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 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Pretty sure you could quite easily do a different scenario every week for the rest of your life without ever repeating yourself if you wanted to.

Heck, you could probably do a different historical battle for... a fair number of weeks anyway. Isn't it grand that humans are so violent and power-hungry?

War - huh! - what is it good for? Pushing little toy soldiers across a table.

However, you can still use points and do a scenario that is uneven.

Points are still a great starting point for pickup play, but they're also still a great guideline for creating a scenario.

Not sure why it's looked on with such disdain by so many historical gamers when it can really be a good tool.

 LuciusAR wrote:
As it happens Miniature Wargames has an article this month of how to play games without points.

It mainly tries to shift away from the obsession with games becoming 'balanced' as real battles are rarely if ever balanced. The attacker is normally doing so because they have some sort of advantage they wish to press. It instead focuses on how to make scenarios fair by shifting the objectives so they player with the advantage in terms of military might has to accomplish more in order to win the game.

One example the writer uses is the 6 day war in 1967, which was a very one sided affair and as a game could never be 'balanced' but could however be made fair by setting the objectives correctly. For example the Arabs win if they survive seven days.

It's a far more difficult matter for tournaments or pick up games, but that doesn't mean it's not possible for more causal gentlemanly play.

I like this idea.

For the very unbalanced, but highly cinematic Sci-Fi fantasy game Warhammer 40k, a scenario like this could work:

Defender:
-1,000 points, consisting of anything whatsoever, preferably fitting a theme.
-Gets to place all the terrain on the board.
-Defends a defender-side objective, possibly a missile silo, or an automated ordnance battery, that must be held until at least Turn (X).

Attacker:
-2,000 points.
-Must start from at least 36" away from the defender's deployment zone.
-May have to have deepstrike limitations, depending on player preferences or scenario specs.
-May take any unit, preferably fitting a theme.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The points based army creation system comes out of Wargames Research Group's series of Ancients rules for competition play.

Whenever someone says 40K has never been designed for competitive play ask them why it has points.

That's hilarious.

Counter argument: Point based character creation in role playing games. *cough* Rogue Trader *cough*

 Vertrucio wrote:
However, you can still use points and do a scenario that is uneven.

Points are still a great starting point for pickup play, but they're also still a great guideline for creating a scenario.

Not sure why it's looked on with such disdain by so many historical gamers when it can really be a good tool.

This is very true. In fact, I always prefer to have a points system, even a flawed one. We play alot of games with unit creation mechanics, so the points systems are never as accurate (no system is, but still) as games with defined army lists. Still, a points system allows everyone to come to the table with at least a similarly potent force. It's a great baseline from which to work, whether we're inventing our own scenario or using a supplied one.

I've not seen much disdain from historical players, but if there is some, it probably stems from the fact that they simply don't need one to reenact many historical conflicts. For many (though not all) conflicts, the order of battle is well established and a points system would only be a distraction. This is just conjecture, but It may even detract from the experience to begin thinking in terms of points vs units. Deploying 500 points of cavalry is not nearly as evocative as ordering "Colonel Philip Honeywood's Regiment of Dragoons" into battle.

 Vertrucio wrote:
However, you can still use points and do a scenario that is uneven.

Points are still a great starting point for pickup play, but they're also still a great guideline for creating a scenario.

Not sure why it's looked on with such disdain by so many historical gamers when it can really be a good tool.

Points are not looked on with disdain by "so many historical gamers". The concept AFAIK comes from competition Ancients rules (Wargames Research Group, 1969), and is widely used in historical rulesets.

Yes... historical games developed the concept.

Spacehulk doesn't use points as it's all narrative/scenario play. IMO it's the best game that GW has ever produced.

As a pure, one-off complete boxed game, it is difficult to fault the first edition Space Hulk. Some of the scenarios are not well balanced, but the speed of playing means you can go as the Space Marines then swap and play as the Genestealers.