It's a Small World After All: Playing at 1000pts

It's a small world after all: playing 1000 pts

Big games get talked about a lot in 40K- playing Apocalypse, playing 'Ard Boyz, playing doubles tournaments, and it's not hard to see why. Playing big games is fun; you get to put more models on the table, you get to use all that stuff that's just sitting in your collection (I'm looking at you, Biovores and Techmarines), and there's just more of everything about your usual 40K game.

But what doesn't get talked about much is playing small games. 1500 is often considered the smallest reasonable size, and a lot of people will say that even 1750 is pretty confining. This is not entirely unreasonable; 40K is largely balanced for the 1500-2000 range, but just as playing larger point values can be interesting, smaller ones can be as well. For one, playing a small battle is simply a lot faster than a large one- if you don't have two hours (or more!) to spare, you might still be able to squeeze in a small skirmish. It's also much easier on those just entering the hobby, cutting the initial investment by a proportional fraction and letting them try out units before sinking huge amounts of money into a gimmick that will lose interest after a short time.

Looked at from a competitive standpoint, smaller games are their own kind of animal and require some unique adjustments compared to a larger battle. I will in particular be looking at 1000pt games here, as any smaller than that and the FOC starts to break down for many armies and it becomes necesary to change many things about the game in order for it to continue functioning. Dice rolls (good or bad) can be much more of a factor, troops and HQs will be a major part of every force, and there is simply more space, fewer guns, and fewer distinct "zones" on the field to deal with.

Let's talk about the big one first: randomness. Yes, in a small game you are more likely to have hot-and-cold luck streaks, as your sample size of dice is much smaller. (Think about it this way: your chances of rolling one of each number on six dice are pretty low, but if you roll six thousand dice, you can expect to get much closer to the "average" result.) So yes, luck is going to be a factor in small games, with games sometimes hinging heavily on a small number of rolls. Really, though, this shouldn't be anything new to you if you're familiar with the vehicle damage chart or roll for 6th/7th turn; there are plenty of instances of luck in "normal" 40K such that things can easily go south off of a few unkind dice. In a 1000pt game you simply must keep in mind that it is very possible that two of your Terminators will fail a save and majorly screw up your plan- every loss is a significant part of your battleforce.


The second elephant is that the mandatory Troops and HQ selections are a much larger part of your army at this point total. Now, this does honestly hurt some armies more than others- Tau, for example, find themselves wincing at the 1+ commander and Fire Warriors. By the same token, however, many of the "good" armies will find that they are spending an aweful lot of their allocation just satisfying the minimums- Space Marines, for example, may have to sink 500 or so just to be a legal army, although realistically they can get away with less than this (minimum Scout squads, etc.) It thus becomes much less an issue of "buy mandatory selections, then build my real army" and more a consideration of what you can do with your basic troops as a major component. No army is forced to spend more than ~250 on their basic dudes, so it's not completely crippling, and really only already-marginal armies (DH, Necrons, etc) are really hurt by this limitation.

A less-looked at consequence is that there is going to be a lot of space on the board. Depending on what point value you normally play at, this may be anything from a significant shift (from 1500) to basically feeling completely empty (if you regularly battle at 2K). Fewer points means less units means more space to run to, less utility for blast/template weapons, and fewer crowding/mobility issues. It also means that cover tends to be extremely plentiful (even more so than normal 5E), as there's always something for everyone to duck behind if they care to. Distances to cross tend to be a bit larger overall as well, although that is somewhat mitigated for melee units by other factors.

Primary amongst them, in fact, is that concentrated fire will have a much larger turn dropping important units in a single turn. At 1750+, it is not realistic to expect any single unit to survive a full turn of shooting from the enemy if they want to drop it (unless it's some kind of rock unit, but that's a different discussion); at 1K, however, the total amount of firepower on the table is such that even dedicated shooting may have trouble dropping a reasonably-tough target in a single round. This means that the one-turn delay some units experience (when Deep Striking, for example) can be less crippling and that linchpin units are less likely to be swept summarily off the table once their position is understood. Value-over-time effects, such as Regeneration, also gain in utility, as it's more likely their source will remain around to get the benefits for the full five or six turns.

Partly as a combination of the above factors and partly as a more direct result it becomes difficult to split an army into multiple "task forces" than at higher points totals, especially for armies that rely on synergy between their units (like Eldar, Tau, and Tyranids) to shore up weaknesses or apply specific strengths. Battles thus tend to be fought between the entirety of armies against each other, although this is certainly not always the case.

Last but not least I would be utterly remiss if I did not discuss the presence of "gimmick" armies at 1000pts, by which I mean armies that rely heavily on one unit/strategy/combination to do all of their heavy lifting. This can include so-called Rock armies that focus around a single unkillable, dangerous unit, but also covers such tricks as Lash/Oblits, PBS/Callidius, or a Tyranid force that entirely hangs next to an Old Adversary Tyrant and Venomthrope. All of these armies are characterized by having a single strategy that they are utterly reliant on and, if it should fail, will collapse without hope of recovery. Small points totals are both a boon and a hindrance to such armies; on the one hand, it can be extremely difficult to fit a functional gimmick into such a small point total, as one simply doesn't have the same level of resources to draw on. (Very rarely do such gimmicks use the army's Troops selections, which are a mainstay of 1000pts.) At the same time, such strategies have a natural advantage on small battlefields, as their inherent weakness to opposing counter-strategies is less crippling; whereas at 2K it can be practically guaranteed that if the enemy could have a counter to what you will do, they will include it, at 1K it is not feasible to try and include every useful thing. "Balanced" armies will have a harder time fitting all of their tools in in sufficient quantity to deal with their enemies. (Keep in mind if you plan such an army, however, point number one about the fickleness of the dice in these fights; if those Terminators or Nobz roll a couple 1s in succession, you may be kissing half your army goodbye.)


So what does all of this tell us, in summation? First of all, armies with strong troops will do well in 1K games; this largely means 5E codices, although some others (like Dark Eldar) will also benefit. Secondly, minimizing the chances of luck wherever possible is a good idea- this means not relying on reserves, for example, nor on small-but-powerful effects that involve a single die roll such as non-twin linked big guns. Thirdly, units either need to be completely self-reliant (like a Tactical Squad) or be working in concert with the whole of the rest of your army; you cannot expect to detach two or three units and have them do something on their own without crippling your forces. Finally, gimmicks should be all-or-nothing in such small games; either dedicate yourself wholly to embracing it or avoid them and stick strictly to keeping a balanced force. There is no room for running small Rock units or backup plans.

I won't say 1000 points is an awesome and superior level to play at- it comes with a lot of caveats and quirks of its own. For those interested in playing a more balanced and skill-dependent game, larger points totals will certainly be a better option; however, with the realities of gaming (time, money, etc) playing small battles can bring a lot of advantages to the table (so to speak) and has a certain old-fashioned charm of its own, harking back to the skirmishes of older editions where models on the table were scarcer than today. It's something of a comprimise, combining the more balanced play of normal 40K with the comparative ease and speed of Kill Team or 40K in Forty Minutes, but obviously taking some of the good and the bad from each. Hopefully this article has convinced you to give it a try, or at least see such battles in a little better light than you might otherwise.