Editing Warhammer 40,000/8th Edition Tactics/Apocalypse (section)

=How to play Apocalypse=
Apocalypse as it stands, (the future and balence gods may be kind) exists as a form of open play, the “throw your collection at the wall” ruleset, there’s no force organisation charts (so you could take an army of all infantry with one HQ, your warlord), no rules on faction keywords (except for abilities etc), so you can take an army of orks and imperial guard (although that is also fluff correct), and you can have more than two players (this is in fact, recommended). You may be forgiven for thinking that Apocalypse is just open play, and that you would treat your army in the same manner, however:
*No force organization charts means that you cannot be battle forged.

*In turn, this means that your armies do not gain objective secured as that requires your army to be (as you guessed it) battle forged. Other abilities like the custodies plus one to invulnerability saves also goes out of the window unless you agree with your opponent beforehand (which is recommended.

*No detachments means no stratagems, which drastically reduces the effectiveness of certain units (no 2+ weapon skill for tanks in melee for example) and drastically increases the effectiveness of others where their hard counter (for example, the counter to a psychic assassin would be to use the previously mentioned stratagem to give a tank a 2+ weapon skill) would require the use of stratagems.

*The scale of the game requires you to think about building your armies differently, at this scale units form together into blobs, even baneblades stop being single entities. As such you shouldn't build your army with the plan of giving each individual unit a set task, such micromanaging will also take forever to enact on the battlefield.

*No force organisation charts also allow you to bring long any units. While in normal open play this means "bring along all of your imperial guard units", in apocalypse it means "[[Angry Marines|BRING ALL OF YOUR UNITS!!! YES YOU CAN PUT THE IMPERIAL AND WRAITH KNIGHTS IN THE SAME BOX, JUST GRAB EVERYTHING!!!]]" This allows you to create interesting and complimentary combinations which are limited only by the size of your van, your lifting strength, and how fast you can run from the lynch mob when you use your tau/tyranid combo army.

*The 4000 points plus per army (or equivalent power points) allows [[Skarbrand|bigger]] [[titan|beasts]] to come out in force, although you might see these units in open play they aren't seen in the numbers of apocalypse.

*Apocalypse is usually played with multiple teams, and unlike smaller multiplayer battles where the forces present are small enough to be effectively separated on the board into separate skirmishes, the scale of apocalypse means that you cannot simply expect your team mate/s to just keep to themselves, you have to work together to win otherwise your forces can quite easily become separated and neutralised.