I agree with your assessment of gaming without points cost. Having done some game design myself and currently working on rules. I am trying to decide whether to have some form of point cost or not. There are a number of players that are put off by a game that does not have a points system. I guess they feel it is too much work to balance the games themselves.

I have found that games without point costs tend to end up with players coming up with a scenario and different ways to approach a game. Games that have point cost system are played more often like tournament style games. Perhaps the point system is used as a crutch?

But is it better to have a point cost system for a game or not? I am curious how many people are put off by a ruleset not having some obvious sort of balancing system. Like stated above, we have all played game that are supposedly balanced only to get completely steamrollered.

I agree with your thinking Zac, I’m keen to try out more things where the points costs are not as important. The game we’ve tried out a few times now has been quite enjoyable, and as long as we both take a look at the forces and the number of units is relatively even, then it seems to work out just fine.

I’m curious how a game like Warmachine/Hordes would work without worrying about points costs. I would think that in terms of units, as long as both sides have the same number of Jacks/Beasts, elite units, grunt units, solos etc. then it would probably turn out to be pretty balanced. I wouldn’t mind trying that out sometime. Since everything in that game is potentially overpowered, then it’s easy to throw points out the window and just beat the tar out of others. :-)

I would say as long as units or characters or whatever are at least reasonably close in game ability between different forces, then if I take a leader and 2 troops and so does my opponent, it shouldn’t matter if your points costs don’t match up.

Or as others mention, just play more scenarios, which is something I want to try to get into more of.

and to keep us normally competetive gamers from throwing dice at each other

I’m sure that even with points we can still find something to argue about if we want to ;-)

BTW, did we ever get that JJ interview here on TGN?

I’ll send him another reminder

We don’t generally use points in our games. The points system in Warhammer and 40K bear no resemblence to the actual capabilities of the units in terms of probabilities anyway. The only system that I ever saw that attempted that was the old Asbury ep system for D&D - as published in the first few issues of the White Dwarf. That system actually tried to base the points on the chance of inflicting harm or surviving it.

There was a very good article about Warhammer Renaissance gaming in Wargames Illustrated a few years ago now that used WFB as the basis but totally scrapped the concept of points.

Howard

I’ve had my own thoughts about this, and what I’ve been thinking is that some units or combinations are “more worth their points”. In Warmachine/Hordes they call it synergy, where different combos of units are more reliable.

This is reflected in 40k/Fantasy by how points are assigned. Since they have easier access to heavy weapons, in an Imperial Guard army a Lascannon is 25 points @ BS3 in a platoon squad, while in a Space Marine army the same weapon at a more effective BS is only 15 points (personally I think las-plas for 25 points is part of why Space Marines are too cheap points-wise but OK). In an Armoured Company there are artificial points increases. Without the artificial points increases, it would be a simple matter to get “more for your points” because your opponents anti-infantry weaponry would be of limited use. Somewhere on GW’s website is buried an article where they detail that if Eldar Striking Scorpions were a Tau unit they would have a higher points cost reflecting their utility. Many experienced 40k players will tell you that knowing all the tricks to making your list the most value for your points is 50% of winning consistently.

The advantage of points based lists is that we’re not all Jervis Johnsons. When starting out or seeing a new army for a first time points based lists give everyone a fair measuring stick.

Tacobake, are you saying half your chance of winning at Warhammer depends on your accounting skills? Number crunching instead of tactis, how very exciting for a wargame :-p

Most of the comments above about point costs being unnecessary seem to assume two experienced players, each familiar with their armies and the armies of their opponents.

Not everyone has those qualifications.

Given that the Codex point values are balanced vs all other Codex point values (play testing - as is right now - matches all the armies vs new one), I think point based games are importunate in 40K and FB. If you are playing BGB Scenarios.
Battles in books like Imperial Armour are different, they are designed to be “re-enactments” and such are model/unit based. They are bloody fun too!

GW has that! Battle for Maccragg (40K), and Battle for Skull Pass (FB).
Best stater sets that I have seen in many years.

The trouble is most games (especially GWs) “starter” boxes won’t give you enough variety to guarantee long lasting excitement…

They are intended to get you playing and expanding your army so it seems unlikely that they would provide a lot of replay value.

The Battle for McGragge set did have a few supplemental scenarios posted for it though.

Privateer Press is probably the only company that has been successful in updating their units but I don’t think they have ever changed point costs have they?

For most games I think that the point cost of the unit is set in stone until you do an official release of the army book or rules. Its one of the problems with them. You can never successfully assume that all players will have an errata document (even in Warmachine)

I think Rackham has an interesting idea for AT-43 as the point costs seem to be very generic.

Agree about PP, moreover, their starters though small they are fun to play (hu not to assemble but that’s another issue).
AT-43 has a quite generic point cost system… But tend to give “standard” armies and redudant types of troops… Will be interesting to see the (major) differences between UNA and Red Blok.

Force Composition or Not?:

I don’t think that “balance” is a reason to have rules that let players pick their own forces at all. Letting players pick their own forces clearly works AGAINST game balance. This is pretty self-explanatory, just think about chess or Avalon Hill boardgames. If you, as a designer, set the forces that players will use in any given battle then you can make the game much more balanced than you could by allowing players to choose their own armies.

From a design perspective - that is, not thinking in terms of selling miniatures linked to a rules system - the main reason to include rules that govern force composition is simply to give players the opportunity to make choices before the game starts and invest themselves in their force so that they care about it.

By empowering players make choices about what they bring to the battle, the force they bring to the battle now says something about they themselves - they are invested in the force. If they are invested in their force then they care about what happens to it in battle. THAT is what makes for a good game. Just like you probably won’t enjoy a movie where you don’t care about the main character, you probably won’t enjoy a wargame too much if you don’t care about your force.

There are certainly ways to make players care about their forces - interesting fluff, cool miniatures, etc. - but from a rules perspective I don’t think there’s much you can do to get a player to care about a force unless they think of it as THEIR force, and to do this, they must somehow create it themselves. Imposing restrictions on how they can do it makes creating an effective force a challenge and lets the players feel like they’ve accomplished something by building a force that they can take pride in.

Set forces are something I don’t like about most board games I’ve played. It is also why I rarely play scenarios with set forces - even good ones - in traditional tabletop wargames. Making choices is what gaming is all about and by not allowing me to make this big important choice I feel disempowered as a player and have less fun.

Point Costs and Explicit Restrictions:

Assuming that we want players to pick their own forces, what do point cost systems offer that other systems might not? Well, if I’m creating a 2000pt WHFB army and a basic trooper costs 5pts and a shield for my basic trooper only costs 1pt then I have a LOT of control over what my army is going to look like. This is good because we want players to have control over what their force looks like, that’s why we have force composition rules in the first place. Points systems are great for providing a simple way of increasing the amount of choice that players have when composing their forces.

The downside to that is that by allowing players too many choices, making an army can get way too complicated to be enjoyable anymore. Add to this the fact that the more choices you give a player to create their own force, the more inherently unbalanced the game will get.

This is why (I think) many systems will slap further restrictions on force composition like “You must take a Hero and X Core Units before taking anything else” in WHFB or “You must take a full platoon before taking a third unit of combat striders” in AT-43. I’ll refer to these force composition rules as “Explicit Restrictions.” The more explicit restrictions that are added, the easier it is to make a force and the more balanced a game is.

Combining these two types of force composition rules seems quite challenging. I would argue that there are not enough explicit restrictions in 40k, leading to some crazy army lists. On the other hand, while it is still a bit early to call, I think that there are too many explicit restrictions in the AT-43 army lists. This might be why, as Zac points out, it doesn’t seem like there is much “point in having points” in AT-43 :)

I’ve not yet seen a game that relies heavily on explicit restrictions and still gets a player invested in their force. I’m trying to design one for a game that I’m working on myself. But I think a good example of a game that combines these two types of force composition rules very well is Epic: Armaggedon. Each army list has its own explicit restrictions on groups of units, but they all share a common points cost system for individual units. Epic Armies are highly customizable but well balanced and easy to create.

In Conclusion:

Points cost systems cut right to the core of why force composition rules are good to have in games, but they need to be managed or they get too complicated and will be abused. This makes the game less fun.

Explicit restrictions are much harder to abuse and make creating forces much simpler, but can remove too much choice from force creation. This will also make the game less fun.

A well-tested game that is written by a good designer, I think, will be able to get the most out of either system and mitigate the disadvantages of both.

Wow, sorry to post an essay-length comment on your site! Lost track of time and space for a moment there :)

Tacobake, I think that PP realises that they can’t really ever change the point costs of their units. Modifying them to increase or decrease abilities is the only thing they can do.

Rackham is in the same boat with Confrontation. Its next to impossible to change the point cost of a unit in the game without creating situations where people have different point costs for the same fig.

You can see the impact of that in AT-43. They still use cards for units and as a game mechanic but the point costs are all in the faction army books and they are, as I’ve mentioned, fairly generic in that they almost seem superfluous. I’ve already read comments on the AT-43 forum about people gaming without using the unit point costs. I can certainly see that after a few games you’d really not need them to quickly figure out what appropriate force levels are in a game.

Gavroche, choosing what you think is an “efficient choice” or a “deadly combo” will definitely invest you in your chosen force. Say you come up with a particular army list that has never been seen before but that you think is a deadly combo of units. You CARE about how well that force does in a battle because YOU came up with that combo. It makes the game better because you are eager to see how well your troops do in battle and whether they can do what you hoped they could when you made the list. It is super-satisfying to pull off a combo like this.

The problem, I think, that you are trying to address is when a particular force list that DID achieve the effect I just described is then copied by everyone with access to online forums. Now what you have is a bunch of players who really did NOT choose the force they are playing with. They are not invested in their force and gameplay suffers for both them and their opponents. This is a gaming tragedy.

As for getting players to build attractive forces by limiting their customization options to buying/painting minis and reading fluff, I have to disagree. Would chess really be as fun a game as Epic for a wargamer if it had more background fluff and cool-looking figs? Many novelty chess-set manufacturers seem to think so and yet I still own way more Star Wars minis figs than I do chess set with Boba Fett knights and Mon Mothma queens :)

Wargaming has some pretty unique aspects to it that separate it from other kinds of gaming and I think that players being able to build their own cool forces is one of them.

Hoplite, usually you don’t come up with the combo. You got it from others or reading tactical advice on the internet ;-)

What I’m getting at is that elaborate points systems, like elaborate rules that try to represent a lot of things, that are not really visible on the table, draw attention away from the tabletop & into the realm of abstract gaming. Not necessarily a bad game in that this can be quite captivating too, but not what I expect from a miniature game.

To your novelty chess sets I would oppose playing Warhammer or Warmachine or whatever miniature game with colour-coded square cardboard counters on an abstract gameboard. Would it still be nice games? Possibly, if you like the abstract mental challenge of the game & don’t care for the visuals. It wouldn’t be a game I’d care much for because it lacks cool miniatures & terrain. What I want is playing with toy soldiers, not cracking a complex set of rules in the way an accountant can score by exploiting the tax code.

Obviously you need good rules in addition to nice miniatures to make a game interesting, but I think we differ in what we consider “good rules”. For me, good rules draw attention to the miniatures on the table. Complex systems & the elaborate configuration rules that go with them often achieve the opposite effect, with people checking the books, making calculations etc. & then looking up to move some pieces before drifting back into rulesland.

i find it quite hilarious that Jervis would publicly voice his opinions on points considering GWs entire marketing strategy relys on selling more points/models….