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I want to know which point size you like to play the most.

My favourite sizes are 1000 and 1500 points. Both allow you to bring an expensive centerpiece unit without crippling your army, but at the same time you can't just take everything you want to. My experience here is that you don't have to be afraid of getting mangled too hard or get your vital unit shot off the table in the first round.

500 points feel too limited in scope and can be very unbalanced, even without intention. It is good to introduce new players, though.

2000 points I don't like as it feels you are required to have redundancy in your list. The time it takes to play a game is way longer here as well. I'd rather play 2x 1000p games on a day than a single 2000p one.
Depending on the table size you use (let's go with the suggested minimum size), the battlefield is crowded without much room for maneuvering.

Let's hear what point size you found to be most enjoyable and why

2k works for me well enough. Well, moreover for the people I play with....
My goal is to play with more of my models, not less. So as the pts shrink so does my enjoyment. Especially if I'm playing a game of armies & not something skirmish based like Necromunda.

And whatever the pts, smaller boards greatly detract from my enjoyment of this game.
Things didn't get any slower.
Ranges didn't decrease.
No reason to be closer together.

2000 is and always has been the most fun to me.

With 9th edition actually having missions for 1k points I've found that level also to be much more enjoyable than it used to be, 500 just doesn't work for some armies.

1500 gives you a good full army while having to make some tough choices. Tough choices make for interesting lists.

 Lance845 wrote:
1500 gives you a good full army while having to make some tough choices. Tough choices make for interesting lists.

Exactly the same for me.

More than 2K, yes it takes longer but it feels the most realistic

1500 to 2000. really 1500 or 1750.
The game feels nonfunctional at 500; is easily cheesed at 1000 and an utter slog over 2000.

2000

What's the point in buying and painting all of these toys if you can't play with them?

I'll give GW props that they've really allowed players to play everything from Kill Team to Apocalypse in size well. No right or wrong size to play, whatever makes the game fun for the person.

I like weird points levels - 850, 1250 - things like that.

But mainly 1000 or 2000.

 Lance845 wrote:
1500 gives you a good full army while having to make some tough choices. Tough choices make for interesting lists.

I think the word you were looking for in there was me.

And no, "tough choices" don't make for interesting lists. They most often result in highly predictable cookie cutter lists because most people won't spend those precious pts on anything but the most optimal stuff.

ccs wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
1500 gives you a good full army while having to make some tough choices. Tough choices make for interesting lists.

I think the word you were looking for in there was me.

And no, "tough choices" don't make for interesting lists. They most often result in highly predictable cookie cutter lists because most people won't spend those precious pts on anything but the most optimal stuff.

No I meant you. Me too, but also you. And no, at 2k I get to bring all the toys for the cookie cutter. At 1500 I need to trim the fat so to speak and there are not clear places to do so. It does force more interesting choices.

I mostly play at 2000 points but I love huge games. I always make at least a 3000 point army for every army I own.

I prefer 1,000-1,250 points. Anything more than that just takes too long and encourages spamming the best units.

ccs wrote:
I think the word you were looking for in there was me.

Careful now, lest you get caught out having fun the wrong way.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I like weird points levels - 850, 1250 - things like that.

But mainly 1000 or 2000.

I actually ask my opponent to come up with some weird points level like 1937 points. Unfortunately, too few players want completely random numbers. It's a little better in Age of Sigmar where the game could largely divide the points by ten and not change anything.

***

I always lean toward the smallest possible amount of points that the game still works decently at. I generally don't mind 1000 or 1250, but understand that 1500 typically a little more workable for every faction/army/etc. I don't mind 2000 points, though; I generally find I am having to pad my army out with extra stuff after about 1750-1850. I think that's why when I played a reduced points (10-15% less points than my opponent) Primaris army with the 8th ed C:SM 2.0, it usually didn't affect me that much since I was just not bringing the fat I didn't have much of a plan for anyways. I suppose it could be argued the codex was still that good, but I would like to think at least some of it was my Primaris army was the CSM army I always wanted sans terminators so I was a lot better at using it than I probably should have been since I had been struggling with a Abbadon-less, no daemon anything, Chaos Undivided Black Legion army up until then.

I always dislike the 'tough choices' argument because it seems made by armies that don't have 50PPM troop units.

Custodes can massively skew and crush armies in the 100-1000 point range. They can compete in the meta in the 2k range. They have a really hard firggen time in the inbetween, traditionally. Maybe now that Patrols aren't so punishing to use it's different.

 Lance845 wrote:
1500 gives you a good full army while having to make some tough choices. Tough choices make for interesting lists.

Thoroughly agree. List building at 2k let’s you bring pretty much multiples of everything. The game is more tactical at 1500 you have to deploy wiser and protect the right stuff, and the game seems more suited to it now on the smaller boards.

At 2K to 2250 or so, you can easily have a little of everything, with primary roles, secondary roles, and overlap, then watch how the units interact with each other.

The point number is somewhat ambiguous. As they fluctuate their point sizes, people will fluctuate their ideal points size. In the past I've seen it be 1500, 1850, 2K and 2250 etc. There are usually some "sweet spots" - thresholds where all the armies seem to be able/likely to hit as they continue to build.

I wouldn't be surprised with the points hike from CA2020 and new codexes if the ideal points size changes again this edition to find that new sweetspot that gives everyone what will feel like a "full" army.

For my two armies, orks and DG, 1500 is no fun - you have to bring all the mandatory choices with no space for random things I just want to bring for fun, like a naut or a pile of DG characters.

 Jidmah wrote:
For my two armies, orks and DG, 1500 is no fun - you have to bring all the mandatory choices with no space for random things I just want to bring for fun, like a naut or a pile of DG characters.

Not true, it's just your personal opinion as you probably like to play with large armies. Orks are amazing at 1500 points, which is my favorite format in all the editions I played. Only nauts or Ghaz may be too pricey for 1500 points games, and yet both can still be played, anything else fits perfectly. 1000-1250 are also interesting formats for orks, they benefit a lot for playing smaller games. In 3rd-5th 2000 points game were really huge games.

Unfortunately here everyone sticks to whatever internet says is the standard format, so no chance of playing any different than 2000 points games for me unless it's some sort of event or a game against a noob.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 buddha wrote:
2000

What's the point in buying and painting all of these toys if you can't play with them?

What about people who own thousand of points of models, not just barely 2000? Should they play apocalypse all the time?

Played new 2000 and 2250. Old tables don't work that well with new 2000pts, at least for me, 2250 aren't that much better either, but at least they let people use all their armies from 8th.

So probably something in the middle of those two. Would be my theoretical best.

I really enjoy 1000-1500pt games. I don’t know why, but for me it feels more interesting than 2k. It kinda makes units that are typically meh in bigger games feel more useful and cool. A dreadnaught is suddenly a centrepiece, a squad of troops kills a portion of the enemy army that feels more impactful, etc.

 Jidmah wrote:
For my two armies, orks and DG, 1500 is no fun - you have to bring all the mandatory choices with no space for random things I just want to bring for fun, like a naut or a pile of DG characters.

What do you define as the mandatory choices? I'd wager you're referring to an optimised competitive core, in which case that's just one style of play and even then mandatory might be a stretch.

1.5k feels like right size for me on the new table size of 44x60. Its a good compromise between army size, possible choice of units, and game length.

Dudeface wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
For my two armies, orks and DG, 1500 is no fun - you have to bring all the mandatory choices with no space for random things I just want to bring for fun, like a naut or a pile of DG characters.

What do you define as the mandatory choices? I'd wager you're referring to an optimised competitive core, in which case that's just one style of play and even then mandatory might be a stretch.

2 HQs 3 troops, anti-tank, anti-horde and anti-primaris. The basic stuff you need to not just lose games before they start.

For DG this would be, from the top of my head:

Daemon Prince of Nurgle 200
LoC 120

7 Plague Marines 156
7 Plague Marines 156
20 Poxwalker 140

3 MBH 300

2 PBC 320

Total: 1392, with barely enough room to fit two cheap support characters if you drop some special weapons on the marines or one expensive character like the blightspawn or a caster. Boring.
An optimized competitive core around daemon troops would probably be much cheaper.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blackie wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
For my two armies, orks and DG, 1500 is no fun - you have to bring all the mandatory choices with no space for random things I just want to bring for fun, like a naut or a pile of DG characters.

Not true, it's just your personal opinion as you probably like to play with large armies. Orks are amazing at 1500 points, which is my favorite format in all the editions I played. Only nauts or Ghaz may be too pricey for 1500 points games, and yet both can still be played, anything else fits perfectly. 1000-1250 are also interesting formats for orks, they benefit a lot for playing smaller games. In 3rd-5th 2000 points game were really huge games.

1000 is a good format due to having different missions tailored for the smaller armies. At 1500 you have to play 2k missions which stretch your army thin because you need to be on all those objectives all over the table. Meanwhile, the point level is high enough for some armies to bring all their toyz, so you have to bring all the answers. 1500 just combines the worst of 1000 and 2000 due to not being an official format.

Oh, and an opinion on what is fun can't be "not true".

1500 is the sweet spot for me. Like others I find that it forces more decisions in the list building phase. Don't play in a power gamer "meta" at all though.

Also should be noted that I have only played 9th edition against myself a couple of times.

 Jidmah wrote:


Oh, and an opinion on what is fun can't be "not true".

Of course, it's just that your previous post didn't really sound like an opinion even if what you said was clearly subjective. There are no mandatory choices in orks lists for example, not even in competitive 2000 points games which is proven by the multiple different winning lists we had so far, so the 1500 points format already has plenty of room for anything you want really.

 Blackie wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:


Oh, and an opinion on what is fun can't be "not true".

Of course, it's just that your previous post didn't really sound like an opinion even if what you said was clearly subjective. There are no mandatory choices in orks lists for example, not even in competitive 2000 points games which is proven by the multiple different winning lists we had so far, so the 1500 points format already has plenty of room for anything you want really.

See here:

 Jidmah wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

What do you define as the mandatory choices? I'd wager you're referring to an optimised competitive core, in which case that's just one style of play and even then mandatory might be a stretch.

2 HQs 3 troops, anti-tank, anti-horde and anti-primaris. The basic stuff you need to not just lose games before they start.

"Mandatory" does not refer to specific units, but to general roles you need to fill in list.

Orks don't get around that either and boyz are extremely expensive as foot sloggers and still fairly expensive as trukk boyz - compared infantry squads, eldar rangers or intercessors/tacs. On top of that, orks usually need to spend more points on units because you need to account for them dying like flies.

You're thinking with 2000 points games in mind. In smaller formats a single Patrol or even Outrider/Spearhead is fine most of the times, even for orks. And you also don't need to fill every role, the Goffs greentide for example is a competitive built but it has very little anti tank.

But even considering the archetypes for 2000 points battallions: Ghaz + 90 boyz is 1050 points, 3 units of trukk boyz is only 465. 1500 is high enough to fit any type of list, even skew spam lists like Goffs greentides or buggies based lists.

It's the elite oriented armies, including SM, that have their efficiency reduced by playing smaller games. They suffer much more than orks from having to cut 3-5 units from their 2000 points list.

1500 points is what I considered the standard due to starting in 5th edition so I always feel that it's a bit of a sweet spot in terms of balancing armies with some tough choices internally as the points limit doesn't allow you to take an all comers list like you can in 2k games.

That being said, I like 2k games as it allows for that flexibility and as such, I prefer 2k games in 9th edition.