Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I'm wondering if there's any conventional wisdom with respect to how many points you should dedicate to each FOC slot when building a list. I would expect this to vary a lot from army to army, so I'm specifically interested in C:SM and CSM. does such a thing exist?

There is no specific formula or conventional wisdom for anything besides scoring units and HQ. Thats because not every armies different units in different slots are the same. Then you have specific list types within a certain codex.


Generally, within the 1500-2000 point range I don't want more than 25% of my points in HQs. Not enough support for the rest of the army.

And for Scoring Units, its a good idea to have at least 2 scoring units per 1000 points(or part thereof)

So at 1500 I want at least 4 scoring units.

One troop per 500 points is a good benchmark. In a 1,500 point list I generally run two full tac squads in rhinos, plus a five man sniper scout squad. So a bit over 500 points in troops, or a third of my army. While I don't worry so much about points, I do like to make sure I have something from each FOC slot in my list.

yeah, I recognize that this will be different for every codex. I also understand (and follow) the 1 troop per 500 pts rule. it's deciding how many points to allocate to everything else that I'm looking for a bit of guidance on (specifically, for vanilla space marines and chaos space marines).

One thing with C:SM is that you can have stuff from diferent slots all doing the same job. You need AT? Drop dread, MM bikes, auto/las pred. Similer points, same job, diferent slots. What does what is really a mater of mood.