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.

I was looking at the datasheet for the Warbringer Nemesis Titan today and noticed that it has a weapon with a range of 480” or 40 feet. Just thinking about playing 40k on a terrain board that big boggles my mind. Who here has experience playing giant games on giant boards with lots of titans? What kinds of scenarios do you play? What sort of house rules do you use to make it work in 8th edition and how big are the points values? How long do the games even last? Does anyone actually have a fully painted 40 foot terrain board?

I dream of participating in a game like this someday. It sounds completely absurd and over-the-top in a way that seems to perfectly express what 40k is all about. What are your experiences with it?

I've certainly not played a game at that scale, but I imagine it would take days to play. I honestly doubt that there has ever been a game of that size, but that doesn't mean you can't aspire to.

You could play Adeptus Titanicus to have titan battles on a smaller scale. I haven't played that either but if you like titans it sounds like an obvious fit.

You don't in practice play with that big boards. You are lucky if you have feet deeper than normal. Then it's just wider as needed. Generally I find 18'(ie 3 boards) wide.

Titans frankly don't work in 40k scale. If enemy doesn't have titan of it's own they are basically overpriced unable to really kill enough to make it worthwhile. Swamping over with small units and it can't kill all and objectives go to other side. With other titan on other side it's who goes first destroys the enemy titan first and thus has big point advantage there.

Top of that big games break up with IGOUGO. Takes looooong time to play and advantage of first turn escalates...

And on titans pet peeve of mine is how void shields do not work at all like they should. Void shields is not flat invulnerable vs each attack. It's 100% impervious so any shot hitting shielded titan shouldn't hurt titan at all. However shields get weakened by number of shots(so lots of weaker shots>1 big shot) and then once it's collapses no save until it can get restored. That's how it's been working for 20+ years. Why they had to change for 8th ed 40k...

Best apoc games I have played have been without titans and have some sort of staggered deployments so armies come out in parts during first 3 turns for example. This migitates the 1st turn advantage and keeps turns short. Even then it's only bandaid. You don't get big battles in 40k universum by just upping points up. They won't be at all like what big battle in 40k universe would be like. Game rules don't support that. NO game rule can work like that. That's why there's generally different games for different sized battles. You don't have WW2 game that covers anything from small squad based actions to division vs division battles that actually represents both accurately either.

Firstly, I would recommend Epic Armageddon for the sort of action you want.

Second - It's been quuuiiiitteee some time since I played a 'Proper' big game of 40k. [Back when Apocalypse first launched] but my experience was very dissapointing. You tended to spend forever organising, forever planning, forever trying to set up all the models on the table. Then someone would bring out some rather large templates, and you'd have to put a hundred or so models away without actually having done anything. My understanding of 8th is that the templates are gone - But instead your opponent rolls a bucket or two of dice, which is slower, and then you pick up your models anyway.

It's been done to death - But 40k is an infantry skirmish game which tries to have reasonable rules for armour, struggles to have reasonable rules for flyers, and topples over at flyers. You just can't accurately represent what kind of axe/sword this lone Imperial Guardsman has in the same system you're trying to model this Warlord Titan.

I've played a good # of such scale games over the years. Often with about 8 players or so & enough pts that everyone can bring the biggest titan made at the time (or at least it's pts equivalent) in case someone does show up with a _____.

The word that best describes them is SLOW.
Especially for the player(s) who don't take the size of the "board" into account & don't bring any flyers/deepstrikes/etc.

Other than that? 40k as normal for whatever the edition.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

Second - It's been quuuiiiitteee some time since I played a 'Proper' big game of 40k. [Back when Apocalypse first launched] but my experience was very dissapointing. You tended to spend forever organising, forever planning, forever trying to set up all the models on the table. Then someone would bring out some rather large templates, and you'd have to put a hundred or so models away without actually having done anything. My understanding of 8th is that the templates are gone - But instead your opponent rolls a bucket or two of dice, which is slower, and then you pick up your models anyway.

On the flipside without templates there's this thing called "overkill" and simply unable to deal with multiple units. Let's say the 2000 pts warhound.

Turbo laser destructor. Aveages 4 shots at BS2+/3+ at S16, -3, damage 2d6
Inferno gun. Averages 14 S7 -3 4 hits. Okay this is scarier.
Plasma gun. Averages 7 shots at S8/10.
Vulcan mega bolter. 20 shots, S6, D2.

What we can see from this is that many weapons wont' scare infantry at all. Even 2 inferno guns though kills just 18 orks(if they don't have inv save. FNP is worthless vs D4). Which certainly is nasty but even with morale WILL NOT kill whole mob in one turn. 2 vulcan's will do that but then you will flat out suck against vehicles.

Either way warhound will strugle to clear enemies enough to make it worth. In standard 2k game you will basically never wipe enemy off the board and they will score objectives and win. Enemy doesn't even need to bother doing anything about titan. And the situation btw just keeps getting worse for titans the bigger they go. Warlord is 6k and sure each weapon will be vaporizing single models no time(warlord will basically vaporize 4 stompas in one go...) but regular units it just can't kill at speed enough.

So playing those games will be rather boooooooring when you have titan vs no titan. Titan cannot win, other has no incentive to do anything about it. And titan vs titan games are generally decided by first turn. Warhound can't take out warlord but reaver vs warlord...Well reaver goes first and short of bad luck it will hurt warlord bad enough return fire isn't enough and then 2nd salvo finish up. Warlord starts and reaver doesn't stand a chance. Warlord vs warlord and the warlord going 2nd is royally screwed up.

The whole idea is that Titans need support from ground troops and are largely designed to kill other Titans. ‘God Machines’ does not mean God Mode. They need supporting elements like anything else in an army.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
The whole idea is that Titans need support from ground troops and are largely designed to kill other Titans. ‘God Machines’ does not mean God Mode. They need supporting elements like anything else in an army.

Thing is the enemy will have stuff more. So you have titan+troops. Enemy has troops+more troops. All he has to do is fight the meagre troop amount. Titan won't kill enough to make a difference. Only time titan makes presence felt is when opponent has titan at which point the titan that shoots first gets rid of the other titan and then effectively has more points from the get-go.

Sounds greeeat. :-/

In all honesty it's boring. The removal of Blasts and the ridiculous points increase Titans have received have made them some of the worst units around. A Warhound costs 2000pts, up from 750, and can only engage two units at a time, while it'll do serious damage, it's still only two units.

With Titan vs Titan, it's a matter of who shoots first. My Warhound got the first shot off at my Reaver, crippled it from 60 Wounds to 25 in the first turn.

There are some battle reports on youtube.

It can be interesting. In 6th my friend came into a large sum of money and bought THREE Reiver Titans and put them together. Naturally we had to do a 5000 or so point game.

Last time I played Apocalypse (a while ago now) it was basically a massive amount of planning and organisation followed by an extended deployment phase, then a first turn where you end up removing most of the models on the board so you end up playing a slightly larger game of regular 40k from turn 2 onwards.

Titans don't really work well in 40k, and the effort required to set up such large games simply isn't worth it, IMO. The game scales badly, first turn advantage is even greater, and the logistics of playing means you typically end up increasing the battlefield size by making it wider, so you end up with a game 5-6 times the size of normal, played on a surface about 3 times the normal size but that tends to break down into effectively 3 different individual games of 40k. There aren't really enough rules in 40k for command structures or manoeuvring to make such large games engaging. You'd be much better off playing Epic.

I actually enjoyed a 10k point game where at least 50% of each side was in super heavies, with some suitably custom narrative rules and so on (generator buildings for modifying invuns, custom stratagems and so on) and it makes for a great experience, especially when you have a single knight house (Castellan, another one with 4 supporting knights and a dozen or so armigers) trying to hold against a Tyranid Monster ist rushing down, which Replens its own losses since the hive fleet always has more where that game from whilst the Tech Priests frantically but respectfully try to awaken the larger titans to join the fray.

NOW THAT, is a true 40k experience. It must be crafted and narrative when you reach such huge points, a aim to fight for other than "Side a rolls to kill Side b... End of."

There was a game of 40k recently that had tanks lined up at least 2 deep across the length of like 4 6' wide boards (all pushed together in a line).

The huge Titan didn't last long apparently.

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.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

Plasma gun. Averages 7 shots at S8/10.
Vulcan mega bolter. 20 shots, S6, D2.

Out of curiosity I thought I would compare this to Epic Armageddon...
A base of infantry is 3-7 40k models (you have a fair amount of freedom but horde armies like orks look best crammed onto their bases for a proper horde)
Plasma can only fire every other turn with 2 shots, but to make it simpler will assume one shot per turn. It has a 5/6 chance of melting any ork base, so say 7 boys or a bunch of nobz.
VMB has 4 shots at 3+ but units get to make a save, that's 2.2 bases of orks (up to 15.6 individuals) or 1.3 bases of nobs...

So the VMB seems about the same while the plasma gun is a bit better...

how bout adeptus Titanicus?

The_Real_Chris wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

Plasma gun. Averages 7 shots at S8/10.
Vulcan mega bolter. 20 shots, S6, D2.

Out of curiosity I thought I would compare this to Epic Armageddon...
A base of infantry is 3-7 40k models (you have a fair amount of freedom but horde armies like orks look best crammed onto their bases for a proper horde)
Plasma can only fire every other turn with 2 shots, but to make it simpler will assume one shot per turn. It has a 5/6 chance of melting any ork base, so say 7 boys or a bunch of nobz.
VMB has 4 shots at 3+ but units get to make a save, that's 2.2 bases of orks (up to 15.6 individuals) or 1.3 bases of nobs...

So the VMB seems about the same while the plasma gun is a bit better...

Supression is real important too. My Epic's a little rusty, but those two dead bases, are supressing another 3. That's 5 taken out of comission [which could be the whole platoon] and any further casulities will certainly cause carnage.

That said, the rule applies. Titans are always better at hunting titans. Don't fire your Warhound at Ork Boyz!

 slave.entity wrote:

I dream of participating in a game like this someday. It sounds completely absurd and over-the-top in a way that seems to perfectly express what 40k is all about. What are your experiences with it?

My prime LGS does an annual Apocalypse game and it's downright spectacular. There are three large tables (roughly 8' x 6'), each connected by a 4" x 18" "bridge". There are two primary objectives per table, with each player getting to place a secondary. Primaries are worth increasing points per round, while secondaries are 1 VP per round. Troops units are the only ones who can hold objectives. Each model with 20+ wounds counts for 1 kill VP.

This year we had five titans, two Warlords, two Warhounds and a Stompa. The Warlords went on the same table so they could face off, while the Stompa and one of the Warhounds went at it on a flank table. One Warlord and a Warhound went down turn one, the Stompa Tellyporta'd in turn two but got slagged by concentrated Shadowsword fire, and the surviving Warlord basically just spent the rest of the game deleting Knights while non superheavies and lighter units fought it out across the three boards.

Setup was done the evening before so players could simply walk in and unpack, while we had an on-site organizer who kept track of turn times, scoring and the like. Nearly twelve hours end to end, but was *DAMN* good fun.

We solved the you go I go by playing games like this with kill team rules.

I know right? We were kinda joking on a thanksgiving tanksgiving event about doing it, and we just tried it.

OMG it makes the game so much more fun to play with vehicles.

So yeah, if you want to have fun playing vehicular/titan murdercide, play killteam lol. And do not shy away from the rules, have leaders, have weapon specialists, use the cover rules, everything. It's really damn fun and it keeps the game fun for everyone.

 SHUPPET wrote:
how bout adeptus Titanicus?

Adaptus Titanicus is scalable to 40k sized units, and is a blast to play, but it does not include non-Titan units nor is it faster to play. It is a very good rules set, though.


We use to play “Floorhammer” back in the day, before Apocalypse. Push back all the tables and bookshelves at your FLGS and play from dusk til dawn. Invitation only, but you could bring a guest. Potluck encouraged. It was that special time when you could field all of your resin, your Warhounds, Reavers, Baneblades, Gargants, Phantoms, Bio-Titans, stretch-built Leviathans and Squat Land Trains. There were Ork and Squat Zeppelins, mole machines, even one guy that had a metal Thunderhawk! Our Ork player had 4 Gargants and a down Stompas. The Eldar play had a Phantom and a couple of their resin Superheavy grav Tanks. Imperial players had everything, from resin to metal to scratch built. And then we added our regular models, Infantry and tanks and guess-range artillery.

It was glorious.

Yes, it was as slow, and it sometimes took the entire weekend, but this was before cellphones, before pagers. We had patience then. We had community. We’d talk smack, talk game, talk Lore, and enjoy the social gathering of our Kind, the Grognards, the Gamers before the common video game players stole the name.

After Apocalypse, the games got smaller and faster (2-3 turns and it was over, rather than the 6-12 turn of Floorhammer), more people played (but less Grognards), and those that did play became less focused on the community as if their time was any more valuable than anyone else. Attention span and patience grow shorter, and the community became less social. A quick game of Apoc is no where near as fun as a long game of Floorhammer use to be. No one enjoys losing their Warlord to the opening volley. No one enjoys facing an indecisive opponent. No one enjoy having to explain banter to a 20-something. The hobby has shifted, and the old ways are dying out.

It was still glorious!


TL;DR - Yes, AT works fine at 40k scale, but it doesn’t speed anything up because it’s not supposed to.

SJ

When we played apocalypse, we would demarcate a section of floor to play in. Usually a space either like 6x8 or like 12x8

In my experience, it's pretty much just slow.

I'd just play A-T or something and ignore the stuff nobody cares about, like infantry, because all they're doing is prolonging the game.

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
I actually enjoyed a 10k point game where at least 50% of each side was in super heavies, with some suitably custom narrative rules and so on (generator buildings for modifying invuns, custom stratagems and so on) and it makes for a great experience, especially when you have a single knight house (Castellan, another one with 4 supporting knights and a dozen or so armigers) trying to hold against a Tyranid Monster ist rushing down, which Replens its own losses since the hive fleet always has more where that game from whilst the Tech Priests frantically but respectfully try to awaken the larger titans to join the fray.

NOW THAT, is a true 40k experience. It must be crafted and narrative when you reach such huge points, a aim to fight for other than "Side a rolls to kill Side b... End of."

Yes! This is the kind of stuff that interests me. Obviously we can't just increase the points values and expect it to work. There not only has to be a strong narrative component (because let's face it, no way this stuff is ever going to be "balanced") but there also needs to be a ton of house rules, special objectives, and list requirements to ensure that the game stays engaging beyond "I went first and wiped you off the board".

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.)

Love all of these ideas and I'm curious about the details if you remember them. What was the player count? What was the board size? And how long did the game end up taking?

Sterling191 wrote:

 slave.entity wrote:

I dream of participating in a game like this someday. It sounds completely absurd and over-the-top in a way that seems to perfectly express what 40k is all about. What are your experiences with it?

My prime LGS does an annual Apocalypse game and it's downright spectacular. There are three large tables (roughly 8' x 6'), each connected by a 4" x 18" "bridge". There are two primary objectives per table, with each player getting to place a secondary. Primaries are worth increasing points per round, while secondaries are 1 VP per round. Troops units are the only ones who can hold objectives. Each model with 20+ wounds counts for 1 kill VP.

This year we had five titans, two Warlords, two Warhounds and a Stompa. The Warlords went on the same table so they could face off, while the Stompa and one of the Warhounds went at it on a flank table. One Warlord and a Warhound went down turn one, the Stompa Tellyporta'd in turn two but got slagged by concentrated Shadowsword fire, and the surviving Warlord basically just spent the rest of the game deleting Knights while non superheavies and lighter units fought it out across the three boards.

Setup was done the evening before so players could simply walk in and unpack, while we had an on-site organizer who kept track of turn times, scoring and the like. Nearly twelve hours end to end, but was *DAMN* good fun.

Holy feth, what an awesome LGS. I'm jealous. Since it's a regular event, I'm guessing they must have a pretty robust set of rules and procedures ironed out and refined over the years to ensure the smoothest possible experience for what would probably be a logistics nightmare for first-timers.

So with yours we have:
- Three 8'x6' tables each connected by a 4"x18" bridge (Very cool setup. Seems perhaps more practical than a super long 4' deep board. Can titans and earthshakers shoot across tables?)
- Two primary objectives per table and each player places a secondary
- Primaries increase in points per round. Secondaries are 1VP per round. Standard troop obsec rules. 20+ wound model kills score 1VP.
- Setup done the night before (Smart!)

Sounds incredible! Twelve hours seems VERY reasonable for something of this magnitude. Would be a piece of cake spread out over a 3-4 day holiday weekend. But I'm sure your event organizers must be pro at handling the setup and logistics by this point. What was the player count? How did deployments work? Were there any list or objective restrictions to ensure that titans had meaningful interactions with other titans? How many points per side?

Clearly many here haven't had good experiences with titan-scale games. I am most interested in the ones who did have good experiences. And specifically what factors and house rules were in place to enable those experiences. If an event like this goes well then it seems like it'd be one worth remembering!

In a game like this more so than ever, "winning" is completely besides the point. Rules and attitude for all participants should all be geared toward creating a fun and memorable experience. Competitive players, please leave this thread now (Jk, jk...). Actually I'm also interested in the horror stories of giant games that went terribly wrong! Why did they go wrong? How big is too big? Titan vs infantry obviously doesn't work in the context of a straight-up brawl, so what kinds of house rules can we come up with to mitigate that? Requiring a minimum number of superheavies or titans on each side seems like an obvious first step. What other ideas do we have to ensure that both titans and ground forces will be able to provide meaningful contributions to the narrative?

 slave.entity wrote:

Holy feth, what an awesome LGS. I'm jealous. Since it's a regular event, I'm guessing they must have a pretty robust set of rules and procedures ironed out and refined over the years to ensure the smoothest possible experience for what would probably be a logistics nightmare for first-timers.

Yeah, this is the 6th year for the game. My first year participating, but it seemed like they've got it down to a science.

 slave.entity wrote:

Holy feth, what an awesome LGS. I'm jealous. Since it's a regular event, I'm guessing they must have a pretty robust set of rules and procedures ironed out and refined over the years to ensure the smoothest possible experience for what would probably be a logistics nightmare for first-timers.

So with yours we have:
- Three 8'x6' tables each connected by a 4"x18" bridge (Very cool setup. Seems perhaps more practical than a super long 4' deep board. Can titans and earthshakers shoot across tables?)
- Two primary objectives per table and each player places a secondary
- Primaries increase in points per round. Secondaries are 1VP per round. Standard troop obsec rules. 20+ wound model kills score 1VP.
- Setup done the night before (Smart!)

Yes, if you have range you can conceivably shoot across the entire room. Thats what the surviving Warlord ended up doing after his primary opponent went down, just sat there and lobbed shots at LoWs for the rest of the day.

One clarification though, its not just ObSec for Troops, its ONLY Troops that can score. You can sit on an objective with a Titan and not be considered holding it.

 slave.entity wrote:

Sounds incredible! Twelve hours seems VERY reasonable for something of this magnitude. Would be a piece of cake spread out over a 3-4 day holiday weekend. But I'm sure your event organizers must be pro at handling the setup and logistics by this point. What was the player count? How did deployments work? Were there any list or objective restrictions to ensure that titans had meaningful interactions with other titans? How many points per side?

It was 18-ish players total (we had one or two LGS staff cycle in and out as reinforcement drop ins to help out forces that were getting overwhelmed to keep things dynamic). We also did the full game over the course of a single day, but as you said it could likely be split out if you've got the inclination to do that.

Deployments were handled in a way I hadnt seen before, but that IMO worked pretty well. There was no roll of for first turn, instead both alliances bid command points to get first turn, and the team that won the first turn lost the points they bid. It's not an auction, it's simply a one-bid comparison, so no fake bidding to drive the price up.

Once that happened every player dropped their warlord within their DZ (2' deployment zones on the player's table edge). After that, they deployed their full army within 2' of their warlord, but still within the deployment zone.

Titans were deliberately matched to the same table. The center table was the big Titan table with the two Warlord class Titans facing off, and the Warhound-weight ones went at it on the left table. Rightmost table had no Titans.

Points were matched the morning of, during the pre-game, but ended up being roughly 15k per side per table (a smidge of variance from individual table to individual table, but the forces were pretty evenly divided), so ballpark 50k points per alliance. We had players with lists ranging from 2k all the way up to 12k.

 slave.entity wrote:
What other ideas do we have to ensure that both titans and ground forces will be able to provide meaningful contributions to the narrative?

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.

 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.

Finally, ignore all the talk of how "fun" it was to just hang out and chat about the fluff. That's how you get those 12-hour games where the store tells you to pack up so they can close and you haven't even finished the second turn. People need to be 100% focused on playing the game or you're going to get bogged down in all of those time issues. If someone can't pay attention to the game then don't invite them back next time.

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.

In a word, Fun, especially back when templates were a thing. I only played a game that big at home so we could just pause and resume as we needed to over the course of three days.

Games at this scale should not be treated that seriously and a lot of the fun was seeing what everyone had left turn three onward after a most of the big stuff had wiped each other out. Cobbling together a winning coalition of remaining units leads to some interesting game play and some really memorable moments.

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....

 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.