Hey folks,
I've had myself quite a few games of apocalypse now and I've noticed that there are several aspects of it that I love, but that also change the fundamental way one must construct an army.

Here's the first thing I've noticed; Bog standard marines and troopers find themselves ineffective and overlooked. I found that unless an infantry unit is either very fast, cheap or heavily armed then it simply isn't effective. Its gotten to the stage that I no longer take standard squads of CSMs in my Apocalypse force, preferring instead to load up with havocs so they can at least make a dent in something. The sheer scale and profusion of big guns in Apocalypse robs the basic trooper of the chance to make a difference as he might in a standard game.

I have yet to try out the cult marines in my army, though I'm guessing that they will fair better due to increased firepower (Noise, T'sons), Survivability (Nurgle) or CC ability (Berserkers). I'm particularly interested in flank marching a maelstrom of gore into the rear of an enemy army! :demon:

Secondly, I have found that Apocalypse is about groups of units, that is to say, rough formations attacking the same target en masse, Particularly if your target is a super-heavy where the combined firepower of several units will be required to even dent such a beast. The same applies to charges, where multiple units hitting home simultaneously will have a greater chance of swaying a flank and capturing one or more objectives.

Thirdly, range is key. This may sound obvious, or even unnecessary given that due to the setup rules for apocalypse, you can start a lot closer to the enemy than in a standard game. Despite this, in my games I have found that even some heavy weapons such as LC's HB's etc just dont reach what I want to hit, especially when firing diagonally down the table.

Lastly, given the shape of your deployment zones, and the rules for various stratagems, it is very common to find your units ambushed and isolated by arriving enemy reinforcements, leading to perhaps an obscene combat unit or two marching all the way through those havoc squads and basilisks you had set up in the corner for example. I believe the solution may be to organize your army into several 'battle groups' , the number of which depending upon the size of game of course. Ideally each group should have elements which are specialised in combat and shooting, preferably mobile where possible in order to seize objectives. These units should be deployed together so they are mutually supporting with each 'battle group' almost acting as a small independent army. This is a tactic I intend to try out in my next game, I'll let you know how it goes.

In one game I played, I only lost a single model, which was an Obliterator. But otherwise, nothing on my side got hit, other than the borrowed Baneblade. Nothing was in range, my Iron Warrior unit just had no way to reach the enemy, and my Blastmaster only shot once!

In normal games of 40K, a 72" range is amazing, Railguns hit all, but in this Apocalypse game, the Baneblade was limited to just a few pockets of Twinkies (Dark Eldar) because I was out of range!

Although, admittedly, I did start further back, because I couldn't communicate with my team during deployment (stupid Jammers <_< )

Although, when battle is finally joined, everything works fine.

Even though I dont really support apoc, I have no choice but to play it for now. (nobody will play normal!)

So I just ripped out 70 terminators and told everyone to come at me. Even if it was 2 on 2, I made it a 3vs1 and managed to take a bunch of victories here and there. Deep strike where they dont want you to and they pretty much fall over dead.

The game after that they wanted to face that same army again. SO! I pulled out my mostly out of date vehicle army of marines. I think I tossed something like 30 classic predators, vindicators, whirlwinds and some specialist vehicles like baals, and old rhinos I quick-converted (on the spot in the store!) into whirlwinds. Took me but 5 minutes to do 3 tanks, gotta love havoc launchers!

So, I just called the army the blast from the past, and the enemy were totting something like 40to60 plasma guns and 10 lascannons. I wiped everyone. :lol:

Ok so apoc is fun, but I rather play the normal way.

Apocalypse does produce some top quality destruction.

Such as one Vortex Grenade taking out 4 Grey Knight Terminators, Brother-Captain Stern, a wraithlord, Avatar and a Farseer...

Moved to the 40K section

most infantry are pretty ineffective in apocolypse but this type of battle was made for obliterators. drop 3 of them where you want them and they can be more effective than an orbital bombardment as far as taking out one hard target like a super heavy tank , a special character, or a nasty squad of just about any other troops. they're pretty good at holding objectives too but they tend to draw alot of attention so usually dont last more than a turn or two.

Also, with the rules for Strategic Reserves, you have full control on when they Deep Strike! No more rolling to see if they turn up, want them to DS on turn 4 to grab an objective? You can with no hassle!

What I love is... well, let me explain slightly. I'm a member of Work In Progress, I'm one of these guys that has whacked out concepts for my armies (Massive Tomb Spyder titans, Mecha-Abominations, daemon-possessed Heavy Gear walkers, and many, many Knights...)
In the past, I was limited because most of these units would fit into Heavy Support, and so I'd be restricted by the Force Organisation Chart. Not so for Apoc, and I'm going berzerk with conversions.

I haven't played it yet, got far too few things. But from what i read the concept is great. But aimed at fun not balance. I think apoc will need but also deserves updated versions over time. As it's a good concept.

Apoc reminds me of that one old PC game, I forget its name. Had orks and imperials, can make any kind of imperial army including titans.

I think you mean final liberation, ahh memories :)

I've played a couple of Apoc games so far and i don't think balance is really too much of an issue, yes you can bring in some sick lists but everything costs points, you have an army of only terminators then you will have alot fewer models than the other guy so his masses of fire will drop you sooner or later, you take too many tanks and you will loose to rending claws or whatever. add the strategems in there and you can conquer pretty much any "uber force" someone can come up with. basically you will have to balance your army to be effective. the fact that you now are able to do what you want in my opinion just shows how good of a stratigist you are. you want to stop that cheesey player from building his stupid, non-fluff, only winning matters army? then get with your gameing group and start an apoc campaign for the next month or so you can make an apoc list but you have to use the same list or every battle. trust me, those players almost always build an army that excells at one thing, that means it will be weak against something else. they may walk over a bunch of marines but I bet 'nids or orks will walk all over them. and crushing those people who are only concerned with winning just feels so good :))

What's the point by building an always winning, beefed out, cheesy army? Where's the challenge? There's nothing more honourable then win over a opponent with a well balanced force, using superior tactics and outmaneuver your enemy outright!

Way back when I played with Black Templars, I refused to battle a friend of mine who had a REALLY cheesy Blood Angels Army. 2 Preds, Annihilator and Destructor, a rhino, a "hard as nails" chaplain, 15 or more Death company marines and the rest of those blood-red-painted-armoured-goons had plasma and melta weapons AND jump packs! Did I mention two five-men squads of sniper scouts?

But I DID battle a "Godzilla" Tyranid army. 2 hive tyrants, 6 carnifexes (yeah, I still shiver when i think about it) and two/four ripper swarms. But eventually, I managed to kill the whole bunch thanks a LOT to those LOVELY assault cannons on my LRC and dreadnoughts! (Got to LOVE rending weapons!)

Apoc is a lot of fun, just got done with my first game myself. I agree with loki that building a "Cheesy buffed out force" takes away from any strategy. But being able to field units that you’ve dreamed up, or better yet creating new rules for existing units, rules that fit the fluff GW is always spewing out but never backing up in game play terms and using super heavy’s without asking for permission is refreshing to say the least. Once the new Chaos codex was out I ripped apart my basilisk was going to do a conversion with my titan but for apoc ended up, throwing the cannon on my recent purchased land raider gave it two structure points and the super heavy rules with multi-targeting (Something I think a land raider with two sponsons should have to begin with) and earned its points back twice over.

I played my IW chaos force with Nids aginst my friends Word Bearer/ Eldar and smoked him, mostly because we dident set up objectives (Something I strongly recommend against). Herding eldar into firing lines with nids is freaking awesome though. Taking normal troops is almost pointless, hell even deep-striking is almost pointless, seems like whomever has more range and firepower is going too win, without objectives of course. It was a lot of fun cant wait to play another but I still favor a good 1500 point game.

One last thing! Dont use the damn forge world rules for your titan I ended up calling my titan the "Wall-mart pattern Warhound".
:pwned

Telos is right about the forgeworld rules. in order to make them legal forgeworld uses the VDR rules points for the most part. this means that anything they supply will be badly overpriced (much like the models to begin with, but I digress) unfortunatly, until GW makes data sheets for everything out there you will still have to play high points for things like bombard batteries and the land raider helios. just consider it the price you have to pay for the more rare tech out there.
it would be nice if GW would redo the VDR rules for apoc battles but I doubt that will happen.

Not true actually. In Apocalypse all reserves must be committed by turn 3 at the latest.

Well, A good ol' "Cleanse" mission will be pretty boring in Apocalypse. By Perturabo, I wouldn't mind herding and shelling my opponent into oblivion, but there's more fun to have objectives where you have to support each unit in a delicate webbing of fire- and close ranged-support to sustain control over the objective, which could be everything from retrieveing a partly-destroyed necron warrior to a crashed Imperial Shuttle transporting Space Marine Gene Seed. :thumb:

I agree completely loki Apoc without objectives is much more boreing and unfair for armys without long range fire support.

I bet EVERY tau player now asks every time he plays a apoc battle: "Is it ok for you that we just go for a cleanse mission?" :lol:

true, cleanse missions don't seem like much fun, but what about some of the other scenarios? I think a bunker assault would be awsome, and there are a few others I might be willing to try.

Well, for a bunker assualt, just make the bunkers the objectives?

I think that you need a lot of terrain on an Apoc table to make it 'fun'. I mean, I'm going to have a lot of fun with my PaK-40 batteries, but thinking hard about placing them, and then herding my opponent out into the open and into their line of fire is going to be delicious.

Plus Take and Hold missions can become very interesting. Holding the objective isn't the hard part. Manuvering your fire support to actually engage the holding unit, without getting the almighty crap blown out of themselves, yeah, that's gonna be cool.

heh, how about like "Capture the Siege Gun"? or "Destroy that Defence Line"? Oh wait, re-acting the Dawn of War last mission "Bringing the Warlord On-line"!

Sheesh...you can come up with tons of missions for Apocalypse, and never run out of ideas! :yes: