Is 3000 points too small for apocalypse?

[distortiondave]

I know 'legally' you can play apo with 3000 points aside, but is it too small?

I'm just thinking that you can have your basic 2000 point list and the addition of 2 baneblades, or a titan or whatever can push it over the 3000 mark into apo territory, but even in Apo games are super heavies and titans too powerful in 3000 point games?

The chances of having titan killing weapons in 3000 points is slim to none, and high cost troops such as Marines, Aspect Warriors and Chaos all lose their advantage in apo games due to the high amount of AP3+ weaponry fired with huge templates - a marines squad hit by a baneblade dies just as easily as an imperial guard squad.

I just wondered if anyone considered 3000 points too small, or adopted house rules where you can only have a super heavy after a certain amount of points or something, or am I overestimating the effectiveness of super heavies?

[Vitae]

Before Apocalypse came out I played a 3000pt Apoc style (i.e. we relaxed the force org rules and he let me use the FW super-heavy rules and a Baneblade) game with a friend

I had Guard the other guy brought Eldar.

We played on a 6 x 4 table - cause that was what the dinning room table was.

We had a ball. It was big enough that I could field a nicely rounded army with 100+ troops, fire support, hellhounds, tanks and a Baneblade. At 3000pts There was still room to maneuver. Much bigger and we would have had to upscale the table.

He got to field all his fancy elite units in squads of a meaningful size. He'd also just built a bunch of Wrathlords and wanted to field all of them as well as his Falcons and Fire Prisms.
Anyway to cut a long story short it was a good fight and great fun - he put some serious pain on my Baneblade before I ended him.

I've also played team Apoc with 3000 and 6000pts per player making up 9000 and 12000pts per side respectively. We were on 2 x full sized tables. We had a day to play the games. While these worked they felt a little rushed.

If you want to play a fun game in a day I'd say go right ahead with 3000pts. You can choose to use Apocalypse or 2x Force Orgs or just "relax the rules a bit" as we did.

As for taking Titans @ 3000. I wouldn't unless you both agreed ahead of time that Titans were allowed. Its like showing up to a knife fight with a gun, sure you will probably win but its not overly sporting.

[distortiondave]

A 3000 point apocalypse game wouldn't take as long to play as 3000 points of a standard game though would it? You start a lot closer together and the assets allow for mega death on turn one with a well placed barrage.

If there was a 3000 point a side apocalypse style grand tournament, would the titan and baneblade heavy lists win?

[Vitae]

A 3000 point apocalypse game wouldn't take as long to play as 3000 points of a standard game though would it? You start a lot closer together and the assets allow for mega death on turn one with a well placed barrage.

Its a good question. We were exchanging "pleasentries" right from the word go with infiltrated units, lascannon, bright lances, snipers and pie plates a plenty. If we had have been closer we would have been doing a whole bunch more general shooting as well as having assault range much quicker too. It would probably have shortened the game somewhat. Not sure it would have made it better to be honest


If there was a 3000 point a side apocalypse style grand tournament, would the titan and baneblade heavy lists win?

From the disclaimers that Forgeworld put out I get the impression that the Baneblade and Titans are somewhat over priced so they do not become game winning monsters. This would seem to be supported by what I saw of the Baneblades in our big battles. They were not the omnipotent weapons they present as - and much was made of their demise.

[Valthonis]

Using the forgeworld rules for baneblades and titans in normal games, makes them suck more than the fluff would suggest.
Thats why I personally only use them in apoc games, because the difference between shooting a 10" pie plate and a 5" pie plate is quite large.

But with 5th ed and its cover saves , I converted to using two hellhammers and a baneblade. Because the hellhammer just does not care about your cover, shoots a smaller blast though.

That being said, they die real quick to assaults (low rear armour), and its still only a land raider equalient on its front armour, so lascannons and so on really mess them up quickly.

But my apoc games are usually around the 10000 pts mark, with anything from 4-8 players. In my eyes these games are to large, they are not as fun as they could be, with 30 min shooting phases/side and no real tacticts beyond rushing at the the other armies. Might be better with more planning though.

So personally I am looking into scaling down the points to 3-5000 per side. and no more than 2 players per side. Simply because to many players = to much cross talk, and wasted time, and confusion, and no order.

My last apoc game featured our newest player, she plays daemons, and had roughly 2000pts of the total 10k on a team.
She showed up, and did not get to do anything but deepstrike her starting units for almost 1.5 hours of gametime. Not to fun, the reason? The game was to big.

wow, that was a long rant about everything and nothing, sorry bout that :dance:

Cheers ! :beer:

[Splata]

When I play apoc I circumvent the problem of time by stipulating that a turn can only go for 30mins. at the end of 30 mins nothing more can be declared and only the dice that are being rolled may be finished being rolled. This often means that some combats don't get resolved from which we sometimes just remove an averageish amount of combatents, sometimes we just forget about them as if the player couldn't be bothereed doing that combat it probably wasn't a big important one.

This method does have its flaws but I've gotten really sick of big games with no hope of finishing

[chrispcarter]

Personally I think the answer to your question varies depending on the circustances.

If you are playing with regular style 40k armies with lots of troops, I think 3000 pts can be fine, and thE apoc rules give you more flexibility.

However, once you start introducing Apocalypse formations, Super-heavies or Legendary units, 3000 pts is a bit restrictive, especially when using armies who aren't too troop heavy to being with.

Case in point - I played a 5000 point game against as Space Marines, against 2 opponents playing Chaos Marines (links at the bottom).

Because of the nature of these armies, we all agreed afterwards that we could have raised the points limit. The game was played on an 8' x 4' table and we both had on problem finding places to put our troops or vehicles - if you look at my army list you can see I only had 9 infantry units!

This is a well known problem for Marines but once I'd added on the Baneblade and Leman Russ and so on, I really had very few points to play with. I found myself agonising over what to drop and take from list this more than any 1500/2000pt game I've ever played. I wanted to include a section of Guard Infantry and some Grey Knights but ended up dropping then as I couldn't get a balanced list while including either. I also ended up taking very few Apocalypse formations as the costs of most of them were too restrictive.

My opponents were more or less the same, and they didn't even take the same amount of hardware I did. This meant that the game played relatively fast and neither of our player turns were too long as we only had a dozen or so units to use each turn.

Now obviously the main reason we had so much table space left was due to the nature of our armies - we were both playing armies traditionally low on numbers and took a good proportion of expensive units. If we'd been playing as Imperial Guard (I took the tanks in the end but no infantry), Orks, or Tyranids, we probably would've had a table swamped in models and no room to manoevure - we would have needed a bigger table really - and the game would have taken a lot longer because of the amount of models to move / shots to take and so on.

I also think that the experience of the players both with the game and with each other makes a big difference to the size of the game that will suit you best. I had played both my opponents in the aforementioned game many times, and we were all familiar with the ways to make our game flow most efficiently and enjoyably. This meant there were relatively few rules debates (or "arguments" as they are commonly known) and we worked together well while setting / tidying up. We are also all longtime 40k players so we know the rules very well (though we occasionally get our editions confused!), which again helps to make the game flow faster.

If you were playing with a new opponent there may be conflicts as you have opposing house rules or opinions on the way a particular rule works, or one of you may be a little less familiar with the rules - this is a problem that certainly isn't impossible to overcome, but it can slow your games down a bit, which is a problem multiplied exponentially in games of this size.

I'd also say the number of players can have an effect - we managed quite well with 1vs2, but obviously if you have more people playing you can divide up the action so that multiple units can act simultaneously, which can help to speed up a game.

I know that most of my reasoning above involves the speed of play and the length of time the game will take, but I think in a large game it is important that you can keep up a decent pace to avoid the game becoming boring for any of the players. I often find after the first couple of turns an Apocalypse game can go as fast as a regular game of 40k - this is because of the inordinate amount of ordnance (nice) that is unleashed in the opening stages of the game mean that players tend to whittle down each other's armies fairly quickly.

To summarise (if you have read all that you are probably cross eyed by now):

LARGER Games (5000pts +)

with a few players and a normal table (6'x4' - 8'x4') suit:


Miniature light armies such as Marines or Chaos.
More experienced players who have played each other before.
Lists with Super Heavies, Legendary units and Apocalypse Formations, lots of vehicles.

with more players and a bigger table then robert's your mother's brother - go crazy and take as much as you like - just remember you'll have to pack it all up afterwards!

SMALLER Games (3000-4000 pts) suit:


Regular 40k style armies - try to avoid taking too many Super Heavies, Legendary units and Apocalypse Formations or you will run out of points!
Players who are less familiar with each other or the rules.
If oyu play a horde army make sure you aren't going to overload the table and that you have enough players to stop the game getting bogged down while you move 300 models a turn!

...that's all my opinion anyway. Feel free to disagree if you like, that's just how I've found things!

As promised, here are the links to my original army list and battle report for the game I kept mentioning:

Army List (http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/space-marine-army-lists/144369-5000-points-apocalypse-ultramarines-imperial-guard-armoured.html)

Battle Report (with pictures!) (http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/40k-battle-reports/144284-5000-pts-apocalypse-chaos-vs-imperial.html)

[Archnomad]

What I find is usually a good laugh is take 3000 points of "army". What we agree (friendly games) to be a decent army (so not 15 heavy supports, 2 troops and an HQ). Then fielding 1-3 Superheavies and some more infantry/spcial characters/formations to fill out points of up to about 5k Depending on whatever we're playing. For example, lately, I've been playing with 2000 Points of Chaos Marines, 1000 Points of Chaos Daemons, An'ggrath, and a Brass Scorpion. Then making the rest of the points up with formations. 4500 Points. In case of 5000, well I just get 2 more assets. =]

I find spending a stupid amount on big things but still keeping it about 1/3 of your army speeds the game up tremendously.

[R3con]

I find 3k apoc games to be a good time, its alot like a 500-1k point regular game...

Somewhat restrictive yet interesting because of those restrictions..

[Zeewulf]

I've played two 3k games, a 2k game, and a 1k game of Apoc. (The 1k game was due to having shown up at the store last minute, finding out there was a game, and saying "Hey, I've got my nids in the trunk, mind if I join?" The other guys were all playing 2k each)

The 2k game had me with a baneblade, five sentinels, three tanks, a hellhound, vulture, and chimera-mounted stormtroopers. The rest of my side was an Armored Company list and a Grey Knights army. We ended up facing off against three Chaos players (well, technically, 2.5, and .5 ork) with a Baneblade, a ton of daemons, a soulgrinder, a Warhound, and some other weird tanks that I never found out what they were....
Ended up winning that, because we pretty much abused the warhound right away (though its VMB got the Vulture), and things went pretty quick. Experienced players, good rules, etc...

The 3k games, well, the first one, NONE of us had ANY idea what we were doing, so it took ALLLLL day, though we had alot of table space...(though not nearly enough. One guy had brought nearly a full chapter of Blood Angels, so, those had been divied up between a couple players). The second 3k game, was a different group, but again a huge amount of forces...and it bottlenecked badly in one spot, simply because the units had so little space to move.

Thats the one major flaw of Apoc aside from time: if you don't have enough space, the game is going to be not as fun.