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As usual, to have fun with 40k the scenario rules are most important. I could see it work if it's not a boring eternal war mission.

Considering how gw's points are effectively 'pointless' for the most part, I personally find it a suitable alternative to 'eyeball' balanced rosters for these kinds of games.

And yes, I'm all for assymetric, or themed/narrative scenarios as a preference. 'Stick everything you have on the board' - not so much.

I guess that leaves quite some room really.I have a feeling,that you will need / have some restrictions, however truth be told you might find a balance system and or a narrative way of playing that is more fun for all involved.
I have personally a feeling that points/ powerlevel often encourage us to play in a certain way, especially when there are units which are just way to effecively priced.
I guess i am curious with what you came up with and how that game went down.

This sounds great, especially if both players generally agree on rough balance. If someone wants to bring 7 Baneblades I'd expect some concessions with the scenario or with what I'm bringing. I don't care if it's perfectly accurate, as long as some effort is made I'd be into it. I suppose at that point it's basically a PL game but more dudes and no detachment restrictions!

Been there - done that

You do have to put in some work to make it a decent game for both sides!

 Peregrine wrote:
no. Why would I want to play a "game" that consists of nothing more than "the player who buys the most GW models wins"?

You don't play to win. You play to have a laugh. Open Play is for storytelling and imaginative play. Matched play is for being competitive.

Re: what people are saying about 'matching the two sides up'. If you're matching the sides up, then that's a form of matched play, and not open play. In open play, you literally don't care about what's on what side, apart from in a narrative or fluff sense. If you are worried about losing, don't play open or narrative play. In open play, no one is a loser, because the objective is to see what happens. Maybe you have a small force of space marines against an endless swarm of tyranids, and you want to see how long they can last, or maybe there is a Chaos force trying to find an ancient relic amongst some ruins, and round every corner there are Tau gun drones.

Hel no.

Yes, with the right opponent and right attitude all around.

All the time - but only if there is a story or scenario to match them to. Put everything on the table and roll dice doesn't really appeal.

 corpuschain wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
no. Why would I want to play a "game" that consists of nothing more than "the player who buys the most GW models wins"?

You don't play to win. You play to have a laugh. Open Play is for storytelling and imaginative play.

And what aspect of points prevents any of this from occurring? People don't laugh and have fun playing with points? You can't run a narrative campaign with points?

I guess I would be willing to play 40K with no points, and I'd also be willing to dip my nuts into a jar of coconut oil, but the question to both is the same: why? To what end? For what purpose?

Playing without points doesn't really save us any time; anyone who is even slightly competent at the game should be able to put together a casual list in no more then 5 or 6 minutes while knowing most of the points costs in their codex by heart. Playing without points doesn't fix any of the inherent imbalances of the game- to the contrary it exasperates them and further requires that both players be on the same page. What exactly would I be gaining here?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Fifty wrote:
Well, my answer would be that I would only do it with someone I knew well, preferably with a neutral game master, and that we'd be doing it with only fully painted models on an amazing game board, and that we'd be trying to tell some sort of a fun story, not find a winner.

But what exactly is gained in this situation by refusing to use points to add up the strength of each army and ensure balanced forces (or, in an asymmetrical scenario, forces correctly built to "the defender gets 50% more points" or whatever)? It sure seems like the only thing it accomplishes is virtue signalling about how 'casual" everyone involved is because they get as far as possible from competitive play.

Thanks Peregrine for providing an example of a player I would definitely NOT play such game with

Back to OP - as true ballance always comes from devising proper terrain+scenario+objectives+lists combo I see no reason not to play such game with someone who understands that and can assure/work together to achieve enjoyable experience for everyone involved. In such case it is really a "surprise narrative" kind of encounter. Bear in mind however, that it either takes experience to equalise some of problems that may arise in such setup or you have to utilise open play "sudden death" win conditions and hope that the resulting game is enjoyable. Or play for giggles only without any expextations as to how this play turns out and just unfold the story as encapsulated in lists and terrain brought.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 corpuschain wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
no. Why would I want to play a "game" that consists of nothing more than "the player who buys the most GW models wins"?

You don't play to win. You play to have a laugh. Open Play is for storytelling and imaginative play.

And what aspect of points prevents any of this from occurring? People don't laugh and have fun playing with points? You can't run a narrative campaign with points?

I guess I would be willing to play 40K with no points, and I'd also be willing to dip my nuts into a jar of coconut oil, but the question to both is the same: why? To what end? For what purpose?

Playing without points doesn't really save us any time; anyone who is even slightly competent at the game should be able to put together a casual list in no more then 5 or 6 minutes while knowing most of the points costs in their codex by heart. Playing without points doesn't fix any of the inherent imbalances of the game- to the contrary it exasperates them and further requires that both players be on the same page. What exactly would I be gaining here?

First of all, I certainly didn't mean to imply that matched play is in anyway not fun. I actually play this way most of the time, because I do like being competitive. But I think this thread espouses a fundamental difference between the way some people think about playing. I see playing 40k as a co-operative exercise. It's not me against my opponent. It's the two of us working together to tell a story. We take charge of one army each purely because that's the way the rules work and it nearly divides responsibility between us. But in the end, it doesn't matter who wins, because we're conspiring together to tease out a resolution to the battle, no matter which side wins, and because it's all about the moments: do you remember when that space marine captain slayed that hive tyrant after nearly being killed by a lascannon; It was so funny when those Dark Angels got lost in deep strike; I can't believe 20 cultists held out against all that Imperial Guard shooting; and so on. When you play this way, it is obvious why you might play without points - so that you can try things that might be fun and interesting that are prevented when you are limited by points. I suspect people are seeing open play as unappealing because it is unbalanced - i.e. one person is more likely to win. But I'm not even seeing 'winning' as a fundamental aspect of the battle, so it doesn't matter at all that it is 'unbalanced'. Or to put it another way, it's not me or my friend who lose, but the space marines or tyranids who lose. Additionally, one of my favourite things to do in open play is to try things I might not try in a matched play battle, such as commit all my forces to break a line, send an HQ into an unwinnable battle, dedicated all my resources to bringing down a daemon, etc.

It's absolutely fine, and lots of fun to play matched play. It's great fun, particularly in terms of thinking about strategy. Open and narrative play is a completely different kettle of fish. It's open, which means it could literally be anything. Some of the games I have played have more in common with a dungeon-crawler game than with tournament 40k. If you don't understand why open play might be fun, then maybe it's just not for you!
I'm just a bit surprised by how many people in this thread are saying 'hell, no, why would I do that,' to the idea of open play. I don't judge them for playing the way they do, but I'm surprised they don't get what open play is all about.

EDIT:
Oh, and as an example of the way someone like me thinks: when I picked up the rulebook and read the bit about open play, and the way it described bringing whatever you want, I thought, "wow, imagine the crazy stuff you could do without limits on what models you could bring! There would be absolute carnage!"

 Peregrine wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well since points/pl's aren't designed for balanced game one reason could be having actually balanced game.

Under no circumstances will "let's ignore the balance information we have, as flawed as it is" provide a more balanced game than using all available information.

That isn't really true. Two close and experienced players could easily create a more balanced game than points or PL would lead to. IT just takes a lot more effort, and familiarity with all armies involved.

Yes In a pre set scenario with specific forces also set before hand, but not a straight pick up game as that’s far too random for my liking.

Even for a pick up game with enough discussion beforehand by palyers that know each other well it could work fine. It would just take longer to set up. For a random pick up with no minimal/no discussion then yeah it would not work. It is really only a method that works in a very narrow setting. Which is I think something GW learned by no points AOS. Having no points as the only method narrows the number of types of games that are possible.

Essentially for a no point game to be good it needs to be a more collaborative effort than one using they systems in place to achieve balance. That said for a random pick up there needs to be some collaboration to make the game good anyway. At least to the point of bringing lists of a similar level of competitiveness. I show up with my LVO eldar list to face Bob and his Themed inquisition force is not going to make for a good match regardless of what we do.

Something like this really benefits from a game master who can spice things up when/if one side is starting to slip.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Playing without points doesn't really save us any time; anyone who is even slightly competent at the game should be able to put together a casual list in no more then 5 or 6 minutes while knowing most of the points costs in their codex by heart. Playing without points doesn't fix any of the inherent imbalances of the game- to the contrary it exasperates them and further requires that both players be on the same page. What exactly would I be gaining here?

Well for one potential for actually balanced game. With points you'll never get balanced game except by pure random miracle.

corpuschain wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 corpuschain wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
no. Why would I want to play a "game" that consists of nothing more than "the player who buys the most GW models wins"?

You don't play to win. You play to have a laugh. Open Play is for storytelling and imaginative play.

And what aspect of points prevents any of this from occurring? People don't laugh and have fun playing with points? You can't run a narrative campaign with points?

I guess I would be willing to play 40K with no points, and I'd also be willing to dip my nuts into a jar of coconut oil, but the question to both is the same: why? To what end? For what purpose?

Playing without points doesn't really save us any time; anyone who is even slightly competent at the game should be able to put together a casual list in no more then 5 or 6 minutes while knowing most of the points costs in their codex by heart. Playing without points doesn't fix any of the inherent imbalances of the game- to the contrary it exasperates them and further requires that both players be on the same page. What exactly would I be gaining here?

First of all, I certainly didn't mean to imply that matched play is in anyway not fun. I actually play this way most of the time, because I do like being competitive. But I think this thread espouses a fundamental difference between the way some people think about playing. I see playing 40k as a co-operative exercise. It's not me against my opponent. It's the two of us working together to tell a story. We take charge of one army each purely because that's the way the rules work and it nearly divides responsibility between us. But in the end, it doesn't matter who wins, because we're conspiring together to tease out a resolution to the battle, no matter which side wins, and because it's all about the moments: do you remember when that space marine captain slayed that hive tyrant after nearly being killed by a lascannon; It was so funny when those Dark Angels got lost in deep strike; I can't believe 20 cultists held out against all that Imperial Guard shooting; and so on. When you play this way, it is obvious why you might play without points - so that you can try things that might be fun and interesting that are prevented when you are limited by points. I suspect people are seeing open play as unappealing because it is unbalanced - i.e. one person is more likely to win. But I'm not even seeing 'winning' as a fundamental aspect of the battle, so it doesn't matter at all that it is 'unbalanced'. Or to put it another way, it's not me or my friend who lose, but the space marines or tyranids who lose. Additionally, one of my favourite things to do in open play is to try things I might not try in a matched play battle, such as commit all my forces to break a line, send an HQ into an unwinnable battle, dedicated all my resources to bringing down a daemon, etc.

It's absolutely fine, and lots of fun to play matched play. It's great fun, particularly in terms of thinking about strategy. Open and narrative play is a completely different kettle of fish. It's open, which means it could literally be anything. Some of the games I have played have more in common with a dungeon-crawler game than with tournament 40k. If you don't understand why open play might be fun, then maybe it's just not for you!
I'm just a bit surprised by how many people in this thread are saying 'hell, no, why would I do that,' to the idea of open play. I don't judge them for playing the way they do, but I'm surprised they don't get what open play is all about.

EDIT:
Oh, and as an example of the way someone like me thinks: when I picked up the rulebook and read the bit about open play, and the way it described bringing whatever you want, I thought, "wow, imagine the crazy stuff you could do without limits on what models you could bring! There would be absolute carnage!"

This pretty much sums up everything about 40K that Peregrine and similiarily minded players simply can't fathom about 40K broadness of usage. Which is really sad, given that 40K shines the most when experienced outside of matched play - it's most trimmed and shallow mode.

Breng77 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well since points/pl's aren't designed for balanced game one reason could be having actually balanced game.

Under no circumstances will "let's ignore the balance information we have, as flawed as it is" provide a more balanced game than using all available information.

That isn't really true. Two close and experienced players could easily create a more balanced game than points or PL would lead to. IT just takes a lot more effort, and familiarity with all armies involved.

This, so much this. Depending on a scenario, terrain and win conditions units can grossly overperform or be borderline useless. Pretty much the only way to get trully ballanced experience is to know relative offence and defence of the lists involved (not a mathhammer summary, but expected performance including all synergies and limitations coming from the whole setup) and then cross tailor as needed and adjust the scenario if further necessary.

And point system cannot ever, by definition, account for relative players skill, so the resulting experience from the match cannot be ballanced out this way anyhow.

Hard no, some sort of balance or limit has to be in the game. Because if you recall, AoS almost died at launch because of this.

If I knew the person I would agree to a sort of "rough estimate" battle, but not a "put down your entire collection" sort of thing. I have long wanted to play 40k and AOS "as intended" without worrying too much about points or asymmetrical gameplay, as long as we have a rough idea of what we are trying to accomplish and come up with a suitably narrative scenario.

Not Online!!! wrote:
I guess that leaves quite some room really.I have a feeling,that you will need / have some restrictions, however truth be told you might find a balance system and or a narrative way of playing that is more fun for all involved.
I have personally a feeling that points/ powerlevel often encourage us to play in a certain way, especially when there are units which are just way to effecively priced.
I guess i am curious with what you came up with and how that game went down.

I'll certainly be posting how the game goes to this thread. The narrative was how the idea got started, and then it just seemed like points would cripple the narrative. Having an unending swarm of enemies with a limit to how many enemies there are is kinda boring!

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Hard no, some sort of balance or limit has to be in the game. Because if you recall, AoS almost died at launch because of this.

I maintain this was more due to people not wanting to put any effort at all into actually discussing the sort of game they wanted, pick-up game culture being the default in many locations, and in general fearmongering over boogeyman "what if" scenarios (e.g. what if my opponent fields 10 nagashes, what if my opponent floods the board with summoning, what if my opponent fields all monsters, etc.) than anything else. It showed that people don't want to try and adhere to a social contract, they want the game to enforce limits.

Wayniac wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Hard no, some sort of balance or limit has to be in the game. Because if you recall, AoS almost died at launch because of this.

I maintain this was more due to people not wanting to put any effort at all into actually discussing the sort of game they wanted, pick-up game culture being the default in many locations, and in general fearmongering over boogeyman "what if" scenarios (e.g. what if my opponent fields 10 nagashes, what if my opponent floods the board with summoning, what if my opponent fields all monsters, etc.) than anything else. It showed that people don't want to try and adhere to a social contract, they want the game to enforce limits.

Agreed. I think AoS died on launch for a whole bunch of reasons. A lack of points was certainly one, definitely, but it wasn't the solitary point of failure.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Agreed. I think AoS died on launch for a whole bunch of reasons. A lack of points was certainly one, definitely, but it wasn't the solitary point of failure.

I don't think it died because open play is bad - it died because people wanted the option to do one or the other, and because people prefer playing with points most of the time.

Depends entirely on the scenario. For example it would be fun to play a small force of Space Marines/IG defending against an endless swarm of Tyranids. Basically see how many turns the defending force could last.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Depends entirely on the scenario. For example it would be fun to play a small force of Space Marines/IG defending against an endless swarm of Tyranids. Basically see how many turns the defending force could last.

2nd edition Tyranids had a special mission card for this: "Tyranid AttacK' it was basically the precursor to today's Meat Grinder; the Tyranid player got to recycle any units destroyed the following turn, and had IIRC 6 turns to completely wipe out the enemy; if even a single model survived, the Tyranid player lost.

I fondly remember a game back around 1996 with my brother, where I lost my last space marine the very end of the game by rolling a 1 on his save. Any other roll I would have won.

tneva82 wrote:
And if you want balanced game the FIRST thing you MUST do is abandon points&power levels. Period. Burn them from your memory. They will lead to nothing but unbalanced games.

Do you honestly not see how absurd this statement is? To improve balance you must first remove all balance? A flawed balancing mechanism (point costs) is better than no balancing mechanism at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insurgency Walker wrote:
Well the point is to have fun right? So even if you bring the wrong set of models to a pointless game if that's all you have to work with you make it work.

If you bring 1500 points and your opponent has 2000 points you just have your opponent drop some stuff and play a 1500 point game. There is no reason to abandon points in this situation.

very doable in narrative games if you both have a feel for points and or power levels.

IOW, "play a no-points game by using the point system, except instead of looking up the point costs normally try to remember them as well as you can". WHY.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 corpuschain wrote:
You don't play to win. You play to have a laugh. Open Play is for storytelling and imaginative play. Matched play is for being competitive.

Sorry, but "play to have a laugh" is ridiculous when you're talking about a game that costs thousands of dollars and countless hours of time. It is utter insanity to make that investment and then play a "game" where one side wipes the other off the table on the first turn because you stubbornly insisted on ignoring point costs and one player brought several times more points worth of stuff to the game. There is never any possible situation where not using the point system improves the game. Casual/narrative games are worse without it just like competitive games are.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
I maintain this was more due to people not wanting to put any effort at all into actually discussing the sort of game they wanted, pick-up game culture being the default in many locations, and in general fearmongering over boogeyman "what if" scenarios (e.g. what if my opponent fields 10 nagashes, what if my opponent floods the board with summoning, what if my opponent fields all monsters, etc.) than anything else. It showed that people don't want to try and adhere to a social contract, they want the game to enforce limits.

You're right. People don't want to pay money for a game where they have to act as amateur game developers, create an informal point system to use for their games, and enforce it through social pressure and shunning anyone who is "too competitive" for their arbitrary standards. GW's decision to release AoS without point costs was an unbelievable act of incompetence, and everyone involved should have been fired and permanently blacklisted from ever working in the game industry again.

Suggestions that removing points to balance is an aweful idea. And the whole notion, "well it's about having fun ! " Yes it is but points allow the fun to be had by both. Because bringing 2k to a 1500 point army is going to be fun for one person.

Points are needed for a reason. Idk why but as of late there seems to have been this massive push for getting rid of points and I don't understand it. It seems to be a theme very common with new table top players as well, just in my observations.

Narrative games can be fine but you still need something to balance it out. Points have to exist.

For my birthday party next month I'm planning to do an apocalypse battle with my 6 friends where we all field everything we own for our individual armies. No points limits and strict wysiwyg. The point of the game isn't for a fair, balanced fight, but rather a true and brutal war of Chaos vs Imperium where we get to see which side has the better force. Real wars weren't fought with fair teams, they were asymmetric. I wouldn't play like this very often and I'd never enter a battle like this with much seriousness, but I really want to have a game with all of my friends where we simply put everything we own on the table. Like a true war where each force takes everything they can muster.

My team:
World Eaters (me)
Death Guard
Emperor's Children
Thousand Sons

Enemy team:
Space Marines
Astra Militarum
Adeptus Mechanicus
Tau

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Idk why but as of late there seems to have been this massive push for getting rid of points and I don't understand it.

It's virtue signalling, nothing more. There's a certain small subset of the community (and GW employees) that is the "casual at all costs" counterpart to WAAC players. They don't just play a silly low-effort game and not care about it (as the word "casual" actually means), they're the people screaming at you for playing "too competitively" and posting long rants about how "casual" play is superior in every way. And they operate under the obviously wrong assumption that if a game is not competitive then it must be casual. In fact, the farther you get from good competitive design the more "casual" it becomes. Who cares if it actually makes a story-based game or random "beer and pretzels" night less enjoyable, it is bad for competitive play so it must be CASUAL. The rules even cease to have any meaning on the table, it's all about bragging about how "casual" you as defined by how stubbornly you can sabotage your own game experience and keep throwing time and money at it.

For this group of people "no points" is just the latest idea they've embraced. It's indisputably bad for tournament games, so it's perfect for them. AoS put it out there, and now it's the sign of the morally superior "casual" player. It's just unfortunate that GW employs some of these people as their rule authors, as it ensures that they will continue to publish trash.