What size games do people play ?

[kreoseus]

After a point on another thread about named units ( Skarlocks, rugluds etc ) got me thinking about army size. I think character units like those lend themselves more to smaller armies rather than vast hordes, so I was wondering what point level people paly their ames at ? When I was a sprog, we always palyed 3rd edition WHFB at 3000points, but a smaller game (2000 ?) might have be a better home for specific characters/units.

Phil

 

[Fimm McCool]

When I was young we never bothered with points. None of us lived near a GW or had much money so we'd have maybe ten, fifteen figures a side and just generally rocked up with whatever we had, joined forces with someone else and played for an afternoon.

Now we normally play 'squad' type skirmishes (LOTR, Mordheim, Munda) occasionally dabbling in 1500pt 40k. I have a 4500pt modern 40k Guard army and a 3000pt Fimir (Counts as 8th Ed Beastmen) army but they rarely take to the table. I prefer the painting anyhow.

 

[axiom]

100% skirmishing for me. I don't have time or inclination to do anything else, but I can just about manage a small bunch of models (10-12) every couple of months.

I do have sizeable 40k armies, but no real desire to learn the current rules or field them.

 

[Blue in VT]

As time is often a factor these days I too fall back on smaller games...something in the 2000pt range is good for a decent gaming session but can be finalized with some effort. I also typically limit the number of characters and leaders...or give all units a level 5 hero and then have a character as general...it streamlines combat when everyone has the same stats!

that said...I'd love to get stuck into a big 3-4000 point game some time soon!

Cheers,

Blue

 

[Zhu Bajie]

Skirmishing circa 500 pts. WFB2E [+RT]

 

[Aiteal]

With my irregular opponent I play 4 point saga games with warhammer minis and setting, so that's about 24 minis per side.
When solo I play RoC warbands with Mordheim rules and Feco AI cards, still working on space hulk minis and warhammer quest dungeon tiles for solo also.

 

[Wheeling Turn]

Long time since I last played WFB. Back them it was around 2-3000 pts depending on the army chosen. Hordes types like Goblins/Skaven, etc around 2000. More expensive ones like chaos around 3000 pts each.

But I always enjoyed games like Necromunda,Mortheim and my all time favourite Space Hulk

 

[Grumdril]

For me the sweet spot is in the 1000 - 1600 points range - enough for some tactical complexity, but small enough that it's about the ordinary units rather than "specials". It could be that I'm a lazy painter, or it could be that the WD / Journal scenarios from my youth (Blood on the snow, Vengeance of the Lichemaster, Dolgan Raiders, even Forenrond's Last Stand) are that sort of size.

I've played a couple of 3000pt games in the last year (at BOYL, and recently hosted by Jeff McC) and in both cases not only was it a full day's commitment, but it was still a question of wrapping up at a convenient point with still a few "what ifs" left hanging. And the power level rachets up noticably. A good day's gaming, but still bigger than I prefer (could we have fitted two 1500 point games into the same time? Not sure, probably not).

I blame Warhammer Armies.

Paul / Grumdril

 

[Katsuhiko JiNNai]

When I played to WH40k and LotR the size of my armies was about 40-60 miniatures for each army (sometime more, especially in WH40k). Now I like to play with skirmish games as Warmachine, Bloodbowl, Mordheim and Pulp Alley. I like play Pulp Alley Solo Games and I'm beginning to play some solo games with mordheim rules and RoC warbands maybe using FECO AI rules too. I like to paint small warbands, paint too much miniatures of the same type could be so boring.

 

[lenihan]

Recently, I've mostly been playing very small games - just handfuls of figures either side. That said, every now and again I like to see a truly epic battle on a massive scale.

 

[Fred9802]

Am I reading this wrong, or is there a way to play Mordheim by yourself? (Solo?)

Please help, as it is dreadfully hard to find games with anything except big armies using current rules.

 

[treps]

I tend to not count points and only use narrative scenarios where each character/unit has a reason to be here depending of the story, it could be from a small skirmish with 5 miniatures to a big battle.

I never saw any interest in a point system except for tournament play, and as I don't play in this kind of game I almost never used them !

The only exception was in a mapped campaign where we did start each with a given point amount and could expand our armies depending on conquest of new territories.
Each player started with 1000 points of a choosen race+allies (based on alignment), we could organize them in 1 or 2 armies that would explore new territories and depending of what we found we were able to rally 200 or 500 points of new troups, or a warmachine, a sorcerer, or a new character that was attached to the army who did find them. Cities or some other territories were also able to deliver some new troups each campaign year with a given point number depending of its characteristic. The armies had to get there to get the new troups or to spend some time at the same location to share the troups between them and be able to reorganize themselves.

 

[Stormbringer]

Skirmishing between 100-200 points with WHFB 2nd Edition and WH40K Rogue Trader -- usually around 10-12 models per side.

 

[Piers B]

We do alot of Mordheim, starting Necromunda too.

For WFB we are aiming for 3000 point armies for our main one, then 1500-2500 for smaller ancillary armies. The idea being they will group together for bigger battles.

For example, as a group, each of us is doing 1000-1500 points of Chaos. The idea being that when we put them altogether there will be enough to face our goodly alliance.

But for games, we play anything from 1000 to 4000, the various campaign packs and general unpointed skirmish and RPG style games.

With Rogue Trader, Im just buying up loads to paint for various games!

 

[Aiteal]

Am I reading this wrong, or is there a way to play Mordheim by yourself? (Solo?)

Please help, as it is dreadfully hard to find games with anything except big armies using current rules.

There's a set of AI cards I use, I have a copy of them here

 

[Zhu Bajie]

I tend to not count points and only use narrative scenarios where each character/unit has a reason to be here depending of the story, it could be from a small skirmish with 5 miniatures to a big battle.

I never saw any interest in a point system except for tournament play, and as I don't play in this kind of game I almost never used them !

I'm not letting you get away with that

Points are a useful guideline. So, for example, in a story of a village being raided by some orcs, 100 points of humans going up against 200 points of orcs, it's obvious what is going to happen. Orcs will win, every time. Narrative doesn't have to mean 'sticking to a pre-determined story with no chance of changing the outcome', play the same story, but with 100 points of humans vs. 100 points of orcs then the outcome is less deterministic, If you crunch the numbers, I think most of the 2nd Ed narrative campaigns, Lichemaster, McDeath, Dolgan all balance to within 5-10%.

Where Points fail is when they are used as system to min-max armies (as in tournament army selection), or to cover "super-powers" (use Reaper if you wanted to calculate that stuff and balance like with like, ) or extreme stats (1000pts of WS1 BS1 troops are still never going to hit anything!). Rather points used as an abstract number to describe the forces overall potential, and guide scenario creation.

That's to say I'm taking about the points used in 2E WFB which are based only on the troops attributes and battlefeild potential, 3E, and onwards all deviate for nonsensical reasons (i.e. in 3rd Ed Skeletons get a PV increase because they cause Fear, but no other Fear causing troop does, so is obviously broken when balancing attributes).

 

[treps]

Points are a useful guideline. So, for example, in a story of a village being raided by some orcs, 100 points of humans going up against 200 points of orcs, it's obvious what is going to happen. Orcs will win, every time.

I find it very challenging to play when you know that you have almost no way of winning, in your example I would probably add a way for the defending villagers to build some fortifications before the attack (like in the magnificent Sven) and the objective could be to limit the damages the orcs would make, or trying to have some skirmisher unit cross the orc lines to get some reinforcements, the next game could totally depend of what happened during this battle (did some villagers manage to flee and give the alert ? if the orcs did suffer some loss how does it affect their next raid ? What happens if the Orc Boss dies, does the animosity rules change ? etc...), this could be a last stand (Alamo ?), or a desperate fight (300 ?), or the village could be a trap to lure the orcs while the human armies are regrouping at the back few miles away, or...
We could also just play it "as is" (your 200 points of orcs against my 100 points of human), and then switch sides to see which one would have the best strategy and kill the more orcs...

My point is that I do find balanced battles boring, and totally unrealistic (yes I know we're talking of a fantasy game but you know what I mean ), in real life battles are never balanced, there is always a superior force engaged against a lesser one, but at the end of the day, the superior force is not the one that will win each time. The narrative allows to give reasons for such battles, and these are the stories that players tell years after having played the battle, not the one where the odds where supposed to be equal and where only the dice rolls made the difference like in any classic ranged battle...

 

[Bluey Zarzov]

Loved to play Dwarfs or Chaos at 3000-3500 in 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th, but took a lot of time to paint that many.

Often teamed up with other players to combine forces of orcs and gobbos or undead to reach the maximum we could and wow, those games could last all day and into the night.

Really just used the points to balance things out a bit, or in the case of ROC warbands, just use points to bring in some extra weirdness to the skirmishes.


Necromunda was a lot of fun in that regard, where a lot of people could just play some really good games with just a handful of minis.


Someone once tried to get me into Epic Fantasy "because you can have hundreds and hundreds..."

I shook my head in horror. I already had so many unpainted dwarfs.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

The narrative allows to give reasons for such battles, and these are the stories that players tell years after having played the battle, not the one where the odds where supposed to be equal and where only the dice rolls made the difference like in any classic ranged battle...

Well, I'd say the difference is in made more the strategy and tactics used by the players, and not in the initial army set up, which is what happens if disproportionately sized forces meet.

As you say, in the 100Pvs of Humans vs. 200PV of Orcs, you'd balance out 100PVs of defensive points, but without calculating the PV's you wouldn't necessarily be aware there even was a short-fall or how much of a short-fall there was to catch up. Similarly with victory conditions - these definitely motivate play, but they can become unachievable if the forces aren't balanced to begin with, in your example, a skirmisher from the village is never going to get past an overwhelming force of orcs.

I agree that asymmetrical battles are more fun and memorable, but for me that doesn't mean ignoring the PVs. Take 100PV, kit out 25 Gobbos vs. 5 Dark Elf champions, and whilst the PVs are balanced, the game is still asymmetrical - conforms the the 'last stand' and 'desparate fight' - just in a more balanced way that isn't as predetermined in its outcome.

So yeah, I take you point about PV modelling a scenario being 'unrealistic' in that it conforms to an abstract model, but it's one that doesn't have to in the way of the narrative, and can improve the ludology.

 

[Protist]

I think points are also useful as a marker for people bringing a collection to the table 'blind'. For example you head out for a game but you didn't get much of chance to discuss what the basis/narrative would be and turn up with 5 Elf Champions for a small game, but your mate brings 25 chaos warriors. Your mate could ditch 20 odd of them for a skirmish but he might have been looking forward to trying them out since the varnish has just dried!

"Bring around 1k points" is a useful marker for selecting a sackful of minis. If you decide to bring that nice new dragon you painted as a surprise then you can work it into the scenario as: "The dragon, woken by the braying of chaotic horns, flies in to see what all the ruckus is about only to find its BREAKFAST TIME!" In turn 3 the dragon enters from a random table edge and attacks the nearest model/unit and (after eating them) continues to attack subsequent models/units nearest to it regardless of race/colour/creed