I brought a bunch of stuff yesterday and I managed to get a couple of friends to split the cost of SeaLowe and the Revised Core set to save money.

Now that I'm officially invested in the game, I'd like to talk about 1 main topic: Army size for competitive play.

I'm really happy to see the mission builder in this game, but I'm a little curious on what's the encouraged point level of games? From what I've seen, everything tends to point towards 300 points being THE point level to play at. I come from a long line of miniatures gaming and I'm familiar with the scale of armies. 40K likes to run tournaments at 1500 and 2000 (some parts even 1750 or 1850), Fantasy almost always stays at 2500 norm or the odd-ball 2000, Warmachine likes 50 points for their Steam Rollers and 35 points otherwise, but what about this game?

Is there a competitive standard?

[i started featuring Dust Warfare on my gaming blog for all those interested.]

Well Mack Martin one of the developers for the game says the intended competitive play level should be between 300 -450 AP (points) for games. These are good sized armies for running on 4'X6' boards too.

Also I am VERY interested in your blog please post a link. And I am glad to hear your in to the game!

HERO said:

HERO said:

Glad to hear you thought it through, hope you enjoy it.

300 was said to be FFG's organized play level and that's what our group plays at. Gives you 1 1/2 to 2 platoons, so gives you enough toys to play with and doesn't bog the game down.

Beat me to it! When we talked to him Mack basically said the sweet spot for the game was between 300 and 400 points, with 300 being the best for competitive play to provide a good solid army but not so much that it bogs down. Locally we, too, have been playing at 300 points, but I've been toying with the idea of going to 350, or maybe even just 301, to legally allow a third platoon if someone wants one.

The highest I've gone is 200 points so far, and that's because we (and by we, I mean my wife) doesn't like our games to go on for too long. I'm hoping once we get some more games under our belt, they'll go faster and we can up the point value.

I concur, 300 for competitive play, although 325-350 for three platoons and/or heroes isn't a horrible idea either.

For just quick friendly games, I've tried 100 (too restrictive), and 150. I think that now our newer core group has several 150 AP games under their belts, we'll up the for-fun games to 200 to get them used to two or more platoons for the 300-350 AP tourneys I plan on runningin the near future. Plus, a few are clambering to try the heavy walkers. Ah, be careful what you wish for boyos.

We play at 350 points all the time and have never found that the game suffered because of it. The point level of 350 allows the third platoon and allows just that little bit more variety of units so that you can deal with the occasional heavy walker without it spending the game being awesome…. well, it still spends the game being awesome but you have that little bit more to be able to take it out. Then if you want the extra hero or platoon upgrade, you have the points to do so. It doesn't really slow the game down as things tend to get exponentially more bloody the more units you add… to a certain limit, of course, that is not to say that you can play 1000 points and it will still be fast

We have been playing 150 and 175 point games lately to get used to the rules and what our units can do. We have enough for the larger battles but we are actually having a lot of fun at these lower point levels and you can really get a bunch of games in at these point totals. We will probably switch to 200 plus point games here in a few weeks.

My blog is in my signature, and thanks everyone for your replies.

It looks like I'll shoot for 300 games as the competitive standard for now.

Interesting, I can't edit my posts, so I guess I'll type this one out because I forgot to mention it.

My 300 point list will have 8 activations from the units I've taken. In short, here's what it looks like:

Heavy Kommandotrupp + Lara

Markus + Kampfaffe

Heavy Recon Grenadiers

2x Battle Grenadiers w/ extra Pzshreks

2x Ludwigs

I feel it will be a very solid force. Axis all the way.

400 point or more we usually play on a 4'x8' table; that's a lot of stuff on the table.

I have played between 100 and 200, just teaching games. I made up army lists for a 580+ points and can't wait to try it at that level!!! So far I have played about 6 teaching games, but no repeats…

The link in HERO's sig is not working. The URL for his blog is: lkhero.blogspot.com.

My son and I usually play with 350 to 450 points and use a 4x8 board. I picked up three of the original starter sets and two core sets to get us started. Amazing what you could find on ebay a few months ago.