Apocalypse Event Suggestions?

[allegedlynerdy]

Hey all,

 

I'm running a campaign league at an FLGS, and the finale will be an apocalypse game. We expect 10-20 players and 20,000-40,000+ points. Does anyone have any suggestions for organizing this? Any idea of how much table space we'd need? There's not going to be any Titans afaik, biggest will be imperial knights.

 

Thanks in advance!

[NovemberIX]

Based on experience I’d say at least three 6x4 tables possibly a fourth if you’re doing an asymmetrical table layout. With that many people it’s probably best to do timed turns with mini-breaks built into the turn changeover to calculate points. If you can find it, I rcan commmend the Crusade of Fire book and the Apocalypse books for a fe other suggestions I know I’m glossing over.

[allegedlynerdy]

I'm not familiar with the Crusade of Fire book, when's it from?

[NovemberIX]

I think mid 6th edition, it was a limited run release but it had a lot of good content from a GM/organizer perspective.

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

build a strict schedule for game turns, with small breaks between each turn to decompress and clean up dead models.

make sure everybody is aware of the schedule. 

 

have "captains" per side to help direct players so they dont waffle around too much

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

also, do whatever you can to keep people motivated.

 

a shop had a 24hr game Apoc game (the owner thought it'd be a good idea...) and somewhere in the 12am-2am region we had people drifting off, one kid on their phone. Everybody was well aware of the time structure but when time came to put up or shut up, they balked. The owner tried to blame the captains but I informed him i'll take the blame when he stays the entire time. It was unrealistic to begin with but I was outvoted. 

 

the next apoc game was over the course of 2 days (I insisted on it or I wouldnt help run it) and it was much smoother, despite being bigger (i believe 120,000 total points, 60k a side). We had timed breaks, a captain per side keeping people motivated and engaged, food on site, breaks throughout the day, tables set aside to decompress, breaks between turns, I even brought a dry erase board with the table layout on it that I updated turn by turn to keep track of objectives, who needed help where and such. The other captain mocked me for being a dweeb but when the game ended we held 7 objectives, contested 2 and killed everything around the last objective deep in their deployment zone. 

 

So to repeat myself again, breaks are essential. Some of my group I've played with for 15+ years. 

I still insist on breaks. Luckily as we've aged it became more of a necessity. It also helps with strategy.

 

PLAN everything before hand. Have a schedule made available to every player. Make a FB group if you need to. Remind them constantly. Border on actual annoyance. Have extra dice, books, templates, movement trays (to speed up deployment), because no matter how long somebody has played they'll forget their crap day of.

 

Most importantly, and this may sound mean, but dont make it an open event. Select players carefully. Apocalypse is a LONG game with alot of prep required to have a fun time for everybody. Including even a single bad egg can ruin that for everybody. If there is a borderline personality wanting to play, and you dont have the heart to say no, then make it clear before hand that no crap will be tolerated. I'd rather hurt a single person than ruin a group experience that took actual months to organize because some neckbeard needs to assert their dominance. 

[Sturm Moonwolf]

I agree with Jarl Kjaran.

 

I've been playing 'Apocalypse' style games almost exclusively for the past decade and a half, and play with a group almost weekly at 20k v 20k (5k per player 4 on 4). We all know our armies and rules and takes us about 7-9 hours with a beer break (or lunch whichever you fancy) With so many players to deal with in your group, it most likely will happen that players will get distracted, and either not pay attention anymore after turn 1 or 2 or run their army about doing their own thing just to get it over with. I would maybe suggest breaking down that group into 2 separate games that are tied into each other in some way. (A group of 20 broken into 2 games of 5 on 5 for example), or even have the folks with larger armies fight each other while the smaller collections play on another table.

 

My group also has quite a few guys with 10k+ sized armies, and we do large 1 on 1 games (typically 7500-10kpts) that will affect circumstances in the next group game. but one thing we all know, anything more than 4 people on a team becomes tedious.

 

Just some suggestions/ideas.

[GawFang]

Adding to what people have said here...

With games lasting far longer than regular games make sure players know they must be around for the whole thing or work out how to deal with players dropping in and out. Its really quite frustrating when you spend 2 turns getting things ready for an attack only to have a player leave and take a chunk of models off the board.

With that said even when players tell you they can be there for the whole thing expect for at least one of your players to drop out or turn up late and not tell you about it until its too late to do anything about it.

[ProsperoStands]

I have organized and run a few Apoc events for 30k, with another coming up in June 2nd in Boston.

 

You NEED to keep the turns tight. I allocate 45 min per side that the war master divides as they see fit. So 10 for movement, 10 for shooting, 20 for Assault, etc. with a 1 min grace period to finish rolls.

 

Using this I have gotten 80k point apoc games done in 8-10 hours.