Massive games of Warhammer 40,000 are loads of fun, and new rules in the Eye of Terror expansion make running these Apocalypse battles easier than ever. Grab your biggest army and your grandest plan, and find out how.
First, what is Apocalypse? This type of game tends to be anything beyond the scope of a normal 2,000-point battle, from as little as two friends throwing hands with oversized armies to entire teams of players shepherding tens of thousands of points around enormous battlefields. If the prospect of simply moving all of your stuff leaves you checking your schedule for the rest of the day, there’s a good chance you’re in Apocalypse. Armageddon is the ideal setting for these types of battles, as hordes of Orks take on regiments of Astra Militarum, but conflicts of this size take place across the galaxy.
Unlike some previous incarnations,* this latest version of Apocalypse uses the core Warhammer 40,000 rules with a few artful tweaks, so you don’t have to learn a whole new system to get stuck in. A new suite of 12 rules adaptations offers ways to cut down on turn time and simplify complex rules, so that you spend less time reading rulebooks and more time blowing Titans to pieces. Engine kill!
In big team games with massive hordes of miniatures, for instance, you don’t always want to wait for your friend with 120 Kroot Carnivores to finish his Advances before Deep Striking your single unit of Warp Spiders onto the table. With the Ready Reinforcements rule, you can now do your Reinforcement step at any point during the phase – easy as that.
MOVEMENT PHASE
In an Apocalypse battle, it can save a lot of time and waiting around if players agree to combine the Reinforcements step with the rest of the Movement phase, using the Ready Reinforcements rule.
OPTIONAL
READY REINFORCEMENTS
Units that would arrive in the Reinforcements step can instead do so at any point during their controlling player’s Movement phase.
Perhaps most importantly, given the sheer size of the weapons found on the super-heavies that rule the Apocalypse roost, units that would otherwise get shot off the table before doing anything at all can hold on for one last hurrah – Giving Their All to get some payback before dramatically expiring.
FIRST BATTLE ROUND
With the levels of lethality found in the average Apocalypse battle, you may find that many units are being destroyed before they have the opportunity to so much as fire a shot. The Giving Their All rule makes sure that everything on the battlefield at the start of the battle has a chance to do something before it is destroyed.
OPTIONAL
GIVING THEIR ALL
In the first turn, each time a unit would be destroyed, do not remove the last model in that unit from the battlefield. Mark that model with a token or by making a note of it: that model has one wound remaining, and will be destroyed at the end
of the battle round.
These are only a couple of the rules available to tweak your experience, and they all work just as well at 3,000 points as they do at 30,000. To cap it all off, each faction has at least three impressive new Stratagems made specifically for the size and spectacle of Apocalypse games – Orks can feed off the chaos around them to call a Waaagh! as often as they can afford the Command point cost,** while Chaos Space Marines can rip open a yawning portal to the Warp and spirit a significant chunk of their army across the battlefield. We can’t guarantee that it’s as comfortable as jumping in the back of a Rhino, but it is fast.
DA BIG WAAAGH!
ORKS – APOCALYPSE STRATAGEM
A battle this cataclysmic in scale drives the Orks to new heights of excitement, generating wave upon
wave of Waaagh! Energy.
WHEN: Start of the Command phase.
TARGET: Your WARLORD unit.
EFFECT: You call a Waaagh!: until the end of the next turn, the Waaagh! is active for your army.
CHAOS GATE
CHAOS SPACE MARINES – APOCALYPSE STRATAGEM
Conjured by dark sorcery and howled prayers to the Chaos Gods, a yawning warp rift swallows up a host of traitor warriors and vomits them forth elsewhere upon the battlefield.
WHEN: End of your opponent’s Fight phase.
TARGET: Up to three HERETIC ASTARTES units from your army, each of which is within 12" of one or more other units targeted by this use of this Stratagem, and not within Engagement Range of one or more enemy units.
EFFECT: Remove your units from the battlefield and place them into Strategic Reserves. When these units are next set up on the battlefield they can be set up using the Deep Strike ability provided that, once set up, each of them is within 12" of one or more other units targeted by this use of this Stratagem.
Once you’ve had a quick look at the rules adaptations and found which ones work for you, you’ll be fighting Apocalypse battles in no time. The only thing you need to worry about is getting all your players together,*** and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a section in the Eye of Terror: Apocalypse book about that too.
Pre-order the Eye of Terror: Reign of Iron expansion tomorrow and join the Iron Warriors on their hellish campaign to dominate the Cadian Gate – and if you have your eyes on an Apocalypse game or two, you might also want to stock up on the devastating new Defilers.
* The first version of Apocalypse came out in 2007, introducing rules for massed battles and big miniatures, including the Stompa and Baneblade in plastic.
** Don’t worry if the costs look a little high – you get loads more Command points in Apocalypse games.
*** Proving once again that the greatest threat to the 41st Millennium isn’t heretics or xenos – it’s scheduling.
