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So, for the first time in about 6 months, my son and I pulled out our 40K models and played a very small 200 pt game (not kill team) to refresh our memories. It was rather aggravating to tell the truth, having to look everything back up again.

So, our "armies" were (with no upgrades on either side)

Tau (me)
-----------
Ethereal
5 Tau Breacher team
3 Stealth suits

CSM (my son)
------------
Warlord
5 marines
Mutilator

I got my head handed to me, partly due to bad tactics (shooting the mutilator instead of the Warlord when they were within 5" of the bleachers), and the fact the Stealthsuits were badly overpriced (Stealth and Shrouded didn't come into play at all). The game wasn't even close, I think I killed one, maybe two marines - my forces were dead by the fourth turn, and probably would have died sooner if the marines had charged the stealth units instead of trading fire with them.

So it got me wondering - in smaller games, say at 200 pts and up to maybe 1000 points, how do the codexes fare against one another? Do the power levels change significantly or is the balance still greatly out of whack?

Never played so low points without KT. Minimum 500, actually in general 750.

You still have imbalances at 500 pts.

Folks who rely on expensive units to function (Guard, for instance) are left out in the cold, and folks with strong small arms (Tau, for instance) clean up at very small points. Formations can utterly bork this, but generally small-points games rely on the relative strength of the Troops over other units. At 500pts and without formations Tzeentch Daemons, Tau, Deathwatch, and Craftworld Eldar are probably the strongest armies.