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Reaching into my hazy/rose-coloured memory banks, I recall that 2nd Edition Grand Tournaments were 1500 points. Marines could only be bought in squads of ten, and a ten-man squad cost 300 points plus the upgrades. GW Veteran's Nights at stores were at the 1000 point level. So you generally had two to three squads of marines along with characters and maybe a vehicle or two. My 1997 Canadian Grand Tournament list was a Captain with Jump Pack, a Librarian, a Techmarine, a Devastator Squad, an Assault Squad, a Predator and a Rhino. Pretty low model density compared to today. For comparison, Imperial Guard squads costed 100 points for a squad of ten (sounds about right for 8th ed... A Leman Russ, though, came in around 200 points.

3rd Edition basically halved the cost of most troops. They've gone up and down since then but there are still roughly half what they were in 2nd Ed. At the same time, points have crept up. It seems that we are happy with this. We don't want to leave out any of our favourite toys.

I went to a 1250 tournament last year and it was great fun. No Lords of War were allowed. Games were fairly fast. Its a good format for single day tournaments.

I have felt that between 8 and 20 units with most forces consisting of 10-14 on average being a pretty good compromise of a bunch of factors in pretty much every miniatures game I have played. Fewer than that and the players don't have much to work with and are often heavily at the mercy of luck. More than that and the game gets bogged down with too much going on, things being forgotten and units are often tripping over each other. The number of units becomes doubly important if the game uses an activation system other than IGOUGO since there are a lot of exploits that are often the nature of alternating/random unit activation.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Reaching into my hazy/rose-coloured memory banks, I recall that 2nd Edition Grand Tournaments were 1500 points. Marines could only be bought in squads of ten, and a ten-man squad cost 300 points plus the upgrades. GW Veteran's Nights at stores were at the 1000 point level. So you generally had two to three squads of marines along with characters and maybe a vehicle or two. My 1997 Canadian Grand Tournament list was a Captain with Jump Pack, a Librarian, a Techmarine, a Devastator Squad, an Assault Squad, a Predator and a Rhino. Pretty low model density compared to today. For comparison, Imperial Guard squads costed 100 points for a squad of ten (sounds about right for 8th ed... A Leman Russ, though, came in around 200 points.

3rd Edition basically halved the cost of most troops. They've gone up and down since then but there are still roughly half what they were in 2nd Ed. At the same time, points have crept up. It seems that we are happy with this. We don't want to leave out any of our favourite toys.

I went to a 1250 tournament last year and it was great fun. No Lords of War were allowed. Games were fairly fast. Its a good format for single day tournaments.

This is correct but they did add combat squads in white Dwarf specifically for "Lunchhammer" 500 point games during 2nd edition.

I preferred that size from.2nd or early 3rd when 40k was still a company level game. It was the best size for it.
A couple of squads, maybe a dreadnought or a transport and a single tank.

The size Bolt Action is IMHO is perfect for 40k. Not surprising as it's written by Rick Priestly and seems heavily based on his original 3rd edition rules.

Double post

Blastaar wrote:
I wouldn't call Apocalypse "unplayable." it may not be a good format, but if people enjoy it, let them.

Have you ever played Apocalypse? The logistical issues of having that many models on the table make it an exercise in masochism where even a "successful" game is lucky to see 2-3 turns as an all-day event. And at no point do you get any meaningful strategy or narrative, you just roll dice until you finally get tired of rolling dice and everyone goes home. So yeah, I stand by my claim that Apolcaypse is unplayable.

I think Apocalypse is more of a spectacle than a game.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
I have felt that between 8 and 20 units with most forces consisting of 10-14 on average being a pretty good compromise of a bunch of factors in pretty much every miniatures game I have played. Fewer than that and the players don't have much to work with and are often heavily at the mercy of luck. More than that and the game gets bogged down with too much going on, things being forgotten and units are often tripping over each other. The number of units becomes doubly important if the game uses an activation system other than IGOUGO since there are a lot of exploits that are often the nature of alternating/random unit activation.

Yeah, I like that size range. Too few units luck seems way too important and the tablespace too unused, I tried GorkaMorka and couldn't get into that. I guess it was like 7-10 units, but they died crazy fast if they ever left the trukk, so didn't feel like it. Same for old WHFB editions too. Wait, I still have to buy 100+ models, but I'm only pushing 4-6 units around the table? Felt like if I wanted a 5-10 unit skirmish I'd play Battletech or nowadays one of the many newer skirmish systems.

There's a few solutions to your issue:
Play smaller games
Add 10p to each model
Play KILLTEAM!!!!!
Play an older edition
Play some other game


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lolman1c wrote:

ccs wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:
Problem I find is, at my place, the weekly community games are 2k points and there is nothing I can do to stop that. So I either cut down my games to friendly games I play maybe once or twice a month or I bring buckets full of orks every week and continue with the masses. XD

There's nothing forcing you to play with buckets of orks.
If you wanted to I'm sure you could make a non-hoard list. Or at least a much lesser sized hoard....

That would require buying more models to make up the points... something I don't want to do as my army was fine for ages.

Anyway, as mentioned I have this problem with marines as well. I had a perfectly good 2k point army but it was reduced to about 1700 in the last CA. Now, if I want to continue to play at the stores nights, I'd have to go out and buy more models. This is something I refuse to do as it would mean GW gets what they want! Old players buying more models...

THIS is what your whining is about! You want GW to change the points so you don't have to buy new models. You want the company to change the game so you don't have to buy more of their models.
If you "refuse" to buy more models -because childish-, then just play older editions or fewer points. If you can't find anyone to play against you and your army that you refuse to upgrade/change/expand, then you have to put your models on the shelf and hope that the next edition will fit your exact list so you can play again.

I said from the start this move to 2k was bad, but people pushed for it so they could have everything at once. Even GW tournaments are below that level.

 SHUPPET wrote:
I said from the start this move to 2k was bad, but people pushed for it so they could have everything at once. Even GW tournaments are below that level.

This I agree with. GW's grand tournaments are 1750, that should be the standard, but ITC made it 2000 and keep it 2000 because that's what "the people want" despite the fact if they changed it to 1750 everyone would go along with it anyways and 1750 would become the new standard.

2000 is just IMHO too big for most games, it's just people want to have their cake and eat it too.

Wayniac wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
I said from the start this move to 2k was bad, but people pushed for it so they could have everything at once. Even GW tournaments are below that level.

This I agree with. GW's grand tournaments are 1750, that should be the standard, but ITC made it 2000 and keep it 2000 because that's what "the people want" despite the fact if they changed it to 1750 everyone would go along with it anyways and 1750 would become the new standard.

2000 is just IMHO too big for most games, it's just people want to have their cake and eat it too.

What makes it too big? Do the games take too long?
As a Custodes player I do not want smaller games. My team can't function all that amazingly on lower points. However, with DG it doesn't even matter. If I were a vivid tournament goer I would probably advocate for lower points as well. It's more fun to play more rounds rather than LONG rounds.

I mean if the castellan is supposedly priced correctly everything in the game needs points drop (except guardsmen)

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'd prefer more granularity with the points, but I'm okay with the size of the games. People can complain about super heavy units all they want, but the truth is most of them aren't actually good. It's like getting mad at the Troop slot in 7th because Windriders exist.

It's all about unit balance, internal and external.

You are right to an extent, but point costing super heavies into standard sized games does cause a lot of problems with scale. For them to feel like superheavies they tend to be fairly durable. This causes other vehicles to die quickly as people prepare to be able to kill knights etc. This causes transports to go away. One of the large issues (other than maybe formation based free vehicles) is that transports have largely gone away for most armies. This results in 2 things.

1.) More other models, if you are not paying x points for transports you pay those same points for 5+ more models instead.

2.) Games feeling longer due to more models - in say 5e I faced plenty of IG armies with 80-100 bodies, but many were mounted up in vehicles, which means, turns go faster, as you are largely moving one model instead of 10.

SO to an extent it is about unit balance, but some units should be balanced in a manner such that they are unplayable at lower levels of points. They can be worth their points, but would take up half your force to put on the field, and so may not be practical.

Just play 1750 points with no TITANICS. 40k works fine at that scale. Knights literally shape the meta singlehandedly because it means lists no longer can take any multi wound models that don't have a 3++ and must include some way of killing a 3++ Castellan in a single blow.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
(Though I should add you can model your Epic Ork bases with more infantry on so you would in fact have more troops even if they were tiny... My dream of relaunching epic includes having a lot more variety in base sizes and basing - a combat squad of 5 marines, a base of 10 guardsmen, a base of 15-20 orks - and stat things on that basis, making some troops feel a lot stronger...

I'd love to have knight-sized bases with five orks on them with a single stat block... but that would basically make infantry swarms, completing the cycle of making vehicles, walkers and monsters as common as infantry, after making gargantuan and titanic models as common as vehicles.

In my opinion, my death guard have about as many models as a 2000 point army should have, and I'm running nothing but squads of 16 pt marines, 120+ point vehicles and monsters and a 470 points lord of war with some characters sprinkled in.

For my orks, I can barely fit 4000 points of them on my dining table, let alone a deployment zone.

 Jidmah wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
(Though I should add you can model your Epic Ork bases with more infantry on so you would in fact have more troops even if they were tiny... My dream of relaunching epic includes having a lot more variety in base sizes and basing - a combat squad of 5 marines, a base of 10 guardsmen, a base of 15-20 orks - and stat things on that basis, making some troops feel a lot stronger...

I'd love to have knight-sized bases with five orks on them with a single stat block... but that would basically make infantry swarms, completing the cycle of making vehicles, walkers and monsters as common as infantry, after making gargantuan and titanic models as common as vehicles.

In my opinion, my death guard have about as many models as a 2000 point army should have, and I'm running nothing but squads of 16 pt marines, 120+ point vehicles and monsters and a 470 points lord of war with some characters sprinkled in.

For my orks, I can barely fit 4000 points of them on my dining table, let alone a deployment zone.

With the scale up of the game I would be down for blocks of infantry, maybe not 5 Orks to a knight base, I could see 5 Boyz on a slightly smaller base than that and Nobs on the knight base etc, then just give each base of infantry a statblock So if you did 5 boyz something like

WS 3+ BS 5+, S4, T4, W5, A10 etc. For 35 pts. If you then had multi-wound weapons effect these blocks the same way as they do vehicles it would go a long way to balancing out cheap single wound models vs multiple wound infantry and vehicles.

Breng77 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'd prefer more granularity with the points, but I'm okay with the size of the games. People can complain about super heavy units all they want, but the truth is most of them aren't actually good. It's like getting mad at the Troop slot in 7th because Windriders exist.

It's all about unit balance, internal and external.

You are right to an extent, but point costing super heavies into standard sized games does cause a lot of problems with scale. For them to feel like superheavies they tend to be fairly durable. This causes other vehicles to die quickly as people prepare to be able to kill knights etc. This causes transports to go away. One of the large issues (other than maybe formation based free vehicles) is that transports have largely gone away for most armies. This results in 2 things.

1.) More other models, if you are not paying x points for transports you pay those same points for 5+ more models instead.

2.) Games feeling longer due to more models - in say 5e I faced plenty of IG armies with 80-100 bodies, but many were mounted up in vehicles, which means, turns go faster, as you are largely moving one model instead of 10.

SO to an extent it is about unit balance, but some units should be balanced in a manner such that they are unplayable at lower levels of points. They can be worth their points, but would take up half your force to put on the field, and so may not be practical.

There's entire armies unplayable at low points, or at any points in general already.

The issue with Transports right now is how they're priced. Rhinos, for example, literally doubled in points and, while more durable, suffer the issue of not transporting anything good AND lost their fire points.
The only good transports I'd argue are the Dark Eldar ones and whatever the Clowns use because they're fast, somewhat durable for the price, don't take up so many points that you lose offense on anything embarked, and since they're open topped...that isn't an actual issue.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'd prefer more granularity with the points, but I'm okay with the size of the games. People can complain about super heavy units all they want, but the truth is most of them aren't actually good. It's like getting mad at the Troop slot in 7th because Windriders exist.

It's all about unit balance, internal and external.

You are right to an extent, but point costing super heavies into standard sized games does cause a lot of problems with scale. For them to feel like superheavies they tend to be fairly durable. This causes other vehicles to die quickly as people prepare to be able to kill knights etc. This causes transports to go away. One of the large issues (other than maybe formation based free vehicles) is that transports have largely gone away for most armies. This results in 2 things.

1.) More other models, if you are not paying x points for transports you pay those same points for 5+ more models instead.

2.) Games feeling longer due to more models - in say 5e I faced plenty of IG armies with 80-100 bodies, but many were mounted up in vehicles, which means, turns go faster, as you are largely moving one model instead of 10.

SO to an extent it is about unit balance, but some units should be balanced in a manner such that they are unplayable at lower levels of points. They can be worth their points, but would take up half your force to put on the field, and so may not be practical.

There's entire armies unplayable at low points, or at any points in general already.

The issue with Transports right now is how they're priced. Rhinos, for example, literally doubled in points and, while more durable, suffer the issue of not transporting anything good AND lost their fire points.
The only good transports I'd argue are the Dark Eldar ones and whatever the Clowns use because they're fast, somewhat durable for the price, don't take up so many points that you lose offense on anything embarked, and since they're open topped...that isn't an actual issue.

That is part of the issue with transports, but a larger one is that if someone is kitted out to destroy knights they die like paper. Further by low points I mean like 2k points. IMO super heavies should be borderline prohibitively expensive at 2k to make other vehicles more viable at a reasonable point cost. I think adding them to the standard playsize was a mistake from the beginning. Alternatively, you could do as suggested above and eliminate "infantry" as being individual models (beyond the more elite troops.) That would help with balance across the board. TO balance things like Rhinos as is they would need to cost basically the same as maybe 2 marines or less. Which is stupid cheap for their durability, etc. Superheavies also hurt other vehicles like Dreads etc. If you are kitted out to destroy 20 wounds with a 3++ save, Dreads just evaporate.

Playing Custodes I am HIGHLY resistant to using less points, to say the least. My basic battalion would be over 1/3 of my army at 1,500. My 'standard' dakkadread costs 271. A unit of 3 Jetbikes is 270. A Jetbike HQ is 160.

So yeah, 2,000 please.

As to the actual poll, I think there's just enough.

As many have said, the easiest fix is to stop playing 2K points. 1500-1750 should be the norm and would "feel" more like prior editions' 2000pts. It would also help with timing for tourneys.

This is NOT something GW can fix, however. Aside from adjusting the Rule-of-3 and detachment limits for lower points games, nothing GW has suggested gives any indication of intended games size.
2000pts is just a nice round number and players keep using it.

It's only the players, us, that can change this norm. Unfortunately, it is very unlikely to happen. Players want to bring all their toys, and having to cut out 250-500pts from a list that you've played for years, adding more as you go along, is a very hard pill to swallow.
Even if we could all agree that 1500-1750 is a better points level, when it comes to actually do that, you also have to convince your opponent to go that low as well.

Which you could do, but unless that opponent then adopts that as the norm, they'll likely go back to 2000pts for the next opponent. The only way we stop using 2000pts as the norm is if we all stop using 2000pts. It's not going to happen, so we have to accept it.

-

People keep saying lower points is the solution. I'm really not sure that is the case, it will have some effect, but IME people are far more likely to cut expensive elite units and toys with dropping points than they are large amounts of models.

Screens are powerful in this game and as long as they are model count will remain on the higher side. Cheap single wound models are the height of durability in 8th. You really need to fix how superheavy models effect durability of high wound count models, and make multiple wound models more desirable.

The bigger issue than knights being a thing is how much infantry you are required to bring for your army to actually work.

In 5th you only needed to bring two units of troops, for orks those could be truck boyz, or a unit of bikers, a deff dread, nobz or manz shifted to troops. You were not forced to field 30 boyz, 20 were just as efficient.

My battlewagon army back then had 32 (20+12) boyz at 2000 points, the kan wall which was "bringing more bodies than bullets" was running 80 boyz at 1500. Both were highly competitive armies at that time.

In 8th despite almost every single non-character unit I own being more expensive than in 5th (including boyz) I field way more models than I did when I started playing - simply because the codex design forces me to play 6 units of troops to gather CP either 10 gretchin or 30 boyz.

CP farming through troops, three troops minimum in battalions, horde unit bonuses and the lack of more elite units in the troops role have done much more for unit count bloat than the wannabe-titans. Bubble-wrapping and hordes aren't exactly new, when I started playing IG players would bring one or two blobs of 40 fearless guardsmen to every game, the loyal 32 are a joke in comparison. Heck, I sometimes brought more lootas than that.

One of the things I love about 40k is how many models are in a typical army. I also love how the different armies have different numbers of models typically, for example Custodes and their small number of very tough dudes vs. Orks and their endless green hordes of screamin' Boyz (WAAAAGH!). I enjoy tournament games because 2000 points lets me put plenty of models on the table but it's not like Apoc where I need a massive case to transport my army.

Of course, if you complain about needing too many models, my recommendation is to play Imperial Knights!