Editing Warhammer 40,000/9th Edition Tactics/Apocalypse (section)

=How to play Apocalypse=
The first thing to understand is that there are two ways of playing Apocalypse. Firstly, there's the half-assed way GW initially set up, which is just to play it as a version of open play. The second, is to play it like a normal game of 40k (or matched play style).
{| class=wikitable cellspacing=0 cellpadding=4 align=left
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! - !! '''Open Play''' !! '''Matched Play'''
|-
| '''Advantages''' || Quick to play and set up as you just grab all your units and play. Allows for fun combos you wouldn’t normally be able to have like tau and tyranids. Removes a lot of the faffing about which stratagems, special detachments etc would cause. || You get all the things you would get in normal match play, stratagems, warlord traits etc. Not much more complicated to create an army for as it’s just what you would do normally, just more of it.
|-
| '''Disadvantage''' || Open play means no detachments. No detachments means you get nothing which would require your army to be battle forged. Very little structure. A lot of your units become very dull. || Although you technically get stratagems, as you lose command points for every detachment you take a came of apocalypse could technically put you in negative points.
|-
|}
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==A guide to Hit and Wound rolls==
If you've gotten so far that you're reading a tactics page on the sewer drain that is 4chan then you should already know the basics of how dice rolls work, and how the warhammer wounding system works. To begin however, you need to appreciate that each dice roll is a probability of success:
*6+ is 16.66% chance
*5+ is 33.33% chance
*4+ is 50% chance
*3+ is 66.66% chance
*2+ is 83.33% chance

Eagle eyed or knowledgeable readers will have noticed/know that each jump represents a 16.66% increase. However, lets look at the improvements you gain with each level of dice roll, and by extension your potential damage increase.
*5+ is 100% better than 6+
*4+ is 50% better than 5+
*3+ is 33.33% better than 4+
*2+ is 25% better than 3+

As you can see, your returns for acquiring better hit/wound rolls diminish rapidly, which is why ork and tau overwatch is so dangerous, as they are effectively hitting on a 5+ on overwatch, a 100% increase over only getting overwatch on a 6. The same applies to if you automatically succeed a roll, the worse your normal roll would be, the better the improvement would be. This is also why armies like space marines don't deal that much more damage with their weapons over eg. Guard armies, as their improved ballistic skill only buys them 33% more damage, while costing more than that.

What you are getting from your improved rolls is not just output, but reliability. As you read through this page you can end up in the dangerous mindset that the numbers you read are absolutes. They are not. They are statistical likelihoods. They are averages, and averages are best on a range, a range which will come to bite you in the ass when you least expect it.

What better rolls buy you is reliability, which is exactly what you want when you're dropping a kill squad out of deep strike to anally abuse the enemy commander. Likewise, is it more cost effective for you to bring  lot of guns which wound on a 4+, or less guns which wound on a 3+? So lets have a look at the dice rolls again, but instead look at their fail rates:
*2+ is 16.66% fail chance
*3+ is 33.33% fail chance
*4+ is 50% fail chance
*5+ is 66.66% fail chance
*6+ is 83.33% fail chance

And then the improvements:
*2+ is 50% less fail than 3+
*3+ is 33.33% less fail than 4+
*4+ is 25% less fail than 5+
*5+ is 20% less fail than 6+

As you can see, a 2+, even though it doesn't buy you much more in the way of success, it buys you a big reduction in relative fail rates, which is exactly what you want when you are looking to guarantee a result that you want. On the opposite, the previous example of the tau and ork overwatch, they may have doubled their hit chance, but they have only reduced their fail chance by 20%, so most of their attacks are still missing.

===Rerolls===
Much has been said about rerolls. If you go to the separate tactics pages you will bump into the effectiveness of captains reroll auras, and whether they are worth it. First off, we need to have a look at the effect they have, both rerolling 1's, and rerolling all fails:
*6+ is 16.66% chance
*5+ is 33.33% chance
*4+ is 50% chance
*3+ is 66.66% chance
*2+ is 83.33% chance

Reroll 1's:
*6+ is 19.44%, +2.78%
*5+ is 38.88%, +5.55%
*4+ is 58.33%, +8.33%
*3+ is 77.77%, +11.11%
*2+ is 97.22%, +13.89

Reroll fails:
*6+ is 30.55%, +13.89%
*5+ is 55.55%, +22.22%
*4+ is 75%, +25%
*3+ is 88.88%, +22.22%
*2+ is 97.22%, +13.89%

To explain what you are seeing, rerolls are effected by two factors:
*Your roll chance
*And your reroll chance to fail ratio.
The higher these two values are, the better your roll will be. This is why when rerolling 1's, a 2+ roll sees the best increase, as it has the highest initial success chance, but it is also why a 4+ has the best increase when reroll all fails. So like with getting better basic dice rolls, when looking at rerolls you need to consider what that reroll is buying you. Rerolling 1's for orks won't buy you much (although in some builds that increase may be enough for you to have to buy bigger bucket for your dice), but rerolling 1's for custodes for their 2+ to hit sees them only failing their rolls 2.78% of the time.

However, rerolling also buys you something else, and that is avoiding negative effects of dice rolls. The most common effect like this is plasma, which deals mortal wounds or outright kills a model on a roll of 1. Rerolls bypass this by giving you one chance to take that 1, a reroll it. Lets take space marines for example. Plasma in their hands will hit 66.66% of the time, and kill them 16.66% of the time when overcharged. When rerolling (whether 1's or all fails) that 16.66% goes to 2.78%, or a 1 in 36 chance.

===Modifiers===
8th edition used to be the era of the modifier, with everything from elder minus 4 to hit cheese to necron Tesla guns activating on a 4+ to hit rather than just a 6 (because who doesn’t want to multiply their initial shots by 7/6).

9th has made everything a whole lot simpler (and less cheesy) by limiting modifiers to just plus or minus 1 once they are all added together. This means that you can still give a unit plus 2 to hit, all that means is that you’ll ignore a minus 1 to hit penalty and still get plus 1 to hit.

There are a few other important changes around modifiers:
*Effects which trigger on a 1 now only trigger on a natural 1, so weapons like plasma are a lot safer to use.
*Strength modifiers are now done after any effects created by a weapon, a S4 marine with a thunder hammer now hits at S9 instead of S10.
*A roll will always succeed on a 6, and always fail on a 1. The exception to this are armour saves, which are always failed on a 1 but can fail if the dice roll required would be higher than 6 (eg. 7+).

===Auto Hitting aka the Humble Flamer===
There’s nothing like purging the heretics with fire. Or destroying the corpse worshipers with an infernal inferno. Or dissolving the walking food with bio acid. Or crushing the deniers of the great plan with plasma wash.

Whatever form it comes in, flamers are everywhere. In previous editions (read, 7th and earlier) the flamer used a template for its shots, and you would roll to hit all units under it. As a result, hordes were really difficult to use, as your gaunt swarm could easily be destroyed by a guardsman with a basic flame thrower. New flamers are characterised by a few points:
*They have a random number of shots (eg. D3, D6, 2D6 etc).
*They automatically hit their target.
*They have shorter ranges than similar weapons.

==A guide to Armour Piercing==
In a world where you may only have access to low strength weaponry, it may not matter if you have a lot of armour piercing on your weapon. To begin with, lets have a look at your success rates against different armour saves.
*2+ is 16.66% success chance
*3+ is 33.33% success chance
*4+ is 50% success chance
*5+ is 66.66% success chance
*6+ is 83.33% success chance
*No armour save (7+) 100% success chance

As you already know, the worse a units armour save is, the better your chance of success. Armour saves are unusual as they're the only save which every unit can take, but which there can be a 100% chance to fail. Even units with no save technically have a 7+ save or worse. This is so their save can be buffed by cover, as otherwise they'd never benefit from those kinds of buffs.

So how do you get around these saves? Armour piercing on weapons can make a huge difference by allowing you to damage a unit. Lets look at the different levels of ap:
*'''Ap0''', bolters, lasguns, your opponent gets a full save roll, making these weapons only useful through sheer rate of fire. You also find it on some higher strength weapons, but these weapons will have some kind of other ability attached to them which make them worthwhile.
*'''Ap-1''', your heavy bolter/flamers, chainswords, autocannons etc. Really the absolute minimum you want to be running on a weapon, even then most of your shots will be blocked by the enemy armour, unless you're bringing this in volume fire. It can be useful, which will be discussed below.
*'''Ap-2''', battle cannons, the vulcan mega bolter etc. Bloody useful as you're now ignoring guard cardboard armour, and light vehicles don't get most of their save. Incredibly useful against knights (see below).
*'''Ap-3''', power swords, most plasma, armour piercing guard cannons etc. The most versatile as now the best save anyone can get against you is a 5+, light vehicles loose all their protection, and those pesky GEQ's with a 4+ save are now put back in their place.
*'''Ap-4''', high power plasma, all meltas and some melee weapons. The power armour destroyer, and makes a mockery of all vehicles.
*'''Ap-5''', Titan grade weapons, both ranged and melee. Cuts through all armour in the game unless it's somehow buffed.
*'''Ap-6''', doesn't exist anymore, but used to be found only on the most powerful titan weapons, or back in 7th edition and earlier, where it was ap1.

Now, you might immediately say that you want the best ap value you can get your greasy mittens on. However, you cannot talk about armour piercing values without talking about invulnerability saves as well. Invulnerability saves can always be taken (unless something says that it ignores or modifies it). In the fluff this is is explained as being a kind of force field, psychic powers, or even just the belief that the unit with it couldn't be harmed. In apocalypse, your biggest threats are those units which have some kind of invulnerability save, as when you're in a world where there are high strength, high ap and high damage weapons running around, your only defence against not being instantly destroyed is an invulnerability save.

Invulnerability saves make it so that your high ap weapons are basically wasted on your target (guilliman with high insane 3+ invulnerability save being a prime example), so you have to think about the ap of your weapons more carefully. So lets have a look at the potential invulnerability saves a unit can have, and what ap to use on them:
*'''2+''', only exists on that one stupid dark elves relic. As the target is a toughness 3 pointy eared prick, just blast them with bolter fire until they fail a save, and lose their invulnerability save as a result.

==A guide to Strength and Toughness==
*'''2:''' HA HA HA! No. Just no. S/T 2 will most likely deal no damage, or protect against anything. You could argue that with the wounding system, if you had enough bodies or attacks you could overcome any target, but chances are you will be paying more for those wounds and attacks compared to S/T 3.

:S/T 2 is generally only found on swarm units, whose entire purpose is to deny deep striking space and slow down units. In an actual fight however it’s about as useful as swearing at your opponent.

*'''3:''' Your GEQ’s, lasguns etc, the stuff normal humans and elves carry around in the 42nd millennia. In normal tabletop games these stats are weak, but useful for fighting other weak units. But in the world of apocalypse S/T 3 might as well not exist, as like S/T 2 you will be wounding the things that matter on 6’s, and being wounded on 2’s.

:However, S/T 3 is cheap, and readily available. A guardsman only costs you 5 points, and you can get S/T 3 units which are tougher than your normal guardsmen, and have multi damage weapons with ap.

*'''4:''' Your MEQ’s, and that point of S/T over 3 buys you... not much really. Generally you will come with a better armour save, ap on some of your guns and extra wounds, but most of the time you will die as fast as your GEQ counterparts while costing more.

*'''5:''' The first useful number, your CEQ’s. Now that there is nothing higher than toughness 9 in the game you will wound everything on at least a 5+, and wounding toughness 5 on a 2+ requires strength 10, which is uncommon. However, S/T 5 isn’t cheap (especially if your getting it in the form of custodes), with the exception of the heavy bolter (S5 ap- 1 D2 goes a very long way), and there are a lot of things in apocalypse which can still wound you on a 3+, and wounding on a 5+ is still a bit meh.

*'''6:''' Rare case, only seen on light vehicles and [[Guilliman|non-demonic primarchs]]. Like S/T 5, it’s more awkward to wound and wounds more successfully. However, the only benefit you have over S/T 5 is that you wound and are wounded by S/T 3 on a 2+ and 6+ respectively. And as already stated, S/T 3 isn’t going to be common in apocalypse, and you can achieve the same effect by using S/T 7 and above.

*'''7:''' Your auto cannon variants and rhinos. These sit in a really weird position as you are easily harmed /struggle to harm S/T 8 units, while the only infantry you will truly shred are the GEQs. Generally has very low ap values associated with it as well.

*'''8:''' The most common stat you will see on the apocalypse battlefields. Think of this as the S/T 4 of this scale. Incredibly flexible as it will shred all infantry, do something against most vehicles, while providing reasonable protection.

*'''9:''' Your new toughest toughness on the block, but strength stats still go higher than this. Weapon wise you will only see lascannon variants and high power plasma with these stats. Provides protection against the very prevalent S8 and S16 weapons, while on the offensive it makes a mockery of the very prevalent T8 vehicles.

*'''10:''' Not particularly common, usually found on things like doomhammers or custodes who learnt that they have power fists in their cellar. In the current edition this will wound everything in the game on a 3+, making it a very desirable stat to have for simply pew pewing everything. Strong enough to get the job done, not so strong that it feels wasteful against light vehicles.

:Be warned however, you will only be wounding Infantry on a 2+, so what you gain in being versatile you will lose in not being super effective against heavy stuff.

*'''11:''' [[Malal|Doesn't exist. Bugger off!]]

*'''12:''' Like S10, but now you'll wound T6 on a 2+. Not very common

*'''13:''' Only [[An'ggrath]] gets this on his axe, and as it stands provides no benefits over S12 due to odd numbers providing no benefits to wounding except against toughness values 1 less than them, and as there's no toughness 12 in the game it doesn't matter.

*'''14:''' An incredibly useful number, as now you can wound the likes of rhinos on a 2+, leaving only the category of super heavy units at your (slightly reduced) wrath. It is, however, not very common, being mainly seen on the knights chainsword variants.

*'''15:''' See 13, except no profile is strength 15.

*'''16:''' This, my dear generals, is what you want. Strength 16 (as this edition there is no toughness 16) is your most plentiful, and reliable value. With it, you can wound everything (minus warlord titans, the eldar titans and a few space marine super heavy tanks and the brick which is the Sokar flier) on a 2+. Combine this with the fact that you can get S16 in reliable rates of fire means that it is also versatile, exactly what you want in a apocalypse setting.

*'''17:''' See 15.

*'''18:''' I have become death, the destroyer of worlds. The destructiveness of S18 (allowing you to wound '''everything''' on a 2+) is matched only by its rarity. You will only find this on titans, and only then on their most powerful weapons. The downside of this power is the low rate of fire it comes in. This is not for taking on anything less than toughness 8. This is what you use to take on Titans. Anything less is blasphemy.

*'''19:''' See 17, only rarer.

*'''20:''' For when GW doesn't understand how its own wounding system works. S20 does exactly the same as S18, but that hardly matters as it only exists on one weapon, Belicosa Volcano Cannon, which, to be fair, does deal a truly insane amount of damage.

==Plasma, is it right for Me?==
Plasma, is, in its basic principle, a really cool idea. You take a weapon which performs reasonably well against low toughness units, then you can overcharge it at the risk of suffering damage yourself, for increased strength and damage, hopefully resulting in a dead/deader enemy. What's not to like? Well, as you may have noticed if you have looked at the rest of this page, things are not always that simple.

To assist us, here is the damage rates for the warhound plasma blastgun, one of the biggest plasma guns you can get in the 42nd millennium.
{| class=wikitable cellspacing=0 cellpadding=4 align=left
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! - !! - !! Warhound  !! Warlord !! Heriophant  !! Phantom !! Baneblade !! Land Raider !! Rhino !! Imperial Knight !! Guilliman !! Custodian !! Guardsman !! Space Marine
|-
! Weapon !! Stats !! T8 W50 2+/5++ RInvuln, 2 VS !!  T9 W120 2+/5++ RInvuln, 8 VS !! T8 W34 2+/5++ !!  T9 W60 3+/4++ RInvuln !! T8 W26 3+ !! T8 W16 2+ !! T7 W10 3+ !! T8 W24 3+/5++ vs ranged !! T6 W9 2+/3++ !! T5 W3 2+/4++ !! T3 W1 5+ !! T4 W2 3+
|-
| Warhound Plasma Blastgun (Standard) || Heavy2D6 72" S9 ap-4 D4 || (2.07)10.37 || (1.5)7.77 || 8.29 ||  4.66 || 12.44 || 10.37 || 12.44 || 8.29 ||  4.14 || (1.55)6.22 || 3.88 || (3.88)15.55
|-
| Warhound Plasma Blastgun (Overcharged) || Heavy2D6 72" S10 ap-4 D5 || (2.07)12.96 ||  (2.07)12.96 || 10.37 ||  7.77 || 15.55 || 12.96 || 12.44 || 10.37 || 5.18 || (1.94)9.72 || 3.88 || (3.88)19.44
|-
|}
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As you can see, when you overcharge the blastgun, its gets 1 extra strength, and 1 extra damage, becoming strength 10 and damage 5, a stat line which is easily the envy of other units, even when not overcharged. However, what is not noted in the profile listed here is that each hit roll of 1 results in 2 mortal wounds, which you cannot block by any means. So every time you overcharge your plasma, you are running a risk, and that risk comes in the form of wounds.

Now we have to consider the idea that the wounds you deal have a points representation, and the wounds you take also "cost" points. So to take a look at this idea, we shall look at the damage differences between normal and overcharged plasma, using the blastgun against the warhound and the warlord titans.

*Normal, warhound 10.37 , warlord 7.77
*Overcharged, warhound 12.96, warlord 12.96

As we can see, overcharging deals an extra 2.59 damage, not much but it might do something. However, overcharging against the warlord deals 5.19 extra damage, a much more sizable difference. This is because the extra strength against the warhound doesn't do anything extra, so the damage increase is only due to the damage increase from 4 to 5 on the gun. On the warlord however, S10 allows you to wound the warlord on a 3+, instead of a 4+, which is why the damage increase is so much larger.

Now lets look at this from a points perspective:
*Normal, warhound 10.37 (414pts), warlord 7.77 (356pts)
*Overcharged, warhound 12.96 (518pts), warlord 12.96 (594)
*Overcharged difference, warhound 2.59 (103 pts), warlord 5.19 (237 pts)
*Overcharged shots rolled 1, 1.16, mortal wounds 2.33 (93pts)

Looking at this, we can see that the extra points of damage you deal to the warhound is only slightly more than the firing warhound would take itself. In a fight this might be worth it, but what if this was against a far less valuable target, like a baneblade? In that situation the mortal wounds the titan would take would be worth far more than the extra damage. However, overcharging against the warlord results in the firer almost doubling their points game, as the warlords wounds are worth far more than the warhounds.

This makes plasma a lot less appetising than it first appears, as you may be dealing more damage, but unless you have a way of mitigating the mortal wounds (by rerolls, repairing or a feel no pain save) chances are the damage you deal will cost you far more. So, when should you use overcharged plasma? When overcharging:
*Would cause your attacks to wound on an improved roll (such as going from 4+ to 3+).
*Or when the firing unit would otherwise be destroyed anyway later in the turn, and firing overcharged would allow you to make the most of an otherwise doomed unit.

Alternatively, there are few things less badass and cool than overcharged plasma. Just remember to warn everyone else so that they can run away first.

===Feel no Pain Saves, because Mortal Wounds are a thing===
Feel no pain saves are your last ditch attack to save a model from an attack. Once you fail your armour and invulnerability save and once damage is assigned, then each model may roll a feel no pain save if it has one to ignore the damage.

In normal tabletop this is great, as most attacks are only 1 damage, so your guardsman effectively gets a straight forward bonus save against damage (brilliant in a world where T3 and a 5+ save isn’t much). However, in apocalypse, even simple anti infantry weapons are multi damage, which is where things get complicated, so let’s look at a 5+ feel no pain save for a 1 wound guardsman, and the corresponding chance to survive:

*Against 1 damage, 33% chance.
*Against 2 damage, 10% chance.
*Against 3 damage, 3% chance.
*Against 4 damage, 1% chance.

After 2 damage you’re looking at a command point sink. This is alleviated by the model in question having more wounds, but feel no pain saves are generally only found on low wound count models.

However, mortal wounds cannot be blocked by any save other than feel no pain saves. Mortal wounds are incredibly dangerous as it doesn’t matter who you are, from guardsman to Titan, you will take the same amount of damage from it. Mortal wounds also “splash”, making them extremely dangerous to hordes, as the mortal wounds will always be efficiently used.

==Infantry, what’s the Point?==
The humble guardsman. Armed with the humble lasgun, flak armour and balls the size of space marine pauldrons, they boldly walk out into the galaxy and... die horribly.

The world of 40K is not kind to the humble guardsman (or anyone for that matter), but for anyone on the apocalypse battlefields without a toughness value of 5 or higher and some kind of invulnerability save, life is very short. Even space marines, with a stat line in normal tabletop which is considered reasonable is instantly vaporised by the weapons at this scale.

This begs the question. What is the point of infantry in apocalypse?

And this is a valid question. Yes, you may feel like an 11 year old again looking at the models for land raiders and carnifexs and think “those are awesome! I’ll have just those!” But in a world where a guardsman has a 31% chance of surviving most shots (aka, being hit and wounded on a 2+ with no save) and have a 1.3% chance of doing any damage, why would you bother?

There are a few reasons why the humble guardsman, or even the (not so mighty) space marine, have a place in your army:
*'''Objectives:''' Every model can (technically) hold an objective. However, a warlord Titan and a guardsman both count as the same number of models when holding an objective. That number being 1.
:Why that is is unknown, but unless you can use your knight to sit on an objective in such a way to prevent anyone else getting within 3” you’re out of luck. There’s also the issue that objective secured is a thing, so that previously mentioned guardsman can out objective (if that’s a thing) ten imperial knights.
:Now, that guardsman has to survive against those ten knights, but 9th edition has dialled back the melee power of superheavies and vehicles in general, so a unit of guardsman has a good chance of surviving long enough to win objectives.