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I thought power points were the dumbest thing GW had done in a while. It sounded incredibly fisher-price, dumbed down, and asinine in concept. I was crapping all over the idea the moment it was announced.

I think i was wrong.

Something i hadn't realized about power points until seeing them in action is they actually make for more diverse armies. With regular points most units fall into one of two catagories. Either take them bare bones because more dudes is always better than weapons, or take only 'most cost effective weapon x' and you end up seeing every squad of a given type equipped the exact same way. With power points it feels like you can try different things about, put those pistols and melee weapons on your sergeants, use something other than the most meta weapon, build squads that look cool and not be punished for it in your list-building.

I never thought i'd like it, nor thought about this advantage, but i'm kind of digging power points now for the variety in squad builds it promotes.

Interesting, my opinion is that I also went from "this is a dumb idea" , to " ok I see the point, I'll use them" but for the opposite reasons. I think PL actually limit realistic options because it really punishes you for not having certain upgrades but also within a certain band of options leads to some freedom.

Personally I think it needs to be a little more granular but I'm on board with the idea now. A few things really bother me like sponsons on tanks or units with lots of upgrade options (like tau) but I think t has real promise for casual games.

It's just a quick way of scrapping together some of your stuff and having some semblance of balance between armies.

If you've glued on a bunch of upgrades on an old unit that you just dusted off and are ready to try out again just for fun, but don't have the points due to the constraints of a points limit it's a decent system to have.

Having options is never a bad thing.

You wanna just play with no points? Then do it.

You wanna play with some sense of balance and structure? Then do it.

You wanna play with strict guide lines and limitations? Then do it.

Danny slag wrote:
I thought power points were the dumbest thing GW had done in a while. It sounded incredibly fisher-price, dumbed down, and asinine in concept. I was crapping all over the idea the moment it was announced.

I think i was wrong.

Something i hadn't realized about power points until seeing them in action is they actually make for more diverse armies. With regular points most units fall into one of two catagories. Either take them bare bones because more dudes is always better than weapons, or take only 'most cost effective weapon x' and you end up seeing every squad of a given type equipped the exact same way. With power points it feels like you can try different things about, put those pistols and melee weapons on your sergeants, use something other than the most meta weapon, build squads that look cool and not be punished for it in your list-building.

I never thought i'd like it, nor thought about this advantage, but i'm kind of digging power points now for the variety in squad builds it promotes.

To be fair, nothing about Points was stopping you from doing these things...that option was always there, power level just ends up having many of the same issues as Formations did, lots of free stuff that isn't paid for and lots of units with tons of scaling with a given power level and lots with none.

The only "downside" to playing Power Levels is that Daemons are utterly broken in PL games.
Summoning only costs points in Matched Play.
In Narrative, any <Chaos> Character can summon a unit for free, and it is way easier that 7E since no Warp Charge are needed.

Other than this edge case, I love the idea of PL.

Summoning didn't cost points in 7th, and wasn't nearly as broken as the internet made it out to be. it was good, but not incredible.

Summoning on 8th on the other hand, is completely pointless.
The horror's split rule will never be used, as just fielding more horrors to begin with costs the same and bring in a bigger presence to begin with.

They need to find a middle ground, as its currently just a non-option. its technically there, but there is never a reason.

Power points seem to be a good way to catalogue your total collection, instead of adding up individual wargear and load outs etc. But that's probably just my OCD talking.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Power points seem to be a good way to catalogue your total collection, instead of adding up individual wargear and load outs etc. But that's probably just my OCD talking.

Your OCD is dead on about that, though. It's definitely an easier way to keep track of the over all scale of the army, without adding up the specific costs of something.

PL seems like it would work great for Apocalypse scale games, where the scope is so much larger than ordinary.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Summoning didn't cost points in 7th, and wasn't nearly as broken as the internet made it out to be. it was good, but not incredible.

Summoning on 8th on the other hand, is completely pointless.
The horror's split rule will never be used, as just fielding more horrors to begin with costs the same and bring in a bigger presence to begin with.

They need to find a middle ground, as its currently just a non-option. its technically there, but there is never a reason.

Same as in AOS, really. They can't figure out a way to balance it between "This is never worth it" and "Some fringe case with a donkey-cave can abuse it"

I like them, they're a quick way to just throw together an army especially with how tedious the actual points feel so far.

Do people not have mobiles and tablets? Can they not download army building apps?

When I started in 94 we only had pen and paper but now your spoilt for easy fast ways to make lists this "it takes too long" spiel really holds no water.

Tedious =/= "it takes too long"

I like power level. Games haven't felt noticably unbalanced yet (despite the proliferation of upgrades! *shock horror*!) and are far far less fiddly to do than points.

 BoomWolf wrote:

Summoning on 8th on the other hand, is completely pointless.
The horror's split rule will never be used, as just fielding more horrors to begin with costs the same and bring in a bigger presence to begin with.

Except that in PL only games, the Horror split rule is AMAZING, which is my point. 10 Pink Horrors are the same PL as 10 Brims, and there is no extra cost for split.

So in Matched Play Pink horrors are near useless, while in Narrative play they are almost mandatory.
Summon spam was decent in 7E, but had the drawbacks of requiring tons of Psykers that just stood around as WC batteries
In 8E Narrative, you can spam DPs and other "good on their own merit" units that are Characters and each one can successfully summon something good.

I like PL and will likely play plenty of games with them, but this specific case is frustrating because I'll have to play Daemons VERY differently in Narrative vs Matched.
I do not think that was the intention of Narrative gaming.

-

 BoomWolf wrote:
Summoning didn't cost points in 7th, and wasn't nearly as broken as the internet made it out to be. it was good, but not incredible.

Summoning on 8th on the other hand, is completely pointless.
The horror's split rule will never be used, as just fielding more horrors to begin with costs the same and bring in a bigger presence to begin with.

They need to find a middle ground, as its currently just a non-option. its technically there, but there is never a reason.

Hi, I'm going to disagree that summoning wasn't a problem in 7th. If you know what you're doing it's easy to summon multiple thousands of points of daemons by the end of the game. All the free transports in the world don't add up to what you could summon in a couple turns.

Summoning in 8th gives you a method of deep strike, which Daemons do not have natively, so it has a huge value.

Also going to say I haven't really observed that points are more or less imbalanced than power. The big argument of points over power is balance; I haven't seen any imbalance yet brought on by power. Although, I don't really care if we play power or points, everything of mine costs so much in points that my calculations are fast and easy, by virtue of the fact that i can't bring that much anyway.

 n0t_u wrote:
Tedious =/= "it takes too long"

Indeed! Some of us just don't enjoy list building as a major part of the hobby.

 Galef wrote:
So in Matched Play Pink horrors are near useless, while in Narrative play they are almost mandatory.

No, they aren't MANDATORY, as there is nothing requiring you to take them. The line of thinking that an army will have "auto-includes" is what leads to the competitive mindset, which is perfectly fine in tournaments. But in Narrative play and events, the focus is not on winning the game, but participating in a story. Try not worrying about "efficiency" and "optimization" in your games, and enjoy your games.

 Galef wrote:
The only "downside" to playing Power Levels is that Daemons are utterly broken in PL games.
Summoning only costs points in Matched Play.
In Narrative, any <Chaos> Character can summon a unit for free, and it is way easier that 7E since no Warp Charge are needed.

Other than this edge case, I love the idea of PL.

They state in the FAQ that you're free to use PL in matched play. That's what my group is doing.

Emissary wrote:

They state in the FAQ that you're free to use PL in matched play. That's what my group is doing.

Which is great, but probably won't last long if some Daemon player ends up regularly fielding 100PL in 50PL games because he has enough characters to do it over the course of 3-4 turns
Successfully rolling 3D6 to get units of ~10PL isn't as hard as harnessing 3 WC for a unit half that size.
In Matched play, Summoning and Split are 'meh' rules, but in Narrative play both rules can easily double your army size.

I'm not trying to rant, but the difference between using Points and using PLs is huge for Daemons. It fundamentally changes how competitive they are, whether you are playing competitive or not.

-

You have to reserve points/power level for matched play.

 Galef wrote:

Emissary wrote:

They state in the FAQ that you're free to use PL in matched play. That's what my group is doing.

Which is great, but probably won't last long if some Daemon player ends up regularly fielding 100PL in 50PL games because he has enough characters to do it over the course of 3-4 turns
Successfully rolling 3D6 to get units of ~10PL isn't as hard as harnessing 3 WC for a unit half that size.
In Matched play, Summoning and Split are 'meh' rules, but in Narrative play both rules can easily double your army size.

I'm not trying to rant, but the difference between using Points and using PLs is huge for Daemons. It fundamentally changes how competitive they are, whether you are playing competitive or not.

-

Why are you worried about how competitive something is in Narrative games?

The whole point to Narrative games is to align more closely with the fluff (this is why you can hold more than half your army in reserve in Narrative, to allow for 'orbital assault' armies). It makes narrative sense to be able to bring Daemons along for some extra and unexpected reinforcements!

 Galef wrote:

Emissary wrote:

They state in the FAQ that you're free to use PL in matched play. That's what my group is doing.

Which is great, but probably won't last long if some Daemon player ends up regularly fielding 100PL in 50PL games because he has enough characters to do it over the course of 3-4 turns
Successfully rolling 3D6 to get units of ~10PL isn't as hard as harnessing 3 WC for a unit half that size.
In Matched play, Summoning and Split are 'meh' rules, but in Narrative play both rules can easily double your army size.

I'm not trying to rant, but the difference between using Points and using PLs is huge for Daemons. It fundamentally changes how competitive they are, whether you are playing competitive or not.

-

In matched play you can't summon units unless you saved the points/power for them. It doesn't matter if you play PL or points.

That doesn't make any sense at all. If your group has decided to use PL instead of points even for matched play, how are you able to set aside points? You have to be using points for that to work.

Unless your group just decided that summoning/split are not going to be rules you allow at all.

I like power levels fine. I don't think they are good for matches where people are trying to min max, but for a quick pick up game, they work great. For teaching games they are also great. I think they will be the only way I will play apocalypse level games as I have no desire to point out individual weapons in a 10k list. I think it will just be easier to say each person take 500 PL, it puts enough of a limit on things for games of that scale.

You still have to buy your daemons w/ power level...

I like to use lootas and tankbustas in my army.

a unit of 5 lootas (with no options) is 8.

a unit of 5 tankbustas with free bomb squigs is 4.

I don't get why people think this is good.

I played a power level game last saturday. It was iron hands and blood angels vs my orks, 2v1. they each took 20 power level and I had 40. Both sides ended up hitting 40 PL, and out of curiosity I calculated points afterward and they ended up 6 points higher than me...that's it. It was a very close game with each sides only finishing with 2 models with the marines being within 3" of the objective. That 6 points was an ork boy who may or may not have had an impact. Overall im happy with PL and the fact that for the most part they should end up pretty close points wise at least in smaller games.

 Galef wrote:
The only "downside" to playing Power Levels is that Daemons are utterly broken in PL games.
Summoning only costs points in Matched Play.
In Narrative, any <Chaos> Character can summon a unit for free, and it is way easier that 7E since no Warp Charge are needed.

Other than this edge case, I love the idea of PL.

You can do matched play with PL. And if they're summoning infinite daemons in Narrative play it better be part of the scenario.

I played with PL against Tau the other day, it was fun and really didn't feel much different than points.

 Galef wrote:
That doesn't make any sense at all. If your group has decided to use PL instead of points even for matched play, how are you able to set aside points? You have to be using points for that to work.

Unless your group just decided that summoning/split are not going to be rules you allow at all.

You just set aside power like you do points. I'm not quite sure why this is a problem compared to points. If you want to summon the demon unit, you just have to reduce your reinforcement power with the unit's power cost like you do the reinforcement points. AoS pretty much only uses power and this summoning system has been in place for awhile now.

You can take advantage of PL to gain an unfair advantage by gaming the system. You can take advantage of points to gain an unfair advantage by gaming the system. You can also steal money from the bank in Monopoly, take airhorns to golf games, and throw spiders on opponents during a timed chess match.

If your only objective in life is winning just open a casino.