Tweaking a 500-Point Old World List: Drilled Warriors, Leaner Rangers, and a Scout Gyrocopter
We had one of those very familiar hobby chats recently: half list-building, half system confusion, and half mild panic before the next game. Yes, that is three halves, but honestly that feels about right when we are juggling too many rulesets at once.
This time the discussion was about a small Warhammer: The Old World game at 500 points, with End3r going back over his list after last week’s match and making a few immediate changes.
500 points is where every choice hurts
Pegiie summed up the mood perfectly right away, joking that after looking through the list, the game probably would not last long, and that Khorne is definitely not a faction for 500 points, especially into “Hałabały”. Small games really do that — every upgrade matters, every mistake matters, and every unit has to pull its weight.
And, naturally, End3r responded in the most relatable way possible:
assuming I even know what I want my list to do ;P
Honestly, same.
Too many systems, too many charge rules
Part of the problem was not even the list itself — it was hobby brain overload. End3r mentioned that he would only really get back to the list the next day, because that evening was for looking through Necromunda. The day before had been Kill Team, and before that, Colosseum.
That led to one of the most painfully accurate lines of the conversation:
in each of the 17 systems, charge works differently, and every time I have to ask my opponent how it works in the one we are actually playing xD
We feel this deeply. If you bounce between skirmish games, rank-and-flank, campaign systems, and whatever else catches your eye that week, your brain turns into a filing cabinet full of almost-correct rules.
The actual list changes
The important part is that the list had already been updated right after the previous game — End3r had just forgotten to post it.
The revised version included three key changes:
- Warriors are now Drilled
- Rangers no longer have axes
- One Gyrocopter is now a Scout Gyrocopter
Everything else stayed the same.
That is a very tidy set of adjustments, but at 500 points those are not minor tweaks — they change how the army wants to function on the table.
Why drop the Rangers’ axes?
This was probably the clearest conclusion from actual playtesting.
The axes turned out to be completely unnecessary on the Rangers. As End3r put it, the crossbows at short range were actually doing the job better anyway. On paper, the idea may have been that crossbows handle longer-range work and axes cover the close-range role, but in practice that just did not seem worth paying for.
So the axes got cut.
That kind of change is exactly why we like revisiting lists after games instead of clinging to the original concept. Sometimes a unit upgrade sounds flexible and thematic, but once dice hit the table it turns out to be dead weight.
Rangers and Skirmish
There was also a quick rules check in the middle of the conversation, when Michał asked whether anything in the list had Skirmish. At first glance it was not obvious from the list, but the answer was simple: the Rangers still have it, just as before, because it is part of their default rules.
A tiny exchange, but a very real one if you have ever stared at an army builder and wondered whether a rule is purchased, optional, or just baked into the unit profile.
Testing Drilled on the Warriors
The most interesting experiment here is probably Drilled on the Warriors.
End3r specifically wanted to test it, which meant finding the points somewhere else. The cost ended up being their shields. To make Drilled fit, the Warriors had to give those up.
That leaves the unit in a very particular spot:
- no shields
- still keeping great weapons
- clearly built for hitting hard in combat
- probably more vulnerable to getting shot on the way in
And yes, that concern came up immediately too — with no shields, they will probably just get shot in the face. That is the tradeoff.
Still, this is exactly the kind of change that is worth trying in a small game. At 500 points, testing mobility, formation flexibility, or positional tools can tell you a lot more about the army than just adding another layer of passive protection. If Drilled helps the Warriors get where they need to be and line up the fights they want, it may well prove worth the risk.
If not, well, at least we will know why it failed.
The Scout Gyrocopter swap
The other notable adjustment was replacing a regular Gyrocopter with a Scout Gyrocopter.
Again, this feels like a very deliberate test piece rather than random shuffling. In a 500-point game, a scouting piece can be extremely annoying, extremely useful, or both. It gives the list a bit more play before the lines fully meet, and it should help pressure space in a game size where board control can get weird very quickly.
We are very curious how this one performs, especially alongside the Rangers. Even without going too deep into theory, it is easy to see the appeal: a small game often rewards early pressure, awkward angles, and forcing your opponent to react.
Where the list seems to be heading
From this short exchange, the direction feels pretty clear.
Instead of trying to make every unit do a bit of everything, the list is being trimmed into something more focused:
- Rangers keep the tools they are actually using
- Warriors lean harder into combat and gain Drilled for testing
- the Gyrocopter slot gets a more proactive role
That does mean accepting some fragility, especially on the Warriors, but that is often the reality of 500-point list building. You do not get every toy. You pick the things you want to learn from the next game and see what survives contact with the enemy.
Which, to be fair, is also how many of our hobby decisions work outside list building.
Final thoughts
We really liked this little bit of post-game iteration because it is exactly how army building usually looks in real life: not as a polished theory article, but as a stream of quick corrections, remembered omissions, and “wait, did that unit already have that rule by default?”
So the current test package is:
- Drilled Warriors
- no shields on the Warriors
- great weapons kept for fighting power
- Rangers without axes
- one Scout Gyrocopter
Now we just need to see whether the Warriors get shot off the board immediately, or whether Drilled turns out to be the sneaky MVP.
Either way, that is the fun part.