By Simon Marshall

Images copyright of Games Workshop, used without permission.

ver wanted to play a massive battle of 40K with seemingly unlimited amounts of infantry throwing themselves against the armored might of the enemy’s elite? Or maybe take an Armored Spearhead of dozens of tanks against an enemy held fortification supported by titans and air cover. Welcome to Apocalypse the game of Mass War in the 41st millennium.

In the following review I will endeavor to take you through all that is cool about the new supplement released by Games Workshop.

Enjoy!

Apocalypse supplement
Everything about this expansion is big, from the larger sized book to the artwork within.

The book itself stands an impressive 13 inches tall and 10 wide with a total page count of 200. There’s fantastic artwork by the likes of; Dave Gallagher, Alex Boyd, Roberto Cirillo, Paul Dainton, Nuala Kinrade and Adrian Smith.
Numerous photos of armies and three very cool fold out battle reports between Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Tyranids, Chaos, Ork and Eldar. Not to mention the massive amount of background fluff and rules.
Also in this book you’ll find information about Terrain building, making Themed battles and organizing games.

All this helps make the Apocalypse book look more like a collector’s item than a gaming book.

Apocalypse breaks all the rules and puts some added fun into your standard 40k lives. Here are the biggest changes to Standard 40K games.

“The only rule is, there are no rules”
Apocalypse removes the restrictions on standard force organization must haves; 1 HQ and 2 Troops as well as removing the limits to the maximum allowance of HQ, Fast Attack, Elites, Heavy Support and Troops. And there is no limit given to having multiples of the units that are usually 0-1 or 0-2.

Even if you only have a few points of several armies it’s possible to combine your forces together into one army, though they still count as separate armies for “Race” specific special abilities. It is possible to have a Tyranid, Chaos, Tau & Eldar Combined force, just remember to come up with reasons as to why they’re all fighting on the same side.

Apocalypse is the best opportunity you’ll have to field those oh so sexy Special Characters that only get to play once in a blue moon. Their presence on the battlefield makes the games have an even greater feel to it.

These freedoms allow players permission to have games with their entire collection, giving birth to some amazing and bizarre themes, from multiple races cobbled together under one banner to massive collections of your favorite army of many years arrayed across the battle field.

The combinations for themed armies are endless, and coming up with stories as to why the forces have teamed up to fight, equally amusing.

“I don’t think there’s enough room to deploy”
Games of apocalypse start at 3000pts. This may seem like a daunting task but most veteran gamers have large enough forces or several armies that can easily make 3000pts. Without any restrictions there’s always going to be that extra tank or unit you have laying about that you couldn’t field in a 1500pt game.

Even if you’re new to the hobby and only have 1500pts or less there’s nothing to stop you from getting a group of friends together and teaming up into two teams.
In fact Apocalypse games are geared toward group play as this increases the fun you can have.

“Time for those house extension plans to go ahead”
It’s important to note that trying to fit 2000pts of guard infantry into a 12inch deployment zone on a 6”x4” table is a little hard so 3000pt and up would most likely be impossible.
Tables start from a recommended 8’ by 4’ for 3000pts and increase in size for bigger games.

“There shooting point blank sire!!”
As mentioned above trying to fit 3000pts of Imperial Guard infantry into a 12 inch deployment strip is nigh on impossible, so let’s introduce Apocalypse’s style of deployment that includes a scatter dice and 12 inches of no mans land.

It involves rolling the scatter dice on the table and drawing a line from the point indicated to the furthest point away. This area now becomes a no setup zone for the armies. This makes the prospect of 1st turn combats all too real.

“10…9…8…7…6…”
With games of Apocalypse it’s important to have some form of organization, a place to play, large enough tables, enough terrain and enough time in which to play. The latter can be a little tricky to organize, if this was a standard 3000pt battle of 40k.

To combat this problem the game designers came up with the solution by giving games of Apocalypse a set time limit.

This puts the power in the organizers hands. It’s up to you how long the games take, and if you begin your game at 10am and finish at 6 pm then that’s how long you’ve got to play. (Though you might want to make the finishing time earlier than expected, to make sure each side has time for an equal amount of turns otherwise you might find you’ll be running overtime to tie up the game.)

“I’ll see your unit and raise you a tank!”
This would have to be the best bit about Apocalypse games for me.
Instead of taking hours to set up your 300 miniatures for a game, you make a bid for how long you believe it’ll take. Bids are between 1-30 minutes.
Now here’s the kicker. The team that bids lowest gets first turn, but you have to set up in the time you bid. Of course you’ll get 5 minutes grace to confer with team mates or plan what you want down first. Then it’s placing unit after unit onto the table to beat the clock. Once the times-up anything not completely (or wrongly) placed are removed and any unit not on the table gets put into reserve that arrive in 2nd and 3rd turn.

“1 for you, 2 for me... 1 for you, 3 for me”
In Apocalypse the only way to win is to be the force controlling the most objectives at the end of the game. Casualties don’t have an effect on victory making it more likely player’s wont hold back and chance that suicidal charge into the mouth of hell. This results in those bizarre scenes where a lowly Imperial Guardsman can take out a tooled up special character through sheer luck.

Apocalyptic Armies
Each army has been given some shiny new rules to add some extra flavor to games of Apocalypse in the form of Datasheets representing special Battle Formation and War Machines. Also, at the beginning of every armies introduction there’s about two pages filled with never been seen before background fluff. Portraying things like, Rundowns on historic battle formations and Special fighting techniques.

Data Sheets are broken up into two categories, Legendary Units and Legendary Formations.

Legendary Units represent larger than life war machines and monstrosities and are broken into a couple of different sub categories.

Super Heavy Vehicles
For the people that haven’t seen or heard of forgeworld, super heavy vehicles include units like Titans and massive tanks like the baneblade. Though first glance at their rules they might look as fragile as a normal vehicle, but they have additional rules that give them some added protection. Not to mention the amount of destruction these puppies can unleash.

Gargantuan Creatures
This category mainly falls to the Tyranids with their Hierodule and Heiraphant Monstrosities but there are exceptions like the Ork Squiggoth.
These massive creatures have special rules that provide them with additional protection from the “little Blighters” among other nastiness.

Flyers
These units include things from Imperial Marauders to Ork Fighter Bomberz.
Quite a few will have special rules taken from the Super Heavy Vehicles in addition to their flyer status. Their abilities range from bombing runs on ground forces to dog fights in the air.

Though some of these units are only available through Forgeworld, there’s nothing stopping you from scratch building your own and using the freedom of a “count as” rule.
But After a couple of games I recon you’ll be hard pressed not to be tempted into buying one of these wonderful centerpieces for your army if you haven’t already.

Legendary Formations represent special units take from the background fluff, that the games developers believe warranted some additional rules. These include some awesome Formations like the Emperors Fist tank company, Tyranid Endless Swarm and Eldar Aspect Wave.

As time goes on Games Workshop clearly states they plan to bring additional Data Sheets out either online or through the White Dwarf magazine, so keep those eyes peeled! You just don’t know what massive horror of war is waiting to be unleashed.

Strategic Assets
As with the last 40K supplement book “City of Death” these Strategies seem somewhat familiar. I’m not going to go into detail on these so you’ll have to buy the book, but I will say you can expect things like Re-Deployment strategies, Orbital Barrages as well as a return of an old favorite, the Vortex Grenade.

Conclusion
Apocalypse may allow you to bend the rules, even break a few. But that’s not to say you should try to make the most busted army you can. There’s a stipulation on fair play throughout the book and its there for a reason. Players should try to keep their power gaming selves on a leash as you’ll be in danger of loosing your Apocalypse gaming group if you keep bringing “Kill all” armies to the battlefield. The games should be about having fun.

This book isn’t about hard fast rules for a new way to play 40k; it’s an example of how to have huge games and what can be accomplished with a little bit of organization.

There’s great potential for colossal campaigns for Apocalypse with themed armies making and breaking alliances to get to the top and stay there.
So let you imagination run wild and have fun!!

Happy gaming!
SM