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 warhead01 wrote:
I like power Levels more today than I did the last time I posted on this thread.
I don't like this, 18 points for a Mek gun, 32 points to make it a Bubble chukka and 15 more points for the crew. (62) That's a single artillery with 4 random stats, two of which are chosen by my opponent and all for 62 points. Or, I could get all of that for 3 points of power level. Points costs create the so called "unusable units". The only down side to not using points is having to buy units in assigned increments. So, I can't field 25 Storm Boys.
I can live with that.

1PL is approximately equivalent to 20pts. 62pts for a 3PL unit is dead on.

What's weird is when you do something like take a squad of Deathwatch Veterans with bolters and chainswords (95pts) and have to pay 9PL for them because the people who wrote the PL estimate are assuming you're going to take four frag cannons (another 120pts) for every five Deathwatch models.


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 Peregrine wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I started out pretty indifferent, but the more I read this thread the more likely I am to play power level simply out of spite. There so much anger/angst against the use of power levels...if I can piss in some of those cheerios, I shall do so.

Like I said, the main appeal of power level is proving a point about how superior you are for using it, not anything to do with it being a functioning system that is better than the alternative.

It isn't better than the alternative. The main point isn't to prove how superior you are for using it. Power level is a quick-and-dirty approach to the game that makes list-building a lot faster and works well enough in probably 85-90% of cases (with the remaining cases being odd unit sizes, units with too many upgrade options (e.g. Deathwatch), and typos (why is Coteaz (100pts) 4PL and Greyfax (85pts) 5PL?)).

The other thing this thread seems to be missing is that there's absolutely no reason to permit playing a PL list against a points list. Make your games "50PL or 1,000pts", or "100PL or 2,000pts", and everyone can build a list the way they want to without screwing anything up. And the writers erred on the side of making PL costs too high, so while it may be a less exact method of list-building it's also at least a slight handicap to the guy who chooses to use PL most of the time.

As an aside I wonder if there are enough 8th lists posted over in that section to see if we can't analyze the discrepancy between PL-cost and points-cost on a large scale, maybe get a concrete figure for just how inexact they are.