Power Level Competitive Play

Howdy y'all, ran across this article earlier today.

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2017/06/18/making-the-case-for-using-power-level-points-in-tournaments/

and I wanted to discuss with the community here, would you consider this?

The main argument that the article makes is:
"If you want a truly competitive game, then it should be the player skill in game that matters, not the ability of a player to be the better accountant and risk management analyst."
and
" a granular, static points system is part of the cause of some units being weak and others strong."
and
"In 8th, if you can choose which upgrades you have at the start of the game, all of those autocannons become lascannons or Impaler Cannons become Shockcannons, and suddenly, you have a chance to win.  In the next game going against a Tyranid swarm, you can swap back to Heavy Bolters and flamers.  Again, this may make certain spam armies worse, but that’s what we want."

Also, for the bigger models:

"Looking at another way, assuming 100 Power Level game versus a 2K granular point game, a Knight Gallant with all the upgrades  is going to make up 21% of your overall army in a PL game while a in a granular system, it will make up 23.2% of your army. That’s a difference of 44 points if converted to granular. A Crusader is going to account for 27% regardless of configuration in Power Level while a maxed out Crusader is going to still take up about 27% of your army in the granular system."

So while this might work for certain units like knights, things like Harlies and Scourges can over double their point cost with upgrades. What's the solution to that? Give certain upgrades Power levels? increase or decrease unit power level?

Right now is probably the most flexible the rules are going to be until all the codexes come out. So go ahead and discuss what experiences you'e had with PL, whether you think this would be interesting, or how you yourself would adjust the current system.

Thank you!

tl:dr. Power Level makes it easier for making lists, having TO's checking them and give more control to the player. Power Level also allows for the player to focus more on skillfully playing the game and less on list building. Discuss your experiences with Power level and how you think think this would work in a tournament setting below.

I'd play power level tour even without tweaks

Sure, with or without the ability to switch out special weapons?

The only thing I found in the article that I couldn't agree with, being a mini waragamer, is the amount of money it would cost armies like DE to actually be built WYSIWYG ... As we have units like scourge, wyhes, bloodbrides, and trueborn that don't have kits that have all the weapon choices the unit is allowed. Why kits would need 3 of each of their special weapons, kabalite Trueborn would need two of the heaviest and 4 of the specials and scourge would have an entire sprew dedicated to just weapon variety, being able to take 7 different shooting weapons and being able to take 4 copies of 6 of those weapon choices. Yes I know their are bit stores and conversion possibilities but new players more then likely won't know that or be good enough at doing conversions (speaking mostly for myself here as I'm terrible at using green stuff or to make weapons outa other weapons and would just rather have the actual weapons piece.) However being able to adapt to the enemy is part of war so being able to change up what weapons your army has in between rounds would be great. As a dark lance heavy list would drop in effectiveness heavily against a horde army of tyranid or conscripts, and a poison heavy list would fall terribly to a mech list.

I'd definitely play that. It would be brutal, but I'd love to get down on some of that action.

@Archon_31. Right, it would be weird where most new people would end up playing with points because they don't have the ability to switch models. Assuming these players are attempting to play tournaments.

@Jim. It so would be. Initially it'd be slower with extra dice rolling for split fire, but everything would die so fast. What kind of list would you run?

Depends on what the PL cap was.

PL is so broken it's ridiculous, I'd run roughshod over armies with it.

I would be happy to play Power Level but as long as strict Wysiwyg is enforced. If they want to best toys make sure their squads are modelled with them! In fact truth be told i think this would be my preferred way to play!

Morgrim wrote:

I would be happy to play Power Level but as long as strict Wysiwyg is enforced. If they want to best toys make sure their squads are modelled with them! In fact truth be told i think this would be my preferred way to play!

"Let's make sure we tactically restrict people to the weapons they chose to model their army with 5 years ago, that way we're sure only the best general will win and it won't at all be pay-to-win."

Use magnets.....the opposite side of that coin is " my dude with a plasma gun is really carrying a lascannon" ....confusing ?

How about both?

Say you had a cap of 90 power level and 1,500 points, and had to fit your army under both - the points stop the power level being a free for all, and the power level cap stops excessive MSU spam?

Creeping Darkness wrote:

How about both?

Say you had a cap of 90 power level and 1,500 points, and had to fit your army under both - the points stop the power level being a free for all, and the power level cap stops excessive MSU spam?

Hoooh, that would be interesting I haven't considered that yet. For most armies, 500pts is roughly 25PL. so maybe ~80PL and 1,500 pts?

TeenageAngst wrote:

PL is so broken it's ridiculous, I'd run roughshod over armies with it.

Please contribute to the discussion instead of just posting your opinion.

It would be interesting for sure, but I don't think it stands up in a WYSIWYG setting. I like the ability for minor list variations, as that would certainly cut down on the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" feel of the game (or rather, Mech, Horde, Elite).

To be fair through, it might put armies with less weapon variations at a disadvantage. A Space Marine can take Flamers, Meltas, Grav, Plasma, or really anything, but a Kab is significantly more limited. Battles might be won simply because an army has the options to deal with any foe, whereas others are stuck with the same two special weapons, one of which is a piece of garbage.

The entire stipulation of this is to reduce the amount of power people who happen to be good with planning and math have when devising armies. What you fail to realize is that people who are good with planning and math can crack which units are dead nuts broken for their PL cost and spam the hell out of them. This doesn't solve that problem, all it does is shift the focus of it and handicap an entirely different set of armies.

I am against it. Wysiwig is not an issue for me as I magnetize everything, but it would give some armies a brutal advantage over others. Namely SM. It is not a good way how to deal with denial lists.
I'd even rather allow a certain small portion of the army as a "sidedeck".

The interesting thing with PL is that they completly shift the meta. No conscripts in PL games : it's all overequipped Razorbacks and Dreadnoughts.

I'd have to agree with Angst on this one. Breakers gonna break. Since the power level is calculated from the average of a unit without upgrades, and the same unit with all the bells and whistles, it sounds logical that the more upgrade a unit can possibly take, the bigger amount of points worth in upgrades it will get per power level if it takes all of them.
For instance, according to my crappy math skills a maxed out unit of trueborn will get 3 points more of gear pr power point over a warrior squad with all upgrades.
( not that, this is the unit that is going to break the game ). The difference is 15 points for a squad of blasterborn with a tricked out Dracon compared to a warrior squad with one dark lance and Sybarite with same gear.
Disclaimer: I suck at math, and logic in general, so either this is really easy to exploit, or I'm...  wrong. Also, if both armies are built from the same principle, maybe it evens out?

Having the option to be able to swap out 25% or maybe 50% of your original list with units you have in a sideboard sounds like a better solution.

I rather just play points but have the extra rerolls if there is a difference in power level.
Although the solution of having both a power level and a point max is also fine with me.
But in the end I think it is more important to stop spam then either power level or points.
Points and power level just change what is "better" aka more effective for the cost.

Of COURSE people are still going to break the game.

I just think I could min max better with PL than points.

Alright, then I pose the question, are Points and points for special weapons truly balanced? Yes some units would get a lot of upgrades and that would increase their point efficiency drastically, but what about their Power Level efficiency? Which PL would also be much easier than adjusting individual points on every War gear and model.

I'd go fun harlies maxed out for the same price.

All guys with free kisses & 2+ pistols yay !
Or even full power swords BUAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Balancing PL is is easyer to do because it is inherrently an estimate.
In the case of PL it means that as much upgrades is always better then fewer upgrades. With points it varies a little bit.

But on if Points are more balanced. I say it should be.
If you try and compare feet and metres with each other.
What would be easier if you can only use whole numbers or use factions?
Whole numbers would be easier, but also less accurat.
Since if we have 2 ft we would have to call it 1 meter since we cannot say it is roughly 2/3 meter or if we would split it even further 6/10 meter. The more granular the system the better it can be done.
The problem arises that it is easier to say 3 feet is around 1 meter then to calculate 3 feet is 0.9144.... meter. And of course in this case the 3 feet is around 1 meter makes the meter worse (but if we would say 2 meter is around 7 ft would make the feet slightly worse).
Of course if you do it wrong, and say 1 ft is 0.25 meter you are working in factions, but will be less acurate in most cases because you will put the meter at 4 feet even though in whole numbers you might have put it at 3 feet.

So basically you're proposing switching the currency. Which means different units will be under- and overvalued, but it's still going to be all about list building and identifying cost-effective options.

If people want to do that, fine, but why? If you wish conscript hordes were worse it would be better to just nerf those instead.

Switching equipment will require extra rules which you could have regardless of the "currency".

Yes the currency would switch, yes, they would have to work on balancing from a different angle. And yeah I never said list building and cost-effective options was bad, it just shouldn't limit units to their statistical best weapon. You should want to run your most cost effective weapon against each army you play. Building a halfway balanced army would require bringing Lascannons and other low shot, high damage weapons in a SM army. When you run into a horde of cheap 4++ horrors, you'll suddenly wish you had brought that heavy bolter or flamer instead of that lascannon. And why not have the ability to switch them out? It'll be a different pts value, but we're not working with points anymore. We're in PL.

And you might argue that your army will then become OP against anything and everything. But yeah, so will your opponent. Everything will die super fast and I've yet to determine if that's good or bad yet. But it'll be chaotic.