Let me start by apologizing for my lengthy post a page before, it was mothers day and my mom and I dont exactly see eye to eye, and i came home an a rather terrible mood and saw your post where you said:
Having endless swarms constantly regenerating takes all strategic and tactical value away from the game.
I must say that in the mood I was in I took it as a personal attack, and that you were saying that I had no strategy or tactics, just a game breaking ability. Looking back on it, yeah, your right, I did lose my temper a bit, so I hope you'll forgive me.
Be careful about judging my sportsmanship. I didn't complain once during the game, nor threw a fit about losing. I am one of the more level-headed and easy going gamers you'll ever run across. I never complain about a loss, nor do I continuously pat myself on the back for a crushing victory.
I wasnt judging you, i was responding to what i thought was an attack on my planning, strategy and tactics. In addition, i didnt really give myself credit for anything besides the objectives i completed in my first after the battle post. It wasnt untill i felt that my command was questioned that i felt the need to point out how i had altered the course of the game by staying several steps ahead of Team B in the planning stages.
The combination of deployment zone/without number is the game-breaker and literally stole the fun from the game and my victory. My opponents had pretty much given up hope by Turn 2 as well, and the whole idea of using these in combination went out the window.
I will agree with you on this, those two in combinations is kinda game breaking, unless your prepared for it. If Team B had deployed differently knowing i had an endless swarm coming on, you could have easily countered the advantage i gained by using the rules for deployment edges to my advantage. Isnt this how all wars are fought? Warhammer 40K focuses on small battles, where tactics will win or lose you the game. 40K Apocalypse takes a step back, and looks at the battlefield from a strategic standpoint. At this level you need to look at your overall strategy, because just tactics wont win the game anymore. In Apocalypse, Deployment zone selection, and deployment, are the two most important phases in the whole game... What happens in those two portions will have a dominating effect on the rest of the game, and if you didnt lay out your forces to counter your opponent properly, it will be very hard for you to win..... because the units you need to counter your opponents flank rush, are on the opposite side of the 8 foot or larger table.
Congratulate yourself for "tricking" us into your strategy, but realize that no matter where you brought reserves from, the end result was the same as that busted up megabattle from before. You merely reinforced what we knew already, but because you play Nids, it's hard to tell someone not to use an ability given to their army.
Like i said before, Without Number is not overpowered if you have to walk across the table with it. What makes it overpowered is when the opponent walks into your deployment zone so you can get into assault in the turn you come on, or when you get to come on from your opponents table edge. This is especially true since you took out the ability to take the strategic assets that counter it.... yet left in the ability to get a deployment edge that is right next to your opponents. It was a big flaw in the rules that were used for megabattles and since there is no strategic assets, there was no way to counter it, without planning for that possibility and changing your deployment to suit that possible outcome.
I have plans sometime in the future to have a megabattle that incorporates an entire room. Pending a room, I have pretty much everything else standing by. No strategic assets will be allowed, but Without Number will be given to both sides (with certain restrictions). Deployment zones will not be funky either, so there will be no opportunity to combine into a game-breaking ability.
Flank March and Without Number(or their similar counterparts) are by no means the only game breaking abilities. So far i have come up with 6 for Tyranids, 5 for Tau, 4 for Eldar, and 5 for Marines. Everyone has them in Apocalypse... they will happen, thats why the strategic assets are there.... to help you counter game breaking abilities, but you need to think ahead.... and out think your opponent, and choose the right ones to counter your foe.
I'll also be running the next 40k campaign (about 6-8 months from now), and serious thought will be given to game-breaking combinations. The idea behind our campaigns/gaming is about having fun and socializing, not power-gaming or "winning at all costs", (even if you know something is unbalanced).
That sounds cool, and I agree, a Warhammer 40K campaign should be all about having fun. But you need to understand something about Apocalypse if you are going to include the rules for it... It was designed around what would be considered "Game Breaking Abilities" in normal 40K... Titans are game breaking, Strategic assets are game breaking, and Formations are game breaking. Everything about Apocalypse is "game breaking", it was designed for the Strategist and the Power Gamer. If your not ready to acknowledge that as you start playing Apocalypse, you might as well just be playing a large game of 40K. There is no possible way to regulate or remove the many, many possible game breaking strategies that are made possible in apocalypse without tossing the rulebook aside completely. If your not ready to use all the game breakers, which are there to balance one another, then my suggestion is this:
That you remove the apocalypse rules from the campaign and just make it a large game of 40K. This includes removing titans, warmachines, and gargantuan creatures, as they too are game breaking.
Otherwise, you will continually be finding "new" game breaking abilities in each battle, and will have to constantly regulate them until the rules are so complex that you just throw out the apocalypse book entirely anyway. The only difference being that it took you alot longer to realize the true nature of Apocalypse by trying to modifying it every time you come across another game breaking ability..... despite the fact that the very existence of titans on the battlefield is game breaking...
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