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I was listening to the latest Preferred Enemies podcast, and they make the case for lowering the expected game size to 1,000(ish) points as a way of making the game more accessible in the face of the upcoming price hike. As someone who tends to prefer smaller games, I'd be all for such a change, but I recognize that some aspects of the game would likely need to be tweaked to accomodate such a playstyle.

Supposing 1k games became your new normal, what Nephilim/AoO style adjustments would you want to see? Would you embrace Boarding Actions style minimum unit sizes? Adjust the way CP is generated? What would secondaries look like? How would you handle armies like knights that just don't fit into small games very well?

Knights are banned. Custodes are probably banned. Single classic FOC or even something more restrictive, no allies, no other detachments, no spam detachments, no vehicle/monster squadrons for anything bigger than a Sentinel. Only troops can score objectives and all "this thing that isn't basic infantry becomes troops" rules are either removed or attached to severe penalties to offset their power. At 1000 points you absolutely must include rules that keep out the skew lists and force both players to take at least 25-50% of their points in basic infantry. Otherwise it's just a rock/paper/scissors game where you take your choice of skew list and hope you get a favorable matchup.

(And that's on top of general things like getting rid of stratagems, replacing IGOUGO with alternating activation, etc, that need to be done regardless of game size.)

Ban units that cross a certain treshold of points. No LoW.

1 HQ
1-3 Troops
0-1 Elite
0-1 Fast Attack
0-1 Heavy Support

Cadian Glory wrote:
Knights are banned. Custodes are probably banned. Single classic FOC or even something more restrictive, no allies, no other detachments, no spam detachments, no vehicle/monster squadrons for anything bigger than a Sentinel. Only troops can score objectives and all "this thing that isn't basic infantry becomes troops" rules are either removed or attached to severe penalties to offset their power. At 1000 points you absolutely must include rules that keep out the skew lists and force both players to take at least 25-50% of their points in basic infantry. Otherwise it's just a rock/paper/scissors game where you take your choice of skew list and hope you get a favorable matchup.

(And that's on top of general things like getting rid of stratagems, replacing IGOUGO with alternating activation, etc, that need to be done regardless of game size.)

I'd basically write about the same thing tbh.

The only part I'd skip is the alternating activation part because I don't think it's as necessary as some make it out to be, and it's sort of a "never gonna happen anyways" item.

But everything else is spot on.

Composition: Battle-forged using one (1) Detachment from the Core rules.
Additional Detachment Restrictions:
Units that are unique (i.e. Limited to one per army) are prohibited.
All units must have a Power Level of 12 or less.
All units with the HQ battlefield role must have a Power Level of 7 or less.
Datasheet Limitations: Unless they have the Troops battlefield role, only one (1) of any datasheet may be included in your army. This limitation of one (1) includes dedicated transports.

I'd probably have a rule that no single model can be more than 25% of your army, but besides that I don't think I'd make many rules adjustments for 1k sized games.

I don't like the idea of flat out banning factions, as folks make collections of things they like, and it's worth time and money.

I don't think taking a few wardogs/armigers is that onerous, compared to a titanic model.

Seeing it's armiger spam that's dominating knights you are forcing them to take better unit

tneva82 wrote:
Seeing it's armiger spam that's dominating knights you are forcing them to take better unit

and while theyre easier to kill than bigger knights, i doubt an army can deal with the 7-ish armiger at you can bring at 1k. even if you bring dedicated anti-tank, the knights can just kill those units first

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I was listening to the latest Preferred Enemies podcast, and they make the case for lowering the expected game size to 1,000(ish) points as a way of making the game more accessible in the face of the upcoming price hike. As someone who tends to prefer smaller games, I'd be all for such a change, but I recognize that some aspects of the game would likely need to be tweaked to accomodate such a playstyle.

Supposing 1k games became your new normal, what Nephilim/AoO style adjustments would you want to see? Would you embrace Boarding Actions style minimum unit sizes? Adjust the way CP is generated? What would secondaries look like? How would you handle armies like knights that just don't fit into small games very well?

Adjust secondaries to disincentivise skew.

Custodes wouldn't need to be banned, I'm wondering if the desire to ban them is just based on a hunch.

Yeah, custodes feel weird to want banned tbh.

At 1k, any bad roll from them is REALLLY bad.

TBH I'd say something like Patrol detachment only (maybe with some exceptions) and limit vehicles/walkers/etc. to like 0-1. So like you could have 0-1 Dreadnought, 0-1 Vehicle, that kind of thing. No special characters. no LoW (sorry Knights, but you don't belong anyway) or 25% limit LoW, something like that (maybe allow Knights to take the smaller ones, but not the big guys). I do think that the Incursion map size is a bit too small though even at 1000, so I think the "norm" should be the larger size map even then.

Honestly, I'd say 1500 should be the norm rather than 1000. It's better than 2k but not quite as limited as 1k is. But I'd still have like a 25% limit on stuff.

I really don't get the LoW hatred. I understand the complaint that they're too big for a game that differentiates between a Bolt Pistol and a Laspistol, but they're not some kind of terrible boogeyman that's impossible to take down.

I would put forward 1500-2000 point armies but with 2-3 500 'modules' to pick from to add to your core 500 points, so if you find you are facing knights you swap in the anti knight part for example.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I really don't get the LoW hatred. I understand the complaint that they're too big for a game that differentiates between a Bolt Pistol and a Laspistol, but they're not some kind of terrible boogeyman that's impossible to take down.

how would you deal with 7 armigers in 1k?

Play more AoS, probably.

The main aspect is all rules should be designed to "work" at 1,000 points rather than 2,000 points and points costs should be designed to "work" at 1,000 points rather than 2,000 points.

Some rules are better or more valuable at different points costs in the game, usually durability and healing rules.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I really don't get the LoW hatred. I understand the complaint that they're too big for a game that differentiates between a Bolt Pistol and a Laspistol, but they're not some kind of terrible boogeyman that's impossible to take down.

how would you deal with 7 armigers in 1k?

Depends on the loadouts.
And more to the point, "Armigers are too strong," isn't the same as "LoW don't belong in 40k." But that is my fault for not being clear with my words.

I highly doubt the ONLY list that'd be too strong is a seven-Armiger army.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I really don't get the LoW hatred. I understand the complaint that they're too big for a game that differentiates between a Bolt Pistol and a Laspistol, but they're not some kind of terrible boogeyman that's impossible to take down.

I dislike how the game warps around models with a higher point cost at low point games. As I wrote I'd make the cut for everything above a certain point cost.

a_typical_hero wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I really don't get the LoW hatred. I understand the complaint that they're too big for a game that differentiates between a Bolt Pistol and a Laspistol, but they're not some kind of terrible boogeyman that's impossible to take down.

I dislike how the game warps around models with a higher point cost at low point games. As I wrote I'd make the cut for everything above a certain point cost.

I think removing access to any model worth more than 250pts is a good cut-off for 1000pts, anything else I'd say go for it.

 jaredb wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I really don't get the LoW hatred. I understand the complaint that they're too big for a game that differentiates between a Bolt Pistol and a Laspistol, but they're not some kind of terrible boogeyman that's impossible to take down.

I dislike how the game warps around models with a higher point cost at low point games. As I wrote I'd make the cut for everything above a certain point cost.

I think removing access to any model worth more than 250pts is a good cut-off for 1000pts, anything else I'd say go for it.

The Monolith shall rule!

 jaredb wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I really don't get the LoW hatred. I understand the complaint that they're too big for a game that differentiates between a Bolt Pistol and a Laspistol, but they're not some kind of terrible boogeyman that's impossible to take down.

I dislike how the game warps around models with a higher point cost at low point games. As I wrote I'd make the cut for everything above a certain point cost.

I think removing access to any model worth more than 250pts is a good cut-off for 1000pts, anything else I'd say go for it.

Nah, taking massive models at 1k points basically means that you have very little to play with. Someone who brings a well rounded force should easily win out on objectives. They simply focus down the rest of the army and ignore the expensive model. Sure, it will kill units / etc, but 1 model simply can't hold objectives or play to the secondaries.

This all feels like overkill to me. I run 1k stuff here standard and none of this has been an issue for us. Couple people bring knights to every tournament and they don’t dominate or anything. I honestly think the game works fine as is.

I'd still be making all of my decisions based on the ongoing stories that emerge from campaign play, and none of us are really all that invested in winning- we wouldn't need rules to avoid skew, because most of us would just do it on our own... Though if the storyline of the campaign called for skew, it would happen and people would deal with it. If it ended up leading to a super lopsided game, that would become the history of the armies involved, and we'd try and steer the story to more equitable outcomes in the games that followed.

Think Slaughter at Sanctuary 101- the SoB were wiped out to a Sister, but the story has a place in the history of the game, and we're still revisiting that battle 15 years later.

That's how we play.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I really don't get the LoW hatred. I understand the complaint that they're too big for a game that differentiates between a Bolt Pistol and a Laspistol, but they're not some kind of terrible boogeyman that's impossible to take down.

how would you deal with 7 armigers in 1k?

I'm sure my Grot Tanks are up to the challenge.

 AduroT wrote:
This all feels like overkill to me. I run 1k stuff here standard and none of this has been an issue for us. Couple people bring knights to every tournament and they don’t dominate or anything. I honestly think the game works fine as is.

Very much this. I think the only adjustment I'd personally make is that I'm likely to play more.

I wouldn't adjust anything really. 1000-1200 point games worked pretty well this edition. However, I don't think most will be willing to deviate from the 2000 point army.

No adjustments needed, other than to players’ attitudes!

I love lower points games, as most are aware of, but I would make one change to the 1,000 point game specs in the book:

Effectively be 1,001 points in competitive play, for the bigger board and CP caps.

But even then, I'm not sure anything really needs to change. I offer that possibility because that's why people say they'd rather not play 1,000 or lower.

Yes, it would be a drastically different meta from 2k. Armies would straight up work differently. But the experimentation is half the fun!

Personally, I'm a huge fan of the smaller tables, like, a huge fan.

a_typical_hero wrote:
Ban units that cross a certain treshold of points. No LoW.

1 HQ
1-3 Troops
0-1 Elite
0-1 Fast Attack
0-1 Heavy Support

Screw factions that have basically their entire roster of characters in elite section, eh?

Also half of the armies in the game can't fill 1K points with this thing unless you go for most massive tanks/monsters they have (forcing most unfun thing in small games, skew list, by default) and even then it's a stretch...

Cadian Glory wrote:
Custodes are probably banned

Broken xeno gak deserves ban 1000x more before we even get to that point, and even then, Custodes are easily fixed by 'no resin' rule

 Irbis wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
Ban units that cross a certain treshold of points. No LoW.

1 HQ
1-3 Troops
0-1 Elite
0-1 Fast Attack
0-1 Heavy Support

Screw factions that have basically their entire roster of characters in elite section, eh?

While I don't disagree, don't they have some kind of "Elite Character" slot that's separate now? Or is that just in the GW app? My point I guess is you could limit "Elites" but not the characters.