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To all those who compare win/lose/draw to battlepoints:

If you have a tournament with win/lose/draw, the guy with the most wins will win the tournament, correct?

If you use battlepoints, the guy with the highest results wins the tournament.

So how would a guy who has to win big would have a disadvantage under conditions, where he only has to win? If I have the possibility to win 5:0, but only need to win 1:0 does that make my army somehow worse?

Experience shows that you need a certain number of troops in order for them to stay alive throughout the game and make it to an objective. But you shouldn't pay too much points just for having mass scoring units.

If they are used from reserve, 2-3 small units is absolutely enough. Use terrain, bring them in place, hide, kill the opponent -> profit.

1 Troop is certainly not enough. It can be, but against a good opponent he will either jam that troop from scoring with some contesting stuff or he will try scoring twice or he will eliminate it. Just too many possibility for that to go wrong, which isn't necessary. Troops are cheap enough that you can by 2 or 3 without losing any significant output.

@corollax

To be honest: I don't get the relationship between the wikipedia article and this problem.

If I play lets say 2000p of an army and spend roughly 300p in Troops instead of 100p to win big in my world this is a marginal difference in killing power. (1700p instead of 1900p)

@peregrine

Because the metagame changes. You've made certain decisions in building your list to ensure that you can win overwhelmingly (for example, taking enough scoring units to claim and hold all five objectives plus the table quarters victor condition), but so has everyone else in the tournament. If you remove the margin of victory factor then now people are willing to change lists and you don't necessarily have an ideal list anymore. You might find that you have too many points invested in blobs of scoring infantry and don't have enough offensive threats to push out of your own deployment zone successfully, while people who don't take an excessive amount of points in scoring units don't have the same problem.

Again, we are talking about a difference of about 200p here. You certainly don't need to capture 6 objectives. Chances that you actually pull it off are marginal and the risk of losing too much killing power is too high. There are lists, that could do it without suffering at all (Necrons, Coteaz, DE, Nids) as their Troop choices contribute to the fight.
But if your troops are neither dirt cheap nor somehow useful apart from scoring, it would be foolish to spend more points on them than absolutely necessary even in a meta where you have to win big. (Because you won't win against the lists with more efficient troops).

What the meta does is not that all guys spam troops, thats rubbish imho. It limits the number of viable lists to very few (Lists that have enough troops AND enough killing power). Those lists do perform as well under W/D/L-conditions. But a greater variety of lists is possible when a close win is enough. Thats certain.

But still 1 Troop is just a risk too high and you don't gain that much. (or do you think that spending 130p for a minimum Platoon instead of Harker would have changed your output to an abysmal level? I wouldnÄt think so. )

@Clauss

Oh yeah I totally forgot about 180 boyz. (which has some problems though with time restrictions...) But still very effective army with a ton of troops.

@Gornall

I do think this arguement boils down to "taking bad troops is bad." Just like taking any inefficient unit is bad. However, plenty of good, efficient troops are available so I personally do not see a benefit to going minimum troops except in extreme cirmcumstances.

+1 Perfect summary.

One more bonus to foot lists is, that vehicles are generally thankful targets for first blood. 3ish Lascannons with searchlights are enough to pose a big threat for AV12 vehicles to concede first blood under any condition. Infantry hordes if deployed properly (some behind BLOS to ensure no unit can be killed as a whole) won't concede first blood as easily.

So having First Blood secured and the Warlord safely denied makes it an uphill battle for the opponent if he is inferior in Troops because all you have to do is not being tabled and shove your troops at the opponent to keep him busy. You can even throw away almost your whole army as long as the objective draw is secured, then you will win.

@Corollax

Think of the dice as "army lists." Each die has six sides, and some fixed number of points to distribute. In the first example, Die A will beat Die B 5/9 of the time. It's a "favorable matchup" -- but it comes at the expense of losing 5/9 of its games with Die C. Depending on the local "metagame", one die may achieve more wins than another, since it will have more favorable matchups. But if you simply tally up the score for each roll, all of them have the same average, and that advantage disappears.

We don't have the Rock/Paper/Scissors metagame conditions here. It would be foolish to count on the opponent having a troop heavy but soft list.
But as proven many times there are lists that win under both conditions. Thing is, in a W/D/L-environment you can have more variety because you can afford to a certain extent to take minimum troops as well. But that doesnt make max troop lists less viable per se.