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I was just wondering if anyone else has had this come up in pickup games. I tend to bring points level lists but a few of the players at my store really like power levels. Would it throw things out of whack too much if I said "I'll play my 1/1.5/2k points against your 50/75/100 PL"? Is there any official conversion or was the 20:1 ratio reverse engineered by the community?

I mostly ask this because my 998 point IG list today would have run at 64 power level, which is almost a 30% difference and pretty far outside of the realm of 'close enough.'

From what I have seen mixing power levels with points is a horrible idea. They are really out of whack on some units. I personally do not thinks its compatible at all if you are looking for a balanced game.

Some of it might also depend on how the lists were put together. If you maxed out your wargear in a point list, you are going to have a lower PL compared to other point list that spent more modestly. They would have more units (and thus PL) but less toys.

Is the PL list a fluffy fun list? Or are they taking advantage of the PL system to give everyone the max number of upgrades? Just because your 1k point list is 64 power doesn’t mean it’s 64 points of well spent power. That 50 PL list where every sarge is packing a powerfist and a combi-plasma, and every vehicle has all the whistles and bells will probably clean your clock.

I suspect that most “friendly” lists are probably compatible at the 20:1 ratio. If one or both people try to game the system to max out the efficiency, you are probably going to run into problems. But that was going to happen even if you were both using the same system and one person was far more aggressive in list building then the other.

At the end of that day, whatever two consenting gamers think will make a fun game is worth trying. Worst case scenario, you just call it early with a “That was a mistake, let’s not do that again” but at least you gave it a shot to see how it worked.

I'd suggest simply building your list for points, then figuring out what the PL of your army is. the entire point of PLs is to enable a quick game without a ton of number crunching and list building. it's VERY easy to say "I have a terminator captian, terminatoer Librarian, 3 tac squads, and a predator, and calcualte the power level of that (41) and then say "well I can play a 41 PL game. or if you'd prefer points, I have a X point list""

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
From what I have seen mixing power levels with points is a horrible idea. They are really out of whack on some units. I personally do not thinks its compatible at all if you are looking for a balanced game.

The thing about points is that they represent the potential power of your army, not the actual power. For instance, if you lose a 200 pt unit in the first round before they can do anything, they weren't worth 200 pts. They basically just distracted some guns for a turn. With a lucky roll or two, a 80 pt unit could be worth a lot more. With a game that has a lot of randomness and unit churn rate, balance is whatever match up creates a compelling game where both sides has a chance of winning and having fun. As such, balance isn't an exact number, but rather a range - very likely within the error of margin for power levels.

And I suspect that people using PL are, almost by definition, not the people min-maxing points for optimal army builds. There will always be That Guy, but I think the people who try to maximize points or build the most efficient lists will find power levels rather unsatisfying because it is so obviously exploitable. There's no challenge to it. And if someone decides to exploit power levels to their fullest, it will be really obvious and you can ask them to tack on a few extra PLs or simply choose to not play them.

Personally, I'd just convert my points list to a PL list (should be quick to do), rather than try to convert a PL list to points (must less quick to do).