Can Small Games Be Fun?

As promised, I'm going to continue to bring some positivity to your Mondays. Mostly this has, so far, taken the form of me pointing you towards blogs that are better than this one, but today I'll be defending an oft shat upon topic: the low points game. A lot of people out there decry any game of less than 1,500 (sometimes even 1,750 or 1,850) points as "not Warhammer." They see it like the WNBA- all the fundamentals are there, but it just isn't exciting. Well, I'm calling bullshit on that.

This weekend, as I mentioned in a previous post, I had a bunch of friends over for some basement throw downs. Everyone was told to bring a 1750 point list and we'd randomly pair off for games. I got matched up with Evan (our resident CSM fan- PS Evan, go snag a Blood Angels Codex, you'll love it) and I was playing my Tyranids list that I'm still testing (found elsewhere on this blog). That game ended in a pretty solid draw and I learned that sometimes even with Hive Commander backing them up, a unit of your Spore borne Zoanthropes won't show up until turn 4 or 5 (fuck you probability). Had the game not ended on turn 5, I think I could have pulled out the win, but Evan was able to tie a couple of things up in CC, preventing them contesting a vital objective. So the game ended with an unsatisfying, hard fought draw. As we played it in record time and had nothing better to do, we decided to play another game, this time at 1,000 points. We figured that we had about an hour or so to play after drawing up lists so the low points would be perfect.

Having less than no clue how I would approach low points Tyranids, I switched out to my regular army of choice, the IG to speed up the list building process. With the amount of variety in their codex, you can have some pretty fun forces, even at low points levels. My list wound up looking something like this:

CCS- power weapon, 4x melta, Chimera
Psyker Battle Squad- 6x Psykers, Chimera
Vets- 3x Melta, Chimera
Vets- 3x Melta, Chimera
Sentinel Squadron- 2 w/ autocannons
Sentinel Squadron- 2 w/ autocannons
Sentinel Squadron- 2 w/ autocannons
Manticore

So yeah, I was able to fit 11 vehicles into a 1,000 point game. I am kind of an asshole, though. Have I ever mentioned that vehicles give me a boner? If I had it to do all over again, though, I would have dropped the Manticore and power weapon (there to fill up a 10 point hole in my list) in favor of a Demolisher. Partly because we were playing on a 4x4 board and partly because the front armor would have proved nigh on indestructible in a small game.

Evan wound up running 3 small Plague marine Squads, 2 Defilers, and a Terminator squad led by a lash dude.

Well, right off the bat I think we can dispel an easy myth about 1,000 point lists. Most argue that in small games losing a "vital" unit will crush your game plan. Comebacks aren't possible. So you can't build a flexible list? Well see above, both of us had plenty of duality smashed into every unit we took, and not just by copy/pasting of the same units over and over. Just about every unit has the ability to deal with armor and Infantry. If you lose one unit, another one of your choices should be able to do whatever needs doing. Scoring units were on the light side, but that's pretty much unavoidable.

The game wound up being a blast, and proved everything I said in a previous post about not putting all of your faith into statistics. At one point 5 veteran guardsmen held off a pair of Terminators for 3 turns in CC, even managing to kill one. This proved to be a decisive move for Evan. Even though those 5 vets should have all been killed or broken, the assault still tied up one of my units that could have contested a game winning objective.

Our favorite moment of the game will stick with me for a long time, I think. We were playing on my desert board, which features a very silty river modeled into it. Usually this gets ignored for most of the game, but I placed my objective in a bad spot for everyone, forcing river crossings for everyone to get at it. Not a big problem for me, as Chimerae are amphibious, but it was a little out of the way to get to nonetheless. To make things interesting we always play that the river is dangerous terrain that inflicts instant death. This will turn out to be an extremely important decision. On turn 4 Evan was holding an objective with a pair of Plague marines and I had the other objective with a Vet Squad in a Chimera. My CCS guns their Chimera across the river, just contesting Evan's objective. The objective holding Marines open fire with their plasma guns on my Chimera, wrecking it. As I went to disembark my troops from the ruined APC, we realized the I had left the ass end hanging over the river. Chavez, veteran melta gunner and no fan of authority, managed to push Colonel Higgins off the ramp first in the rush to vacate the burning transport, where he quickly became entangled and drowned. Using the Colonel's floating body as support, the rest of the melta gunners were able to climb to safety, only to be gunned down by the remnants of Evan's other Plague marines on a nearby bridge. Talk about rock and a hard place. So if you're keeping track, Evan was able to shut down 3 different attempts I could have made to claim/contest the game winning objective- Veterans, my Chimera, and the CCS. Sounds like we both had the flexibility needed to make the game interesting until the last moments. Hmm, I thought that was impossible with small lists?

In the interest of keeping this post from running overlong, here are some additional, concise reasons that I like the small game:

• Time- small games can be played quickly. If you or your gaming buddies don't get many opportunities to play, small games are a great way to fit in 3-4 games in a single afternoon of gaming. This is great because it can help to prevent bruised egos and gets you more experience against a wide array of opponents. If you play twice a month and lose both games you're going to be pretty pissed, right? Well if you can play 4 times in a day chances are you'll be able to pull a win or draw or two. You or your friends will probably feel better about life when this happens.
• Turning the tables on shit units- we all have some units that are collecting dust on our shelves. Maybe they aren't durable enough or are just too mediocre to perform in a large game. Try them out in a small game, you may be surprised by the results. Evan's defilers, for example get exponentially tougher in small games. For a relatively low cost you're able to get an efficient anti-infantry/light armor platform that is mobile, can assault, and is pretty fucking durable. It also bears mentioning that demonic possession is a bitch to deal with when you are as notorious as I am for getting a ridiculous amount of hits on a vehicle and rolling dozens of shaken/stunned results. My Sentinels proved to be all stars in the low point game as well. Half of them survived and had claimed a Lash sorcerer, Defiler, and several Plague marines as kills throughout the game.
• Tactical decisions- every decision you make in a small game is amplified. If you like that kind of thing this will be right up your alley. Building an effective list becomes a really frustratingly satisfying endeavor. The low points forces many important decisions as to what you can bring. On the table, you need to plan and react very quickly to be able to claim victory. As mentioned earlier, if you approach it right, losing a unit shouldn't cripple you, but having limited resources means you do need to be a little cautious and have a good idea what you need to do going into the game.
• Low cost of entry- less points = less models. That means less money spent, less to paint, and less shit to transport. Great for new players and anybody who has trouble moving their army.

There you have it. Give the small game a chance, you might like it. Even if it's still not your style, hopefully you can see that they do have some merit and there are a number of good reasons you might want to play at less than 1,500 points.