Siegeworld - Lesson's From the Front

There is a reason it is called "Floorhammer's Greatest Game".  It is the biggest 40K Apocalypse game played on the FLOOR.

Run by the insane (and truly awesome) group of gamers at Siegeworld in St. Louis, The annual Siegeworld game is truly something different in the world of Apocalypse.  I got to know Kirk Damman, the guy who runs the club, when we first started the Apocalypse40K forum.  And then their whole group came to The Big Game III in Memphis this year and anchored the Imperial lines.

First, here is the Siegeworld video of their set-up.

From Kirk:

I'm going to post of a few of the Apocalypse observations/lessons I learned with the new rules in our extremely large format. (almost 200K points).

1)  People universally forgot to use their high command bonuses, we had no finest hours at all because everyone forgot.  This is probably the most different of the new rules, and with the record keeping we had, people just simply forgot it.  It really should have been used for movement, would have helped a lot.

2)  We had a "break" after every turn, (for about 2 minutes) simply to calculate points and allow reserves.  Worked well.

3)  Spearheads were very popular, but trying to remember which tanks were in which formations is a bit difficult.  Markers would be nice (or some movement connectors).  The arrowhead is really useful for the lighter main gun tanks (e.g. Leman exterminator).

4)  The rules feel like they flow better, the game feels more fluid.

5)  Vortexes are fun.

6)  The game was surprisingly even on victory points.  The difference was one team's ability to control the major (+4) objective for two turns without the other side trying to contest it (a clear strategic mistake).
 

The right flank

A few of the things that we thought were issues.

1)  We were constantly assigning one too many hull points to a D shot.  Bascially, we kept giving it +1 for a penetrating/glancing, then the roll on the table.  This is clearly wrong, we were just so used to "automatically penetrates"

2)  There are almost too many big explosions.  Virtually everything goes up.  It would be nice if the blast was a little more powerful and a little less common as the outer ring basically never had any effect.

3)  Basic Superheavy tanks (9 hull with no shields) are a little to easy to destroy with D weaponry.  A single D shot will average around 4-5 hull points so a weapon like a turbolaser (2 shots) with standard rolling will usually destroy it in a single round.  9 hull is actually a little light for the smallest superheavy, we really thought 10-12 felt more right.  It's important to remember that the templates will rarely miss on a target this size.

4)  There is a massive jump between Str 10 and Str D when shooting at Superheavies (not so much with regular targets).  The ability to ignore anything that isn't a "destroyed" on the table, and then only doing 1+D3 hull basically means that any weapon without D can't destroy even the lightest superheavy rolling straight 6s.  However, D can rapidly kill any superheavy (and on the same pure 6's roll can take out virtually anything).  I like that this make D a near imperative to use on war machines, but it does make it a bit too potent in that regard.

For example,  10 Leman Russes (Including Pask Vanquishers in Formation) +2 superheavy tanks did less damage to a reaver titan than one arm gun from a warhound. Similarly, my Reaver with a melta cannon was monstrously outgunned by a warhound with a turblaser.
I really feel that the rules as they are now in some sense feel more like the targeting priority the SoCal group used.  If there are multiple titans on the table, failing to shoot at your counterpart, will cause you to loose your titan.  The problem is that other than titans (which at least have shields) superheavies are a bit vulnerable.
There are three classes of things when it comes to units.  War machines with D weapons, War Machines w/o D weapons, and everything else.

5)  Shields are more useful.  Because of the prevalence of explosions, if you have no shields you are very vulnerable to scattered "D" explosions from other formation units.  I had the front baneblade in a steel fury squadron explode and almost take out both the others.  However, warhound titans in a similar position shrugged it off on shields.

The left flank

A few thoughts we had for our game in the future.

1)  Modifying VP for destroying superheavies.  You get 1VP for a model with 10 or more hull+shields (which exempts unshielded SH tanks, but nothing else) and 2Vp for 20 hull+shields.  I don't think this makes sense unless there are a lot of superheavies on the board.  If you're talking mostly tanks in a more normal sized game, the rule is fine as is.

2)  There is a big gap with having D weaponry on the field.  The Shadowsword will be REALLY good in a smaller game (even better is the warhound, but a little less common).  In a huge game, things seem to balance reasonably.

3)  Everyone should have access to the vortex grenade.

4)  Recordkeeping can be a headache.  There are a lot of special rules. 

And another flank to protect against!

Kirk Damman, the Siegeworld organizer at The Big Game III this year.

Much thanks to Kirk for the write-up!

Loken