Onward to the Apocalypse ...

Warhammer 40K – So I broke down and bought the latest apocalypse book. It happen to be on the shelf at my local store for significantly less than the MSRP so I figured it would be good to have just in case. My group has been talking about trying to get in a "big" game once every few months where we could spend a Saturday or Sunday playing all day. This my or may not happen...

But I'd rather be prepaired just in case as the designated "organizer/president" of our game group the responsibilty for having the rules and planning events is usually mine. 

The 2013 Apocalypse rulebook is about the same size as the core 40k book with the majority of it taken up by pages of painted models and datasheets for all the races of 40K. The actual rule potion is fairly small and uses minor additions to the existing ruleset to better mimick a large scale battle. Notable among these rules are strategic assets, super heavy vehicles and some command structure changes. Also rules for massive template wepons are included in the book with drawing the illustrate how to make your own. Of course GW does sell these large scale templates and asset cards as a linited edition product, you can probably get by with photocopying from the book and making your own templates.

As someone who has built a full battle company of space marines I was interested in the data sheets for marine lists. These are only a few pages but they do give some interesting options if you own all the models needed to make a formation. For example having a full company gives you the option to fire overwatch with all units rather than just the one being charged. Kinda cool but nothing ridiculous.

The other reason I picked up the book is to have the most current rules for the superheavy vehicles. There are several charts you need to have access to included in the book as well as the rules for all the large scale pastic kits and some Forgeworld models. While I may never own a Titan it's fun to read the rules and dream... 

The book is not a must have by any means and you can probably get by without it unless you have your heart set on playing with superheavy vehicles. I really feel like the minimal amount of rules could have been included in the core 40K book as an optional way to play with the data sheets being part of the codex releases that seem to be happening every month. If you want to use any of the forgeworld varients you still have to pick up the correct Imperial Armour Supplement so this book fills a very minor niche in the hobby.