Editing Apocalypse (section)

==Escalation==
GW realized that no one plays Apocalypse scale battles due to their size and time (and thus don't buy their models). To fix this, they came up with a new supplement for 40k proper called '''Escalation''' that allows you to use a '''Lord of War''' (Super-Heavies and Gargantuan Creatures) in your Force Organization chart, complete with [[Anal Circumference|Strength D weaponry]]. So now you can have a Baneblade in your 1500 points game, like an asshole. So far its just one or two models per race ''(unless you play Imperial, in which case you get all the Baneblade variants and can take units from [[Imperial Armour]])'', but you'd be extremely unlikely to be fielding more than one Lord of War anyway.

The initial reaction to Escalation was broadly negative from the player base, as accusations flew around about it making things wildly imbalanced when one player's army doesn't have access to a Lord of War or counters to Strength-D weapons for whatever reason.

Though forums and 40k blog websites gradually debunked this attitude by showing that tournament goers were not immediately swamped by players arriving with waves upon waves of unbeatable superheavy deathstars, nor were the new Lords of War absolutely essential in winning or losing games, and in many cases were seen as point sinks and [[DISTRACTION_CARNIFEX|giant "shoot-me" targets]] in reasonably sized games vs well designed and balanced armies.

===7th Edition 40k===
With the arrival of the latest ruleset for Warhammer 40,000, Escalation was very much just rolled into the general toolbox of rules. So Superheavies and Destroyer weapons can find their way into any game without using a supplement, though the Escalation/Apocalypse book would still be required to actually have rules for fielding the superheavy / "Lord of War" models.

They also nerfed the rules for Destroyer weapons too, while still causing multiple wounds as before, they do allow saves as determined by the AP of the weapon (usually AP1 or AP2 anyway) unless you roll a 6 while determining results, in which case your models are screwed.

Apocalypse is still very much a thing, despite the incorporation of many of its rules into the core rulebook. The latest edition of Apocalypse introduced several new features which makes Apocalypse something more than just another game at very high points levels:
*"Finest Hours" where your warlord gets a 3+ invulnerable save and a one-use super-warlord trait for a turn. Either rolled for on a table at random, or is fixed by your primarch if you are a Space Marine (both Loyalist/Traitor)
*Differentiating between formation types, which is something not done at lower level games.
**High Command Formations are single units usually containing several independent characters, granting you additional strategic assets as the game continues in addition to whatever rules they grant you.
**Psychic Choirs - something that GW needs to develop further; whole squads of psykers that may combine their warp charges into single, larger psychic powers. Though 7th Edition 40k creates a pool of warp charges anyway, this grants you access to some really big spells.
*We've always had Strategic Asset Cards, which are like army-wide buffs/special rules or pieces of wargear, the 2nd Edition of Apocalypse restricted some to have resource costs, where if you used them your end-of-game score is reduced accordingly.

GW is still promoting Apocalyse through its own supplements, focusing on specific battles between races, granting new Finest Hour abilities, Formations and Strategic Assets for each participant.
*'''Warzone Armageddon''' - Part of the Apocalypse book. Orks vs Guard, Templars & Blood Angels
*'''Warzone Damnos''' - Ultramarines vs Necrons
*'''Warzone Pandorax''' - Chaos vs Guard, Dark Angels & Grey Knights
*'''Warzone Damocles''' - Tau vs pretty much anything Imperium can throw into a meat-grinder. Except Sisters of Battle, because GW hates them.
*'''Warzone Valedor''' - Craftworlds Iyanden, Biel-Tan, & Dark Eldar vs Tyranids
*'''Warzone Vraks''' - Chaos vs Imperium ''Published in Imperial Armour Apocalypse, essentially an condensed update for the three older Vraks books''
Interestingly the Warzone books have this running theme of "[[Advancing the Storyline]] except not really". Warzone Damnos, for example, takes place nearly a hundred years after Agrippan's big sacrifice and all that, and Warzone Damocles is the ''second'' Damocles Gulf Crusade (and is thankfully devoid of Matt Ward's accursed Highlander references). Pandorax is even got an entire Horus Heresy novel to be its prequel! (tl;dr the Damnation Cache opened up and a lot of Iron Hands died)

===8th Edition 40k===
From 8th edition Lords of War became normal play units with most common models except for titans appearing in the standard faction codices and the ability to field a detachment in matchplay solely containing a Lord of War without HQ or other unit requirements with no penalty to command points, and even bonus command points for fielding a detachment consisting of 3 or more LoW. They do remain expensive units however, with most in the 25-30 power 400 base cost with 200 additional wargear point range, though there are a small handful of cheaper LoW (albeit ones that wouldn't be classified as superheavies themselves, such as [[Roboute Guilliman]] or [[Mortarion]]). Forgeworld have updated their Imperial Armour codices for 8th edition and they remain officially sanctioned supplements by Games Workshop.