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The Official 2018/2019 Warhammer 40,000 Grand Tournament Season drops army size to 1750 points.

https://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/the-official-2018-2019-warhammer-40000-grand-tournament/

Thoughts? How will it affect your meta?

I think it is a good call, and hopefully other tournament organisers will do something similar.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
I think it is a good call, and hopefully other tournament organisers will do something similar.

Agreed. I don't think other organisers will. ITC/ETC and other big tournaments seem to view GW GTs with a fairly high level of contempt so they'll probably ignore what seems to be a reasonable decision on GW's part. My club has been playing 1750 since 8th edition landed and we've found that even relatively slow players can get a game completed from deployment to final turn in 2.5 hours. In general I think it'd be interesting if tournaments had more variety in their points limits and mission structures, if only to make people think a bit more about their armies. I'm sure it comes down to TOs being risk averse with their rulesets due to the costs involved in running a tournament - you don't want your different set of rules to turn too many people away.

1500 would be even better but this is preferable to 2k

Long as it allows people to include Fun Units, I'm up for that.

Nowt worse than a points level that means you can't take your favourite Big Boy to war.

Don't like it at all.

I think it's a good move. Having to make hard decisions, rather than allowing you to take pretty much anything, makes the game better IMO.

tneva82 wrote:
1500 would be even better but this is preferable to 2k

This.

Less points are preferable.
I would even consider 1650 or 1500 pts for larger tourneys.

As much as I don't like that idea, it's probably a necessity. I've only been to a few tournaments, mostly local. The one big tournament was about 50 people, but that I've had some crazy stuff with how to build your army.

For tournaments we've found 1500 to be about the sweet spot. at 1000, the first turn matters overmuch and there's almost no way to get battles to go to objectives turn 4-5. We tried a 1000pt format with "sudden death" objectives that were meant to be achievable on a crushing victory, or "normal" objectives achieved turn 4-5, and while we had about half games going to the normal objectives the sudden death objectives popped up pretty frequently.

At 1500 though it's a lot harder to load everything into an alpha strike and just hose whole armies down.

Good move. I like to run basic stuff but with a guard army it is simply too many models to play at a decent clip and not ruin the experience for the other chap. Anything which means I can go down that route and not worry about taking expensive stuff to speed up play is good in my book.

I don't think its a good idea because:

1. They have spent a year balancing their game based upon feedback from 2k points.

2. They are currently pitching their premiere competitive event, where each game round is 30 min less than you can expect at most other uk events, and then reducing its points by 1/8th.

3. They have recently released anti spam rules, which inherently become less effective at a reduced point value.

4. If its hard to make balanced competitive lists at 2k, which can cover the bases to defeat the crazy hyper competitive lists, imagine how much more difficult it will be with 1/8th of the tools.

5. The competitive community (which lets face it GTs are aimed at) has spend a year learning how to play a 2k meta, invalidating a lot of 'game feel'.

6. They are cutting their potential sales to competitive players by an 8th if this becomes adopted widely.

7. There are better ways to make sure that games go to time. (like having more than 5 2.5 hour rounds over 3 days!).

And that's why unlike last year, I wont be buying a ticket this time around.

Speaking as someone who qualified for the final in a heat, and then decided to not attend the final due to the (imo) bad 3 day 5 short game schedule and 4 weeks of planning time i had after waiting for the FAQ to drop.

I like 1750. 2000 feels like you can have everything you want (Unless you play space marines and use subpar units ) , and 1500 feels too small of a force for me, I like to change my list from game to game, but thats a bit too much.

1750 is a sweet spot in the middle. For 1000 point games I prefer to just use other sistems and go to play some skirmish level game.

 Mushkilla wrote:
The Official 2018/2019 Warhammer 40,000 Grand Tournament Season drops army size to 1750 points.

https://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/the-official-2018-2019-warhammer-40000-grand-tournament/

Thoughts? How will it affect your meta?

Noooo, really?!
It was really down to this or chess clocks.
I like it!

Makes sense. The reality is that the hope/promise/assumption that 8th would play faster than before isn't true. In fact its often slower. Something had to give, reduced points is probably the easiest solution.

The issue GW had with 8th is they made if faster to play 8th if you used armies similar to 7th....but made infantry so good that spamming 100s of models is superior in every way to running tanks etc. They also added CP giving players another point of decision which slows things down, and made re-rolls super prevalent (no more re-roll saves, but tons of re-roll hits, wounds, and FNP mechanics that are slow).

5th ed was the fastest edition I have played and that was in large part that mechanized forces were king. Moving 10 boxes around the table is much faster than 100 individual models. Now they were too powerful in 5th, however I think they have been over corrected for the past 3 editions (Hull points made them too weak, loss of fire points hurts many this edition, as does their ability to die quickly for their cost compared to infantry units.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As to points drop, I like it my LGS plays 1500 points, I think it is a much tougher point level to play, and lower points makes soup much less attractive because the taxes for detachments become more meaningful.

It’s a direct response to this year’s winner slowplaying. And it’s fine. I wish GW would try clocks, but I understand why they went lower points instead, and having a variety of points values in tournaments is a good thing.

Well, I guess the big question is...will the independent circuits follow suit?

I can certainly approve. I really like 2000pts for casual games in which you have the time to play it out, but for timed competitive events, you really need to "cut the fat".
1750 makes the most sense as it still allows variety of list building, yet makes some choices difficult.
1500pts would be too restrictive and would likely create concentrated lists that would seem repetitive.

Hopefully this trickles down to most local events to change the overall meta.

 meleti wrote:
It’s a direct response to this year’s winner slowplaying. And it’s fine. I wish GW would try clocks, but I understand why they went lower points instead, and having a variety of points values in tournaments is a good thing.

Just as easy to slowplay 1750 to max turn 3.
It will help a little in the overal amount of turns the games go but won't fix the actual problems.

I approve of this move. I've always felt that lower point games were more interesting because they required the player to make real compromises and choices in list building.

We shall see what it does for lists!

Some units behave very differently when you have more open space on the table. I think it's very healthy for the game.

My preference in the tournament world would be 1500. It is at least a step in the right direction as it does also heavily influence what we take in our "casual" games (by casual I mean the tournament practice games that make up most of our pickup games here)

However in my neck of the woods: ITC = life. If ITC doesn't adapt this, it will be ignored.

It's good to change things up. Personally I hope that my local tournaments adopt this, while the non tournament games do not. I would very much like a distinction between what is someones tournament list, or someones casual list.

I don't think its really going to solve the problem, but its not a bad change regardless. I wish it was 1800 though, almost entirely because I like numbers divisible by 3....

 Ordana wrote:
Just as easy to slowplay 1750 to max turn 3.
It will help a little in the overal amount of turns the games go but won't fix the actual problems.

If 99% of games go the full 5-7 turns, then it becomes really easy to identify slow play. It's also easier to justify an insentive to go the full 5-7 turns at that point.

 Wibe wrote:

 Mushkilla wrote:
The Official 2018/2019 Warhammer 40,000 Grand Tournament Season drops army size to 1750 points.

https://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/the-official-2018-2019-warhammer-40000-grand-tournament/

Thoughts? How will it affect your meta?

Noooo, really?!
It was really down to this or chess clocks.
I like it!

Or just up the cost of chaff.

Although this event is kind of lame:

If you have painted your models in a specific way, we expect you to use the rules relevant to that scheme. For example, if you have painted your models as Salamanders, your army must have the Salamanders keyword. If you have created your own unique colour scheme, then you may give them any keyword that you wish.

Seriously not a fan of color based WYSIWYG

I think that a problem may occur due to my suspicion that GW has currently based points off of an assumption of a 2000 point game. By lowering the army size but not lowering point costs that's going to handicap a lot of "elite" armies (I play mono GK and I know it will hurt my ability to be even somewhat competitive).

I prefer building for 2000 points, but there is no question that 1750 is cleaner and more effective for tournament play. I'd be very interested to see what ITC thinks of the change as Reece has mentioned that 2k is too high, but hasn't made any moves on his own to adjust the point values.