How is GW going to tweak Power Level?

[Noserenda]

Now theyve promised they are going to adjust power levels, if not all the time then at least once apparently. Then of course we have both CA and the FAQs come out with no changes... 

Has anyone heard anything about this, or have thoughts about it? I mean they cant mean "Wait for the codexes" can they?

[No Foes Remain]

I just hope they fix the discrepancy between Space Marine Codexes, I have an 23PL Astral Claw patrol but the same patrol costs 28PL for my Dark Angel Successor, using the DA Codex but the same units.

[ThePenitentOne]

I wonder if this will be in the Appendix we haven't seen yet?

 

I mean, the thing about Crusades is that they don't accommodate PL changes well. Like say you're 100PL into your Crusade, so 125PL total. People want to start a Crusade on launch day. I mean, I guess you're technically always building your army out of the units in your roster before every battle anyway. But it's a hassle.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

There are a lot of reasons why power levels don’t work.

[Rik Lightstar]

I wonder if this will be in the Appendix we haven't seen yet?

 

I mean, the thing about Crusades is that they don't accommodate PL changes well. Like say you're 100PL into your Crusade, so 125PL total. People want to start a Crusade on launch day. I mean, I guess you're technically always building your army out of the units in your roster before every battle anyway. But it's a hassle.

That's not a unique issue to Power Levels though, if you did the relatively simple (x20) maths and ran it as a Points based system you'd still have the same issue when points change.

 

Anything that ascribes a numerical value to each 'unit' will have this problem when the values change, be it up or down.

 

Rik

[Slasher956]

I said this in the sisters forum.... but with all the points for units now being derivatives of 5 are we seeing the last edition with points?  and the next will only have power levels?

 

It also looks like they are standising the costs of weapons across all factions (ie a S3 power sword is the same cost as a S4 one)

 

If they do then only 1 thing to adjust!

[Interrogator Stobz]

The game had several editions of multiples of 5 for stuff.

I don't think it means anything.

 

I'm probably wrong ofc.

[Noserenda]

Ooh an appendix might be a good call, though id figure that may have leaked by now with so many rulebooks in the hands of lucky influencers? 
 

[MARK0SIAN]

I don’t think we will get a power levels revision in one go. I think it will be done via the new codexes.

[Fajita Fan]

Power levels are just a quick approximation for you to have quick games, I don't think PL was ever meant to be a truly competitive or granular gaming format. 

[ThePenitentOne]

Power levels are just a quick approximation for you to have quick games, I don't think PL was ever meant to be a truly competitive or granular gaming format. 

 

Maybe not, but now that it is the default for Crusade, people like me are considering using it for the first time. I will likely only be playing Crusade from here on in; even when my opponent thinks we're playing matched play.  That means I'll have to track points in addition to PL, because some opponent won't want to play a game that feels like matched play to them unless we are point balanced (probably no one would want to play that game), but that's okay.

 

You'd have to suppress all of your Battle Honours for the game, and you'd have to use matched play secondaries rather than agendas, so the battle wouldn't provided as many XP rewards as usual. But if you did all that, you wouldn't even need to tell your opponent that you were going to run your army through the Crusade system's post battle sequence after the game.

 

Anyway, the point is that Crusade armies really emphasize story based growth and development, and changes to PL mess with that story by moving the goal posts on how many units you can bring to the table from one game to the next. If PL changes happen once, at the beginning of the Crusade, fine. But if they happen frequently, or get spread out over time, it is going to be a fair bit of work to fix that on all of the various tally and roster sheets that are needed for campaign tracking.

[MARK0SIAN]

Well, they’ve already said that power levels will be updated more regularly than they were in 8th (which was not at all) but that they would t be updated as often as points.

 

That means power levels will not even be updated every year. I don’t think it’s going to have a huge impact on crusade armies therefore unless you’re unlucky and happy to be in the middle of a crusade when they do update the levels. The vast bulk of your matches won’t be affected.

[Noserenda]

Exactly, i mean its not particularly relevant to butt in with dislikign em, i mean there are plenty of topics for that im sure :D But there are a few PLs out there that really suffer from GW getting the units points radically wrong, like inceptors for example that id quite like to use in crusade but have significantly inaccurate PLs rather than a point or so.

[Fajita Fan]

This is why their points values should be 1. free and 2. on the website for easy updating. This business of putting error-ridden and annually updated points behind a paywall isn’t helping anyone but shareholders in a tiny, marginal way.

 

I want to like the idea of power levels for faster list building but a 2 point error or mistake in PL is much more serious than a 2 point typo in traditional game points. As a fluff gamer I’m all for game systems that don’t involve using Excel to maximize weight of fire in competitive listbuilding but the last Chapter Approved really let me down in terms of quality.

[Bat33.1]

There is another issue with PL though and that is there use for deepstriking units  CP cost which now spills into competitive games. They need to be correctly balanced especially for issues such as those in the DA example above.

[Panzer]

Unless they take all options from units away or make them all equal, which doesn't seem very likely when looking at Primaris with for example Eliminators with Snipers and Las-Fusils, Redemptors with Plasma and Gatling, Repulsors with a Las and Gatling, Aggressors with Boltstorm gauntlet + launcher vs Flamerstorm gauntlets and so on, I doubt GW will ever change to PL for good because there's just too big a difference even within the same unit.

Too many people, me included, are not willing to trade a system for the same but worse just for the sake of easy calculating in a time almost everyone has a portable computer with them.

 

How often will PL be updated? I seem to recall them saying something like every two years early when the ramp up to the new edition stuff started, but don't quote me on it.

Edited July 17, 2020 by Panzer

[tychobi]

Age of Sigmar tried it. Didnt take as far as I remember.

Edited July 17, 2020 by Excessus

[Burni]

My mate and I are looking forward to using Crusade for the majority of our 9th ed games. So we looked into PL for the first time and immediately said ‘nope!’ Thankfully Goonhammer published a great article that day with tips on how to do Crusade with points!

 

Even if they do adjust stuff regularly, 1 PL is about 20pts, so it doesn’t given them any granular control.

[Khornestar]

Now theyve promised they are going to adjust power levels, if not all the time then at least once apparently. Then of course we have both CA and the FAQs come out with no changes... 

Has anyone heard anything about this, or have thoughts about it? I mean they cant mean "Wait for the codexes" can they?

They could absolutely mean wait for the codexes. Or not...

 

I’d say unless it’s in some other part of CA we don’t know about, that is the most likely.

[Chaplain Killmer]

Well I didn't really look into the core rules - but I asume there still is the balanced game, the approximate game with the powerlevels and the one just put all your minis on the table - so if one of the systems isn't working for you or your group just dont use it. On the other side for very small games Killteam might be working, too.

Edited July 17, 2020 by Chaplain Killmer

[Marshal Loss]

My mate and I are looking forward to using Crusade for the majority of our 9th ed games. So we looked into PL for the first time and immediately said ‘nope!’ Thankfully Goonhammer published a great article that day with tips on how to do Crusade with points!

 

Even if they do adjust stuff regularly, 1 PL is about 20pts, so it doesn’t given them any granular control.

Thanks for the heads up on that Goonhammer article, much appreciated. Will be very beneficial for my group

[ThePenitentOne]

Yeah, ditto on the thanks- Just read the article in question; I think I disagree with some of what I read, but it was thought provoking. Now I'll read all the other stuff in the Narrative Forge section. Really, I'm at the point where I need the book in my hands in order to make any decisions. I still think there will be unforeseen difficulties with substituting points. I can see a situation where you have to spend additional requisition points to buy a unit because of the upgrades you want for it. I also really didn't like the idea of dropping the supply limit requisition- I'm very curious to see what happens when an army focused on supply limit comes up against an army that is smaller but full of relics and other equipment.

 

I feel like some of the additional restrictions they suggest are just for the sake of restrictions? Granted, that might change once I've got a few games behind me; these guys have way more experience than I do.

[Noserenda]

Seeign as people insist on bringing it up anyway, PL is fine if you can trust your opponents, if you dont trust your opponents to not take the mickey then use points. Tbh i blasted through the other side of that so long ago im not bothered.

[nanosquid]

I like the idea of using PL for meta-mechanics like Summoning or campaign rosters as in Crusade, but making your actual games balanced via points. It's nice to have PL as a "bird's eye view" for bookkeeping but using points for the game itself. I too disagree with some of goonhammer'd take in the aforementioned article, but only because I think the army roster is abstract enough not to need points granularity (but I don't hold it against them, the poor goons have had their innocence tarnished by the sins of tournament play for too long, bless them).

 

In the end I think the only house rule we'll use for Crusade play will be "drop a few wargear options for this game to make sure we have our points close enough without spending an RP to modify the army roster"

[killersquid]

Since power level is printed on the datasheets, I don't imagine we'll see updates to that until the app, or when codexs get re-printed.