting for hour+ to play for 1-2min, and often the playing is stuff like rolling saves etc.


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 p5freak wrote:


You dont have to play with 500+ models. Use 2-4 LOWs and 1000-2000 points are already gone.

You would have to first own multiple of those and that is assuming your army actualy has access to LoW in the first place. I can't take 6 draigos.

You have an an Imperium army, you can take any Imperium LOW.

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:
It has been done. It doesn't work. There are too many models on too small a space, IGOUGO becomes an unbearable slog of hour-long turns, and the whole thing bogs down in rolling a million dice for everything.

How are you getting "too small a space" to be a thing? Scale the board to the game, and ignore the "minimum table size we want you to use so you buy our boards" table from the rulebook - after all, you're already ignoring parts of it to be playing at over 3k a side...

Because most people and most stores/clubs don't have that much space. It's hard enough getting a 6x4 table, a 12x8 just isn't a realistic goal for most people. And past a certain point you can't expand the table without hitting the limits of how deep into it you can reach. It's great in theory to have a huge table but can you reach units in the middle of it without awkward leaning or having to move sections of table out of the way?

So because you don't have room obviously nobody has room and thus obviously nobody can have board with sufficient room. Because obviously everybody lives in same size room.

Really silly claim. As in even on our flgs we could move tables around a bit enough to get 18" wide board if me felt like it. Wider than that comes issue yes.

Of course it's also possible to play on non-box shaped boards. Seen big games that are shaped like L's for example.

 Blndmage wrote:
You have an an Imperium army, you can take any Imperium LOW.

Sure, just buy multiple LoW from an army you don't play (and may or may not have any interest in) and give up your faction purity rules. Spend a few hundred dollars and a lot of hours of painting time on something other than the faction you want to play. And for what? So you can meet some arbitrary game size goal?

This is not a reasonable solution.


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tneva82 wrote:
So because you don't have room obviously nobody has room and thus obviously nobody can have board with sufficient room.

MOST.

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
So because you don't have room obviously nobody has room and thus obviously nobody can have board with sufficient room.

MOST.

No, I'd lean towards the majority of clubs/shops being able to put on a big game once in a while - and the suggestion that 6'x4' boards are rare is simply laughable, even if some people put smaller mats on top of them these days.

I would agree that it is more unlikely that people would be able to do these at home, though.

Karol wrote:


You dont have to play with 500+ models. Use 2-4 LOWs and 1000-2000 points are already gone.

You would have to first own multiple of those and that is assuming your army actualy has access to LoW in the first place. I can't take 6 draigos.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Has anyone tried to play a really large game size? If so, how did you handle it, and what kinds of limits did you use?

Yes, 3k and 4k per side, and people in my group also did 5k per side so far.

You need bigger tables obviously, what does work for us is just going 6x8.
In our cases we're doing this so we can bring our expensive models/units into the game - so we "enforce" at least 1 proper LOW (think Falchion, Mastodon, etc) and focus on expensive/low-model-count units (eg multiple Land Raiders and a bunch of terminators) mostly. We also ignore Martial Legacy entirely, at least when playing Marine vs Marine.

My last list contained:
Mastodon, 3 Land Raiders, 2 Rhinos
3x5 Tacticals, 20 Terminators,
2 Techmarines, Chaptermaster, Contemptor, Ironclad
4 Land Speeders, 1 Storm Speeder
IIRC that was 4k

Generally speaking this does NOT work as any kind of competitive play. It's more of a coop narrative battle using matched play rules.
Obviously this also doesn't really work with just any army, as was mentioned already. I'm not sure why you'd want to play 4k if all you own is PA GKs or GSC. I can see IG working fine if you use movement trays for your infantry and focus more on Tanks / Artillery than Infantry, though. Deathwatch with their Infantry AoR would probably be horrible to play at those points, but I don't see the appeal of doing that anyway - with those armies, you can do all the cool stuff and bring all the awesome units at 2k or less points anyway - bringing a Mastodon or 3 Land Raiders at 2k just doesn't work out well, like, ever.

what kind of argument is "well not everyone has enough space/LOWs"? yes, that's obviously true, but that's basically the same as saying "people with just a small collection of models will not be able to build that large a list / a decent list at those points". You can't build 4k if your entire chapter is 3k points total, sure , but that does not make 4k games unplayable for everyone else.

Just look for ways to make it work, not reasons why it doesn't work in some cases.

 Blndmage wrote:


You have an an Imperium army, you can take any Imperium LOW.

I play GK, I don't even like how power armoured GK look like. If I don't do that for regular w40k, where NDKs , another model I don't like, and power armoured GK are the better choice, you can imagine what chance there is that I would buy non GK models just to maybe play apocalypse. Plus this is just one problem. I have seen mass combat in early 8th. Dude gets his 1400pts lit up turn one and then has to stay all saturday to get the participation prize. Apocalypse maybe works in the US and/or for people with gigantic houses or dedicated space to play. Most stores will not even want to run apocalypse events, because a whole day event means, they are generating less money from renting tables and there will be no ccg or other table top players on that game at the store. And that is on top of stores not being suited for having 10+ people playing in them at the same time.

Karol wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:


You have an an Imperium army, you can take any Imperium LOW.

I play GK, I don't even like how power armoured GK look like. If I don't do that for regular w40k, where NDKs , another model I don't like, and power armoured GK are the better choice, you can imagine what chance there is that I would buy non GK models just to maybe play apocalypse. Plus this is just one problem. I have seen mass combat in early 8th. Dude gets his 1400pts lit up turn one and then has to stay all saturday to get the participation prize. Apocalypse maybe works in the US and/or for people with gigantic houses or dedicated space to play. Most stores will not even want to run apocalypse events, because a whole day event means, they are generating less money from renting tables and there will be no ccg or other table top players on that game at the store. And that is on top of stores not being suited for having 10+ people playing in them at the same time.

Then playing 4k games just isn't for you, so what? This is clearly a "you" problem.

And let people sort out their space issues on their own - I'm lucky as I'm part of a gaming club, we have a space of our own where I can just book 2 tables and then push them together, done. We don't hog the space like that every weekend, of course, so noone has any issue with it. Obviously not a solution for people in different situations, others might just use their garden and setup a temporary space to play, and some will just not have any way to make it work.

Here's a pic of what I think was a 5K game during 8th. No LOWs, just good ol buckets of models. I think we only got 3 turns in because of time, and we were using a too-small 6x4 table. It was more or less a big mess for model density, lack of terrain, etc. But it was also fun! "Slophammer" at its finest.



One highlight was a horde of big ugly Chaos Spawn slamming into the golden boy Custodes and rolling real nice for their CC attacks, doing a good job butchering many of them.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Has anyone tried to play a really large game size? If so, how did you handle it, and what kinds of limits did you use?

All the time, just make sure you have time for it and dont take it competitive serious. Super fun way to get cool units on the table you normally dont take, we also play Ro4 for 4k. Apoc is great too but its a completely different game, so if you want to play more like 9th then don't play Apoc (Also Apoc is about 2yrs behind for new units). We make sure to play the 3k missions in the core rule book.

Oh also we have a 4x8 table for 4k-5k, 4x6 for 3k

nekooni 806264 11408661 wrote:

Then playing 4k games just isn't for you, so what? This is clearly a "you" problem.

And let people sort out their space issues on their own - I'm lucky as I'm part of a gaming club, we have a space of our own where I can just book 2 tables and then push them together, done. We don't hog the space like that every weekend, of course, so noone has any issue with it. Obviously not a solution for people in different situations, others might just use their garden and setup a temporary space to play, and some will just not have any way to make it work.

But it becomes a me problem, because the more people talk about stuff like that or crusade etc the higher the chance that the development team will use their time, which they are already not using very well, on those things instead of working on matched play. That is the me part. But other stuff is not a me thing. a 8-10 hour game where you get blazed off the table turn 1 , after a 2 hour trip to the store, is not very fun no matter how someone cuts it.

Karol wrote:

nekooni 806264 11408661 wrote:

Then playing 4k games just isn't for you, so what? This is clearly a "you" problem.

And let people sort out their space issues on their own - I'm lucky as I'm part of a gaming club, we have a space of our own where I can just book 2 tables and then push them together, done. We don't hog the space like that every weekend, of course, so noone has any issue with it. Obviously not a solution for people in different situations, others might just use their garden and setup a temporary space to play, and some will just not have any way to make it work.

But it becomes a me problem, because the more people talk about stuff like that or crusade etc the higher the chance that the development team will use their time, which they are already not using very well, on those things instead of working on matched play. That is the me part. But other stuff is not a me thing. a 8-10 hour game where you get blazed off the table turn 1 , after a 2 hour trip to the store, is not very fun no matter how someone cuts it.

"Other people might get attention" isn't the problem you think it is.

40k is already a mess-and GW shows no signs of changing it properly. Whether they spend rules time updating Orks, adding game modes for giant games, or anything else really, it ain't gonna make 40k a perfect game. Not by a long shot.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Has anyone tried to play a really large game size? If so, how did you handle it, and what kinds of limits did you use?

A few thoughts

1) Time. The higher the points value the longer the time it will take for each turn. Similarly the more players per side the longer things will take in general. This will all vary a lot depending on your game group, how focused they are as players and how big a game you go for. That said super-massive games often work best if you can plan long time slots for them. So set aside a whole day on the weekend if you can - like a tournament only casual fun for the mega-game. Even better if you have space you can setup and perhaps even run over two days (some of those massive 20K games have done that).

2) Attitude. In general massive games are a bit like narrative in that they break enough things that they tend to not work as competitive games and more as casual games first. That doesn't mean you don't follow the rules, just that the attitude is often more about rolling dice, chatting, showing off lots of models (and big lords of war for those who have them) etc... This might mean you get 2 turns in and its pizza time and then everyone sort of casually floats and the game falls apart etc... Basically take things as they come and expect someone to have to leave early (their army panic retreats) or arrive late (sudden reinforcements) or for people to be slower on their turn than ideal (although that sort if is the only time you might put some pressure on at least so that turns do cycle through at a decent rate).

3) Organising. Ok so whilst I said take a casual attitude or at least non competitive; big events take organising. Finding space might mean using a different than normal venue; very long play times means identifying ways to get food during the day or ensuring everyone brings their own or that you can schedule downtime for people to go get food. Other things like making sure you've got gear to play (books, dice..) and the tables and all. Also having someone designated as the organiser/event runner helps a lot in ensuring someone is issuing orders and making sure things at least keep running along.
Someone who makes sure the tables are setup; that lunch is called etc... IT doesn't have to be super forma, but having a clear leader helps a lot as does generally organising the event.

4) Side games. Depending on how much space and time and on your group and how many attend and all you might find that not everyone can always stay focused on the game. In theory they should but someone at one end of the board waiting for an opponent and then an ally at the very other end of the board, might well find they've not all that much to do. If possible a few tables set aside can help. Perhaps they roll up with some MTG or Underworlds games whilst they wait; perhaps they just sit and chill; Maybe there's some Munchkin going on and people just drop in and out of characters as turns come up etc...
This is all just respecting that its a long game (esp if its a day long affair) and that not everyone will remain charged for the game the whole time. If you can work in some downtime and relaxing options and not allow it to harm the flow of the main game, then go for it.

5) Side tables/space. Good for having somewhere to gather and chat; to eat and drink etc...

6) Space for bags. Might sound daft, but big games means lots of boxes/bags. So try and make sure that the place has room for those bags and boxes so that they are out of the way and people aren't tripping over them. The game space might be chock-a-block with models; but the player space wants to be accessible and without clutter.



Overall go and have fun. As you can see in the thread already some people have tried this and it isn't for them or their group; others have and had loads of fun. The only way you'll find out is to jump in and give it a go. Accepting that the first time might show you a whole host of problems that you might not resolve until running it again.