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I'm curious as to what people think on this one.

When it comes to what weapons someone has, do you consider it better to have options in the units entry (EG "Dudes may replace their machinegun with a rocket launcher for X points"), or to instead have separate units which you can choose (EG "Dude with machine gun, X points, Dude with rocket launcher, Y points).

Personally I feel like 40k (my go-to analogue) got it right back when they used to say "has X models, models cost this, can upgrade to fancy stuff for these prices", rather than the current "These guys cost this, and their default weapon costs that, so changing their weapon refunds you that and then costs you this for the new one, and all the prices are on another page somewhere".

I'm considering the units for my wargame I'm slow-building and I have gone for individual units for this instead of upgrades, I figure it'll be easier in the long run to have individual data cards for each unit which involves everything they can do, rather than multiple upgrade cards. It might mean more different cards, perhaps, but less of them on the edge of the table waiting for a liht breeze or careless sleeve to shuffle them up!

so, what do you prefer - more units with less options or less units with more options?

Well, to me it depends on if the game is Model vs Model, Unit vs Unit, or Big Battle. That dictates the level of granularity, but I hate when a Unit vs Unit game asks me to do Model vs Model level of granularity.

I'm mixed on this. For the most part I agree with E that it's way better in miniature vs. miniature games opposed to squad based big games. However, I really like having war gear options on your main hero models or even squad captains. It adds a level of personalization to the list you're building. Plus there was something magical about decking out a daemon prince back in 3rd edition 40k and just slaughtering units with it. lol

As far as do I prefer more units with less options or less units with more options, it depends on my mood. I'd probably lean more towards less units with more options overall.

Why not both? If upgrades are really sidegrades or a token wargear/weapon, then put them as options for a unit. If upgrades significantly alter how the unit behaves/what it is useful for, then make a separate entry for unit with such loadout.

Unit with upgrade choices, for two reasons:

* It makes changes to the stats simpler. In 40k terms, if you decide you want to make a heavy weapon carrier BS 4 instead of BS 3 you have to go through and change "squad with missile launcher", "squad with lascannon", "squad with mortar", etc, individually. If you have a single squad that can be equipped with a choice of heavy weapon you only have one thing to change.

* It makes it easier to keep track of everything. The more total units you have the harder it is to keep everything in mind, the more pages you're flipping through trying to find something, and the easier it is to miss something. Having a single unit makes explicit what is our intuitive understanding of the situation: you have one unit choosing between modes. And then you can save making a different unit for the cases where you genuinely have a significant difference in function/stats.

One thing to consider though: If you're doing a "no more than three copies of a unit" kind of rule it matters a lot whether you have one unit name with a list of options or three different unit names. It's especially important to handle this consistently across your game so you don't have some factions that can easily take lots of duplicates while other factions can't.