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So, the title explain it. I love Apocalypse, but I'm really annoyed by the NCCG approach to the game (and, even more important, almost everyone at our club despise it and make difficult to organize a game).

I, obviously, have already a few ideas about how to convert the current card to a different and more approachable form... but before talking of my idea I would love to know if you have felt the same, and/or what other management system you may think about that will keep the differences between armies but that is also easier to use and more straightforward (the current system is all over the place btw).

I like the current system. I dont mind drawing cards and planning when to use them.

I hate command points and stratagems. Cp farms to use the same 3-4 strategems over and over is bs and dull. At least with the deck building i have to build the deck and then hope i draw the cards i need when i need them.

I don't like it either, but I wouldn't be so bitter if they included all the cards in the original set. What are your solutions?

I think the biggest issue with the cards is a lack of proper scaling and the fact that some cards are blatantly better than others. There are, to my knowledge, at least four variants on the "Orbital Bombardment" ability, some of which are faction locked, some of which have vastly more damage potential than others.
Also, since discarding happens at the end of the turn rather than the beginning, it's entirely possible (and easy) to amass a huge deck of cards, and in large games you could potentially be picking up nearly your entire deck.

The easier fix is to cap card draws to 10 cards. At most you can fill your hand.

Well, my idea is more or less the following:

1) Analyze the current rules and cards. I'm collecting all of them on a DB to group them (here btw: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1amZ9o2jqtz_m9sWGD88XfUbofb9A-W8ZvuupEYNHfyk/edit?usp=sharing ) and for a first assessment.
There are indeed a number of similarities and (even if the work isn't complete), I think there are wide margin to merge a lot of them.
I think almost nothing will be lost in terms of fluff and narrative support if we reduce the entirety of those (more or less) 300 cards to a 20/30 general archetype of effects.

2) create a substitute system that can be integrated as smooth as possible. So, for example, any effect that can be created (by terrain, mission rules etc. - the most common are those that allows to pick another Asset) can be directly converted.
Also, the idea is to uniform the effect throught armies: "Orbital Bombardment" will be the same for anyone, whatever they are Tyranid, Imperium or someone else.

3) The idea I'm propending toward is compose by 3 layer of "Stratagem" (in lack of a better name).
The first level is the Command Assett "Apocalypse". Any armies have them. Let's say there are 6.
Then there are army specific stratagems. Let's say 6.
Then we have the specific one, those related to specific subfaction. Those are already 2/3 in general.

Also, implement 2 hard cap: only 1 "Stratagem" to any detachment may be used any turn (to avoid stacking and deathball that benefit simultaneously by a lot of different cards), and any stratagem can be used only once a turn (to avoid that the most beneficial are used exclusively.
Add a simple conversion by point per point base (so, any Stratagem cost 1, any Detachment generate 1 Asset a turn, any effect that give a card provide 1 point, any effect that let you select a card give D3 point) and you're almost done.

Other small fixes will be to give any armies a specific selection of "stratagem" for the second tier based on their tactics (so Eldar will have the "Movement" ones, like Blood Angel, whilst Ultramarine will have those more tactical).

Another idea is to let the "stratagem" be somehow generic, and the specific army use them differently (For example, the "Replace Order" assett will be a generic one. Ultramarine can replace the order with any other. Blood Angel only with Move or Assault. Dark Angel only with Aimed Fire... and so on).

There are a number of intended consequences due to the mess that current Assets are. For example, the target will became only Unit or Detachment (removing the "3 unit" example): this means that using a Stratagem that target a single unit will inhibit the rest of the Detachment to use any other Assett.... or for example if you use a "Stratagem" during the Action Phase the same Detachment will not be able to benefit from a different "Stratagem" that applies at the Start of Damage Phase (like all those that provide Ignore Damage 5+).
Another intended consequences is that replicating twice the same "Stratagem" at a general and the faction (or eventually subfaction) level will replicate the fact that with deck you can use "the same" (aka: very similar) stratagem to different unit. As a practical example: imagine that any armies has the chance of having a free Assault Action. Astartes will have another "Stratagem" to gain a free Assault action (eventually with a bonus, but it's irrelevant now). Then a specific Chapter (like Space Wolves) has another "stratagem" to gain a free Assault action.
A standard army like Eldar can have a unit that have a free Assault.
Adeptus Astartes like Blood Angel can have 2 unit from 2 different Detachment with a free Assault
Space Wolves are able in the same turn to have 3 unit from 3 detachment gain a free Assault.
Basically, the "Tier" of different strategems allows to create the event of a duplicate stratagems by two cards... even with the hard limitation of 1/turn.


In the end, it will work similarly to the Strategem in 40K (that, btw, I don't like at all) but with much more restraint, uniform rules between all armies (or, at least, rules that have a common structure), less bookeeping and no CP farm.
Also, it will provide a little support for a more strategical counterplay.. forcing enemy to change his/her Order and than doubling down on a specific unit that cannot be protected later in the turn... and stuff like that.

Only issue will be to track what "Stratagem" any unit have used... but to be honest that's pretty easy: it's enought to have a list of 4-6-8 possible "Stratagem" for any army (subfaction - faction - universal) and use a dice of the appropriate size placed near the unit.

My idea should, as a final product, produce a single A4 (or A5) page for any different army that list a dozen of "Stratagems" tops.... and that's it. The rest stays the same.

I also think eventually you can reintroduce the old "Strategy" value for different armies that provide the initial number of "Tactical Point"... but honestly that's a minor issue. First and foremost I need to complete the assessment of those all.

P.S: right now the Assets listed includes all with the exception of: Eldar (any), Apocalypse general Assets, Caos (any) and Necron. Tau are in progress. All other armies are already listed... and you can already see a lot of overlapping.

Waaaghpower wrote:

Also, since discarding happens at the end of the turn rather than the beginning, it's entirely possible (and easy) to amass a huge deck of cards, and in large games you could potentially be picking up nearly your entire deck.

Reading rules is tech, discarding happens at the end of a phase. You can draw your whole deck, but only keep 10 for the rest of the turn if you cannot somehow burn them all there and then.

Personally I don't mind the card system as long as the cards are distributed fairly. I have the basic set + the extra pack, which we've then dealt out with my opponent so that both get nice stuff (like checking "okay, there's 12 cards to mitigate damage, let's deal six for both sides"). Of course this can then be fiddled with if there's some skew players would like to try, like taking more orbital weaponry or something. If the enemy is drawing lots, kill their commanders. It's not too hard RAW, unless you make character targeting harder. The cards are useful, but not overpowering and focusing on gathering them means you have lots of troops that aren't contributing as much for their points.

If you want to lose the cards, I'd advocate for straight up ditching them all and giving all commanders a command reroll or something similar that they generate every turn for their detachment. Overcomplicating things with a rather abstract system is often bound to crash and burn before getting thoroughly tested, especially if your gaming group doesn't have the hots for the system to begin with.

@Cybtroll
That looks like a great idea. So many of the cards are so unbalanced, even those that do the same thing. Cutting them down to a few dozen archetypes will help the game a lot.

It looks like you a proposing a system where each player has a list of cards/stratagems and then they can pick one to use on each of their detachments or a unit in each of their detachments every turn. Each stratagem can only be used once per game per detachment, correct?

I don't understand what you mean by a tier system. Wouldn't that just let an army duplicate stratagems?

In addition, I don't think I understand the tier system, having the same stratagem do different things to different factions. So you have 3 sheets of paper applying to each detachment, one for universal stratagems, one for the faction stratagems, and one containing all the subfaction stratagems (of which 2 will apply to the detachment). Over the course of the game, you will use 5 of the 18 stratagems applying to each unit. Or do you apply one stratagem from each category each turn? So you can use one stratagem from each category for each detachment each turn for 3 total (no duplicating universal and faction stratagems), or maybe you can chose between a faction and subfaction one, so 2 total. Keeping in mind some stratagems affect the whole detachment and some affect only one unit in the detachment. That's an interesting idea, but it might a bit limiting if you only have 8 general stratagems.