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Is it time to rethink 2000 points as the "standard" in AoS?


RuneBrush

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Was just reading through the thread on the recently announced GW price increase and had a bit of a random thought.  With the overall cost of an army increasing when purchased from scratch, why as gamers do we seem to constantly end up with the scenario that 2000 points is the defacto size to play games at?  Specifically thinking of organised events more than anything, but as a wider line of thinking when writing lists etc.

Is now a good time to rethink this almost self-imposed point level and try to encourage slightly smaller games to be played.  It would not only lower the monetary cost, but also speed games up (less to move and think about), plus it would certainly shake the "meta" up - you'd not see a 4 mega-gargant army for example.

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GW tried with 40k in 8th. They set the standard to 1750 and the community rioted. Some tournaments did capitulate out of a desire to toe the party line, but the norm returning to 2000pts in 9th suggests they listened to that brief outrage.

The only way I see it moving is if GW radically increase points across the board and 'the community' don't just raise the norm to say... 2500 to accommodate. 

I think people like 2000pts because 1) Familiarity. GW fans are typically anything if not adverse to change and 2) It's a good point range to allow everybody to bring all their shiny toys.

Personally I'd be over the moon to see the average point battle drop to 1500 points or so, largely because I hate seeing boards where things are awkwardly crammed up like somebody poured a bucket of Army Men out over it, but I don't see that changing unless GW themselves push for it.

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Personally I love the idea of smaller games and would love it if it became more standard. I would prefer to collect more smaller armies than one larger army.

I was quite excited for the meeting engagement format in GHB 2020 but nothing really has been said of it in the transition to 3rd. 

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I find games under 2k to be too small for me, my current list (including heroes) is only 7 units and 20 models as is.

 

I would be interested in a smaller point format that strives to keep larger armies still. Off the top of my head restrictions like no heroes over 500 points, no more than half the army spent on heroes, 3 battleline required still, only 2 reinforcements etc.

 

Of course moving to 1500 points only makes some of the broken units more broken but that's not a reason to try, just more reason to fix those few outliers

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Nearly all my games in 3rd Ed have been at 1000 points and it really feels like a sweet spot. It’s fast, you don’t get lost in the rules and new abilities, it’s FAR easier to reach. Plus 1000 points is an interesting value to build lists, you can fit most things in but you need to know your army to get the most from the few things you can get on the table. So different to 2k where games lasted hours and often didn’t finish. I am finding it hard to go back to 2k

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For me the game feels very balanced around 2k being the standard game type. I have played plenty of games at 1k and a few at 1.5k but 2k definitely feels like the point at which things fall into place most naturally. As the game is now I feel like it is really the lowest point at which the big center piece heroes and monsters don't just completely obliterate everything on the table.

Personally I wouldn't be against moving the standard of where the game is generally played but I think that's a bigger job than it initially seems.

As for why everyone seems so attached to the 2000 number, both here in 40k? I have no idea. The whole thing strikes me as holding on to tradition for it's own sake and little else.

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A topic that in my opinion is worth taking a closer look!

During AoS 2.0 we had a time where my group played some more 1k games. Main motivation was the fact that 3 people were building new armies and wanted to play the new models already, before having enough to hit the 2k cap. We noticed following patterns:

  • Games were faster and more intense/fun.
  • No one could assembly a fully buffed deathstar, which was basically dominated the 2k meta at that point. This forced lists to be build with some weaknesses that the others could use for their advantage. While this led to a rock-paper-scissors-effect in some games, it in general gave some tactical depth to the game. 

For AoS 3.0 I see some reasons why it may work in a less optimal way. Mainly, 3.0 came with a major bump in points. Some factions like Hedonites, Beastclaws or Stormcast have some really really pricey units which limits list building in a rough manner. Getting used to not being able to put all units you want to play is anyway uncomfortable, being only able to build lists at either 920 or 1060 pts with the models you have makes it even worse. But despite the mentioned worries: We participated with some friends at a random-team-tournament with 2v2 games of 1k lists, and it was really a fun event. I've seen there some really interesting lists which also got spiced up by having 4 of them on the board at the same time.

Btw the same also affects 40k: With 40k armies beeing currently way pricier than AoS ones we started to play more smaller games. While 2k games tend to be exhausting and 3-4 hours long, smaller games tend to be a way nicer experience. Only downside is that you have to scale the terrain/playmatsize down. Playing 1k at 6x4 ft is neither fun nor fair.

Edit: Another point that makes me wonder if it works that well in 3.0 as in 2.0 is the killyness and damage output within this new edition

Edited by Charleston
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To preface: Im saying this solely from a competitve standpoint. I think if you want to play lower pt value games you should definitely go for it. 

Im not looking for a way to discourage/disparage Gitz/Skaven again. A horde army can barely play as one in this edition - why make their issue worse by giving them less points to work with. Keep in mind this is supposed to be army vs army. Lower point caps for games coupled with the higher point costs in 3rd edition is just eating away at models and starts turning this game into skirmish as opposed to what it should be, which is the fantasy equivalent of 40k. 

 

1k games would be bad for the competitive scene. Games get too swingy, and the meta would be dominated by either someone that can throw in extremely efficient models at low points such as Morathi/Stonehorns/Garants/etc or just whomever is rolling hot that day. It wouldn't bode well for that part of the game at all. As someone said prior 40k tried doing this even marginally and it was hated enough that it got reverted an edition later. 

 

3 battleline required would be awful for some armies. If I take 3 units of gluttons ive got 250 points left for heroes. I can afford a single ogor foot hero and the rest i have to spend on gnoblars or frost sabres. Can Giants even fit 3 battleline in at 1k without going exclusive mancrushers?

 

Like I said above though, if others like it they should play it. Standardizing it though is a different issue and would make the game worse off imo

 

 

 

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I have a number of issues with 1k games.

First off, lets talk wounds.  At the moment, an average 2k list is somewhere between 80-100 wounds, with most of them being on the lower end of that scale.  Exceptions do exist, but if you were to go through the majority of 2k lists that have been doing well, they all fall somewhere in that range.  Go to a 1k game, and we cut that in half(ish) to 40-50 wounds.

Now lets talk damage.  What are some "good" units that I can bring at 500 points or less.  Hmm... I can bring 6 longstrikes, at 480 points, which are going to dish out ~14 damage per turn at rend -2, with 1 turn of double that.  Lets do a smidge of rounding... and they can do 30 damage turn 1, effectively ending the game because the opponent only has 10-20 wounds left on the board.  Great game, right?  Or how about fulminators?  A squad of 2 fulminators charging is 18 damage at rend -2.  Add the breath weapon, and we can just round up to 20.  So for 230 points, I get to delete half to 2/5 of the "average" army.  Note here, I can actually fit both of the above units into the same army, and if it is hammers of sigmar, still have 2 battleline units.

I can go through a few other factions and build "power" lists as well, that can effectively hit hard before the opponent has a chance to react.  Are these the armies that you normally see at 1k?  No.  Why?  Because they aren't fun, and the game is over by turn 2, usually in a VERY lopsided manner.  At the same time, there are a number of factions that just straight up cannot compete with the above lists, because they require synergy pieces to work together to create that.

In case all of this wasn't enough though, there is one other "boogyman" out there.  Summoning.  Lets take sylvaneth as an example.  At 2k, summoning 100 points of dryads from within their woods is... sometimes not even worth it.  With the right build, you can fairly easily get your spell off each turn, meaning that by turn 4 you effectively have fielded a 1400 point army to your opponents 1k army, all for the low, low price of bringing a 95 point hero.  Moving on to Nurgle, their conjuration points are affected by being in your territory, being in your opponents territory, and having a gnarlmaw... which means you have standard nurgle summoning for a 2k army, but your opponent is only fielding 1k points.  Even bringing a squad of plaguebearers out each turn from turn 2-4 is an extra 450 points, and should be pretty easy for a nurgle list to do (unless it gets wiped off the board by one of the alpha lists available).  Or we can look at Legion of the First Prince, which can still field Belakor, and still potentially get ~125-150 points or so worth of summoning each turn.

Overall, the problem is that while 1k is technically a "viable" way to play, if it is played competitively it leads to some rather extreme skew lists, and an awful lot of non-games.  For many armies, the board also feels extremely empty, but at the same time, you don't necessarily want to decrease the size of it because it leads to easier turn 1 charges, which then leads to even more skew lists.  1k is fine as a casual "I want to play a fast game" format, but once people try solving it competitively, it quickly leads to un-fun non-games that are easily seen as won or lost before deployment even happens.

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45 minutes ago, Schauer said:

To preface: Im saying this solely from a competitve standpoint. I think if you want to play lower pt value games you should definitely go for it. 

Im not looking for a way to discourage/disparage Gitz/Skaven again. A horde army can barely play as one in this edition - why make their issue worse by giving them less points to work with. Keep in mind this is supposed to be army vs army. Lower point caps for games coupled with the higher point costs in 3rd edition is just eating away at models and starts turning this game into skirmish as opposed to what it should be, which is the fantasy equivalent of 40k. 

1k games would be bad for the competitive scene. Games get too swingy, and the meta would be dominated by either someone that can throw in extremely efficient models at low points such as Morathi/Stonehorns/Garants/etc or just whomever is rolling hot that day. It wouldn't bode well for that part of the game at all. As someone said prior 40k tried doing this even marginally and it was hated enough that it got reverted an edition later. 

3 battleline required would be awful for some armies. If I take 3 units of gluttons ive got 250 points left for heroes. I can afford a single ogor foot hero and the rest i have to spend on gnoblars or frost sabres. Can Giants even fit 3 battleline in at 1k without going exclusive mancrushers?

Like I said above though, if others like it they should play it. Standardizing it though is a different issue and would make the game worse off imo

Normally, 1k games have a 2 battleline requirement (and also reduced limits on other stuff). Still a higher percentage than 2k, but not as bad as 3 battleline.

I think half the armies of AoS are so limited in model/warscroll variety that they don't really work on 2k without doubling up or only using a single build. Smaller table and smaller armies would work better for these armies. Since GW is unwilling to expand even the worst of them (Fyreslayers) a good solution for summoning might be all that stands between 1k being a simply better format.

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30 minutes ago, readercolin said:

I have a number of issues with 1k games.

First off, lets talk wounds.  At the moment, an average 2k list is somewhere between 80-100 wounds, with most of them being on the lower end of that scale.  Exceptions do exist, but if you were to go through the majority of 2k lists that have been doing well, they all fall somewhere in that range.  Go to a 1k game, and we cut that in half(ish) to 40-50 wounds.

Now lets talk damage.  What are some "good" units that I can bring at 500 points or less.  Hmm... I can bring 6 longstrikes, at 480 points, which are going to dish out ~14 damage per turn at rend -2, with 1 turn of double that.  Lets do a smidge of rounding... and they can do 30 damage turn 1, effectively ending the game because the opponent only has 10-20 wounds left on the board.  Great game, right?  Or how about fulminators?  A squad of 2 fulminators charging is 18 damage at rend -2.  Add the breath weapon, and we can just round up to 20.  So for 230 points, I get to delete half to 2/5 of the "average" army.  Note here, I can actually fit both of the above units into the same army, and if it is hammers of sigmar, still have 2 battleline units.

I can go through a few other factions and build "power" lists as well, that can effectively hit hard before the opponent has a chance to react.  Are these the armies that you normally see at 1k?  No.  Why?  Because they aren't fun, and the game is over by turn 2, usually in a VERY lopsided manner.  At the same time, there are a number of factions that just straight up cannot compete with the above lists, because they require synergy pieces to work together to create that.

In case all of this wasn't enough though, there is one other "boogyman" out there.  Summoning.  Lets take sylvaneth as an example.  At 2k, summoning 100 points of dryads from within their woods is... sometimes not even worth it.  With the right build, you can fairly easily get your spell off each turn, meaning that by turn 4 you effectively have fielded a 1400 point army to your opponents 1k army, all for the low, low price of bringing a 95 point hero.  Moving on to Nurgle, their conjuration points are affected by being in your territory, being in your opponents territory, and having a gnarlmaw... which means you have standard nurgle summoning for a 2k army, but your opponent is only fielding 1k points.  Even bringing a squad of plaguebearers out each turn from turn 2-4 is an extra 450 points, and should be pretty easy for a nurgle list to do (unless it gets wiped off the board by one of the alpha lists available).  Or we can look at Legion of the First Prince, which can still field Belakor, and still potentially get ~125-150 points or so worth of summoning each turn.

Overall, the problem is that while 1k is technically a "viable" way to play, if it is played competitively it leads to some rather extreme skew lists, and an awful lot of non-games.  For many armies, the board also feels extremely empty, but at the same time, you don't necessarily want to decrease the size of it because it leads to easier turn 1 charges, which then leads to even more skew lists.  1k is fine as a casual "I want to play a fast game" format, but once people try solving it competitively, it quickly leads to un-fun non-games that are easily seen as won or lost before deployment even happens.

yes, 1k games requires some additional tinkering to try and get a more "balanced" experience (also worth mentioning that 2k is not perfectly balanced itself so we shouldn't hold 1k to higher standards). My experience with a very fun tournament at this size had a restriction where you could bring no single unit which costed 300+ points and had boards which were smaller only horizontally (this was stil in AoS 2.0 and we were playing on square boards 48x48). I was afraid of summoning too but utlimately it wasn't more impactful than in a 2k games. I am not saying that this creates the perfect experience (the "no 300+ pts unit" has certainly a higher impact on some armies than others) but one can surely try to make this format work.

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It is a really good idea, but I think it will be hard to convince the player base as a whole to try this. It's funny because rules wise, smaller games are totally supported, this edition even add 750 as a valid point range. I wonder if it is just a effect of "we always played like this in fantasy/40k" or more the visual feeling of having more of a army in the table or using most of your cool models/rules as you can. Maybe if we start to see more people playing those games (battle resports videos or in text around her, more discussion about local tournaments around those points) it could be normalized.

Giving my anecdotal case, around here 1k~1.5k points tournaments are as common as 2k for AoS. The reason for this is that we hardly have support for the game, no GW store and only last year the stores around here got an importer with a contract to bring GW stuff for them. Even now most of what we have are starting collects and the few things outside of those end being really expensive (like 2x the Australian GW price). This make hard for people to get started in the hobby and when they do it takes a while to get to 2k to play (months generally, unless you buy many box in one go on ebay). Those smaller points tournaments were really good to create a community of players, as you can get start with only a start collecting/starter set and one or two boxes. If you are looking to encourage people to get in the hobby or create a local community I really recommend promoting 750/1k/1.5k tournaments!

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I agree that the balance of the game seems to be around 2000 pts.  While 1000 pt games can be fun, it seems that any imbalances to the game become more magnified the smaller you go.  If you find yourself fighting an uphill battle with your opponent at 2000 pts, you will find yourself absolutely crushed at 1000 pts.   If a given unit was undervalued in pts at 2000 pts, it is twice as undervalued at 1000 pts.  I think this is where meeting engagements came in.  By staggering the arrival of certain types of units it somehow minimized these problems.  But 3rd edition got rid of these rules.

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I usually try to play between 500 and 1,000 points, as this allows me to get home from work, eat, then play a game, without having it stretched over several days. I have 2,500 points or so of each army, and it lets me choose what I want to play and get a fun game.

I honestly could not see myself playing 2,000 points again, as it feels like it's just a slog.

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You can't balance the game both at 1k and 2k, it just doesn't work. So if you play at 1k in a game that's balanced for 2k you're going to have even bigger problems than we do at 2k with getting a balanced experience.

Add to that that AOS doesn't even have a smaller board size and unique missions at 1k the way 40k does and you'd need to do a lot of work to make it a decent play experience. Like for example how does a 1k gargant list play a 6 objective mission or the one where you win if you control all 4 when your army is 4 units at most, and could be only 2?

Conversely, how do you deal with stuff like longstrikes that can shoot in the hero phase once per game? You have a 450ish point unit that can shoot literally half your opponent's army off the table on the top of T1 in a 1K setting. Morathi can easily kill an entire 1k army herself in the 3 battle rounds she lives. Etc etc. It seems like you'd need house rules limiting certain units to avoid them being utterly dominant.

Edited by yukishiro1
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People love ban lists. Nothing like being told you can't play with your models because someone (not even GW) decided they were too powerful.

Don't get me wrong, if it works for your local group go for it by all means. But in my experience community comp tends to lead to arguments and bad feelings as people inevitably disagree as to what should be on said ban list and what shouldn't. 

My point is basically just that for 1K to be a serious thing competitively it needs a lot more support from GW than GW seems willing to give it at this point in time. If people aren't competitively minded I'm sure it can work and may well be a way to give people something to do with their armies while they're working towards 2K...but I don't see things shifting to 1K overall without a fundamental shift from GW. And I doubt GW is going to want to halve the amount of money you need to spend to get a competitive-sized army. 

 

 

 

Edited by yukishiro1
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I remember Adepticon used to have the Vanguard AoS event, which was 2 events in a single day, and 3 1.5 hour games each.  Was super smooth and fun and had a great army list variety as I recall.  Also the table is much smaller too for that size of game.

These days with MW all over the place and shooting becoming so much more prevalent, I think a 1K meta would require something like only allowing 2 reinforcement points and only for Battleline units.  Then we wouldn't see half an army be 1 unit of Longstrikes or whatever.  Limits on points for a single model may be appropriate too.  500 is probably good.  Still you could have 2 Megas but not Gatebreakers.  Also no named heroes (sorry Kroak 🐸)

 

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6 minutes ago, Lord Krungharr said:

These days with MW all over the place and shooting becoming so much more prevalent, I think a 1K meta would require something like only allowing 2 reinforcement points and only for Battleline units.  Then we wouldn't see half an army be 1 unit of Longstrikes or whatever.  Limits on points for a single model may be appropriate too.  500 is probably good.  Still you could have 2 Megas but not Gatebreakers.  Also no named heroes (sorry Kroak 🐸)

Some of those are already a thing. You can't spend more than half your points in a single unit (nothing more than 500 points for 1k) and you have 2 reinforcements at max.

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8 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Was just reading through the thread on the recently announced GW price increase and had a bit of a random thought.  With the overall cost of an army increasing when purchased from scratch, why as gamers do we seem to constantly end up with the scenario that 2000 points is the defacto size to play games at?  Specifically thinking of organised events more than anything, but as a wider line of thinking when writing lists etc.

Is now a good time to rethink this almost self-imposed point level and try to encourage slightly smaller games to be played.  It would not only lower the monetary cost, but also speed games up (less to move and think about), plus it would certainly shake the "meta" up - you'd not see a 4 mega-gargant army for example.

In my area, the answer is gatekeeping - the same thing (and usually from the same people responsible) that killed fantasy

for others I know personally, it’s because they have limited free time and feel like going out for a ~1 hour game of 1000pts etc isn’t worth their time or effort

for me, I actually prefer smaller games (I generally enjoy the side games more than the main games, like Warcry etc), but I know the people I regularly play with don’t, so I don’t get to play the smaller games very often.

slightly off topic but somewhat relevant: in all my years of playing AoS, I’ve noticed an interesting trend. armies that are generally considered ‘bad’ do quite well at ~1000pts, while the ‘good’ armies don’t seem to do as well as they normally would 

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