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Dudeface wrote:
Why do you care?

Because this is a thread for discussing the subject. If you don't want to participate in that discussion then stop reading and stop posting. We don't need you to tell us that the discussion is pointless.

Andykp wrote:
Totally bonkers. But chats with folk like hecaton make me realise how things like Q-anon take hold.

JNAP, you gonna tell him to shut the feth up or are we allowed to respond in kind?

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Also, from a design standpoint, Power level is EMBARASSING to even talk about. If I were a game designer, I'd NEVER want to have my name behind it.

Can you elaborate?

As a game designer, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Well, look at the questions I asked before to begin with in this thread.

The very simple premise is: is a Plasma Pistol better than a Laspistol, yes or no?
If the answer is yes, should they cost the same?
The replies were "I don't care" or "it doesnt have an effect, so no". PL avoids the entire premise weapons are not equal for all situations, and sometime just outright upgrades rather than sidegrades. Telling the players to self regulate is bad and lazy design, period, when it comes from the designers. It's a whole other can of worms coming from players themselves, which incidentally proves the CAAC player is a thing.

It also ignores the fact that some people DO have very optimized squads to begin with, sometimes just BECAUSE they look cooler. I met a guy before that had a Sternguard squad with 2 Grav Cannons and 8 Combi-Plasma, simply because Plasma and lasers cool coming out of a drop pod. In a system like PL, it's about the same cost as my Sternguard squad with just the Grav Cannons.

THAT is embarrassing to try to defend from a design standpoint, period.

You merely can't grasp the concept of people not worrying about such things to begin with. That's all there is to it. And that is not meant as an insult, it's just an observation - many people are like that, including some members of my own game group.

If I put a morkanaut in my army, it doesn't matter whether I'm using points or PL, the balance be will equally bad.
It doesn't matter though, because I knew I wasn't going to have balanced game the second I decided to run a morkanaut.
The reason why I decide to run a morkanaut was not related to any rules at all, especially not to its point costs. The sole reason for running it is "big robot smash".

As for your example with the plasma/grav sternguard - there is no reason to believe that paying 220 or 260 points for them is more balanced than paying 12 PL (=240 points). They seem like overcosted garbage either way.
I'd argue bringing sternguard at all will upset the balance of your game more than a PL game's point level being off by <10%.

Since you like to call BS on numbers, I'll explain how I got that 10%. From the campaign I was running, I have access to all the lists played which are a total of 37 armies drawn from 10 different factions.
When you calculate the points, most of them are 10-20% over the point limit that would correspond to the game size (so 1100-1200 points for incursion), on average the "more expensive" army had 6.3% extra points over their opponent. There is no clear correlation between that difference and who won/got tabled/got more agendas done.
The one outlier from that rule was a space wolves player - he had up to 18.1% points over his opponents (you'll probably guess why), but lost every single one of his three games and then dropped. I'll go on a limp and say that unit of decked out wolf guard isn't actually balanced at 500 points.

And yes, the whole point of PL is to be lazy. Building a list with PL can be done within a few seconds by just filling a patrol detachment with the correct battle roles from your case. No tools or tech required, you don't even need pen and paper. If a player doesn't show up and you need to change lists to accommodate for that, it can be done within seconds.
For the vast majority of people, building a list with points requires battlescribe and at least half an hour of fiddling with options to get as close as possible to the points limit without going over. Some people even take hours. Even if you are mathematical genius who has already memorized all the points of their army, your opponent most likely is not, and a group of people definitely are not.
Anyone who claims otherwise is arguing in bad faith, full stop.

If you want to have the best possible armies facing against each other in match of skill in a game that is as balanced as possible(matched play, tempest of war, GT season packs), points are the right tool for the job.
If you are not running the best possible armies and units to begin with, the extra granularity of points is just unnecessary bloat that adds nothing to the game.

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I'm not sure what effort you think goes into PL? It's pretty much unit cost/20?

Nah. If I want to run a Big Mek in Mega-Armor with a Tellyport Blasta, that's 95 points. But I pay 6 PL for him (+25 points over, effectively). Kustom Jobs are always a minimum of +1 PL, even if they only cost 10 points. The stat increases your Waaagh!Boss gets as an Ork in Crusade cost 1 power rating *each* for +1 strength or wounds; that's basically never worth it, so you've got this section of the crusade rules you just don't use.

Meanwhile if I bust out my Harlequins I can get a 130 point Voidweaver for 5 PL, or 6 Harlequins Players w/ 2 Fusion blasters and 2 Neuro Disruptors (normally a total of 128 points) for 4 PL. So there's no fairness between factions, and some of them are just punished super hard by the PL system.

So you're saying they don't put effort into PL?

Dudeface wrote:
So you're saying they don't put effort into PL?

They do put effort into it, because they write the crusade rules around them. But the balance is really, really bad. You can put a lot of effort into something and still fail.

 Jidmah wrote:
Building a list with PL can be done within a few seconds by just filling a patrol detachment with the correct battle roles from your case.

Sure, if you want a random pile of units with no coherent strategy and no narrative you can do that. It will be more than a few seconds because you'll have to flip through the book to get all of the numbers but I will concede that in this one bizarre and highly undesirable scenario PL may save you a minute or two of time. But it will still be slower than me pulling out one of my pre-made lists and handing it to my opponent while I get out the appropriate models.

For the vast majority of people, building a list with points requires battlescribe and at least half an hour of fiddling with options to get as close as possible to the points limit without going over.

I am highly skeptical of that. I can make a list in the normal point system in maybe 5-10 minutes max. Will it be perfect? No, but it's not like you're doing any list optimization with your PL lists.

And you're again ignoring the fact that the majority of the time it takes to build a list is choosing which units will go in that list (for narrative or strategic reasons), the actual totaling up of the point costs (whether PL or normal points) takes very little time in comparison. So even if PL takes half the time to add up the points you're still barely saving any time on the process as a whole.

Dudeface wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I'm not sure what effort you think goes into PL? It's pretty much unit cost/20?

Nah. If I want to run a Big Mek in Mega-Armor with a Tellyport Blasta, that's 95 points. But I pay 6 PL for him (+25 points over, effectively). Kustom Jobs are always a minimum of +1 PL, even if they only cost 10 points. The stat increases your Waaagh!Boss gets as an Ork in Crusade cost 1 power rating *each* for +1 strength or wounds; that's basically never worth it, so you've got this section of the crusade rules you just don't use.

Meanwhile if I bust out my Harlequins I can get a 130 point Voidweaver for 5 PL, or 6 Harlequins Players w/ 2 Fusion blasters and 2 Neuro Disruptors (normally a total of 128 points) for 4 PL. So there's no fairness between factions, and some of them are just punished super hard by the PL system.

So you're saying they don't put effort into PL?

I'd argue the issue here is GW not putting effort into the ork codex. Their crusade rules are busted beyond repair and points don't change thing about that.

 Jidmah wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I'm not sure what effort you think goes into PL? It's pretty much unit cost/20?

Nah. If I want to run a Big Mek in Mega-Armor with a Tellyport Blasta, that's 95 points. But I pay 6 PL for him (+25 points over, effectively). Kustom Jobs are always a minimum of +1 PL, even if they only cost 10 points. The stat increases your Waaagh!Boss gets as an Ork in Crusade cost 1 power rating *each* for +1 strength or wounds; that's basically never worth it, so you've got this section of the crusade rules you just don't use.

Meanwhile if I bust out my Harlequins I can get a 130 point Voidweaver for 5 PL, or 6 Harlequins Players w/ 2 Fusion blasters and 2 Neuro Disruptors (normally a total of 128 points) for 4 PL. So there's no fairness between factions, and some of them are just punished super hard by the PL system.

So you're saying they don't put effort into PL?

I'd argue the issue here is GW not putting effort into the ork codex. Their crusade rules are busted beyond repair and points don't change thing about that.

Hecaton is misrepresenting their argument. Initily it was that they'd like PL removed as GW devotes too much effort to it and would prefer better points balance using said effort.

I feel like we've shown their application of PL is actually very effort light and frankly lazy, so its not that which is the issue. Instead it sound slide Hecaton would prefer points based crusade, as that would allow circumvention of PL to lead to more balanced games and options (which may not be the point of crusade imo).

But yes the ork book has some real issues, but I fele like the actual problem, if there is one, with PL isn't being well communicated.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
So you're saying they don't put effort into PL?

They do put effort into it, because they write the crusade rules around them. But the balance is really, really bad. You can put a lot of effort into something and still fail.

As per my above, are you actually advocating for point based crusade rather than a removal of PL?

Dudeface wrote:
I feel like we've shown their application of PL is actually very effort light and frankly lazy, so its not that which is the issue. Instead it sound slide Hecaton would prefer points based crusade, as that would allow circumvention of PL to lead to more balanced games and options (which may not be the point of crusade imo).

Your feelings are wrong, you have not shown that.

Dudeface wrote:
But yes the ork book has some real issues, but I fele like the actual problem, if there is one, with PL isn't being well communicated.

It's that it's less balanced than points. In my mind, the purpose of a points system (like points or PL) is to help game balance. PL is worse at that than points.

Dudeface wrote:


As per my above, are you actually advocating for point based crusade rather than a removal of PL?

I'd love to see both. PL makes my narrative games worse.

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I feel like we've shown their application of PL is actually very effort light and frankly lazy, so its not that which is the issue. Instead it sound slide Hecaton would prefer points based crusade, as that would allow circumvention of PL to lead to more balanced games and options (which may not be the point of crusade imo).

Your feelings are wrong, you have not shown that.

Dudeface wrote:
But yes the ork book has some real issues, but I fele like the actual problem, if there is one, with PL isn't being well communicated.

It's that it's less balanced than points. In my mind, the purpose of a points system (like points or PL) is to help game balance. PL is worse at that than points.

Dudeface wrote:


As per my above, are you actually advocating for point based crusade rather than a removal of PL?

I'd love to see both. PL makes my narrative games worse.

It makes your games worse because of the lazy application of the PL formula and the low effort application of PL against some crusade upgrades. It's a low effort solution to a low effort problem. I wouldn't advocate its removal but I'd question you really look at what crusade is meant to be and consider if it's the right thing for you if you want balance over narrative.

Of course I'd be willing to champion for point or PL in crusade, but that's actually more effort than doing one or the other. I'd also wager that giving points in crusade would take more time and energy away from balancing the game than using PL.

Dudeface wrote:
It makes your games worse because of the lazy application of the PL formula and the low effort application of PL against some crusade upgrades.

Those lazy applications create exponentially more work for the people who try to fix them. Like I said, it'd be much better if we stuck to points.

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
It makes your games worse because of the lazy application of the PL formula and the low effort application of PL against some crusade upgrades.

Those lazy applications create exponentially more work for the people who try to fix them. Like I said, it'd be much better if we stuck to points.

That's fine but you're back into subjective opinion and we've reached the logical conclusion of it all.

No further debate needed, you prefer points and don't like PL because you play crusade and it doesn't use points, you feel points would allow for a better balanced game in crusade because people won't abuse things and upgrades might be more equally viable etc

Dudeface wrote:
That's fine but you're back into subjective opinion and we've reached the logical conclusion of it all.

The examples I posted upthread were not particularly subjective.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Building a list with PL can be done within a few seconds by just filling a patrol detachment with the correct battle roles from your case.

Sure, if you want a random pile of units with no coherent strategy and no narrative you can do that. It will be more than a few seconds because you'll have to flip through the book to get all of the numbers

You just outed yourself as never having played a single game with PL
PL are published in a one-page table, just like points. For crusade, you even put them on your crusade roster, so you can build the list by dropping datasheets on the table until you meet the limit.
And it's perfectly possible to create a coherent army with both a strategy and narrative from that, it's even easier than doing so with points.

Essentially all your arguments are based on you not actually having any experience with PL and making baseless assumptions about how it could work.

but I will concede that in this one bizarre and highly undesirable scenario PL may save you a minute or two of time. But it will still be slower than me pulling out one of my pre-made lists and handing it to my opponent while I get out the appropriate models.

PL lists can be premade as well, making your point null and void. The thing is, you don't have to, plus you aren't suddenly unable to play because you can't adapt to a 2vs1 game because there is an odd number of players present. Your list also becomes worthless immediately if you packed the wrong heavy weapon dudes, forgot a unit at home or if faced with a board or mission that doesn't allow your army to function as intended.

For the vast majority of people, building a list with points requires battlescribe and at least half an hour of fiddling with options to get as close as possible to the points limit without going over.

I am highly skeptical of that. I can make a list in the normal point system in maybe 5-10 minutes max. Will it be perfect? No, but it's not like you're doing any list optimization with your PL lists.

You can. I can, too. Most people cannot. Which means you are sitting on your ass, twiddling your thumbs, staring at a piece of terrain of your choice, while your opponent tries to build and army on a phone that has the same size as the communicator your infiltrator sergeant is holding.

And you're again ignoring the fact that the majority of the time it takes to build a list is choosing which units will go in that list (for narrative or strategic reasons), the actual totaling up of the point costs (whether PL or normal points) takes very little time in comparison. So even if PL takes half the time to add up the points you're still barely saving any time on the process as a whole.

I'm ignoring that fact, because it's not a fact. It's an assumption that you have yet to prove, and assumption which I have observed to be absolutely false.
The majority of time spent on building list with points is either cutting down the army down to the points level, or adding meaningless upgrades everywhere so you aren't 40 points under the limit because your army's cheapest unit is 80.

For PL, essentially works like a game of black jack. You start with your mandatory units (usually HQs and troops) and then check if you have reached the PL. If you didn't, add another unit that fits in, which absolutely is allowed to be a unit that fits your narrative and/or strategy. Still not over the point limit? Add another one. Just 1-2 PL left? Add a cheap filler unit of buy army-specific upgrades. If applicable, buy relics and traits. Done.
It literally was faster to me to type that down than to update battlescribe data.

Example:
Mandatory units:
Lord Of Virulence 6
5 Plague Marines 6
38 PL left, I need anti-tank and ranged firepower
2 MBH 14
Hellbrute 7
17 left. I want a tallyman to buff the helbrute and a big squad of plague marines as back-up in case the helbrute implodes
Tallyman 4
10 plague marines 12
1 left. I buy the re-roll pathogen for the LoV's gun for 1 PL.
50 PL used
Relic for tallyman, Sons of Mortarion plague for LoV.

Tada, coherent army list ready to go. If I hadn't forgotten the costs of a helbrute, I wouldn't even have to open the PL list to build it.

I still use points regularly and think they absolutely do have a place. PL definitely has weakness, but few of those are actually talked about in this thread. But if you think that points are all-upside and that there is no advantage to PL, you are objectively wrong.

 Jidmah wrote:
PL are published in a one-page table, just like points.

That's funny, because in this very thread PL advocates have been talking about how great it is that the point costs are on the datasheet instead of in a table at the back of the book like the normal points.

And it's perfectly possible to create a coherent army with both a strategy and narrative from that, it's even easier than doing so with points.

Sorry, but there is no way you're making a coherent list in "a few seconds" as you claimed. You might be able to add up some point costs that fast but that means zero time spent on actually thinking about which units you want to take (whether for strategic or narrative reasons).

You can. I can, too. Most people cannot.

I have no idea why. It's basic math and the costs are all right there in the table. And once you've played the game a few times you have a pretty good idea of what your standard units are.

The majority of time spent on building list with points is either cutting down the army down to the points level, or adding meaningless upgrades everywhere so you aren't 40 points under the limit because your army's cheapest unit is 80.

40 points is one Sentinel, list is done. Or you just play with 40 points un-spent because the goal is apparently to get a list on the table as fast as possible, not to optimize your choices.

And the same thing happens with PL. My cheapest unit in PL is 2 points, and the few 2 point units are mostly niche support characters that have no real reason to exist. Realistically my cheapest unit is 3 points, so being at 49/50 points means screwing around with a bunch of unit swaps to try to find something that fits (and isn't just throwing in a pointless master of ordnance with no artillery to buff).

For PL, essentially works like a game of black jack. You start with your mandatory units (usually HQs and troops) and then check if you have reached the PL. If you didn't, add another unit that fits in, which absolutely is allowed to be a unit that fits your narrative and/or strategy. Still not over the point limit? Add another one.

You do realize that's the exact same process you use with normal points, right?

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:


As per my above, are you actually advocating for point based crusade rather than a removal of PL?

I'd love to see both. PL makes my narrative games worse.

Just anecdotal - when evaluating crusade, we did a short campaign of 4 games using points and just changed all the rules with 1PL=20 points.

The biggest issue with that was that unit costs tend to not be pretty numbers, so when drawing an army from the crusade roster people often found themselves short by a lot of points without being able to add anything else - you can't just add or remove upgrades to accommodate for that like you would in a single game format. Especially elite armies were hit hard by that because often HQ+2 units would add up to 435 or something and there just was nothing in their crusade rooster they could add.

So in the context of crusade, switching to points definitely causes just as many problems as it solves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
PL are published in a one-page table, just like points.

That's funny, because in this very thread PL advocates have been talking about how great it is that the point costs are on the datasheet instead of in a table at the back of the book like the normal points.

Points are in the back of the book? Yeah, right, you're lucky if that is true when you rip the shrink-wrap off your pre-ordered codex
Are you sure you should be ranting about the balance of the two system when you don't even know how to find the proper numbers?

I'm not going to bother to respond to the rest of your post because it's just you being willfully obtuse about obvious things or denying things that have been proven to you. My point has been made.

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
That's fine but you're back into subjective opinion and we've reached the logical conclusion of it all.

The examples I posted upthread were not particularly subjective.

They're just examples where pl =/= points precisely. Your feelings on that are subjective and this is why these thread self perpetuates.

Nobodies opinions are facts and you don't have to argue for them either for or against.

It literally was faster to me to type that down than to update battlescribe data.

Okey, I really don't get this part. People don't remember what their unit load outs cost, so they need PL to make it easier. And they lose their army lists over and over again? I mean I do get that some books can build more, then one build per army or even rarer a subfaction, but even with 2 builds you just print out the two lists, and then use it till a CA points update or new codex comes. Which is one time per edition for one and on the most unopitmal once per quarter for the other.

So I have been watching this and trying to pick a side (so far I am in camp "live and let live" which is where I started, but it has been interesting in the way that watching a trainwreck is interesting...).

All I have learned is that the introduction of PL was a bad decision, not because PL itself is bad but because GW has apparently divorced the community into very hostile camps.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
So I have been watching this and trying to pick a side (so far I am in camp "live and let live" which is where I started, but it has been interesting in the way that watching a trainwreck is interesting...).

All I have learned is that the introduction of PL was a bad decision, not because PL itself is bad but because GW has apparently divorced the community into very hostile camps.

I find it fascinating, it's not down to GW, it's just humans being humans. When people lost the ability to just go "yeah I don't like it but whatever, do what you like" is a mystery. But either you're for or against PL as a base concept and the other 'side' shat in your cereal and have threatened your nan seemingly.

What we need now is a PL turf war, anchorman style, where people turn up with codex and batter each other in a back alley over it. My creeping suspicion is that one 'side' probably don't own any though.

Well because all the time that goes in to GW thinking about PL is taken away from other stuff GW could be using.

If I don't paint any models, because my army is done, then what do I care if GW puts a huge design focus on new paints. Now someone who paints constantly can say that GW puts not enough time in to their paint range. There is nothing benefiting me, the person who doesn't need paints, from GW making new ones. And , as I said before, in the PL vs points case, PL are indicative of many design choice people who use points do not like. The whole only load outs in the box are legal, in the numbers we put in to the single box, that is PL thinking about the game. And people don't like it. The more it gets accepted the more PL the game becomes, and the worse it becomes for people who don't want to use the points.

"the time gw puts into thinking about PL" is probably equal to the time it takes me to type

=ROUND((POINTS!A1/20),0) into excel

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Good balance benefits everyone. If two players brought the same exact units to play the same exact army against each other, except one guy has that Sternguard squad with all that Plasma and I don't, that's an immediate disadvantage. Those armies are NOT equal, yes or no?

If two players brought the same units to play the same exact army against each other the game has already failed. And failed pretty hard. Play chess if you want something like that. Or 30k.

And see how you PL defenders avoid questions entirely? Instead of answering the question you gave the same lazy response of "gO pLaY cHeSs"

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Good balance benefits everyone. If two players brought the same exact units to play the same exact army against each other, except one guy has that Sternguard squad with all that Plasma and I don't, that's an immediate disadvantage. Those armies are NOT equal, yes or no?

If two players brought the same units to play the same exact army against each other the game has already failed. And failed pretty hard. Play chess if you want something like that. Or 30k.

And see how you PL defenders avoid questions entirely? Instead of answering the question you gave the same lazy response of "gO pLaY cHeSs"

I answered you, where's my response?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"the time gw puts into thinking about PL" is probably equal to the time it takes me to type

=ROUND((POINTS!A1/20),0) into excel

Apparently that's adequate to make a massive difference to their points balancing.

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Good balance benefits everyone. If two players brought the same exact units to play the same exact army against each other, except one guy has that Sternguard squad with all that Plasma and I don't, that's an immediate disadvantage. Those armies are NOT equal, yes or no?

If two players brought the same units to play the same exact army against each other the game has already failed. And failed pretty hard. Play chess if you want something like that. Or 30k.

And see how you PL defenders avoid questions entirely? Instead of answering the question you gave the same lazy response of "gO pLaY cHeSs"

I answered you, where's my response?

You.....really didnt. You said something about unemployment and gave the lazy answer of "I don't care".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Also, from a design standpoint, Power level is EMBARASSING to even talk about. If I were a game designer, I'd NEVER want to have my name behind it.

Can you elaborate?

As a game designer, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Well, look at the questions I asked before to begin with in this thread.

The very simple premise is: is a Plasma Pistol better than a Laspistol, yes or no?
If the answer is yes, should they cost the same?
The replies were "I don't care" or "it doesnt have an effect, so no". PL avoids the entire premise weapons are not equal for all situations, and sometime just outright upgrades rather than sidegrades. Telling the players to self regulate is bad and lazy design, period, when it comes from the designers. It's a whole other can of worms coming from players themselves, which incidentally proves the CAAC player is a thing.

It also ignores the fact that some people DO have very optimized squads to begin with, sometimes just BECAUSE they look cooler. I met a guy before that had a Sternguard squad with 2 Grav Cannons and 8 Combi-Plasma, simply because Plasma and lasers cool coming out of a drop pod. In a system like PL, it's about the same cost as my Sternguard squad with just the Grav Cannons.

THAT is embarrassing to try to defend from a design standpoint, period.

You merely can't grasp the concept of people not worrying about such things to begin with. That's all there is to it. And that is not meant as an insult, it's just an observation - many people are like that, including some members of my own game group.

If I put a morkanaut in my army, it doesn't matter whether I'm using points or PL, the balance be will equally bad.
It doesn't matter though, because I knew I wasn't going to have balanced game the second I decided to run a morkanaut.
The reason why I decide to run a morkanaut was not related to any rules at all, especially not to its point costs. The sole reason for running it is "big robot smash".

As for your example with the plasma/grav sternguard - there is no reason to believe that paying 220 or 260 points for them is more balanced than paying 12 PL (=240 points). They seem like overcosted garbage either way.
I'd argue bringing sternguard at all will upset the balance of your game more than a PL game's point level being off by <10%.

Since you like to call BS on numbers, I'll explain how I got that 10%. From the campaign I was running, I have access to all the lists played which are a total of 37 armies drawn from 10 different factions.
When you calculate the points, most of them are 10-20% over the point limit that would correspond to the game size (so 1100-1200 points for incursion), on average the "more expensive" army had 6.3% extra points over their opponent. There is no clear correlation between that difference and who won/got tabled/got more agendas done.
The one outlier from that rule was a space wolves player - he had up to 18.1% points over his opponents (you'll probably guess why), but lost every single one of his three games and then dropped. I'll go on a limp and say that unit of decked out wolf guard isn't actually balanced at 500 points.

And yes, the whole point of PL is to be lazy. Building a list with PL can be done within a few seconds by just filling a patrol detachment with the correct battle roles from your case. No tools or tech required, you don't even need pen and paper. If a player doesn't show up and you need to change lists to accommodate for that, it can be done within seconds.
For the vast majority of people, building a list with points requires battlescribe and at least half an hour of fiddling with options to get as close as possible to the points limit without going over. Some people even take hours. Even if you are mathematical genius who has already memorized all the points of their army, your opponent most likely is not, and a group of people definitely are not.
Anyone who claims otherwise is arguing in bad faith, full stop.

If you want to have the best possible armies facing against each other in match of skill in a game that is as balanced as possible(matched play, tempest of war, GT season packs), points are the right tool for the job.
If you are not running the best possible armies and units to begin with, the extra granularity of points is just unnecessary bloat that adds nothing to the game.

Your TLDR is points aren't perfect, therefore PL okay. Thats a lazy excuse to defend it as well.

Also 10% difference is a LOT.

My biggest problem with PL is the points are MUCH LOWER meaning 1pt up or down has huge changes and no granularity at all compare to higher value of points. If a 5 man unit if 3PL but 60pts or 12ppm if you think the unit is too costly go down 1pt now that unit is 50pts, if you lower the PL down 1pt on average that unit dropped 20pts. It will never have precision balance attempts.

I'd rather it bc X points for X models and then X gear is also X points. Instead of each model costing, so 5mans will always be bought in 5mans (this does suck if you want less than 10) 3mans bought in 3's etc... So 5man unit for 60pts, if there is too costly then make the unit 55pts or 50pts for 5.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Good balance benefits everyone. If two players brought the same exact units to play the same exact army against each other, except one guy has that Sternguard squad with all that Plasma and I don't, that's an immediate disadvantage. Those armies are NOT equal, yes or no?

If two players brought the same units to play the same exact army against each other the game has already failed. And failed pretty hard. Play chess if you want something like that. Or 30k.

And see how you PL defenders avoid questions entirely? Instead of answering the question you gave the same lazy response of "gO pLaY cHeSs"

I answered you, where's my response?

You.....really didnt. You said something about unemployment and gave the lazy answer of "I don't care".

Quality journalistic integrity. I didn't say I don't care, I asked why you care if you don't use PL.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
My biggest problem with PL is the points are MUCH LOWER meaning 1pt up or down has huge changes and no granularity at all compare to higher value of points. If a 5 man unit if 3PL but 60pts or 12ppm if you think the unit is too costly go down 1pt now that unit is 50pts, if you lower the PL down 1pt on average that unit dropped 20pts. It will never have precision balance attempts.

I'd rather it bc X points for X models and then X gear is also X points. Instead of each model costing, so 5mans will always be bought in 5mans (this does suck if you want less than 10) 3mans bought in 3's etc... So 5man unit for 60pts, if there is too costly then make the unit 55pts or 50pts for 5.

Honestly that's pretty much how sigmar does it and I'm all for that, I'd even embrace the reinforcements caps on game size.

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Good balance benefits everyone. If two players brought the same exact units to play the same exact army against each other, except one guy has that Sternguard squad with all that Plasma and I don't, that's an immediate disadvantage. Those armies are NOT equal, yes or no?

If two players brought the same units to play the same exact army against each other the game has already failed. And failed pretty hard. Play chess if you want something like that. Or 30k.

And see how you PL defenders avoid questions entirely? Instead of answering the question you gave the same lazy response of "gO pLaY cHeSs"

I answered you, where's my response?

You.....really didnt. You said something about unemployment and gave the lazy answer of "I don't care".

Quality journalistic integrity. I didn't say I don't care, I asked why you care if you don't use PL.

I care about the quality of the game itself. If I went to introduce the game to someone new and PL was the only option, I'd be embarrassed with the game. Self regulation =/= quality, especially when people have different definitions of "run what you think is cool instead of meta". Hell, we have a thread going on if someones friend should run Magnus at 1000 points. If balance were important this would be an issue and the friend can run what they think looks cool instead of negotiating what they're allowed to run AND thinks looks cool.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Good balance benefits everyone. If two players brought the same exact units to play the same exact army against each other, except one guy has that Sternguard squad with all that Plasma and I don't, that's an immediate disadvantage. Those armies are NOT equal, yes or no?

If two players brought the same units to play the same exact army against each other the game has already failed. And failed pretty hard. Play chess if you want something like that. Or 30k.

And see how you PL defenders avoid questions entirely? Instead of answering the question you gave the same lazy response of "gO pLaY cHeSs"

I answered you, where's my response?

You.....really didnt. You said something about unemployment and gave the lazy answer of "I don't care".

Quality journalistic integrity. I didn't say I don't care, I asked why you care if you don't use PL.

I care about the quality of the game itself. If I went to introduce the game to someone new and PL was the only option, I'd be embarrassed with the game. Self regulation =/= quality, especially when people have different definitions of "run what you think is cool instead of meta". Hell, we have a thread going on if someones friend should run Magnus at 1000 points. If balance were important this would be an issue and the friend can run what they think looks cool instead of negotiating what they're allowed to run AND thinks looks cool.

And that thread is using points. The OP of that thread is playing "1,000 Point" games, not 50 PL.

Balance in 40k is atrocious-this applies whether you use points or PL.

I 100% agree that GW should get their crap together and make the game better balanced-but PL isn't what's stopping that from happening.

But what's a real worked example of a unit which was "too expensive" at 60 points, but would be "fine" at 55? What's the example of an underperforming faction that was suddenly saved by such a change?

I think its reasonable to say imbalance is a macro problem - and ultimately 5 points here and there isn't going to change an OP/UP faction - who is almost certainly out of whack by a far greater amount than this.