Finding the good APOCOLYPSE GAME!!!

Recently, down at the local gaming club and store Outland, we decided to have us a rather large game. Inspired by WW1 tactics, the game was a slant on the normal Apocolypse rules. The idea was that the attacking side had to move down a long edged board, through trench defenses and the enemy, but also take an hold a chain of objectives. The attackers were aided in being the only side able to deep strike, and encouraged to take a "Market Garden" approach.

Over all the game was loose, fun and for the most part, highlighted what makes APocolypse a great varient on a great game.

However, the first game (can we call this a prototype?), also highlighted problems.

Christars Law
The first was the points allowance. In an effort to assemble reasonable sides, one man Christian, was left with his entire Tyranid horse of next to 8000points, to play on his own. Exciting, but ultimately far to hard for one man. Especially when the other side contained more players each demanding his time.

Einsteins Law
The second was time and space. It was so silly to forget that in a 6 turn Apoc game, infantry will only ever get around 6" X 6 turns = 36", assuming there is nothing in the way.

As you can see. That was never going to happen. Between this, the Christars issue and the torrent of deepstrikers, the game got about two maybe three turns.

Unacceptable.

So what can we learn from this? What can we do? Well, inspired to continue pursuing the good game, I've decided to play a series of Apoc games, exploring exactly that. What can we do against this age old problem? What planning is required to make an exciting game that:

Allows all players an equal chance,
Allows for heroic actions and tense situations,
Allows for tactical decisions that go beyond simply lucky dice,
And that really captures massive battles?

Firstly, right after the battle, the organisers got together with the players that had the biggest sides to confer. We came up with the following issues and possible solutions:

Christars Law:
Any players that wish to be involved may have no more than 3000pts including up to one super heavy or legendary unit. Or 1500pts and the same.

Einsteins Law:
Consideration must be made to the mobility of units in the game's time span. Things such as tunnels, roads and available deep striking must be though on.


For the next game?
The next game, is planned to be inspired by Operation Market garden. Now I've been hesitant about this for a while, because I didnt want a repeat of the last games faults and if I'm honest, Operation Market Garden actually failed due to similar mistakes in the real world!
Then, one evening, I was playing a rather good computer game call Company of Heroes...

Captured Objectives as future deployment "zones", loose objectives based on "Intel" and a whole weekends worth of Apocolypse.
More soon.

And how am I preparing for the next game?
Well... among other things...



Hehehhe