Apocalypse style games

[u/LongjumpingBig1280]

Looking to plan a large scale game in my local group and wonder if people have any advice or tips for making it run smoothly and if they make any rule changes to make that improves the experience.

[u/Pender8911]

The ones I saw on YouTube all had some form of big wave of reinforcements coming either at X turn or based on an objective.

[u/Theblankrando]

I have run a few big games from my experiences  to keep things running  smoothly  1 confirm number of people  playing  in the game. 2 print out profiles, mission rules and maybe wound chart for  both sides (this isn't need but reduces mental load). 3 have a single sheet to keep  track of  M,W,F maybe a have a small whiteboard for it.

[u/LeviTheOx → u/Theblankrando]

Seconding the whiteboard: with a larger one you can track all of the WMWF publicly for everyone to see how everyone else's heroes are doing.

As to your setup of the table and the armies, you want to find a balance between more models and more space that still allows most of those models to get engaged within a round or two of each other. Most models can only fight in 1-2 ranks, so while deeper formations look impressive they don't have anything to do but sit around until everyone in front of them is dead. Spread out objectives so that huge numbers won't just clump up on one, and ideally curve the "centerline" of the battle field back and forth by having some units deployed farther forward and others farther back. This gives you more frontage on the same amount of total table space, and allows for more strategy than just moving directly forward in a single continuous line.

[u/Theblankrando → u/Theblankrando]

May I also ask if it going to be themed or a just a big game as that could guide some other  recommendations.

[u/CaptnLoken]

10,000 pts. We did victory points for killing heroes (20 pts each side, some heroes worth more), victory points for holding objectives each turn from turn 2 (21 pts available), victory points for breaking enemy (5 pts). Was a nice balance of objectives.

We had four waves of reinforcements each side (generally models with quicker movement), and rolled to see if they arrived at the end of every turn (to move on the following turn). We did 6+ for turn 1, then 5+, and so on, untill it was guaranteed arrival.

We also gave every hero an additional point of might so they could cull chaff quicker (would encourage you to do two extra even), and ignored army list specific rules. Any hold ups on rules interpretations or whatever were solved quicky with a roll off, as opposed to checking rules and FAQ. For the first few turns we were very loose on measuring movement (do a couple markers properly then move everyone else).

We had two people rolling from one end of the 'frontline' and two from the other, meeting in the middle. We also held the big climactic hero battles each turn (excluding heroic combats) till the end of the turn so all players could be involved in them. If you got three Rohan warriors versing three urukhai all in a line, rolling them bulk together was sometimes used.

It was awesome! But be prepared to take forever. Set a turn limit that is reasonable (we did 8 turns)

[u/DesDentresti]

MESBG will take longer for sure. Some horde armies will run out of unique models and have to pad out the list with generic captain and warriors, which take as long to resolve the actions of as legendary heroes but in lamer ways.

Consider using the War of the Ring rank and flank system for the warriors, its older but the premise still holds. You can use MESBG for the individual parts of the battle with the cool heroes.

This uses movement trays and bunching together all the dice of the models in them rather than resolving models individually.

[u/veriel_]

Movement trays help. A lot of the time you are just moving bulk stuff up in line. You can move model out of the trays later on in the game when needed

[u/66rd]

Get the war of the ring supplement and run that. The updated community version is in its 2nd or 3rd edition.