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Hey, y'all. I'm organizing my first Apoc. game in a couple of weeks. I just wanted to know if anyone had any ideas for house rules to ensure that abuse doesn't occur and that everything is fun. I vaguely recall that Flank March is potentially abusive, so I'll just ban it outright. Are there any other problems with Apoc? Thanks.

Camoflage for Titans/superheavies/gargantuans: unless you have a convenient Tokyo for said Godzilla to hide amongst, it's not going to be realisticly camoflageable (sp?). That's my take, anyway.

As for Flank March, just reserve it to formations and such that come with it; don't make it an option for the stratagem choice.

There is one rule I would really want to change.

Turbo lasers/laser blasters etc should use a small blast template. They are supposedly precision weapons or at best mega mega lascannon. Where they get the wide angle setting from I don't know.

Ban Flank March.

Make sure that each side deployes 50% of their forces at the start of the game (to stop one side from bidding 1 minute, deploying nothing, and burning their opponent's first two turns 'cause they have nothing on the table).

BYE

I can't see there being any problems with Apocalypse. Especially if its your first game just play with no changes and see what goes well or not. Players, as long as they aren't in it to win at all costs and want a fun memorable game, don't noramlly abuse the rules. besides, whos to say anyone would take Flank March anyway-to ban it seems to take the point out of Apocalypse being 'a liberating game of 40k'

Although, I agree with getting each side to set up at least 50% of its models, purely because it looks good

I favor restricting armies to using flank march to coming in on the sides of the table only, UNLESS they are entirely mounted/vehicles/bikes/jump packs. This is characterful and usually prevents people from taking objectives. (We also play infantry only on objectives.)

I 100% agree with H.B.M.C.......

Ban Flank March.

You wont regret it.
One overtooled CC army useing it will completly ruin the game for everyone he is fighting against.
Never tried the 50% deployed bit, but I have to admit it sounds like a pretty good idea. Also something my local gameing store does that works quite well.... Limit each player to only being able to field 1 apoc datasheet in there army. Now I know every store has a guy like this, but this rule cuts down on the guy that wants to bring an entire Titan army or Baneblade army ect ect.

Last but not least, just use some common sense... if it looks like someone is bringing a overtooled broken army, be polite and inform him that he needs to un cheese it. Remember, Apoc is about haveing fun with a group of friends. (despite what some people think)
Just because there is no FOC doesnt mean that you should bring the most broken army possible.

We had to ban the combination of flank march and careful planning to bring in most of your army behind your opponent on turn 1 and assault the crap out of them. Since there are more than a few formations that give careful planning. We still typically use flank march because someone normally takes ambush. Though it doesn't help against multiple Land Raiders.

Thanks, everyone. I think that HBMC's suggestions will be the most useful, given the group that I'm playing with. I'm the only cheesy min-maxer in the group, and I'm planning to restrain myself this time.

Orlanth wrote:There is one rule I would really want to change.

Turbo lasers/laser blasters etc should use a small blast template. They are supposedly precision weapons or at best mega mega lascannon. Where they get the wide angle setting from I don't know.

I'd take this a step further and make them Str 10, AP 1. As they stand they totally smoke a Volcano Cannon at titan hunting. I'd also drop the VC to a 5" blast and have it cause d3 hits. The VC should be the ultimate titan slayer, not the anti heavy infantry gun that it is now, and it certainly shouldn't be out-performed by a scout titan weapon.

we house ruled that flank march is banned.

The biggest problem we had with apoc is that its an objective grabbing game where everything can start in reserve (there's no rule to say any of you army has to start on the table).

Ergo, whoever goes second can win (as long as they're not a numpty). We played all day with 12k points a side and with hindsight the winner came down to a dice roll (both sides wanted to go second, therefore both bid the maximum 30 mis for setup, we rolled off - the team that won chose to go second and won the game).

For our next game we're using the following deployment rules.

Both sides roll, winner chooses A or B.
Team A puts first 1/3 of their army down
Team B puts first 1/3 of their army down
Team A puts next 1/3 of their army down
Team B puts next 1/3 of their army down
Team A can put out any additional models they want, remainder go to reserve
Team B can put out any additional models they want, remainder go to reserve
Team A takes first turn.

If you do it this way you don't have to ban any assets!

If you're in any way worried about abuses, exploits, fairness ... ban APOC
So far my game group haven't done 1 apoc game, because everytime they even touch the subject, i get excessively enthousiastic about it and make sure to allude to my 6500 points of eldar that i could deploy in an apoc game. This has worked like a charm to keep this crap out of our gamegroup.

You dont need to ban Apoc. Apoc without Flank March and a friendly group is actually really really fun to play. Also our local group tends to weed out the few players that are known to play to win at all costs regardless of outcome from even playing with us.

exactly, just don't invite people who abuse the rules to the games. just like many people do when playing normal games, you just don't play them. or get everyone to attack them, even their own team mates, the look on their faces when that happens is priceless!

Certainly don't ban Apoc games... it's lots of fun, if people stay in the spirit. We've been playing a lot of them around my store during the Lucky 13s campaign, and restricting Flank March like I said before has helped a lot (as there doesn't seem to be anyone but me who can field a Battle Company or similar FM/CP formation, and I'd rather field my 2 Reavers, 3 Baneblades, and such) and a lot of fun has been had.