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Karol wrote:
The sesonal system is only good for two type of people. Those that got lucky and started playing a faction that GW always over buff or over nerf. Or if they have a gigantic collection already.

But it's still way better than waiting for the next edition. My hopes is that GW is actually starting to realize its much easier to push sales for multiple 1k armies ($300~$600) rather than a single large army ($700~$1000).

When you have a min-maxed army for a particular faction, what winds up happening is just as you describe - you wait until your army becomes OP again thru the OP codex cycle that typically begins towards end of an edition and into the next.

GW always comes up with the next big thing for your army, but what they fail to realize is that factions only have so many units of which only handful are viable/competitive/cool looking that people end up buying anyways.

Outside of hyper competitive players that swap out entire rosters, most people build their core 2k and have another 500~1500 worth of shiny new things on the side to swap out units as needed. Then they play the waiting game - for the next shiny thing and/or OP codex. Not many people own multiple 2k pt armies fpr the sake of playing the next hot faction because 2k army is a financial commitment not everyone is willing to partake multiple times.This means a typical 40k players' model purchases will be limited to about 3.5~4k pts.

In my experiences, 2k games always end up with single throwaway unit parked on each of your quadrants to grab objectives while providing whimsical ranged support, while you push rest of the army forward. They're typically one dimensional and reward playing statistics, and none for strategical placement of your units other than the secondaries like linebreaker. 2k games essentially boil down to this: How much of your enemy can you destroy by turn 3? How uneven can you make the battlefield with the first two turns? At the top of T4, the battlefield typically resembles a 1k pt game, but on a huge board where units with low M and low range are practically neglibile for the rest of the game if they werent yet in position.

Going back the main point, I've been playing alot of 1k games since nephilim and I have to say 1k is where strategic game play is most rewarded. Assault phase feels way more engaging (since fights can happen in T1 for ANY faction as deployment/dice rolls allow) and doesn't feel like you're just throwing away units (by virtue of having to footslog into fight by turn 3~4, i.e. berserkers ejected from dead rhino @T1), shooting is much more balanced out as 24" range is already sufficient as long as you control the center of the board, smaller unit count forces smarter plays from both parties, and smaller board allows most objectives (primary & secondaries) to be within reachable ranges where they can be achieved with reasonable effort during T1.

Also, a true TAC list is hard to come by at this bracket, forcing everyone to bring their take on a skew. This is then shaken up by the fact that critical massing & wombo comboing key units is that much harder due to point restrictions, limiting the skewness of the skew. Shorter games mean you can play more games trying out different tactics.

Oh, and the best part: PISTOLS MATTER.

Owning multiple 1k army FEELS much more feasible, even though at the end of the day, it still costs me just as much as a single large army. I already have a list of 5~6 1k armies I'd be interested in buying WITHOUT a OP codex driving the sale.

Jarms48 wrote:
New rumours of the MFM are definitely trying to push marines again. Apparently it’s 10-20% off points for nearly every unit.

So casting rumored values aside - if marines are doing poorly outside of faction specific units then they should probably get point decreases. Moreso if they're losing AoC, right?

Why would you consider this to be pushing marines instead of fixing marines?


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Leo_the_Rat wrote:
If/when GW does make these changes sometimes they go overboard and sometimes they don't do enough. Very rarely they get the change done right on the first try. It's in GW's interest to make armies/factions as balanced as possible so that people invest in all of the lines and, GW hopes, they invest in multiple lines.

One of the best way GW gets people invested in multiple lines is by putting out those ( relatively speaking ) dirt cheap starter boxes. I probably would never have owned as many primaris and necrons without the last one.

I support 1000 pt games. Half out of necessity, since I only have 2 Killteam boards and table space, but being selective in which units I bring means my lists can vary each game rather than stick to one formula.

I'm so happy to see the community starting to embrace 1,000 point games, and the associated tourney stuff.

The community is doing this for several years now
But because 1000 point tournaments are not official events or at the large cons, most people don't care

 Blndmage wrote:
I'm so happy to see the community starting to embrace 1,000 point games, and the associated tourney stuff.

 kodos wrote:
The community is doing this for several years now
But because 1000 point tournaments are not official events or at the large cons, most people don't care

I've always been an advocate for going back to 1.5k format, but 1k is even better than the old 1.5k games.

However, where 1k games truly shine is under nephilim ruleset with less starting CP.

In non-nephilim 2k games you can bring everything you want plus redundancies. Then you blow like 6~10 CP's in your opening turn wombo combo, and trades are more or less meaningless because they're not really trades but simply throwing away expendable units due to redundancies.

 kodos wrote:
The community is doing this for several years now
But because 1000 point tournaments are not official events or at the large cons, most people don't care

Why aren't they official events?
The GT books explicitly have half the book for 1,000 point games.

ask the TOs

I just know that in the wider area has 40k tournament series is splitted between an official ITC Masters series that has 2000 points game and another 1250 points series and playing one does not count for the other (mainly because they use different rules, like playing on same table size as 2k points etc)

for the local scene, the 1250 points not counting for the overall masters series was reason enough of not doing them at all, no matter that initial more players wanted the smaller games


things changed with Covid and by now as everything re-stared I don't know of any tournament that uses less than 2k points because local TOs focus on large few large events rather than many smaller ones and therefore only 2k is worth doing it

The issue with lower points from a serious/competitive stance is that you really exaggerate skew potential.

Tyel wrote:
The issue with lower points from a serious/competitive stance is that you really exaggerate skew potential.

Weirdly that's also the argument against playing higher pts games.....

ccs wrote:

Tyel wrote:
The issue with lower points from a serious/competitive stance is that you really exaggerate skew potential.

Weirdly that's also the argument against playing higher pts games.....

I disagree. I have played a lot of game sizes (in 40k from Combat Patrol to massive 2-days long, 8-player, 20.000pts affairs) and it's definitely the case, that the higher point limit, the better the balance. The most powerful abilities, instead of affecting (and deciding) entire battles, affect only a tiny portion of the battlefield, the same goes for absurdly improbable dice rolls. Most players' collections also limit how optimised a very large army can be fielded by them.

Indeed. There's 2 sides to this though.

Smaller games can be more vulnerable to skew, unless you do some work at the front end to mitigate.

When I played warmchine competitively, the 3 main points levels were 25, 35 and 50pts. Equivalent, maybe to 1000,1500 and, say 1850.

While wmh, in gwneral, was a game with a lot of 'silver bullets', At the lower levels it was magnified greatly as you just would not have enough stuff to.shut down something- (eg karchev jack/armour skew or goreshade with his free banes) that skew would shut you down - you'd need higher points levels to build in the ancilliary pieces to 'round out' your list.

That said, I've experienced something of the same the other way too.back in 4th ed 40k, the tau 'power' build was 3 hammerheads, kroot, ic-abusing hq suita plus other stuff. About 90% of the 'heavy lifting' was done by the hammerheads. And you'd max out at 3. At 1000pts, you had 'peak' efficiency. At any higher levels you were filling points with far-less-than-optimum options so your performance dropped off whilst everyone elses tended to get better.

This is not ro say that smaller games are 'less' fun. Or that larger games are 'less' fun either. Bit of front end work is needed in both imo

1k is fun when you aren't playing super competitive but as soon you turn up the heat it quickly devolves in rock paper scissors between the handful of players that decide to skew.

GW definitely uses rules design to manipulate sales, just not in the simplistic way angry wargamers tend to whine about. Some of these theories are so naive and tunnel visioned, it's almost endearing.

Well, that the game is skewed if you use the official tournament rules from GW, no matter which points

That lower points are worse because GW does even care less than for 2k is not the problem of lower points but not adjusting the rules

750-1000 point games work well since 3rd edition, or casual and competitive play, simple because no one used the event rules from GW for that size

 kodos wrote:
Well, that the game is skewed if you use the official tournament rules from GW, no matter which points

That lower points are worse because GW does even care less than for 2k is not the problem of lower points but not adjusting the rules

750-1000 point games work well since 3rd edition, or casual and competitive play, simple because no one used the event rules from GW for that size

Not really sure this is right for the reasons said. Skew is different from say points imbalance.

At around 1k points I can bring say a Tank Commander, 2 Leman Russ and 2 Rogal Dorn tanks. I don't think this is an especially overpowered combination - but if you have a balanced list of say 2-3 characters, 3 units of troops, and some more specialised stuff, its possible you can do very little to reliably hurt my tanks.

But equally, if you did put half your points into dedicated anti-tank, you are going to end up looking a bit hopeless against say an Ork list with 90~ Boyz or a GSC list with 120 neophytes etc.

Basically this is far more rock paper scissors than the higher points values, when the FOC and Rule of 3 etc start to lean on you.
Which is in turn why when we talk about 40k's issues, we talk about imbalances - i.e. this is too good for its points - rather than "Mech wall skews are broken", "Assault is too powerful" etc. There's almost always efficient and inefficient units of every type across the game.

 skchsan wrote:

Karol wrote:
The sesonal system is only good for two type of people. Those that got lucky and started playing a faction that GW always over buff or over nerf. Or if they have a gigantic collection already.

But it's still way better than waiting for the next edition. My hopes is that GW is actually starting to realize its much easier to push sales for multiple 1k armies ($300~$600) rather than a single large army ($700~$1000).

When you have a min-maxed army for a particular faction, what winds up happening is just as you describe - you wait until your army becomes OP again thru the OP codex cycle that typically begins towards end of an edition and into the next.


Outside of hyper competitive players that swap out entire rosters, most people build their core 2k and have another 500~1500 worth of shiny new things on the side to swap out units as needed. Then they play the waiting game - for the next shiny thing and/or OP codex. Not many people own multiple 2k pt armies fpr the sake of playing the next hot faction because 2k army is a financial commitment not everyone is willing to partake multiple times.This means a typical 40k players' model purchases will be limited to about 3.5~4k pts.



Going back the main point, I've been playing alot of 1k games since nephilim and I have to say 1k is where strategic game play is most rewarded. Assault phase feels way more engaging (since fights can happen in T1 for ANY faction as deployment/dice rolls allow) and doesn't feel like you're just throwing away units (by virtue of having to footslog into fight by turn 3~4, i.e. berserkers ejected from dead rhino @T1), shooting is much more balanced out as 24" range is already sufficient as long as you control the center of the board, smaller unit count forces smarter plays from both parties, and smaller board allows most objectives (primary & secondaries) to be within reachable ranges where they can be achieved with reasonable effort during T1.

But if your army is bad, you more or less have to wait for the next edition. There were multiple sesons in 9th. In which could a Imperial Fist player say, I had fun in this one? If someone started Mechanicus after they got nerfed in to the ground then no amount of reverting of nerfs helps, when the book is just going both against the updated core rules system, and has to play against armies which have both more power, and were clearly designed in mind with the new systems in mind.

GW always comes up with the next big thing for your army, but what they fail to realize is that factions only have so many units of which only handful are viable/competitive/cool looking that people end up buying anyways.

That depends on the faction. With GK, the army to play right now, is more or less the same army which was played out of the index in 8th ed. DA still play win armies. BA play their faction stuff as do the SW, and if they could not take anything of the new model lines, they wouldn't. And I don't think people fail to realise how the factions play or function. Maybe in the past it was like that. Now there is too many sites dedicated to w40k, to many tournaments, stats etc being run and someone that starts and want to play the game just gets stuff on a platter, they don't have to wonder how to make melee scouts or reavers viable in a marine list. The community of thousands , potentialy tens of thousands of people already did that for them, and the anwser is they do not work. Maybe it is a bit confusing for people that have to read about lists at the same time as people telling them to "play what they want", but I don't have it has much impact on younger player. People are too jaded to fall for stuff like that. And if they do, well I can feel for them, but GW games are the way they are.

In my experiences, 2k games always end up with single throwaway unit parked on each of your quadrants to grab objectives while providing whimsical ranged support, while you push rest of the army forward. They're typically one dimensional and reward playing statistics, and none for strategical placement of your units other than the secondaries like linebreaker. 2k games essentially boil down to this: How much of your enemy can you destroy by turn 3? How uneven can you make the battlefield with the first two turns? At the top of T4, the battlefield typically resembles a 1k pt game, but on a huge board where units with low M and low range are practically neglibile for the rest of the game if they werent yet in position.

For armies which are considered good, bar hard counters which often are not played, the "how much you can score/destroy" is anwsered with "enough for the opponent to be mathematicaly impossible to win on avarge". Plus because people are bad at reading stats and understanding what a 10% win rate, or more, really is, we get a situation where people think that something like 45% vs 53% win rate difference can be covered up by skill. And then they try to translate it to store games, which of course doesn't work.

Owning multiple 1k army FEELS much more feasible, even though at the end of the day, it still costs me just as much as a single large army. I already have a list of 5~6 1k armies I'd be interested in buying WITHOUT a OP codex driving the sale.

I do think that is what GW expects from their customers. And for a chunk of the player base it doesn't really matter. But go try to tell a 14y old that the entry for the game is not 2000pts, but rather 3-4 armies, potentialy for more then one system, just in case one turns sour. Yeah just invest 4-5k in to models, then paint them and then you can start playing for real. And , unless you are printing those models, you will achive the state in your late 20s, with considerable number of players never getting to moment when they can have fun with what they paid for. But I guess no one at GW cares what is going to happen in 20-25 years, when the current pillar of game the 30y olds hit pension age and the new blood is not coming in large enough numbers to support the game.

Also, a true TAC list is hard to come by at this bracket, forcing everyone to bring their take on a skew. This is then shaken up by the fact that critical massing & wombo comboing key units is that much harder due to point restrictions, limiting the skewness of the skew. Shorter games mean you can play more games trying out different tactics.

Oh, and the best part: PISTOLS MATTER.

I don't mind skew lists as long as each factions gets one, and there is more then 2-3 of them in the entire game. Because otherwise is creates tiers where playing specific armies just doesn't make sense at all. Smallers games are faster then big games, but they are not fun for people with elite armies. In general w40k scales bad up, but scales horribly down. Some armies come with preconsctructs where for the army to function batches of 1200 or even more points of models have to be build. At the same time other armies, always aggresivly costed, have absolutly no problem being played in smaller point games. Especialy when objectives scale for those armies favourable too. A two heroes and two units of terminators, is not as fun to play as an harlequin army or IG which spams kasarkin, and just cuts slots to play less then 2000pts.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel 808031 11472260 wrote:
Not really sure this is right for the reasons said. Skew is different from say points imbalance.

At around 1k points I can bring say a Tank Commander, 2 Leman Russ and 2 Rogal Dorn tanks. I don't think this is an especially overpowered combination - but if you have a balanced list of say 2-3 characters, 3 units of troops, and some more specialised stuff, its possible you can do very little to reliably hurt my tanks.

But equally, if you did put half your points into dedicated anti-tank, you are going to end up looking a bit hopeless against say an Ork list with 90~ Boyz or a GSC list with 120 neophytes etc.

Basically this is far more rock paper scissors than the higher points values, when the FOC and Rule of 3 etc start to lean on you.
Which is in turn why when we talk about 40k's issues, we talk about imbalances - i.e. this is too good for its points - rather than "Mech wall skews are broken", "Assault is too powerful" etc. There's almost always efficient and inefficient units of every type across the game.

A lot of marines and almost all elite armies are not going to have 3 units and specific stuff, on top 3 characters in 1000pts. Now there are hyper efficient armies with units that can do everything, melee, range, fast moving and objective grabing on top of that GW gave them cheap support units that work vs everything, often thanks to MW mechanics or upgraded damage ability. And the problems of armies like marines is that in low point games, which in todays world seem to be even 2000pts for some marine factions, they lose to everything. To melee armies, to shoting armies, to hordes, to armies that focus on taking objectives etc And especialy if someone tries to build something non tournament. To work in the setting we have right now marines would require either free transports, which would be devastating to the wallets of any new marine player, or the release of hyper efficient melee units, which are also fast. So primaris jet pack units, bikers squads bigger then 3 with sgts being able to take weapons for melee, heroes that can take packs or bikes, and who also hit above their points costs.

Karol wrote:
A lot of marines and almost all elite armies are not going to have 3 units and specific stuff, on top 3 characters in 1000pts. Now there are hyper efficient armies with units that can do everything, melee, range, fast moving and objective grabing on top of that GW gave them cheap support units that work vs everything, often thanks to MW mechanics or upgraded damage ability. And the problems of armies like marines is that in low point games, which in todays world seem to be even 2000pts for some marine factions, they lose to everything. To melee armies, to shoting armies, to hordes, to armies that focus on taking objectives etc And especialy if someone tries to build something non tournament. To work in the setting we have right now marines would require either free transports, which would be devastating to the wallets of any new marine player, or the release of hyper efficient melee units, which are also fast. So primaris jet pack units, bikers squads bigger then 3 with sgts being able to take weapons for melee, heroes that can take packs or bikes, and who also hit above their points costs.

Not sure I agree. Marines are clearly not great at the moment - but you can make a list for 1000 points with a mix of stuff.

For example you could take something like:
SM Captain
SM Lieutenant
2*5 Assault Intercessors
5 Intercessors
3 Aggressors
3 Eliminators
3 Suppressors
1 Gladiator Valiant

Is it very good? Probably not - because Marines aren't and I don't think this is even focussing on the better Marine stuff. But its a varied 1k points army with 2 characters, 3 troops units, a tank, a mix of shooting profiles and a bit of assault potential.

Why would you buy the list when a csm army will just automaticly win against you by virtue of of fight on death being a superior trait, to anything any marine army can have. Including the sub factions that are considered to be doing well. And it is not just one army, walk the dogs lists at 1000 same problem, epecialy if they take abadon who can just walk through 1000pts of marines on his own. Any fast moving army like tau, various eldar etc the list is never reaching melee, never really killing anything at range. And then there is tyranids, necrons, SoB etc It just turns in to a question of why did I spend X money on this models. And this isn't even a new question. Marines were bad through out most of 8th edition too. So if someone were like me and started to play back then, they are in their second edition of no fun. There are limits to how long someone can be okey with getting farmed by other players. On top of that the other faction players, those with good armies, who are having fun, are neither obligated to change doing what they like, nor will the probably want to, considering that they themselfs are having fun.

I had a chuckle at the Valiant. I had to check what that actualy is. thought that maybe it was that huge primaris super tank used form some unchargable tricks, but that brick costs hundrads of points.

Because once again, not everyone plays in competitive groups where min-maxing and net listing are the only way to play.
It's almost like this has been explained to you about a thousand times.

Yeah, I mean, not all CSM do the "fight on death" thing. Maybe the Loyalist Scum player gets lucky and the CSM player is playing Night Lords, and they can just laugh as the Night Lords Legion trait does basically nothing to their army.

Where is fight on death still a thing? I play EC and my noise marines, who used to have it, lost it a couple of updates ago.

Creations of Bile Legion trait (also adds +1 to movement and strength).

Cyel wrote:

ccs wrote:

Tyel wrote:
The issue with lower points from a serious/competitive stance is that you really exaggerate skew potential.

Weirdly that's also the argument against playing higher pts games.....

I disagree. I have played a lot of game sizes (in 40k from Combat Patrol to massive 2-days long, 8-player, 20.000pts affairs) and it's definitely the case, that the higher point limit, the better the balance. The most powerful abilities, instead of affecting (and deciding) entire battles, affect only a tiny portion of the battlefield, the same goes for absurdly improbable dice rolls. Most players' collections also limit how optimised a very large army can be fielded by them.

It doesn't matter if you disagree. It IS an argument that's been used against playing larger game sizes.

 Gert wrote:
Because once again, not everyone plays in competitive groups where min-maxing and net listing are the only way to play.
It's almost like this has been explained to you about a thousand times.

yes, the minority. Especialy if you count the number of people that stay playing the game. A CoB army will blow the marine player off the table, in melee, but other marine builds will do it too. The army is just writen better by GW.Taking a unit of terminators or possessed in a csm list doesn't require net listing either.
And it is not like some other armies that have one, often rare match up which is bad. Practicaly everything is a bad match up for a marine player. It says volumes about the book, that the way to play RG or SW is to not play RG or SW, but rather their successor.

ccs wrote:

Cyel wrote:

ccs wrote:

Tyel wrote:
The issue with lower points from a serious/competitive stance is that you really exaggerate skew potential.

Weirdly that's also the argument against playing higher pts games.....

I disagree. I have played a lot of game sizes (in 40k from Combat Patrol to massive 2-days long, 8-player, 20.000pts affairs) and it's definitely the case, that the higher point limit, the better the balance. The most powerful abilities, instead of affecting (and deciding) entire battles, affect only a tiny portion of the battlefield, the same goes for absurdly improbable dice rolls. Most players' collections also limit how optimised a very large army can be fielded by them.

It doesn't matter if you disagree. It IS an argument that's been used against playing larger game sizes.

It matters if the argument is flawed. You can make any argument you want, supported or unsupported by as many facts and opinions as you want, but the validity of the argument is what matters, not whether it was made or not. From my experience, and from seeing other attempts at smaller points value tournaments in various editions, there is a point where the size of the game becomes too small to be balanced because of the power level of certain units skewing the game. There's probably a debate to be had about where that break point is. Note this doesn't mean 2k is perfectly balanced, just that it's considered more balanced than 1k for competitive play.

Karol wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Because once again, not everyone plays in competitive groups where min-maxing and net listing are the only way to play.
It's almost like this has been explained to you about a thousand times.

yes, the minority. Especialy if you count the number of people that stay playing the game.

Once again, for the thousand and first time, you're wrong.

The vast majority of people playing 40k never attend tournaments, they don't follow the meta and they quite often buy bad units, even entire bad armies. In many cases they're oblivious to how bad these armies are, because they're playing against similar armies and like-minded people. Problems occur when they choose a truly terrible army, or come up against someone who is more in tune with the current meta. Mostly, this doesn't happen that often.

Slipspace wrote:
The vast majority of people playing 40k never attend tournaments, they don't follow the meta and they quite often buy bad units, even entire bad armies. In many cases they're oblivious to how bad these armies are, because they're playing against similar armies and like-minded people. Problems occur when they choose a truly terrible army, or come up against someone who is more in tune with the current meta. Mostly, this doesn't happen that often.

I think the major issue with casual groups is that some will be more into 40k than others. There's typically a gulf of skill between someone who plays a game of 40k once every 6 months, and otherwise doesn't think about it - and people who spend every other weekend playing and the rest of time following the competitive/professional meta via videos, forums etc. The first player gets smashed by the second - and then goes away thinking its all about the net lists. But really its that the second player is just a lot better and would have beaten them running anything.

When you look at a top list today, its usually not just "my maths is much better than your maths" (Flamers aside perhaps). Their strengths are usually in its functionality. You need to know how to use that to score and win the game - and deny your opponent doing the same.

If both players don't really know what they are doing, and are making loads of mistakes/suboptimal decisions, then I don't think the balance is that far out of whack. Certainly its better than most phases of previous editions have been.

Admittedly you can have a terrible army - but I feel its usually kind of contrived. "Here's my 30 Reivers" etc.

Karol wrote:
yes, the minority.

No. A thousand times no. Like not even close to reality. There are more people who just build and paint 40k models than play 40k competitively.
The Comp crowd, however, is very loud and very active on Facebook and Forums, which makes people think they are the dominant grouping of 40k hobbyists.
Threads on rules interactions or discussions about the game last longer because they are often contentious topics where people have lots of different opinions that they can argue about for weeks. That doesn't happen with people posting Bat Reps, models, or armies because it's a very binary interaction of "Here is my stuff" and "Cool". The same thing (generally) goes for background discussion where someone asks "What is Thing?" and people answer "This is Thing".
There is also a significant difference between playing a game and wanting to win it and playing the game with the intention of winning at all costs.

Also when it comes to discussions of balance its better to talk about the game at the top end of play where its being played as intended because it gives you a more finite style of play that can be repeated and tested and such.

So balance chat often revolves around the competitive end. The gains and losses then filter down into the other levels.


But yeah if you think that people only play 40K competitively or not at all then whilst that might be true at some local levels, it is far from the normal for the majority of GW's customers.

If GW really were being played that heavily at the competitive end only, GW would have had to have improved their rules writing decades ago to keep up.




Consider football. The vast amount of chat about football is often the competitive end; but for all those footballers paid vast fortunes to kick a ball around; the number of people playing football casually is VASTLY greater. Overwhelmingly vastly greater.

its so painfully obvious that 98% of the "1k is worse than 2k" party never actually played 1k incursion games. What you're forgetting in your couch crusade theroycrafting are board size, terrain density and deployment zones.

Remember that 1k games are played on 30x44. In theory, its half the battle field versus 2k strike forces' 44x60. However in practice, it feels more like 1/3 once the terrain has been set up because terrain density doesn't decrease linearly as the board (you don't just half the number of terrain compared to strikeforce). The terrain density ends up being a bit denser than typical strike force set up. In some missions, deployment area is so small that your entire army is set up base-to-base.

In incursion:
1. Getting trapped in your own deployment zone is a real thing and an actual threat. The "sit back and shoot away" strategy doesn't work in incursion. You don't have enough guns to fully prevent your opponents from playing objectives. You NEED to play the map and actively contest objectives.
2. There is no target priority - EVERYTHING is a threat and EVERYTHING is in range in a single movement phase. If you aren't playing smart, you can lose a significant portion of your army and/or get so far behind in points that it's impossible to win.
3. There is a limit to specialization. There is no such thing as impenetrable fodder wall nor is there unstoppable force due to inability to critical mass them. Skews on paper NEVER work out as you planned in an incursion game because probability curve can't normalize under smaller sample size.

I implore you to just try setting up an army according to incursion missions and you'll immediately see how different the game becomes.

Whatever seems OP on paper/codex isn't as overpowered in smaller games. OP units only truly become OP once you've applied all available force multipliers and wombo combo the crap out of them.

If you really want an ACTUAL example of OP, that would be some BS shenanigans like GK termi wound juggling of the old. Some thing is OP when there is a systematic issue with how the game is played with a certain unit, not when a unit just happens to be super cost effective.

IG horde army was systematically broken at the start of 8th ed by the virtue of abusing the fall back rule and dirty cheap throwaway fodder that made it impossible to have your own shooting phase. Now THAT'S OP

 skchsan wrote:
Remember that 1k games are played on 30x44. In theory, its half the battle field versus 2k strike forces' 44x60.

I had a few good chuckles while reading this "1k vs 2k" chapter, right until this sentence. 1k on 30x44... Holy crap, time to feel old .