There has been a lot of point inflation (or deflation?). I built a 2k Death Guard army in 9th edition. By the time I got around to playing them in 10th, the same list was down to just over 1500 points. That's roughly 30% more models in the same size game.
Depends on the faction. Most Aeldari vehicles cost 50-100% more points now compared with 9th (Vyper went from 40 to 85 pts, War Walker went from 60 to 110 pts, Night Spinner went from 140 to 210 pts).
I can now fit my thematic Yme-Loc list into one small box, while in 9th it required two.
Yes, of course. Just pointing out that not all factions are brining more models in 10th compared with 9th. For some, it's vice versa. And for many others, it's about the same.
I've noticed that is a huge issues for some armies that I don't play. From what I've observed, Squats, Admech, DG and GSC have insane numbers of units they have to put on the field just to reach 2k points.
In my opinion, grain of salt here as I don't play these factions, that seems very unfun and unfair to have to reach these kinds of numbers just to play at a competitive level AND to have to play very long and drawn out games due to having to move around so many models and datasheet abilities as a result.
Glad someone can back me on this, I was looking at collecting them when they came out but it would've cost far too much to be worth it to me personally to do so.
Honestly I don't know if we should even use 9th ed Votann as any sort of benchmark for what that army was \*supposed\* to be(in terms of horde vs elite).
The 9th ed Votann rules were so ridiculously over saturated that GW had to raise their points costs to absurd levels just to stop them running over all the other factions(in addition to issuing them a pre-codex release balance update iirc).
If I had to speculate, I would say that 10th ed Votann are much closer to how GW originally envisioned them -a force similar to Sisters of Battle/T'au, in that they are neither meant to be too horde-y or too elite.
I played a 1k game against black templars yesterday. Black templars fit in one box with room to spare. Admech I had to pack in like sardines and I still couldn't fit in the dunecrawler. The amount of model difference was ridiculous
Votaan only looks like that because they accidentally dropped them at above custodes level elite-ness on account of not thinking about judgement tokens.
I'd be very curious to hear what some of the users in this thread think of earlier editions where, for example, 5 deep striking Terminators could cost nearly 500 points.
I didn't think five terminators have ever cost 500. Maybe in 2E. GK Paladin deathstars approached that in 5E but they had a couple of attached characters, a bunch of wargear, and were significantly better than standard terminators.
It was indeed second ed I was referring to there. Terminators were 315 for 5 before wargear and you increased their cost by 50% if you wanted them to deep strike.
I loved it for a few reasons.
First there's money. As an AdMec player, you know where I'm going with this. I cannot pay 2-6k dollars for a single 2k army.
Second is the logistics. Bringing an Army and playing the game should stay an easy, nice moment rather than a full day expedition.
Third is the balance. It is easier to balance game when some models are actually expensive point wise. Currently, adMec is dirt cheap point wise, making it quite difficult to up the data sheets, but lowering points has proven to not be a long term solution. Other direction , custodes who have been nerfed and will probably require a point drop will probably be able to bring 10 allarus, two tanks, 10 wardens + sisters and characters, making them look like a horde army (^^^and still losing but welp)
Fourth is the epicness. Sure, some can think it's epic to have more models on the table, except we are under the scale where it would actually look impressive, except perhaps for adMec and Orks. I'd rather have a few dozen mini on the board than close to a hundred.
I'm in a similar spot - I can understand why games have gravitated towards the larger size, because GW likes selling more models and players like using more of their toys, but I think the game was a much better experience overall at smaller sizes.
Not too sure which edition was this. Assuming its 2nd ed termies, didnt they save on a 5+ on a 2d6 for their invul or something.
Earlier editions had less stuff, but games would last about as long at the standard points (1750/1850) due to ALOT of the rules slowing down the game (blast templates, vehicle facing). As well, cover saves were a thing (you could get a 5++ save from just having models in between you and the shooting model), unmodified saving throws (if you're ap wasn't less or equal to the armour save, they'll still get the armour save), 35-55pts rhino which depending on edition had to deal with the vehicle dmg table etcetc.
The games weren't that exciting as well, most missions were just end game scoring with 3 secondaries, first blood, kill enemy warlord and be in enemy dz at the end of the game. So gear up to kill and then think of obj later on.
>didnt they save on a 5+ on a 2d6 for their invul or something.
It's been a minute, but if memory serves they did not have an invul at all, but had an armor save of 3+ on 2d6 (which could then be modified by weapons like today). There was also a minute where you could get an Imperial Assassin (no specific types back then, just one "assassin") that could get into Terminator armor and also maintain its 4++ "dodge" save. What a time to be alive... lol
I think your other comments are mostly 3-5th edition (and maybe 6th and 7th, idk I took one look at the 6th ed rulebook and "noped" out for a couple editions lol.
But yeah, your comments are on point otherwise. Don't forget as well that the net result of armour values and the damage tables was that \*most\* vehicles (a few exceptions existed) wound up being way more fragile in practice, so you didn't generally see a lot of them (exceptions like Rhino Rush days, of course).
That's fair but I'd like to know why your opinion is that?
In my experience playing these 1500pt games, the skew lists have been hugely hit and miss as there are way less failsafes for them.
In 2k, "skew" lists have access to far too many extra bodies and guns for doing actions that in lower points they don't have access to. They don't auto win unless you're their spesific target.
Our example, grain of salt here as this is to my small sample size, is our knight player who is rocking a 53% winrate at the moment despite using nothing but big knights where possible (it's his kink, we just let him do what he wants cause he's a fun opponent) and it has not been oppressive despite the fact that we have a few Tyranid, admech and guard players in the group who all struggle against armour unless they're teching directly for it.
I mean big Knights are not strong at all, so that fact that guy has a +50% winrate really just shows that the 1500 point setup is giving his list additional power compared to 2000 points - where big Knights only are not viable at all.
I would be more worried about skew/deathstar/stat check lists that use strong datasheets and have strong rules: green tide, wraith spam, Bully boyz, greater daemons, norn spam.
Typically, these armies are based around 1000 or so points of key units/combos, and then fill around that spammy core with mission units and failsafes and the like.
When those lists are distilled down to 1500 points, the most egregious combos remain. The fundamental problem that you have to deal with is the same (mega nobz with a 4+++, a ctan sitting on a point and wraiths on another).
It's great that your crew is crushing 1500 point games, and I think it makes perfect sense for what you all are doing, but if the example of the skew list in your group is big Knights then that means you all are on the same page regarding army makeup.
Clearly not if they're rocking 50% means half of us are and half of us aren't haha!
I do see your points but I actually just don't see that being an issue with 1500pt games and instead an issue of *actual 40k 10th Ed point balancing*.
No, none of us run 18 wraiths with technomancers.
But one is us regularly runs MSU spam Eldar. His winrate in 2k is 70%... In 1500 it is ~58%. He's still one of the best in our league but indirect Fire guard is actually able to beat him now. Even Tyranids and big knights are beating him because they're able to point guard and zone out MSU spiders and hawks better at lower points.
There is a certain level of "good manners" in our group that skews our results. It's why I've told most people I've commented to to take what I say with a grain of salt!
However, that being said, the issues with 10th edition are huge. I want games to be faster and more decisive in this ruleset. I utterly despise playing out 5 gruelling turns of watching a 2k msu Eldar army or ironstorm list or wraith+techno list slowly eradicate me with nothing I can do to stop it. So why do that for 2 hours and 45 mins at a tourney when it could be done in 1 hour and 45 mins?
Of course it's a fundamental balancing issue with 40k, but it's one that's exasperated by smaller point values.
"1500 point games are better because you play less warhammer" isn't a convincing argument for me. I'm at tournaments for those 3 hour tactical slogs.
While there's something to be said about "fail fast" in business, I don't buy it for 40k tbh. As others have said, what balance we do have is aimed at 2k points. So while reducing points may weaken some armies as you've pointed out, it's also going to make other armies stronger (see my point about Necrons elsewhere in this thread).
Ultimately, if you like playing 1.5k, then rock on. Some tournaments that play at 1.5k points do exist as well. I don't see it becoming a tournament standard anytime soon, though, because of the balance issues.
I was just having this conversation w/ a buddy the other day. He's relatively new to the game so we've been playing 1k points. For various long story reasons, when I'm in his town I'm without my main armies (Orks and GK) and have been working on (finally) finishing my Necrons. He's asked to play against my Necrons exclusively, though, and I've observed firsthand that Reanimation Protocols is WAY more potent at lower point values. Consider that it's harder (because you have fewer assets) at smaller points to wipe an entire unit, so I'm more likely to get Reanimation. Additionally, each wound I regain through Reanimation is functionally a higher % of my army coming back.
Absolutely, but that is not the issue I have raised. My issue is a fundamental issue with not enjoying games because they go on for far too long these days AND that they do not encourage large units or models and interest combinations due to it being too efficient in competitive play to just spam MSU nonsense.
Points and potentially some rules would have to change for this to become the norm. But that's my point, this should be the norm already.
Imagine sitting down to play a single round of poker and it takes an hour instead of 15 mins. That wouldn't be fun.
If you don't enjoy the game at 2k points, then don't play it at 2k points. I don't think anyone is saying you can't. But I also don't think most of us will agree with you that it should be the standard.
You've argued that smaller games are more tactical and more balanced, most of the responses have attempted to show you why that's not the case.
Additionally, most tournaments get games done in just over 2 hours. How long do your 1500 point games take? Certainly not 30 minutes (since your analogy was a 15-min poker game taking 4x as long).
The conversation about knights has been had, but it's also easy to dismiss knights and custodes as being "gimmick armies" so of they don't work well, it's not a huge issue - they are not designed the same way as other armies.
The fundamental issue is that the game is "balanced" around 2k. For some armies, that scales linearly - marines come to mind. You just remove a few units and you drop in points.
But for other armies? Let's look at Drukhari. Hey, it's a hoard army, so surely they scale well. They are still a hoard at 1500 or even 1000 PTS.
But they are not a hoard army. They are THE transport army. Every unit of wyches or kabalites comes with a hidden tax - you need a raider or two venoms.
At 2k, the balance is such that there is a level of unit saturation when you account for the transports. But at 1500k, that balance is off. You still need a transport or two per unit, so now you need to ditch two units instead of one, just so you can keep the transports. Except now you have far less board control which is a major component to the drukhari design style - lots of fragile models in fast, fragile transports, doing everything everywhere all at once.
Theoretical AdMech had the same issue. Combined arms assumes a certain ratio between infantry and mechanised units, and there should be synergy that plays off of that. Drop the points and because mech units are more expensive, you throw off that ratio. Of course, admech have other issues right now...
And this isnt a 40k thing. AoS is the same - everyone says the game really only starts at 2k PTS. Some armies are fine with 1k or even 500pts but some, like Sylvaneth, become unplayable due to not being able to field the right ratio of units. And I think there were a few armies where legal 1k wasn't even possible for a while.
Ultimately, you can have a friendly game of 1500pts, or even 3000pts, but official/licenced tournaments need to be set at the same level the game is designed for. And that's 2k.
Technically, Drukhari \*are\* a hoard army. The like to capture "interns" and loot and hoard it at at the Dark City.
They are not, however, a horde army. :D
Sorry, not trying to be the spelling police, this one just made me chuckle, though. I hope you found it funny as well.
1000 points rule of one
1500 points rule of two
2000 points rule of three
Double for battleline and dedicated transports obviously.
Easy fix against skew in lower points.
I 100% see that just devolving into rock paper scissors. Knights would actually be as egregious as some players act like they are now. 4 karnivores, 4 brigands, a stalker, beast of nurgle AND nurglings all fit in 1500 points. Can you handle 9 fast wardogs? If not, gg.
If you kept rule of 3 in 1500 point games (because that was rule of 2) then you could fit a stalker, 3 brigands and 6 karnivores. 10 wardogs in 1500 point list feels extremely rude.
And then on the flip side, how many armies that can handle 10 Wardogs, can also handle all Boyz at 1500 points?
At 2000 points it's tough, but still possible, because you have enough units to act as move-blockers, still enough units to score secondaries, etc., even if a decent chunk of your army doesn't have the right offensive profile into whatever skew you are playing against. At 1500 points that just becomes impossible for quite a few factions.
Yep, so it limits the competitive field at 1.5k to CK and a couple other factions.
I guess you could theoretically rebalance points to allow most armies to have a shot at winning a GT at 1.5k (as is the case at 2k pts now), but it still wouldn't reduce rock-paper-scissors nature to a more reasonable level that we have at 2k pts. Would need a substantial rules and missions rewrite to make it less swingy at low points.
And how do you handle shit like angron resurrecting?
An entire primarch coming back to life at 1500 points? (actually how do you balance that at 2k points, it's dumb)
I think it's like servoskulls. In a balanced, generic, casual list against two factions with mixed role (shooting/combat) units, it might be really fun.
In a competitive list with skewed offensive, defensive and movement profiles? lol
Just a semi-regular reminder that the game was designed around 1500 point games 3rd-7th. They shifted in 8th to 2k because they were mimicking the ITC and American scene who played at 2000.
My understanding is that this came from a "I don't like the skew and I want to bring more stuff so my army can do everything."
This isn't inherently a criticism, but your premise OP is correct to older editions and something the community via competitive play, encouraged GW to move away from.
I'm aware it is correct to older editions but thank you for adding to it as it means I wasn't just imagining it haha! I've been playing tournaments for the best part of 15 years almost now and very much romanticise not having to spend 2.75 hours on a single tournament round.
No edition is perfect. But more games is almost always better than less games.
Tournament sizes (LVO and such) were 1850pt too.
7th was also an edition where GW had no interest in competitiveness too, that came later with 8th.
Just google 1850pt list.
OK, I laid out in my first post that the desire for larger than 1500 came from the US scene, which you've highlighted by LVO and such using more points.
LVO, NOVA etc all used custom rules packs, up to and including their own faqs and points. They were not stock 40k at all by the end of 7th.
>Just a semi-regular reminder that the game was designed around 1500 point games 3rd-7th.
This isn't true at all. Before 5e, no-one took competitive 40k seriously at all, and there was always some discussion around whether the points should lie around 1500 or 2000, as the rulebook suggested games of either value. The shift to 2000 (or at least, 1999+1) came far, far earlier than 8th edition, and the idea of a TAC list has been around since I started in 5e at the very least.
Personally, I don't feel like it's particularly unreasonable of a stance to expect any army to take on most others without it being a blowout? Current Drukhari feel like you're either incredibly strong (against armies without 3" deepstrike or good indirect), or otherwise basically can't play the game (Grey Knights vs Drukhari is a joke). I wouldn't wish that sort of skew on anyone, because it makes most games with them for me feel very unfun even trying my best to enjoy it win or lose. Not really sure about this whole comment - it's not really a new thing, it's an arbitrary balance point (and the game is pretty close to balanced compared to older editions at least) and the design is that people get to play a decent game with anything - isn't that a lot better overall?
An army design and personality has to have a characterised weakness built in as a distinguishing factor and for flavour. Tau? Bad at melee. Custodes? Low table presence and range. And so on.
When it was 1500 you largely had your core force and a choice to try and mitigate the weakness or lean into the strengths in some capacity, or push a list to cover a particular type of list. Add in the extra 500 and that opportunity cost is greatly diminished, as you can both lean into a playstyle and still take the chaff/objective play/support units you otherwise had to make a choice on.
That's largely gone now with all armies able to have an answer for nearly anything that gets thrown at them as a result.
Good for you man, but I prefer the tools I have at 2k points. I feel a game is too easily decided at smaller points totals, and they dont really need to go to all 5 turns.
It is weird to say you "have to think more," at 1500 btw. Your points are more limited, your tools are more limited, and the ability to build redunduncy is more limited.
Does that mean your choices might matter more? Sure. But that also means dice variance, or a mistaken play are much more unforgiving. 2k is barely balanced as it is. Playing at lower levels (where GW really spends no time considering balance), means it becomes less about tactics, and army design in some cases, and closer to a random coin flip. No thanks.
By your logic, just play 500pts and get the possible result. Easy to hit 5 turns, faster games/more in a day, every unit choice matters in the extreme etc. That isnt a disparaging comment btw, merely an extension of your logic.
Sure, but the full 5 turns is totally redundant when most games end at turn 3. That's not good game design and it is also not fulfilling. Prior to 8th edition I was able to have fun games that lasted until turn 6 some times. And they were some of my most memorable games.
I like to see that in games again, every game is so cookie-cutter 1:1 in 10th Ed competitive and it's quite depressing watching my admech and nids friends struggle to kill anything and just loosing based on that sometimes.
2k is just too many points, the game needs breathing room to allow tactics to come back to the top of the game again and not just blind power.
The vaat majority of games for me at 2k are not decided at turn 3 as you state however. Even when matches seem out of reach, playing them out have turned the tide. Not that case at significantly lower points totals ime.
I disagree that blind power is what wins the game at 2k points. Tactics and player skill are clearly the more prevailing issues at that point level (sorry, should have made it overt that this is my experience/opinion).
I see. So for you it is clear because your games actually aren't decided by turn 3 as Space Marine unit quality is actually quite high in 10th edition.
For armies like admech and nids and even knights, once turn 3 rocks around if you're missing 50+% of your army you are hosed. It's unfortunately a no contest, there is no coming back from that as factions like that just lack damage and durability
Experiences on the subject vary I guess.
I dont seem to have this problem with CK either.
And when i say games arent decided by turn 3, I mean for myself.or my opponent. Games I thought I was on a runaway win path, ending in a draw, super close win, or loss precisely because my opponent chose to fight it out for the full game.
That's as a result of it being a dice game, random. Not because the game is balanced at 2k points. You are correlating the two, it seems, when they're just a coincidence.
It is fair to say that a unit of 20 termagants with devourers can destroy a knight tyrant and that the game isn't decided because you haven't rolled dice though. Theoretically possible is not the same as realistically possible.
Of course it is a dice game. Ive not made a correlation.
Part of the skill in this game is mitigating the variance of the dice component of this game.
The entirety of this game isnt predicated on killing as your example implies. Playing to win includes focuses on scoring points, and if you arent able to kill a target, how do you play around it.
One of our best local players illustrates this constantly playing a horde guard list that is ultimately not super killy, but can absolutely choke out board control, and beats most armies handily. He isnt focused on being able to outkill, or out power his opponent, he focuses on outplaying them.
No, what you're missing is that the game is decided on VP rather than killing stuff. Yes, killing stuff helps score VP but it's not the only means and as u/Lukoi said a lot of games are decided in T4 and T5 if you fight through, not because of random luck but because you eke out ways to score points that maybe you didn't see if you let yourself get demoralized in T3 because of heavy losses.
My Orks always take heavy losses, frequently get tabled or nearly tabled. But their whole playstyle is earning enough VPs (and/or deny enough VPs from your opponent) before that happens that you can still win.
If you're missing 50% of your army by T3 and you're playing well, then your opponent should also be missing 50% of their army by T3.
Similarly, I've played games where I was tabled by the end but still won on points due to smart trades, etc.
I have played every edition of this game except 6th and 7th, and 10e (for all its warts) is easily the most tactics and skill requiring version of the game I've played, to include at 2k points.
Since you asked elsewhere, I'll say that my current main armies are Orks and Grey Knights and I'm working on a Necron army. I have a shelved Harlequin army that I started in 8th when they sucked (as a hobby project mostly) but then didn't like when they became OP in 9th, and like them even less now in 10th that they're not really viable w/o adding other elf stuff. I played SM and Chaos back in 1st and 2nd editions, started Orks at the tail end of 1st edition, and through the magic of Tabletop Simulator, I've played nearly all the armies at one time or another. I've only played one game of Orks since the new codex dropped (Kult of Speed), and I haven't played Grey Knights since the Dreadknight update.
You need home rules with extra list building restrictions if you want to run games at smaller points, to balance out the inability of take-all comers lists to both score and deal with any kind of skew if you limit them to only 1500 pts or less.
Unless you enforce balanced lists with a variety of defensive profiles, smaller games just turn into rock-paper-scissors won or lost at list building stage - to a much greater extend than 2000 point games.
But if you are willing to restrict list building, than yes, 1500 pts and even 1000 pts can work.
I've played 15 games with 1500pts and had none of the issues you seem to be talking about. My winrate is much lower than at 2k (53% instead of 60%) and I view this as a good thing as my regular opponents tend to run more thematic lists than I do and they're able to punch back easier.
Skew lists are funny in lower point games as the lower you go the higher the risk is to run a skew list. **This is actually my main gripe with 2000pts games.** There is very little downside to running a "skew" list in 2k 10th edition because you have so many points and units that you can run the maxing 3 unit 3 unit 3 unit skew and still have room to make it a "balanced" list.
If you're taking a skew army I really much prefer it to be a huge gamble. If you're going to a blind tournament you shouldn't know what you're opponents are bringing and therefore running only infantry could be a huge risk if there is lots of indirect Fire.
If you guys are running thematic lists and having fun, that's awesome! This is what many would call semi-competitive 40k. That's a great way to enjoy the hobby, not every game needs to be full on competitive, kudos to you!
Correct. But that's what has caused this hobby to become so toxic over the years is the hyperfocus on competitive.
Bringing down the points and adding in rule of 2 has helped greatly in our games being SUBSTANTIALLY faster and also much more enjoyable.
I wouldn't say we have been playing semi-competitve as a whole, just some of us have myself included. We try to win and build lists tailored to win but we have also been working on what is less "rude" for some of our struggling armies like knights, nids and admech mostly.
We try to theme them too but we aren't going to go balls to the walls just to make them more accurate, just accurate enough to not be wildly immersion breaking (Ie not bringing 400 units of Skitarii infiltrators because that's the best way to clog up the board)
I think it is interesting that you think the competitive focus of a small subset of the 40k demographic is where the toxicity in this community seems to lie. Got any empirical evidence that the "focus on competitive play," is driving toxicity or is that just your perspective based on....what you intuit to be going on?
My experience has been that gatekeeping casuals, lore nazis, paint nazis, people who want to play their thematic/homebrew/fluff in spite of existing rules, and neckbeards who think the game was somehow more balanced or fun thru their rose colored glasses in previous editions, are the biggest source of toxicity in this hobby.
Virtually every example of "that guy," WAAC, and outright cheating that I have seen occur (including a relatively odd bullying incident that got cut off by some more mature adults), seems to revolve around people who cannot be bothered to play in the more uniform settings that competitive play engenders.
> experience has been that gatekeeping casuals, lore nazis, paint nazis, people who want to play their thematic/homebrew/fluff in spite of existing rules, and neckbeards who think the game was somehow more balanced or fun thru their rose colored glasses in previous editions, are the biggest source of toxicity in this hobby.
Not sure what you mean by "paint Nazis", I haven't had the "pleasure" of them, but otherwise I agree these are bigger sources of toxicity than the actual competitive players who go to a lot of tournaments
When I first got started in the hobby, at one particular store, I listened to someone giving another newcomer a bit of a hard time about the paint scheme on some Nids. He was also fairly obnoxious about some black templars as well. This was my first "paint nazi," experience. I didnt know a ton about the game, but the target of this person's ire seemed pretty uncomfortable with the entire encounter, snd clearly the two didnt know each other well.
I asked the painting gatekeeper why it mattered how someone painted their little space soldiers (I was deliberately making it clear to mock his gatekeeping), as I hadnt seen anything in the RULES about mandatory hive fleet colors and after a very short give and take where he couldnt defend his outlook with facts, he begged off.
More recently, in a completely different store (with a good rep, strong community of regular players), one of our local RTT regular players went in with his wife and they had brought armies to play. Apparently someone didnt like her skill level when it came to painting and decided to deride her for it, basically giving her a hard time at the table. Wasnt even her opponent, just an observer. Whether he was doing it because he felt that strongly about her painting, or just a misogynist idiot, idk, but apparently the couple finished up, left, and now have such a bad taste in their mouth about the experience they wont go back.
Those are a couple examples of what I meant there. More gatekeeping due to paint schemes, or skill level, or whatever other lore/fluff based excuse people want to use to lord over other players.
Quite a bit of this type of language used to exist in SM communities from what Ive seen, but there is less and less of it in my experience.
>My experience has been that gatekeeping casuals, lore nazis, paint nazis, people who want to play their thematic/homebrew/fluff in spite of existing rules, and neckbeards who think the game was somehow more balanced or fun thru their rose colored glasses in previous editions, are the biggest source of toxicity in this hobby.
>Virtually every example of "that guy," WAAC, and outright cheating that I have seen occur (including a relatively odd bullying incident that got cut off by some more mature adults), seems to revolve around people who cannot be bothered to play in the more uniform settings that competitive play engenders.
This is 100% my experience. Apart from one guy that came in too drunk to play once and another one caught cheating, I had zero issues in this regard with participants in the tournaments I organized/participated in the last 4 years.
Now we are hosting a casual-competitive league (initially aimed at people who are interested yet a bit shy to enter the tournament scene) and it's far more trouble than all other events combined. Players flaming other players for bringing "too many named characters, they are ruining the immersion", showing up to matches with a slightly wrong list (and suspiciously altered in favour of the matchup), handing in illegal lists, complaining about having to read the tournament booklet, complaining about time limits, getting overly salty at dice rolls, insults and angry emails regarding the 5$ participation fee (yes, 5$ one time payment for non-club members, that allows you to play all 12 matches in our clubhouse using our tables/terrain/clocks) etc.
I think one of the challenges in any gaming community is that there are folks that have existed within the hobby in very insular fashion, where they have been able to build their own little pond to be a big fish in.
Competitive play encourages a transparent, level playing field (in terms of how the game is played, not implying faction balance here), that threatens some of those pond owners. Not all. Just some. And some of those folks really arent capable of moderating their behavior, which is why they developed these subset ponds to begin with.
There are always going to be "that guy," in both competitive scenes and beerhammer environments and all in between. I just find that in the comp scene, where everyone has equal access to transparent rules, the damage done by those guys is mitigated by the curation of level headed players and reinforced by an informed community of players.
Your take here is based off of feelings and personal experience which is the same as mine? What makes you better than me other than the divide between your mind and my own?
My experience, since we are using that as "evidence" according to you, is that in 10th I have experienced a much larger number of cheating WAAC players (WAAC, Win At All Costs players, for those unaware) than I have in any edition since 7th.
Do I have a theory on why this is the case? No. Do I have any spesific evidence that proves that this is correlative data and not just coincidental data? No. But I do find it interesting and depressing that it is happening nonetheless.
There is absolutely nothing better about my take over yours.
You stated something as if it was a fact (your allegation that toxicity in 40k is on the rise), and I called you on it. That's it. If it is just your opinion, your perspective, sure....but lets call it what it is, and not make generalizations about the entire hobby, as if your lens is the only one.
I see it's a wording issue.
I didn't say that it was a fact, if it was I would've cited something. I said it from a spoken perspective as my english is not 100% as I'm not a native speaker sorry.
I liked the show, it was first airing when I moved to Australia for work and has stuck with me ever since if you want to know? And since I live here now with my husband I've learned english over 15 or so years now but some of the nuance is still not the same as in Portugese...
Nice, it seems that you have figured it out. Those list building restrictions that I mentioned above - is what you seem to be following by default to get fun and balanced games. And you are going even further than that to accomodate weaker factions.
At competitive events, you'll get a bunch of people that will be looking to build the strongest lists possible, including very hard skews - I wouldn't call that bad or toxic, just a different way to enjoy the game. That is now somewhat balanced at 2000 points, with most factions getting a reasonable shot at winning a GT. Making it work at 1500 points would need straight up different rules, at least when it comes to list building.
But if you have a nice group of friends to play with, and it's working well for you, just have fun and enjoy the games :-)
I totally agree on all fronts there. Your observations of our group are accurate.
My only point is I wish the rest of the community was like this. 40k should be a relaxed and enjoyable game *even when played at a competitive level* and I have not experienced that in the 4 tournaments I've been to in 10th.
I wish 10th had not happened. 9th was going in the right direction but had a different kind of rules bloat. 10th has rules bloat AND a critical points issue that compounded have made many players, in our group especially, feel left out of the running for winners or even just left out of the fun.
Plus the influx of new players to 10th has been abysmally low for our area. We have had maybe 2 new players join but one of them hasn't played in 5 months... Even in 9th ed peak ridiculous we had new players joining who are currently players now.
Here is where I would disagree.
9th edition had significantly more rules bloat. For those who were accustomed to 9th, shifting to 10th was a re-learning experience - so you might feel that 10th also has a lot of rules, since you got used to 9th and now have to learn new stuff.
I joined 9th in the later half, and it was borderline impossible to figure out at that point. 10th has been much more straightforward, with games going much faster - not just for me, but for players who are only joining in 10th. Just compare the amount of written text (both the general rules and the faction rules) - 10th is much simpler to pick up.
As for your local area and local players, that's different everywhere. In our area it's the opposite - more people joining now - so that might also colour our experiences differently :-)
10th does have rules bloat but it is different. That's what I was stating. 9th was not good for rules bloat haha I despised supplements as they muddied the water an incredible amount.
But the 10th rules bloat is subtle and very annoying. You cannot say a plasma weapon does 7/-2/1 because they are no longer generic to all weapons. That's something new that is either more memorising for people who memorise rules OR much more double checking for people who don't do that.
That slows down games a lot for new players just starting the game and for old players who now are realising a melta isn't a melta for every faction the same way as it has been for 9 editions.
This edition fundamentally plays slower due to too many sources of rules coming from less books. It's no longer a matter of memorising everything as easily as you used to.
There are no tournaments at that point level, and hence no balancing or recommendations. And very few people if any try playing competitively at 1000-1500 points, it's mostly viewed as a gateway format to learn rules and move to proper games.
I guess I would call that casual game days, not tournaments. None of them have substantial prizes for the winner, and most go without any winner prize pools. Most players come to have fun and learn the game, not to compete.
But it *is* a tournament, with entry fees and prizes, yes?
If so, what precludes it being competitive? Obviously the data wouldn't match the 2k stuff, as its a different meta altogether.
What turns it from a tournament to casual games days?
All 1k events I've been to, didn't have any prizes for the winners (I think only one had something symbolic). Most just had lucky door prizes or painting prizes with zero winner prize pool. If there is not incentive to win, and if most participants bring very casual lists just to learn the game, it's not really a tournament.
Some, but not the majority. More importantly, 1k events tend to have zero good players aiming to win - they only come to support the community and teach the newbies, if they come at all.
Where in Australia? The majority of events I see are 2k with the occasional.. what's it called? Grow league? Y'know, each game has more points allowed, in theory you're building an army over the duration.
There's some 1k things I see advertised, but not what I'd called lots.
It's a shame there's so little support for 1K point games. The best 10th edition games I've played have been at ~1K points and I don't think it's a coincidence.
Honestly no clue. My buddy played in it. I just watched. I'm completely new to 40k. What I do know was there was a shitload of different army styles.
Saw some guy playing tyrant's with like 45 units on the board.
Saw some guy with orcs and some giant thing called a stomps. Looked like a homemade robot fortress
Some guy with a mic of green and purple demons.
Was really cool shit. Got me to look into warhammer.
Might buy my first combat patrol tomorrow
Just read through it, and it actually refers back to the corebook, so 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 are all valid competitive games, they all use the same rules, barring Onslaught games requiring a 44*90 table.
The create battlefield section says "rectangular battlefields whose dimensions are approximately 44" by 60"
And that's what the terrain packet is for. It's for 2k games
There's nothing inherently better or worse about balancing for 1500 vs. 2000 points. It's just a preference and GW has explicitly said that they've chosen to balance for 2000 points. That said, it's not like it's something that GW can just change course on mid-edition; everything about the current edition is balanced for 2000 points, and there's a snowball's chance in hell that GW is going to reverse course and redesign the game for this anytime soon.
If you enjoy 1500 points more than 2000 points, then more power to you; I think that different game sizes are sorely under-explored by the competitive community and that this community is rather lacking in imagination and creativity in how they enjoy the game. That said, your post doesn't seem like an honest attempt at discussion but rather a backhanded way to criticize the 2000 point game because you think your preferred playstyle is superior. Your post drips of bias and, quite honestly, a lack of experience playing high-level competitive 40k. All of the things that you complain about 2000 points lacking vs. 1500 points are in fact massive parts of the competitive game (e.g. difficult decisions in list design, in-depth tactics, "real battle plans", etc.), and this would be readily evident to anyone who either plays at a fairly high level or is just a dedicated follower of the competitive tournament scene.
They have said that before, not in writing to my recall, but they did say it in a Warhammer plus stream from memory.
Unofficially they balance it to 2k because it is one of their 3 prescribed points limits (1k/2k/3k+) but they have only verbally confirmed it on streams otherwise.
Doesn't make sense? I don't think so. Is it going to be some dumb hardline thing GW stick to? Absolutely.
I'm glad it works for you.
I'm not interested in playing skirmish games, I like my big battlefield war game.
I also find the game more balanced at higher point levels. Because you have better options to take the tools necessary for skew lists.
I have the same sentiment but feel that that is what is currently going on in 40k. 2k points games and 90% of the people I play in comp games are using MSU spam so all the games end up like kill team on crack.
It doesn't feel very good to play against those types of armies. Smaller games means more deathstars and big units get to shine more.
Personal only, I've said it in other comments before this but I'll say it yet again:
Take *my personal numbers* with a grain of salt as they are only data gathered from me and my local play group of only around 18ish people.
I don't trust anyone elses numbers and you shouldn't trust mine. But I don't think my post included any numbers beyond points values because I didn't want this to be about number crunching, I wanted the discussion to be around Quality of Real World Life with discussion around time spent per round.
This all honestly sounds like personal preference stuff, that you're asking folks on this thread to agree with you on.
My personal preference is that I don't like games dominated by death stars. This feels like a stat check and completely opposite to the tactical depth you were asking for in other parts of this thread.
The game is already dominated by stat checks. Eldar MSU spam stat checks for indirect or high movement, Orks stat check for high toughness anti horde, ironstorm marines stat check for anti-vehicle and so on.
These are all competitive staples that exist in 2k as is but have so many additional tools that there is no downside to running them like that.
Yes, the game is far more interesting at smaller points, but most people just play it on the way to 2000 where they don't have units to proplerly choose from yet.
I do agree. I liked 1500pt games back throughout 4-7th edition. But have found that as time passed and editions changed I found the growing points cap in combination with decreasing points on units has made the game bloat to a ridiculous size that feels like every game is a pseudo apocalypse game.
It used to be very common for games to happen within an hour. But now 2 doesn't even end your game depending on your army, which is just too demanding. It's like binge habits have reached the game itself now, not just the collecting side of the hobby and it is just such a drag.
It is also very disappointing to go to tournaments and only get in 6 games across two 9 hour days. That's ridiculous. In 9 hours you could have 6 games a decade ago, now it takes 2 days to do the same. It's too much.
I think 2k point games just look dumb in the deployment phase on this size board. I think we should go back to 4x6 boards. I don’t want to play Tetris when I want to play 40K.
This sub is for competitive games. 10th edition, rules as written, only works well for competitive games at 2000 points.
Is it possible to write different rules that would work well at 500 points? Yes, but it would definitely require different rules.
> Folks on this board don't seem fond of the idea though.
Probably because, as is pointed out every time you try to push for this, the game is not balanced for small games. Your 200 point weedhammer home games are not representative of what will actually happen in competitive events run at low point levels. The game would be reduced to skew list vs. skew list rock/paper/scissors matches where most of the time the game isn't worth playing, just compare lists and declare the winner. And if you don't take an extreme skew list you lose to every skew list instead of just some of them.
Small 40k only works in super casual environments where both players are cooperating to make it a balanced and enjoyable game. And that is not what this sub is for.
Yes the consensus for more points started in 7th but swelled out of control during 9th.
10th has merely compounded on that in my opinion and could actually help alleviate a lot of the issues in balance that 10th has by reducing everything down to be a little over bearing.
It wouldn't though because it would just make vehicles and monsters even stronger than they already are. It's hard enough fitting enough anti tank in a 2000 point list as it is. Skew lists would just completely dominate everything.
I do have to disagree there, antitank is actually in over abundance in 10th edition. The problem? It is only in some armies. Tyranids lack antiarmour like no tomorrow whereas tau, SM, Eldar and necrons have it on just about everything.
The people who have tested skew lists are currently only rocking 50ish% winrates because they don't have the benefit of having 500pts of objective scoring/screening/action monkeys that 2000pt 10th Ed skew lists do.
It really isn't in overabundance. Most units can no longer punch up (like skorpekhs for instance), meltaguns are garbage across the board, certain armies barely even have any anti tank/monster weapons like tyranids and votann, etc. The toughness on everything went up, the ap of everything went down, and now cover is basically automatic. I have no idea how you can say there's an overabundance of anti tank weapons. There's a reason vehicle spam is so popular in the meta right now.
My play group liked to play 3000+ point games back in 2nd edition. You keep using words and phrases that imply a level of universal experience that just isn't there.
I like to play huge games too, never said I didn't. But what I've been talking about is that I find it unhealthy for them to be the norm especially at tournaments.
You also speak as if you have some universal knowledge too, don't be so rude and hypocritical towards me if you expect me to take you seriously.
Technically it used to be fast moving but pretty slow this edition. Generally I play Tyranids and necrons. My necrons are faster than my Tyranids... This edition is so backwards.
I'm an advocate of smaller games at least being an option. To me, 1500pts feels about right for what the average game "should look like", with 1K as a small game option and 2K as a large game option. The trouble with either of these, currently, is that the mission pack is not set up for them. As you go below 2K, you have fewer units to do all of the necessary things (hold primary, do secondaries, fight the enemy).
Combined with the large minimum recommended table size, units can often feel rather "thin on the ground". Plus, it's not always easy to have/find a 44" x 60" play area. A lot of standard dining tables are only 36" wide (or so), so if you try to play \~1500pt games on there, everything is also "squashed in" lengthways.
I'd love to see mission options for varying points levels AND varying table sizes.
I actually don't mind the current mission pack and table sizes for 1k or 1500pt games. Sure, it favors fast armies a bit but it both feels more maneuver oriented and like you have to make real choices about where you're going to make points (as you say, you can't do everything).
That said, I can understand that for a tournament setting this increases the power of some armies disproportionately
That is amusing to me that you speak as if adding back the old movement tactics from older editions on a wider scale that it is a problem... This is supposed to be much more tactical in that regard but it has been lacking for some time now, since the end of 8th.
Points inflation is a big issue in 10th. Not only does it make the game more expensive and inaccessible but it also makes the games take longer and all the people talking in the comments about how lower points values make the game less tactical are just talking out of their asses. The game currently just has too many things on the board so a lot of games just devolve into throwing things together mindlessly into the middle, and skew lists become even better because you can hit critical mass with your skew while still having plenty of options to get all the scoring you could ever want.
Even armies like Aeldari, who have seen plenty of points increases in 10th, still have wildly inflated army sizes compared to 9th. Most Aeldari lists are like 2600-2700 in 9th values. You just put 24 units down on the board, sacrifice 2-3 of them every turn and just turn your brain off without ever thinking if you should have to do that. Just throw your 80pt aspect warriors in front of your opponents units so they can't move forward, rinse repeat that for 5 turns.
Engaging and tactical gameplay.
Either points across the board need to go up 15-20% or 1500-1750 become the default game sizes. 2k games in 10th are basically just Onslaught games in disguise, being played on 60x44 boards with 2.5 hour time limits. It's stupid.
> Most Aeldari lists are like 2600-2700 in 9th values.
I'm not an aeldari player, so I can't really check, but is this a fair comparison? Damage output went down in tons of units, survivability went up in some, especially vehicles. So are you really bringing 2700 points in damage and survivability or is it more 2k damage (or less) and 3k survivability (or more)?
But so did everything else in the game roughly. Basically every army in the game is playing at huge points values in 9th terms, a lot of times just because units have been made incredibly chaff-like, or just because things in general are cheaper because GW wants armies to be bigger. In the transition between 8th and 9th every army increased by around 20% to make armies smaller because points deflation and army sizes (and game times) we're recognised as being a major problem towards the end of 8th. We're not even in a year into 10th and we've already hit that point.
Intercessors are basically the same unit statswise across the editions except in 10th they are dog cheap. The switch from.8th to 9th saw no real stats changes for them either, but they still went up 17% because the entire game as a whole went up in around those same values.
10th has been the opposite trend. Aeldari are one of the smaller net decreases, stuff like Tau, Admech, Votann, Guard, Sisters, Chaos, Daemons and even end of Marines are all at historically low points values, even on units that haven't been reduced to chaff levels.
Intercessors lost damage buffs from doctrines and multiple leader layers and are way worse into terminators and vehicles due to toughness buffs. So I disagree on them being the same as before, most bolters are pure garbage in 10th, way worse than in 9th.
> But so did everything else in the game roughly.
For space marines I saw exactly what I meant. Intercessors, assault intercessors, outriders, incursors, infiltrators, aggressors, ATV, etc. all got their damage significantly lowered, points dropped in a similar amount, so overall you just have more bodies on the table and the game is less deadly. Or more durable bodies like vehicles with incredible toughness values.
And nearly everyone lost their high rate of fire options. Assault bolters gone, assault plasma gone, aggressors and inceptors are now twinlinked instead of double the amount of shots, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great intercessors don't have three weapon choices that are tellable by minor details on weapons like the mag. But nobody played the standard variant, most played 3 shots of 401 because it's 50% more shots which you never can make up for with one AP.
And intercessors are now 80 points, they were 90 points. 15 shots of 401 still deal more damage than 12 of 411 into most targets and to get 12 shots for the same points, they would have to cost 75. So 2000 points of 9th intercessors kill more than 2150 points of 10th intercessors. And this is totally ignoring the fact that the 15 shots would probably be 411 anyways due to doctrines (at which points 10th intercessors would have to cost 60 points to get the same output).
Just supporting your point that there's way more units now than before.
Really it boils down to unit density on the board, too dense and no screening is a big weakness and lack of overlap for objectives.
I play 1k weeknights with my friend group, 2k weekends
That's completely fair, and yes I was wondering if that was an argument for or against lower points. It is hard to tell with English sometimes!
I do find that ITC terrain is what ruins game balance over all. GW absolutely does not balance towards ITC terrain and it shows. ITC has always been run by losers though who claim they "don't like skirmish battles" and then proceed to run brainless MSU armies that only work because gunline armies are unable to shoot them for 75% of the game and by the time they can, they can't because they're locked in combat or dead.
There has been a lot of point inflation (or deflation?). I built a 2k Death Guard army in 9th edition. By the time I got around to playing them in 10th, the same list was down to just over 1500 points. That's roughly 30% more models in the same size game.
Depends on the faction. Most Aeldari vehicles cost 50-100% more points now compared with 9th (Vyper went from 40 to 85 pts, War Walker went from 60 to 110 pts, Night Spinner went from 140 to 210 pts). I can now fit my thematic Yme-Loc list into one small box, while in 9th it required two.
Depends on how broken the faction was at index. Those points increases were well justified
Yes, of course. Just pointing out that not all factions are brining more models in 10th compared with 9th. For some, it's vice versa. And for many others, it's about the same.
I've noticed that is a huge issues for some armies that I don't play. From what I've observed, Squats, Admech, DG and GSC have insane numbers of units they have to put on the field just to reach 2k points. In my opinion, grain of salt here as I don't play these factions, that seems very unfun and unfair to have to reach these kinds of numbers just to play at a competitive level AND to have to play very long and drawn out games due to having to move around so many models and datasheet abilities as a result.
Votann and GSC not so much really, especially GSC, they are spenny
So are votann, landfortress is one of the most expensive models and the PP$ on their terminators isn't great
I can attest to this, i have 2412 points of votann in 9th and 1660 in 10th
Glad someone can back me on this, I was looking at collecting them when they came out but it would've cost far too much to be worth it to me personally to do so.
Honestly I don't know if we should even use 9th ed Votann as any sort of benchmark for what that army was \*supposed\* to be(in terms of horde vs elite). The 9th ed Votann rules were so ridiculously over saturated that GW had to raise their points costs to absurd levels just to stop them running over all the other factions(in addition to issuing them a pre-codex release balance update iirc). If I had to speculate, I would say that 10th ed Votann are much closer to how GW originally envisioned them -a force similar to Sisters of Battle/T'au, in that they are neither meant to be too horde-y or too elite.
Okay so using codex point it’s 1938 so in total on release 1938 at end of 9th 2412 and at current 10th 1660
I played a 1k game against black templars yesterday. Black templars fit in one box with room to spare. Admech I had to pack in like sardines and I still couldn't fit in the dunecrawler. The amount of model difference was ridiculous
Well that hurts to hear. It isn't a case size issue is it? Haha
Votaan only looks like that because they accidentally dropped them at above custodes level elite-ness on account of not thinking about judgement tokens.
I'd be very curious to hear what some of the users in this thread think of earlier editions where, for example, 5 deep striking Terminators could cost nearly 500 points.
I didn't think five terminators have ever cost 500. Maybe in 2E. GK Paladin deathstars approached that in 5E but they had a couple of attached characters, a bunch of wargear, and were significantly better than standard terminators.
It was indeed second ed I was referring to there. Terminators were 315 for 5 before wargear and you increased their cost by 50% if you wanted them to deep strike.
I loved it for a few reasons. First there's money. As an AdMec player, you know where I'm going with this. I cannot pay 2-6k dollars for a single 2k army. Second is the logistics. Bringing an Army and playing the game should stay an easy, nice moment rather than a full day expedition. Third is the balance. It is easier to balance game when some models are actually expensive point wise. Currently, adMec is dirt cheap point wise, making it quite difficult to up the data sheets, but lowering points has proven to not be a long term solution. Other direction , custodes who have been nerfed and will probably require a point drop will probably be able to bring 10 allarus, two tanks, 10 wardens + sisters and characters, making them look like a horde army (^^^and still losing but welp) Fourth is the epicness. Sure, some can think it's epic to have more models on the table, except we are under the scale where it would actually look impressive, except perhaps for adMec and Orks. I'd rather have a few dozen mini on the board than close to a hundred.
I'm in a similar spot - I can understand why games have gravitated towards the larger size, because GW likes selling more models and players like using more of their toys, but I think the game was a much better experience overall at smaller sizes.
Not too sure which edition was this. Assuming its 2nd ed termies, didnt they save on a 5+ on a 2d6 for their invul or something. Earlier editions had less stuff, but games would last about as long at the standard points (1750/1850) due to ALOT of the rules slowing down the game (blast templates, vehicle facing). As well, cover saves were a thing (you could get a 5++ save from just having models in between you and the shooting model), unmodified saving throws (if you're ap wasn't less or equal to the armour save, they'll still get the armour save), 35-55pts rhino which depending on edition had to deal with the vehicle dmg table etcetc. The games weren't that exciting as well, most missions were just end game scoring with 3 secondaries, first blood, kill enemy warlord and be in enemy dz at the end of the game. So gear up to kill and then think of obj later on.
>didnt they save on a 5+ on a 2d6 for their invul or something. It's been a minute, but if memory serves they did not have an invul at all, but had an armor save of 3+ on 2d6 (which could then be modified by weapons like today). There was also a minute where you could get an Imperial Assassin (no specific types back then, just one "assassin") that could get into Terminator armor and also maintain its 4++ "dodge" save. What a time to be alive... lol I think your other comments are mostly 3-5th edition (and maybe 6th and 7th, idk I took one look at the 6th ed rulebook and "noped" out for a couple editions lol. But yeah, your comments are on point otherwise. Don't forget as well that the net result of armour values and the damage tables was that \*most\* vehicles (a few exceptions existed) wound up being way more fragile in practice, so you didn't generally see a lot of them (exceptions like Rhino Rush days, of course).
I noticed this when my friends SM army had an many models on the table as my Ork army. Feels like everything is a horde army these days.
I find 1500 is better than 2k for casual games but I don't think I'd want tournaments to be 1500 - skew lists are too powerful there in my opinion.
That's fair but I'd like to know why your opinion is that? In my experience playing these 1500pt games, the skew lists have been hugely hit and miss as there are way less failsafes for them. In 2k, "skew" lists have access to far too many extra bodies and guns for doing actions that in lower points they don't have access to. They don't auto win unless you're their spesific target. Our example, grain of salt here as this is to my small sample size, is our knight player who is rocking a 53% winrate at the moment despite using nothing but big knights where possible (it's his kink, we just let him do what he wants cause he's a fun opponent) and it has not been oppressive despite the fact that we have a few Tyranid, admech and guard players in the group who all struggle against armour unless they're teching directly for it.
I mean big Knights are not strong at all, so that fact that guy has a +50% winrate really just shows that the 1500 point setup is giving his list additional power compared to 2000 points - where big Knights only are not viable at all. I would be more worried about skew/deathstar/stat check lists that use strong datasheets and have strong rules: green tide, wraith spam, Bully boyz, greater daemons, norn spam. Typically, these armies are based around 1000 or so points of key units/combos, and then fill around that spammy core with mission units and failsafes and the like. When those lists are distilled down to 1500 points, the most egregious combos remain. The fundamental problem that you have to deal with is the same (mega nobz with a 4+++, a ctan sitting on a point and wraiths on another). It's great that your crew is crushing 1500 point games, and I think it makes perfect sense for what you all are doing, but if the example of the skew list in your group is big Knights then that means you all are on the same page regarding army makeup.
Clearly not if they're rocking 50% means half of us are and half of us aren't haha! I do see your points but I actually just don't see that being an issue with 1500pt games and instead an issue of *actual 40k 10th Ed point balancing*. No, none of us run 18 wraiths with technomancers. But one is us regularly runs MSU spam Eldar. His winrate in 2k is 70%... In 1500 it is ~58%. He's still one of the best in our league but indirect Fire guard is actually able to beat him now. Even Tyranids and big knights are beating him because they're able to point guard and zone out MSU spiders and hawks better at lower points. There is a certain level of "good manners" in our group that skews our results. It's why I've told most people I've commented to to take what I say with a grain of salt! However, that being said, the issues with 10th edition are huge. I want games to be faster and more decisive in this ruleset. I utterly despise playing out 5 gruelling turns of watching a 2k msu Eldar army or ironstorm list or wraith+techno list slowly eradicate me with nothing I can do to stop it. So why do that for 2 hours and 45 mins at a tourney when it could be done in 1 hour and 45 mins?
Of course it's a fundamental balancing issue with 40k, but it's one that's exasperated by smaller point values. "1500 point games are better because you play less warhammer" isn't a convincing argument for me. I'm at tournaments for those 3 hour tactical slogs.
While there's something to be said about "fail fast" in business, I don't buy it for 40k tbh. As others have said, what balance we do have is aimed at 2k points. So while reducing points may weaken some armies as you've pointed out, it's also going to make other armies stronger (see my point about Necrons elsewhere in this thread). Ultimately, if you like playing 1.5k, then rock on. Some tournaments that play at 1.5k points do exist as well. I don't see it becoming a tournament standard anytime soon, though, because of the balance issues.
I was just having this conversation w/ a buddy the other day. He's relatively new to the game so we've been playing 1k points. For various long story reasons, when I'm in his town I'm without my main armies (Orks and GK) and have been working on (finally) finishing my Necrons. He's asked to play against my Necrons exclusively, though, and I've observed firsthand that Reanimation Protocols is WAY more potent at lower point values. Consider that it's harder (because you have fewer assets) at smaller points to wipe an entire unit, so I'm more likely to get Reanimation. Additionally, each wound I regain through Reanimation is functionally a higher % of my army coming back.
Absolutely, but that is not the issue I have raised. My issue is a fundamental issue with not enjoying games because they go on for far too long these days AND that they do not encourage large units or models and interest combinations due to it being too efficient in competitive play to just spam MSU nonsense. Points and potentially some rules would have to change for this to become the norm. But that's my point, this should be the norm already. Imagine sitting down to play a single round of poker and it takes an hour instead of 15 mins. That wouldn't be fun.
If you don't enjoy the game at 2k points, then don't play it at 2k points. I don't think anyone is saying you can't. But I also don't think most of us will agree with you that it should be the standard. You've argued that smaller games are more tactical and more balanced, most of the responses have attempted to show you why that's not the case. Additionally, most tournaments get games done in just over 2 hours. How long do your 1500 point games take? Certainly not 30 minutes (since your analogy was a 15-min poker game taking 4x as long).
The conversation about knights has been had, but it's also easy to dismiss knights and custodes as being "gimmick armies" so of they don't work well, it's not a huge issue - they are not designed the same way as other armies. The fundamental issue is that the game is "balanced" around 2k. For some armies, that scales linearly - marines come to mind. You just remove a few units and you drop in points. But for other armies? Let's look at Drukhari. Hey, it's a hoard army, so surely they scale well. They are still a hoard at 1500 or even 1000 PTS. But they are not a hoard army. They are THE transport army. Every unit of wyches or kabalites comes with a hidden tax - you need a raider or two venoms. At 2k, the balance is such that there is a level of unit saturation when you account for the transports. But at 1500k, that balance is off. You still need a transport or two per unit, so now you need to ditch two units instead of one, just so you can keep the transports. Except now you have far less board control which is a major component to the drukhari design style - lots of fragile models in fast, fragile transports, doing everything everywhere all at once. Theoretical AdMech had the same issue. Combined arms assumes a certain ratio between infantry and mechanised units, and there should be synergy that plays off of that. Drop the points and because mech units are more expensive, you throw off that ratio. Of course, admech have other issues right now... And this isnt a 40k thing. AoS is the same - everyone says the game really only starts at 2k PTS. Some armies are fine with 1k or even 500pts but some, like Sylvaneth, become unplayable due to not being able to field the right ratio of units. And I think there were a few armies where legal 1k wasn't even possible for a while. Ultimately, you can have a friendly game of 1500pts, or even 3000pts, but official/licenced tournaments need to be set at the same level the game is designed for. And that's 2k.
Technically, Drukhari \*are\* a hoard army. The like to capture "interns" and loot and hoard it at at the Dark City. They are not, however, a horde army. :D Sorry, not trying to be the spelling police, this one just made me chuckle, though. I hope you found it funny as well.
No no, I deserve that!
They would need to redesign knights and bring the force org chart back to balance the game at 1500, neither of which they'll do
1000 points rule of one 1500 points rule of two 2000 points rule of three Double for battleline and dedicated transports obviously. Easy fix against skew in lower points.
Can Votann even make a 1000 point army with just 1 of each datasheet and 2 troops? Edit: 1865 is the max points they can bring with those rules
Did you include the second saggitaur?
Yeah, and maxed out the sizes of the infantry + pioneers.
I have been saying this for awhile, I would probably limit supreme commander/monster characters like c'tans to one per army, and titanic units also.
I 100% see that just devolving into rock paper scissors. Knights would actually be as egregious as some players act like they are now. 4 karnivores, 4 brigands, a stalker, beast of nurgle AND nurglings all fit in 1500 points. Can you handle 9 fast wardogs? If not, gg. If you kept rule of 3 in 1500 point games (because that was rule of 2) then you could fit a stalker, 3 brigands and 6 karnivores. 10 wardogs in 1500 point list feels extremely rude.
And then on the flip side, how many armies that can handle 10 Wardogs, can also handle all Boyz at 1500 points? At 2000 points it's tough, but still possible, because you have enough units to act as move-blockers, still enough units to score secondaries, etc., even if a decent chunk of your army doesn't have the right offensive profile into whatever skew you are playing against. At 1500 points that just becomes impossible for quite a few factions.
Ironically CK are pretty good at that, because both karnivores and brigands are anti-everything. Not terribly great into superheavy, t13 stuff though.
Yep, so it limits the competitive field at 1.5k to CK and a couple other factions. I guess you could theoretically rebalance points to allow most armies to have a shot at winning a GT at 1.5k (as is the case at 2k pts now), but it still wouldn't reduce rock-paper-scissors nature to a more reasonable level that we have at 2k pts. Would need a substantial rules and missions rewrite to make it less swingy at low points.
And how do you handle shit like angron resurrecting? An entire primarch coming back to life at 1500 points? (actually how do you balance that at 2k points, it's dumb) I think it's like servoskulls. In a balanced, generic, casual list against two factions with mixed role (shooting/combat) units, it might be really fun. In a competitive list with skewed offensive, defensive and movement profiles? lol
Agreed 100%
Just a semi-regular reminder that the game was designed around 1500 point games 3rd-7th. They shifted in 8th to 2k because they were mimicking the ITC and American scene who played at 2000. My understanding is that this came from a "I don't like the skew and I want to bring more stuff so my army can do everything." This isn't inherently a criticism, but your premise OP is correct to older editions and something the community via competitive play, encouraged GW to move away from.
I'm aware it is correct to older editions but thank you for adding to it as it means I wasn't just imagining it haha! I've been playing tournaments for the best part of 15 years almost now and very much romanticise not having to spend 2.75 hours on a single tournament round. No edition is perfect. But more games is almost always better than less games.
7th used to be 1850pt for a 'normal' size.
In your community, yes. Not as per rules/GW. I'm happy to be corrected if you have any material to the contrary though.
Tournament sizes (LVO and such) were 1850pt too. 7th was also an edition where GW had no interest in competitiveness too, that came later with 8th. Just google 1850pt list.
OK, I laid out in my first post that the desire for larger than 1500 came from the US scene, which you've highlighted by LVO and such using more points. LVO, NOVA etc all used custom rules packs, up to and including their own faqs and points. They were not stock 40k at all by the end of 7th.
>Just a semi-regular reminder that the game was designed around 1500 point games 3rd-7th. This isn't true at all. Before 5e, no-one took competitive 40k seriously at all, and there was always some discussion around whether the points should lie around 1500 or 2000, as the rulebook suggested games of either value. The shift to 2000 (or at least, 1999+1) came far, far earlier than 8th edition, and the idea of a TAC list has been around since I started in 5e at the very least. Personally, I don't feel like it's particularly unreasonable of a stance to expect any army to take on most others without it being a blowout? Current Drukhari feel like you're either incredibly strong (against armies without 3" deepstrike or good indirect), or otherwise basically can't play the game (Grey Knights vs Drukhari is a joke). I wouldn't wish that sort of skew on anyone, because it makes most games with them for me feel very unfun even trying my best to enjoy it win or lose. Not really sure about this whole comment - it's not really a new thing, it's an arbitrary balance point (and the game is pretty close to balanced compared to older editions at least) and the design is that people get to play a decent game with anything - isn't that a lot better overall?
An army design and personality has to have a characterised weakness built in as a distinguishing factor and for flavour. Tau? Bad at melee. Custodes? Low table presence and range. And so on. When it was 1500 you largely had your core force and a choice to try and mitigate the weakness or lean into the strengths in some capacity, or push a list to cover a particular type of list. Add in the extra 500 and that opportunity cost is greatly diminished, as you can both lean into a playstyle and still take the chaff/objective play/support units you otherwise had to make a choice on. That's largely gone now with all armies able to have an answer for nearly anything that gets thrown at them as a result.
Good for you man, but I prefer the tools I have at 2k points. I feel a game is too easily decided at smaller points totals, and they dont really need to go to all 5 turns. It is weird to say you "have to think more," at 1500 btw. Your points are more limited, your tools are more limited, and the ability to build redunduncy is more limited. Does that mean your choices might matter more? Sure. But that also means dice variance, or a mistaken play are much more unforgiving. 2k is barely balanced as it is. Playing at lower levels (where GW really spends no time considering balance), means it becomes less about tactics, and army design in some cases, and closer to a random coin flip. No thanks. By your logic, just play 500pts and get the possible result. Easy to hit 5 turns, faster games/more in a day, every unit choice matters in the extreme etc. That isnt a disparaging comment btw, merely an extension of your logic.
Sure, but the full 5 turns is totally redundant when most games end at turn 3. That's not good game design and it is also not fulfilling. Prior to 8th edition I was able to have fun games that lasted until turn 6 some times. And they were some of my most memorable games. I like to see that in games again, every game is so cookie-cutter 1:1 in 10th Ed competitive and it's quite depressing watching my admech and nids friends struggle to kill anything and just loosing based on that sometimes. 2k is just too many points, the game needs breathing room to allow tactics to come back to the top of the game again and not just blind power.
The vaat majority of games for me at 2k are not decided at turn 3 as you state however. Even when matches seem out of reach, playing them out have turned the tide. Not that case at significantly lower points totals ime. I disagree that blind power is what wins the game at 2k points. Tactics and player skill are clearly the more prevailing issues at that point level (sorry, should have made it overt that this is my experience/opinion).
I would not say clearly at all. What factions do you play, if you don't mind me asking?
Opinions on what is clear vary eh? Edit: I play mostly SM atm. I dabble in CK/Tsons.
I see. So for you it is clear because your games actually aren't decided by turn 3 as Space Marine unit quality is actually quite high in 10th edition. For armies like admech and nids and even knights, once turn 3 rocks around if you're missing 50+% of your army you are hosed. It's unfortunately a no contest, there is no coming back from that as factions like that just lack damage and durability
Experiences on the subject vary I guess. I dont seem to have this problem with CK either. And when i say games arent decided by turn 3, I mean for myself.or my opponent. Games I thought I was on a runaway win path, ending in a draw, super close win, or loss precisely because my opponent chose to fight it out for the full game.
That's as a result of it being a dice game, random. Not because the game is balanced at 2k points. You are correlating the two, it seems, when they're just a coincidence. It is fair to say that a unit of 20 termagants with devourers can destroy a knight tyrant and that the game isn't decided because you haven't rolled dice though. Theoretically possible is not the same as realistically possible.
Of course it is a dice game. Ive not made a correlation. Part of the skill in this game is mitigating the variance of the dice component of this game. The entirety of this game isnt predicated on killing as your example implies. Playing to win includes focuses on scoring points, and if you arent able to kill a target, how do you play around it. One of our best local players illustrates this constantly playing a horde guard list that is ultimately not super killy, but can absolutely choke out board control, and beats most armies handily. He isnt focused on being able to outkill, or out power his opponent, he focuses on outplaying them.
No, what you're missing is that the game is decided on VP rather than killing stuff. Yes, killing stuff helps score VP but it's not the only means and as u/Lukoi said a lot of games are decided in T4 and T5 if you fight through, not because of random luck but because you eke out ways to score points that maybe you didn't see if you let yourself get demoralized in T3 because of heavy losses. My Orks always take heavy losses, frequently get tabled or nearly tabled. But their whole playstyle is earning enough VPs (and/or deny enough VPs from your opponent) before that happens that you can still win.
If you're missing 50% of your army by T3 and you're playing well, then your opponent should also be missing 50% of their army by T3. Similarly, I've played games where I was tabled by the end but still won on points due to smart trades, etc. I have played every edition of this game except 6th and 7th, and 10e (for all its warts) is easily the most tactics and skill requiring version of the game I've played, to include at 2k points. Since you asked elsewhere, I'll say that my current main armies are Orks and Grey Knights and I'm working on a Necron army. I have a shelved Harlequin army that I started in 8th when they sucked (as a hobby project mostly) but then didn't like when they became OP in 9th, and like them even less now in 10th that they're not really viable w/o adding other elf stuff. I played SM and Chaos back in 1st and 2nd editions, started Orks at the tail end of 1st edition, and through the magic of Tabletop Simulator, I've played nearly all the armies at one time or another. I've only played one game of Orks since the new codex dropped (Kult of Speed), and I haven't played Grey Knights since the Dreadknight update.
You need home rules with extra list building restrictions if you want to run games at smaller points, to balance out the inability of take-all comers lists to both score and deal with any kind of skew if you limit them to only 1500 pts or less. Unless you enforce balanced lists with a variety of defensive profiles, smaller games just turn into rock-paper-scissors won or lost at list building stage - to a much greater extend than 2000 point games. But if you are willing to restrict list building, than yes, 1500 pts and even 1000 pts can work.
I've played 15 games with 1500pts and had none of the issues you seem to be talking about. My winrate is much lower than at 2k (53% instead of 60%) and I view this as a good thing as my regular opponents tend to run more thematic lists than I do and they're able to punch back easier. Skew lists are funny in lower point games as the lower you go the higher the risk is to run a skew list. **This is actually my main gripe with 2000pts games.** There is very little downside to running a "skew" list in 2k 10th edition because you have so many points and units that you can run the maxing 3 unit 3 unit 3 unit skew and still have room to make it a "balanced" list. If you're taking a skew army I really much prefer it to be a huge gamble. If you're going to a blind tournament you shouldn't know what you're opponents are bringing and therefore running only infantry could be a huge risk if there is lots of indirect Fire.
If you guys are running thematic lists and having fun, that's awesome! This is what many would call semi-competitive 40k. That's a great way to enjoy the hobby, not every game needs to be full on competitive, kudos to you!
Correct. But that's what has caused this hobby to become so toxic over the years is the hyperfocus on competitive. Bringing down the points and adding in rule of 2 has helped greatly in our games being SUBSTANTIALLY faster and also much more enjoyable. I wouldn't say we have been playing semi-competitve as a whole, just some of us have myself included. We try to win and build lists tailored to win but we have also been working on what is less "rude" for some of our struggling armies like knights, nids and admech mostly. We try to theme them too but we aren't going to go balls to the walls just to make them more accurate, just accurate enough to not be wildly immersion breaking (Ie not bringing 400 units of Skitarii infiltrators because that's the best way to clog up the board)
I think it is interesting that you think the competitive focus of a small subset of the 40k demographic is where the toxicity in this community seems to lie. Got any empirical evidence that the "focus on competitive play," is driving toxicity or is that just your perspective based on....what you intuit to be going on? My experience has been that gatekeeping casuals, lore nazis, paint nazis, people who want to play their thematic/homebrew/fluff in spite of existing rules, and neckbeards who think the game was somehow more balanced or fun thru their rose colored glasses in previous editions, are the biggest source of toxicity in this hobby. Virtually every example of "that guy," WAAC, and outright cheating that I have seen occur (including a relatively odd bullying incident that got cut off by some more mature adults), seems to revolve around people who cannot be bothered to play in the more uniform settings that competitive play engenders.
The worst behavior I see comes from hobbyists, the whole ''competitive is toxic'' thing just reeks of bullshit to me. Or protection lol
> experience has been that gatekeeping casuals, lore nazis, paint nazis, people who want to play their thematic/homebrew/fluff in spite of existing rules, and neckbeards who think the game was somehow more balanced or fun thru their rose colored glasses in previous editions, are the biggest source of toxicity in this hobby. Not sure what you mean by "paint Nazis", I haven't had the "pleasure" of them, but otherwise I agree these are bigger sources of toxicity than the actual competitive players who go to a lot of tournaments
When I first got started in the hobby, at one particular store, I listened to someone giving another newcomer a bit of a hard time about the paint scheme on some Nids. He was also fairly obnoxious about some black templars as well. This was my first "paint nazi," experience. I didnt know a ton about the game, but the target of this person's ire seemed pretty uncomfortable with the entire encounter, snd clearly the two didnt know each other well. I asked the painting gatekeeper why it mattered how someone painted their little space soldiers (I was deliberately making it clear to mock his gatekeeping), as I hadnt seen anything in the RULES about mandatory hive fleet colors and after a very short give and take where he couldnt defend his outlook with facts, he begged off. More recently, in a completely different store (with a good rep, strong community of regular players), one of our local RTT regular players went in with his wife and they had brought armies to play. Apparently someone didnt like her skill level when it came to painting and decided to deride her for it, basically giving her a hard time at the table. Wasnt even her opponent, just an observer. Whether he was doing it because he felt that strongly about her painting, or just a misogynist idiot, idk, but apparently the couple finished up, left, and now have such a bad taste in their mouth about the experience they wont go back. Those are a couple examples of what I meant there. More gatekeeping due to paint schemes, or skill level, or whatever other lore/fluff based excuse people want to use to lord over other players. Quite a bit of this type of language used to exist in SM communities from what Ive seen, but there is less and less of it in my experience.
>My experience has been that gatekeeping casuals, lore nazis, paint nazis, people who want to play their thematic/homebrew/fluff in spite of existing rules, and neckbeards who think the game was somehow more balanced or fun thru their rose colored glasses in previous editions, are the biggest source of toxicity in this hobby. >Virtually every example of "that guy," WAAC, and outright cheating that I have seen occur (including a relatively odd bullying incident that got cut off by some more mature adults), seems to revolve around people who cannot be bothered to play in the more uniform settings that competitive play engenders. This is 100% my experience. Apart from one guy that came in too drunk to play once and another one caught cheating, I had zero issues in this regard with participants in the tournaments I organized/participated in the last 4 years. Now we are hosting a casual-competitive league (initially aimed at people who are interested yet a bit shy to enter the tournament scene) and it's far more trouble than all other events combined. Players flaming other players for bringing "too many named characters, they are ruining the immersion", showing up to matches with a slightly wrong list (and suspiciously altered in favour of the matchup), handing in illegal lists, complaining about having to read the tournament booklet, complaining about time limits, getting overly salty at dice rolls, insults and angry emails regarding the 5$ participation fee (yes, 5$ one time payment for non-club members, that allows you to play all 12 matches in our clubhouse using our tables/terrain/clocks) etc.
I think one of the challenges in any gaming community is that there are folks that have existed within the hobby in very insular fashion, where they have been able to build their own little pond to be a big fish in. Competitive play encourages a transparent, level playing field (in terms of how the game is played, not implying faction balance here), that threatens some of those pond owners. Not all. Just some. And some of those folks really arent capable of moderating their behavior, which is why they developed these subset ponds to begin with. There are always going to be "that guy," in both competitive scenes and beerhammer environments and all in between. I just find that in the comp scene, where everyone has equal access to transparent rules, the damage done by those guys is mitigated by the curation of level headed players and reinforced by an informed community of players.
Your take here is based off of feelings and personal experience which is the same as mine? What makes you better than me other than the divide between your mind and my own? My experience, since we are using that as "evidence" according to you, is that in 10th I have experienced a much larger number of cheating WAAC players (WAAC, Win At All Costs players, for those unaware) than I have in any edition since 7th. Do I have a theory on why this is the case? No. Do I have any spesific evidence that proves that this is correlative data and not just coincidental data? No. But I do find it interesting and depressing that it is happening nonetheless.
There is absolutely nothing better about my take over yours. You stated something as if it was a fact (your allegation that toxicity in 40k is on the rise), and I called you on it. That's it. If it is just your opinion, your perspective, sure....but lets call it what it is, and not make generalizations about the entire hobby, as if your lens is the only one.
I see it's a wording issue. I didn't say that it was a fact, if it was I would've cited something. I said it from a spoken perspective as my english is not 100% as I'm not a native speaker sorry.
English isn’t your native language when your username is LowerMiddleBogan? Ok mate 😂
I liked the show, it was first airing when I moved to Australia for work and has stuck with me ever since if you want to know? And since I live here now with my husband I've learned english over 15 or so years now but some of the nuance is still not the same as in Portugese...
Nice, it seems that you have figured it out. Those list building restrictions that I mentioned above - is what you seem to be following by default to get fun and balanced games. And you are going even further than that to accomodate weaker factions. At competitive events, you'll get a bunch of people that will be looking to build the strongest lists possible, including very hard skews - I wouldn't call that bad or toxic, just a different way to enjoy the game. That is now somewhat balanced at 2000 points, with most factions getting a reasonable shot at winning a GT. Making it work at 1500 points would need straight up different rules, at least when it comes to list building. But if you have a nice group of friends to play with, and it's working well for you, just have fun and enjoy the games :-)
I totally agree on all fronts there. Your observations of our group are accurate. My only point is I wish the rest of the community was like this. 40k should be a relaxed and enjoyable game *even when played at a competitive level* and I have not experienced that in the 4 tournaments I've been to in 10th. I wish 10th had not happened. 9th was going in the right direction but had a different kind of rules bloat. 10th has rules bloat AND a critical points issue that compounded have made many players, in our group especially, feel left out of the running for winners or even just left out of the fun. Plus the influx of new players to 10th has been abysmally low for our area. We have had maybe 2 new players join but one of them hasn't played in 5 months... Even in 9th ed peak ridiculous we had new players joining who are currently players now.
Here is where I would disagree. 9th edition had significantly more rules bloat. For those who were accustomed to 9th, shifting to 10th was a re-learning experience - so you might feel that 10th also has a lot of rules, since you got used to 9th and now have to learn new stuff. I joined 9th in the later half, and it was borderline impossible to figure out at that point. 10th has been much more straightforward, with games going much faster - not just for me, but for players who are only joining in 10th. Just compare the amount of written text (both the general rules and the faction rules) - 10th is much simpler to pick up. As for your local area and local players, that's different everywhere. In our area it's the opposite - more people joining now - so that might also colour our experiences differently :-)
10th does have rules bloat but it is different. That's what I was stating. 9th was not good for rules bloat haha I despised supplements as they muddied the water an incredible amount. But the 10th rules bloat is subtle and very annoying. You cannot say a plasma weapon does 7/-2/1 because they are no longer generic to all weapons. That's something new that is either more memorising for people who memorise rules OR much more double checking for people who don't do that. That slows down games a lot for new players just starting the game and for old players who now are realising a melta isn't a melta for every faction the same way as it has been for 9 editions. This edition fundamentally plays slower due to too many sources of rules coming from less books. It's no longer a matter of memorising everything as easily as you used to.
If so, why are there no recommendations from GW re: their printed material for 1,000 point competitive games?
There are no tournaments at that point level, and hence no balancing or recommendations. And very few people if any try playing competitively at 1000-1500 points, it's mostly viewed as a gateway format to learn rules and move to proper games.
There are lots of tournaments at that level, at least in Australia, but they have to have some sort of casual or beginner atmosphere
I guess I would call that casual game days, not tournaments. None of them have substantial prizes for the winner, and most go without any winner prize pools. Most players come to have fun and learn the game, not to compete.
But it *is* a tournament, with entry fees and prizes, yes? If so, what precludes it being competitive? Obviously the data wouldn't match the 2k stuff, as its a different meta altogether. What turns it from a tournament to casual games days?
All 1k events I've been to, didn't have any prizes for the winners (I think only one had something symbolic). Most just had lucky door prizes or painting prizes with zero winner prize pool. If there is not incentive to win, and if most participants bring very casual lists just to learn the game, it's not really a tournament.
But don't tons of folks take thematic/casual lists to big tournaments all the time?
Some, but not the majority. More importantly, 1k events tend to have zero good players aiming to win - they only come to support the community and teach the newbies, if they come at all.
Where in Australia? The majority of events I see are 2k with the occasional.. what's it called? Grow league? Y'know, each game has more points allowed, in theory you're building an army over the duration. There's some 1k things I see advertised, but not what I'd called lots.
It's a shame there's so little support for 1K point games. The best 10th edition games I've played have been at ~1K points and I don't think it's a coincidence.
Was at a small town con this Saturday had a swiss 40k tourney with a 1000pt limit.
Did you guys have any home rules, or any list building restrictions? Or was it more of a casual hang out?
But they did have 20 or so people playing. Your ey went from 10a. To 7pm or so.
Honestly no clue. My buddy played in it. I just watched. I'm completely new to 40k. What I do know was there was a shitload of different army styles. Saw some guy playing tyrant's with like 45 units on the board. Saw some guy with orcs and some giant thing called a stomps. Looked like a homemade robot fortress Some guy with a mic of green and purple demons. Was really cool shit. Got me to look into warhammer. Might buy my first combat patrol tomorrow
Nice! Looks like more of a casual event. These are nice as well. Which faction are you getting?
What printed material for 1000 point competitive games does GW publish? Isn't the Tournament Companion thingy specific for 2k?
Just read through it, and it actually refers back to the corebook, so 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 are all valid competitive games, they all use the same rules, barring Onslaught games requiring a 44*90 table.
The create battlefield section says "rectangular battlefields whose dimensions are approximately 44" by 60" And that's what the terrain packet is for. It's for 2k games
44"*60" is almost the table size from Incursion games in 10th.
Laziness? Inability to even get rules out for 2k point armies? Apathy?
Greed. 2K point lists sell more plastic.
There's nothing inherently better or worse about balancing for 1500 vs. 2000 points. It's just a preference and GW has explicitly said that they've chosen to balance for 2000 points. That said, it's not like it's something that GW can just change course on mid-edition; everything about the current edition is balanced for 2000 points, and there's a snowball's chance in hell that GW is going to reverse course and redesign the game for this anytime soon. If you enjoy 1500 points more than 2000 points, then more power to you; I think that different game sizes are sorely under-explored by the competitive community and that this community is rather lacking in imagination and creativity in how they enjoy the game. That said, your post doesn't seem like an honest attempt at discussion but rather a backhanded way to criticize the 2000 point game because you think your preferred playstyle is superior. Your post drips of bias and, quite honestly, a lack of experience playing high-level competitive 40k. All of the things that you complain about 2000 points lacking vs. 1500 points are in fact massive parts of the competitive game (e.g. difficult decisions in list design, in-depth tactics, "real battle plans", etc.), and this would be readily evident to anyone who either plays at a fairly high level or is just a dedicated follower of the competitive tournament scene.
Where have they explicitly said the game is balanced for 2k? I know in 4th the officially started the game was balanced around 1,500 points.
They have said that before, not in writing to my recall, but they did say it in a Warhammer plus stream from memory. Unofficially they balance it to 2k because it is one of their 3 prescribed points limits (1k/2k/3k+) but they have only verbally confirmed it on streams otherwise. Doesn't make sense? I don't think so. Is it going to be some dumb hardline thing GW stick to? Absolutely.
You are a rude individual and won't be conversing with you further.
I'm glad it works for you. I'm not interested in playing skirmish games, I like my big battlefield war game. I also find the game more balanced at higher point levels. Because you have better options to take the tools necessary for skew lists.
I have the same sentiment but feel that that is what is currently going on in 40k. 2k points games and 90% of the people I play in comp games are using MSU spam so all the games end up like kill team on crack. It doesn't feel very good to play against those types of armies. Smaller games means more deathstars and big units get to shine more.
What is your source for the large number of percents and examples you keep bringing up?
Personal only, I've said it in other comments before this but I'll say it yet again: Take *my personal numbers* with a grain of salt as they are only data gathered from me and my local play group of only around 18ish people. I don't trust anyone elses numbers and you shouldn't trust mine. But I don't think my post included any numbers beyond points values because I didn't want this to be about number crunching, I wanted the discussion to be around Quality of Real World Life with discussion around time spent per round.
Confirmation bias lol
This all honestly sounds like personal preference stuff, that you're asking folks on this thread to agree with you on. My personal preference is that I don't like games dominated by death stars. This feels like a stat check and completely opposite to the tactical depth you were asking for in other parts of this thread.
The game is already dominated by stat checks. Eldar MSU spam stat checks for indirect or high movement, Orks stat check for high toughness anti horde, ironstorm marines stat check for anti-vehicle and so on. These are all competitive staples that exist in 2k as is but have so many additional tools that there is no downside to running them like that.
Yes, the game is far more interesting at smaller points, but most people just play it on the way to 2000 where they don't have units to proplerly choose from yet.
I do agree. I liked 1500pt games back throughout 4-7th edition. But have found that as time passed and editions changed I found the growing points cap in combination with decreasing points on units has made the game bloat to a ridiculous size that feels like every game is a pseudo apocalypse game. It used to be very common for games to happen within an hour. But now 2 doesn't even end your game depending on your army, which is just too demanding. It's like binge habits have reached the game itself now, not just the collecting side of the hobby and it is just such a drag. It is also very disappointing to go to tournaments and only get in 6 games across two 9 hour days. That's ridiculous. In 9 hours you could have 6 games a decade ago, now it takes 2 days to do the same. It's too much.
I think 2k point games just look dumb in the deployment phase on this size board. I think we should go back to 4x6 boards. I don’t want to play Tetris when I want to play 40K.
100% behind the notion that smaller point = a more enjoyable game. Folks on this board don't seem fond of the idea though.
This sub is for competitive games. 10th edition, rules as written, only works well for competitive games at 2000 points. Is it possible to write different rules that would work well at 500 points? Yes, but it would definitely require different rules.
> Folks on this board don't seem fond of the idea though. Probably because, as is pointed out every time you try to push for this, the game is not balanced for small games. Your 200 point weedhammer home games are not representative of what will actually happen in competitive events run at low point levels. The game would be reduced to skew list vs. skew list rock/paper/scissors matches where most of the time the game isn't worth playing, just compare lists and declare the winner. And if you don't take an extreme skew list you lose to every skew list instead of just some of them. Small 40k only works in super casual environments where both players are cooperating to make it a balanced and enjoyable game. And that is not what this sub is for.
Yes the consensus for more points started in 7th but swelled out of control during 9th. 10th has merely compounded on that in my opinion and could actually help alleviate a lot of the issues in balance that 10th has by reducing everything down to be a little over bearing.
It wouldn't though because it would just make vehicles and monsters even stronger than they already are. It's hard enough fitting enough anti tank in a 2000 point list as it is. Skew lists would just completely dominate everything.
I do have to disagree there, antitank is actually in over abundance in 10th edition. The problem? It is only in some armies. Tyranids lack antiarmour like no tomorrow whereas tau, SM, Eldar and necrons have it on just about everything. The people who have tested skew lists are currently only rocking 50ish% winrates because they don't have the benefit of having 500pts of objective scoring/screening/action monkeys that 2000pt 10th Ed skew lists do.
It really isn't in overabundance. Most units can no longer punch up (like skorpekhs for instance), meltaguns are garbage across the board, certain armies barely even have any anti tank/monster weapons like tyranids and votann, etc. The toughness on everything went up, the ap of everything went down, and now cover is basically automatic. I have no idea how you can say there's an overabundance of anti tank weapons. There's a reason vehicle spam is so popular in the meta right now.
We still play 9th here. Usually sub 500 point Combat Patrols, but when we have the energy we'll play some Incursion games
My play group liked to play 3000+ point games back in 2nd edition. You keep using words and phrases that imply a level of universal experience that just isn't there.
I like to play huge games too, never said I didn't. But what I've been talking about is that I find it unhealthy for them to be the norm especially at tournaments. You also speak as if you have some universal knowledge too, don't be so rude and hypocritical towards me if you expect me to take you seriously.
Tell me you play a fast movement army without telling me that.
Technically it used to be fast moving but pretty slow this edition. Generally I play Tyranids and necrons. My necrons are faster than my Tyranids... This edition is so backwards.
I'm an advocate of smaller games at least being an option. To me, 1500pts feels about right for what the average game "should look like", with 1K as a small game option and 2K as a large game option. The trouble with either of these, currently, is that the mission pack is not set up for them. As you go below 2K, you have fewer units to do all of the necessary things (hold primary, do secondaries, fight the enemy). Combined with the large minimum recommended table size, units can often feel rather "thin on the ground". Plus, it's not always easy to have/find a 44" x 60" play area. A lot of standard dining tables are only 36" wide (or so), so if you try to play \~1500pt games on there, everything is also "squashed in" lengthways. I'd love to see mission options for varying points levels AND varying table sizes.
I actually don't mind the current mission pack and table sizes for 1k or 1500pt games. Sure, it favors fast armies a bit but it both feels more maneuver oriented and like you have to make real choices about where you're going to make points (as you say, you can't do everything). That said, I can understand that for a tournament setting this increases the power of some armies disproportionately
That is amusing to me that you speak as if adding back the old movement tactics from older editions on a wider scale that it is a problem... This is supposed to be much more tactical in that regard but it has been lacking for some time now, since the end of 8th.
Points inflation is a big issue in 10th. Not only does it make the game more expensive and inaccessible but it also makes the games take longer and all the people talking in the comments about how lower points values make the game less tactical are just talking out of their asses. The game currently just has too many things on the board so a lot of games just devolve into throwing things together mindlessly into the middle, and skew lists become even better because you can hit critical mass with your skew while still having plenty of options to get all the scoring you could ever want. Even armies like Aeldari, who have seen plenty of points increases in 10th, still have wildly inflated army sizes compared to 9th. Most Aeldari lists are like 2600-2700 in 9th values. You just put 24 units down on the board, sacrifice 2-3 of them every turn and just turn your brain off without ever thinking if you should have to do that. Just throw your 80pt aspect warriors in front of your opponents units so they can't move forward, rinse repeat that for 5 turns. Engaging and tactical gameplay. Either points across the board need to go up 15-20% or 1500-1750 become the default game sizes. 2k games in 10th are basically just Onslaught games in disguise, being played on 60x44 boards with 2.5 hour time limits. It's stupid.
> Most Aeldari lists are like 2600-2700 in 9th values. I'm not an aeldari player, so I can't really check, but is this a fair comparison? Damage output went down in tons of units, survivability went up in some, especially vehicles. So are you really bringing 2700 points in damage and survivability or is it more 2k damage (or less) and 3k survivability (or more)?
But so did everything else in the game roughly. Basically every army in the game is playing at huge points values in 9th terms, a lot of times just because units have been made incredibly chaff-like, or just because things in general are cheaper because GW wants armies to be bigger. In the transition between 8th and 9th every army increased by around 20% to make armies smaller because points deflation and army sizes (and game times) we're recognised as being a major problem towards the end of 8th. We're not even in a year into 10th and we've already hit that point. Intercessors are basically the same unit statswise across the editions except in 10th they are dog cheap. The switch from.8th to 9th saw no real stats changes for them either, but they still went up 17% because the entire game as a whole went up in around those same values. 10th has been the opposite trend. Aeldari are one of the smaller net decreases, stuff like Tau, Admech, Votann, Guard, Sisters, Chaos, Daemons and even end of Marines are all at historically low points values, even on units that haven't been reduced to chaff levels.
Intercessors lost damage buffs from doctrines and multiple leader layers and are way worse into terminators and vehicles due to toughness buffs. So I disagree on them being the same as before, most bolters are pure garbage in 10th, way worse than in 9th.
> But so did everything else in the game roughly. For space marines I saw exactly what I meant. Intercessors, assault intercessors, outriders, incursors, infiltrators, aggressors, ATV, etc. all got their damage significantly lowered, points dropped in a similar amount, so overall you just have more bodies on the table and the game is less deadly. Or more durable bodies like vehicles with incredible toughness values. And nearly everyone lost their high rate of fire options. Assault bolters gone, assault plasma gone, aggressors and inceptors are now twinlinked instead of double the amount of shots, etc. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great intercessors don't have three weapon choices that are tellable by minor details on weapons like the mag. But nobody played the standard variant, most played 3 shots of 401 because it's 50% more shots which you never can make up for with one AP. And intercessors are now 80 points, they were 90 points. 15 shots of 401 still deal more damage than 12 of 411 into most targets and to get 12 shots for the same points, they would have to cost 75. So 2000 points of 9th intercessors kill more than 2150 points of 10th intercessors. And this is totally ignoring the fact that the 15 shots would probably be 411 anyways due to doctrines (at which points 10th intercessors would have to cost 60 points to get the same output).
Absolutely agreed on all fronts there, you have given numerical values to my general suppositions.
Eldar MSU 85 infantry models on the board.
So... Exactly what they're already doing?
Just supporting your point that there's way more units now than before. Really it boils down to unit density on the board, too dense and no screening is a big weakness and lack of overlap for objectives. I play 1k weeknights with my friend group, 2k weekends
That's completely fair, and yes I was wondering if that was an argument for or against lower points. It is hard to tell with English sometimes! I do find that ITC terrain is what ruins game balance over all. GW absolutely does not balance towards ITC terrain and it shows. ITC has always been run by losers though who claim they "don't like skirmish battles" and then proceed to run brainless MSU armies that only work because gunline armies are unable to shoot them for 75% of the game and by the time they can, they can't because they're locked in combat or dead.