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This is probably a dumb idea, but figured I'd run it past the hive-mind.

Imagine a league or season, with regular tournament games. After each week's match, if you lost then you increase your point total by some amount. If you won then you decrease your point total by some amount. At the end of the season, winners are determined by who has the best record, or who has the least amount of points, which should probably give the same answer?

The hope is more even matches amongst players of disparate skill, which would hopefully in turn mean everyone has more fun, whilst still rewarding the most skilled with the 'Win' at the end of the season.

Thoughts?

Wouldn't work, and would have attrocious results for good armies that are aggresivly costed tanking their first 1-2 games to get extra points to have it easier in the rest of the league.

Plus the points gained, with fixed unit size for some armies would be strange. How many points would someone like a GK gain for losing, with basic stuff costing around 200pts? How many points would a knight player lose to not be left with odd left overs.

I have seen and played games where top armies beat lower tier armies without 300-400pts of stuff, sometimes by forgetting to use reserves, sometimes by forgetting to move one flank for a turn. It would also be very hard to balance with something like GSC, who just respawn stuff during game.

It's not a good idea because you don't have long enough for things to average out into a good representation of actual strength. Let's say I play my marine army against eldar for my first three games while you play your guard against admech for your first three games. I lose all three because marines aren't quite eldar level and get the point bonus. You win because guard aren't quite admech bad and get the point penalty. Now we play and in addition to having a far stronger list/faction at neutral points I also have the loser buff. I table you in one turn in a game that wasn't even remotely fun for you.

Another issue is that you're locked into using a single list for the entire league, something many people don't like.

I've considered doing something similar narrative leagues and campaigns. I don't think it would work well in the way that you're pitching it.

As Owl points out, you don't have enough games for things to "average out." Instead, you end up encouraging people to game the system, especially if they have a rough idea of who they'll be facing in future weeks.

Where this sort of points penalty rubber band mechanic works better, I think, is in non-competitive events where you want to ensure that no one is spending the whole event getting wailed on. So for instance, if you're running a campaign and you want to keep the player with a notably weaker faction (or a notably weaker grasp of the game) invested, you might track his Win/Loss record and give him +5% of that match's army points for each loss he has compared to his wins.

That is, if he's lost 3 times and won twice and the game was going to be 1,000 points, he'd have 50 extra points to work with.

The more he loses, the closer his games will be until he eventually has enough extra points to start winning, at which point his wins will steadily increase and his extra points will decrease until he reaches an equilibrium.

If your goal is to measure who the most competitive/efficient player/army is, this rubber band probably just throws a wrench in the works. If your goal is to help weaker armies/players enjoy the game alongside stronger players, then this can work well.

It is an interesting and I think "solid" idea.

I would suggest you go with a very simple implementation and maybe also a cautious approach, e.g. don't do +-250 points per win/loss, do +-50. If the players enjoy it then the second time around you can try being more adventurous.

Not with the way the current points system works. There's no flexibility in unit sizes, so loosing, say, 100 points would mean dumping units worth far more than 100 points and trying to find something that slots into that gap.

No reason to lower points below the starting level. Think golf handicap. You can't be better than a scratch golfer (handicap 0).

Also, I wouldn't reward players for a single loss. Somebody has to win every game after all outside of the odd tie. So wait until the 2nd or 3rd loss in a row before awarding bonus points.

adjusting for current points, we did a several-month long round-robin with 12 ish players... every consecutive loss gave you +5%. Once you won, back to +0%

it was fun... I don't remember anyone complaining and while now, with set costs, a +50-100 may not let you tack on a new unit, but it will let someone swap out a poor unit for a better one. We were fortunate to have a massive reserve of community models, so swapping things in and out was easy for us

Okey. Lets say someone plays an elite army. They lose a game. get 5% of 2000 pts. There is no option in their codex that costs 100pts, even less so one that could make it win easier. No upgrades to buy, no extra relics, no extra models in squads etc. So now they have to lose two games to maybe get an extra squad. Thankfuly now, they don't have to worry about cost of upgrades etc. What if having one extra squad of basic infantry isn't enough to beat armies that are a tier or two above them? It could mean that the army has to lose 4 or 6, maybe even 8 games to actualy feel the impact of the extra points.

but an elite army might have 300 point and 400 point units... so now they can swap a 300 for a 400? If not, then a second loss maybe does get them enough points to offset loses a bit

Well that is assuming that the more elite unit is actualy good and that they want to take them.
Or that the new unit is run at the basic 400+pts size and doesn't require there to be 10 of the models to be efficient.

In general the assumption is that for this to work, the player would have to both have , as in the codex, and own the extra models. If someone has 2000pts of models, then telling them that now they have an extra 100pts to play with, and that in order to not get -10VP they have to buy the new models within a short time to the next game, may not be very helpful. And this is assuming that they want/can buy the extra models. I am not very good with emotions, and it is really hard for me to imagine what a person feels like if they are told something like that. The closest I can imagine is someone being told to change a major in sports, for some people it works, but for some it is career ending.

Its a crutch, not a requirement... if it tries a person to be given more points... then they can simply choose to not use them.