Hi All,
In June we had a Apocalypse game that tied into our local crusade campaign. Unfortunately, I am struggling to find my photos from the event : ( As with the past few events I was trialing a mission I wrote which is included below. The purpose of this event was to encourage players to bring out large numbers of vehicles and monsters, which sometimes get over-shadowed in apoc. The story for this mission was a rogue planet had emerged from a warp storm and both sides were racing to discover its secrets. As it was still quite tainted many armies were using their vehicles to screen them from the ambient corruption.
Mission Rules:
Key Targets: In the harsh climate of this planet sometimes the cruelest fate is to be left stranded: At the start of the battle each player must nominate 5 models to be their key targets. These must be vehicle models, if the player has no vehicle models then they must be character models. If the player has neither characters nor vehicles then the opposing team automatically scores these points. The defender then secretly assigns the following point values to each model: 50,40,30,20,10. When that model is destroyed the opposing team scores that many victory points.
Relics: The world is littered with what appear to be valuable relics or pieces of lost information, as far as you can tell anyway…. After deployment has finished both teams will alternate placing 6 objectives on the board. All objectives must be minimum 9” away from any vehicle/monster models or either team’s deployment zones, and at least 3” away from another objective. At the end of any movement phase any model with the “Vehicle” or “Monster” keyword can perform the following action:
Relay: One or more of your “Vehicle” or “Monster” units (including flyers) may begin to perform this action at the end of one of your movement phases. Each unit must be within range of the same objective. The action is complete at the start of your next command phase. If the unit performing this objective is in your crusade roster then the unit may advance, shoot and charge normally.
Each team scores 25 points for each successfully completed action. Once this action is complete, remove the objective. At the end of the round, each team alternates placing a number of new objectives equal to those removed by their opponents over the course of the preceding round. If there isn’t space for an objective to be placed then it is held in reserve until the start of the next round. The team with the fewest points always placed it’s objective first.
Warp Touched: The lands of this planet are beset by the same, strange phenomena that have afflicted the system. However, the shifting tides of the warp cause these effects to change constantly. At the beginning of the second round the team with the fewest points rolls a D3 to determine what “Warp Effect” is in play. This will be drawn from the Irradiated Wasteland twists from the Charadon campaign book. Once per game, if the team with the fewest points is losing by 100 or more points then, if each player sacrifices one vehicle unit (these units are treated as being destroyed, any transported models are considered to be lost), then they may roll 2D3 and pick the result. This result lasts until the end of the round. In addition, at the beginning of each turn players will roll 1 D6 for each of their non-vehicle or monster models on the board. On a “1” that model suffers 1 mortal wound.
House Rules:
It is my solemn opinion that all large battles like this need some form of house-rules to keep things interesting. To mitigate against one side dominating we implemented the following restrictions:
- During the first round no vehicle, monster or character models are removed until the end of the round. This way everyone gets a bit of fun with their models. We also don’t roll to see if these models explode until the end of the round either (to avoid opportunistic suicides).
- In order to speed up games the normal turn order is revised into the following:
- Movement:
- Team A Moves
- Team B Moves
- Shooting:
- Team A Shoots (team selects half their members, rounded down, to shoot)
- Team B Shoots (team selects half their members, rounded down, to shoot)
- Remaining Team A Shoots
- Remaining Team B Shoots
- Assault
- Team A Charges
- Team B Charges
- All fights are considered to be one combat, but resolved by player similar to the shooting phase. However any player can spend CP’s to interrupt after an enemy unit has fought.
- Movement:
- All players tart with 1 CP and generate an additional one in their command phase
This was the second game we had used these rules for our event and, overall, they have worked well. We did run into some “issues” that I will discuss when I cover how the game went. I would encourage you to look at some of the Crusade supplements from GW when setting up your events as they have a lot of fun mission ideas. As this article is already a bit lengthy I will save the full report, and my thoughts on how it went for Friday.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
