It’s partly for balance, but honestly I think it’s just the business model.
If 2000pts of Space Marines were just two or three infantry squads, a dreadnought, and two characters, then there’s no real reason for you to keep buying a bunch more. So now that’s only a little bigger than a Combat Patrol, and you gotta buy lots more squads and vehicles and stuff to play a full game.
Yes, but the unfortunate thing is that this was balanced before by how the game handled horde armies as compared to elite armies. If you had a bunch of cash to burn, you could play a horde army and field a massive 2000 point list. But, if you were more budget conscious, you could play an elite army like Custodes and still play an effective army even though it was many, many, many times smaller than that horde army.
The line between elite and horde has been blurring for a long time, especially with 10th, and while I'm sure it's for monetary reasons, I think it also makes the game worse.
3rd Edition Black Book List Nid Player here, this game has NEVER EVER been balanced.
I used to LOS screen my Carnifex and Hive Tyrant (2nd Ed models, mind you) behind ranks of termagants, hormogants, and genestealers so that they couldn't be shot and just matched forward. Back in the day each model blocked up to twice it's height or something like that. At least that was how it was taught to me.
I'd still get wiped out from time to time, but when the Carnifex and the Hive Tyrant hit the marine squads it was epic slaughter.
Nowadays the release cycle is too fast for my limited time to build, let alone paint. An entire editions has gone by since I started trying to get back into playing.
Haha I’ve been playing since 3rd edition, back then I played the khorne berserkers party bus and let me tell you. The game was in fact broken and way different than today. Berserkers had to take a rage roll, so you could sometimes double move in a turn. Lmao once those units of berserkers hit the enemy lines the game would end by me just meleeing over and over again. Lol vehicle armor used to be different as well, get kharn behind a tank and he would pop that no problem lol.
My brother rolled Khorne Bezerkers too. By the time he finished his army I had figured out how to kite his raging units with chaff units.
Vehicle rules were so different! A Carnifex with strength 10 would routinely knock out every vehicle it touched. Even land raiders were 4 to glance and 5+ to pen, and being a monstrous creature I think I was rolling 2d6+S. That threat was so scary to my blood angle buddy that he'd throw his whole army at the Carnifex while I wheeled the rest of the swarm into his flank!
Hahaha good on you!! All the older dudes that played at the local Gamesworkshop in grapevine early 2000s were not kiting at all. Lmao they would stack their gun lines and I would pounce. I never had the joy of getting dismembered by tyranids back then. It was a lot of space marine, csm, and necrons. The csm and space marine players would have full thematic and well painted armies. Half the shop played fantasy too! It was some good times for sure, I still have some old codex’s that are wild to go back and read!
In third edition the tyrannids had the special rule”shoot the big ones” where the blocking line of sight by smaller tyranids does not apply, but I agree with your first point. This game was never balanced. I think it is now the most balanced it ever was.
> Nowadays the release cycle is too fast for my limited time to build, let alone paint. An entire editions has gone by since I started trying to get back into playing.
The instability of the rules and three year edition cycle is at least part of the reason I've branched out into other game systems.
I'll still play 40K if my friends want to, of course, but I don't actively seek out games of it the way I used to.
It worked like that for everyone except Tyranids. The "Shoot the Big Ones" rule explicitly stopped Tyranids from blocking line of sight precisely because that's what everyone would do otherwise.
3rd edition early tau adapter here and can attest, 40k has never been balanced and 2k has been the standard for game size at many points in the past.
Also stopped playing years back (7th edition) cause the meta started moving at a breakneck speed and I could never keep up. I've been happy painting and spending time making the army I want and then playing an odd few games a year, usually OPR as the rule set is just better at this point IMO.
That being said, I know plenty of people in the hoddy that really don't enjoy the painting and modeling portion and just want an endless wave of meta shift and power list gaming but that scene is in my rear view mirror.
Idk, end of 9th was fairly good. And even dud units could be made to work in a casual setting.
And going off stats 10th is also fairly balanced, but it's a crap shoot for if your books got good internal diversity (tau, crons) or like 1 dull list (custodes, admech)
Thats one of the things pushing me more and more towards 30k. Full dread army? Why not. Don't want to run 20 man squads of basic troops for objective capping? Use Pride of the Legion and make Veterans and Termies your main troops. Plenty of other options to go between horde and elite army, and many of them give extra flair to the army. Heck, you can run almost Leman Russ - only list for imperialis militia.
Whilst you can certainly build an army of all Dreadnoughts in 30k, you're likely to have trouble finding an opponent as that would be very much considered a faux-pas. 30k is somewhat self-regulating when it comes to army lists due to pretty wild balancing.
You can do those things in 10th, I have a full 13 dread list for space wolves and an armored list for AM that is 8 Russ tanks of several types, a baneblade and a couple engineseers for repairs. Having a themed army in 10th is very easy.
Yeah sorry my brain is still in 8th/9th because I kinda tuned out in 10th. But what I like most in HH is that you can tailor your army towards your choices, not just pop 10 dreads in a list. Rites of war are just fun (and their equivalent for guard/mechanicum/auxilla/demons etc). And I miss gear having point costs and units not having fixed sizes.
I think 10th has to be the worst offender. It feels like there is no distinction, and flavor and identity are slowly eroding. I don't mind some streamlining of mechanics, but there's definitely problems: Codex rules being replicated in various forms across armies, some units sharing statlines/abilities/weapon profiles across armies but being wildly different in price...
The detachment format is cool and simple but it has created its own problems: detachments dictate synergies and army comp, if the rules are bad/bland/unfun especially by comparison to the datasheets in the codex you have the issue of no one wanting to utilize that detachment outside of maybe a few one off pick up games. Whereas other detachments then become full of utilization due to their more engaging or synergistic rules... ( HCL & CC compared to OP and AL for Necrons, or NMV compared to the rest of the Custodes codex..). If they keep doing detachments, I hope they focus on making them feel more robust and flavourful than some of the Codexes this edition. Right now, they feel very simple, I'd love it if Detachments buffed the entire set of datasheets very minorly but then gave specific keywords & units heightened effects and buffs. It is somewhat like that now, but it is more 1 dimensional, like either being a minor army wide buff with a condition or a keyword buff. Like AL would benefit from buffing the movement of Necron units across the board while Destroyer Cult units keep the charge bonuses.
Custodes would've been done better using the existing shield hosts of old and dictating additional Martial Ka'tah, depending on which one you chose. With units a seeing specific form of support from a given shield host but the entire army benefiting from a new Ka'tah to utilize when fighting.
I hope we see good things with the Chaos Codex and the AoI Codex later this spring. Not repeats of the Admech/Custodes releases.
Coming back to the comment above:: the weight being shifted towards codex detachments and less individual abilities on sheets means a codex and the detachments within derive the identity. If the rules are bad, bland, or copy-paste they army loses flavourful and identity. Especially if, like say, similar to Admech: they continue to decrease points to compensate for rough rules and inadvertently turn the army into a Horde army
Games Workshop is a model company first. And so, in some ways, I see the business incentive to sell bigger armies.
I also tend to think that games are too complicated and time consuming with with so many models on the board. The barrier to entry is quite high by the time you buy, build, paint, learn the rules, lug your models somewhere or build a board to play on. There's so much going on before any dice get thrown. Making the game more accessible should help grow the player base, and improve the experience for existing players.
If games were a bit smaller, I'd still spend the same, I'd just have more armies to play.
If business incentives are incentivising you to undercut the quality of your own products (by designing the game in a way that some people think isn't as good) that is a problem.
AoS model count is way less, so it's not a GW thing. It's a 40k thing.
This actually has resulted in exactly what you say too, it's easy for new players and me and other long time players ended up with way more AoS armies.
Constant army size growth and the increasingly costly barrier to entry was one of the things that ultimately killed Fantasy the first time around.
In 40k, the turning point was the plastic Baneblade, originally introduced for Apocalypse only (in 4th/5th) and then allowed into regular 40k shortly thereafter (Imperial Armour). Allowing people to take a giant super unit in regular matches of 40k just reframed *everything*, and we went from playing 1500 point games with a bunch of basic infantry squads with supporting elements to 2000 point games where super-units were commonplace.
When a Baneblade is acceptable in a standard army and point limits shifted up to accomodate it, all of a sudden fielding three tanks or multiple elite melee deathstars doesn't feel excessive any more. When there are units that can wipe entire other units off the table in a single round of shooting/combat, all of a sudden basic infantry doesn't seem attractive any more either - gone are the days of squads being whittled down over the course of a few turns.
I quickly googled for an example army and found this great one below ( source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/p9ved3/blast\_from\_the\_past\_4th\_edition\_1500pts\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/p9ved3/blast_from_the_past_4th_edition_1500pts_of/) )
This is a fairly classic 3rd-5th edition style army - it's a little heavier on the infantry than some lists, but it's notable in that it's reasonably well-rounded and reliant primarily on basic Troops (four Tactical squads) with some Elites (Dreadnought + Terminators), some Fast Attack anti-tank (two Multi-Melta Land Speeders), and some Heavy Support (Devastators and a Whirlwind).
I can't imagine an army like this in 10th edition :( - I miss games that ran for 5-6 turns, took around 3 hours to play and when you were finished there were often still models on the board.
https://preview.redd.it/6duhkmttf4xc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=6ebc4d5220418b3519b910d64e67a1a8c9463041
I recommend 4th. People tend to look at third with rose-tinted glasses but forget it took multiple revisions and rewrites (the entire charge and fight mechanics had to be completely re-done for one) and a complete shift in codex design philosophy towards the end of the edition to reach the point that was considered 'good'.
Twenty years later, it's gonna be tricky to hunt down and implement all the additional rules material to play the 'good' version of third. I'd spare myself the trouble and just play 4th, which still has the same feel but is way more digestable.
Some guys in town still play 4th edition. I started in 9th so I'm at a pretty big disadvantage but i LOVE the old system. Other than the blast templates-it slows the game down too much to perfectly space out every guy every time you move.
I think we should use the scatter dice for deep strike. It's so much better than just setting up exactly 9" away where you want. And you can gamble on it too when you really need to get in somewhere.
Vehicles feel like vehicles. Walkers feel awesome (as opposed to 10th where there's nothing special about walkers unless i'm missing something).
Or use your own house rules with your buds. My friends and I used to use a mix of 40k and bolt action rules. I love infantry based games so bolt action was a natural fit.
This is a fun idea. I know a crew that plays One Page Rules but it doesn't do it for me haha. I'm fairly happy playing smallerish crusade games at the moment but will check out the bolt action rules.
I thought about giving Rogue Trader a shot when my reprint arrived. I might have to GM, rather than play. Still looks fun. Maybe I should find the 3rd Ed rules. I might even have a dog warred copy of the book at my parents....
My dude, the baneblade came out in 4th edition apocalypse. Lords of War weren't allowed in non apocalypse games until 7th edition, and even then it wasn't in a codex.
You're right there about the timeline; it was Imperial Armour where the rules would have been found - but I still maintain the plastic super-heavy was the turning point; once a model like that was being mass-produced, it was going to see wide adoption and players wanting to field it.
This is [a picture of the 1990 armorcast baneblade and the 1995 Forgeworld baneblade.](https://imgur.com/a/ahWb64f) That's 1st edition 40k and 2nd edition 40k respectively.
All great points. I'm just getting back into the game after a long hiatus. I last played 3rd edition. I remember that most armies had just one vehicle or dreadnought. It was supposed to be like a slightly larger skirmish battle. That's why the armies were smaller and big things were very rare. They had epic for the larger scale battles. Seems like they blurred those lines and combined them now.
My 9th ed Raven guard army is/was 37 models total.
The Tyranids I’m building are currently 121 models.
Yes I’m building the swarm that I’ve accumulated through a couple purchases and not meta chasing bigger monsters but it’s fun that that’s considered a “balanced” game. I prefer fluffy games anyway
For me, instead of encouraging me to try out new armies, I think I’d rather just play different games.
I’m halfway through building and painting my first army and I genuinely have lost the motivation to ever get a second just due to the sheer price. If it had been easier to get to 2000 points I would have been excited to start 2-3 more armies that I was also interested in.
Heck, someone gave me most of an unpainted army for free and just looking at what else I would need to buy to make it playable completely killed my desire to even finish painting them.
It feels like the mobile game “whale” model where the majority of the business is geared towards the people that will spend $3000 for an army every year.
It may be making them money in the short term, but in the long term I don’t think it’s sustainable, now that they’ve even started axing game support for whole model ranges, and not even because they’re replacing outdated sculpts.
I just see it going down a bad path and I don’t want to invest any more in the ride.
With Killteam, you can buy a team from every faction cheaper than a Guard or Admech army for 40k. I ran the numbers, and it wasn't pretty. They push Killteam, Warcry, and Necromunda, too. In my opinion, they're much better games than 40k. Killteam and Warcry are fast to play easy to learn. Necromunda is a beautifully sculpted love child between 40k and D&D. I feel like I wastedish $3000 grand on 40k before finding the peripheral GW properties. With those games $50-100 is reasonable for a team.
Killteam is 40k at the squad level 8-20 models at most. Each of your dudes has stats and moves as an individual instead of having multiple models comprising and fighting as squads. Although they sell teams prepackaged, most of the battle line type infantry units from 40k can be used in Killteam. Warcry is the exact same thing but for Age of Sigmar. Necromunda is actually as old as 40k. It's a similar skirmish type game, but it's about hive gangsters and it's based on a campaign like a tabletop RPG and your gangers have the ability to level up and get new gear as it progresses.
Necromunda is my favorite GW game by far. How can you not love a game where you can set a dude on fire, watch him run off a ledge to his death, then accidentally kill your own model in like 10 different ways? It’s absolutely beautiful
I did this in my first game. We played a 3 game custom story in a day. The final game, after we had fought our way out of the town square, we found ourselves being attacked by zombies. We had to put our differences aside and team up to survive. My Orlock weapons master shot a zombie on a bridge with a flaming shotgun shell, setting it on fire. It ran off the edge of the bridge onto a group of zombies trying to get up a ladder, which hurt a couple, and set fire to a couple more...
It was some of the most fun i'd had in a table top game for sure.
All of them are skirmish style games where you have around 10 models who all act individually. Many are alternate activation.
Kill Team is 40k but at a squad level - your squad trying to complete a mission. It's slightly more complex in terms of rules and very granular and well balanced and works really well as a competitive game. It's probably what 40k really SHOULD be like.
Warcry is the same scale of thing for AoS, but in tone it's a lot sillier. Much simpler rules, faster gameplay, crazy scenarios. It's a quick, action packed game designed so you can get set up and playing really fast. No braincells, lots of fun.
Both of those games can be played using models from AoS and 40k.
Necromunda is the ultra-narrative RPG version. You're hive gangers in the underhive. It has it's own massive range of uniquely weird and wonderful models. It has LOADS of rules to represent anything you can think of. And it's not even vaguely 'balanced' - it's designed to be played in a narrative campaign with an 'arbitrator' running thing and deciding which rules are in use. Fun, massive, thematic, crazy, but definitely not for competitive play!
It's probably worth adding that there are still fairly active communities for Inquisitor at r/Inq28 and Mordheim at r/Mordheim – both with fairly good living rulesets despite being abandoned by GW.
I feel the need to recommend Killteam to you. My sincere apologies if I'm not the first. You can get a badass team from every faction for $3000 grand and it's 40k models so it's a good slow way to build out a 40k army while getting to play with your models the whole time.
There are youTube channels showing official bat reps from back in 2nd Ed, it was wild how inflation has expanded the game - they used to look like combat patrols.
Most combat patrols are around 400-450 points, so even a standard Incursion game is twice as big. Then you may get bored of playing always the same list and buying more units gives you more variety. And new pretty models getting released and you want to paint them. So… I see lots of reasons to keep buying stuff even without playing 3000 points
Fifteen years ago, in late 4th-eartly 5th, I routinely put 140 Ork Boyz (four 30man squads, two 10-man trukk squads) on the table as part of a 2000 point game, with fifteen lootas (because back then we weren't forced to take the spanners if we didn't want to), six deffkoptas, a warboss, a weirdboy, a looted wagon (R.I.P.), and a twelve-strong biker squad.
Now, the unit cap on Boyz is ten men smaller, the bike squads max out at six, and I find I bring *fewer* models to a 2000-point game.
Experiences vary.
I miss the old Guard organization-
One command squad of at least five guys, then each platoon had another command squad (or tank), 2-5 squads of infantry per infantry platoon, plus option heavy weapons squads...
Of course, I also miss Hardened Veterans. My best-painted unit in all of my armies, so of course it's the one that goes bye-bye.
Squad sizes and battle line means that you can now field 480 guardsmen, albiet from 4 different data sheets.
You're certain to run out of points before that limit in anything short of an onslaught game..
My 5th edition Steel Legion 2k army was, if I recall right, 55 infantry (two platoons of two squads plus commands, plus company command), 7 Chimeras, 3 Russ, 2 Basilisks, Valkyrie w/ stormtroopers, and 4 armored sentinels. (I believe that’s when they made the tanks in squads with multiple per slot)
All they would play at my store as 1500-2000, or apocalypse.
We played like 1750 ish in the commonly and it was three squads of fire warriors 3x3 crisis a hammerhead two devilfish Pathfinders and some broadsides and that was it. Games took like 2 hrs max. Good times.
Hence my summing up with "experiences vary."
I suppose Marine and Necron players might need to chuck more plastic at the board, but if you run Orks, Guard, or Tyranids, we actually seem to be putting *fewer* guys out there (note: As an Ork player, having all my guys be S4 T5 and thereby making the bolter about as scary as a lasgun to my line infantry is certainly... something)
I feel that this is what the OP acknowledges, but considers it as a problem - previously, there were horde armies like Orks/Guard/Tyranid and elite armies like marines, but now they all are roughly equal, with hordes taking fewer bodies and marines taking more.
I think by putting it down to just points, the OP is being a little simplistic, though.
Some of it's points, sure.
Some of it's down to the basics of the game (everyone needs to farm CP, everybody needs to contest objectives, everybody needs answers to deep striking Rapid Ingress horseshit, etc) causing armies to have samey units that end up occupying a similar amount of table space.
And some of it, including the points adjustments, is down to the very simple math that comes with expanding the statlines and changing how units work.
Back when dinosaurs walked the earth, an Ork boy was S3, T4, WS 4, BS 2 with a 6+ save (and I2, remember Initiative? Good times) and a Space Marine was S4, T4, WS 4, BS 4, with a 3+ save (And I4!), making them qualitatively superior almost across the line. Even in melee, their acknowledged specialty, an Ork would be outperformed by an individual Marine- and thus, a Marine's higher points (more than double, IIRC) were justified
But all of that has changed, and even with a second Wound, Marines just aren't that much better than a S4 T5 Ork with a 5+ save- especially since weapon skill is no longer compared between units, but is now just a simple stat check. That Ork who used to need a 4 to land a hit on a Marine only needs the same 3 he'd need to swat a guardsman or a grot, and now doesn't need a 5 to wound, but only a 4. Meanwhile, the Marine *does* usually need a 5 to score a wound after hitting an Ork.
For a game largely balanced around MEQ units for most of its design history, the stretching of the strength and toughness tables has done formerly elite armies no favors- apart from their second Wound and some stronger guns on the Primaris units, Marines have remained largely the same.
Meanwhile, vehicles have gotten so hard to damage that melta weapons are actually better at killing heavy infantry than they are at taking out a vehicle- and it means that everybody is packing firepower that finds T4 with a 3+ save more cute than elite.
Yeah I guess you're right, sorry bout that m8 but I really don't care about it either way it's fun fielding 30 terminators, but it was also fun having terminators always wave on a 4+ and usually on a 2+
Yeah, 2k was standard for both fantasy 6th edition and 40k 4th, I'm not sure where OP is getting the increased point cost games from.
Some tournaments ran at 1650-1750 in order to avoid the additional power houses you got with 2k (lord choices, more rare slots etc), but for the most part, 2k was THE game mode.
We are a bit responsible for this.
Kill team events does not have nearly the same attendance and Combat patrol also are not as popular. I’m pretty sure these were tests done by GW to see the popularity of smaller scale games but they see that it doesn’t sell as well and they focus on the big game instead.
Meanwhile the 40K event popularity creates popularity and gets talked about in YouTube channel and drives people to events and the cycle continues.
It’s pretty funny because Killteam and Combat Patrol are unequivocally more balanced, and it’s not even particularly close. Big 40K is the sloppiest system GW produces currently imo and it also sells the best. Really goes to show that good rules and balance don’t matter in terms of sales, which really shows in their design philosophy tbh.
I particularly liked kill team, but gave up trying to get more than 8 people to play.
Meanwhile I could attend a dozen GT-Sized 40K event each year if I want.
I include myself as part of the problem as I just defaulted back to 40K, I’d rather use my time to play a game than trying to organize and promote a game that few people were really interested in.
I’m really surprised more people aren’t into kill team. I think it’s really fun and a bit more chess-like that big 40K. Plus I get to try different factions without needing a whole armies worth
My local shop is half and half 40K and Killteam every Friday, we have like 12-16 people at least show up every week and have like 20-30 in the local area. I feel very fortunate to have a Killteam scene in my area, because I’m just not going back to big 40K. It’s just absolute trash and only getting worse, Id rather just not play and do something else with my time. I might try AOS if there’s no KT scene when I move, but ya regular 40K is dead to me.
Edit: The only caveat I’d say is if they used alternating activations in big 40K. It would immediately make the game way better and more interesting, and wouldn’t even be that hard to do. But as far as I’m tracking the GW design team has insisted they will never change it from pure I go you go due to fear of player backlash. Even tho IGYG is hilariously outdated and no game system should be using it in 2024. So ya, probably never going back.
I felt like his for a while. I got excited to run big vehicles, monsters, mounted units and all the fun toys. I am definitely of the mind that there are too many models on the table in big 40k. Killteam is much more accessible. However, playing narrative big 40k has me enjoying it again. KT is certainly a tighter system barring a few of the kludgey cover/terrain rules.
I’ve been trying to get into Legions Imperialis/Epic Armageddon to try and do big battle stuff, but that’s even less popular than Killteam unfortunately.
Ya, I get what they were going for, keeping the range smaller is better for them as a company, but I’m a Tau main so not having even in the range is annoying. That’s why I’m just 3D printing and leaning towards Net Epic Armageddon, the rules are free and the models are cheap if you have a 3D printer. Only real problem is it’s just not that popular, and getting people into it in my area is difficult.
Just to say this is why Warcry is great, skirmish size but lots of tinkering options, in the current edition, especially if you play a non-specialist warband (I.e. not from one box but cobbled together).
Yeah this is the big selling point for me with 40k, but freedom of army composition seems to be something GW wants to remove as much as possible from 40k too with free wargear and such.
Tbf, the popularity of 40k also makes it less balanced, in that the more eyes are on it, the more likelly someone is going to find some "bug" in the rules they can exploit, which means that has to be patched, which just creates more jank, which then gets exploited.
There is probably lots of broken things in Kill Team and Combat Patrol thats just undiscovered.
I can’t really say for combat patrol, but for Killteam things that are unintended or blatantly too strong are patched in balance dataslates every couple of months. They’re discovered quickly and dealt with pretty quickly as well. I think that’s only possible because the scope of the game is smaller and the list construction is more constrained, the points system in big 40K is just awful and there are too many units.
I've been trying to find a local club to get involved with so I can actually play with the models I paint, and games like Kill Team, Combat Patrol, Warcry/Underworlds look great to me because of the low barrier for entry, shorter games, fewer models, easier rules etc... but literally no clubs I've found play any of them. It's just 40k/AoS and sometimes Heresy
So, here's a dumb question... from what I hear, the biggest complaint about 1,000 point games is that you don't have enough unit variety to beat the various forms of skew lists. If the OP is true, then wouldn't playing smaller games, even 1,500, counteract that?
1000 points is fair when everyone plays fair.
But skew lists can definitely become a problem. You'll see this happen in for example escalation leagues where players who are NOT building the army as they go and are either adding or already have a ton of an army might experiment... I'm guilty of this myself. You bring something that sounds stupid and fun, and someone else can't deal with it.
The thing about skew lists is that they tend to be really swingy. I play knights at 1k a lot and I can usually tell how the game is going to go by the end of turn 1.
Either my team has done a lot of good cross-map shooting, or I've missed most of my shots and had one of my armigers blown off the map.
My green tide army has done a little better, but after a few games I feel like it's exhausting rolling 80+ dice every turn so I've kinda gotten turned off that list.
I played an escalation league starting at 750 points. And some ork ayer bang a bunch of buggys and a war boss.
Everyone else had a couple of infantry squads and an HQ leader.. It was a shit show.
Yup armies that have access to cheap high toughness units can be a problem
Imagine guard with the new leman Russ points
No balanced 1000 point list could even dream of dealing with multiple of them
It really depends. My Thousand Sons basically don't work at less than 1500 points, because all the points costs are balanced around the powerful Rituals we can cast. But the resource we need to use Rituals is dependent on how many sorcerer characters are in play.
Even at 2000 points it means that you basically *have* to focus on characters and MSU Rubric Marines. At 1000 points, even with that focus, you wont have enough Cabal Points to cast powerful Rituals.
Not just skew, but typically each list can only afford 1-2 proper hammers. So games are often about who gets to kill the opponent's hammer unit first, giving them nothing to fight back with and snowballing from there.
It's moronic to play 40k competitively. Warhammer is best played together instead of against one another. The first conversation any two players should have when scheduling a game is what kind of game they want to have. And adjust their lists accordingly to create the kind of game they want.
I have a fun time playing warhammer together with my friends, to win ("competitively"). It can create some really tense/tactical moments.
Like you said nobody seems to talk about how they want to play prior to playing it which I think should be more normalised.
It's only moronic when two players approach the game different ways. Either both play competative or both play fluff warhammer, nothing wrong with either.
I’m pretty sure I remember seeing someone do a comparison with how expensive some top 9th edition lists were in 10th and in editions past, and iirc they were broadly the same. As in the number of models you could field at a given points cost hasn’t changed much.
Obviously this is not the case for Admech right now, but that’s a bit of an outlier
It’s faction specific.
Looking at my Guard army, in 8th we had 4pt guardsmen, 33pt HWTs, 150pt Leman Russes, and I believe artillery was between 110-150ish.
They’ve all gone up… but with “woo free upgrades” I don’t want.
I get limited rules and stratagems so there was less of a learning curve and “gotcha” moments during games but I never understood the wargear thing. It’s a strategy game for nerds with a major role-playing element. Taking away tailoring my units just feels like taking away part of what made the game
It was the proverbial straw that made me stop playing. I still have my fingers crossed that 11th will return to some kind of 8th/10th hybrid... But honestly it might just be time to finally pivot into one page rules (or napoleonics, lol)
100%. I get that they wanted to simplify the game from how it was 7-9th, and I agree. But adding up point costs for gear was not a concept anyone struggled with.
I seriously think that it's executives wanting to get involved, so they try to learn the game, and adding up point costs is about as far as they get before they decide the game is too darn complicated. So they say "simplify the points system!".
However the parts that are complicated, like cover interacting with large models or the differences between Reserves and Strategic Reserves never get addressed. Heck it took until like 8th edition for Pistols to make sense.
My only hope is that free wargear is a temporary stepping stone towards greater balance in the game. Like designers said it would be easy to balance armies competitively if they could first focus on balancing everything at max power. Then once it is relatively balanced, reintroduce points in a way where you have an option to not take the plasma gun, sponson weapon, HK missile etc.
Probably not the case but I can dream.
It's something the flexs over time going from 2nd edition onwards were around the average size.
Yes, basic game size has gone up from 1500 to 2000 but proportionally it's fairly flat.
If it helps Lord of the Rings games are a good mid size between 40K/AoS and Killteam/warcry.
And when Tactical Marines went from being something that you fielded because you didn't have the models to field anything else yet, to being something that was actually very useful in the game.
Average points was 1750-1850 during 4th and 5th, 6th was 2000 (week really it was 1999+1) and since then it's been 2k. Which isn't much bigger. Given many transports were 35-40 points, chaff was cheaper, and no big named characters in events, etc... some armies are fielding less models now (my Nids are lower, my DE are the same, CSM are lower, actually much lower now).
That means 2k has been the normal for 12 years now.
I think what makes the game feel like it's more models honestly is smaller tables with larger bases.
When you had 60 Marines on 25mm bases, some starting in a few rhinos and others in 3 drop pods all on a larger table (60x72). It's going to feel cramped with 32mm models, transports not used anywhere near as much and on a 44x60 table.
It's a side effect of balance passes granting just blanket points drops. So now Ad Mech, one of if not the most expensive faction to collect, is that much more expensive to have a table-ready force because you have to field that much more stuff.
Points can fix the game balance, but not the feeling of a unit. If an elite unit has really poor stats it's bad; sure they can make it cheaper, but they don't *feel* like they should. Same when a unit has rules that don't fit what they are in the mind of players.
When I started playing in third, the normal games were 500/750/1500. On rare occasion you would see a blowout 2000 game, but Armageddon came around and stopped that.
3rd was an interesting beast though, as the point values in 3rd were close to exactly half that of 2nd edition. The streamlined/simpler ruleset allowed for the increase in army size to not affect game time. Since 3rd points values have slowly crept up.
Also significantly cheaper. £10 for a tactical/devastator/assault squad when they were first released. Crazy how cheap the hobby was in 3rd considering how expensive 2nd was.
I couldn’t even buy enough models to make big squads as a necron player back in the day. My lgs would randomly buy blister packs.
Oh you want a squad of 10 flayed ones or some wraiths?
Good luck buying 2 at a time for the next 5 months.
I don’t think I ever even got to use a parish (probably the coolest unit in the game)
That was definitely a big part of it. The mixed metal/plastic kits towards the end of second were eye wateringly expensie. I remember a TacSquad being about £25, which is like £45 in today's money. I imagine that GW would have been hard pressed to validate keeping similar prices because of that.
It was awesome though, because the newer models looked much cooler (and hence were mostly unchanged after multiple refreshes), had more options, and I remember a big thing was that as a kid, techniques like pinning were basically the dark arts that only professionals did, whereas most other kids would rely on superglued models constantly breaking apart. Plastic glue/polystyrene cement was much better for keeping models stuck together.
That said, price creep set in quite quickly, and I remember the price of some things, like the Devastator Squad and Assault Squads, etc. slowly coming up by amounts of £2-5.
Last I checked in low late 2022 early 2023, most kits were about £10 more than inflation would have been, with an inflation matching price of £17 to the price of a TacSquad being around £27-30. And you could easily rationalise that the improvement with some refreshes made up for some of that.
I do also remember checking the Land Raider, and that was actually perfectly in line with inflation
E: just checked a tactical squad and devastator squad. They’re about 2x more now than an inflation matching cost (£18 vs £35. Land Raider is almost exactly in line with inflation still (£30 vs £55)
Having seen the data on it, that's not actually true. The points cap of a full game has increased, yes, but so has the average points cost per model. The 2000pt game isn't something artificially created by GW, it's an approximation of how many models people want on the table - if it was too high we'd go back down to 1500 or 1750 pt.
The problem, imo, is board sizes shrinking.
That’s my biggest complaint as well, the most balanced and fun games I had of 9th and 10th were ignoring the new board measurements and just using the whole 6’x4’ table
Board sizes are retarded small. I remember in 8th edition I'd struggle to get my space wolves across the board.
Now with my imperial guard I struggle to make it out of my deployment zone if the enemy gets T1 and I can't wipe their front line faster than they can move them.
This is one of the reasons I have moved to only playing Necromunda and Blood Bowl - much smaller cost for entry due to lower model counts. I enjoy the freedom to explore different gangs/teams more readily as the investment in time and money is far less than buying a whole new 40k army.
Hell yeah, plus the saying "every model is a necromunda model" really helps. Since you can use proxy/kitbash/3rd party minis, you can greatly reduce costs.
I prefer larger games, personally. It makes it feel more like a real battle and makes the Herohammer experience less ridiculous (Lord-Regent of the Imperium shows up to personally fight a small band of enemies, etc.)
And unlike 2006 you can now take more than 3 heavy tanks, your mandatory troop choice was a minimum of 25 models and you had to take at least 2. The absolute minimum model count for a guard army was 55.
Funny thing, but points really haven’t changed all that much over time. I was curious about this, and the farthest back book I could find of mine was the 3.5 edition chaos codex. It’s surprisingly not all that different from where things sit now. A basic CSM was 14 points a model. A Rhino was 50 points, Nurglings were 10 points per base, and funnily enough, a Lord of Change was only 160. What has slowly changed though over time have been the options. First it was free unit champions, then some baked in upgrades, now we’re at the point where all the wargear is free, and that’s probably where the scale increase has caused the most impact. I do agree though that games feel too large. I’m mostly a Sigmar player these days, but even recently my friends and I noticed how even a thousand point game of 40K feels larger than a 2,000 point game of AoS, and God forbid our Crusade campaign makes it to the 3k level.
It would be interesting to hear how a 1500 point tournament plays out these days. I imagine games will be played to the end a lot more and would probably be more enjoyable for everyone. I'm in favour of smaller games being the default but 2000 points seems set in stone
On the other hand you could always just lean into a terminator style army, or knights or custodes etc. Nidzilla, Ork dread mob, daemon monster spam, C'tan spam, IG tanks. Some factions don't have these options but most do
Just did a 2 day 1500pt tournament - aimed at casuals so perhaps not reflective of competitive tournaments, but I would say more enjoyable than 2000.
Games actually felt similar in terms of length - there were a few games against nids and other hordes that didn’t finish - but I felt like the mental overhead was less simply due to less unit types being on the board.
Anecdotally comparing scores, people seemed to score less on secondaries, maybe due to having less utility units or not having the tools to do things like bring it down etc.
Tbh it was the little things that made it more fun - easier to move models between tables, quicker overview of armies, shooting phase feeling slightly less oppressive. It also meant each unit felt more impactful and got to show off a bit which was nice
I mean, 1500 with some restrictions could work. Like, no unit can be more than 20% of max points, no centerpieces that are more than 25% etc. In Horus Heresy you can't run Horus (600) points in lists smaller than 2.4k. And his upgraded form (1000pts) is for 4k armies and bigger.
This also creates some issues though. Perturabo (450ish points) has a modified Baneblade that can be ran as his transport (900ish points). But it counts as Lord of War points which means you total over 1350 points in that slot, so you can't run that in games where each side has less than 5400 points...
I'm just getting back to Warhammer 40k after being away from the hobby since 5th edition and games feel like they have actually gotten quite a bit smaller since then. Squads used to be so much larger for horde armies back then, of course with templates still around you needed that. The game was also substantially more lethal back then, a stray battlecannon shot wiped entire squads and a single autocannon round had the potential to destroy most vehicles (A krak missile or Lascannon destroyed most any other vehicle).
That being said I didn't like playing 2k much back then either and usually stuck with 1500. Space Marines were about 14 points a model back then too, as were Chaos Space Marines (although I think they were 15, but the CSM were awful in 5th unless you ran Lash Prince with Obliterators.)
Dragging 2000 points of Tyranids is annoying, but cmon, that's like the main Tyranid motif. A giant ravenous swarm of Aliens. Sure Nidzilla existed back then (and ironically was the best way to play them), but the large swarm of alien monsters has always been the central theme of the Tyranids.
I like more models. Bigger armies=more fun. Is Warhammer expensive? Sure, but it's also an investment and has potentially one of the best dollar per hour hobbies out there
I remember most games back in my HS and college days being 500 to 1500 tops, but we were poor students. IMO the game can still be played in almost any size and still be enjoyable, except for a few armies like Knights that usually need a high point total to field a balanced army.
My main problem is how much it congests the board. Deployment zones wind up packed like sardines, and everything’s so packed in close it quickly devolves into a statblock slogfest, there’s not much sense of manoeuvring or of a threat and counter threat
I don’t get to play often just because of where I am geographically, so I don’t mind making a day of it and laboriously hauling a 3k army, it’s a 3 hour drive anyway. But even in 2k games we always use a bigger board, it actually makes things just so much more fun. The first turn is basically just getting into position, only the extreme long range units will be shooting anything, movement becomes a commitment; so you have to really think about where you’re sending your units because you can’t just react on the fly. Heavy weapons function like they oughta; a massive scary threat to deter people, taking the quickest route to the objective can expose you to 2 turns of heavy bolter fire mincing your squad. Screening becomes less automatic and deep strikes or flank attacks from fast units become much more of a threat, especially since the bigger board really gives those high speed units a chance to shine. Having an actual horde army means something since instead of your units just getting in eachothers way they actually give you the board control and screening more elite armies simply can’t get, and most of all they’re able to encircle smaller armies.
This is why i like to play on larger than standard boards with upscaled deployment zones, lets you be more strategicand can get some early game comflict going
To GW’s credit, I actually think this is as much a balancing problem as it is a sales tactic. In 9th they slashed points on a lot of armies out of reluctance to change rules, or in the case of Armor of Contempt, decided the rule change made the game worse, so a points change was added instead.
Then, in 10th, very briefly, points were sort of “reset” to the early 9th values, where, for example, marines were only getting a handful of units. But without the wombo combos available in 9th edition, most of these “elite” units wound up feeling very weak, so GW slashed points almost immediately. So now you can fit 120 Primaris marines, with room to spare, in a black Templar list. That’s a number that, in years/editions past, would’ve been reserved for things like conscripts.
And the scary thing is that even at dirt cheap costs, things like intercessors and assault intercessors still aren’t seeing widespread use. Tbh, it’s probably mostly to do with the hullspam meta we still find ourselves in, and how little many of these units can do when they find themselves face-to-face with a Redemptor Dreadnought. I mean, who wants to run 150pts of melee intercessors, or 160 points of shooty intercessors, when that 10-man unit can’t even scratch the paint on a 210 point Redemptor dreadnought with cover/AoC, when the Redemptor wipes out the 10-man without breaking a sweat?
Haven’t 2000 pts been the norm for a pretty long time now? I’ve started in 7th and that was the standard size game. I also remember in 9th(?) everything got a significant point hike to shrink the game down, and the minimum recommended table size got smaller too. I remember watching people play earlier games that involved half a dozen drop pods puking out full tactical squads supported by tanks and dreadnoughts.
As far as I can tell the game has only shrunk?
I care less about the points bloat and more about the inclusion of flyers superheavies and named characters in 'normal' games, that are now on shrunken boards that the enemy can cross and reach melee in the first turn through a maze of identical L shaped ruins, and an arms race of codex creep means every unit has to be able to annihilate another unit in one salvo (with 45 stratagems).
All of those things bug me infinitely more into making 40k feel like a cramped, frenetic mess than having say 50% more of an army on the table than I did in 3e-5e.
I've been playing a lot of TOW since release and it's so damn refreshing to have a game on nice big tables, with a couple turns of manoeuvring, and actual seeing a hill or some trees here or there for once since 2013.
Nah. 2k point games have gotten smaller overall. Back in 8th, I was running 180 boys, and that wasn’t even half the list. Now I can run 120 max, with 80 being ideal currently.
As a beginner from other games (Xwing, Armada, Legion) it is a BIG game. Loads of units, loads of dice, many many differing attacks. In reality to play a competitive game through you need to have memorised so many details and be really really fast. The learning curve is steep, the games are exhausting.
Obviously the models and the law are fantastic and that’s why I’m here.
I found the games of Xwing, Armada and Legion were still complex. But generally flowed quicker with more time to chat. But those communities are dying off sadly.
There is a 40K version that could exist which keeps the flavour, the narrative and the cool models. But also gets the flow and pacing of these other games.
But it would mean removing some of the most traditional 40K elements. Changing turn order, reducing model count, and in my opinion - moving on from the d6. to an attack dice /defence dice system perhaps using d8’s (very controversial I know).
Recent interviews with GW rules designers show for example that they felt 2nd edition worked best with maybe 400 points.
All the battle reports were 1500 to 2000 points simply to push sales.
All we see now is this rules vs marketing extended for another 30+ years
Warhammer does work for fewer points. While Combat Patrol isn't that fun the long run in my opinion, and Incursion doesn't really work once people start teching lists, it can be easily fixed with some bolted-on army restrictions.
Just some basic stuff like having a 1k game restricting Battleline to 0-3 and other units to 0-1, plus restricting the use of heavy vehicles (like allowing only one model past a certain Wounds or toughness threshold) would make Incursion a workable and interesting play format. Combine that with the Leviathan deck and requiring Tactical Objective play and you'd end up with a play format that strongly discourages taking big and tough single models or 'deathstar' units that usually plague small point games.
And then Boarding Actions still exists. The rules were adapted to 10th ed and are free download off Warcom. I wholeheartedly recommend you check it out, even if it's on proxy terrain or flat out corridors drawn on paper. Boarding Actions is some of the most fun I had with 40k in literal decades. Games Workshop cracked the code with small format games with it and I am thoroughly baffled they do not support it more.
A part of the issue with the gaming industry (among others) is that they don't necessarily look to growing their customer base, preferring to squeeze their existing one like an orange.
To step away from 40K as an example, ~~Wizards of the Coast~~ Hasbro enjoyed several years of explosive growth, thanks to the efforts of others, like Critical Role, and an unusual set of circumstances, like the debut of "Stranger Things" and the Covid outbreak. They hired an MS executive to take over WOTC, whose first words were "This IP is under-monetized" and started shifting things to an online "walled garden" model with the purchase of D&D Beyond and their effort to claw back the OGL. Hilarity ensued.
Yup I agree. I saw a post recently from someone who showed what a full 2000 point army from 3rd edition was compared to 10th and it has literally quadrupled.
This seems exaggerated significantly. wait was it 2nd ed to 10th? Coz 3rd halved the points value from 2nd and then they've stayed somewhat similarish since.
this is 1,500 points from 4th ed.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/p9ved3/blast\_from\_the\_past\_4th\_edition\_1500pts\_of/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/p9ved3/blast_from_the_past_4th_edition_1500pts_of/#lightbox)
https://preview.redd.it/r8dglck2g6xc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5027c45a422de05eaf7e19a3a804762c6e97a63d
1500 points of Ultramarines in 2nd Ed.
1153 points in 7th edition
970 points in 8th edition.
990 points in 9th edition.
830 points in 10th edition.
890 points in 10th using Primaris versions of units.
So, with pretty much identical loadouts and units, you got the above points values.
......
No. The number of figures are far fewer than they were in the early editions. Especially with fantasy.
I had swarm armies in both. I will never paint another termagant or night goblin archer again, even at gunpoint.
I've long thought 40K is played in an incorrect scale.
There shouldn't be titans and aircraft in 40K.
For full scale engagements with aircraft etc, Epic should handle those. 40K should be more combat patrol scale: maybe one or two pieces of armour and 2-3 stands. Kill Team should handle surgical infiltration missions.
I was playing 40K at RT and 2e. I don't know when it went from being 30ish dudes and some tanks / dreadnoughts to "here's my line of dudes, tanks, aircraft and my forge world titan" but it seems crazy to me. Obviously YMMV.
I have to disagree here, I’ve been playing since 3rd edition and 2k pts has always been the standard “butter zone” in the groups I played with. Sure you could play smaller battles most people in my experience were against smaller battles, especially space marine players. And while 10th edition is unique with the reset - simplified points and faction rules for new comers have come about as a result of a move to make the game simpler this edition- the base points cost of many units are practically the same, even after the new update:
3rd Ed. Tactical squad = 15pts per model
10th Ed. Tactical squad = 14pts per model
3rd Ed. Dreadnought = 105-125pts
10th Ed. Dreadnought = 135pts
3rd Ed. Genestealers = 16 pts p.m
10th Ed. Genestealers = 15pts p.m
3rd Ed. Zoanthropes = 34pts p.m
10th Ed. Zoanthropes = 33.3 pts p.m
3rd Ed. Drukhari warriors = 8pts p.m
10th Ed. Drukhari warriors = 10pts p.m
3rd Ed. Ravager = 105pts
10th Ed. Ravager = 115pts
Maybe try playing kill team or even Necromunda if you prefer the vibe of smaller scale battles? I know a lot of people who have really enjoyed jumping into these.
That 15ppm for Tactical Marines was for a naked bolter marine with nothing but his bolter and his power armour. Give him frag and krak grenades, and he goes up to 18ppm. Want to give the squad a special or heavy weapon, or the Sergeant a power weapon or plasma pistol? There's another 10-15 points each.
I’m right there with you. I played in ~3rd edition, then stopped until 8th, and was surprised how much the model count seems to have grown. There’s often not maneuvering space on the board because of it. It does, to an extent, feel like it removes some of the vibe of the game.
It also drives very short games. Tournament games are often over by round 3. I’d much prefer a 3 hour game have 5-7 turns with fewer models, vs. balancing the rules around so few.
Andry Chambers (idk, could have been Rick Priestly), one of the former game designers, has talked about why the model count increased. 40K was initially designed as a skirmish-scale game, about 25-50 models.
During 2nd edition, they got a lot of letters and phone calls from independent shops saying their customers were mostly interested in playing it at battle-scale, despite the rules getting really clunky at that size. So, they decided to redesign the game for a battle scale of roughly 50-100 models. 3rd edition was transitional in size, and 4th was nearly there.
The model count has since remained pretty close to what the average customer actually wants.
Definitely. Every time I watch a battle report, I almost always think "wow, that's quite a lot of units", then there's some factions like nids or tau where it definitely feels like too much "a character, another one, infantry, a transport, big suit (monster), another suit, then double that and add 3 specialist units and 2 more characters". And then there's admech like: "3 packs of infantry, each with a character, several scouts, fast attack units, a tank, a transport, a big pack of kataphron, with character of course, specialist infantry, for a bit of diversity, and another one, another one, and another unit, and, oh yeah, 2 armigers for the hell of it." Completely ridiculous
I think the first round or two just look silly when you are packing plastic into your deployment zones. It all feels way too tight for the size board. 1000-1500 feels right for a 44x60 board.
I'll be entirely honest, 2k is the size of game I am least interested in. At 1k, I can just dedicate a couple of hours for a quick game, and at 3k I can bring out the Big Dumb Objects effectively. 2k takes a long time, and I have a lot fewer points to go around.
Our group has decided to keep our games in the 500-1500 range. Most of our normal games are 1000 pts.
It does lock out some of the bigger flashy units, but the balance is just fine. We've found a board about 3'x4' is perfect for 1000 pt games, too.
This sentiment confuses me sometimes, before remembering that I play Thousand Sons, and a “marine heavy” list has maybe 30 Marines total, a monster or two, and a Rhino or two. Then I look at essentially every other legion fielding easily double or even triple that many bodies… It’s shocking how different it is. I still can’t understand how I have double the number of basic Space Marines as I do Rubrics (a mix of Hellblasters, Infernus, Intercessors, Assault Ints, and other stuff) and yet… I don’t even have 2000 points of SM, while having over 3000 points of TSons. It’s… well, kind of insane.
I've only been playing for about 8 months now, but I've played more 1k games than 2k games. Maybe that's just my local scene, but it's what tends to be more popular.
Additionally, might I offer you to try Kill Team? Most teams are one box of 10 models and many teams don't even take the full box. It's got alternating activations so it's much faster paced and more engaging as well.
It’s partly for balance, but honestly I think it’s just the business model. If 2000pts of Space Marines were just two or three infantry squads, a dreadnought, and two characters, then there’s no real reason for you to keep buying a bunch more. So now that’s only a little bigger than a Combat Patrol, and you gotta buy lots more squads and vehicles and stuff to play a full game.
Yes, but the unfortunate thing is that this was balanced before by how the game handled horde armies as compared to elite armies. If you had a bunch of cash to burn, you could play a horde army and field a massive 2000 point list. But, if you were more budget conscious, you could play an elite army like Custodes and still play an effective army even though it was many, many, many times smaller than that horde army. The line between elite and horde has been blurring for a long time, especially with 10th, and while I'm sure it's for monetary reasons, I think it also makes the game worse.
As much as I love Warhammer 40k - let's be honest. It was never "Balanced"
3rd Edition Black Book List Nid Player here, this game has NEVER EVER been balanced. I used to LOS screen my Carnifex and Hive Tyrant (2nd Ed models, mind you) behind ranks of termagants, hormogants, and genestealers so that they couldn't be shot and just matched forward. Back in the day each model blocked up to twice it's height or something like that. At least that was how it was taught to me. I'd still get wiped out from time to time, but when the Carnifex and the Hive Tyrant hit the marine squads it was epic slaughter. Nowadays the release cycle is too fast for my limited time to build, let alone paint. An entire editions has gone by since I started trying to get back into playing.
Haha I’ve been playing since 3rd edition, back then I played the khorne berserkers party bus and let me tell you. The game was in fact broken and way different than today. Berserkers had to take a rage roll, so you could sometimes double move in a turn. Lmao once those units of berserkers hit the enemy lines the game would end by me just meleeing over and over again. Lol vehicle armor used to be different as well, get kharn behind a tank and he would pop that no problem lol.
My brother rolled Khorne Bezerkers too. By the time he finished his army I had figured out how to kite his raging units with chaff units. Vehicle rules were so different! A Carnifex with strength 10 would routinely knock out every vehicle it touched. Even land raiders were 4 to glance and 5+ to pen, and being a monstrous creature I think I was rolling 2d6+S. That threat was so scary to my blood angle buddy that he'd throw his whole army at the Carnifex while I wheeled the rest of the swarm into his flank!
Hahaha good on you!! All the older dudes that played at the local Gamesworkshop in grapevine early 2000s were not kiting at all. Lmao they would stack their gun lines and I would pounce. I never had the joy of getting dismembered by tyranids back then. It was a lot of space marine, csm, and necrons. The csm and space marine players would have full thematic and well painted armies. Half the shop played fantasy too! It was some good times for sure, I still have some old codex’s that are wild to go back and read!
In third edition the tyrannids had the special rule”shoot the big ones” where the blocking line of sight by smaller tyranids does not apply, but I agree with your first point. This game was never balanced. I think it is now the most balanced it ever was.
Wasn't that added with the codex, not the black book?
You are correct, that was added in the 3rd edition Codex for exactly those reasons.
I love being the reason for new rules!
> Nowadays the release cycle is too fast for my limited time to build, let alone paint. An entire editions has gone by since I started trying to get back into playing. The instability of the rules and three year edition cycle is at least part of the reason I've branched out into other game systems. I'll still play 40K if my friends want to, of course, but I don't actively seek out games of it the way I used to.
It worked like that for everyone except Tyranids. The "Shoot the Big Ones" rule explicitly stopped Tyranids from blocking line of sight precisely because that's what everyone would do otherwise.
3rd edition early tau adapter here and can attest, 40k has never been balanced and 2k has been the standard for game size at many points in the past. Also stopped playing years back (7th edition) cause the meta started moving at a breakneck speed and I could never keep up. I've been happy painting and spending time making the army I want and then playing an odd few games a year, usually OPR as the rule set is just better at this point IMO. That being said, I know plenty of people in the hoddy that really don't enjoy the painting and modeling portion and just want an endless wave of meta shift and power list gaming but that scene is in my rear view mirror.
Idk, end of 9th was fairly good. And even dud units could be made to work in a casual setting. And going off stats 10th is also fairly balanced, but it's a crap shoot for if your books got good internal diversity (tau, crons) or like 1 dull list (custodes, admech)
The end of 9e was actually looking PRETTY GOOD as far as the metawatch was concerned. Almost all factions 45-55%.
Thats one of the things pushing me more and more towards 30k. Full dread army? Why not. Don't want to run 20 man squads of basic troops for objective capping? Use Pride of the Legion and make Veterans and Termies your main troops. Plenty of other options to go between horde and elite army, and many of them give extra flair to the army. Heck, you can run almost Leman Russ - only list for imperialis militia.
Whilst you can certainly build an army of all Dreadnoughts in 30k, you're likely to have trouble finding an opponent as that would be very much considered a faux-pas. 30k is somewhat self-regulating when it comes to army lists due to pretty wild balancing.
You can do those things in 10th, I have a full 13 dread list for space wolves and an armored list for AM that is 8 Russ tanks of several types, a baneblade and a couple engineseers for repairs. Having a themed army in 10th is very easy.
Yeah sorry my brain is still in 8th/9th because I kinda tuned out in 10th. But what I like most in HH is that you can tailor your army towards your choices, not just pop 10 dreads in a list. Rites of war are just fun (and their equivalent for guard/mechanicum/auxilla/demons etc). And I miss gear having point costs and units not having fixed sizes.
>Full dread army? This is a great way to be regarded as a total prick in the 30k community. The general unwritten rule is one per 1000 points.
I think 10th has to be the worst offender. It feels like there is no distinction, and flavor and identity are slowly eroding. I don't mind some streamlining of mechanics, but there's definitely problems: Codex rules being replicated in various forms across armies, some units sharing statlines/abilities/weapon profiles across armies but being wildly different in price... The detachment format is cool and simple but it has created its own problems: detachments dictate synergies and army comp, if the rules are bad/bland/unfun especially by comparison to the datasheets in the codex you have the issue of no one wanting to utilize that detachment outside of maybe a few one off pick up games. Whereas other detachments then become full of utilization due to their more engaging or synergistic rules... ( HCL & CC compared to OP and AL for Necrons, or NMV compared to the rest of the Custodes codex..). If they keep doing detachments, I hope they focus on making them feel more robust and flavourful than some of the Codexes this edition. Right now, they feel very simple, I'd love it if Detachments buffed the entire set of datasheets very minorly but then gave specific keywords & units heightened effects and buffs. It is somewhat like that now, but it is more 1 dimensional, like either being a minor army wide buff with a condition or a keyword buff. Like AL would benefit from buffing the movement of Necron units across the board while Destroyer Cult units keep the charge bonuses. Custodes would've been done better using the existing shield hosts of old and dictating additional Martial Ka'tah, depending on which one you chose. With units a seeing specific form of support from a given shield host but the entire army benefiting from a new Ka'tah to utilize when fighting. I hope we see good things with the Chaos Codex and the AoI Codex later this spring. Not repeats of the Admech/Custodes releases. Coming back to the comment above:: the weight being shifted towards codex detachments and less individual abilities on sheets means a codex and the detachments within derive the identity. If the rules are bad, bland, or copy-paste they army loses flavourful and identity. Especially if, like say, similar to Admech: they continue to decrease points to compensate for rough rules and inadvertently turn the army into a Horde army
Games Workshop is a model company first. And so, in some ways, I see the business incentive to sell bigger armies. I also tend to think that games are too complicated and time consuming with with so many models on the board. The barrier to entry is quite high by the time you buy, build, paint, learn the rules, lug your models somewhere or build a board to play on. There's so much going on before any dice get thrown. Making the game more accessible should help grow the player base, and improve the experience for existing players. If games were a bit smaller, I'd still spend the same, I'd just have more armies to play.
If business incentives are incentivising you to undercut the quality of your own products (by designing the game in a way that some people think isn't as good) that is a problem.
AoS model count is way less, so it's not a GW thing. It's a 40k thing. This actually has resulted in exactly what you say too, it's easy for new players and me and other long time players ended up with way more AoS armies.
Constant army size growth and the increasingly costly barrier to entry was one of the things that ultimately killed Fantasy the first time around. In 40k, the turning point was the plastic Baneblade, originally introduced for Apocalypse only (in 4th/5th) and then allowed into regular 40k shortly thereafter (Imperial Armour). Allowing people to take a giant super unit in regular matches of 40k just reframed *everything*, and we went from playing 1500 point games with a bunch of basic infantry squads with supporting elements to 2000 point games where super-units were commonplace. When a Baneblade is acceptable in a standard army and point limits shifted up to accomodate it, all of a sudden fielding three tanks or multiple elite melee deathstars doesn't feel excessive any more. When there are units that can wipe entire other units off the table in a single round of shooting/combat, all of a sudden basic infantry doesn't seem attractive any more either - gone are the days of squads being whittled down over the course of a few turns. I quickly googled for an example army and found this great one below ( source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/p9ved3/blast\_from\_the\_past\_4th\_edition\_1500pts\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/p9ved3/blast_from_the_past_4th_edition_1500pts_of/) ) This is a fairly classic 3rd-5th edition style army - it's a little heavier on the infantry than some lists, but it's notable in that it's reasonably well-rounded and reliant primarily on basic Troops (four Tactical squads) with some Elites (Dreadnought + Terminators), some Fast Attack anti-tank (two Multi-Melta Land Speeders), and some Heavy Support (Devastators and a Whirlwind). I can't imagine an army like this in 10th edition :( - I miss games that ran for 5-6 turns, took around 3 hours to play and when you were finished there were often still models on the board. https://preview.redd.it/6duhkmttf4xc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=6ebc4d5220418b3519b910d64e67a1a8c9463041
I would love it if we got back to armies like this. I guess I should just play 3rd.
I recommend 4th. People tend to look at third with rose-tinted glasses but forget it took multiple revisions and rewrites (the entire charge and fight mechanics had to be completely re-done for one) and a complete shift in codex design philosophy towards the end of the edition to reach the point that was considered 'good'. Twenty years later, it's gonna be tricky to hunt down and implement all the additional rules material to play the 'good' version of third. I'd spare myself the trouble and just play 4th, which still has the same feel but is way more digestable.
I'll have to find a copy of the rules for fourth. Thanks for the heads up.
Some guys in town still play 4th edition. I started in 9th so I'm at a pretty big disadvantage but i LOVE the old system. Other than the blast templates-it slows the game down too much to perfectly space out every guy every time you move.
Blast templates are awesome. They were also argument city in a lot of cases.
I think we should use the scatter dice for deep strike. It's so much better than just setting up exactly 9" away where you want. And you can gamble on it too when you really need to get in somewhere. Vehicles feel like vehicles. Walkers feel awesome (as opposed to 10th where there's nothing special about walkers unless i'm missing something).
Or use your own house rules with your buds. My friends and I used to use a mix of 40k and bolt action rules. I love infantry based games so bolt action was a natural fit.
This is a fun idea. I know a crew that plays One Page Rules but it doesn't do it for me haha. I'm fairly happy playing smallerish crusade games at the moment but will check out the bolt action rules.
3rd has one of the simpler set of rules, when it comes to old editions.
I thought about giving Rogue Trader a shot when my reprint arrived. I might have to GM, rather than play. Still looks fun. Maybe I should find the 3rd Ed rules. I might even have a dog warred copy of the book at my parents....
My dude, the baneblade came out in 4th edition apocalypse. Lords of War weren't allowed in non apocalypse games until 7th edition, and even then it wasn't in a codex.
You're right there about the timeline; it was Imperial Armour where the rules would have been found - but I still maintain the plastic super-heavy was the turning point; once a model like that was being mass-produced, it was going to see wide adoption and players wanting to field it.
This is [a picture of the 1990 armorcast baneblade and the 1995 Forgeworld baneblade.](https://imgur.com/a/ahWb64f) That's 1st edition 40k and 2nd edition 40k respectively.
All great points. I'm just getting back into the game after a long hiatus. I last played 3rd edition. I remember that most armies had just one vehicle or dreadnought. It was supposed to be like a slightly larger skirmish battle. That's why the armies were smaller and big things were very rare. They had epic for the larger scale battles. Seems like they blurred those lines and combined them now.
My 9th ed Raven guard army is/was 37 models total. The Tyranids I’m building are currently 121 models. Yes I’m building the swarm that I’ve accumulated through a couple purchases and not meta chasing bigger monsters but it’s fun that that’s considered a “balanced” game. I prefer fluffy games anyway
This guy Capitalisms
This is what killed Fantasy, tbqh.
For me, instead of encouraging me to try out new armies, I think I’d rather just play different games. I’m halfway through building and painting my first army and I genuinely have lost the motivation to ever get a second just due to the sheer price. If it had been easier to get to 2000 points I would have been excited to start 2-3 more armies that I was also interested in. Heck, someone gave me most of an unpainted army for free and just looking at what else I would need to buy to make it playable completely killed my desire to even finish painting them. It feels like the mobile game “whale” model where the majority of the business is geared towards the people that will spend $3000 for an army every year. It may be making them money in the short term, but in the long term I don’t think it’s sustainable, now that they’ve even started axing game support for whole model ranges, and not even because they’re replacing outdated sculpts. I just see it going down a bad path and I don’t want to invest any more in the ride.
With Killteam, you can buy a team from every faction cheaper than a Guard or Admech army for 40k. I ran the numbers, and it wasn't pretty. They push Killteam, Warcry, and Necromunda, too. In my opinion, they're much better games than 40k. Killteam and Warcry are fast to play easy to learn. Necromunda is a beautifully sculpted love child between 40k and D&D. I feel like I wastedish $3000 grand on 40k before finding the peripheral GW properties. With those games $50-100 is reasonable for a team.
Can you give me a tldr of Killteam, Warcry, and Necromumda?
Killteam is 40k at the squad level 8-20 models at most. Each of your dudes has stats and moves as an individual instead of having multiple models comprising and fighting as squads. Although they sell teams prepackaged, most of the battle line type infantry units from 40k can be used in Killteam. Warcry is the exact same thing but for Age of Sigmar. Necromunda is actually as old as 40k. It's a similar skirmish type game, but it's about hive gangsters and it's based on a campaign like a tabletop RPG and your gangers have the ability to level up and get new gear as it progresses.
If you can get enough people for a regular Necromunda campaign, it's some of the most fun you can have on the tabletop that isn't a Blood Bowl league.
Necromunda is my favorite GW game by far. How can you not love a game where you can set a dude on fire, watch him run off a ledge to his death, then accidentally kill your own model in like 10 different ways? It’s absolutely beautiful
I did this in my first game. We played a 3 game custom story in a day. The final game, after we had fought our way out of the town square, we found ourselves being attacked by zombies. We had to put our differences aside and team up to survive. My Orlock weapons master shot a zombie on a bridge with a flaming shotgun shell, setting it on fire. It ran off the edge of the bridge onto a group of zombies trying to get up a ladder, which hurt a couple, and set fire to a couple more... It was some of the most fun i'd had in a table top game for sure.
All of them are skirmish style games where you have around 10 models who all act individually. Many are alternate activation. Kill Team is 40k but at a squad level - your squad trying to complete a mission. It's slightly more complex in terms of rules and very granular and well balanced and works really well as a competitive game. It's probably what 40k really SHOULD be like. Warcry is the same scale of thing for AoS, but in tone it's a lot sillier. Much simpler rules, faster gameplay, crazy scenarios. It's a quick, action packed game designed so you can get set up and playing really fast. No braincells, lots of fun. Both of those games can be played using models from AoS and 40k. Necromunda is the ultra-narrative RPG version. You're hive gangers in the underhive. It has it's own massive range of uniquely weird and wonderful models. It has LOADS of rules to represent anything you can think of. And it's not even vaguely 'balanced' - it's designed to be played in a narrative campaign with an 'arbitrator' running thing and deciding which rules are in use. Fun, massive, thematic, crazy, but definitely not for competitive play!
It's probably worth adding that there are still fairly active communities for Inquisitor at r/Inq28 and Mordheim at r/Mordheim – both with fairly good living rulesets despite being abandoned by GW.
I feel the need to recommend Killteam to you. My sincere apologies if I'm not the first. You can get a badass team from every faction for $3000 grand and it's 40k models so it's a good slow way to build out a 40k army while getting to play with your models the whole time.
There are youTube channels showing official bat reps from back in 2nd Ed, it was wild how inflation has expanded the game - they used to look like combat patrols.
I love Minisodes! I really wish there was a commonly adopted ruleset that plays like that but with some streamlining of the clunkier mechanics.
Thats basically what a standard list for 1500pts of marines in 2nd edition looks like. About 20 guys, a couple of tanks and characters
Most combat patrols are around 400-450 points, so even a standard Incursion game is twice as big. Then you may get bored of playing always the same list and buying more units gives you more variety. And new pretty models getting released and you want to paint them. So… I see lots of reasons to keep buying stuff even without playing 3000 points
Fifteen years ago, in late 4th-eartly 5th, I routinely put 140 Ork Boyz (four 30man squads, two 10-man trukk squads) on the table as part of a 2000 point game, with fifteen lootas (because back then we weren't forced to take the spanners if we didn't want to), six deffkoptas, a warboss, a weirdboy, a looted wagon (R.I.P.), and a twelve-strong biker squad. Now, the unit cap on Boyz is ten men smaller, the bike squads max out at six, and I find I bring *fewer* models to a 2000-point game. Experiences vary.
Guard in 3rd was like this. The way platoons worked meant you could put 100 guardsmen down and it only counted as two troop choices.
I miss the old Guard organization- One command squad of at least five guys, then each platoon had another command squad (or tank), 2-5 squads of infantry per infantry platoon, plus option heavy weapons squads... Of course, I also miss Hardened Veterans. My best-painted unit in all of my armies, so of course it's the one that goes bye-bye.
Beautiful, we must return to this. I'm sure GWS would love it too
Squad sizes and battle line means that you can now field 480 guardsmen, albiet from 4 different data sheets. You're certain to run out of points before that limit in anything short of an onslaught game..
You can still do this in heresy. Solar Auxilla and Imperialis Militia/Cults can bring insane amount of bodies.
Back in index 8th I would run 150 conscripts with creed giving them orders. And that was only like 600 points.
My 5th edition Steel Legion 2k army was, if I recall right, 55 infantry (two platoons of two squads plus commands, plus company command), 7 Chimeras, 3 Russ, 2 Basilisks, Valkyrie w/ stormtroopers, and 4 armored sentinels. (I believe that’s when they made the tanks in squads with multiple per slot) All they would play at my store as 1500-2000, or apocalypse.
yeah, Nids could field almost 200 termagants/hormagaunts at one stage.
We played like 1750 ish in the commonly and it was three squads of fire warriors 3x3 crisis a hammerhead two devilfish Pathfinders and some broadsides and that was it. Games took like 2 hrs max. Good times.
I guess he might be a SM player as one definitely we use way more marines now that what you used to
Hence my summing up with "experiences vary." I suppose Marine and Necron players might need to chuck more plastic at the board, but if you run Orks, Guard, or Tyranids, we actually seem to be putting *fewer* guys out there (note: As an Ork player, having all my guys be S4 T5 and thereby making the bolter about as scary as a lasgun to my line infantry is certainly... something)
I feel that this is what the OP acknowledges, but considers it as a problem - previously, there were horde armies like Orks/Guard/Tyranid and elite armies like marines, but now they all are roughly equal, with hordes taking fewer bodies and marines taking more.
I think by putting it down to just points, the OP is being a little simplistic, though. Some of it's points, sure. Some of it's down to the basics of the game (everyone needs to farm CP, everybody needs to contest objectives, everybody needs answers to deep striking Rapid Ingress horseshit, etc) causing armies to have samey units that end up occupying a similar amount of table space. And some of it, including the points adjustments, is down to the very simple math that comes with expanding the statlines and changing how units work. Back when dinosaurs walked the earth, an Ork boy was S3, T4, WS 4, BS 2 with a 6+ save (and I2, remember Initiative? Good times) and a Space Marine was S4, T4, WS 4, BS 4, with a 3+ save (And I4!), making them qualitatively superior almost across the line. Even in melee, their acknowledged specialty, an Ork would be outperformed by an individual Marine- and thus, a Marine's higher points (more than double, IIRC) were justified But all of that has changed, and even with a second Wound, Marines just aren't that much better than a S4 T5 Ork with a 5+ save- especially since weapon skill is no longer compared between units, but is now just a simple stat check. That Ork who used to need a 4 to land a hit on a Marine only needs the same 3 he'd need to swat a guardsman or a grot, and now doesn't need a 5 to wound, but only a 4. Meanwhile, the Marine *does* usually need a 5 to score a wound after hitting an Ork. For a game largely balanced around MEQ units for most of its design history, the stretching of the strength and toughness tables has done formerly elite armies no favors- apart from their second Wound and some stronger guns on the Primaris units, Marines have remained largely the same. Meanwhile, vehicles have gotten so hard to damage that melta weapons are actually better at killing heavy infantry than they are at taking out a vehicle- and it means that everybody is packing firepower that finds T4 with a 3+ save more cute than elite.
Yeah I guess you're right, sorry bout that m8 but I really don't care about it either way it's fun fielding 30 terminators, but it was also fun having terminators always wave on a 4+ and usually on a 2+
Yeah, 2k was standard for both fantasy 6th edition and 40k 4th, I'm not sure where OP is getting the increased point cost games from. Some tournaments ran at 1650-1750 in order to avoid the additional power houses you got with 2k (lord choices, more rare slots etc), but for the most part, 2k was THE game mode.
The rule book and gw events were both 1500 standard, 2k only became "officially normalised" in 8th.
We are a bit responsible for this. Kill team events does not have nearly the same attendance and Combat patrol also are not as popular. I’m pretty sure these were tests done by GW to see the popularity of smaller scale games but they see that it doesn’t sell as well and they focus on the big game instead. Meanwhile the 40K event popularity creates popularity and gets talked about in YouTube channel and drives people to events and the cycle continues.
It’s pretty funny because Killteam and Combat Patrol are unequivocally more balanced, and it’s not even particularly close. Big 40K is the sloppiest system GW produces currently imo and it also sells the best. Really goes to show that good rules and balance don’t matter in terms of sales, which really shows in their design philosophy tbh.
I particularly liked kill team, but gave up trying to get more than 8 people to play. Meanwhile I could attend a dozen GT-Sized 40K event each year if I want. I include myself as part of the problem as I just defaulted back to 40K, I’d rather use my time to play a game than trying to organize and promote a game that few people were really interested in.
I’m really surprised more people aren’t into kill team. I think it’s really fun and a bit more chess-like that big 40K. Plus I get to try different factions without needing a whole armies worth
Maybe Is Just me but when I Saw KT's rules with all those triangles and geometrical symbols I drop immediately
Honestly its a weird layout but they just mean distances, when you know the rules to a basic level its no more complex than standard 40k
Honestly its a weird layout but they just mean distances, when you know the rules to a basic level its no more complex than standard 40k
My local shop is half and half 40K and Killteam every Friday, we have like 12-16 people at least show up every week and have like 20-30 in the local area. I feel very fortunate to have a Killteam scene in my area, because I’m just not going back to big 40K. It’s just absolute trash and only getting worse, Id rather just not play and do something else with my time. I might try AOS if there’s no KT scene when I move, but ya regular 40K is dead to me. Edit: The only caveat I’d say is if they used alternating activations in big 40K. It would immediately make the game way better and more interesting, and wouldn’t even be that hard to do. But as far as I’m tracking the GW design team has insisted they will never change it from pure I go you go due to fear of player backlash. Even tho IGYG is hilariously outdated and no game system should be using it in 2024. So ya, probably never going back.
I felt like his for a while. I got excited to run big vehicles, monsters, mounted units and all the fun toys. I am definitely of the mind that there are too many models on the table in big 40k. Killteam is much more accessible. However, playing narrative big 40k has me enjoying it again. KT is certainly a tighter system barring a few of the kludgey cover/terrain rules.
I’ve been trying to get into Legions Imperialis/Epic Armageddon to try and do big battle stuff, but that’s even less popular than Killteam unfortunately.
I wish they did epic over in 40k with all the xenos instead of leaving us stuck in the Horus Heresy.
Ya, I get what they were going for, keeping the range smaller is better for them as a company, but I’m a Tau main so not having even in the range is annoying. That’s why I’m just 3D printing and leaning towards Net Epic Armageddon, the rules are free and the models are cheap if you have a 3D printer. Only real problem is it’s just not that popular, and getting people into it in my area is difficult.
Because Combat patrol and killteams have no army composition freedom, which is a big part of the enjoyment of the game
Just to say this is why Warcry is great, skirmish size but lots of tinkering options, in the current edition, especially if you play a non-specialist warband (I.e. not from one box but cobbled together).
Yeah this is the big selling point for me with 40k, but freedom of army composition seems to be something GW wants to remove as much as possible from 40k too with free wargear and such.
Combat patrol is NOT balanced what are you talking about
Tbf, the popularity of 40k also makes it less balanced, in that the more eyes are on it, the more likelly someone is going to find some "bug" in the rules they can exploit, which means that has to be patched, which just creates more jank, which then gets exploited. There is probably lots of broken things in Kill Team and Combat Patrol thats just undiscovered.
I can’t really say for combat patrol, but for Killteam things that are unintended or blatantly too strong are patched in balance dataslates every couple of months. They’re discovered quickly and dealt with pretty quickly as well. I think that’s only possible because the scope of the game is smaller and the list construction is more constrained, the points system in big 40K is just awful and there are too many units.
Thats also a very fair point. Big 40k just has way too many *things* to ever be balanced no matter what.
Lol you're delusional if you think for a second that Combat Patrol is better balanced than a 2k game. It isn't even remotely close.
I've been trying to find a local club to get involved with so I can actually play with the models I paint, and games like Kill Team, Combat Patrol, Warcry/Underworlds look great to me because of the low barrier for entry, shorter games, fewer models, easier rules etc... but literally no clubs I've found play any of them. It's just 40k/AoS and sometimes Heresy
So, here's a dumb question... from what I hear, the biggest complaint about 1,000 point games is that you don't have enough unit variety to beat the various forms of skew lists. If the OP is true, then wouldn't playing smaller games, even 1,500, counteract that?
In my expirience 1000pts games are prefectly fine, they are not fine in AoS, but 2000pts army there its like 1500/1250 in 40k so its no as critical
1000 points is fair when everyone plays fair. But skew lists can definitely become a problem. You'll see this happen in for example escalation leagues where players who are NOT building the army as they go and are either adding or already have a ton of an army might experiment... I'm guilty of this myself. You bring something that sounds stupid and fun, and someone else can't deal with it.
The thing about skew lists is that they tend to be really swingy. I play knights at 1k a lot and I can usually tell how the game is going to go by the end of turn 1. Either my team has done a lot of good cross-map shooting, or I've missed most of my shots and had one of my armigers blown off the map. My green tide army has done a little better, but after a few games I feel like it's exhausting rolling 80+ dice every turn so I've kinda gotten turned off that list.
I played an escalation league starting at 750 points. And some ork ayer bang a bunch of buggys and a war boss. Everyone else had a couple of infantry squads and an HQ leader.. It was a shit show.
Yup armies that have access to cheap high toughness units can be a problem Imagine guard with the new leman Russ points No balanced 1000 point list could even dream of dealing with multiple of them
It really depends. My Thousand Sons basically don't work at less than 1500 points, because all the points costs are balanced around the powerful Rituals we can cast. But the resource we need to use Rituals is dependent on how many sorcerer characters are in play. Even at 2000 points it means that you basically *have* to focus on characters and MSU Rubric Marines. At 1000 points, even with that focus, you wont have enough Cabal Points to cast powerful Rituals.
Not just skew, but typically each list can only afford 1-2 proper hammers. So games are often about who gets to kill the opponent's hammer unit first, giving them nothing to fight back with and snowballing from there.
It's moronic to play 40k competitively. Warhammer is best played together instead of against one another. The first conversation any two players should have when scheduling a game is what kind of game they want to have. And adjust their lists accordingly to create the kind of game they want.
I have a fun time playing warhammer together with my friends, to win ("competitively"). It can create some really tense/tactical moments. Like you said nobody seems to talk about how they want to play prior to playing it which I think should be more normalised.
It's only moronic when two players approach the game different ways. Either both play competative or both play fluff warhammer, nothing wrong with either.
1500 is my fave game size, perfect balance at this point in the game
I’m pretty sure I remember seeing someone do a comparison with how expensive some top 9th edition lists were in 10th and in editions past, and iirc they were broadly the same. As in the number of models you could field at a given points cost hasn’t changed much. Obviously this is not the case for Admech right now, but that’s a bit of an outlier
It’s faction specific. Looking at my Guard army, in 8th we had 4pt guardsmen, 33pt HWTs, 150pt Leman Russes, and I believe artillery was between 110-150ish. They’ve all gone up… but with “woo free upgrades” I don’t want.
10th ed's decision to do away with most wargear/options was an absolute travesty
I get limited rules and stratagems so there was less of a learning curve and “gotcha” moments during games but I never understood the wargear thing. It’s a strategy game for nerds with a major role-playing element. Taking away tailoring my units just feels like taking away part of what made the game
It was the proverbial straw that made me stop playing. I still have my fingers crossed that 11th will return to some kind of 8th/10th hybrid... But honestly it might just be time to finally pivot into one page rules (or napoleonics, lol)
100%. I get that they wanted to simplify the game from how it was 7-9th, and I agree. But adding up point costs for gear was not a concept anyone struggled with. I seriously think that it's executives wanting to get involved, so they try to learn the game, and adding up point costs is about as far as they get before they decide the game is too darn complicated. So they say "simplify the points system!". However the parts that are complicated, like cover interacting with large models or the differences between Reserves and Strategic Reserves never get addressed. Heck it took until like 8th edition for Pistols to make sense. My only hope is that free wargear is a temporary stepping stone towards greater balance in the game. Like designers said it would be easy to balance armies competitively if they could first focus on balancing everything at max power. Then once it is relatively balanced, reintroduce points in a way where you have an option to not take the plasma gun, sponson weapon, HK missile etc. Probably not the case but I can dream.
I remember back in 9th there was a Tsons list that won a GT that could be bought for under 300 eur. That was fairly shocking to me.
Play smaller points
Yep, I love playing 1500 point games
I've been saying this for years and getting downvotes to oblivion every time.
For real I'm a dad and my play group is dads and free time is hard to come by I can't remember last time we had over 1k match
It's something the flexs over time going from 2nd edition onwards were around the average size. Yes, basic game size has gone up from 1500 to 2000 but proportionally it's fairly flat. If it helps Lord of the Rings games are a good mid size between 40K/AoS and Killteam/warcry.
In 2nd edition you could have about 27 figures and a tank and have a 2000 pt army.
Yeah, 3rd is when it went from a platoon sized game to company sized. Guard in 3rd on average was 100+ models
And when Tactical Marines went from being something that you fielded because you didn't have the models to field anything else yet, to being something that was actually very useful in the game.
Average points was 1750-1850 during 4th and 5th, 6th was 2000 (week really it was 1999+1) and since then it's been 2k. Which isn't much bigger. Given many transports were 35-40 points, chaff was cheaper, and no big named characters in events, etc... some armies are fielding less models now (my Nids are lower, my DE are the same, CSM are lower, actually much lower now). That means 2k has been the normal for 12 years now. I think what makes the game feel like it's more models honestly is smaller tables with larger bases. When you had 60 Marines on 25mm bases, some starting in a few rhinos and others in 3 drop pods all on a larger table (60x72). It's going to feel cramped with 32mm models, transports not used anywhere near as much and on a 44x60 table.
Yeah I've noticed AoS points tend to be about 25% more expensive across the board, I really like it
I ordered a Skaven box for 150€ and it's over 1200pt... Comparing this to my 40k Orks, this seems super cheap
It's a side effect of balance passes granting just blanket points drops. So now Ad Mech, one of if not the most expensive faction to collect, is that much more expensive to have a table-ready force because you have to field that much more stuff.
Pts are easier to fix than bad rules.
Points can fix the game balance, but not the feeling of a unit. If an elite unit has really poor stats it's bad; sure they can make it cheaper, but they don't *feel* like they should. Same when a unit has rules that don't fit what they are in the mind of players.
I said easy, not correct. AdMech proves that. Billed as elite, sold as elite, monetary cost as elite, trash rules and pointed like a hoard.
When I started playing in third, the normal games were 500/750/1500. On rare occasion you would see a blowout 2000 game, but Armageddon came around and stopped that.
3rd was an interesting beast though, as the point values in 3rd were close to exactly half that of 2nd edition. The streamlined/simpler ruleset allowed for the increase in army size to not affect game time. Since 3rd points values have slowly crept up.
Also significantly cheaper. £10 for a tactical/devastator/assault squad when they were first released. Crazy how cheap the hobby was in 3rd considering how expensive 2nd was.
I couldn’t even buy enough models to make big squads as a necron player back in the day. My lgs would randomly buy blister packs. Oh you want a squad of 10 flayed ones or some wraiths? Good luck buying 2 at a time for the next 5 months. I don’t think I ever even got to use a parish (probably the coolest unit in the game)
Could it be due to 3rd edition having more plastic multipart kits and less metal monopose?
That was definitely a big part of it. The mixed metal/plastic kits towards the end of second were eye wateringly expensie. I remember a TacSquad being about £25, which is like £45 in today's money. I imagine that GW would have been hard pressed to validate keeping similar prices because of that. It was awesome though, because the newer models looked much cooler (and hence were mostly unchanged after multiple refreshes), had more options, and I remember a big thing was that as a kid, techniques like pinning were basically the dark arts that only professionals did, whereas most other kids would rely on superglued models constantly breaking apart. Plastic glue/polystyrene cement was much better for keeping models stuck together. That said, price creep set in quite quickly, and I remember the price of some things, like the Devastator Squad and Assault Squads, etc. slowly coming up by amounts of £2-5.
What’s the inflation on that though, I think it would be not that much cheaper with inflation
Last I checked in low late 2022 early 2023, most kits were about £10 more than inflation would have been, with an inflation matching price of £17 to the price of a TacSquad being around £27-30. And you could easily rationalise that the improvement with some refreshes made up for some of that. I do also remember checking the Land Raider, and that was actually perfectly in line with inflation E: just checked a tactical squad and devastator squad. They’re about 2x more now than an inflation matching cost (£18 vs £35. Land Raider is almost exactly in line with inflation still (£30 vs £55)
I could afford 3rd edition as a kid mowing lawns. Prices today are shocking. It was definitely cheaper.
Having seen the data on it, that's not actually true. The points cap of a full game has increased, yes, but so has the average points cost per model. The 2000pt game isn't something artificially created by GW, it's an approximation of how many models people want on the table - if it was too high we'd go back down to 1500 or 1750 pt. The problem, imo, is board sizes shrinking.
That’s my biggest complaint as well, the most balanced and fun games I had of 9th and 10th were ignoring the new board measurements and just using the whole 6’x4’ table
Board sizes are retarded small. I remember in 8th edition I'd struggle to get my space wolves across the board. Now with my imperial guard I struggle to make it out of my deployment zone if the enemy gets T1 and I can't wipe their front line faster than they can move them.
This is one of the reasons I have moved to only playing Necromunda and Blood Bowl - much smaller cost for entry due to lower model counts. I enjoy the freedom to explore different gangs/teams more readily as the investment in time and money is far less than buying a whole new 40k army.
Hell yeah, plus the saying "every model is a necromunda model" really helps. Since you can use proxy/kitbash/3rd party minis, you can greatly reduce costs.
Bood Bowl is goated as a game though.
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I am so sorry for you. From what I hear, they used to be way better and more elite. They were apparently never meant to be a horde army.
I prefer larger games, personally. It makes it feel more like a real battle and makes the Herohammer experience less ridiculous (Lord-Regent of the Imperium shows up to personally fight a small band of enemies, etc.)
Good thing there is so many small scale specielist games. From one page rules to necromunda
Came here to mention OPR. And then probably get banned from the sub, but I’m sometimes a cynical pessimist.
Can confirm I recreated a guard list from a 2006 White Dwarf and what used to be arround 2000 points are now 1200.
And unlike 2006 you can now take more than 3 heavy tanks, your mandatory troop choice was a minimum of 25 models and you had to take at least 2. The absolute minimum model count for a guard army was 55.
Funny thing, but points really haven’t changed all that much over time. I was curious about this, and the farthest back book I could find of mine was the 3.5 edition chaos codex. It’s surprisingly not all that different from where things sit now. A basic CSM was 14 points a model. A Rhino was 50 points, Nurglings were 10 points per base, and funnily enough, a Lord of Change was only 160. What has slowly changed though over time have been the options. First it was free unit champions, then some baked in upgrades, now we’re at the point where all the wargear is free, and that’s probably where the scale increase has caused the most impact. I do agree though that games feel too large. I’m mostly a Sigmar player these days, but even recently my friends and I noticed how even a thousand point game of 40K feels larger than a 2,000 point game of AoS, and God forbid our Crusade campaign makes it to the 3k level.
I think Greater Daemons in general may not be the best measure, since I think their rules got updated to reflect their massive new models.
It would be interesting to hear how a 1500 point tournament plays out these days. I imagine games will be played to the end a lot more and would probably be more enjoyable for everyone. I'm in favour of smaller games being the default but 2000 points seems set in stone On the other hand you could always just lean into a terminator style army, or knights or custodes etc. Nidzilla, Ork dread mob, daemon monster spam, C'tan spam, IG tanks. Some factions don't have these options but most do
Just did a 2 day 1500pt tournament - aimed at casuals so perhaps not reflective of competitive tournaments, but I would say more enjoyable than 2000. Games actually felt similar in terms of length - there were a few games against nids and other hordes that didn’t finish - but I felt like the mental overhead was less simply due to less unit types being on the board. Anecdotally comparing scores, people seemed to score less on secondaries, maybe due to having less utility units or not having the tools to do things like bring it down etc. Tbh it was the little things that made it more fun - easier to move models between tables, quicker overview of armies, shooting phase feeling slightly less oppressive. It also meant each unit felt more impactful and got to show off a bit which was nice
I mean, 1500 with some restrictions could work. Like, no unit can be more than 20% of max points, no centerpieces that are more than 25% etc. In Horus Heresy you can't run Horus (600) points in lists smaller than 2.4k. And his upgraded form (1000pts) is for 4k armies and bigger. This also creates some issues though. Perturabo (450ish points) has a modified Baneblade that can be ran as his transport (900ish points). But it counts as Lord of War points which means you total over 1350 points in that slot, so you can't run that in games where each side has less than 5400 points...
I'm just getting back to Warhammer 40k after being away from the hobby since 5th edition and games feel like they have actually gotten quite a bit smaller since then. Squads used to be so much larger for horde armies back then, of course with templates still around you needed that. The game was also substantially more lethal back then, a stray battlecannon shot wiped entire squads and a single autocannon round had the potential to destroy most vehicles (A krak missile or Lascannon destroyed most any other vehicle). That being said I didn't like playing 2k much back then either and usually stuck with 1500. Space Marines were about 14 points a model back then too, as were Chaos Space Marines (although I think they were 15, but the CSM were awful in 5th unless you ran Lash Prince with Obliterators.) Dragging 2000 points of Tyranids is annoying, but cmon, that's like the main Tyranid motif. A giant ravenous swarm of Aliens. Sure Nidzilla existed back then (and ironically was the best way to play them), but the large swarm of alien monsters has always been the central theme of the Tyranids.
I like more models. Bigger armies=more fun. Is Warhammer expensive? Sure, but it's also an investment and has potentially one of the best dollar per hour hobbies out there
If you think that then play 1500 or 1000 point games. Your not required to play 2000's.
I remember most games back in my HS and college days being 500 to 1500 tops, but we were poor students. IMO the game can still be played in almost any size and still be enjoyable, except for a few armies like Knights that usually need a high point total to field a balanced army.
My main problem is how much it congests the board. Deployment zones wind up packed like sardines, and everything’s so packed in close it quickly devolves into a statblock slogfest, there’s not much sense of manoeuvring or of a threat and counter threat I don’t get to play often just because of where I am geographically, so I don’t mind making a day of it and laboriously hauling a 3k army, it’s a 3 hour drive anyway. But even in 2k games we always use a bigger board, it actually makes things just so much more fun. The first turn is basically just getting into position, only the extreme long range units will be shooting anything, movement becomes a commitment; so you have to really think about where you’re sending your units because you can’t just react on the fly. Heavy weapons function like they oughta; a massive scary threat to deter people, taking the quickest route to the objective can expose you to 2 turns of heavy bolter fire mincing your squad. Screening becomes less automatic and deep strikes or flank attacks from fast units become much more of a threat, especially since the bigger board really gives those high speed units a chance to shine. Having an actual horde army means something since instead of your units just getting in eachothers way they actually give you the board control and screening more elite armies simply can’t get, and most of all they’re able to encircle smaller armies.
This is why i like to play on larger than standard boards with upscaled deployment zones, lets you be more strategicand can get some early game comflict going
Them shrinking board sizes in 9th was a disaster, they needed to honestly make them bigger.
To GW’s credit, I actually think this is as much a balancing problem as it is a sales tactic. In 9th they slashed points on a lot of armies out of reluctance to change rules, or in the case of Armor of Contempt, decided the rule change made the game worse, so a points change was added instead. Then, in 10th, very briefly, points were sort of “reset” to the early 9th values, where, for example, marines were only getting a handful of units. But without the wombo combos available in 9th edition, most of these “elite” units wound up feeling very weak, so GW slashed points almost immediately. So now you can fit 120 Primaris marines, with room to spare, in a black Templar list. That’s a number that, in years/editions past, would’ve been reserved for things like conscripts. And the scary thing is that even at dirt cheap costs, things like intercessors and assault intercessors still aren’t seeing widespread use. Tbh, it’s probably mostly to do with the hullspam meta we still find ourselves in, and how little many of these units can do when they find themselves face-to-face with a Redemptor Dreadnought. I mean, who wants to run 150pts of melee intercessors, or 160 points of shooty intercessors, when that 10-man unit can’t even scratch the paint on a 210 point Redemptor dreadnought with cover/AoC, when the Redemptor wipes out the 10-man without breaking a sweat?
I agree with all your points. Lore wise it is also dumb having named lord commanders show up in relatively minor forces constantly.
Haven’t 2000 pts been the norm for a pretty long time now? I’ve started in 7th and that was the standard size game. I also remember in 9th(?) everything got a significant point hike to shrink the game down, and the minimum recommended table size got smaller too. I remember watching people play earlier games that involved half a dozen drop pods puking out full tactical squads supported by tanks and dreadnoughts. As far as I can tell the game has only shrunk?
The US tournament scene led the way on it.
I care less about the points bloat and more about the inclusion of flyers superheavies and named characters in 'normal' games, that are now on shrunken boards that the enemy can cross and reach melee in the first turn through a maze of identical L shaped ruins, and an arms race of codex creep means every unit has to be able to annihilate another unit in one salvo (with 45 stratagems). All of those things bug me infinitely more into making 40k feel like a cramped, frenetic mess than having say 50% more of an army on the table than I did in 3e-5e. I've been playing a lot of TOW since release and it's so damn refreshing to have a game on nice big tables, with a couple turns of manoeuvring, and actual seeing a hill or some trees here or there for once since 2013.
Nah. 2k point games have gotten smaller overall. Back in 8th, I was running 180 boys, and that wasn’t even half the list. Now I can run 120 max, with 80 being ideal currently.
As a beginner from other games (Xwing, Armada, Legion) it is a BIG game. Loads of units, loads of dice, many many differing attacks. In reality to play a competitive game through you need to have memorised so many details and be really really fast. The learning curve is steep, the games are exhausting. Obviously the models and the law are fantastic and that’s why I’m here. I found the games of Xwing, Armada and Legion were still complex. But generally flowed quicker with more time to chat. But those communities are dying off sadly. There is a 40K version that could exist which keeps the flavour, the narrative and the cool models. But also gets the flow and pacing of these other games. But it would mean removing some of the most traditional 40K elements. Changing turn order, reducing model count, and in my opinion - moving on from the d6. to an attack dice /defence dice system perhaps using d8’s (very controversial I know).
Recent interviews with GW rules designers show for example that they felt 2nd edition worked best with maybe 400 points. All the battle reports were 1500 to 2000 points simply to push sales. All we see now is this rules vs marketing extended for another 30+ years
Warhammer does work for fewer points. While Combat Patrol isn't that fun the long run in my opinion, and Incursion doesn't really work once people start teching lists, it can be easily fixed with some bolted-on army restrictions. Just some basic stuff like having a 1k game restricting Battleline to 0-3 and other units to 0-1, plus restricting the use of heavy vehicles (like allowing only one model past a certain Wounds or toughness threshold) would make Incursion a workable and interesting play format. Combine that with the Leviathan deck and requiring Tactical Objective play and you'd end up with a play format that strongly discourages taking big and tough single models or 'deathstar' units that usually plague small point games. And then Boarding Actions still exists. The rules were adapted to 10th ed and are free download off Warcom. I wholeheartedly recommend you check it out, even if it's on proxy terrain or flat out corridors drawn on paper. Boarding Actions is some of the most fun I had with 40k in literal decades. Games Workshop cracked the code with small format games with it and I am thoroughly baffled they do not support it more.
A part of the issue with the gaming industry (among others) is that they don't necessarily look to growing their customer base, preferring to squeeze their existing one like an orange. To step away from 40K as an example, ~~Wizards of the Coast~~ Hasbro enjoyed several years of explosive growth, thanks to the efforts of others, like Critical Role, and an unusual set of circumstances, like the debut of "Stranger Things" and the Covid outbreak. They hired an MS executive to take over WOTC, whose first words were "This IP is under-monetized" and started shifting things to an online "walled garden" model with the purchase of D&D Beyond and their effort to claw back the OGL. Hilarity ensued.
The tournements and Games I've been playing since the early 00s have always been 2k points unless its an apoc game.
*Laughs in old school WH Fantasy* Not even close, OP. Not even close.
Yup I agree. I saw a post recently from someone who showed what a full 2000 point army from 3rd edition was compared to 10th and it has literally quadrupled.
This seems exaggerated significantly. wait was it 2nd ed to 10th? Coz 3rd halved the points value from 2nd and then they've stayed somewhat similarish since. this is 1,500 points from 4th ed. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/p9ved3/blast\_from\_the\_past\_4th\_edition\_1500pts\_of/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/p9ved3/blast_from_the_past_4th_edition_1500pts_of/#lightbox)
Pretty sure it was 3rd. I actually played 3rd back in the day. Armies were much smaller.
The problem isn't the amount of models for me is the ridiculous board sizes, too fucking small.
https://preview.redd.it/r8dglck2g6xc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5027c45a422de05eaf7e19a3a804762c6e97a63d 1500 points of Ultramarines in 2nd Ed.
1153 points in 7th edition 970 points in 8th edition. 990 points in 9th edition. 830 points in 10th edition. 890 points in 10th using Primaris versions of units. So, with pretty much identical loadouts and units, you got the above points values.
...... No. The number of figures are far fewer than they were in the early editions. Especially with fantasy. I had swarm armies in both. I will never paint another termagant or night goblin archer again, even at gunpoint.
I've long thought 40K is played in an incorrect scale. There shouldn't be titans and aircraft in 40K. For full scale engagements with aircraft etc, Epic should handle those. 40K should be more combat patrol scale: maybe one or two pieces of armour and 2-3 stands. Kill Team should handle surgical infiltration missions. I was playing 40K at RT and 2e. I don't know when it went from being 30ish dudes and some tanks / dreadnoughts to "here's my line of dudes, tanks, aircraft and my forge world titan" but it seems crazy to me. Obviously YMMV.
I have to disagree here, I’ve been playing since 3rd edition and 2k pts has always been the standard “butter zone” in the groups I played with. Sure you could play smaller battles most people in my experience were against smaller battles, especially space marine players. And while 10th edition is unique with the reset - simplified points and faction rules for new comers have come about as a result of a move to make the game simpler this edition- the base points cost of many units are practically the same, even after the new update: 3rd Ed. Tactical squad = 15pts per model 10th Ed. Tactical squad = 14pts per model 3rd Ed. Dreadnought = 105-125pts 10th Ed. Dreadnought = 135pts 3rd Ed. Genestealers = 16 pts p.m 10th Ed. Genestealers = 15pts p.m 3rd Ed. Zoanthropes = 34pts p.m 10th Ed. Zoanthropes = 33.3 pts p.m 3rd Ed. Drukhari warriors = 8pts p.m 10th Ed. Drukhari warriors = 10pts p.m 3rd Ed. Ravager = 105pts 10th Ed. Ravager = 115pts Maybe try playing kill team or even Necromunda if you prefer the vibe of smaller scale battles? I know a lot of people who have really enjoyed jumping into these.
That 15ppm for Tactical Marines was for a naked bolter marine with nothing but his bolter and his power armour. Give him frag and krak grenades, and he goes up to 18ppm. Want to give the squad a special or heavy weapon, or the Sergeant a power weapon or plasma pistol? There's another 10-15 points each.
I’m right there with you. I played in ~3rd edition, then stopped until 8th, and was surprised how much the model count seems to have grown. There’s often not maneuvering space on the board because of it. It does, to an extent, feel like it removes some of the vibe of the game. It also drives very short games. Tournament games are often over by round 3. I’d much prefer a 3 hour game have 5-7 turns with fewer models, vs. balancing the rules around so few.
Andry Chambers (idk, could have been Rick Priestly), one of the former game designers, has talked about why the model count increased. 40K was initially designed as a skirmish-scale game, about 25-50 models. During 2nd edition, they got a lot of letters and phone calls from independent shops saying their customers were mostly interested in playing it at battle-scale, despite the rules getting really clunky at that size. So, they decided to redesign the game for a battle scale of roughly 50-100 models. 3rd edition was transitional in size, and 4th was nearly there. The model count has since remained pretty close to what the average customer actually wants.
As others have said, 40k is often a 3 turn game disguised as a 5 turn game
My issue is the size of tables! There’s nowt wrong with just playing 1000 or 1500 pts is there?
When I started warhammer, the biggest thing you would see on a table was a dreadnought.
Admech 4000 points are now 2000. Three editions in a row they slashed points severely.
Definitely. Every time I watch a battle report, I almost always think "wow, that's quite a lot of units", then there's some factions like nids or tau where it definitely feels like too much "a character, another one, infantry, a transport, big suit (monster), another suit, then double that and add 3 specialist units and 2 more characters". And then there's admech like: "3 packs of infantry, each with a character, several scouts, fast attack units, a tank, a transport, a big pack of kataphron, with character of course, specialist infantry, for a bit of diversity, and another one, another one, and another unit, and, oh yeah, 2 armigers for the hell of it." Completely ridiculous
I think the first round or two just look silly when you are packing plastic into your deployment zones. It all feels way too tight for the size board. 1000-1500 feels right for a 44x60 board.
I'll be entirely honest, 2k is the size of game I am least interested in. At 1k, I can just dedicate a couple of hours for a quick game, and at 3k I can bring out the Big Dumb Objects effectively. 2k takes a long time, and I have a lot fewer points to go around.
Our group has decided to keep our games in the 500-1500 range. Most of our normal games are 1000 pts. It does lock out some of the bigger flashy units, but the balance is just fine. We've found a board about 3'x4' is perfect for 1000 pt games, too.
This sentiment confuses me sometimes, before remembering that I play Thousand Sons, and a “marine heavy” list has maybe 30 Marines total, a monster or two, and a Rhino or two. Then I look at essentially every other legion fielding easily double or even triple that many bodies… It’s shocking how different it is. I still can’t understand how I have double the number of basic Space Marines as I do Rubrics (a mix of Hellblasters, Infernus, Intercessors, Assault Ints, and other stuff) and yet… I don’t even have 2000 points of SM, while having over 3000 points of TSons. It’s… well, kind of insane.
I've only been playing for about 8 months now, but I've played more 1k games than 2k games. Maybe that's just my local scene, but it's what tends to be more popular. Additionally, might I offer you to try Kill Team? Most teams are one box of 10 models and many teams don't even take the full box. It's got alternating activations so it's much faster paced and more engaging as well.
It’s certainly to make more money but I love big bloody battlefields, makes me feel like I’m in one of the books
Want smaller games? Play Killteam or Combat Patrol. As for Marines being 14 pts, looked at my 4th ed codex, and they were 15, scouts were 13.