Are Warhammer 40K Points TOO LOW? 

Custodes combat patrol: 870 points Admech combat: 270 points Both of these cost $160

cries in admech

I am old enough to remember when two characters, two tactical squads, five terminators, a dread and predator was a 2k Space marine army

It also makes the onboarding process way less attractive this way. People starting the hobby are already intimidated by the price point (and existing ones too), the hobby side of things and the logistics of transporting their then finished and extremely expensive art pieces safely to use them for an actual game.

My expectation from reading the video title: - Are points too low? - Yes. followed by 18 minutes of white screen

I remember 5th edition parking lot Warhammer, where you had to play Tetris to fit 13-15 Rhinochassis (Razorbacks, Whirlwinds etc) into one quarter of the table. That shit does NOT need to return!

I remember when the Votann were built up to be an elite xenon army

Hahaha, the Russ Vanquisher is now 145 points, for a Russ. The Kasrkin is now 120 points, a tank only costs 25 points more, it's frankly silly now.

Short answer: yes. Long answer: yes they are. The individual models no longer feel impactful. Before you had 1 special weapon guy in a squad and one heavy weapons guy. Now you need a full 10 man squad all equipped with the same weapon to feel impactful. And you also need 3 units from them.

The lower the points per model they go, the more people will go to 3d printing instead

Just looking in old white dwarfs will show you how much smaller armies used to be. So much more accessible

tactically aimed at your wallet? GW? noooo way, really? GW? 🤣 They would never...

Imagine if they made Custodes actually elite? Smaller unit size, with squads of 3, and it takes more than 1/2 a grenade or a high speed Rhino to kill one!

GW is incentivised to lower points costs by the nature of the fact they're a model selling company. Lower points per model/unit = more models you need to purchase for a 2000pt game.

Admech suffers from a lot of issues but man looking at their list and seeing 180 being the most expensive unit likely is the biggest issue. They really don't have anything to invest those points into now.

Absolutely. The inflated army sizes makes games take longer, makes games less tactically interesting because everything is just shoved together and packed tightly and so much positional and spacing play becomes less important. It also increases the monetary barrier of entry to the game, made worse by how doing things like buying multiple combat patrol boxes is less net savings than before and because of 10th's rules you'll end up with lots more extraneous useless units (mainly characters). It's cheaper right now to buy a good/decent 2k army in for most TOW factions than it is for 40k which is an insane world to be in. Before they pulled them from sale I made a good 2k Beastmen list for like £280. £280 means I just about get to 1k points for a decent meta Necron army. Not to mention these overstuffed tiny boards spilling over with models just looks visually messy and kinda shit. People like to bring up Admech but man, Tau armies are like 3,8k points in 9th values. Despite all the points increases my Aeldari armies are frequently like 2.5-2.8k points in 9th values. We're essentially playing Onslaught level games on the same tiny boards and expected to be done with them, in event spaces, in 2.5 hours. It's stupid as hell.

Back in the day 1500 points was the "full game" size, and 1000 was perfectly normal. Then it rose to 1850, and finally to 2000. This was mostly on players and tournament organizers, and not GW, who generally stayed out of that debate until relatively recently. Also, superheavies (titanics these days) were very rare, and special charactes (epic heroes) were generally slightly subpar and a once in a while sort of thing. I honestly wouldn't mind going back to Chambers era army building, but I suspect I'm in the minority here.

Frankly I support a 30% points hike across all units and factions, many armies are FAR too horde-y.

I miss when "Elite" armies had multiple abilities and points to match instead of "Simple not Simplified"

Yes. I started in 2nd Ed when a tactical marine was 30 points. The amount of money it takes to create a 2000 point army has been vastly inflated by edition after edition of endless point cuts.

Points are fine as they are. I actually really love playing 18 deathshroud termies, 30 blightlord termies, 3 PBCs, Morty, typhus, 5 phoetid bloat drones, 18 myphitic blight haulers, 12 predator destructors 180 cultists. 598.000 poxwalkers, and 472 plague marines lead by Biologus putrifiers in rhinos. The only downside of this list is that i can only ally in 9 GUOs, 11 sets of nurglings and 3 brigands before i hit 2000 points.

Ever since the end of 9th edition I have thought that non Gravis Astartes felt puny., When Orks got Beast Snagga Boyz with 5 strength as a battle line unit and Astartes still only had a toughness 4 I felt Astartes seemed a little weak. It is one reason why I am such a fan of Gravis units. They feel powerful the way Astartes should feel like to play. Toughness 6, 3 wounds feels elite. Toughness 4, 2 wounds feels very mediocre.

Get rid of power level in disguise, lower the damage output (especially re-roll or + to wound combos) and increase points. Would be purely beneficial for the game.

i like to be able to field more units, BUT if they can't even get through the toughness of the opponent it does not matter :(

Cheap units are fine if that unit is a horde like Termagaunts or Grots. But anything that is supposed to be "elite" are OK if they're not cheap, as long as their rules reflect that properly. In general, it seems to be a matter of either output or survivability: that's just not quite balanced in many places it seems.

You know rather than waiting for GW to arbitrarily raise the points cost of every unit in the game to reduce board-overcrowding, we as a community could just set the standard game size back down to 1750 or even 1500. Same net result, but far, far faster to implement. 🤷

After playing a lot of Onepagerules it is very refreshing playing with a system where everything is pointed based on it's component parts. If you want a model with a 2+ save, hits on 2+, multiple feel no pains and mortal wound access (like deathguard terminators) you have to pay for it and those models can come out a very high point per model. A goblin with a 6+/6+ and a pop-gun is equally evenly pointed. GW feels like they balance points on... whoever happens to be making edits to the google doc at that particular time (or they adjust based on whichever models they have a surplus of in storage)

When I started playing, my friend's Ork Boyz were 6ppm, whilst Necron Warriors were 18ppm. These are now 8.5 vs 10ppm. The "middling" of points costs is great for Ork (horde) players, less so for Necron (Elite) players. 1000pt games were also very common on 48x48" tables, with large 1500/2K games on 6'x4' tables. The reduction in battlefield sizes compounds the feeling of "more things on the table", even for those armies using fewer models now.

1K games feel more engaging than 2K points now. 1k is reminiscent of 1.5k back in 7th ed. Relatively quick, every model counts and you can get 2 done in an afternoon.

Points are too low across the board and massively so in some factions. The main culprit here is GW balancing mostly by points but also the fact that the indexes were massively unbalanced to begin with. The upper tiers (Eldar!!!) and the lowest tiers (Death Guard, AdMech, Votann) were simply playing two different games at the beginning of the edition. For Votann, Drukhari, DG and Grey Knights, taking a look at the rules and also tweaking some weapon profiles and datasheets worked ok. They still have way too much units on the board, but it's worlds apart from AdMech, who desperately need to have their datasheets re-evaluated but instead get cheaper and cheaper. The Riptide is also a perfect example: Yes, it should be between 200-300 points for such a big model, but then it should also be able to do something other than just stand in the way. Tweak the gun and voila, it is actually worth some points. Anyway, long story short: While it's in the interest of GW to sell more models, I hardly think it's a design choice because that sounds way too organised for GW. Let's face it, they don't even have acceptable communication within their balancing department, I doubt their interdepartmental communication is any better. 10th should have just stewed for another year or so and they should work on a coherent design philosophy.

What's frustrating is we know they will edit actual datasheets because they buffed the Dreadknight weapon. There's no reason they can't alter statlines and abilities to make a unit worth its points besides it being easier to just drop the points rather than look at what change is actually needed. For instance, give the Lion back his -1 to wound and damage 2 sweep (and then further buffs on top probably), and buff the damage of Deathwing Knight swords and maces by 1 each, instead of hacking one seventh off of the Lion's points and dropping DWK points too.

Wouldn't it be easier to just play 1500pt/1750pt games?

I think the decline of elite armies being compensated for by points reductions is definitely the main concern. My 2,000 point Lychguard-heavy Necron army from 8th edition is now 1,270 points, and the models are of course more expensive than they were back then, which does not feel good for an army I considered 'finished'. Part of that was just the edition as a whole being cheaper, but my 3,000 points of 1st Company Marines also lost a good 500 points, while my more-hordey 2,000pts of Orks only lost about a hundred points.

I think 1500pts games are quicker to play, and are balanced enough to have fun. Plus you can play your big models, maybe 1 less than you do in 2000pts games. Worth it imo

GW really has to start doing more changes to individual datasheets with each balance pass. I even think it should be more common than the full Balance Dataslate that targets big Army and Core Rules, getting a few datasheet changes alongside each new set of points would be great.

As a Necrons player, i feel like my army is becoming more elite for every update. Not saying the points increases are unjustified, but at some point you gotta ask the question if all (or most) other factions just have weak rules and needs to be made stronger.

I dont mind the point system as it is now, but they CANNOT keep this crap of making people wait so long for rules changes and slashing points as a bandaide fix instead of changing the rules NOW instead of every 3-6 months. Multi-billion dollar company being lazy AF.

The standard used to be a single Tactical Marine was 15 points. Every other thing was in relation to that. Once they changed the Marine points, it all went to hell.

The fact they aren't messing with data sheets is insane to me. That was the benefit of giving each unit it's own statistics for each weapon. If a unit is broken with the shotgun everyone else can bring, but bad at everything else, you can just put minus one strength on it for only them, or hit their points and buff the number of attacks on their other weapon choices for both internal and external balance. But they printed physical data cards they could sell instead of making digital rules easy and accessible.

As someone who mostly collects and plays Heresy when I can play, I love big impressive armies with dozens of units. But that needs to come with a bigger table, the average size of a 40k Board is rapidly reaching the Team Yankee parking lot singularity, except Team Yankee is a game that costs less than 200 dollars for that parking lot army.

I think the real issue is that GW refuses to make units that are, yknow actually worth paying points for. Half the datasheets in the game may as well not exist because they are so much worse than the "competitive" choice Id happily pay 150-110 points for my 9th ed legionaries with a psychic power or solid melee output based on what mark they had, now I can get 10 for almost the same points but I still probably won't get them other than their so cheap their probably technically worth it

I play asoiaf and can take two whole armies and game accessories anywhere. 40k is a pain to lug around just one of most armies.

I miss when army construction was hemming and hawing over adding one unit over another. Weighing the pro's and con's for unit X against unit Y.

While it is certainly true that lots of Aeldari units got points nerfs, many of our units were hugely brought down in power level in 10th and made *much* cheaper--banshees, scorpions, dire avengers, and shroud runners come to mind.

Broadly, I don't think most units in the game are undercosted currently, barring some glaring exceptions (like the Riptide or Admech in general) after all, we are fielding armies. I think another thing that could be adding to the lack of power or the feel thereof is the strength and toughness changes. Meltas, overcharged plasma guns, powerfists, and similar weapons that used to just obliterate all comers now wound most vehicles and large monsters on a 5+. A lot of weapons are just straight up worse against a lot of targets, and that's not even considering the broad AP nerfs.

What really bothers me is some of these army’s are getting so large that they have trouble fitting in their deployment zone. They can also struggle to move everything around the board as there’s just so much terrain that any time you have more than 3 vehicles they can easily get stuck on each other.

Uhh 2/3rds of players would be a consensus my dude. Also, have mentioned this in previous videos. But Chapter Approved was absolutely a thing they did for a long time where they did both rules and points updates for units. They even put out yearly collections of the Chapter Approved changes. They also printed revised codexes in 3rd for both Dark Angels and Dark Eldar.

For tyranids between 9th and 10th the exocrine got a massive damage nerf but got its points almost halfed, on the other end genestealers went to 2 wounds and up in points.

I'm not sure how to put this succinctly, but sometimes I feel like part of the problem is that we are still able to buy too many boxes of the same unit. The rule of three is, generally, a decent restriction to keep from spamming too much of the same stuff, but the number of boxes you need to buy to make three full units of something can still be a problem. An extreme example would be the AdMech Ironstrider/Dragoon box. You would need to buy nine boxes to complete three full units of Ironstriders, and thanks to having multiple datasheets buildable from the same kit, you could actually buy up to 27 boxes of that same kit to max out the units you could bring. That is simply too many. It will never be a good thing if you can run 27 of the same model kit in a single 40k game. Heck, I feel like the six boxes it takes to fill out three units of most elites is already pushing things! So why does any of that matter? Well, if we reduced unit sizes or the number of duplicate units allowed, it would force many armies to bring in a wider variety of units, and they wouldn't be able to bring as many models overall because they can't 'save' as many points by maxing out on one or two under-costed units. This is not a perfect or universal solution by any means. It has tons of problems, and wouldn't be as simple as just reducing the duplicate unit count to 2 instead of 3 or something like that. Regardless, I think it is worth thinking about how many boxes of the exact same unit should people really be expected to buy to fill out a list? How many people actually enjoy assembling and painting six boxes of the same thing? How many people enjoyed the first box or two, then got tired of it and only did the rest because they needed to in order to play? I just feel like allowing too much of one unit on the board not only causes potential gameplay spamming problems, but is also maybe asking a lot from players on the hobby side just to get to the army size where they can play a game at the points range it was balanced for, which is 2k, and have some minor ability to swap a few units in or out of their list to adjust to the meta.

I think one major problem in balancing is that there are far to many attacks across the board, when two comparable units has enough attacks to wipe the other out in one go it will feel weak for the defending player, but if you lower the Strength or AP of attack it would make the weapon feel like airsofts. Lowering the number of attacks would make it so attacks that hit would feel effective, but also give the opportunity for tougher units to survive.

I think the issue that makes this feel bad is when elite units do not have elite datasheets and the balance approach is to drop their pts to match. There are many units I feel most people wouldn't mind even a major pts increase as long as they feel like the power is appropriate to match the units lore/badassery.

At this rate the game boards will need a size increase the way points are going.

to put into some context a single space marine used to be 16 points per model and that was back when they had one wound and had to pay for grenades and other wargear.

I feel Tau should be more elite. Pricier Fire Warriors but the guns hit harder (Rifle, Blasters) or more often (Carbines). Crisis teams with more fire volume (keeping the "specialization" change from 10th), and the Riptide the proper BEAST it should be.

I think the big problem is standardizing games as 2000 points rather than the 1500 points of 2nd through 5th, and then specifically setting army construction and CP rules to make 1500 not an option.

These constant point changes are entirely geared towards getting you to buy more models.

There's wanting to reenact the large-scale wars of the setting, and then there's units that have such legitimately bad rules and statlines, that constant point reductions eventually contrasts their fluff.

There's a duality with this point. You must also consider the lethality. If things were more expensive and killy it would feel worse when your expensive unit is alpha striked or vice versa then you have way less to continue the game. I think where its at is perfect as opposed to how it was. Games go for 5 turns and are intense the whole time instead of maxing out points from a turn 3 tabling

It's not just the money, it's also the extra time spent playing because of the points drops. Everyone is generally bringing more models, more units, more special weapons, but they're doing less with them overall.

I'd be happy to bring back war gear points. It's been super annoying being so short with list building trying to be creative

As a Dark Angels Player, in 9th i dreamed if running a full Termie list, now i just choose to run Deatwatch Vets and have 6 squads of them for board control and just swarming past Votann or Necron shooting.

it's interesting hearing this from a native 40k player's perspective. When i syarted looking into 40k i was coming from age of sigmar, where points are much more reigned in (clanrats being 5ppm, basic humans being ten and ogres being around thirty, with set sizes that mean you're not payong under 90 for most units, including heroes) it was a culture shock to say the least when I started collecting votann and saw 65 point characters and 90 point bikes

I don't get the vibe of the current Admech army. When i think of the Adeptus Mechanicus i imagine lots of big devastating guns and quite an elite army that whips out so much firepower that clearly violates the Geneva convention.

Honestly i love the smaller points. The new tau are really expensive so far for most of what i play. Yeah it costs a few extra $$, but noting really that crazy. I sold a single mtg commander deck and paid for my entire tau army, including the three riptides, and bought a bunch of it used. Ive had so much fun just revamping, and fixing up old used models that its almost more fun to get the used. Sometimes i can even just find the box opened for 20% off +. You just have to shop smarter, not online unless you find a good ebay listing. People keep only buying the best meta units and womder why they don't have the fun theyre looking for. Buy whats cool and play. You dont need to go to a single GT. In my casual games i feel like the large powerful units are crazy strong for the price while infantry if you dont have leaders making them crazy strong, are mostly useless unless you focus on scoring and only killing a select few units. On the other hand, i field over 150 tyranids when i play them and its a lot of fun. People at ny store have started to use non meta units just to play against me do to my mixed unit comps beating out anti meta essily.

I feel like every game I play swings towards armies fielding a lot of elites or vehicles fighting other small elite/vehicle armies because running any faction with a moderate amount of chaff is equivalent to running a horde army and spending 1500$+

I rewrote a list from 5th edition to 10th edition and what had been 2000pts is now 1305pts....

I know it probably won’t happen, but I’d love to see GW balance the game towards smaller army sizes with restrictions on the number of large vehicles and monsters you can field. I’m speaking from anecdotal experiences, but a lot of my 2k point games and above involve half of our armies being basically a single unit type. A unit might be pretty good, but the actual impact of one squad of them is pretty low meaning you need to bring a ton of them to do any work. And while I’m not a huge competitive player, a lot of competitive lists and games involve exploiting unintended outcomes more so than mid game decisions. It would so much better if the game was balanced around ~1000 points, there were restrictions on the number specific units you could bring, but most units are more specialized, and have a larger impact on the game by themselves. An obvious downside is list building becomes more restrictive, but there would be so many upsides. By making lists smaller and more restrictive, it becomes less expensive to play, and easier to get into. This also means that starting new armies becomes cheaper and easier to do, leading to more ways of playing the game. While small point 40k right now is too swingy, with the proper balancing, having fewer, more specialized troops leads to more tactical games with a lower skill floor and higher ceiling. It also means that games take shorter amounts of time. Basically, if list building was simpler, and actually playing the game past the deployment phase had more depth, 40k would be so much better. Or in other words, make it more like Killteam.

One advantage to playing lower points games is that it forces you to make unit choices you might never have considered at 2000 pts. Simply because you have fewer points to work with. You're not loading up with the best units, knowing you'll still have plenty of room left for value inclusions. You have to trim the fat more, being very careful about what unit is doing what. And you often can't afford to include the big centerpiece model (let alone multiples thereof), making you choose other units to get the job done.

I think the undercost issue is really highlighted by how almost every army is getting some form of 3” deepstrike. It’s too easy to inconsequentially screen out half or more of the board so for that type of detachment to work you have to have 3” deepstrike. In lower point games you have to actually decide where you’re going to allow your opponent to deep strike in rather than just being able to screen them out to their own deployment zone without thinking about it.

"GW cries in lost potential money"

Laughs in Thousand Sons

Huh... That's a problem I've never noticed but that's definitely there. I think that's because I play 2 horde armies (Orks and Tyranids) so I never thought about them being "too hordy", and the only non-horde I play, Thousand Sons, I think is pointed pretty well

Notably: working through old projects I've made it to Tau, haven't played them since vespids were released and I have an army I painted and played in a 2k event somewhere around 4/5th edition. That 2k list before the recent Tau codex released is now 985pts.

yes- 2nd ed had the right idea points wise but meant GW didn't sell enough. all the free vehicles for SM for was probably the nadir in ?7th ed. Its better but should still trend upwards. I've actually found 1000pt games to be a lot of fun,challenging both for composition and command point reasons

Look at it this way. You get to paint SO MANY miniatures this way! You like painting miniatures, don't you? Hey, where are you going? Jeez, some people are weird. (Primes another 60 Imperial Guardsmen)

Points are massiv to low for some Armys. Thats another Power Spiral Problem. But we all should know, GW is not interessted in balancing the Game, just selling more Models. And that is a Way for it.

The Kroot situation is just sad. Just look at the Carnivores: >Old set was 35€ >Included 16 Minis >Means that if you buy two sets, you get three 10-man squads and even a couple leftover models for future projects (more squads, kitbashing, etc.) Vs. >New set is 42€ >Includes 10 minis >You now have to buy three sets to get your triple ten-man squads >No extra guys left And people wonder why so many players are turning to 3D printing... And the funny thing is, while the refresh indeed looks very nice, the Carnivores are the most divisive set. New ones just look too sleek and human compared the rougher and more monstruous look of the older.

My personal answer to this is; no, the units aren't too low in points. It is the models themselves which are far too expensive for what you get, so it feels like you don't get anything for your money anymore once you put it on the tabletop. Even retailers with a 20% off of RRP feels like a rip-off. Kroot Hounds are £25 for 5 of them, which are 4 parts each, and you can take a unit of 10... that's £50 for Kroot Hounds?! £150 for 3 units of 10! That's approximately £45 more than the Kroot Hunting Pack on a lot of websites! What the actual fuck?! Yet you can get a Farstalker Kinband unit with LOADS of options for WAAAY less?! This is probably the worst that it's been in a very long time. The value for money is horrible now! Since 8th edition, the price hikes have been absolutely insane. The problem with this is that GW have committed to making it so that people are unable to even collect a single army anymore, never mind about having multiple armies. If GW lowered their prices, then people would inherently buy more armies, which nets them far more money. I don't want to just think about collecting a single army, I want to collect multiple armies but it's not viable from a financial perspective anymore. It's a massive shame GW has done this to the tabletop community. They've slowly backed themselves into a corner, and I think the business will only survive in the long-term if someone was to completely buy it out. 10th edition has absolutely failed because GW has failed to see what people want; to have fun.

Consider that, like Mordian Glory worked out, you can fit in the following in a 2000pts list: 2 tank commanders 60 jungle fighters 3 hellhounds 3 leman russ 6 chimeras

I'd love some point drops for guard. The more models i can play the better it gets

I remember when being a horde army was really just for Orks, IG & nids. Now you play supposedly “elite factions” like Votaan & SM and see more models then what you used to account for being a “crazy horde” in older editions. Return to monkey. Play 3rd-5th.

To be honest I think AOS illustrates the key thing about points in 40k: 40K has low points costs mainly due to balancing, like the most commonly given reason is upper management saying "make it lower so we sell more things", but internal communication in GW doesn't work like that, the power levels in 40k are much higher than in AOS, getting units blasted from across the board is much more likely, in AOS the points costs are higher across the board, because that's the style of gameplay AOS is more balanced for

Points changes only go so far in fixing things when the situation calls for rules changes. I'd get making certain options cheaper to encourage their use, but it's not a good look when the only appeal is how many of them you can put down. Marines are in a weird spot since only adjusting points affects more than just whatever the top performing setup is so more careful tuning would be better.

Sad part about Space marines in general is that they are Poster boys and most selling army. So to sell even more, GW decreases point cost of kits, resulting in marines losing their status of "Best of the best, Elite force of Imperium"

Even before watching the video, my short answer is yes

armies that are bad have way too low points cost and can put 100s of models on the table and will still loose, armies that are good can put like 7 units on the table because their units are so expensive and still win, armies that are too good can win and have 100s of models on the board at the same time. (orks csm etc) The problem is rules not points gw lol

Points are actually a reason that me and my local game store played warhammer fantasy/sigmar. There are actually so many boxes that are like 60 dollars that come with like 4 separate buildable variants that is a few hundred points

Indeed it is. Regardless of army, I'm always looking to use vehicles or larger models when I can just so I don't end up with another horde list.

I don't argue that the balance passes are a good thing, I just think it's balancing in the wrong spot. It feels to me like a $ push. Make people buy more just to get a playable army. The effect of this hitting new players more than those with established collections.

I’m not a competitive player, but a true hobbyists. I currently have a 3K+ points Space Marine Army and a couple 2k+ points army (T’au and Tyranids)… yes I also have a pile of shame I’m slowly working through anyways, having the chance to compare different army lists and deployments of Space Marines vs T’au and Tyranids, it does seem that some T’au units are cheaper when compared to a similar unit from the other armies. The entire crisis battlesuits were ridiculously under cost when we considered what they brought to the table. It’s been somewhat addressed in the new codex, the same goes with the Riptide.

Back in my day marines were 180 per 10, in a 1500 point standard game. To have the same ratio as 5th edition intercessors (standard new marines) should be 24/model 240/squad. With other costs adjusted accordingly

Stompa says noooooo

One thing iv not seen mentioned much, or as a specific point is just how much actual PLAYING these hordes take. it might not be the 200+ model hordes of yesteryear, but winning a game takes lots of stuff going on at once. My LGS has a lot of competetive players and puts on tourney days ect, and before I even got to 2k points I had to give up on orcs. old hordes might have been bigger, but theres so much rules fiddling like everyone being exactly X inches from every wall to charge block but also screen but also hold the point and do objectives. Its so much to think about and do and move that it gets overwhelming, combine that with many competitive armies having "no you dont" abilities or move tricks you have to think ahead for, and suddenly the 2-3hr game time gives you 90 minutes to do all that 5 times. This hobby isnt enough of my life that I can afford to just rep games out over and over and over until these stop being decision points and start being pre-solved problems I just have to remember the answer to so I can go fast enough for organised play. on top of that, theres how frustrating it is to have to roll literally hundreds of dice to do anything. each unit feels like it only achieves anything through the law of large numbers. 40 plus orc shots, 8 hits, 1 wound, saved on a 2+. repeat for every unit. now do it four times over in melee. I've had games vs W.E. that spent 2 hours in the first turn from rolling dice. Allmost every game with that army felt like I was forced to ignore certain phases for certain units just to save time because the act of rolling all that dice felt like timewasting. Im on tau atm and my all my lists have ran stormsurge even though its considered terrible, because I'd rather lose a game than feel stressed for three solid hours, constantly apologising for how long my army takes to do even one phase and futile-ly pouring hundreds of choppa hits into a tank only to have them all bounce off a 2+. as soon as I saw Str 24 Ap-6 D12 I stopped caring about "good".

I wonder if the "horde effect" is not the result of the disparition of the "elites ,fast attack ,support,.." classification. Back then it was way easier to separate troops and elites for example, the elites were far more costly but had a real impact in specific situations. Nowadays ,Gw does not put enough emphasis on those differences and we have elite like "Karskins" who are basically regular troops. The point tax on weapons and stuff too probably has an important part in the "hordification" ,Even if now the point for a regular squad are a little bit higher than before ,we were able to go far higher than now if we wanted to get lots of upgrades. So a lot more point for us to turn into more units.

Because i had seen the combat patrols of the past, 10th edition has actually stopped me from starting my 40k journey. I told myself i wouldnt buy boxes below 4 points per dollar or buy more than 2 boxes to get to the 1,000 point mark. 10th has ensured that none of the armies im interested in have either option available.

I would like for them to increase points in general by about 12.5-15% across the board. Fewer models on the table would make fore more interesting games and losing units would feel more devastating.

Amusingly, I have my old 2nd Edition IG codex, which has a sample 1500pts army at the back, consisting of approx 40 infantry type models (including characters), 2 Chimeras, a Leman Russ and 5 Rough Riders. In today's money, that's 870pts!

As someone who likes running 3k point games over 2k due to the number of models on the table, I think the points are at a good spot. Most armies are decently sized with some outliers, like AdMech. Custodes are more elite than space marines, space marines more elite than "elite xeno" armies, and those armies are more elite than horde armies. I do understand it's harder to get into the game when points are too low, like Ad Mech, and recently, Tau, but it isn't that bad for all the other armies.

"Are points too low?" asked no tyranid player ever. Stats of a 150pt model, with a 300pt price tag. Even all the gaunts have gone up in points despite going down in lethality by half or more. Gotta just tell Cruddace that he's assigning prices for nid units, but secretly put those values on every other faction and boom: everything across the board will be nice and overcosted.

The issue is a combination of GW using points reductions as a mechanism to drive sales and the outspoken aspects of the community pushing to play at 2k to the detriment of other point sizes (1k) and formats (boarding actions).