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And think about super heavies. Unlike normal units, their median can swing over 100 points. Depending on the knight or baneblade you take, you could be up or down by an entire troop units worth of power/points.

PL also hurts models that have uneven numbers of units that can be transported; say Ork Trukks that can carry 12 models. Do you use the PL for a squad of 10 Boyz, and toss two in for free, or do you use the PL for a squad of 15/20 boyz, and only bring two more?

Also, PL is a joke - it's basically a worse version of points; and only serves to allow armies with a million upgrades to fully upgrade their army, at a cheaper price than normal.

PL = (Max points+Min points)/2, roughly - this means that if you're buying as many upgrades as you can on a squad/model, you're always coming out cheaper than if you took them all and payed for them with points.

If upgrades aren't "free" in PL, then lack of upgrades are a huge cost.

Same effective arguments, different terms.

As a consept power is a GREAT idea.
Some of us hate nitpicking the equipments looking thru all the wargear for every single model in order to find out the cost, and thus dont want to play regual points match.

But the flaw with powerpoint is that it is ironicly made too simple.
A unit costing 7 powerpoints is in reality worth 5-9 powerpoints all depending on upgrades, and that is the main problem with powerpoints.
500p is 500p but 25 powerpoints that equals to 500p can be worth anywhere from 480-550points as it all depends on the wep selections and upgrades.

Upgrades/equipment needs their own powerpoints value and in that prossess a new power point scale has to be created.
Aka keep the 5 power value for a SM 5 man tac unit, but add a cost of 1 power for a marine with special wep and 2 power for a marine with heavy wep. (so a 5 man unit whit only bolters would cost 5 power, but a 5 man with a las cannon would cost 7 power)
This would reflect the fact that a upgraded 5 man tac squad is more powerfull then a defualt one and thus should cost more power points to field, and it allso teaches brand new players about the tradeof about upgrading a unit vs keeping it basic.

Breng77 wrote:
I mean it was never a perfect 1 to 20 ratio, because options are involved and Power level takes into account the use of some upgrades.

I mean no it wasn't but at the same time it was. Take a squad of necron warriors. a full squad of 20 at 12 points a pop is 240 points and they are PL 12. So this is the most perfect scenario because they have no wargear options.

Every game store I've gone to uses points, because when you are playing with randos making sure everything is as fair as possible is generally the best policy. With the smallest effort PL can be busted wide open, and when your playing an unknown quantity that leads to all sorts of issues.

Power level is designed to be low effort, and non-competitive, and that's just not how most games against randos are played.

Bharring wrote:
If upgrades aren't "free" in PL, then lack of upgrades are a huge cost.

Same effective arguments, different terms.

The argument I am attempting to make it that when using PLs, you should take neither zero upgrades or full upgrades, but rather SOME uprades.
That is what the PL system is DESIGNED to accommodate.

Choosing to take no upgrades and handicap yourself, or going balls-to-the-wall with upgrades and being TFG, is your choice, but is not within the spirit of the rules.

I should preface by saying that I prefer points in almost all situations, but I see that value in PL and have actually sued them to good effect.
If you use them as intended, everything is fine.
If you try to break the system, it will get broken, and the same is true for all things in 40K.

 Grimgold wrote:
Every game store I've gone to uses points, because when you are playing with randos making sure everything is as fair as possible is generally the best policy. With the smallest effort PL can be busted wide open, and when your playing an unknown quantity that leads to all sorts of issues.

Power level is designed to be low effort, and non-competitive, and that's just not how most games against randos are played.

I completely agree with this. You shouldn't use PLs with "randos". But that still doesn't mean PLs are useless
It just means you need to use them with already established friends. If you don't have any of those (friends) I can see how someone would think PL were useless

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 Galef wrote:
or going balls-to-the-wall with upgrades and being TFG

So making optimal strategic choices is now "being TFG"? This says a lot about the mindset behind most PL advocacy.

You shouldn't use PLs with "randos". But that still doesn't mean PLs are useless

Sure it does. The purpose of a point system is to evaluate the strength of your army and allow you to build lists. If you can't use PL with random opponents and make good strategic choices about your lists then PL is a failed system and useless. Just use the normal point system like everyone else.

 thekerrick wrote:
Everyone thinks power level is another version of points. Its not. Stop comparing it to points.

My group has switched to 100% power level. We are burned out on tournaments and are just a casual group of garage hammer players now. Our games are typically not competitive. We pull out 100 PL, play, have fun, and that's it. I can equip my models how I want them and rule of cool my whole army.

We havent had a SINGLE issue where powerlevel has come off as cheesey or overpowered.

Yeup same here. FLGS uses PL for team tournies, keeps the nonsense at bay for the most part. Hard core players stay away, the Power Levels mean everyone can bring their fun stuff. Fun has been had since we went that route over points.

(We still have point matched play tournies, but the store tends to mix it up so it's not COMP every month lol.)

I also agree. If your primary games are random pick up games, then PL is definitely not suited to you. For anyone that plays primarily at an FLGS that is probably generally going to be the case.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Galef wrote:
or going balls-to-the-wall with upgrades and being TFG

So making optimal strategic choices is now "being TFG"? This says a lot about the mindset behind most PL advocacy.

No, I am saying that using PL for pick up games is about HAVING FUN, not strictly about "making optimal strategic choices"
If you cannot understand that, I'll never be able to adequately explain it.

But again, there is nothing wrong with making the best list you can. You use points for that. I use point for that.
Put if that is ALL you want to do. Don't use PLs
But also don't say PLs are useless as that is only for your POV. There are enough players who find them useful, ergo, THEY ARE USEFUL.

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We use PL at the store I go to, no one really questions it and it seems to work mostly fine. I've honestly not bothered to look at how my armies would cost regular points wise.

I would never use PL for a pick up game that's a bleedin stupid idea asking for arguments to break out.

As for PL assuming a median load out that's just gobbledygook, no one can tell you what the median load out is so how are people supposed to know what's right and what's being TFG?

PL is and always been worthless and I say that as a casual.

 Galef wrote:
No, I am saying that using PL for pick up games is about HAVING FUN, not strictly about "making optimal strategic choices"

But how is a unit equipped with fewer upgrades "more fun" than a unit with all of the upgrades? You're assuming this weird polarity between optimal choices and fun choices.

There are enough players who find them useful, ergo, THEY ARE USEFUL.

There are a lot of players who find them useful, but the primary purpose seems to be virtue signalling about how "casual" they are rather than any actual advantage to PL over conventional points.

 sfshilo wrote:
Yeup same here. FLGS uses PL for team tournies, keeps the nonsense at bay for the most part. Hard core players stay away, the Power Levels mean everyone can bring their fun stuff. Fun has been had since we went that route over points.

And right here is the example of what I'm talking about. PL doesn't improve balance or the quality of the game, but saying "we're using PL" keeps the more competitive players from joining the event.

hobojebus wrote:
I would never use PL for a pick up game that's a bleedin stupid idea asking for arguments to break out.

As for PL assuming a median load out that's just gobbledygook, no one can tell you what the median load out is so how are people supposed to know what's right and what's being TFG?

PL is and always been worthless and I say that as a casual.

Uh..actually you totally can find the median. You use basic math to find the median of all the wargear costs.

Frankly, I really don't see other purpose for PL besides ease of use. If you want to get an ad hoc game quickly going you might want to use them, but if you have more time to prepare there really is no reason to not use the points instead.

 Peregrine wrote:

But how is a unit equipped with fewer upgrades "more fun" than a unit with all of the upgrades? You're assuming this weird polarity between optimal choices and fun choices.

I find it amusing that you literally can't fathom people intentionally playing sub-optimal lists. Playing sub-optimal units actually increases the tactical decisions you make during the game because you don't have an answer to everything. Neither list being optimal is more fun than both being optimal because things don't die as much. There's also the fact that you can just take models as they are and not worry about their weapon costs, which is just easier and people like me would rather not be bothered to count points.

Is it easy to break? Yes. But if no one tries to break it you're good.

 Peregrine wrote:

 sfshilo wrote:
Yeup same here. FLGS uses PL for team tournies, keeps the nonsense at bay for the most part. Hard core players stay away, the Power Levels mean everyone can bring their fun stuff. Fun has been had since we went that route over points.

And right here is the example of what I'm talking about. PL doesn't improve balance or the quality of the game, but saying "we're using PL" keeps the more competitive players from joining the event.

To your point, I would agree that keeping any players out of an event is bad.
However, most truly competitive events do, in fact, push out the casual player who just wants to put his models on the table, roll dice and NOT have his opponent just remove his units in 2 turns.
Using PLs for events to keep more "cut throat" players allows casual plays to participate in events in the first place. Otherwise they could not do so at all.

It would be ideal if the system allowed both kinds of players participate EQUALLY in an event, but that is not the world we live in.
Some of us don't care if we win, we just want to play. PLs make that easier.

Another use for PLs is to create 2 armies specifically designed to face each other an insure the game goes past turn 3
If one seems more powerful than the other, you can adjust accordingly without juggling points.
I do this with my small collections of Marines, CSM and now Necrons to play very small games with my son.
I could certainly do this with points, but I would have to spend more time tweaking points than just swapping wargear getting straight to playing

Dandelion wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

But how is a unit equipped with fewer upgrades "more fun" than a unit with all of the upgrades? You're assuming this weird polarity between optimal choices and fun choices.

I find it amusing that you literally can't fathom people intentionally playing sub-optimal lists. Playing sub-optimal units actually increases the tactical decisions you make during the game because you don't have an answer to everything. Neither list being optimal is more fun than both being optimal because things don't die as much. There's also the fact that you can just take models as they are and not worry about their weapon costs, which is just easier and people like me would rather not be bothered to count points.

Is it easy to break? Yes. But if no one tries to break it you're good.

^^^This^^^ If you use purely optimal lists against someone who doesn't know what the optimal choices even are, the game is not fun for either player.

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Dandelion hit it on the head...and it's something which amuses me to no end.

This forum has a fair share of people who are borderline foaming-at-the-mouth mad about Power Level. A game mechanic they're not, in any way shape or form, forced to use. I love this kind of rage. Makes me smile. Couple that with the fact that said people don't actually understand how/why Power Level works, and it makes it even tastier.

Look, if you have an issue with a "terrible" unfathomable swing of X number of points; don't play Power Level. No one's holding a shuriken pistol to your head and telling you to. Just shut the feth up and play your game the way you want. And I say this as someone who pretty much only plays with points. Stop complaining about gak which doesn't actually impact you.

 Elbows wrote:
Stop complaining about gak which doesn't actually impact you.

No thanks. Bad design is still bad design even if I can use an alternate rule, and I have no obligation to pretend otherwise just because you don't like seeing negative comments.

Yes, thanks.

 Galef wrote:
Using PLs for events to keep more "cut throat" players allows casual plays to participate in events in the first place.

Only because of virtue signalling, not because PL is a good system.

Another use for PLs is to create 2 armies specifically designed to face each other an insure the game goes past turn 3

PL has nothing to do with this. You can create the exact same army and add up the conventional points. In fact, the conventional point system is better for this goal because it allows you to more accurately evaluate the strength of each army and spot any imbalance that will allow one side to win the game quickly.

I could certainly do this with points, but I would have to spend more time tweaking points than just swapping wargear getting straight to playing

More time by a trivial amount. If you can add up PL points you can add up conventional points.

^^^This^^^ If you use purely optimal lists against someone who doesn't know what the optimal choices even are, the game is not fun for either player.

But what does this have to do with power levels? Calling your point system "power levels" doesn't solve this problem at all. And if you can deliberately tone down your PL list to not overwhelm someone who is bad at list creation then you can do the exact same thing with conventional points.

The one thing PL has going for it, as I see it, is that you don't have to go to the back of the Codex to find them, unlike points.
But that's just Codexes being annoying rather than a problem with the points system in itself.

I guess you could also house rule PL being used as kill points, instead of just 1 per unit?

 Peregrine wrote:

More time by a trivial amount. If you can add up PL points you can add up conventional points.

It's not that trivial, especially if not using Battlescribe. Considering how annoyingly points are now scattered across several books, I can totally understand why everyone doesn't want to bother with them. It is basically a choice between ease of use and better balance. Some people may prefer the former over the latter.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Panzergraf wrote:

I guess you could also house rule PL being used as kill points, instead of just 1 per unit?

I was actually thinking that earlier. Seems like a decent idea.

Grocery store A sells 1 to 10 apples for $10.
Grocery store B sells 1 apple for $1.

If I ask you to buy 5 apples, which is the better store to buy apples from?
Will any customer at store A not buy 10 apples?
Isn't it more balanced and fair for new apple buyers to go to store B and both buy the same number of apples for the same price?

This has nothing to do with power level vs points. I just really like talking about expensive apples.

It depends on the store- If store B only sells bags of 10 apples for $10 then you don't have the option to only buy 5 for $5.

 Crimson wrote:

Panzergraf wrote:

I guess you could also house rule PL being used as kill points, instead of just 1 per unit?

I was actually thinking that earlier. Seems like a decent idea.

Indeed. This could work whether you use Pts or PLs
I definitely might steal this idea for my games at home. We haven't quite worked up to the tactical finesse of using objectives.

I am desperately trying to get both my kids into 40K and the easier I can make it, the better. My oldest is too hooking on video games and can't be bothered by even looking at a rulebook. My youngest, however, may eventually want to build an army of his own (Necrons) and PLs are easier to introduce than Pts and wargear options.
PLs allow you to play the models as they are without worry if them going over the "point" limit, or being so below the point limit that you have to cram in another unit (that you might not have)

 Peregrine wrote:

Only because of virtue signalling, not because PL is a good system.

Why is it virtue signaling? The main appeal of power level is the ease of use. For me, ease of use > granularity. I really just don't care what upgrades cost. In fact, I think most upgrades are arbitrarily overcosted already. All units have restrictions on what they can take (eg 1 special weapon) so making upgrades expensive is kind of redundant anyway. Power level just assumes you take the upgrade, which is what I want to do anyway.

Again, we all know power is less precise than points and is more abusable, but many of us really don't care. Power level is instead a Godsend for getting right to a game. It's so easy I can make up a narrative scenario right before deciding the power level to play and what units to bring. Take a bunker assault for example: I get to take an army based around sieging because that's what an actual general would do, not some TAC list that wouldn't be appropriate for the mission. And I can do all of that in a few minutes.

 Galef wrote:
PLs allow you to play the models as they are without worry if them going over the "point" limit, or being so below the point limit that you have to cram in another unit (that you might not have)

But it really doesn't, because you aren't adding up power levels for just one army. You're trying to make two forces come out equal. If you have models to make units with power levels of 5, 6, and 8 then you will be short in a 20 PL game. If your opponent has the models for units with PL 5, 7, and 8 then they will be at 20 PL and have an advantage. Or maybe they have 6, 7 and 8, and can't make an army without either going over the 20 PL limit or being under it by the price of a whole additional unit. The PL system actually makes it harder to make exact point totals because you can no longer change the upgrades of a unit to adjust its point cost, you're stuck with a fixed point cost for that unit no matter how you equip it. It also gives an illusion of equality that may not be correct. You might both have exactly 20 PL, but depending on how your units are equipped one side may actually be significantly stronger. You're making the numbers equal for the sake of making the numbers equal, not balancing strength.

The real solution, which you can do with conventional points, is to treat the point limit as a rough estimate rather than an absolute number. Add up the points of your models, get them roughly close, and play the game. The fact that PL makes the fact that you're 1 point over the limit invisible by hiding upgrade costs doesn't matter because you don't care if you're playing 498 points vs. 501 points in a 500 point game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dandelion wrote:
Why is it virtue signaling?

Because you're using a point system that is worse at doing the job of a point system. The only thing PL does better than conventional points is allow you to tell the world "I use PL not points, I AM CASUAL". In all other situations, if you don't care about virtue signalling, conventional points do a better job.

And you see this demonstrated in the post I quoted. They're using PL, not because it does a better job of creating a balanced and enjoyable event, but because the sign saying "WE USE PL" makes the competitive players stay home.

The main appeal of power level is the ease of use. For me, ease of use > granularity. I really just don't care what upgrades cost. In fact, I think most upgrades are arbitrarily overcosted already. All units have restrictions on what they can take (eg 1 special weapon) so making upgrades expensive is kind of redundant anyway. Power level just assumes you take the upgrade, which is what I want to do anyway.

Do you play an army with different levels of upgrades? Because there's certainly a difference between an IG veteran squad with 3x flamer + mortar and 3x plasma + lascannon. You'll certainly care about the difference between the two when you're talking about hundreds of points across an entire army.

Take a bunker assault for example: I get to take an army based around sieging because that's what an actual general would do, not some TAC list that wouldn't be appropriate for the mission. And I can do all of that in a few minutes.

You can do this with points. Except now you have the benefit of a more accurate evaluation of the strength of your army. For example, the flamers you took because flamers are fluffy in a bunker assault cost an appropriate amount of points instead of the plasma-equivalent that is assumed by PL. The conventional point system gives you much more freedom to pick units based on fluff without feeling like you're sabotaging your chances of winning or taking "too much" stuff that you didn't pay for.

 Peregrine wrote:
You can do this with points. Except now you have the benefit of a more accurate evaluation of the strength of your army. For example, the flamers you took because flamers are fluffy in a bunker assault cost an appropriate amount of points instead of the plasma-equivalent that is assumed by PL. The conventional point system gives you much more freedom to pick units based on fluff without feeling like you're sabotaging your chances of winning.

And indeed this was my approach at first.
However the limited models I have to use (because we can't just play Eldar against each other every game) made it difficult to make those changes easily with points.
I often found that taking Lascannons on a Razorback, for example, were needed when facing Eldar, because we are using 1 Faclon tank.
However, against the CSM I have with no vehicles, the Lascannons were worthless and the Razorback was better off having Assault cannons.
Using PLs means we can play with exactly the same models in each game, but balance the weapons used so that one army wouldn't have a clear advantage over the other.

This has made our games last MUCH longer and engaged much more interest for my son to play.
I would never use PLs in a normal sized game, but they have been very valuable for small learner games. And that's the point.

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