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I have played my fair share of large 40k games. It's actually one of my favorite kind of games, as you can see and use things that don't exactly get fielded in anything less than 3,000 points. The problem is, at least as I have noticed it, that there are basically two kinds of Apoc. battlefields: Floorhammer, or the super-long table. For me, this has lead to one big phenomenon, one side will dominate in one area, the other side in another, and then you might spend one or two whole turns running at each other and the only thing that can fire are Basilisks, Vortex missiles, and superheavies. This is just wasted time.

Sure, there are deepstrikers and transport fliers, but there has got to be a way to be able to quickly get more footsloggers together quickly. So, here is my rough idea: Teleportation devices. Some kind of portal or standing model that will allow a unit to be zapped across the board (probably using deepstrike rules) that would otherwise not be able to. I'm not sure whether these should just be usable battlefield terrain or be a purchasable upgrade. Either way you'd have to limit what could use them. Having a Leman Russ tank pop up unexpectedly is an annoyance, having a Warlord titan do it is game breaking. Perhaps make it a portal, like from the movie StarGate. Anything that can fit through can use it, and only X number of units per turn.

I'm not a huge fan of Apoc and thus very biased, but aren't footsloggers mostly kind of moot in such games? From the games I've seen, Apoc is mostly about the superheavies and maybe some vehicle or shooty MC hordes.

That said, I've known people to put their Apoc boards in a sort of "Z" or "//" shape , basically sticking two normal tables together with the ends sticking out a bit on the sides. They then allow each player to bring reserves on from one of the edges near the middle, basically letting them dump smaller units out into the middle of the battlefield.

I've also seen people play with a given piece of terrain in their corner of the board serving as a "teleporta" that lets them deepstrike units from said piece of terrain to any location on the table.

You could also play missions where objectives are scattered across the table and can only be held my non-vehicle-non-MC units, basically making it the job of infantry to guard objectives rather than trying to jog up the table.

As a side note, I am working on a scenario for an "Alamo" style game. Basically, I want to set up three tables into a "T" shape (Two 6x4 tables across the top, one going down). At the top of the T would be a pretty darn impressive Fortress, but with one side open. The Defenders would have the defensive advantage, but be massively outnumbered. Attackers reserves would come on from the sides of the T while Defensive reserves (about half their force) would start coming off the bottom of the T. Can the reinforcements make it too the Fortress before it falls?

Two things:

1) You don't want to encourage footslogging infantry too much. Infantry units have the worst time-to-roll-dice to effectiveness ratio in the game, it takes a ton of time to use them but they rarely accomplish much. If people are only bringing small numbers of infantry, preferably to camp on objectives and be forgotten, the game will go a lot faster.

2) Any "teleport" rule needs to have a limit on how much you can use it. You don't want to completely negate the advantages of units that depend on speed and/or range to be effective. Otherwise, if you can teleport your whole army wherever you want it each turn, why take Basilisks instead of LR Demolishers? Why take flying transports when a teleporting Rhino is just as fast? Etc. A special rule that lets a unit or two move across the table is ok, but don't do it too much.

If you had the terrain you could try some sort of massive-scale Zone Mortalis-esque game? Defined 'rooms'/'walls'/'corridors', heavily restricted line of sight/barrage weapons, that sort of thing?

It'd take a long time, but if you planned out the teams/composition/mission you could probably make it work. I've found Apocalypse works best when there are big teams and each individual player is only responsible for 1,500-2,000pts of stuff in the first place.

Alternately you could just use more transports, potentially with a few restrictions lifted to make them more useful in an Apocalypse game that might be over in three turns (charge out of transports, disembark after moving further, etc.).

 Peregrine wrote:
Two things:

1) You don't want to encourage footslogging infantry too much. Infantry units have the worst time-to-roll-dice to effectiveness ratio in the game, it takes a ton of time to use them but they rarely accomplish much. If people are only bringing small numbers of infantry, preferably to camp on objectives and be forgotten, the game will go a lot faster.

2) Any "teleport" rule needs to have a limit on how much you can use it. You don't want to completely negate the advantages of units that depend on speed and/or range to be effective. Otherwise, if you can teleport your whole army wherever you want it each turn, why take Basilisks instead of LR Demolishers? Why take flying transports when a teleporting Rhino is just as fast? Etc. A special rule that lets a unit or two move across the table is ok, but don't do it too much.

I totally agree with everything you just stated. I personally dislike using anything smaller than a Leman Russ in games over 10,000 points per side. However, there are many players that simply do not have massive collections. Their Apoc army is simply their normal 1850 list with whatever spare units they have laying around. Telling them they can't play because they can't bring they can't bring 5 Falcons instead of 100 Guardians isn't a line I'm willing to cross. Telling them they are relagated to camping on objectives seems even worse (it just makes them stand around all day while the rest of us have fun).

Letting them drop a rhino full of Tactical marines somewhere important once per turn would actually give them a roll, and thus some entertainment.

We play Apocalypse games in my area once a month. We usually set up the tables differently every time. We use 8'x4' tables. Usually 3-4 of them. We've done U shape, H, shape, /// shape, and just a straight line. We've also done | | shape as well. We have a cap of 4000pts per player and only 2500pts can be used to purchase LoW. This stops some crazy stuff and means everyone has to bring smaller stuff. Deployment zones and what we call dice buddies is important. Dice buddies is another person from the other time. Most likely the guy you step up acrossed from. This way there is no worry about getting all your shots and assaults in. We alot 1 hour and 20 minutes per turn with each phase having a time limit. This way the game keeps moving and we don't get bogged down by 1 players movement and being slow.

Personally, the mission in the Apoc book are designed for 1v1. Some get really interesting and complex at team vs team. (last month was 6v6) For missions, its the deployment that really matters. For example | | shape table. the deployment zones were 12" from the edge with a 24" no man zone in between with Attacker ->| <-defender -> | <-Attacker. This made it that the defending team was trying to hold down 2 fronts on the table. While the attacker attack from both sides. We added tunnel markers and made them big enough that a baneblade could drive through, but it used its movement and shooting phase to make the jump from 1 front to the other.

Alternately for speed-of-play reasons you could prohibit Independent Characters from joining/leaving squads after deployment and write up some sort of combined-profile mechanic. In Apocalypse games treating the unit as one 'model' (e.g. ten Tactical Marines becomes a ten-Wound model with a Salvo 20/10 boltgun) and writing up a mechanism for determining how many to-wound rolls blasts make (based on the size of the blast and the number of models in the target unit) could make things go much faster, especially given the frequency with which infantry units get one-shot wiped in Apocalypse.

We play foot-slog infantry as just a block unit, for sake of appearance. all the models will be there, but we usually use something to create a larger base to move the entire unit at once, rather than dozens of separate models.
The secret is old CD's and Blu-tac. just stick the models onto the base using blu-tac and then you can just move the CD. we usually spruce them up with some moss and rubble to make it stick out less and it helps speed the game up considerably.