Making an Army to Fit the Points

When I first started to play warhammer 40k I lost every game I played, for months. My group loved to play against me, because they knew they would win. You see, none of us were hardcore about the hobby, there was Drew, who used to be, he is the one that really thought us, but you could tell his heart wasn't in it anymore. Anthony was my most common opponent, he played Tau, and at the time I played Tyrannids. I had to borrow Drew's army, and he played nidzilla, I wanted to play swarm, so I tried to make my 15 hormagaunts and 9 genestealers a swarm army for 1500 point game. There was my problem, it's really obvious looking back, but at the time I had never seen what a proper swarm army was. Granted, no one had a large army out of that group. Everyone played with under 40 models, and they built their armies similar to how I did, they stretched them out to make them more points.

Fastforward to present day, they don't play with me anymore, because I got more hardcore about it than they did, and I can tell you the last time I visited them (keep in mind, this was with old codex too) I didn't lose a match. We spent all day playing, and I never lost.

Moral of the story is, don't stretch out your army to make it more points. Now I am assuming most players don't do this, but if you do, think about it. Are you giving your troops upgrades they don't need? Are you taking a vehicle upgrade simply because you have the points? Now this is good to an extent, like maybe 10 points or so just to hit that 1500 mark, but they were trying to play 1500 point games with 800 or so point armies. Now, I understand, it's a lot of money to collect a 1500 point army, but who said it had to be 1500 points? If you have an 800 point army, play 800 points! It will be more enjoyable, I promise.