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I spent late third/early fourth through 6th at a max of 1,500 points, played mostly 500-1,000pnts, even running monthly 500 point events for no more than 8 for a few solid years.

While GW has been giving tons of support to Combat Patrol games, even more to Incursion, trying to bring up 500-1,000 as serious games, or even casual, gets brushed aside so quickly.

I know that 9th ed Incursion games have mission/board mistakes. Ideally there'd be GW support for competitive Combat Patrol. I feel like it could really work amazingly as a circuit format.
The smaller boards (for 500points) are a great size, and would lesson the burden on event hosts.
The restriction to a Patrol detachment, as well as it being Ro2 could really make it valid.
It could really develop into its own thing. Rounds would be shorter, meaning more games, either more rounds per event, or more frequent events.

It goes without saying that the tips and tricks for 2k games are out the window. It would've a drastically different meta, which is kinda the point.

Thought this could make for a really good discussion.

Compared to 2000 points, even at 1000 the game is wildly unbalanced.
Making it work at 500, even more so with a competitive approach, would require a lot of restrictions and houserules to fix stuff.
Otherwise the games would be even more of a coin flip than at 2000 points.

 Aenar wrote:
Compared to 2000 points, even at 1000 the game is wildly unbalanced.
Making it work at 500, even more so with a competitive approach, would require a lot of restrictions and houserules to fix stuff.
Otherwise the games would be even more of a coin flip than at 2000 points.

this. most of my recent experience has been at 1k, and yhea, its very easy to build a wildly unbalanced list, or rather, its extremely difficult to build a list at 1k with a decent answer to everything, and thus to get into unwinnable matchups where the oppo simply has brought something you cant counter. A lot of the "big ticket" items in 40k assume they will be facing 2,000 points of enemy and are balanced with that assumption, so throwing them into a 1k game ends up with them being rather overpowered.

hell, you can fit a c'tan shard into a 500 point game, in a legal patrol list, how the hell is that balanced? its not a particularly good list, but the point remains.

to make 500/1k work in a competitive scene, you'd either have to tack on a large number of listbuilding restrictions to force players into a specific "balanced" list style (Which would naturally distort the meta in favour of whatever you thought of as "Balanced", or have separate points values for these lower points games to better account for the differences in effectiveness units have at 500 and 1k, which adds significantly more to the rules team's workload.

that said, this new drive to encourage low points games is good for the hobby as a whole, it lowers the barriers to entry form cost significantly, down to maybe a 100-150 quid (i.e. a combat patrol box, codex, paints starter set etc). so maybe we should be looking at doing something like this.

It is very rock, paper, scissors. You can also still make it more competitive just play 8 rounds, double Knock outa, or something to make it easier on the RNG of bad match ups.

Honestly 500pt games are really fun, its a complete different mind set and I highly enjoy them, but you need a group of people that also enjoys them, if you get a few that hates lower points or complains the whole time then its not going to be a good event. What works at 2k doesn't necessarily work at 500pts.

A few reason why I really like Combat patrol games;

Everyone can join for cheap
They are really fast games, give a 1hour limit and let the dice roll
You can play couple games (sometimes even 3-4) rather than 1 game within the same time limit
1 day events can be done within a reasonable time, 6hours for 5 games, mini prices.
You can toe into another faction and get an idea if you like them or to scratch an itch to play something else easily.
You can make full custom fun mini armies and have lots of uniqueness compare to a larger army.

I had a 500pt Zombie Tyranid army Combat Patrol list in 5th for example for a unique army, was so much fun (Tervigon, Gaunts, and Hive Guard, some gaunts were coming out of the ground, I had tomb stones, and all green ish grey/black with broken limbs). Sadly I don't have it anymore and only 1 model for a pic for some reason (well I know why, Photobucket happened and removed my pics) Pic in attachments.