Is there a particular point value at which every army, or at least most armies have a reasonable chance of winning? I've been fooling around with the Army builder for a while now, and I'm having a little trouble settling on a point value for a match that doesn't give certain lists a serious advantage.

SBG is appealing to me because the total cost of an individual force is pretty low, low enough that I can just invite a friend over and give him three or four choices from my armies, and play a casual game with him. I've been collecting SBG miniatures for a couple of months now, distributed pretty evenly between Eregion, Rohan, Minas Tirith, Mordor and Moria. Because of this, rather than focusing my resources on creating an optimized army for tournaments, I have to think about collecting the miniatures in a way that enables me to stage balanced matches between segments of my own collection. Here's where I run into trouble.

It seems to me that by pointcost, Warriors are undervalued. Of course you must take a Hero for every 12 warriors, and that brings the total price of the warband into a reasonable neighborhood. It seems to me that you are getting the most value point-for-point out of an army when you have exactly enough points to field a combination of that army's cheapest heroes with exactly 12 warriors per hero.

This means that most armies reach a sweetspot at a certain value (their cheapest hero + 12 warriors). They hit another peak of efficiency at about twice that value. (2 cheap heroes +24 warriors). In between those two points, the army isn't so well optimized. You can't afford a whole new unit, and a more expensive hero might not give such a good return for his cost.

The trouble is, most armies reach their sweetspot at different values. For Moria Goblins, they can afford a new full warband at 100, 200 and 300. For Rohan it may be 150, 300, 450, or for Rivendell it could be 200, 400, 600. My dilemma is that I really don't have enough experience with the game to pick a happy medium, where each army list has a chance to shine.

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Elrond Nine Sixteenths elven does not exactly roll off the tongue.

I think you're over thinking it a bit If you haven't played the game, or only played a few, there are a lot of nuances you'll be missing that will affect game play. Everything from Fight to Courage has a role. The raw rules do favour quantity over quality, but warband army formation and warrior special abilities, or subtle stats like Courage, mitigate this. A horde of goblins might break a group of elves first, but the elves simply won't run away…and eventually the goblins will break, and then disappear.

It's true that smaller armies can be a little unbalanced, but it's not terrible. I think most people would agree you can get good balanced results at around 500 points, and it effectively peaks at around 750+. Some armies are more forgiving to play (Uruk-hai, Dwarves, maybe Gondor), some require a bit more finesse (wood elves, all-cavalry Rohan), and some are more difficult to optimize (all-Mahud), but once you have some experience you can make almost any decently configured army work.

As whafrog has said, it is pretty balanced and you are overthinking it in a way. The sweetspot changes as you have said, but there is always a way to make another sweetspot (aka strong list) at a higher pts value.

Yes, it is most efficient to use up the 12 models per warband before you are forced to take another leader, so therefore any army which can do this the most should be in best shape. As you have said Moria does have a bonus in this manner as it is easily able to outnumber. The points for warriors are close enough together for their stats to be enough to keep it balanced, so you still have to play tactically in order to win, even if you did outnumber them, because they would have superior defence or fight and give them a higher chance of winning or surviving the fight.

As to heroes and regular captains - You generally will not get your points back from using a named hero. Their use is more in disrupting the enemies plans and covering your weak points/accentuating strengths. If you were to take all generic captains, you might not have what it takes to prevent an enemy hero doing critical damage at a critical time.
EG: Your goblins have captains and shamans, an enemy eagle flies over the lines to engage the shaman. You charge a captain in but combined it might not be enough to win the fight (depends on dice) - the eagle kills your shaman and you lose fury. Now the majority of your goblins are failing courage checks in order to charge the ents ripping through your lines. You are unable to get enough goblins to pass their tests in order to get a surround on the ent and win, so you are forced to wait until he rolls badly, and you roll better, with a dwindling army. Alternatively, if you had a ringwraith mixed in, you could attempt to immobilise the eagle, preventing it from winning a fight and causing the trouble in the first place.

Once you get a few games under your belt you will see the importance of heroes, but in general, yes you do want as many troops as you can, unless you can be certain that what you do have is likely to survive long enough to allow you to take other units (eg dwarves). My suggestion would be to start off with Minas Tirith, Mordor or Moria - your preference. Minas Tirith is pretty standard IMO which will help you compete in your first few games, but you will find they have a lack of options in certain aspects (magic) - this can be covered over by getting some allies or fiefdoms involved, but I would suggest trying another army before investing in fiefdoms (mainly due to the financial cost). You might find you can get a more "balanced" or better army for your playstyle with a range of options for cheaper (I'm thinking Mordor or Moria here).

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While 17 elf models at 300pts can beat a 40 model goblin town list, you are right to think that certain points values favour different armies. I find anything from 350 upwards is rather balanced; evil armies have room to field their typical shaman+cheap might batteries, while good lists can just about afford fielding their worthy heroes like dwalin or eomer without taking a significant hit numbers wise.

Low points ( 250 - 350 ) can be played but is where you will see a greater variation in effectiveness. As mentioned 500-750 usually gives all armies flexibility to build a solid force, with more of the special units showing up at the higher end of that scale. Unless we're doing something special for a specific reason we almost always play in the 500 - 750 range.

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Those that struggle most (with expensive basic troops and very expensive heroes) are indeed the Elves of Rivendell, at least from the ones I've got some experience with. From 500pts onwards, even those should be able to get two full warbands - enough for a good game. Smaller point sizes can be great as well, but effectiveness differs, and less variation in forces will be encountered (monsters and above-average heroes will be too expensive to take). Nothing to prevent you having nice games, but balanced ones are mostly encountered at 500+ points I think.

1000pts is the max you can play really.

Agreed with Whafrog, 500pts is a really fun place, you get quick games with good balance. But anything up to and including 1000pts is fine but it scales in time
500pts = 1.5 hours
1000pts = 2.5 hours

If you are playing tournament pace.

2.5 hours ? that some serious fast game a 1000 battle takes me between 3-4 most times.

Really? You need to sort that out.
1000pts is easily done in 2.5 hours if you already have a list ready.
At Throne of Skulls I only had one game go to time.

Having a time limit is important anyway because horde vs horde can last forever!

I'm with you RefluentMonk, I usually have to stock up on supplies to make it through 1000 points… Eat like it's my last day on earth beforehand and all that!

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The new warband rules help alot to speed it up, purely because numbers are alot less.

In the old GT days of goblin hordes it was a complete nightmare.

500pts is the sweetspot for pick up games I've found. Plenty of models on the table, and heroes can influence it heavily but can still be taken down.

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“Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, all courses may run ill.”

A 300 points game takes me a solid 5-6 hours

I talk a lot

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Played a 1k game high elves vs mordor, less than 2 hours on reconoitre. Don't mess about don't hang about, get gilgalad on a horse and glorfindel on AND twins on horse and then go smash the opponent to little pieces.