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Hey guys, I posted a series of house rules in the General forum, not really realizing I probably should have put them here instead (Sorry about that). Anyway, I'm starting up an apoc setting in my local games store with the help of the current TO, and we wanted to get some internet takes and ideas on what we've come up with to help balance it to our player-base and help speed general gameplay. Take a look and let me know what you think

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/590858.page#6744424

BTW, sorry for the forum spam, won't happen again

I'm going to try to sum up changes and my thoughts, this is a lot to sift through so I may miss something.

1. You're requiring HQ/Troops. At one/two minimum per 3k it shouldn't have too much of an influence on the game, I'm not going to object.

2. The superheavy restrictions are a mite vague, right now it looks like you're allowing each player to take two smaller Superheavies per 3k and one larger one period, which shouldn't be much of an issue for most armies (the only issues would be Guard wanting more than one Baneblade-chassis tank and 'Nids wanting more than one TGC, the second is probably more worth an exception than the first).

3. Players may not duplicate named characters, teams may. I'd suggest dropping the second clause, there's honestly no good reason people should be annoyed by not being able to take the same Special Character as someone else on their team without the FOC. I might include a provision that army-wide effects from one Special Character benefit all models from that army on the team just to cover your ass if someone's getting pissy that his teammate's DE gets Deep Strike for free from Sliscus but his DE don't.

4. Unlimited weapon range capped at 120". It's honestly not going to matter unless you're playing on a board larger than 10x4, you might as well leave it at Unlimited to speed up play.

5. Refuel/rearm: A fine idea in theory, but if you look at the current rules you're giving the Imperium a free Strategic Asset that xenos don't get. It's not a must-take Asset unless you've got a lot of Marauders but it's something you might want to consider.

6. Deep Strike: The second clause is perfectly fine, but if I were you I'd scrap the first entirely. I've had three-turn Apocalypse games run eight hours, losing a turn in Apocalypse is so much worse than losing a turn in standard six-eight-turn 40k it's not even funny. The standard Apocalypse rules run Strategic Reserves in a manner entirely different from 40k for this exact reason; even if you have some fundamental difference with first-turn Deep Strike making Deep Strike unplayable is really not the answer. In all honesty the second provision isn't really necessary under the current meta, Deep Striking a band of Terminators into your enemy's deployment zone is a fairly weak and impractical strategy.

7. Deployment: I wouldn't stick with the half-army-on-the-table idea, simultaneously requiring Reserves for half your army and nerfing it by prohibiting turn one arrival is going to slow the game down drastically.

8. Small Armies: Conceptually a good idea to keep people with smaller forces in the game, in practice easily abuseable. If my two thousand points consisted of Farsight, six Crisis Suits, a Riptide Wing, and a Tiger Shark giving me the recycle-army benefit is going to be much more valuable to my team than giving it to my teammate's 2,000pt Space Marine Battle Company. I'd advise restricting superheavies from making use of this, at least.

9: Superheavies: I hate to say it but the way things are going with the hyper-shooty meta these days a 500pt Superheavy isn't going to survive turn one if you don't let people grant it cover or repair it. I was playing a game once where I got to borrow a Stormlord and loaded it up with my Seer Council for defensive powers, it made it to all of turn two with a rerollable 3+ cover save before the combined firepower of a Tiger Shark and four Hammerheads brought it down.

10: Destroyer weapons. No objection here.

11: Campaign-rules-wise mashing people together into "factions" makes very little sense from the perspective of 40k lore, I'd suggest scoring armies individually and requiring some minimum of games played.

1. Ok.

2. That's a fair point about IG/Nids. The rules weren't written with any specific army in mind, more to discourage someone from bringing 10 baneblades and 5 titans to the table. I'll definitely look into how to make exceptions for armies that rely on bigger models at larger points.

3. Excellent point. I'm going to use this change for sure, not sure why I didn't think about it either lol.

4. The events are played on a 6x12 board broken into 3 segments. Overall range for the event is almost 16 feet long end to end, so limiting range slightly will actually force some models to move instead of tucking in a safe corner somewhere.

5. Might limit it to a one time use or something. I know as a Tau player I have a lot of missiles to blow that would be nice to rearm, and I know a lot of Imperium weapons are the same. I'll see how to make it less game breaking though.

6. I didn't even think of the timeline associated with losing that first turn. I was more concerned with putting half your army on the table turn one, and then getting tons of drop-pods coming in to possibly drastically change the number balance. Maybe having to roll for turn one reserves instead of automatically coming in? That way there's a chance you get them all, and there's a chance you have to wait.

7. The deployment idea was borrowed from Siegeworld, and it seemed to work out really well there, however it is untested here. My friend and I will mock up a deployment and see how much it effects the flow, and if it hurts the timeline then we'll definitely drop it like you suggest.

8. Yes, I had meant to put in that super-heavies don't get the recycle, but must have forgotten about it before posting. Good catch.

9. Apocalypticon saw good use of nerfing cover and repairs to super-heavies, but I think this nerf would be better off on titans and other crazy 20+hp models. I'll drop it for now and see how this first event plays out.

10. Hope they work out as intended.

11. Only issue with having army totals instead of factions is many players use lots of different armies, and there are a lot of potential players here. Keeping track of them all would be painful and extremely time consuming. Considering most people run apoc as Imperium VS Xenos, or other such layouts, the faction system isn't too far from what people are familiar with. Makes organizing it easier to keep track of as well.

Thanks for the input! We have a lot to consider based on your input, and hopefully it ends up more balanced and fun in the long run.

Would like to reinforce point six a bit more. Rolling for Reserves in standard 40k is already an aspect that makes the game too dice-dependent, with Apocalypse and games running fewer turns rolling for Reserves is going to make the game hinge even more on a small number of dice. The rules for Strategic Reserves are the way they are because of the sheer game-changing potential of someone's 2,500pt Manta not coming on in those three turns because you rolled low twice in a row.

Fair point. So you think reserves rules should be abandoned altogether in favor of regular apoc rules, or did you have a better solution than ours?

The standard Apocalypse Strategic Reserves rules work just fine; they're simple, reliable, and don't bog the game down at all.

Well it would be pointless to post rule ideas then ignore input, so I'll scrap it unless reserves become a problem down the road. Thanks for all the ideas