Micromanaging the Apocalypse

Or GM-ing a test game of Apoc to see what works

So today opportunity presented itself for a quick test game of Apoc. Far sooner than I anticipated, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. With the short notice nature of the game not many people could attend, and we ended up with just three players, playing roughly 7000 points per side. Classic Chaos versus Imperials match up.

Unnatural Disasters

We firstly eliminated some options from the table. We didn't have the spare daemons for a warp rift, nor did we want the LOS block it would bring. I do think we could do the Zombie Apocalypse game, as we have a load of Z-company zombies from when we ran the Get to the Choppa scenario. However I'm trying to keep things simple for now. And one of the gamers had played some apoc on Saturday and found that after he'd pissed off an inquisitor there wasn't much left on either team come turn 5...

That left three, and the random roll gave us the Seismic Table.

Now this was quite a fun little table. The first turn it created a line of dangerous terrain, but unluckily for the Imperial side the effected units had Move Through Cover so ignored it. In the second turn, it did far better, destroying two Bastions, knocking a point of armour off the third, and obliterating the skyshield landing pad (along with a dread, half a vanguard squad, and forced a plaguemarine squad to bail out fast) Turn three it took some more armour points off the last surviving Bastion. As we only ended up having time for a short game this was all it could do, so even if we'd allowed Exterminatus to be a possibility, it wouldn't have got out of hand. Course, if we'd managed to get through the turns a little quicker and get to the turn 5 I had envisaged, then the chances of anything surviving this far would have been unlikely in the extreme...

Finest Hour

These allowed for some fun little tricks, although the idea of making a warlord particularly epic for a short spell didn't really happen. Most of the finest hours were more strategic in nature. They do also make the calling warlord something of a target, and I will admit to falling at fault here in advising the Imperial side - my first thought had been to throw everything at the finest hour daemon prince, but in the end I suggested throwing a couple squads of Legion of the Damned at Abaddon. Get the Warmaster point and PREVENT him from calling his finest hour. Sadly it was not to be. His terminator bodyguard was wiped out, and the daemon prince was taken down to 2 wounds. Shows the my old guard way to be true, if you want something to die throw statistically twice as much as you need to kill at it - just to be sure.

Scoring

I thought the scoring system was good. It was fairly even at the end of session 1, though at the end of session 2 chaos were firmly in control and took the lead. Of course with the Imperials having the last turn they had the opportunity to sneak the win with objectives now being worth 3 points a pop. The imperial side got close, but with some tenacious plague marines holding out against everything that could be thrown at them, and one chaos held objective too far from ANYTHING that could get there, they couldn't capture the 5 they needed. The alternative route was killing Abaddon and the super heavy, but with Abaddon locked in combat the two squads that charged him were a forlorn hope... a forlorn hope that was made irrelevent by the epic fail of the match.

Epic Fail of the Match

Two vanguard veterans, both armed with power fists, having survived their timely intervention that destroyed one super heavy, took stock in the lee of a building. A crackle of communication came through from their leader... they were being ordered into an all out attack. Using every ounce of power their jetpacks could give them, they burned till their fuel cells ran dry. They soared across the battlefield, covering several times the normal safe jump distance. Despite a rough landing for one, they survived and found themselves sat on an objective, taking control of it from the enemy Baneblade. Seeing the Baneblade was already the worse for wear, they charged up to it and with an epic feat of strength, managed to TOSS the baneblade!!! Sadly as the two heroes were high fiving each other it got dark... funny, there wasn't meant to be an eclipse today...

As the chaos forces surveyed the wreckage of their super heavy that had once been guarding the objective, they wondered what had killed it... and why whoever killed it hadn't taken control of the objective as the battle reached it's zenith... and what the hell was that yellow foot doing sticking out beneath the wreckage of the baneblade?

Divine Intervention

In this game, the divine intervention was easy to keep track of - the requirements for both sides were the same. However, the Imperial side didn't reach the threshold to call on the Emperors assistance till the final turn. By then the fearless and Furious Charge were fairly meaningless. It does look like a fun mechanic, and as long as you keep track of things that die as they happen, and know in advance what the threshold is, there is no reason why this cannot work in a non-GM game.

Strength D

We didn't have that many strength D weapons around, so the OP nature of this weapon didn't really come into it. I'll have to leave that test for another time.

Super Heavies

Something I like about this, is the super heavies keep on ticking till they are dead. It makes things a lot easier not having to balance different coloured dice on different guns to represent different effects. Plus with the new damage results you won't get one lucky melta shot 666ing your arse to death in one hit, which is a bit of a relief.

Super Heavy Walkers

Now a query did come up with this one. SH Walkers are treated as walkers in all respects, which means they can pivot in the shooting phase. Not an issue with a walker, it pivots, shoots, job done. It assaults what it shot. However with a super heavy walker, if it pivots to shoot one target, can it then pivot around and shoot something else? I was dubious about this - I felt that as a Baneblade declared all it's shooting and then resolved them all technically simultaneously, then the super heavy walker should also resolve it's fire simultaneously - ie, while facing in the same direction. However the players made the case that the Super Heavy Walker in question, the new Khorne monstrosity, had an upper torso that looked quite a bit more mobile than it's belly gun. Not liking the idea of an abuse of rules where you could fire a big gun at one target then turn to shoot something else to protect (relatively) vulnerable rear armour, I ruled that while they could engage different targets in different directions, the vehicle facing would end up towards whatever the belly gun shot at. I'll look into this a little more to see if I can get anything clearer on it before the next game.

Orbital Strike

This was the biggest bone of contention in the game. One of the players was absolutely adamant I was wrong in this ruling and argued the point forcefully, to the point that the other two players accepted my ruling and carried on gaming while we continued to debate the point. As GM, I forced my way on this one. This solution won't be available in every game, so we will need to investigate it further.

Basically, it comes down to the strategic asset, orbital bombardment. It states that "a friendly warlord makes a shooting attack with the following profile" which is for an apocalyptic mega blast with infinite range and a juicy str D centre. The background is that he calls upon a ship in orbit to take a shot at a target he nominates.

Now there were a few points of contention here. First, LOS. Is it required? It doesn't say it's required. However if you can nominate any unit on the board, why bother mention a warlord making a shooting attack? Why give an unlimited range? Why not just say "pick a target unit on the board" if you can shoot anywhere? My rationale behind this is that the ship in orbit can't exactly tell what the biggest threat to the tactical situation is on the ground. They require the commander on the ground to give the order to blast the living shit out of the corner of grid 7 to prevent a flank being overrun.

However, once we had agreed to use a warlords LOS there was then the issue of scatter. I believed the warlord chose the target, but the firing was done by some lackey on a cruiser miles above the surface - why would they use his BS to modify the scatter? I used the older rules from the Space Marine Codex and the Guard codex to back me up here - the models that can call down bombardments don't get to modify the scatter by their BS. It isn't them shooting, they are just saying roughly where to shoot. And this is where we came to the disagreement. It doesn't say anywhere in the asset that it doesn't use the warlords BS for scatter - he is firing therefore he get's to modify. It's as if the gun is being fired by him. Now under read as written I think my friend has a point, but under read as intended I think it is ridiculous. To illustrate my point, a warlord using read as written can not only modify the scatter, he could potentially fire UNDER scenery - killing the enemy he can see hiding under a skyshield landing pad, while leaving the troops on top unscathed. Now please do tell me how in the hell a battleship in orbit is supposed to pull off that particular trick shot?

Anyway, we eagerly await an FAQ on that one, as I don't think either of us is going to convince the other on this one. Any thoughts anyone?

And Finally

Just scrolling through some apocalyptic pictures to break up this essay a little, I found this beautiful model...

However, there's just something about that pose... I want to get one, and convert it so the hands are on the hips...

Then the pelvic thruuuuuust....

The Four Stompas of the Apocalypse

The tactical situation - apoc game at the local Games Workshop. Two Ork players and a small Guard contingent line up against the varied forces of the Imperium, with Guard, Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Blood Angels and Dark Angels stood before them. Time for Waaaaaaaggghhhh!

 "Hand out those camo sticks!" yelled Platoon Sergeant Crick "Cover every exposed part of skin in green. You two, start a small brawl among that squad! Don't stand up straight, hunch over more! We're gonna have to really pull off one hell of a show if we're gonna make it back to Imperial lines alive..."

Bugrit surveyed the field in front of him. This was a Meks dream, the fruits of his labours given life on the field of battle. Naturally he didn't see things this way. Bugrit saw a good chance to crump stuff and get more loot. But despite his lack of elocution, it's fair to say that the description of his feelings was probably accurate.

Wazzdakka and a horde of bikes were over to the right flank. A Stompa and a Skullhamma were surrounded by all the wagons, truks and buggies of the clan, with a swarm of Stormboyz clustered behind the mass of the Stompa. Bugrit stood in a nest of Snotlings, plenty of ammo for his Shok Attack Gun. Over to the left, a rival clan had brought three Stompas to the party. They may think they had the best position in the centre of the field, but they aren't as fast as Bugrits lads. We'll beat em to the enemy, hell we can probably reach THEIR enemy before they do. On the far left there were what appeared to be some looted wagons crewed by Grots. Presumably they were allied with the other clan as they seemed to be in the midst of their lines. But grots are unimportant anyway...

The Stompas strode forwards, thier super gatlers tearing vast chunks out of the opposition. The entire speed freaks clan surged forward... well, not quite as one. They were bumping and shoving and trying to make sure they got to the enemy first. One truk exploded as a paniced shot from a krak missile struck home. As the vehicle fell to pieces around them, the lads emerged and vowed revenge upon the lowly marine that had committed them to walking. Their temper was not helped by their erstwhile allies driving past at speed, throwing insults and quite a bit of faeces at them. Most of the enemy fire was bouncing off the super heavy vehicles though. The occassional ripple of a kustom force field betraying the shots that could have potentially done more than scratch the paint job. Meanwhile, the bikers slaughtered the Ravenwing bikers who had been foolish enough to try to slow down the Stompa by getting in it's path. As they died, the air rippled and a squad of Terminators appeared behind the Stompa. The bikers roared into the assault, as did the Nob bikers lead by Wazzdakka. They slaughtered them in a brutal close combat, though several of the bikers were cut down in return. 

As the Orks broke in a wave upon the Imperial lines, more and more troops started to arrive behind the Ork forces. Blood Angels, Ultramarines, Space Wolves, Dark Angels. A couple of Dakkajets swooped low and annihalated the Blood Angels with supreme weight of fire. A jingling sounded as Santa came flying across the battlefield, firing missiles at... well, anyone happy really. You never know, it may even have hit the enemy. Bugrit decided that devastator squad in a bunker had been troublesome enough, and targetted his shok attack gun at them. There was a brief "Zogging eck!" followed by a bright flash... Bugrit, his grots, and the two low flying dakkajets had all vanished! Lost in the warp somewhere...
A double 1 roll on a Shok Attack Gun probably wouldn't effect flyers, but as the Orky side was winning so easily by this point that most of the reinforcements were troops that had already been killed in the battle being given a second chance we didn't see the harm in losing the flyers to such a funny result

The bikers and wazzdakka charged into the second Deathwing squad, and Santa joined them. ore than half the squad were wiped out. However when the Dread countered into Santa and managed to instant death him, the combat tipped in the Dark Angels favour. Wazzdakka tried to make a hasty escape, but he was captured by the Dark Angels. They seemed to think he had some intelligence on the whereabouts of some people who must have tripped. I don't see why they're so concerned, but have to admit that the idea of asking an Ork for intelligence shows the supreme naivety of the first legion...

By this point the left flank had started to turn upon itself. Smelling the umiez for what they really were, the Orks had turned upon them. They had then promptly switched sides and fired back. The speed freaks spotted a glint in the eye of a Stompa as they roared towards the nearest Baneblades... including a red one. Seeing the challenge, a speed freaks battlewagon instantly rammed the rogue Stompa with a deffrolla, as a looted wagon, dive bomber and Skullhamma all started firing at it. After quite a bruising the Ork player retired from the field of battle, with one Stompa dead and 2 limping (one of which had lost half it's mass, yet none of it from enemy fire!)

As some of the Orks withdrew, the umiez on the left realised that the Imperials weren't so forgiving of their earlier "play-acting" as some of their shots had been a little too convincing... terminally convincing in fact. They meant to get their revenge on the traitors, so the guard switched back to the Ork side as they fought for their very lives. The Dark Angels swiftly retreated with Wazzdakka, who having been unseated from his bike for the first time in months was finding walking a little difficult. He'd have to escape when he had feelings back in his legs. The guard were slaughtered as the first lads out ran riot, though most of the boyz were still in their transports, having not reached the enemy yet. It was decided that it was a solid Ork victory and the imperials withdrew to lick their wounds, as the lads celebrated a glorious victory, and a bloody good fight. One or two even wondered where Bugrit and Wazzdakka had got to, and why were they missing all the fun..?

Santa Klaws Rulez...

As promised, the rules I came up with (and by now should be using in an apoc game) for Santa Klaws and his Sleigh...

UNIT OR FORMATION NAME: Santa Klaws POINTS: 250

DESCRIPTION:

Oi get your choppas out,

'ear the umiez cry,

Giv em all a clout,

and watch em all die...

Santa Klaws is coming, to WAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

SANTA KLAWS:

	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
Santa	5	2	5	5	3	4	4	9	6

Santa is equipped with Power Klaw, Eavy Armour, Cybork Body, and Santas Sack of Prezzies, Santas Sleigh.

Santas Sack of Prezzies.

At the start of the shooting phase, choose one Ork unit within 12” of Santa, and roll on the following table.

D6	Result
1	Lumps of Coal. The boyz have been bad. The unit cannot do anything this turn except cry.
2	The unit gets shiny new choppas and sluggas but no tactical change
3	As above, but these ones are snazzier, so the orks feel even better. No tactical difference, but they're happy.
4	Lotsa Ammo – Santa has given out extra bullets, all guns get +1 shot this turn
5	Wooly jumpers – The extra thick layers give +1 to the armour save this turn
6	Med Packs – The unit has FNP this turn!

The effect of Santas Sack lasts for one turn only. No unit can receive a second gift from the sack. That wouldn't be fair.

SANTAS SLEIGH:

	BS	Front Armour	Side Armour	Rear Armour
Santas Sleigh	2	11	11	10

Fast, Chariot, Open Topped, Red Paint Job, 2 twin linked dakkaguns, Exhaust Cloud, 4 Joy Seeking Missiles, A very Special Task. The sleigh has 4 hull points.

Joy Seeking Missiles.

Read out the name of the missile. Whoever has the biggest smile (friend or foe) is the target. That players most expensive unit is targeted.

Range unlimited, no LOS required. AP2 One shot heavy 1 hits on 2+. All are fired at once. Str variable*

*If the person is upset at this turn of events, the missiles are Str 6. If they are ok with things, they are Str 8. If they find the whole episode hilarious, Str 10.

A very Special Mission

If this unit is being used in December, it can choose to be a flyer during any turn. It must be a flyer for the complete turn. As a flyer the rider can vector strike instead of doing his sweep attack.

If the flyer is shot down, the unit that shot it down is immediately targeted by the nearest unit (friend or foe) and an out of sequence shooting attack is directed against it, as everyone is mad at them for spoiling Christmas. Furthermore, all units on the board (including the “friendly” ones) have preferred enemy against THAT unit for the remainder of the game. Whichever player ordered the unit to shoot down Santa can expect to receive abuse from all other players for doing the most callous thing since Alan Rickman called off Christmas...

Arrogance is a Virtue

At least, it is when it's tank shaped, and the Orksies have one just as big!

Decided to get a couple of big jobs off my painting "To Do" list

The Fortress of Arrogance, Yarricks personal transport, is a minor conversion - a little plasticard and some pieces from the city buildings sprue created his pulpit, and the paint job was simplicity itself. Hard to tell here but there is a red line around the pulpit, the turret housing and the top of the guns.

The skullhammer took somewhat longer, with having SO much red to paint. Some extras from the Stompa kit and a spare cannon from one of the variants in the shadowsword box went into this, plus a few spare grots and a couple of bits from the Ork Truk sprue.

And finally, if an Ork is smiling at you, be worried....

Super Heavies Scalped by Sixth?

Having played my first apocalypse game of sixth edition on Sunday (with no str D weapons in any army, so no chance to test the idea of making D less the auto win gun) I have discovered that super heavies are not all they once were...

Sure, they're still durable as hell. You can still chain reaction one to death if you're lucky, but the odds aren't good. Being able to whittle them down a little by gradually glancing away the structure points makes them easier to deal with (slightly) though you can of course use techs and meks to repair some of those hull points. No what I found was that they were far easier to effectively take out of the game.

Assuming you aren't snap-firing...

For the uninitiated, super heavies used to have their own damage table. low results would stun a gun or the driver. mid table would knock off a gun or give a half-immobilised result. And the high results would take off structure points. The big guns, your primary weapons, had a 4+ save against stunning and damaging. The enemy would generally shoot at the big thing and when you failed a 4+ on the big gun they may think "ok that will do that's a lot less damage it can do to me next turn, I can finally shoot something else"

Move forward to sixth, and they use the same damage table as basic 40k. The only difference being immobilised is drive damaged (so half immobilised, takes two to stop it) and that explodes is remove a structure point and roll again, without modifiers. For killing the things it seems to be on a par with before. A succession of 6s can instant kill, but it's unlikely. But for shutting the super heavy out of the game, all it takes is one penetrating hit. You roll and get a crew shaken or stunned result, and your job is effectively done! Why? Because it effects ALL the guns at once. You still get a 4+ save for primary weapons, but taking the baneblade as an example, you've just lost your demolisher cannon, your two lascannons are hitting on 6s, the 3 twin linked heavy bolters likewise (though weight of shots and twin linked means they aren't as effected as the lascannons) and you're one bad dice roll from losing your mega cannon. Statistically two hits and all you have is a bunch of heavy bolters for 450 points. The enemy doesn't have to chuck masses of firepower at them anymore... as soon as it's shaken they can move on to other targets. Part of the benefit of super heavies would be their nature as bullet magnets, allowing the rest of your forces to advance unmolested. Will this still be the case? It also puts more of an onus on the first turn - if you go second you may never get chance to fire your super heavies... at least going first you have chance to fire them at least once!

I have no solution to this issue, and I am not looking for one. I can just see the nature of apocalypse mutating to make super heavies far less effective than they once were. Are Games Workshop going to rely on people rarely playing apocalypse and thus not noticing? It seems unprecedented for them to make a massive kit like the baneblade less effective than it used to be, unless they are relying on people just simply wanting one without thinking about when or if they will ever field it...

Do note, that this does not affect my previous article on Str D weapons. That was about balancing the warhound options out to make viable choices of all weapons and I stand by it. If anything this issue makes the new rules for Str D better as they'd still be able to fire while snap firing - a titan armed with plenty of old str D and nothing else may find itself easy to shut out of a game.

The Problem with Strength D

The gun that can do anything...

With an apocalypse game approaching I was discussing the subject with the local GW manager, and he expressed a bit of a dislike for apoc (I consider him a friend so won't be grassing him up :oP) as he says it's too easy to break the game just by taking lot's of Strength D weapons. And he does have a point. I have made the claim before that the amount of super heavies you have isn't nearly as telling as the amount of Str D you have. I once played a game where my five super heavies took on my opponents two... however when it came to Str D he was putting out 5 shots per turn to my 1, and with him holding his supers in reserve and walking them on turn 1 (careful planning strategum) he killed my Str D before it could fire. From then on he was ripping through me with Str D while my Str 8 or 9 shots just bounced off his tanks, or barely scratched them. The combination of Auto Penetrate and the +1 on vehicle damage meant that he was taking structure points off with half his shots, and tearing through my tanks. Now this is what they are for fair enough, but once he'd finished those off, he found they were equally good at annihalating infantry. And THAT I think is the problem with Str D - there is no downside. They're good at everything, the jack of all trade weapon. Why would you take any other gun when this one does everything anyway?

An unfamiliar titan... one with a variety of guns!

This has lead to some rather boring titan loadouts where someone brings out a forgeworld reaver that has two laser destroyer arms and a laser destroyer shoulder weapon, putting out a formidable 8 Str D shots per turn. Now from what I remember of the fluff the titans were usually armed with a variety of weapons to deal with a variety of foes, cos let's face it they aren't the easiest things to swap a gun on. The turbo lasers were for killing enemy titans, but they'd have maybe an apoc launcher for dealing with enemy infantry and a plasma blastgun for tagets that are classed as "in-between." But how often are such varietous loadouts seen on titans? Why bother, when Str D does everything better than the rest anyway?


In discussion, we thought that it might be best to take away the blast rule to make the weapon less effective against infantry. My friend said that in his opinion, the only reason it was blast in the first place was so that it would be better at hitting larger vehicles than small ones - a large blast can feasibly miss an ork truk, a land raider is a harder thing to miss, and a baneblade damn near impossible to miss! So to try to keep that effect in place, I suggested increasing the BS when shooting at larger targets. After all, you can't say that a solitary guardsmen would be as easy to hit as a baneblade. So perhaps +1 BS against vehicles (and monstrous creatures too?) with a further +1 (that stacks) against super heavies and gargantuans. Meaning a Baneblade is still practically impossible to miss, a land raider the odds are you're gonna hit it, while a guardsmen you just fire in roughly the right direction and hope to hit near enough to fry the guy.

Consulting with a friend who actually uses titans (and therefore my theoretical hard sell on this issue) he said that he wouldn't want to see the Str D completely useless against infantry, but could see we had something of a point. He agreed that having to make a tactical decision between the different guns would be more interesting than just taking Str D as it does everything. He came up with the rather good suggestion of two fire modes - focused or dispersed, similar to the Tau Hammerhead shooting mode.

After haggling between the three of us I decided the following would be a good new profile for Str D weapons

focused mode - Str D, NO BLAST, +1 BS against vehicles, +2 against super heavies/gargantuan
dispersed mode - Str7, AP2, Large Blast.

The dispersed mode would still wound most things on 2s, but allows cover saves. It doesn't instant death T4, or disregard FNP for T4. Basically, it'll still kill marines in the open, but if it's a tough unit (Paladins, nob bikers) it won't brutalise them.

I need to look into it a little more to be sure - I believe there may be one or two Str D weapons out there that currently don't have blast (the daemon shell strategic asset springs to mind, though don't quote me on that I need to check) and I don't want to GIVE them an anti infantry capability they aren't designed to have, they can stay as they are. But I may try experimenting with it as a house rule to see how it takes.


There is an upside for the titan lovers... with it no longer being blast, you can potentially snap fire. Those pesky flyers you've been unable to touch? sure they'll be tough to hit... but if you do hit them, bye bye...