Is our game too much about point now? 11th discussion.

[Brother Raul]

Hail Brother and Sister,

                                          This is a serious question I'd like to ask the community. I'll keep it brief and too the point as yoir answers are the important part.

 

A points/mission system to determine the winner has a lot of meritt but have secondaries ect gone way to far and are now detracting from our armies fighting?

 

I've not played a lot 40k in 10th but get a strange feeling after a game. Points have their own narrative on the reult and Its sometimee like a basketball game and not like a earlier edition table top wargame.

 

Doing non combat actions or manouvering to do them is kinda ridicolous to me to be honest.

 

We have units manouvering or not shooting to simply score points now where as before it was to screen, bait, get a better firing angle or charge ect.

 

It still happens but if your melta squad doesnt get a better rear % A, and you are behind on points, then why not terra form this turn or recover assets?

 

I am not complaining about rear AVs being gone, just about the rewards for being more strategic in your attacks versus rewarded for not attacking at all.

 

You now trade units for points and not enemy assets in an attempt to beat them from the field, you outscore them.

 

Its about out scoring your enemy not winning a war game.

 

If scoring was heavily around destroying units, or keeping units alive as well as Primaries, the game would feel more like a war game and less like a points system.

 

Sure missions are a good idea but as and secondaries have some merrit but they arent focused on fighting, especially the later which is often opppsed to fighting (the mission is more about the rules to fight with).

 

Also with secondaries kinda sick of GW doing this whole roll something back but then make it a lot worse by not thinking about it. So if the game is supposed to become more about scoring why give it a draw system on secondaries?

 

Fixed is the way. You get 3 per game that reward fighting or surving to suppliment your final destroyed v surrvived + primary score. You choose the 3 based on your opponents list.

 

Thats the equaliser without FOC GW.

 

Finally I believe there are too many Primary objective markers in a 40k game. 4 is balanced and perfect, 5 means we are more focused on gathering resources (spreading out) than fighting for limited resources.

 

So in summary before I go of all Black Templars on a crusade to the UK what are your thoughts please?

 

Q.1 Is points scoring too much of a focus of game play now and detracting from fighting/ surviving?

 

Q.2 Should points and secondaries be more about fighting/ surving?

 

Q.3 Should there be less objective markers and less points for them so that destroying/ surviving units is the new primary, objective control the new secondary. Fix some cards to chose as a tertiary to augment your points for destroying/ surviving units or holding certain objective markers and make these points very limited.

 

I just feel in the far future there is only points at the moment. 40k needs more war. Please let me know yoir thoughts.

[Lathe Biosas]

While I do miss the old days where missions read like quotes from STARSHIP TROOPERS*, there are some armies that work better (thematically) trying to accomplish specific missions that may not involve killing the enemy army.

 

While some current rules seem a little wonky to me... aka the random missions that can change round by round (to me this feels like General Jerry has some real ADHD issues and can't concentrate on his order of battle).

 

I do believe that this is a better game than some of the older editions. Not perfect, but better.

 

 

 

*WE ARE GOING IN WITH FIRST WAVE. 

MEANS MORE BUGS FOR US TO KILL. YOU SMASH THE ENTIRE AREA. YOU KILL ANYTHING THAT HAS MORE THAN TWO LEGS. YOU GET ME? 

 

 

[Karhedron]

I have been playing 40K since 1st edition and in the old days, killing the enemy was the primary focus. 2nd edition introduced simple mission cards and the idea has come back in various forms over the years. The current mission decks are the most sophisticated iteration of the concept. I enjoy the missions and secondary objectives because they add variety to the game. If you play the same opponent regularly then simple "kill the foe" missions can become repetitive after a while. Drawing secondaries is a great way to keep games fresh. And even here, your secondaries are a lot easier to complete if you opponent is dead so killing the enemy is never a bad idea. 

 

Having said that, it is a very personal thing. If you prefer games focussed on killing the enemy, that is fine and can be accommodated. If you and your opponent feel the same way then the easiest solution is to play the "Purge the Foe" Primary mission and simply ignore secondaries. This will give you a game centred on killing the enemy. There really is not right or wrong way to play the game. As long as you and your opponent are both on the same page, then do whatever you enjoy.

 

One thing to bear in mind is that this will affect the balance of some armies slightly. Certain units (particularly Battleline units) have abilities that help them take or hold Objectives such as better OC or Objective Secured. If you play without these elements, you may find certain units lack a role. This is not a problem, just something to be aware of.

[Helbrechts_Sword_Servitor]

To me is a matter of deciding beforehand what game you want to play. 

 

If you're gonna play a Matched Play game with all the trimmings (L-shaped ruins, mission cards, championship approved deploy) then you gotta tailor your army to accomplish those things - take a Lt. with Combiweapon, some scouts and units with sticky objectives.

 

If you wanna crush the enemy, then play like Karhedron wrote, load up on your deadliest unit and go to town.

 

Personally, I think that 40k nowadays is too much skewed towards the meta. As a Black Templar player who doesn't like Repulsor Executioners, I feel I'm always fighting an uphill battle, since the best list I can pull uses at least one of them, if not two.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

1. I don't think points detract from fighting/survival. I think a lot of lists rely on tactical objectives to survive. Sku lists are just really strong now, if you can build an all-comers list your fraction is probably broken. I also think with streaming games becoming more and more popular, that they want the tactical deck to add some suspense. So, I don't know how many people even look into fixed objectives now.

 

2. Fixed is still an option, lots of lists run a bunch of characters, and the ones that don't tend to run vehicles/monsters. I run saga of the hunter wolves, and for my detachment bonus I need to outnumber my opponent with space wolf marine units, I don't really have room for action units. I don't think fixed is as strong as tactical for winning tournament but if you're just playing the game there isn't a big difference in scoring. I mainly notice it when I'm getting my butt kicked and I don't get any pity points from a deck.

 

3. I think 5 objectives is the right number. It's an odd number so people play to win it, unlike 2 or 4 where it just turns into a draw. It forces people to spread out, and to go to the center table. Without that there just isn't incentive for some armies to move (think leafblower in 5th), or not to make a deathstar unit. I get that it doesn't feel like earlier editions but I don't miss stat check lists very much.  

 

 

 

Edited January 4 by Jorin Helm-splitter

[jaxom]

On 1/1/2026 at 7:52 PM, Jorin Helm-splitter said:

Sku lists are just really strong now, if you can build an all-comers list your fraction is probably broken.

Could you please expand on this? It seems important but I don't know what it means.

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, jaxom said:

Could you please expand on this? It seems important but I don't know what it means.

 

Assuming they mean "skew" lists. A skew list is one that dials up a single attribute to the maximum in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy by providing more of attribute X than any balanced army can deal with. This means that the only risk to a skew list is running into either its hard counter or a mirror match.

 

One example of a skew list is an infantry horde designed to drown an enemy army in bodies. Any anti-tank firepower the enemy brings is effectively wasted. The horde doesn't even need to kill the enemy particularly well. It just needs to move fast enough to get on the Objectives first and then gum up any enemy counter-attack. Another example is Knight lances where even the weakest unit is T9 meaning that enemy anti-infantry weapons are pretty much useless. If the Knights can take out the enemy anti-tank capability early on then the enemy will have a hard time pulling off a win.

 

The basic principle is that there are too many types of army in the meta these days to build a take-all-comers army that can effectively deal with all of them. So the only way to win is to instead focus on building your army to dominate in one specific area and then making it the enemy's problem to respond. In effect, skew armies force the enemy to play on their terms.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

@jaxom - Karhedron explained it pretty well, the concept been around for a long time, but I was thinking of inside joke and typed SKU instead. A SKU is a code you give a product for tracking inventory. Whenever there is unit that is dominating, and people just run the max they can my friends and I call it a sku list, which is pronounced just like skew. We find it funny because it's basically the same concept it's just instead of making a list towards a theme, you're just maxing out one unit. It also implies whoever is running it is a bit of wallet warrior which is an added bonus for us. 

[jaxom]

Thank you both. I find it fascinating how over time well rounded lists seem to have been replaced as the bench mark for a good codex/faction.

[jaxom]

I think I figured out what about the match play system bothers me, in relation to @Brother Raul's questions. Match play missions make objectives too abstract in execution; I feel like I'm playing a game rather than a wargame. If the idea is to reflect changes in tactical or strategic priority as the battle unfolds then I think it's either too random or too face paced.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

I think it's completely fair to think that they're too abstract. I'd really like for them to design some narrative missions around some of their terrain packs/kits and just include them with the terrain or post them on warhammer community along with an explanation of why your fraction would do it. IIRC the old witch hunters codex back in 3rd had a list of reasons why they'd fight any fraction, and I'd like to see things like that add some of the flavor back in.

 

edit: The new boarding patrol looks interesting on this front, but I'd prefer something with bigger forces.

Edited January 9 by Jorin Helm-splitter

[Helbrechts_Sword_Servitor]

10 hours ago, Jorin Helm-splitter said:

I think it's completely fair to think that they're too abstract. I'd really like for them to design some narrative missions around some of their terrain packs/kits and just include them with the terrain or post them on warhammer community along with an explanation of why your fraction would do it. IIRC the old witch hunters codex back in 3rd had a list of reasons why they'd fight any fraction, and I'd like to see things like that add some of the flavor back in.

 

edit: The new boarding patrol looks interesting on this front, but I'd prefer something with bigger forces.

 

I'm reading some recent issues of White Dwarf, and they had an article like that, but with explanations on why factions would fight themselves, e.g.: Stormcast Eternals have an arena where they can go all out and not expend a ressurection.

[Xenith]

Having a story and giving a unit a mission to accomplish to win the game is the very definition of narrative gameplay. Secure the servoskulls, send the signal, whatever. These are all narative devices and should be in narrative play, not competitive. 

 

I agree 100% that the game is too complex: the scoring too annoying to track, and the missions too wordy for the casual gamer. Only professional players, people who get paid to do it, seem to be on top of things.

 

I have been out of 10th for a good while now, but my local club is having a slow grow league to get people back into the game - we started at 500pts on weds, and that game took 2 hours. 2 hours for a 500pt game. Half the time was spend reading and rereading the mission rules, reading secondary misison cards, and using the app to score.

 

This 500pt game required 2 apps, a deck of cards and 2 hardback rulebooks to play.  It's insane. 

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

On 1/9/2026 at 7:22 AM, Helbrechts_Sword_Servitor said:

 

I'm reading some recent issues of White Dwarf, and they had an article like that, but with explanations on why factions would fight themselves, e.g.: Stormcast Eternals have an arena where they can go all out and not expend a ressurection.

 

Yeah, I found the section of the witch hunter codex that listed the narrative hooks, it didn't really include a reason for witchhunters fighting themselves in that summary because the puritan vs radical theme of the inquisition was pretty in your face lol. I had forgotten that they'd included rules for adversaries in the book as well, they crammed a lot of content into 64 pages. 

 

That said most of the narrative stuff I've bought from GW over the years has been frustrating. Cause its either trying to sell you a complete set terrain or designed around having certain units. I'd actually prefer it if they just went back to some of the older rulebook missions and just tweaked them a bit to fit within the current rules and had narrative/getting started downloadable mission pack.

 

22 hours ago, Xenith said:

Having a story and giving a unit a mission to accomplish to win the game is the very definition of narrative gameplay. Secure the servoskulls, send the signal, whatever. These are all narative devices and should be in narrative play, not competitive. 

 

I agree 100% that the game is too complex: the scoring too annoying to track, and the missions too wordy for the casual gamer. Only professional players, people who get paid to do it, seem to be on top of things.

 

I have been out of 10th for a good while now, but my local club is having a slow grow league to get people back into the game - we started at 500pts on weds, and that game took 2 hours. 2 hours for a 500pt game. Half the time was spend reading and rereading the mission rules, reading secondary misison cards, and using the app to score.

 

This 500pt game required 2 apps, a deck of cards and 2 hardback rulebooks to play.  It's insane. 

 

I don't think that 40k has professional players yet, I think we have professional influencers which in IMO is worse. It seems like our influencer's channels are either news, lore, or matched play. Some of the matched play channels have narrative campaigns but they tend to be behind a pay wall, which makes sense. They have to put more work into it, and chances are they need more people involved to make the content good. Regardless I think they create a perception that there is one way to play, and GW doesn't correct it because they want to sell that deck of cards.

 

I mainly went on that rant because I wouldn't even consider using the mission decks in 500-point slow grow league game. I think it would feel horrible from a game experience standpoint with how small the forces are. Players are going to spend a ton of time looking at those cards because of how limited their resources are to achieve them, and the luck of the draw element is going to feel super impactful.  

[Lord Sondar]

And this is why a lot of gamers have stopped playing 40k altogether.  It's too focused on the competitive game side of things.  I suspect this has a lot to do with a way to make money and choke 3d printed miniatures as you can enforce official sculpts only at a tournament.

 

I'm not going to say it's a bad thing persay. I'm not a competitive gamer and am much more modeling and painting first.  I just suspect it's going to take more of a rock, paper, scissors format going forwards.

[Karhedron]

4 hours ago, Lord Sondar said:

And this is why a lot of gamers have stopped playing 40k altogether.  It's too focused on the competitive game side of things.  I suspect this has a lot to do with a way to make money and choke 3d printed miniatures as you can enforce official sculpts only at a tournament.

 

You are looking at it the wrong way around. The competitive focus is not to the detriment of other modes of play, it is complimentary to it! A balanced competitive game is great for everyone, particularly pick-up games because it means that all casual and pick-up games all benefit from being balanced. You don't have to to worry so much about turning up for you first game against a new opponent and being curb-stomped by an uber-army that just operates at a tier above your own. Look at what happened with Victrix, they were significantly too good out of the gate so GW toned them done within a couple of months. In the old days a broken codex would stay broken for years. And if you really don't care about the competitive scene then there is no need to use updates. Just agree to play against your mates with whatever makes you happy.

• Can't be bothered keeping up to date with points or rules changes? Play as printed in the codex.
• Feel the game is too focussed on Objectives? Just play "Purge the Foe" or "Total War" and have fun with the carnage.
• Feel the missions are too prescriptive? Play Open or Narrative and play however you want.

There is literally nothing about focussing on competitive balance that is detrimental in any way to other parts of the game. But having the game well balanced at the top tables has trickle-down benefits for those who often play pick-up games at clubs, even if only casually.

Edited January 12 by Karhedron

[DemonGSides]

1 hour ago, Lord Sondar said:

nd this is why a lot of gamers have stopped playing 40k altogether.  It's too focused on the competitive game side of things.  I suspect this has a lot to do with a way to make money and choke 3d printed miniatures as you can enforce official sculpts only at a tournament.

 

There's multiple large tournaments around my area on a monthly basis (Talking almost 100 People at one and over 40 at another) and none of them have strict modelling requirements.  This is a constant boogeyman of people who don't play the game, because they have an axe to grind.

Only GW would enforce this strict modelling, and even THEY don't enforce it that strictly.  GW doesn't run 99% of tournaments.

1 hour ago, Lord Sondar said:

I'm not going to say it's a bad thing persay. I'm not a competitive gamer and am much more modeling and painting first.  I just suspect it's going to take more of a rock, paper, scissors format going forwards.

 

This is just a nonsense take and has no basis in reality.

[jaxom]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

 

You are looking at it the wrong way around. The competitive focus is not to the detriment of other modes of play, it is complimentary to it! A balanced competitive game is great for everyone, particularly pick-up games because it means that all casual and pick-up games all benefit from being balanced. You don't have to to worry so much about turning up for you first game against a new opponent and being curb-stomped by an uber-army that just operates at a tier above your own. Look at what happened with Victrix, they were significantly too good out of the gate so GW toned them done within a couple of months. In the old days a broken codex would stay broken for years. And if you really don't care about the competitive scene then there is no need to use updates. Just agree to play against your mates with whatever makes you happy.

• Can be bothered keeping up to date with points or rules changes? Play as printed in the codex.
• Feel the game is too focussed on Objectives? Just play "Purge the Foe" or "Total War" and have fun with the carnage.
• Feel the missions are too prescriptive? Play Open or Narrative and play however you want.

There is literally nothing about focussing on competitive balance that is detrimental in any way to other parts of the game. But having the game well balanced at the top tables has trickle-down benefits for those who often play pick-up games at clubs, even if only casually.

I don’t mind matched play being default for armies in pick up games because I agree about the balance; and all changes from codex to matched play are free. I’m more uncertain about matched play missions because their mechanics are paylocked. I can’t read the core rules or some other document and know what what I’m getting into.

[Dr. Clock]

On 12/29/2025 at 12:54 AM, Brother Raul said:

Q.1 Is points scoring too much of a focus of game play now and detracting from fighting/ surviving?

Even if it's just about fighting it will come down to points... I don't really want to go back to the days of counting up how many points of my army survived as the main way of determining a winner. For SO MANY years the best units were simply the killiest and/or toughest. I love my action monkeys, and I like that I have a reason to include them and move them around instead of... not.

 

On 12/29/2025 at 12:54 AM, Brother Raul said:

Q.2 Should points and secondaries be more about fighting/ surving?

They are already very much about surviving, I'd say. 'Existing in a place' implies you've survived there for at least a turn. I understand that about a third of secondaries are achievable through movement alone, but in lots of cases I think I prefer those to the killing ones... If you want your game to be more about fighting there is nothing to prevent you doing something custom with the missions... Like allowing the creation of 'custom' secondary decks and/or achieving each one more than once... A simple example might be 'pick 6 secondaries to form your deck, and draw one at the beginning of each turn. Each secondary mission is discarded when it is achieved in two turns of the game.' Basically a 'fixed lite' type of situation, and if you want to pick all the killy ones, I can pick all the movement ones. 

 

On 12/29/2025 at 12:54 AM, Brother Raul said:

Q.3 Should there be less objective markers and less points for them so that destroying/ surviving units is the new primary, objective control the new secondary. Fix some cards to chose as a tertiary to augment your points for destroying/ surviving units or holding certain objective markers and make these points very limited.

As soon as you make 'destroying units' a primary determinant of scoring, the whole game skews to maximum unit sizes and save characteristics. Similar things happen when you reduce the number of objectives... if all you need is one brick on one place, then every list will live and die by the weight of its brick. It's not a super healthy place from a diversity perspective, and is the utter doom of the '5-man chaffe scorer'. One of the main brakes on both pure aggro and turtle lists is that most of the points in the game require some maneuvers or actions, and thus you can't rely on carnage alone. That's not to say that carnage is a bad choice - with my aggro lists it is pretty routine to just give up on an Action secondary or two in a game in order to a) grab a sweet CP, and b) keep the pressure on in turn 2/3 so that I can actually get where I need for late game scoring or spiking the cannons. While you don't always directly 'score points' from a big push, you're usually either depriving enemy of points later on, or getting yourself ready for the late game victory lap.

 

So in sum, for what it is, I think the current game works well, though I certainly understand that a bit more player choice and front-end strategy might be nice in place of the very high randomness of secondaries at the mo. I'd just emphasize caution - the objectives and scoring dictate 'what is good' in the game, and not everyone wants to be guided so purely by stacking killiness into defense. 

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[DemonGSides]

If someone doesn't like the randomness of secondaries, take fixed ones. If you want to focus on killing, pick two from between assassination, bring it down, or cull the horde depending on what you're going up against and bam, you've got your killy game that cares not where you stand.

[Xenith]

There's an old adage from world of tanks, in which you can win by destroying enemy tanks, or by capturing their base:

 

The game is called world of tanks, not world of circles.

 

We play it to drive around in tanks, not to park your tank in a circle and try to survive until the timer runs out. 

 

With all of the missions and scoring, and interactive play being seen at top tables, the game in it's competitive form is almost certainly "circle-hammer" and not "war" hammer these days. 

 

You could probably either scrap primary or secondary missions, and the game would still be fine and fun, with more emphasis on killing stuff. 

 

If you like killing stuff based games, there's always heresy, where you still get VP for having more units alive, and killing things on objectives.

 

That said, it's still very much about the player mentality. The number of games of 3-5th ed where I've had to choose between keeping my HQ on an objective and winning the game, or running him out to kill stuff, but lose,  were beyond count, and always fun, but in those instances they only had to be on the objective in the last turn. In modern 40k you have to sit on objectives for 5 turns.