OPINION: On wargear and weapons options

Wildeyedjester over on Hogs of War blogged this discussion starter:

As I build my armies, I tend to skimp on equipment. I will give squads the minimum amount of equipment that I think they will need, and never a bit more. Examples? My suicidal take one for the team imperial guard squads don't get squat. My Tactical space marine squads in rhinos get a melta. My Eldar Fire Dragons don't get an exarch. Why? I have always saved those points to buy another squad. I like to field as many units as I can, and this usually means I drop equipment to near baseline status.

Now I know from experience that many people are exactly the opposite. Every squad has the maximum amount of special/heavy weapon/upgrades that it can take. The idea being to make each squad the best they can be, no matter what might pop up. I have seen squads on the table that are paying almost 100% more for upgrades and wargear, and I often wonder if sometimes these extra points don't seriously put some armies at a disadvantage.

Now surely, there are pro's and con's to both of these situations. What do you guys think?

This was my answer:

I'm one for being minimalist, trying to scrimp by on the least amount of equipment necessary for the squad to do what I want it to do. My main opponent, Gary, is the opposite, and he thinks nothing of dropping hundreds of points on extra gear.

A good example is our approach to Chaos Terminators. My idea was three man squads with combi-plasmas/meltas at 105 points per unit.

His idea was a five man squad with icon of Khorne, lightning claws and Terminator champion coming in at 250 points.

Which is better? There's only one way to find out - FIGHT! ;~)

I've always liked the idea of playing a Space Marine horde army, with lots and lots of basic troopers and just one cheap and cheerful HQ choice. In fact I did come up with a list under the previous Marine codex which allowed me to field the entire Blood Angels 3rd Company for just 2000 points. Of course it meant not overly tooling up the squads, but who wouldn't want to bring six Tactical squads, two Assault squads and two Devastator squads to one 2000 point battle?