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A while back, someone pointed out that it was not good for me to have a unit of twenty-five bloodletters, but instead twenty or thirty, and I wasn't quite sure why this was so bad. I didn't have the points for thirty, but still wanted to be able to use the Denizens of the Warp stratagem. Is it bad to field a unit between set unit sizes under some circumstances, or not? I personally see no problem with it.

Are you a hyper competitive type, then yes it is bad.
If you arent....then who cares?

Racerguy180 wrote:
Are you a hyper competitive type, then yes it is bad.
If you arent....then who cares?

I'm not a hyper-competitive player, but why is it bad for them?

It's not fully optimized, which is how they view the game, as something to be optimized.

Racerguy180 wrote:
It's not fully optimized, which is how they view the game, as something to be optimized.

Yes, how dare people try to win a competitive game... -_-

Did the person explain why it’s bad? Because 25 seems a fine number for deep strike, charge, and have 20 or more guys even if they Overwatch.

It’d be bad in PL, since you can take 30 for the same cost as 25, but in points, seems fine.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
A while back, someone pointed out that it was not good for me to have a unit of twenty-five bloodletters, but instead twenty or thirty, and I wasn't quite sure why this was so bad. I didn't have the points for thirty, but still wanted to be able to use the Denizens of the Warp stratagem. Is it bad to field a unit between set unit sizes under some circumstances, or not? I personally see no problem with it.

No it is not bad or even necessarily unoptimized. For a unit to be optimatized, it needs to be big enough to achieve its task a decent percentage of the time. That means you may need 20, 22, 25, 27, or 30 Bloodletters depending on the goal. If you keep finding yourself either short of Bloodletters or having way more leftover than you need, you have the wrong number.

Many Chaos players still like to stick to the holy numbers of the Chaos god, which results in odd numpbers, too. Older Tau fluff had firewarriors in units of 6 or 12, before their rules moved to 5-10(?). So, there are reasons to use other unit sizes. As someone who more often than not uses Plague Marines in units of 7 I can't say I ever had the feeling that this decision made my army worse, maybe in smaller games with 1000points but in a 2000points game? No problem.

In regards do bloodletters specifically, I suspect they were referring to their special rule that kicks in when they have 20+ models. Having more than 10 models in the unit means you're more vulnerable to enemy blast weapons. Having 20 models means you'll lose your large squad benefit as soon as you lose a single guy. Having 30 means you're giving yourself as many ablative wound before you sink below 20 dudes as possible.

That, or I'm guessing that blood letters change power level for every 10 dudes. Don't have their book in front of me, but I"m guessing that 20 letters cost less Power Level than 25 letters, and that 25 letters have the same PL as 30 letters. In which case, you're basically cheating yourself out of 5 extra bodies if you happen to have the models for them.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
It's not fully optimized, which is how they view the game, as something to be optimized.

Yes, how dare people try to win a competitive game... -_-

Did the person explain why it’s bad? Because 25 seems a fine number for deep strike, charge, and have 20 or more guys even if they Overwatch.

It’d be bad in PL, since you can take 30 for the same cost as 25, but in points, seems fine.

Well there's no competive gw games so...

tneva82 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
It's not fully optimized, which is how they view the game, as something to be optimized.

Yes, how dare people try to win a competitive game... -_-

Did the person explain why it’s bad? Because 25 seems a fine number for deep strike, charge, and have 20 or more guys even if they Overwatch.

It’d be bad in PL, since you can take 30 for the same cost as 25, but in points, seems fine.

Well there's no competive gw games so...

If running with your wife to be on your back and hat throw, can be made in to competitions then all GW games can easily be made so too.

Competitive in this context just means it's two players fighting over a single winner.
You don't have to take the competition very seriously (see wife-piggy-back racing) nor have the rules be very balanced for it to be a competitive game.

Tournament play isn't all competitive ever is.

hey man there are is stuff to win in the wife-piggy-back racing. My aunt won a speed dumpling competition in Goldap and it ended her friendship with her neighbour, because of the stuff she win.

But is true that competitions can sometimes be in your mind, and one can go to far, as any sports beat downs compilation can show. But on the other hand a game is a game, and if you play it as if there was nothing at stacked, as if it it doesn't matter, the opponent has to not care too, for it to not end bad.

tneva82 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
It's not fully optimized, which is how they view the game, as something to be optimized.

Yes, how dare people try to win a competitive game... -_-

Did the person explain why it’s bad? Because 25 seems a fine number for deep strike, charge, and have 20 or more guys even if they Overwatch.

It’d be bad in PL, since you can take 30 for the same cost as 25, but in points, seems fine.

Well there's no competive gw games so...

But ITC in 8th did use PL for determining certain types of secondaries and I wouldn't be surprised if you saw something similar to that down the line. So it did used to matter in certain cases.