24000 pts apocalypse - tips?

[wbravenboer]

In a few weeks time we will be playing a major apocalypse game, 6 players, 4000 pts each,
tyranids/eldar versus IG/SM
The tyranids will be fielding a Hierophant and a barbed Hierodule,
the imperiums has at least 3 baneblades, a stormlord and a shadowsword.
I will be playing IG, especially the hierophant has me scared, and of course a lot of trygons, mawlocs and
beasties will be coming along...
Are there some people who can give me and my mates some pointers to deal with the bio-titan or some tactical advice? ;)

[Xas]

hierophant hates lascannons
hierodules hate krak missiles and batlecanons

kill the 'dule first as it has comparatively high shooting power for its low survivability.


rest is just like any other game. if you defeat them in detail you also defeat them in the whole.

if you want to really bug the bugs get some destroyer weapons (imperial titans / laser weaponry) and a decent shield of small tanks so their hierophant cannot get it.

[DarkLink]

Make an Imperitor Class Titan from cardboard, and watch your opponents remove several square feet worth of models all at a time:D

[wbravenboer]

that is a great idea! ;)
I have a warhound titan, but still in the box, it is a beautiful model, that deserves some time to make it into the killer it will be!
It is an idea to get some covering units, like sentinels, to try to protect the big tanks against those deep striking units?
Chances are that our Space marine player will use a lot of devastators and drop-pods to hammer the big ones, as our super-heavies will be blasting big chunks of tyranids... the heavy AP2 weapons will be aimed at those titans, it will be a matter of when those things will come in close contact, then it is probably 'game over'...

[blackjack]

24,000pts!

My advice.. RedBull lots and lots of RedBull. It's going to be a long day....

[HiveFleetTiamat]

As someone who has played a 10k myself. Make sure you have lots a blast templates vs nids.

[Mike X]

My advice.. RedBull lots and lots of RedBull. It's going to be a long day....

Great advice. My recommendation would be Mountain Dew though, since energy drinks taste nasty and make you crash hard.

[Herald of Nurgle]

As someone who has taken part in a 50k game, let me give you a few pieces of advice:
- Give yourself fun time based objectives to give people a reason to not just give up and go to lunch each 30 mins. The Imperial Guard have a Thermal Detonation Device (tm) that'll blow up the planet, for example, which could be shown as a linked set of CSM Doomsday Devices. Give bonuses to sides for completing the objectives.
- Definitely need to be sure about the procedure you and your opponents are using. Who moves whom? Who responds? etc.
- Bring loads of assets. Seriously. Scheduled Bombardments can help to thin out the tide early on so that you or your opponent don't have to worry about the full 24k pts. :P
- The last Apoc game I played (10k pts) I brought about 24 cans of coke, 2 pies, and a cake. Mmmm, cake.

[Walls]

Oddly enough I just went through a huge apocalypse game. 45000pts on the table, all painted, 7 players, 8 hours...

Also wrote an article about it!

http://deathbridgewarhammer.blogspot.com/2010/06/apocalypse-and-things-ive-learned.html

[The AKH]

that is a great idea! ;)
It is an idea to get some covering units, like sentinels, to try to protect the big tanks against those deep striking units?


Just cover the flanks with more tanks. :D Seriously.

[Mike X]

- Give yourself fun time based objectives to give people a reason to not just give up and go to lunch each 30 mins. The Imperial Guard have a Thermal Detonation Device (tm) that'll blow up the planet, for example, which could be shown as a linked set of CSM Doomsday Devices. Give bonuses to sides for completing the objectives.
- Bring loads of assets. Seriously. Scheduled Bombardments can help to thin out the tide early on so that you or your opponent don't have to worry about the full 24k pts. :P

These are great advice too. I mean, really, if you're doing something as insane as 24,000 points, you might as well include some non-standard stuff to keep things interesting.

[eagleboy7259]

In a few weeks time we will be playing a major apocalypse game, 6 players, 4000 pts each,
tyranids/eldar versus IG/SM
The tyranids will be fielding a Hierophant and a barbed Hierodule,
the imperiums has at least 3 baneblades, a stormlord and a shadowsword.
I will be playing IG, especially the hierophant has me scared, and of course a lot of trygons, mawlocs and
beasties will be coming along...
Are there some people who can give me and my mates some pointers to deal with the bio-titan or some tactical advice? ;)

Pray you get the first turn?

[wbravenboer]

Yes! That would be nice...
Also a time limit for every turn ;) We will discuss some ideas and rules, pictures and videos will be made.
The idea is a kind of 'wave assault' battle mission, with 3 tablesides for the nids and the imperium in the center-area with one table edge. Perhaps a 'defender' first turn is a reasonable suggestion.

[eagleboy7259]

I've always wanted to try Apoc, is the system actually fun? Like is there a bit more to it than whoever has the nicest forgeworld piece wins? I don't wanna invest in something that I'll play once and drop $600 bucks on

[wbravenboer]

I don't think that it is necessary to use forgeworld monsters ;)
We have played some smaller apoc games before, it is a great excuse to get to use all your models,
no restrictions and have fun!
But I do read about some things to think about, also what's said in the apoc book, the best way is to discuss some
rules and regulations, because otherwise a hierophant will destroy pretty much your whole army...
You can also play a 10000 pts game with only troops, 1500 gaunts against 1500 orc boyz?

[DarkAngelHopeful]

I've played a handful of 24,000 point games. In my experience, make sure you have time to finish the game. It was very disappointing to have to stop the game because someone had to make it home at night for work the next day.

If you have a lot of infantry, I suggest starting as close to the no man's land as possible. In one game, both teams decided to sit back and the game consisted of some shooting and lots of moving and running and not very much action.

Also, We played a game on a 12'x4' board, one on a 10'x4' board and decided that even with that many points it's too much space to facilitate action and speed of play. The last one we played was on a 4'x8' board and was 24,000 points. It sounds cramped at first, but it's really not. Especially when you are sinking so many points into titans, planes, baneblades, etc. And my group found that having a smaller board facilitated action better. Things got interesting from the first turn on because we were at each other's throats pretty much from the beginning.

One thing about balance that I learned was to make sure both sides have a close to even amount of D strength weapons. My team had a warhound titan, 3 bane blades, and 5 thunder bolt fighters. My friends on the other team had an eldar titan and an eldar cobra for super heavies. Both of the edlar vehicles had multiple D weapons and my team had none. On the first turn we had one structure point left on the titan and 2 baneblades were dead. The entire game we never really scratched the eldar vehicles. And that's not to say we didn't try either. I shot 20 missiles from my planes and all of their weapons on the first turn and all I did was destroy a weapon which he rolled and got back. I believe the game would have been more fun and balanced if my team would have taken some D weapons.

Bring snacks to munch on.

I think a time limit per turn would speed up the game play.

remember to have fun! =D

[Xas]

I've played a handful of 24,000 point games. In my experience, make sure you have time to finish the game. It was very disappointing to have to stop the game because someone had to make it home at night for work the next day.

If you have a lot of infantry, I suggest starting as close to the no man's land as possible. In one game, both teams decided to sit back and the game consisted of some shooting and lots of moving and running and not very much action.

Also, We played a game on a 12'x4' board, one on a 10'x4' board and decided that even with that many points it's too much space to facilitate action and speed of play. The last one we played was on a 4'x8' board and was 24,000 points. It sounds cramped at first, but it's really not. Especially when you are sinking so many points into titans, planes, baneblades, etc. And my group found that having a smaller board facilitated action better. Things got interesting from the first turn on because we were at each other's throats pretty much from the beginning.

One thing about balance that I learned was to make sure both sides have a close to even amount of D strength weapons. My team had a warhound titan, 3 bane blades, and 5 thunder bolt fighters. My friends on the other team had an eldar titan and an eldar cobra for super heavies. Both of the edlar vehicles had multiple D weapons and my team had none. On the first turn we had one structure point left on the titan and 2 baneblades were dead. The entire game we never really scratched the eldar vehicles. And that's not to say we didn't try either. I shot 20 missiles from my planes and all of their weapons on the first turn and all I did was destroy a weapon which he rolled and got back. I believe the game would have been more fun and balanced if my team would have taken some D weapons.

Bring snacks to munch on.

I think a time limit per turn would speed up the game play.

remember to have fun! =D


generally the idea to blaance D weaponry is right.

but not a necessarity if the team with more D weapons is eldar. if you only manage one glance 5 or pen 3 with 20 ordnance (2d6 pick highest for armor pen) s8 missiles you pretty much fail hardcore at rolling.

I once destroyed an eldar titan with two heavy weapon teams with 3 autoannons each and a company commander to twinlink their weapons. eldar vehicles are AV12 and isntead of solid shields they only get a 4+ invul save you can negate with a single stunned result (they have to move to get the save). they also do not have the normal holofields that cause you to roll 2d6 and pick the lower for damage results so each pen (4+ with lascannons!) has a 1/3 chance of doing structural damage!


the dangerous thing about D weaponry is that it blasts trough cover!

[DarkAngelHopeful]

generally the idea to blaance D weaponry is right.

but not a necessarity if the team with more D weapons is eldar. if you only manage one glance 5 or pen 3 with 20 ordnance (2d6 pick highest for armor pen) s8 missiles you pretty much fail hardcore at rolling.

I once destroyed an eldar titan with two heavy weapon teams with 3 autoannons each and a company commander to twinlink their weapons. eldar vehicles are AV12 and isntead of solid shields they only get a 4+ invul save you can negate with a single stunned result (they have to move to get the save). they also do not have the normal holofields that cause you to roll 2d6 and pick the lower for damage results so each pen (4+ with lascannons!) has a 1/3 chance of doing structural damage!


the dangerous thing about D weaponry is that it blasts trough cover!

I do have pretty bad luck with dice rolls lol. The other thing is it seemed like there were 2 4+ saves I was going through on the Cobra.

[DrLove42]

You only ever get 1 save, so you've been done a bit there...

As for negating the eldar save, the eldar player is a stupid person if they don't pay a few points for spirit stones so it can move.

As for balencing Strength D its not necessary. I played a 24,000 a week ago, where we destroyed a Warlord titan (thats the 2500pt one) using Wraithguard, Meltabombs and a Priests Evisserator. I single handedly killed a baneblade with just fire dragons, and a macharious vulkan (ok this was with a single S:D shot) and as a result of them both going big explosion killed nearly 2000 points of the opposin army in just 6 shots.

For the points you pay for 1 Strength D you can afford more heavy weapons which can do more damage to one target, or split them on multiples. I don't own any of my own superheavies, but for the same points i have enough brightlances to do more damage to more targets. For the points a baneblade or equivilent costs you can get enough lascannons/brightlances/railcannons etc to do more damage

[DarkAngelHopeful]

You only ever get 1 save, so you've been done a bit there...




I completely agree.

I guess I should clarify. I don't have the Apoc book in front me as I'm in Afghanistan right now, but the Eldar fighter plane has this ability to negate hits on a 4+ if I remember correctly. Something like that. It was reasoned that since it happens before wounding, it's not a save. It simply negates hits. The Eldar Cobra has the same ability, along with a 4+ invulnerable. So, that's where the two 4+'s came from. One was negating hits, the other was an actual save. Since I don't have the Apoc book in front me, if someone does and wants to verify all this that would be cool.

On a side note, I do happen to have Apoc Reload, Battle Missions, and Planet Strike with me as they were sent in a package lol.

[wbravenboer]

Wow! Hope you come home safely! If you see any of our Dutch soldiers, say Hi!
No chance to play warhammer there I think ;)

Funny to hear from some Eldar players, as I have yet to play against Eldar, any special units to be afraid of?

[Xas]

the eldar cobra EITHER has a 4+ invul OR the ability to negate hits on a 4+.
the old variants of titan holofields negate hits on a 4+.
the new variant of titan holofields (imperial armor apocalypse 2, newest FW apoc book) grant a 4+ invul save.


as they appear in different books no entity can have BOTH at the same time.

an eldar flier has two 4+ "saves" because it both has the normal cover save for fast moving skimmers and the holofields. an eldar superheavy with the old holofields can as well have a doubled 4+ save but not shoot the same turn (because it has to move flat out to get the cover save) or your oponent somehow managed to obscur it to get a normal cover save.

none of the above can buy spirit stones.


only the new cobra mk2 can have spirit stones but then the holofields are only a 4+ invul save and therefore NEVER stack with any sort of cover.

[DrLove42]

When i spoke with the forgeworld guy at the FW open day he said you only ever get 1 save 4+ save on eldar vehicles (not including the 4+ for primary weapon). Eldar fliers don't get the holofield save AND then the 4+ save all fliers get. They only get 1, but all other fliers lose theirs against the hydra and other AA weapons that ignore cover saves.

He said that all Eldar fliers need reducing in cost massivly now, but that's not till IA10.

As for multiple saves on a single vehicle we just generally accept that all vehicles only get 1 save. Holofield/flat out but only get one save. Gets more complex when the new phantom titan's released a that has different saves depending on what speed it moves!

[DarkAngelHopeful]

All of this is great to know for future Apoc games. Now it won't be as hard for me to kill a Cobra lol. Thanks for the info!

[DrLove42]

No probs. good luck on the rest of your deployment!

As this seems to be a eldar/apoc thread rule discussion now i've got a question....Wave Serpent shields reduce the strength of all shots in the front/side arc to S:8 right? And no double dice for melta or ordanance. But how does this intereact with Strength D? I've seen 2 groups;

1) its a STRENGTH D hit so it also downgrades to a S8 hit. Although this makes wave serpents harder than titans this is my view on it

2) It causes an auto penetrate, so the shield has no effect.

Thoughts?

[DarkLink]

Strength D doesn't have a strength value for a wave serpent energy field to affect. All it does is cause auto-penetration, which the energy field does absolutely nothing to protect against.

Strength D could be Str 10 or Str 8 or Str 3 or Str -, it doesn't matter. In each case, it auto-penetrates.

[Xas]

No probs. good luck on the rest of your deployment!

As this seems to be a eldar/apoc thread rule discussion now i've got a question....Wave Serpent shields reduce the strength of all shots in the front/side arc to S:8 right? And no double dice for melta or ordanance. But how does this intereact with Strength D? I've seen 2 groups;

1) its a STRENGTH D hit so it also downgrades to a S8 hit. Although this makes wave serpents harder than titans this is my view on it

2) It causes an auto penetrate, so the shield has no effect.

Thoughts?

darklink is right on this (2) but to elaborate a bit.

"Destroyer" or "Titan Killer" is a special apoc rule that can be either written as strenght value or the titan killer special rule. nevertheless it is not a pure strenght value that you could look up on your to-wound chart so the fields are useless.

your strenght D weapon might cause a strenght 8 hit on the wave serpent but that still auto penetrates.

[thelonegrif]

if your going into a game that big its been my experience that formations and extra stratagems conferred by those formation will help out a lot and ive seen that if you both take outflank you will be fighting around the table edges the whole freaking game and that got old quick in my circle since your running sm/ig you'll have access to a decent variety of weapons but dont go wasting them purely on titans (or bio titans in your case) sometimes you can spend up 2-4 turns trying to kill something like that just try to tie it up and keep it distracted and off objectives best way to do that is give it something tasty to chew on (that should keep it quite and happy for a bit :D) and remember after mass points are gone snipes can bring down a titan

[Daemonette666]

In a few weeks time we will be playing a major apocalypse game, 6 players, 4000 pts each,
tyranids/eldar versus IG/SM
The tyranids will be fielding a Hierophant and a barbed Hierodule,
the imperiums has at least 3 baneblades, a stormlord and a shadowsword.
I will be playing IG, especially the hierophant has me scared, and of course a lot of trygons, mawlocs and
beasties will be coming along...
Are there some people who can give me and my mates some pointers to deal with the bio-titan or some tactical advice? ;)
Lots of Nids, means lots of units moving, so more time being taken up in their turn moving not shooting or fighting (initially).

Your blast/template weaponry will thin these down a great deal. For the big nids, amnd the bio-titan D weaponry is good, as are heavy weapons teams. keep pounding on thw worst of them, and they should fall. Use your SM allies to create units of good close combat troops for the inevitable crunch in close combat.

Do what you are good at. shooting, so lots and lots of tanks. The bane wold is a favourite of mine, as is the hell hound in my traitor guard army.

The Eldar are possibly your biggest threat, with their heavy tanks armed with D-weaponry, titans, and an array of nasty tank killing units (prism cannons, D-cannons, and so on).

Simple tactic, kill the big stuff with your high str and high AP weapons. Kill the massed troops with large blast weaponry, and lots of fire power. Spread the Space Marines amongst your own troops so you have some close combat backup.

Someone mentioned not using a huge gamning table. I agree. Nothing bigger than a table tennis table (5' x 9'). I have also noticed that if you let player bring in reserves up unto turn 5, the game goes on for ever. Limit the turn when all reserves must be on the table by, and if it wasn't for the fact that one or more of your opponents is uning Nids, I would limit the number of models on the table as well.

[Daemonette666]

Lots of Nids, means lots of units moving, so more time being taken up in their turn moving not shooting or fighting (initially).

Your blast/template weaponry will thin these down a great deal. For the big nids, amnd the bio-titan D weaponry is good, as are heavy weapons teams. keep pounding on thw worst of them, and they should fall. Use your SM allies to create units of good close combat troops for the inevitable crunch in close combat.

Do what you are good at. shooting, so lots and lots of tanks. The bane wold is a favourite of mine, as is the hell hound in my traitor guard army.

The Eldar are possibly your biggest threat, with their heavy tanks armed with D-weaponry, titans, and an array of nasty tank killing units (prism cannons, D-cannons, and so on).

Simple tactic, kill the big stuff with your high str and high AP weapons. Kill the massed troops with large blast weaponry, and lots of fire power. Spread the Space Marines amongst your own troops so you have some close combat backup.

Someone mentioned not using a huge gamning table. I agree. Nothing bigger than a table tennis table (5' x 9'). I have also noticed that if you let player bring in reserves up unto turn 5, the game goes on for ever. Limit the turn when all reserves must be on the table by, and if it wasn't for the fact that one or more of your opponents is uning Nids, I would limit the number of models on the table as well.
Sorry typos - Bane Wolf (chem cannons). Happens when you speed type.

[Tacoo]

Just remember the number 1 rule of Apocalypse if not going first or there good targets are in reserve, reserve your super heavies! When i play Apoc, i always reserve my titans. I do this so they come on unscathed, and as such get at least 1 full turn of shooting before anything happens. With eldar there, you might whant to reserve even if you go first if your opponent reserves alot of big units and just leaves a bunch of shrimps on the field. cant remember apoc rules, but if im irght, half (you choose) of your reserves comes in turn 2, the other half turn 3? if so then make sure you have a lil squad of guards men also in reserves to help you control reserves. (rcant remember if its half, or if its just on a 4+

[! : ?]

when playing such large battles i find that it helps to work out "assets" openly and in such a manner that it helps create a great narrative for everyone involved....