Megabattles rules and scenarios- test bed

[Sheepshagga]

At J's request, I'll start work on Megabattle rules.  I'll create two sets: one based off current 40k and IA rules, and another once Apocalypse comes out.  From there, a decision will be made if we can blend them together, use the 40k set, or use the Apoc set.

First off, 40k/IA rules:
-2 players per side.
-Standard FOC per player
-2000 pts per
-1 Superheavy per side, points taken out of the total army list (each player can give up a portion of his army value). 
-Structure point limitations (don't know yet), but probably nothing bigger than a Baneblade class or Warhound.
-For Ork superheavies, I have good rules from Seigeworld.  We’ll use those.
-EDIT: If one team does not have a superheavy, but the other does, then the team without one can choose 2 campaign fortifications or 2 Apocalypse-style Strategic Assets,  or a combination of each.  A team cannot have more than one of each Asset.  Not all Assets will be used- a list of approved ones is forthcoming.
-Flyers approved (non structure point types)- points from an individual, not the team.
-EDIT: No named characters, but teams must designate a general as the Supreme Commander.  Read scenario details for benefits/penalties of having a Supreme Commander.
-More missions forthcoming, but ideas are welcome!
-If your army has some special ability that affects the entire enemy army, like the Speed Freaks Fighta-bomma raid, then it needs to be brought up and addressed, and possibly modified because things like that are created and designed against a single opponent, not multiples.  EDIT: Items/abilities that have unlimited range or affect an entire army are now limited to a max range of 72".
-Teleport homers and similar devices can be used by all friendlies, not just army specific.

[GI_Joel]

I am onboard for OCT 6 for some megabattle testing.  I would also like to invite some of the other guys who are interested in joining the campaign such as Justin and Jesse. 

[Brynjolfr]

I'd love to join. How many points should I bring?  Bugs or Marines?

[Sheepshagga]

Any army you want Jesse.  We're playtesting megabattle scenarios so it's not essential to bring the army you will field in the campaign. 

Read the rules in the first thread for army composition.  I suggest bringing a regular 2000 point list, but be prepared to use AB at GE to make some adjustments to support your partner (if either you or he brings a Superheavy). 

Personally, I'll bring Templars, a flyer, and a Titan.  So whoever I'm partnered with will be asked to share about 200 points to offset the high cost of the Titan.  If he's unwilling, I'll still field it, but that kinda sucks for the "whole team" aspect. 

[captkurt]

Personally, I'll bring Templars, a flyer, and a Titan.  So whoever I'm partnered with will be asked to share about 200 points to offset the high cost of the Titan.  If he's unwilling, I'll still field it, but that kinda sucks for the "whole team" aspect. 

No way...if you wanna bring that lame ass, cheesy titan then forget it....your playing with less!

[Sheepshagga]

Having scrounged through the Apocalypse book, I’ve chosen the following Strategic Assets to incorporate into our Megabattles as appropriate.

There are two JPEGs here, so if you want to download them, make sure you get them both.

PHOTOS REMOVED AND UPDATED LATER IN THE THREAD

[Sheepshagga]

After some initial "playtesting" last night, we discovered that there were a number of issues with each of the scenarios, so I will pull them later today, attempt to fix them, then repost them.

Mostly the issues were with Army abilities.  "The defenders were too close as armies with a 24" move/charge could engage in turn 1", or "(army) can't use this, so why have it", or "Why not create a list of abilities for the Supreme Commander to pick from, rather than force the player to use a certain ability".

All great points, and I will adjust the scenarios (or may even scrap one or two).

I will also create an Apocolypse-like scenario or two, using more ideas from Apocalypse, but more like:  An Apocalypse table setup, but using a slightly modified FOC (+1 to all 0-? choices), max 3 HQ per player, choose a Supreme Commander, 1 superheavy per side, 4000 points per side, 2 players per side, some strategic assets, and using IA rules and standard templates instead of the devastating Apocalypse ones.

[Sheepshagga]

Ok, I updated 3 scenarios so far, and I'm attaching the options available to a Supreme Commander as well.  Rather than dictate what the Commander does, I'm now offering a ton of choices that can be tailored to the needs of an army.

Next Saturday, Oct 6, I've recruited some interest in having a megabattle.  If we get enough people, we can have 2 megabattles.  I'd like to try out "Megabattle 5- Frontal Assault", and if we have enough people, then they can try out "Megabattle 2: Hostages" as well.

Just so we can start preparing ahead of time, I will be an Attacker for the Frontal Assault.  I'm looking for someone to be a partner, and I need two people to be defenders.

After that, I need two people to be attackers and two defenders for the Hostage scenario. 

Any takers?


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[Sheepshagga]

Seems I underestimated the costs of Superheavies.  Combined with the fact that we are increasing FOC to include more 0-? choices, I've decided to bump up points per player to accomodate the bigger, nastier things.  Here are the latest, basic Megabattle rules:

-2 players per side.

-Modified FOC per player.  3 HQ Max, +1 to 0-? unit choices.

-2500 pts per player.

-1 Superheavy per side, points taken out of the total army list (each player can give up a portion of his army value). 

-Superheavy can have no more than 3 Structure/Mass points (any void shields excluded).

-Superheavy and flyer rules will follow those of the most current Imperial Armour books (Update 2006).  Rules will be made available to anyone who does not have access to these books.  Just let me know what you need and I will provide it.

-For Ork superheavies, I have good rules from Seigeworld.  We’ll use those.

-If one team does not have a superheavy, but the other does, then the team without one can choose 1 campaign fortification or 1 Apocalypse-style Strategic Asset. 

-At no time can a team have more than one of each Strategic Asset.  See list of approved Assets available.

-Flyers approved (non structure point types)- points from an individual, not the team.

-No named characters, and no assassins, but teams must designate a general as the Supreme Commander.  Read scenario details for benefits/penalties of having a Supreme Commander.

-If your army has some special ability that affects the entire enemy army, like the Speed Freaks Fighta-bomma raid, then it needs to be brought up and addressed, and possibly modified because things like that are created and designed against a single opponent, not multiples. 

-Items/abilities that have unlimited range or affect an entire army are now limited to a max range of 72".

-Teleport homers and similar devices can be used by all friendlies, not just army specific.

For those players who do not have a Superheavy and wish to use one (specifically a Warhound or Ork Stompa/Gargant), if I'm not using mine, you can borrow it.  This affords many players the opportunity to field something really nasty.  I also have a Vulture and Ork flyer available.  I will always bring all my goodies for anyone who wishes to borrow them for the day, so no worries.  Given your opponent's permission, they can even "count as" something else (like a Chaos Titan, or maybe a different kind of flyer...). 

[1st-Co-Battle-Bro]

Hey Sheepshaaggaaa however you say it ... I am down for anything with the megabattle - attacker - defender - teaming with you or against - whatever.  The scenarios sound cool and I'm excited to field more than 2000 points.

However - as you and everyone else knows, all I have is my Ultramarines, so I would probably want to side up with your Templars ("I wanna play with the Titan!"), or with anyone else Imperial.

Also -question regarding the FOC - with the +1 to unit choices, that means for example, that one could field 4 heavy support choices instead of three, right?  Am I understanding that correctly?

[captkurt]

Not to derail what Greg has done here....but I had a thought about this whole next campaign and megabattle thing.

With the coming of Apocalypse and the fact the many of us have superheavies of sorts....why don't we make this next campaign an Apocalypse campaign?

Go with six 2 man teams.  Many fewer territories, start with more to begin with.  Every battle is a team on team Apocalypse battle.

Mega battles do not take much longer to play and 2 normal games (sometimes less).  I have played 2v2 that lasted 1.5 hours.  With Apocalypse you set a time limit....say 2-3 hours and calc the winner at that point.

regardless, I do suggest the following for all mega-battles....

Deployment - alternate sides, deploying all of on Force Org slot, rather than unit by unit.  Even if you have ZERO units in that slot, you take your turn and deploy 0.

side 1 deploys all Heavies, side 2 deploys all Heavies
side 1 deploys all Troops, side 2 deploys all Troops
side 1 deploys all Elites, side 2 deploys all Elites
side 1 deploys all HQ, side 2 deploys all HQ
side 1 deploys all Fast Attack, side 2 deploys all Fast Attack
side 1 deploys all Infiltrators, side 2 deploys all Infiltrators

Reserves are brought on in a 50% fashion.  On each turn (two and later) count the number of units in reserve, divide by 2 and bring that many units into play.  This allows the player to control the reserve arrival and not random die rolls.  Units that come in via special rules (demonic summoning and so on) deploy by normal reserve rules.

[Sheepshagga]

Deployment - alternate sides, deploying all of on Force Org slot, rather than unit by unit.  Even if you have ZERO units in that slot, you take your turn and deploy 0.

Reserves are brought on in a 50% fashion.  On each turn (two and later) count the number of units in reserve, divide by 2 and bring that many units into play.  This allows the player to control the reserve arrival and not random die rolls.  Units that come in via special rules (demonic summoning and so on) deploy by normal reserve rules.

These are good ideas.  We can try them out this weekend.  I would go so far as to say any flyers would fall into this category as well, since they are rolled as reserves too.  EDIT:  As far as deployment goes, in a scenario where deployment is not already outlined, then we can use this technique.

As for making our next campaign an Apocalypse campaign, having playtested a few "rounds" already, it would require remaking the entire campaign.  For this next campaign, I'm not a big supporter of that particular idea, but it's not my call.  Talking with Cliff the other day, he mentioned something about more Apocalypse megabattles, but he didn't mention a particular campaign, so I'm sure we'll all get our Apoc fixes soon enough.

Personally, I'd rather see how quickly Apocalypse catches on, or perhaps burns itself out, before we commit a whole campaign to it.  Having read the rule book (albeit briefly), I was not impressed with many of its rules (or lack thereof in some cases).

Bryan, since you're the first to man up, I'll take you as a partner.  We'll be the attackers.  Now we just need some poor saps to be defenders.    I'll shoot you a PM to discuss army possiblities.

[Sheepshagga]

I updated the Strategic Assets above, specifically addressed how some things can be deployed, and adjusted the limit on how many can be taken if one opponent brings a Superheavy and the other does not.

Also, here's a breakdown of Megabattle Table Set Up rules.  This is taken from our current campaign, but opened up a tiny bit to allow for the bigger armies.

Some scenarios to come will require a certain amount of terrain to be between deployment zones, so in the future, be aware of scenario requirements and place the terrain in accordance with it as best as possible.

For the campaign itself, some worlds will already have a terrain associated with it, and that may determine what the Megabattle table will look like, but for Saturday's battle(s), let's use the "Sparse/Agriculture/Suburbs" setup.

[spaz102]

Can I still use my RavenWing or DeathWing? I need to have a named character in order to use them. Are we looking to limit the use of these types of armies?

Will my DeathWing assault work for all termins in the group army? So we can teleport half of them on turn one?

What about using Chapter Masters? 

Thanks,

Lee

[Sheepshagga]

As far as the overall campaign is concerned, I'm not the end-all-be-all with respect to what armies you can bring.

This thread and my part in the campaign is all about development of the Megabattles that will be part of the bigger campaign.

As for Deathwing special rules in the Megabattles, ONLY the army that has a special rule can take advantage of it.  An example, my Templars are fearless when involved in an assault.  This is for Templars only, not any other Space Marines that are my allies.  However, one special rule that may cause issues would be the one (forget the name) that allows all Space Marines to use the Marshal's leadership.  I'd say that only the Chapter can take advantage of their leader's leadership.  If two Marine armies are on the table, they follow their own leaders (Chapter loyalty).  A Supreme Commander is being created so that both allies in a megabattle can enjoy joint benefits.  But for everything else, all special rules stay within the associated army.

As for deepstriking/teleporting, if the unit is one that  has to be rolled for (like reserves), then on Turn 2 50% of them will come on without a roll needed.  On Turn 3, the remaining 50% can come on.  If Deathwing can teleport/deepstrike starting on Turn 1, then YES, 50% of them can automatically come on.