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Hey so I have a quick question for all the veterans out there; I don't know if it's just my inexperience but when I'm building an army list I often find myself with an odd empty space. I have some random allotment of points left where it's not quite enough for another full unit, but not small enough to ignore. In y'all's experience what do you do with those odd points? Is it worth putting in some half-baked unit. that might do something? or giving you other units meh upgrades?

Put in another decent unit, then trim the upgrades you don't need from the rest of your force to make it fit.

I'm talking about after you've done that.

The topic name is...misleading.

You could be more helpful and tell use what army list you are buildinng is

 awbbie wrote:
I'm talking about after you've done that.

Well if you have genuinely trimmed all the upgrades you don't need, and still find some points left..

either upgrade a mediocre unit to a better unit

or, put some upgrades back in!

I'm working on Dark Eldar but I find that it happens with whatever army I'm working on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Captyn_Bob wrote:

 awbbie wrote:
I'm talking about after you've done that.

Well if you have genuinely trimmed all the upgrades you don't need, and still find some points left..

either upgrade a mediocre unit to a better unit

or, put some upgrades back in!

Okay, thanks.

That topic title reminded me of something I once saw on a porn website...

 CrownAxe wrote:
You could be more helpful and tell use what army list you are buildinng is

Quoted for truth. It's not really possible to answer this without an example of what you mean, especially since you say you've already made a bunch of changes already.

If you've written up a list with which you're happy but have 50 or so points left over, there are generally three options:

- Several small upgrades. Put a bunch of small upgrades across the army - melta bombs, Bonding Knife Rituals and Exarch powers are all examples of things that are often dead but can be situationally awesome, so make sense to add in with spare points.
- Boost a single unit, either by replacing it with something that does the same job better (Whirlwind to Thunderfire) or boosting the unit size (ten Devastators instead of six, to give them ablative wounds.)
- A small, cheap unit with a single job. The archetype here is a small Troops choice to claim a home objective- ten Gretchin or three Nurgling bases, for example - but note this doesn't have to be a Troops choice, it can be anything which is cheap and not very killy but has a tactical role. Deffkoptas for Linebreaker and Venomthropes for crowdsource cover are other examples of this.

If you can outline your list, points value and typical gaming style, it'll be easier to give specific advice.

Aelyn wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:
You could be more helpful and tell use what army list you are buildinng is

Quoted for truth.

Thank you, that general advice was mostly what I was looking for, but I'm running

Archon with Huskblade, haywire grenades, soul trap and animous vitae

Drazhar

2 units of 4 incubi in venoms. Venoms have flicker fields and splintercannons

4 Raiders (nightshields, splinter racks and Dark Lances) with warriors: 2x dark lances, 2x splintercannons

1 razorwing, with free missles and desintigrators

3 Ravagers, dark Lances and night shields

So I still have 50ish points left. I had more but I bumped up a haemonucli to Drazhar to lead the other unit of Incubi. My usual style is picking off tanks and high quality targets from a range and using close combat units for contesting/moping up.

OK then, based on that list I would suggest a few options:

- That Archon is quite heavily stacked, but has no extra protection. If he's going to be fighting in challenges (implied by the Vitae) it makes sense to give him a touch of protection, such as a shadow field.

- Alternatively, if you trim the Archon a bit you could take a Court in a Venom. It'll be another target, forcing your opponent to split their fire further.

- As a third option, you could put in a small unit of Reavers with a special weapon like a Heat Lance. If you can get more points spare, you could even take a unit of Scourges with Haywire Blasters, which is an excellent suicide-DS unit to use to deal with the heaviest vehicles that the Lances may not be able to finish off, such as super-heavies.

Based on the unit sizes and the transport choices, I'm assuming that the units are already maxxed out, so there's not much that can be done to boost the units beyond small upgrades. Despite that, I hope my suggestions demonsrtate what I mean about what can be done with a few spare points.

Aelyn wrote:
OK then, based on that list I would suggest a few options:

- That Archon is quite heavily stacked, but has no extra protection. If he's going to be fighting in challenges (implied by the Vitae) it makes sense to give him a touch of protection, such as a shadow field.

- Alternatively, if you trim the Archon a bit you could take a Court in a Venom. It'll be another target, forcing your opponent to split their fire further.

- As a third option, you could put in a small unit of Reavers with a special weapon like a Heat Lance. If you can get more points spare, you could even take a unit of Scourges with Haywire Blasters, which is an excellent suicide-DS unit to use to deal with the heaviest vehicles that the Lances may not be able to finish off, such as super-heavies.

Based on the unit sizes and the transport choices, I'm assuming that the units are already maxxed out, so there's not much that can be done to boost the units beyond small upgrades. Despite that, I hope my suggestions demonsrtate what I mean about what can be done with a few spare points.

Okay, that helps quite a bit. thank you!

I usually drop a single expensive model from a unit, and buy 2 cheaper ones for another unit. A 10-man squad might end up as 9, and a couple of 5-man squads become 7.
Or something.

I'd agree with others that there are places to optimize the list and get some points back, but to your original question...

In the case you mention that you have 50ish points, I'd probably get a small warrior squad on foot, and empty raider/venom, or even a small unit of mandrakes (cover saves). Basically something cheap that can claim an objective. That's it... claim an objective. If the unit ends up doing something else... gravy. Your opponent will either have to devote resources to eliminating a non-threatening unit (increasing the survivability of important units) or allow you to freely gain an objective or two. Often these cheap units can be the difference between a win and a loss and are by no means worthless. Most armies have access to them in some form or other, and it is usually how I fill excess points if I really can't get things to balance out.