It's interesting to consider where this stands after the release of all the army books we are going to get. So pretty much all armies except Skaven & Beastmen (the last two 7th edition books, both with an eye on 8th) and Bretonnians (surprisingly viable despite the book's great age). In general I would say all the books are closer in power level than in 6th or (especially) 7th editions. Beastmen are considered the weakest, then Tomb Kings. Beyond that though, there's not so much in it. Elves are powerful, Daemons, one or two others. Match-ups can be very important. Factor in End Times changes and the balances shift again of course.Prince of Spires wrote:power creep: it's a sort of natural progression that is very hard to counter. Any armybook you release, you want to be of average power (or slightly above it perhaps). After all, you don't want to create an overpowered army, but at the same time everything in the book should be usable. This is not just the aim when trying to sell more models, but also a games designer wanting to make a usable game / army. Of course, a games designer is probably not going to make a whole book worse then it was, unless it was really silly overpowered (since doing so would create a whole lot of unhappy customers). The thing here is though that this creates a moving target. Above average army books stay the same power level. But below average army books move up in power. As a result the average moves up with half the army book releases (since half will be below average). Creating more and more powerful books as things move along. All with the simple aim of creating a balanced game.
I agree with this Rod, though 2400 was perhaps played even more. 6th edition began at 2000 but many tournaments shifted to 2500 after the Hordes of Chaos release, so these things have moved before (3000pts being common in past editions of course).Prince of Spires wrote:Somehow the consensus in the community about what was an average game size moved up from 2000 to 2500 when going from 7th to 8th. Nothing in GW rule books indicated that this was needed or even intended. It sort of just happened. I think the main reason was going from number of units in a slot to the % based system. In 7th you could run a fully kitted out star dragon prince (or equivalent) at 2000pts. And there wasn't any difference in that regard between 2000 and 2500 points. With the % system, this changed around. 2400 was the minimum for the more elite armies to run fully kitted out lords on monsters. And since few people can resist big, fire breathing lizards, the community adapted I think.