Mega battles in 9th?

[Valkyrion]

Spitballing thread.

 

How would you go about playing Apocalypse style games in 9th edition?

 

Option 1:

Use 8th edition apocalypse rules

 

Pro: Rules already exist, system in place.

Con: No datasheets for dozens of new units.

 

 

Option 2:

Use 9th edition rules as written but with no FOC. 

 

Pro: Datasheets exist, no need to relearn an older system

Con: Time. 8th ed Apocalypse lets you do 500 power level in a long evening. 500PL 40k will take days, even if you theme your forces around lords of war. 

A good alpha strike means player B doesn't get to use their fancy big toys and could render the rest of the game moot. 

 

 

Option 3:

Use 9th edition rules, but with alternating activations.

 

Pro: as above

Con: ??? I genuinely don't know. 40k has never used AA and there must be a reason for that. Do any issues immediately jump at anyone? 

Using AA would mitigate alpha strike and allow players to use all of their toys, more or less.

It doesn't do anything to speed up the game, though, if anything it slows it down.  At least in standard rules, the game organically speeds up as models and units are removed, as would this, but less are being removed at once. 

 

 

Option 4:

Either option 2 or 3, but infantry are 2 or 3 times more expensive than normal, stratagems cannot be used on infantry units, no infantry has ObSec, but all vehicles, monsters and lords of war gain obsec. 

 

This is a bit out of the box, but was a suggestion by a friend. His reasoning was that at such a scale most of our time should be taken up by big toys, not moving 30 gaunts, charging 30 gaunts and then using stratagems to make them fight again and so on. 

 

 

Any ideas?

[MegaVolt87]

Use the open play rules and power levels in 9th. You don't need tighter missions and FOC etc from matched for a big game. Never take them serious business either, its just for fun at such a big game, don't feel obligated to finish it either if its very sprawling. 

[Warhead01]

Use the open play rules and power levels in 9th. You don't need tighter missions and FOC etc from matched for a big game. Never take them serious business either, its just for fun at such a big game, don't feel obligated to finish it either if its very sprawling. 

I've done this same thing in other editions with the goal of playing till turn 4 if we couldn't play more turns but with 9th it feels like it wouldn't even reach turn 4.

Maybe set one main objective both sides are playing for as the focus of the game. In later turns skip out on units that just can't contribute to either player reaching that goal. 

Objectives in the center maybe but give it a big area maybe a 9 inch radius and use a table larger enough, like a 4X6 or 4X8. I feel like unless you have your armies down things like stratagems will bog down the game.  

 

On a side not Apoc 8th, not sure if that's actually what it's caller, plays very differently than 8 or 9 40K games. If you can adapt those play mechanics then your larger mega battle might actually play a full number of turns and might play more smoothly. I'm not sure how Apoc works in it's latest edition as far as data sheets. You might be able to home brew some you need? No idea. 

 

[tychobi]

We did a 10k battle in 7 hours using 9th ed 40k rules with two players and one helper. If you konw your rules and dont muck about 9th is fast. Armageddons most recent edition is a rad game but is only marginally faster at scale. Oddly it works best for us at a scale equivilant to about 2k 40k points.

[MARK0SIAN]

I’d start by eliminating as many of the time consuming aspects as possible. Remove all rerolls, all stratagems, all secondary objectives, morale and set any random damage weapons to a fixed damage, for example any d3 damage weapons is always 2 damage.

 

That will help streamline the game somewhat. I think your friend is right in saying that you play apocalypse to play with the big toys so I’d make it a requirement that X percent of each list must be units above a certain power level and maybe even hard cap infantry units.

 

I’d probably take an idea from 8th apocalypse that damage is resolved at the end of a phase. In the shooting phase everything then gets to shoot at least once. In the combat phase everything gets to swing at least once.

 

Other than that I think you’d have to change so much of the core rules that you’d no longer be playing 9th and would be better just playing 8th apocalypse with homemade data sheets for any new stuff.

[Jolemai]

Option 5 - use the CA Apocalypse rules for 40k (i.e not the new game) as it will scale to 9th accordingly.

[Noserenda]

The 8th era apocalypse system is probably best, homebrew out any new datasheets :)

 

If you can't agree on that then stripping out bloat as suggested by Markosian will probably work. I'd argue apocalypse is just as much about scores of smaller things though!

[Valkyrion]

I’d probably take an idea from 8th apocalypse that damage is resolved at the end of a phase. In the shooting phase everything then gets to shoot at least once. In the combat phase everything gets to swing at least once.

 

 

How would you do this? In apocalypse it doesn't matter what you are hit by, you use multiple blast markers, so I'm not sure how that could translate without a ton of bookkeeping?

 

Would you ideas not work equally well with alternating activations? If we're talking stompas and knights and baneblades et al It's unlikely that one unit would entirely destroy another unit in one activation, but even if it does then there are hopefully other super heavies left to play with.

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

I’d probably take an idea from 8th apocalypse that damage is resolved at the end of a phase. In the shooting phase everything then gets to shoot at least once. In the combat phase everything gets to swing at least once.

 

How would you do this? In apocalypse it doesn't matter what you are hit by, you use multiple blast markers, so I'm not sure how that could translate without a ton of bookkeeping?

 

Would you ideas not work equally well with alternating activations? If we're talking stompas and knights and baneblades et al It's unlikely that one unit would entirely destroy another unit in one activation, but even if it does then there are hopefully other super heavies left to play with.

Id probably do it so each side moves and shoots. Then each side charges and fights. For each unit maybe put a marker next to it saying how many wounds/models it lost but it doesn’t actually lose them until both sides have moved and shot. Then do the same for fighting.

 

Alternative activations do work really well with super heavies. I played in a couple of events called League of Knights run by the honest wargamers channel. The games were purely knights V knights and used alternate activations. It works really well but only because each side had similar kind of models and most importantly, a similar number of units on each side. Because the models were all knights it also meant you didn’t really have any chaff units to activate first to make your opponent have to activate before you used your good stuff.

[Valkyrion]

What about a unit hierarchy system?

Each turn is a few mini turns;

Player A uses all of their Titanic models - moving, psychic, shooting, charging, fighting.

Player B then does the same.

Player A then uses all of their vehicles and monsters

B - ditto

A - bikes and cavalry

B - ditto

Finally A - infantry and B infantry.

 

Morale takes place right at the very end. 

 

This is a bit like alternate activation, but allows the players to focus their forces how they want. 

As you said, AA is fine for 10 knights vs 10 knights but not so good for 10 knights vs a green tide, so this way a player could do a proper apocalyptic horde and have the advantage late turn, whilst a guard tank company would have the mid turn advantage and the knights the first turn advantage. 

 

To all intents and purposes, each Unit phase would be a new turn; so transports could advance in their turn and the infantry within could disembark at the start of their turn, because in effect the vehicle hasn't moved in that infantry units turn. 

 

Could even run a system whereby the unit focus is mutable - roll a D6 at the start of the turn, on a 1-3 the order is reversed so that infantry go first and super heavies go last. 

[MARK0SIAN]

I quite like that idea! I think it would work well but I’d probably keep it a fixed order each round just for simplicity/speed sake.

 

One thing we’ve used before in a big game we played was that for the first turn all infantry units were -1 to hit to avoid them being nuked straight away.

 

I’ve also seen a fog of war mechanic used effectively where all weapons are limited in range but the range increases each turn. So in the first turn weapons can only fire at units within 12 inches for example. Then on turn 2 it goes to 18 or 24 inches and so on. It helps make it a bit less lethal in the first couple of turns.

Edited March 11, 2022 by MARK0SIAN

[Schlitzaf]

I always like enforcing classic apoc rules.

30 Minute Player Turns Period. Or 45 Minute Player if people are slow.

[Valkyrion]

This thread has been a great help, and I don't mind if the admin feel like it needs shunting to the lesser spotted homegrown rules section.

 

How does this feel; (obliques are the same thing but bigger because you might have all day to play, or 6 hours or a full weekend)

 

 

150/225/300 Power each player

15/25/30 Command Points to spend on stratagems when building your army.

These stratagems become one use only but you can buy multiples unless that stratagem is normally one use only. (e.g, 4 overwatch strats, or 3 transhuman, but only 1 orbital barrage or bolster defences etc)

All stratagems only cost 1CP. 

Stratagems cannot be used to give relics or warlord traits to units.

Any stratagem can instead be used as Command Reroll stratagems. (e.g, you spend CP on a psychic denial strat and the opponent has no psykers, or all your infantry are dead so there's no use keeping your transhuman etc) 

No detachments.

No innate aura abilities. Auras granted via warlord traits, psychic powers and stratagems are allowed. (not sure on this, I'm sure there's important auras I'm forgetting about. the point is to mitigate the reroll 1 auras from warbosses, lieutenants and the like)

1 Warlord Trait. Warlord must still be a CHARACTER.

Maximum of 50/75/100 power can be spent on INFANTRY, BIKES, or CAVALRY (1/3 of the army)

 

Changes to the Turn Sequence:

Each player shares a Command Phase and both players roll off to see who is the Attacker and who is the Defender for that turn.

Attacker then has a movement phase, a psychic phase and then a shooting phase.

Defender then has a movement phase, a psychic phase and then a shooting phase.

Attacker then has a charge phase and a fight phase.

Defender then has a charge phase and a fight phase.

There is no Morale phase.

Back to the beginning.

 

Changes to missions and objectives:

No secondary objectives.

Roll for an Onslaught mission to determine objective placement and deployment zone location.

Score points as follows for each turn, including the first:

5 points per turn for holding the objective(s) in your deployment zone.

10 points per turn for holding the central objective(s).

15 points per turn for holding the objective(s) in your opponent’s deployment zone.

 

Score points at the end of the game:

10 points for eliminating the enemy Warlord

10 points for eliminating all INFANTRY, BIKES and CAVALRY models

10 points for eliminating all VEHICLES or MONSTERS

10 points for eliminating each Titanic unit.

 

 

-------------

 

It looks like a lot of changes, but I don't think it is because most of it is in army building and then scoring, the gameplay itself should be fairly fluid.

 

[MARK0SIAN]

Sounds like a decent plan. I think you’ve got a solid shot at a decent game in a decent timeframe with that and it shouldn’t be onerous for everyone to grasp the rules.