I have several suggestions from many apocalypse games under my belt:
1) Design a scenario- don't just play a normal game. This means you also pre-set the strategems and assets that are allowed. Flank march should ONLY be allowed on a apocalypse formation that has it as part of the formation special rules. And flank march should only work on that specific formation, and maybe only flanking within a certain "zone" of the board.
It also means that as much as possible, try to determine sides, like Marines vs. every other army, or Imperials vs. Xenos. You'll have to adjust things on the fly depending on who actually shows up on game day, but at least you'll be trying to conform to a basic concept. This also allows players within the teams to coordinate their lists so that, for example if only troops score, you don't end up with one team having almost no troops.
2) Design the scenario so that a player will have something to do no matter where on the table his guys are set up. Let me expound. On a large table, it's unlikely everyone will be within even 36" of one of the 5 standard objectives. If you're one of those players not near an objective, basically all you can do is run at the guy across from you.
Either increase the number of objectives, or have something else they can do (fight over). Like a defense station that allows the controlling side to get a free orbital strike, or a shield generator that protects another area way across the board, you get the idea.
3) Having time limits, like we've done in the past, is a good thing. Expanding the time per turn in turns 2-4 (when a lot of the big assaults start up) is also a good idea.
4) I like making D weapons Str10 AP1. You could also give them 2d6 take the highest vs. vehicles for pen rolls, or even the straight up 2d6 listed above.
5) One idea I've seen used, and I've used personally, is to have the people who are coming declare ahead of time any superheavies they plan on bringing so that you can either adjust the scenario or adjust the teams a bit before game day. They can keep the rest of their list secret- only superheavies are declared. This gives the additional benefit of allowing the players on each team to sort of work together before the event to make sure there are enough super-heavy killing units running around. For example, if I'm on a Xenos team, and I know the imperial players are bringing a couple warhounds- maybe I don't have a warhound to bring myself, but I can at least plan to have some havocs, melta chosen, and combi-melta terminators in my list to ensure those titans won't run completely roughshod over my entire army.
6) Play around with the objectives and how they're scored. I've seen games where a running tally was taken at the end of each turn to see which side controlled the objectives so that you couldn't just ignore them until turn 5. I've played in games where controlling some objectives was worth more points than others (this works best with a pre-set scenario), and sometimes worth different VP amounts depending on the turn.
I've also participated in big games where every player was given a secret personal objective on game day, right before the game (like kill 2 opposing HQ's, or hold a certain piece of terrain, etc). If they told their teammates what their secret objective was before the game ended, they forfeited a VP to the enemy team. If they achieved their objective, they added a VP for their team. You can do this fairly easily by making 10-15 standard secret objectives, mixing them up in a hat, and simply having the players secretly pick one pre-game.
Those are some of my suggestions. Take them or leave them, but they have been learned through lots of trial and error over many, many big games throughout the years.
Reply With Quote