Well, the start of a debate is brewing in the finals thread, so I figured I would open this up for discussion on that as to leave that thread for finals/finals results discussion.

Also, some people might not have anything to care about the finals, but they might have feelings on this.

KP: Helps keep the ever efficient IG and MSU armies down. Everyone always realizes units are worth one, instead of constantly asking points costs for opponent's units.

VP: Each player always has a consistant 2,000, so it's less of army A always beats army B... less rock-paper-scissors, more 40k no?

I see both constantly different at tournaments I attend, and both are prefectly fine, so I have no strong pull towards one way or the other.

Queue for the debate!

I voted for a hybrid of both, simply that you need to win both victory points and kill points to win an Annihilation-type game. Winning only one means a tie.

I prefer the hybrid as well, perhaps as a European player it's already the way most games work already here. Often winning conditions are a mix of objectives (KP's, Objectives, etc) and VP's. With the balance between those depending on the specific scenario's the tournament is running.

A specific scenario we had in the past in a local tournament was allocating additional KP's to units over a certain point value. This meant the real cheap units still added additional KP's (mostly min squads/5th edition codex transports), but meant the mega-unit squads still gave multiple KP's as well.

I voted for a hybrid of both.

Mostly, that both missions have their place.

As I stated in the other thread, the distribution of objectives-to-missions in the BRB falls out like:

11% - 5 Objectives
11% - 4 Objectives
11% - 3 Objectives
33% - 2 Objectives
33% - Kill Points

I believe that this sort of distribution is important in running a Warhammer 40k tournament, especially if anything like a consistent metagame is to be established.

As such, a three game tournament should almost certainly have a mission with either one or two objectives, and should almost certainly have a mission with kill points. The third mission can be some variant with multiple things to do, such as quarters, or multiple placed objectives.

As the number of games goes up, this ratio should be maintained as best as possible. In a four game event, one mission type is bound to get doubled-up, but as you go to a second day, no mission type should ever have two more than another.

Victory Points make a good tie breaker, and they make a good secondary or tertiary objective, for systems that use those. I don't think they're a good primary objective in any case, largely because that's not how 5th ed is designed. The victory point mechanic is added, almost as an afterthought, on the back page of the appendix.

The further away from this ideal you get, the more advantages certain armies/builds get over others. I believe that the balance in 5th edition is designed with these three mission-types in mind. And while people moan and complain about 'draw-fest' or about how kill points screws their armies, it's more likely that they're just not designing armies that can win these missions, instead hoping that negativity will decrease the chance that they have to play these missions.

Yo should get a kill point for every 100 points a unit is worth, rounding normally.

Not perfect at all but fixes the problems associated with both types of systems and it is pretty dang easy to add up.

Seconded Reece's idea. MSU armies will still give up more KP's but won't get screwed by armies that bring 5 units.

I voted KP, it's in the main rules and it is a balancing factor during the list building stage of preparing for a tournament. VP should only be used as a tie breaker (also in the rule book).

Reecius wrote:Yo should get a kill point for every 100 points a unit is worth, rounding normally.

Not perfect at all but fixes the problems associated with both types of systems and it is pretty dang easy to add up.

If you round "normally," then rhinos are free. Ick.

The "Slaughter Style" kill points are just victory points, at a lower resolution - you may have a few outliers (a list with a bunch of 55 pt Chimerae, say), but essentially a 2000 pt list will give up about 20 of these modified VPs.

If you take it one step further, and require that everything is worth at least 1 pt, plus the one per/100 pts, you've essentially created a "weighted" KP system, only different in mechanics from the 3rd 'Ard Boyz mission that everyone was bitching about. You also introduce a different metagame mechanic, as units get optimized around costs - no more than X49, lest you give up that every mKP (modified KP).

KPs are a goofy system. But it's hard to argue that they aren't being factored into at least some costs, when you look at the changes in transport costs, or the rules for the Lone Wolf.

I like missions with multiple objectives, but I prefer them to be "pure" objectives.

i voted KPs.

However, a hybrid mission where you need to have more KP and VPs to score a win would be interesting. It would mean an MSU army could potentially give up more KPs but earn more VPs leading to draw on that mission, but possibly not overall.

In 40k you pretty much always round up, no matter how small. That was how I took Reece's idea. That even a 35pt Rhino=1 KP. Personally it's a nice mix to me. Simply always rounding up will keep most people in the 20-25 KP level. Some armies (Mech IG/MSU Marines) will have closer to 30ish. I think it works pretty well actually.

ah yes, haha, no freebies!

I voted both... People will always want the mission objectives to always favor what thier personal army or list excels at.

If I play something with low KPs then missions punishing high KPs or weak small units which I don't use is good.

If I play something with high KPs, then I want victory points.

Both sides are wrong and just are going to rail against anything that doesn't benefit them personally.

I like when the missions are drastically different and totally punishes extreme or min-maxed armies that are trying to game the 'mission imposed comp' with thier list.

Reecius's idea doesn't solve the inherent problem that MSU armies are simply better than non-MSU armies, and therefore doesn't address the game-balance issue.

If I have five units, that means, barring special rules, that I can target at most five things/turn, and be in, at most, five places/turn. An army with 23 kill points can be in 23 places each turn, and can address 23 different targets. They better manage their firepower to boot. A unit of 15 tankbustas may have as many S8 shots as three units of longfangs, but they're required to declare all their shots up front. The three small units can fire sequentially, and select their subsequent shots based on the results of the previous ones. MSU is a force-multiplying effect, both by granting additional choices, but also by granting you more of the special and heavy weapons that are important.

In the real-world, MSU tactics have completely replaced the massed hordes that dominated warfare pre-1920. As I stated in the other thread, modern combat doctrine calls for four-man fire-teams (not so unlike a SM combat squad).

The problem comes that, in a game, if every army does the same thing, the game is kind of dull. So some armies don't do the MSU thing, or do it badly. Some codexes present a troop with a weakness (Ld7) and allow you to overcome it by fielding a horde, playing to the theme of the race.

But, that 30-man squad of ork boyz is limited in its mobility (footslogging) and its target options (one unit/turn). Compared to space wolves, who can field 2 razorbacks and 10 men w/ 2 special weapons for the same points, the orks have a quarter the targeting options, half the ability to score objectives, and half the mobility to get there.

In two of three of the missions in the rulebook, the orks are fighting at a disadvantage simply because they don't do MSU as well, and MSU is inherently better.

Kill points aren't mean to be fair in a vacuum, they're designed to give the armies that are thematically large a chance against what is simply a superior approach to warfare. That final 1/3rd of the games puts an extra consideration onto the table, one that's not based on real-world warfare, but that makes the game more balanced, and that allows for a greater variety of "viable" armies.

In my opinion, the greater variety of viable lists, the better the game. And, Reecius's proposal detracts from this. Using the wolf vs orks example from above, the orks are still worse off in objective missions, they still suffer the over-all impact of lesser mobility and targeting flexibility, but now, they're looking at a 3:4 ratio in the killpoint game, compared to the 1:4 ratio that currently exists. Why would anyone play anything except a MSU-favoured army in this system?

Amen Brother Redbeard. I don't see GW addressing the MSU imbalance in a strong way. The MSU style army, with transports, is a big moneymaker for them and Godbless them for it. I say let MSU be inherently advantages in gameplay as it is in the core rules now, but don't give them any more bonus' than they already have.

The contrarian vote:

Get rid of kill points and victory points, because they're both open to scamming in one way or the other. Instead, force each player to determine the points for each wound or damage result on their models, and assign points PER WOUND or damage result.

No more "Oh, you only killed 2 guys out of that unit, you get nothing!" business. If you kill something, if you wound somebody, if you blow something up, you deserve points!

Disclaimer: I personally favor having multiple missions with contradictory winning strategies, like missions with both objectives and kill points, since those require more work by the players to optimize.

Redbeard:

So what about my proposal?

Nurglitch wrote:Redbeard:

So what about my proposal?

Re: having to win both KP and VP to win an annihilation game? Again, it gets rid of the balancing factor.


Let's look at two armies - 500 points, to keep it simple;

Army 1:
Tyranid Prime w/ Adrenal glands
6 genestealers w/ toxin
6 genestealers w/ toxin
6 genestealers w/ toxin
6 genestealers w/ toxin


Army 2:
Tyranid Prime w/ Adrenal Glands
12 Genestealers w/ toxin
12 Genestealers w/ toxin


Same points, right? Same models even. So they should be balanced.

Except...

In missions where you need to hold more than two objectives, Army 2 can't do it. Army 1 can pretty much auto-win a five objective game.

Not only that, the they've also got tactical flexibility. Army 1 can throw a unit out as a sacrifice, allowing Army 2 to charge (and w/ furious charge, from the adrenal glands, they'll probably clean up that fight), but then Army 1 can counter-charge their own Prime in, and, swinging first and hardest, setting it up so Army 1's prime always gets the charge on army 2's prime...

Your solution doesn't address that. The MSU army can always play for the wins in the objective games, and play for the tie, at worst, in the VP/KP mix. And the big-unit army is denied the mission that is supposed to be to their advantage for overall balance, instead probably tying it up there (because it's awful hard to kill enough SMU points when you can only be in a few places at once).

Why would anyone ever take a big unit of genestealers? Isn't this supposed to be balanced? Having more units to do stuff with is more options. More tactical options. Just plain better. For nids, not a big deal, they can take small stealer units. Not all codexes can do MSU though.

Kill points seem gamey - but this is a game. It's an artificial construct that may well not address which side appears to be winning the battle, but it serves a vital role in allowing more army archetypes to be viable. I mean, troops as the only scoring units is gamey too. And having one lone guardian sitting on an objective when the game ends on turn 5, against 1000 points of enemy models doesn't really reflect who won that battle either does it. But random game length is another game-balance rule, and it has a place.

I always prefer multiple victory conditions.

Objectives and Kps for example.

Redbeard:

So how exactly do pure Kill-points avoid the criticisms you've leveled at my proposal?

Nurglitch wrote:Redbeard:

So how exactly do pure Kill-points avoid the criticisms you've leveled at my proposal?

In the KP/VP missions you suggest they both have an equal chance of succeeding, one having far fewer KP that the other and one having much greater tactical flexibility. Where it breaks down is in objective missions, where the army with greater tactical flexibility gains a much greater advantage, where as the army with few KP gains nothing. Pure KP missions are required to balance the game, so that armies that can take MSU units effectively do not completely dominate armies that cannot.

Regwon:

Okay, let me put it this way: How do pure Kill-Point missions balance out the Objective missions if all the criticisms that Redbeard leveled at my hybrid proposal apply to pure Kill-Point games?

Nurglitch wrote:Regwon:

Okay, let me put it this way: How do pure Kill-Point missions balance out the Objective missions if all the criticisms that Redbeard leveled at my hybrid proposal apply to pure Kill-Point games?

The criticisms dont apply to pure KP missions, which is exactly the point. If they did there would be no argument. KP missions balance the game over all. If you are playing a one off pick up game then obviously some army lists will lose out to KP, but since this is a tournament discussion there will be other objective based games to play as well.

In objective missions there is a clear advantage to MSU armies. If a KP/VP hybrind missions there is no clear advantage to either MSU armies or large unit/low KP armies. That means that in 2/3 of the missions low KP armies lose out and in a KP/VP hybrid mission it is a tie, since one is more likely to win on KP and one is more likely to win on VP.

In a pure KP missions you would expect the low KP army to have a much greater advantage than a MSU army. In redbeards example above army 2, having fewer KP, is likely to beat army 1 in a straight up fight, because army 1 has almost double its KP. In an objective mission army 1 would be able to cover more of the board, hold more objectives, threaten more areas and set-up many more useful situations for itself.

Pure KP missions must exist to balance this discrepancy, and while hybrid missions are certainly better than pure VP missions for this, they are not enough to balance out the advantage of MSU armies.

I'm pretty sure that Redbeard pointed out that Army #1 there could fight to a tie at minimum because of the advantages lent to an army fighting an opponent consisting of fewer units. That's the point: handing out fewer Kill-Points does not make up for the advantages conferred by having more units.

Sure it does.

If VP are part of it, then Army 1 can lose units as long as they stay even on VP, giving them the tie, under your proposal.

If VP are not part of it, then Army 2 actually gets the initiative in the KP mission. With larger units and less KP to give up, they can engage and accept the greater point loss if they take some stuff out on the way.

If Army 2 kills three of Army 1's stealer units, but loses both of their stealer units (keeping the prime out of the conflict), then in a pure KP scenario, Army 2 gets the win (3 KP to 2 KP).

Under your hybrid system, Army 1 would have a 100 point VP lead, 20% in a 500 point game, and would therefore win VP while losing KP - a tie for both under your proposal.


So that's the difference. In a pure KP scenario, a large-unit army can make unequal point trades if such trades net them a KP bonus - an advantage to the large unit army, and one that gives them the tactical initiative in the mission. If you add a VP condition to the annihilation mission, they cannot make these unequal point-value trades unless they're willing to settle for a tie.

Kill Points for main.
Victory Points for ties.

5th Ed Codicies are (hopefully) made with 5th ed Missions in mind.
RAW, it includes Kill Points.

It is balanced as it gets IMO and easy to work with.

@Redbeards example:

KP: Tie. Why? 2x12 stealers hunting 4x6 all over the board not falling into the trap where they suddenly have to fight 3 of them. Nothing happens.
VP: Tie. Why? 2x12 stealers are defending and refuse to assault because they will be trapped into a countercharge. They stick in terrain and keep distance. Nothing happens.
Objectives: The only interesting matchup there because you have to be at a certain location on the field when game ends and therefore defend a certain point which is much harder. I think it depends on the player. If the MSU guy keeps one unit at back to save an objective he is most likely to get eaten by the big squads and perhaps lose because the big squads save 2 objectives. If he doesnt he is in the melee anyways and it depends on good micro and timing on both sides who will win. large unit are as good as MSU concerning the defence of objectives. They are even better, because they can take the 3" space completely and so deny the objective to any enemy infantry. So they can hold even with enemy presence. MSU can not. And they can hold multiple objectives with one unit where MSU needs 2. (ok actually you can hold 2 obj with 5 men but MSU normally doesnt expose 5 men to the enemy...)

OK back to the topic, I think Objectives is also a tied starting point.

The problem is, the large unit army is always on the defending part in the missions: VP and objectives. They are most likely NOT to win. But defence is the main strength of large units so the MSU guy will have a hard time beating the defence and is most likely NOT to win too. The difference is, if the large unit army attacks, it is toast. If MSU does it is not.

Same circumstances we have in KP mission. But the other way round. MSU is on the defence there. Denying killpoints by hiding stuff going out of range spreading out to hav local superiority and perhaps go for the main target kill and win 1:0. Large unit army is on the offensive because each unit is able to score a killpoint while it denies itself to the enemy.

But that is not a good example of MSU, because there are no tanks included. And tanks are most valuable in denying enemy objectives by last turn tank shock. That puts the large unit army on the losing path concerning objective missions. Especially an infantry based large unit army.

Redbeard:

Well, I'm convinced.

For the sake of the discussion,


http://novaopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/KP-by-Rank.jpg

That's the graph of Kill Points by Competitive Rank for the NOVA Open.

The average # of kill points brought was 16.18, the eventual winner brought 17 (the high seed at the end of day 1 had 19)

The average remains roughly the same throughout, with over-20 individual armies being present across the entire rank spread.


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Also, we ran 2 leagues and a tournament last year using KP for missions and tiebreaking with VP, but recording both every game.

There was a difference in VP scored and KP scored only once, across over 300 game samples. I'll try to dig out that spreadsheet while I'm at it.


My frustration with the discussion is that it actually doesn't matter. Barring strange outliers and bad luck draws, MSU armies are simply better ... you don't balance that with KP, you just hope to, and hope is not a strategy. KP is a bad mission, b/c it fails to balance 40k, and other than its attempt at balance is actively counter-intuitive.


Dust and Diamonds in a Dollar Store. I'll continue to accumulate facts via league play that uses KP (b/c it's fine in league play) and tourneys that generally don't (though we'll see how that continues) while people continue to ignore them either way.

I don't see how the data from a tournament that publicized the fact that there weren't going to be any kill point missions is useful to this discussion.

People brought armies that had no consideration given to how many kill points were in them, and there were no missions that penalized people for how many they brought. Of course the graph is going to be all over the place.

The point should generally be taken, that even though there was a wide spread of KP, the army that won was right at the average, and the armies that went true MSU and spammed the gak out of KP did not necessarily do well.

That's to say, that if you check the # of KP in most of the winning armies at major conventions, you will find most are probably around the 15-17 mark, regardless of the inclusion of KP as a mission.

You see fewer LOW KP armies at the event, but I don't see how that's a bad thing - MSU spam is not being given some kind of proportionally dominant advantage, which is the theory presented by "VP are bad and encourage X"

Again, we also have an enormous data set from our KP-inclusive tourneys and leagues that show no material divergence between VP-superiority and KP-superiority among winners of missions, either.

Does the average change when its known that KP missions are a factor?

If the average number of KP does decrease, then the balancing is working - people are tempering their armies knowing that KPs are part of 5th edition.

If the average decreases, but the winners remain the same, you're punishing the average and the weaker players by encouraging them with false ideas of KP reduction improving their odds.

Savvy?



Balance is NOT about the average. That's the fail mindset that causes the GW Codices to often become IMBALANCED ... namely, that they balance around their notion of an "average" player, which leads to certain codex styles being far easier for superior players to take far too much advantage of.

Provide the "average" with encouragement to weaken their army's tactical capacity in the majority of missions and in straight combat, for the sake of "hoping" they have a better advantage by luck of the opponent draw in the KP mission(s), and all you do is harm the people who fall for that idea as actually being bright.

MVBrandt wrote:MSU spam is not being given some kind of proportionally dominant advantage
. . .
Barring strange outliers and bad luck draws, MSU armies are simply better

This is why I agree with Redbeard, despite being taken out of order (and context perhaps) it is still true.

You'll wind up, with me, at the conclusion that MSU is not absolutely better in a vacuum ... it's why numerous true MSU attendees at the Open did not do very well. Spreading your threats and bringing an optimal choice of units to tackle opponents, capture objectives and areas of the board, survive damage, etc., is always common sense tactics. Spreading your points as much as humanly possible (true MSU)? Well, provably not so successful. Which is why KP as a balancer against MSU is unnecessary; max MSU is self-destructive.

Establishing a balance between strong units and numerous units is INHERENTLY self-managing. KP just causes people to WRONGLY (at their own detriment) harm the best balance in "hopes" of a good pairing with someone that has too many KP in just the right round (when they'd probably beat that person anyway, in any mission, if they had a properly balanced force).

BUT reducing the # of units you would NORMALLY take to best optimize your army based upon the phantom hope that you get the perfect draw at the perfect time for a KP mission at a tournament ... yields unsuccessful results, harming the people that buy into that faulty premise.


There will be opinions on both sides here; the goal of a tournament organizer should be to create the most FAIR situation possible ... not one that appears to cater to one side of an argument yet unfairly punishes the people most in need of a fair field.

That's not the only side to balance.

You're looking at it from the perspective of someone trying to win an event by hoping for a matchup, rather than the overall impact of what armies are present, and what the spread of the field is.

Looking at your no-KP event, out of a field of 88 teams, 6 of the top 8 advancing armies were from two marine codexes that encourage MSU tactics, there was one ork army piloted by a very experienced, competent general, and one Daemon army that should have been a mono-nurgle CSM army (which I'd imagine was doing SMU stuff, as mono-nurgle would lean that way).

I'd like to compare that with the adepticon championship results, but the data for what armies were played isn't there. I'm fairly sure it was more varied.

Player skill isn't accounted for in any of these graphs. The impact isn't going to be a good player not doing well, or a poor player suddenly winning tournaments. The impact is seen in the variety of armies that can be brought with a chance to do well.

When 50% of the finals are all space wolves, something isn't right. You can't tell me that none of the 11 Space Wolf players was below average, yet their lowest finish was 2-2 (average) and 7/11 of them had winning records.

Adding KP to the equation means that some of those players aren't going to run as many kill points. Whether that is good for that individual player, I don't know. But it is good for the tournament environment overall. The more codexes that can field viable armies the healthier the metagame. And taking out KP doesn't seem to encourage variety.

The Mono-Nurgle army only brought 13 KP.

The Adepticon champ was a Space Wolf player, with 13+ KP (may have been 15, may have been 13, can't recall for sure) ... and I finished 9 out of 240 with 19 KP, winning my first round against someone with 6 fewer.

As far as army variety, Demons, SW, and Orks held the highest win %'s ... certainly not "marines spamming MSU" ... in fact, Marines and Guard maintained 50% level win rates.

As far as 50% of the finals all being space wolves, you had the eventual tournament winner with only 17 (around the average), a GT veteran in Sam P. with only ~14 in attendance of the top, and the 23KP SW of A. Sutton losing his first match-up in the final round.

Saying something isn't right is ... well, going "YOUR FACTS CAN'T MEAN ANYTHING," and if we're at an impasse where I can't convince you of anything that's fine ... I just don't think it would be productive to carry too far.

We've run tournaments and leagues merrily with KP as a win condition in the past, and facts / reasonable argument convinced me to adjust my case and presentation. While I'm happy to do similar, I don't think it's necessarily going to accomplish anything here if both sides aren't open minded about it. I'd rather stay positive with you, than butt heads.

Like I said, I can provide all the data I want, you'll interpret it to suit your position if there's no interest in adjusting.



In a final note, your last bit is exactly the point I'm making, but in the opposite - people who bring fewer KP get crunked at tournaments these days by people who optimize lists WITHOUT thinking about KP (just as people who try really hard to purely MSU get crunked). You help the effective balance of the game by giving people freedom to optimize their armies without a flawed constraint in place that GOOD players don't even bother with to begin with. It just widens the skill and success gap, and frankly the codex success gap as well.

MVBrandt wrote:it's why numerous true MSU attendees at the Open did not do very well.

Because they were beaten by another SMU army?

It seems that at least half of the players will lose (in only the first round). That is inevitable, considering the nature of the game, and yet MSU dominated in your listings? Or did I totally mis-read that?

16.18 KP is not MSU, nor is it a MSU-dominated field when the AVERAGE is 16 (implying very roughly equal parts above and below that #).

You won't find ANY 8ish KP armies that are actually successful. Nob bikers are horrible, for example, and are one of the few that even come close.

I'm willing to adjust my view - but at the moment, I don't have the same data that you do.

And, while I'm not saying that your facts don't mean anything, your facts, at least the ones you've presented data for, are only from a tournament that announced beforehand that there would be no KP mission. To think that people didn't adjust their armies knowing this would be foolish.

It's not an easy problem to get real data for. You could, theoretically, run the exact same tournament with the exact same people, but tell them ahead of time that there would be KP this time, and see what happens in that scenario - but that's not going to happen.

For a controlled experiment to provide meaningful data for this question, you need to run two events, where people know beforehand that one will use KP and one will not. Even tracking the difference between VP and KP in one event doesn't do it, because the question isn't do they yield different results, but do they change the metagame; do people build different armies when they know that they'll have KP missions and when they don't, and what impact on the tournament results do the effects of those changes have.

And this is data that no one has, it's an experiment probably too involved to actually run.


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MVBrandt wrote:You won't find ANY 8ish KP armies that are actually successful. Nob bikers are horrible, for example, and are one of the few that even come close.

I have to disagree with you here. I won my last tournament (22 players) with an 8 kp army. (I think - ghaz, mek, boyz, boyz, nobs, boyz, wagons) - okay, nine...

I actually have the data from last year's outdoor tournament, which works out about the same (field of 32). If I have time, I'll dig it out and process it, but I can tell you that it was won by a 23 KP army in a field with a wide variety of KP despite the fact that EVERY ROUND was random rolled for by EVERY TABLE using pure book missions. The winner had 2 KP missions against significantly lower totals. Everyone played at least one KP mission over the course of the day.

As far as the latter point, well touche? Skill trumps list every time, even ghaz and 9 KP. <3 (!)

In a five round tournament, I think there should be one KP scenario, one VP scenario, and three objective oriented scenario. I think both VP and KP are abusable, but not when run in tandem, because it prevents stupid amounts of spamming, as well as Deathstar armies, making for more army variation. Its hard to say how the Nova was affected by its use of VP, because the Space Wolf book's general power level was also a factor of those results. In other words, the general efficiency and tons of options allow for identically powerful builds that are not MSU based.

In short, a variety of victory conditions encourages a variety of armies, instead of the kind of draw my friend got at the last GT he went to (Loganwing, Razorspam Wolves, Leafblower, Razorspam BA, Mech Guard) which bored the hell out of him. That GT used VP exclusively and the lists were slanted for it. Codex creep is deffinately playing a factor in this equation, though.

I don't think the "MSU" concept is the winning factor here, it's the diversity, flexibility, redundancy (and player skill).

For instance, Stelek had 3 long fang units, 4 GH units with melta, 2 mm speeders, and 4 plaserbacks. This effectively gave him 16 anti-vehicle shooting units (if you split fire with Long Fangs). Add in the IST's for possible use against light transports, and the TWC for punching rhinos etc.

Also, he had several options for scouting, outflanking, and deepstriking. He had shooting and CC units. Ending up with all of these things in a MSU format was one possibility, but not the only one. I haven't seen many lists besides those that were baterp'd, but I'd venture to say that few armies were as diverse and flexible.

The MSU concept wasn't the winning factor. He had redudancy across the board. Speeders had hvy flamers for anti-horde also. TWC can do just about anything. The combination of all the redundancy, extra shield units via dedicated transports/MSU's, and smart deplotment/movement acheived the end result.

*Off Topic*

Phazael do I need to win a GT with Orks now?

I know some people believe in codex creep but I personally don't. I probably would have beat my only SW opponent of the tournament with my daemons if I hadn't gotten the wrong wave and watched it (the shooty one) scatter into assault range

Space Wolves can create multiple builds which means more people will run them. Increasing the odds of winning. Heck the Slaughter had a DE win best general and a CSM win overall. I'd like to see an actual list of tournament winners this year and their armies. I'm pretty sure it's more varied than most people think.

*On Topic*

I do agree with a mix personally. While I don't take KP's into account when I build a list I do assume it's a weakness and removing that weakness makes it easier for me to win. Phazael's percentage on primaries makes sense to me. Maybe next year at Nova since it's 4 games day one it can be 2 objective/table quarter, 1 VP, and 1 KP (last mission). Then the only single objection most people had to the tournament would be done. And maybe make all 4 be on the list for breaking ties. Then you can gather even more data on it. Just some thoughts

In a final note, your last bit is exactly the point I'm making, but in the opposite - people who bring fewer KP get crunked at tournaments these days by people who optimize lists WITHOUT thinking about KP (just as people who try really hard to purely MSU get crunked).

This thinking is flawed. The poor and unlucky players are those who get crunked by the good and the lucky ones. Part of being a good and lucky player is designing your army accordingly. If I know I'm going to be playing 2 games out of 6 with KPs then thats going to factor into army design, and if I know ahead of time I'm going to be playing an event where KPs don't matter then I'll tweak my list accordingly.

And incidentally, I won my Vegas ticket with a 9 KP list at 1,750 points. My KP primary game was a walk-over: My opponent had around double my total and simply couldn't cope with the advantage my army had over his. He's a very good player, but his otherwise awesome army (mech guard) didn't have a prayer in that one mission.

There will never be a system that will please everyone or that cannot be manipulated in some fashion by "creative" list design. The goal should be, then, something that's quick and as fair as you can make it.

I like Reecius' idea, except that I would alter it as follows:

-1 KP per 50 points cost (round to nearest 50). Should eliminate some of the MSU/transport shenanigans.
-each army must have the same KP value at the same points level. If there is a difference, the army with the lower value must add +X KP to his list, where X is the difference in KP values. He then adds +1 KP to his highest value units until his top X units have added the extra KP. So, for example, if he was 3 KP less than his opponent, his top three units would each be worth +1 KP than they normally would. If tied, owning player may allocate the "bonus" KP.

It's more or less a hybrid system and should be fair, as far as you can be in something like this.

The Everliving wrote:

In a final note, your last bit is exactly the point I'm making, but in the opposite - people who bring fewer KP get crunked at tournaments these days by people who optimize lists WITHOUT thinking about KP (just as people who try really hard to purely MSU get crunked).

This thinking is flawed. The poor and unlucky players are those who get crunked by the good and the lucky ones. Part of being a good and lucky player is designing your army accordingly. If I know I'm going to be playing 2 games out of 6 with KPs then thats going to factor into army design, and if I know ahead of time I'm going to be playing an event where KPs don't matter then I'll tweak my list accordingly.

And incidentally, I won my Vegas ticket with a 9 KP list at 1,750 points. My KP primary game was a walk-over: My opponent had around double my total and simply couldn't cope with the advantage my army had over his. He's a very good player, but his otherwise awesome army (mech guard) didn't have a prayer in that one mission.

I 100% agree with alex, the Los do make mr modify my list... Had I ha the list I wanted to bring finished... I would not have had a land raider.

Btw, alex is in the top 5% of skill level of 40k players

What's wrong with points value of units killed?

I don't really understand how KPs work, I play casually and rarely... I mean, as an IG player I can shove all of my units into two platoons minimum... Doesn't that mean I have less KPs than my opponent?

VP's and Objectives.

KP's were a terrible idea and always will be.

Henners, most IG builds you see at tournaments cannot do that.

Since only infantry units can combine from the same platoon, it would be hard to make a successfull list with only CCS and infantry squads.

KP is part of the book missions, but just in case you haven't read that portion (not sure from your post), the basic idea is that every unit is worth 1 KP. So a chimera = 1kp, the squad inside = 1kp.

Basically, if it can act seperately, its a seperate KP. (And yes I know this is a generalization.

At 2k points at the NOVA open, my guard list ran...21 kp. I can honestly say the only thing that I changed due to the omission of a KP mission was I ran marbo, when typically I won't.

If you REALLY want to wring the sweat out of players - in a 4 game tourney day - have one mission feature Kill Points and the next one figure Victory points. Then you have to build lists to balance (or ignore) both.....

I mentioned that earlier (well, an equivalent), but Redbeard explained that it wouldn't work. Although I'm inclined to believe MVBrandt has some interesting figures that currently point in the other direction (that they're basically the same anyways).

Kind of an aside here, but one thing VP over KP does is remove any incentive for Squadrons, especially when VP are calculated per vehicle instead of per squadron.

Where KP might dictate taking Landspeeders in squadrons of 2, or a single 3 speeder unit, removal of KP and application of VP to all vehicles in a squadron really seem to act as a disincentive for taking squadrons.

hyv3mynd wrote:I don't think the "MSU" concept is the winning factor here, it's the diversity, flexibility, redundancy (and player skill).

Sorry, I just saw this post and I needed to comment. I've been harping on a similar theme for ages, though the three list design principles I advocate are Synergy, Flexibility, and Redundancy, with diversity as an extension of flexibility to an army level such that an army needs to be flexible to provide a floor for dealing with a range of opponents. Well, technically for dealing with their opponent's tools, and kudos to the people who pointed out the way player skill was being abstracted away from the success of the armies

Hybrid.

I am firm believer that Kill Points are not devil-spawn. At the same time I don't necessarily believe they are the great savior of balance. I think seeking true balance in a system not initially designed for true balance, where some armies are two editions old and where games are ultimately decided by the randomness of dice is an exercise in futility. There will always be small bits of chaos in the system and the trick is to manage that chaos to degree so that over time you settle somewhere that is more or less even. That is the middle ground I see between issues like KP and VP - both are part of the game and both should be manageable in tournaments.

The KP vs VP debate is similar in some ways to Comp vs No Comp, and I wouldn't be surprised to see many of the same people on each side of the discussion. Along the same lines, there is a strong division amongst players, and it often feels like one camp sees 40K as a sport - while the other sees it as game. Neither viewpoint is wrong, but instead of planting a flag and refusing to budge, people should seek a little more middle ground.

i voted hybrid. tournies should reflect the edition they are played in and should have roughly 1/3 KP missions per that stance. i do, however, think VP should be used as a tie breaker in all missions (objective and KP based).

Subjective KP per unit. Rhinos are typically worth 1 while squads are typically worth 2, HQs are worth an amount deemed "appropriate" as per the codex, etc. Make the better units be worth more. Point cost doesn't always reflect usefulness, and KPs don't account for single-model units and the like.

An idea Similar to Reecius'. A BP for every 100 points cost of a unit so like this-

1-99= 1 Pt.

100-199= 2pt

200-299=3

300=399 =4 etc.

This would bring the best of both systems. MSU armies would offer a larger amount of BPs however there wouldn't be the current rock/paper/siccors system that currently exists.

For example a 10man seer council with all the fixings runs close to 500 pts. In the current system that's only 2 KP but at 2000 pts that's over 1/4 of the eldar army and I only get 2 pts if I kill it? How does that make any sense? But getting 6 points for it seems fair. On the flip side A system like this would hamper MSU armies that take alot of cheap transports, since a death of a rhino isn't a mere 35 VPs its a whole battle point.

One of the Huge problems with the KP system is that it doesn't reward you fairly for killing those super large costly units that are hard to kill. (Nob Bikers, eldar seer council etc.)

One of the major problems with the VP system is that it leads to an influx of MSU armies and doesn't penalize in any way an overabundance of mech.

This system could be fair to both.

Except this, as has been explained, is low fidelity VPs. Basing it off a units points cost? VPs in all but name.

KPs work because they dont care about the value of the unit in game points.

KP's are one of the reasons I don't play 40k any more.

They don't reflect on the value of units killed, plus they encourage armies that are less fun to play.

To me, the more units of substance out there (Basically units that are a threat to things...5 scouts with bolters aren't, 5 marines with a lascannon are), the more dynamic the game is and the more fun it is. Plus you can reap small accomplishments even when you lose...Taking out a unit gives a little 'fun' boost and you get more of them when you have more small units out there rather than big, resilient units.

Well, according to KP, my gun drones that come free with all my vehicles that I can't get rid of, which are forced onto the field whenever one of them is destroyed and can be killed rather easily by practically sneezing on them, are worth the same amount of points when killed as a fething land raider. A stock devilfish is worth the same amount of points as a land raider with a terminator squad inside?

Yeah, no. KP are broken.

Also, I love how the same people who are complaining about the NOVA using VP instead of KP and how they're supposedly rebalancing the game (they aren't...and if they are it's for the better), are likely the same people who praise events like Adepticon, BoLScon, etc. which are infamous for rewriting core rules of the game for no real reason with their "FAQs", writing missions that favor certain armies over others, introducing comp or even ban lists of all things, etc. You guys haven't been playing "real" 40k for a long time, why is following the rules so important all of a sudden?

I'm a firm believer in what MVBrandt is saying. KP reduction strategies are generally bad decisions, and over the long haul, there is almost no difference between victors in VP vs. KP matches.
KP aren't a balancing mechanism, though people think they are. VP don't correct for the inequity of KP, even though people think they do.
Removing KP as a possibilty from the matrix of mission objectives has some benefits and some costs, though most that are commonly discussed from both sides are the product of insufficient data.

I am a firm believer that heavy use of VP as a mission scoring criteria generates no appreciable change in the outcomes, creates significantly greater chance of scoring error by players, and increases the time it takes for rounds to progress. As such, I tend to use only minimal VP calculations in tournament design.

I also believe that KP calculation is prone to significant error and many less travelled players find them unfair (though my data, just as MVBrandt's, indicates that a variation between KP and VP winners is the exception, not the rule).

In short, VP and KP both have flaws as mission conditions for timed tournament play. I like either for secondary / tertiary objectives, but either as a primary goal encourages "mean" play (stomping the other guy completely) and introduces the possibility of substantial and important error into the primary objective, which I find best avoided.

I voted hybrid, because there isn't any functional difference in them overall.

Sidstyler wrote:Well, according to KP, my gun drones that come free with all my vehicles that I can't get rid of

Last time I checked, the only vehicle you can't remove the drones from is the Piranha. Not to mention that Tau are a quite outdated codex, and using one of their niche rules as a basis for saying KP are broken is akin to claiming that 5th ed assault rules are broken because Necrons are screwed by them.

Also, I love how the same people who are complaining about the NOVA using VP instead of KP and how they're supposedly rebalancing the game (they aren't...and if they are it's for the better), are likely the same people who praise events like Adepticon, BoLScon, etc. which are infamous for rewriting core rules of the game for no real reason with their "FAQs", writing missions that favor certain armies over others, introducing comp or even ban lists of all things, etc. You guys haven't been playing "real" 40k for a long time, why is following the rules so important all of a sudden?

I think this is more a case of the people who are so loudly praising NOVA are the same ones who complained about how Adepticon, and BoLScon weren't playing 40k because of the rules changes. Personally, I think that any TO is free to do whatever they think is best for their event. But you can't slam one event for not being 40k, and then go on to laud another without acknowledging that it, too, isn't actually playing 40k.


@jon.wolf:

Okay, so there is no functional difference between KP and VP. I'm not saying you're right, but for the sake of follow-on discussion, I'll assume you're right enough. That said, if KP and VP are functionally equivalent and it doesn't matter which one is used, what is the compelling argument for moving away from the basic rules published in the book? Surely in absence of solid evidence that something doesn't work we should strive to hold as close to the published rules as possible. If the evidence is that VP isn't significantly different from KP, why not just use KP, on the off chance that maybe, just maybe, the game designers did know what they were doing?

Last time I checked, the only vehicle you can't remove the drones from is the Piranha.

Wrong. I don't have the option of just not taking drones, I have to use gun drones, or I have to pay 20 points to swap them out for something that won't screw me over on KP.

So you're basically telling me to get around KP, something that wasn't even a thought when my codex was designed, by paying even more points for already overpriced vehicles. That's fair and balanced alright.

Not to mention that Tau are a quite outdated codex, and using one of their niche rules as a basis for saying KP are broken is akin to claiming that 5th ed assault rules are broken because Necrons are screwed by them.

I used Tau as an example because that's what I'm most familiar with, I'll let people who play the other armies speak up for their own bs. Needless to say Tau aren't the only ones screwed and I think you know that.

That said, if KP and VP are functionally equivalent and it doesn't matter which one is used, what is the compelling argument for moving away from the basic rules published in the book?

Because of old, outdated armies like mine that get screwed? Isn't that always the excuse TOs give for changing the rules, to even the playing field?

I don't get why this is a big deal. The VP/KP switch is the only departure from the main rules, but that alone is apparently game breaking enough that it has people debating in threads like this one. People don't have a problem with comp, banning special characters, etc., but using the superior VP system over bs KP is where we draw the line. You can change anything else you want but KP must remain or your event loses all credibility.

But yeah, that's just how I see it. Of course I'm no fan of KP, because not only does it make no sense but it really makes it hard for me to play with my outdated army, my only army, which GW has apparently forgotten about. But mostly I just don't understand what the point is of assigning everything a value with the points system, and then turning around and saying everything is worth 1 point no matter what. The only reason I can see them doing this is to make things easier to calculate after the battle, but I refuse to accept that VP was just that damn complicated that this had to be done.

Maybe Jervis's kid was having too much trouble adding everything up.

Sidstyler wrote:
I used Tau as an example because that's what I'm most familiar with, I'll let people who play the other armies speak up for their own bs. Needless to say Tau aren't the only ones screwed and I think you know that.

Take any pre-5th ed codex and anyone who plays it can tell you a rule in 5th that screws them in some way. This isn't a valid argument for changing the rules on a per-tournament basis, it's a valid reason to hope your codex gets updated sooner than later. No one makes you take those drones, as you pointed out, you could pay points to trade them in for a SMS system. You could simply not take the vehicle in the first place, it's not like tau transports are priced competitively in 5th ed anyway.

@ redbeard - Both KP and VP are presented in the book as scoring options. I use both. Moving away from the scoring options presented in the rules allows for different aspects of performance to be emphasized, as well as focusing attention of different components of the force org chart. In the basic BRB missions, killing troops equals victory. There are some nuances, but basically winning is about eliminating all enemy troops choices (not necessarily true in one game, but over the course of a tournament, the winners will have killed all or almost all enemy scoring units most of the time). Generating different mission parameters can alter this basic truth and cause players to think of the battlefield from a different perspective; being successful in handling changes is part of being a good general, in my book.

jon.wolf wrote:I'm a firm believer in what MVBrandt is saying. KP reduction strategies are generally bad decisions, and over the long haul, there is almost no difference between victors in VP vs. KP matches.
KP aren't a balancing mechanism, though people think they are. VP don't correct for the inequity of KP, even though people think they do.

Agreed with most of this although I'm not sure about saying there isn't a difference between VP and KP matches. From where I'm sitting dedicated transports are good enough as it is and using VP over KP removes their only drawback. From where I'm sitting death-star units probably aren't used enough (seer council and nob bikers and bloodcrushers) and using VP over KP only helps reinforce that.

I am a firm believer that heavy use of VP as a mission scoring criteria generates no appreciable change in the outcomes, creates significantly greater chance of scoring error by players, and increases the time it takes for rounds to progress. As such, I tend to use only minimal VP calculations in tournament design.

This. Unless VP's are proven to be a better option I don't see the point in introducing added complexity to results. I also don't see any reason to remove KP's from an environment when the popular armies are only going to be served better by VP's and the less popular armies harmed by them.

And then of course there is that whole KP's are in the rulebook argument. I like following the rulebook too.

You're one of the few then.

VP all the way. KP's were a ridiculous hamfisted reaction to people having to do mafs.

I've seen too many games of "Annihilation" where to person who lost far more of their army actually won the game, probably close to 1 in 3. The mission type is described as destroying more of an enemy than they destroy of you. If I kill two Land Raiders and a Terminator Squad, and you kill 4 Rhino's, victory should not go to you.

Likewise, losing a Gun Drone unit off a Devilfish should not be worth as much as killing Abaddon or a Marneus Calgar.

Simple destruction of distinct elements of maneuver is a meaningless measure of victory, there's no value attached to a KP. VP's problem was implementation, however at least VP represented a proportion of the enemies force and a more realistic measure of their defeat as opposed to KP's. I can kill off 10 KP's of an enemy and lose 6 and one can have no idea what that actually means in terms of how badly each respective army has been hurt. My 6 lost KP's may only be 1/4 of my army or it may mean I've been almost tabled In a 2000pt game, who knows? if I say I scored 1200 VP's and my opponent scored 700, everyone knows exactly what that means.

I like the idea of each KP being worth a certain number of VP. VP being given for objectives and table corners and such.

That way it would be something like:
50pts for each KP
100pts for each corner you control
100pts for each objective

Surtur wrote:I like the idea of each KP being worth a certain number of VP. VP being given for objectives and table corners and such.

That way it would be something like:
50pts for each KP
100pts for each corner you control
100pts for each objective

The problem becomes that one army will still have a greater scoring potential. A Tau army with 20 KP's or an IG army with 22 simply won't have the ability to attain as high a score as an opponent with say, 13 KP's like a CSM army. The CSM army will will be able to rack up a higher score with a smaller portion of the enemy army destroyed.

Before playing 5e, I thought Annihilation would be terrible for Imperial Guard. I have found through play that Annihilation, especially Spearhead Annihilation, is the best mission for Imperial Guard - especially against KP "optimized" armies.

A force with few distinct elements will be forced to waste firepower killing that last squad member or disabled Chimera, whereas the high KP Imperial Guard force can kill units off completely with a very economical use of force.

A 22 KP IG army is at a significant advantage over a 13 KP CSM army in Annihilation, and actually has a harder time in Objective missions, where the CSM player's unit quality can do him much more good, and where closing with the enemy is unfortunately required of a bunch of guys in tee shirts.

Vaktathi wrote:VP all the way. KP's were a ridiculous hamfisted reaction to people having to do mafs.

I've seen too many games of "Annihilation" where to person who lost far more of their army actually won the game, probably close to 1 in 3. The mission type is described as destroying more of an enemy than they destroy of you. If I kill two Land Raiders and a Terminator Squad, and you kill 4 Rhino's, victory should not go to you.

Likewise, losing a Gun Drone unit off a Devilfish should not be worth as much as killing Abaddon or a Marneus Calgar.

Simple destruction of distinct elements of maneuver is a meaningless measure of victory, there's no value attached to a KP. VP's problem was implementation, however at least VP represented a proportion of the enemies force and a more realistic measure of their defeat as opposed to KP's. I can kill off 10 KP's of an enemy and lose 6 and one can have no idea what that actually means in terms of how badly each respective army has been hurt. My 6 lost KP's may only be 1/4 of my army or it may mean I've been almost tabled In a 2000pt game, who knows? if I say I scored 1200 VP's and my opponent scored 700, everyone knows exactly what that means.

Preach on brother.

Clearly VPs result in MSU builds. VP may be superior to KP for competitive play but let's not pretend dropping KP for VP has no effect on the meta-game!

KP missions are an integral part of the balance of army design. To say KP style armies are inferior and thus KP should not be used is elitest to one type of army design. An all bike SM army will have minimal KP's and will wreck every 22 kp imperial guard army ever brought onto the table top.

I also agree that VP's do nothing but reward dedicated transports and MSU style lists. If that's the way you want to play then fine, but it is not 5e 40k.

DarthDiggler wrote:KP missions are an integral part of the balance of army design. To say KP style armies are inferior and thus KP should not be used is elitest to one type of army design. An all bike SM army will have minimal KP's and will wreck every 22 kp imperial guard army ever brought onto the table top.

I also agree that VP's do nothing but reward dedicated transports and MSU style lists. If that's the way you want to play then fine, but it is not 5e 40k.

Can we all accept not all codexes can use MSUs? Not everyone plays space marines with 3+ saves and zero leadership issues. Some of us have to take larger units because of our codex design.

VP to KP is a massive swing in the metagame for some codexes to. Again, not everyone plays space marines. Nobs who are highly efficient and can be used with reckless abandon under KPs become a massive liability and a huge payoff for opponents.

When I play at a tourney that uses both, while I get a boost for KP missions I have to play through the pain on a VP mission. But orks are in the minority and don't apparently have the political clout like marine players to cry until whole formats are turned on their head.

nkelsch wrote:

DarthDiggler wrote:KP missions are an integral part of the balance of army design. To say KP style armies are inferior and thus KP should not be used is elitest to one type of army design. An all bike SM army will have minimal KP's and will wreck every 22 kp imperial guard army ever brought onto the table top.

I also agree that VP's do nothing but reward dedicated transports and MSU style lists. If that's the way you want to play then fine, but it is not 5e 40k.

Can we all accept not all codexes can use MSUs? Not everyone plays space marines with 3+ saves and zero leadership issues. Some of us have to take larger units because of our codex design.

VP to KP is a massive swing in the metagame for some codexes to. Again, not everyone plays space marines. Nobs who are highly efficient and can be used with reckless abandon under KPs become a massive liability and a huge payoff for opponents.

When I play at a tourney that uses both, while I get a boost for KP missions I have to play through the pain on a VP mission. But orks are in the minority and don't apparently have the political clout like marine players to cry until whole formats are turned on their head.

Well said nkelsch. I'm surprised GW hasn't errata-dropped KP altogether so every MEQ player would spend a few hundred quid on dedicated transports. Something to look forward to in 6th edition!

In a non-confrontational way, which codices are actually helped by taking big large units as a general rule?

Nob squads are pretty ... bad, especially in the "s8 everywhere" metagame of today, and in the world of psyker battle squads.

I'm trying to figure out, while we figure the rest out, what codices are actually "better" if they minimize KP. Ork armies with giant boyz mobs on foot and nobz or nob bikers just get run over these days ...

MVBrandt wrote:

Nob squads are pretty ... bad, especially in the "s8 everywhere" metagame of today, and in the world of psyker battle squads.

Ork armies with giant boyz mobs on foot and nobz or nob bikers just get run over these days ...

It seems to me your basic argument is that certain builds aren't good enough so we should change the rules to make them less effective. Just because you think the list isn't good enough, doesn't mean it isn't or that KP should be removed the list hampered more.

The fact that a close to 600pt eldar seer council has the same value as a transport vehicle and a small squad is not justified.

1 seer council 1 Eldrad mech-Dar Lists at 2k are amazing in KP games. As in game breaking amazing. Fortune d moving fast gravtanks + 10man seer council is ridiculous.

MVBrandt wrote:In a non-confrontational way,

I'm trying to figure out, while we figure the rest out, what codices are actually "better" if they minimize KP.

A sm bike army will have troop units of 8 bikes + attack bike for over 300pt. They will turbo in front of an IG gun line and proceed to wreck 2-4 vehicles in a glorious turn of death. Those vehicles may or may not be of equal or more VP value, but the IG player just lost more KP. Times this by 3 and the IG player can lose seven 55pt vehicles (385 vp's) while the bike player loses 3 kp's (900+ vp's) This all doesn't happen in one turn and the IG player will have to concentrate copious amounts of fire to bring those 3 bike units down by turn 3-4. The rest of the bike army hides or boosts around for 1-2 turns until the game is over.

The bike army wins 7kp's to 3kp's when we play by the rulebook, but loses 900vp's to 385vp's when we make stuff up. I mean make stuff up because the rulebook only includes VP's as a condition to break ties, not be a primary objective. The rulebook says vp's are only a tiebreaker.

So you're suggesting that an army that literally suicides, completely dying while only knocking a few guys out of their rides, is a good army and should be encouraged? Or that those are good tactics? Or even fun (turbo, roll cover save dice, roll melta dice, wee)? Or even fluffy (marines suiciding to kill a few tanks?)?


Also, to your first post, I wasn't making an argument - I was asking what kp-starved lists are walking all over people today thanks to the KP mission (as opposed to hoping for 1-2 presuming equivalent field skill with an "easy" win hiijacking the KP mission)?

If there are some serious builds that are awesome and are the ONLY good builds a codex can come up with that fail without kill points, that's a serious argument for them. If it's random trips land raider CSM lists that get slaughtered in non-KP missions and have no material bearing on tournament results ... well, not so hot, and certainly not an argument for it *at the competitive tournament level* ... note that I'm an ADVOCATE of Kill Points in casual events, leagues, pick-up gaming, etc.

MvBrandt,
Are you suggesting that eliminating KPs does not affect the metagame?

I'm not necessarily suggesting anything, I keep asking questions.

I want to know how KP affects competitive tournament play in a material way.

There's a statement of "it balances the game!" that's tossed about, but never adequately proven/defended (namely, that lower KP armies are BOTH more prevalent and somehow more successful at tournaments BECAUSE of the KP mission).

If they are only more prevalent because of it, but not more successful, than KP actively harms players who bring fewer KP and then do poorly b/c of it. If KP makes them more successful is also important as well ... that's to say, that you also have to prove the KP mission is what's causing lower KP armies to be successful (i.e. Redbeard referenced a tourney win with 9 kp earlier; the thesis basically states here that without the KP mission he would have lost, and/or brought a different list altogether).

Savvy? I've provided statistics, etc., but the return commentary is typically just "it's really important for balancing and preventing MSU," without much in terms of facts or proof statements.

Another reiiteration that I advocate KP usage in league play, and casual play with friends, etc.; I think it is materially harmful to weaker players in tournaments b/c its inclusion as a mission encourages those who don't know better to foolishly optimize for it, when lists are either "Good" or "bad" for all missions on merits that have nothing to do with KP (and so, lists like Redbeard's quoted successful one are good lists WITHOUT KP as a mission, and so KP isn't why they are succeeding, or being brought).

Recognizing that Kill Points are indeed part of the 40K experience, I firmly believe there are ways to incorporate them into 40K tournament gaming.

The 'problem' with KP in events like the NOVA, or even the PST/Battle Points system used in the Championships at AdeptiCon, is that KP become a definitive game ending objective. To use KPs in the NOVA's system, with it hierarchical system of tiebreaks, results in the game ending based on KPs. Given that the NOVA system (with its emphasis on mobility to claim table quarters and objectives + Victory Points) definitely leans towards one style of play, you can see why Mike has steered clear of KPs within the structure of his system. Using KPs as a Primary objective in a PST mission means that the game is heavily weighted in favor of a KP result, or forces certain types of armies to play for the draw. This also forces you to devote a second mission to something non-KP oriented in order to balance the mission load.

While the PST/Battle Points system makes it easier to include KPs over time, it still gives the player little choice in those particular missions (W/L vs. BP argument aside). This has been a topic of discussion since the beginning of the year in regards to reworking the 2011 AdeptiCon 40K Championships. In the end we want to be as true to the rulebook as possible, add an additional element or two to make the missions not so 2D and give players the tactical tools to make choices as the game progresses. The draft rules (which is really like v. 12) should be out this coming Friday, and I will be compiling an article for the AdeptiCon Dev Blog (also launching this Friday) that address the process and theory behind the new format. Looking forward to hearing what people think.

MVBrandt wrote:So you're suggesting that an army that literally suicides, completely dying while only knocking a few guys out of their rides, is a good army and should be encouraged? Or that those are good tactics? Or even fun (turbo, roll cover save dice, roll melta dice, wee)? Or even fluffy (marines suiciding to kill a few tanks?)?

The SM force wins by playing the mission (KP), and should win. Similarly, an Eldar grav tank army that tank shocks it's way onto objectives in the bottom of the last turn (often as dictated by time, rather than random game length) wins by playing the mission.

Fun is relative; facing mech IG with Tyranids on a fairly open table is rarely my perfect idea of fun, and it's when you really have to focus on playing the mission. It seems strange to worry about fluff at this late date.

In general, Tyranids, Kan-wall Orks, Horde Orks, Nob Biker orks, Jetbike Council Eldar, and foot BAs/Templar can make better use of fewer, larger units.

MVBrandt wrote:I'm not necessarily suggesting anything, I keep asking questions.

I want to know how KP affects competitive tournament play in a material way.

*snip*

Savvy? I've provided statistics, etc., but the return commentary is typically just "it's really important for balancing and preventing MSU," without much in terms of facts or proof statements.

while hardly scientific, i've tried calculating the KP in the first page of pics on the adepticon 2010 40k championship gallery. the first mission in adepticon this year had KP as the primary objective (but not the only one) and they weren't used in the rest of the missions IIRC; if people didn't tailor their armies, there shouldn't be a significant difference. obviously, i don't have access to the army list so i've had to make assumptions. in general, those assumptions have been made generally IN FAVOR of more killpoints using common army types (if i see 3 razorbacks and 15 marines in front, i assume 6 KP with 3 transports and 3 squads of 5... two IG sentinels as separate killpoints). there's always the chance i'm off by a killpoint but here's what i found.

11, 13, 23, 9,
skip, 12, 11, skip
11, 15, 12, 18
8, 12, 12, 9

skipped 5th pic (repeat of the 1st)
skipped 9th pic (some parts of army off pic)

http://www.adepticon.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=11317

i get an average of 12.57 killpoints and it's probably a bit less than that due to assumptions i made in favor of extra KP. you seem pretty set with your decision that KP don't solve anything with statistical analysis involving n=1 sample size of tournies you've run (leagues don't really compare; people are willing to try out stuff in leagues they wouldn't in tournies). if you're serious about the validity of your statistics, take the time and compare the KP to what you can calculate from the adepticon pics (every few days i'll try and calculate another page myself and post it here). kill points DO affect what people bring to a tourney. you claim that it doesn't affect who wins and i'll take your claim at face value but ask you a separate question. are you running the tournament for just the final four players or all those who paid to attend? if it doesn't change the top 4 or so armies' composition, does everyone play against one of those 4 players every round or do they play against the other 26-116 people attending? KP according to you may not change the winners according to your own observations but they definitely increase the types of armies people bring overall. listen, you're obviously free to invent whatever scoring system you want for your tourney as the organizer and i'm sure you'll have repeat attendees from the overwhelmingly positive reviews of the tourney posted here... but saying that removing KP doesn't have an effect on what armies are brought and the builds they use isn't true.

saying that removing KP doesn't have an effect on what armies are brought and the builds they use isn't true.

I never claimed that

Red_Lives wrote:The fact that a close to 600pt eldar seer council has the same value as a transport vehicle and a small squad is not justified.

1 seer council 1 Eldrad mech-Dar Lists at 2k are amazing in KP games. As in game breaking amazing. Fortune d moving fast gravtanks + 10man seer council is ridiculous.

Considering armies like these are not often found in top 8's of competitive tournament play I'm not sure if that's even a problem.

What is found are armies that are hurt by KP: Multiple MSU spam with lots of dedicated transports. Why you would have a rule at a tournament that only makes those armies stronger doesn't make any sense to me.

I want to know how KP affects competitive tournament play in a material way.

The question you should ask is how using VP instead of KP does. The answer is that it hurts low unit count armies with death stars. I'm not going to make a claim that KP's exist to prevent MSU because you and I both know MSU is good anyway and people are going to run armies like that despite any drawbacks from KP missions. However, if you abolish them completely and then turn around and use VP's instead you're really sticking it to every opposite army type: Low KP count armies, and armies that run expensive units/models. Expensive MC's (Tyranid MC's, Daemon Princes), expensive Vehicles (Land Raiders), expensive model units (Nob Bikerz, Bloodcrushers, Seer Council) are all punished under a system that uses VP's instead of KP's.

I don't want to follow the logic that wet sidewalks cause rain here but in the top 8 of the nova armies with death-stars were basically non-existant. Would we have seen a nob biker or seer council or LR heavy vulkan or CSM if you had used KP over VP? I don't know. But you certainly didn't help those armies chances with the ruleset.

I would rather strongly disagree that deathstars are harmed, at least not beyond their current limitations (i.e. nob bikers and seer councils are both readily and easily dealt with, despite people hoping they'll help in KP missions and investing hundreds of points in them).

Also, the winner still ran a 250+ point TWC w/ fenrisian squad attachment, Njal, and his grey hunter squads mostly had 9 models in them w/ only 2 min-squads+razors ... hardly MSU. #2 ran Mephiston. #4 ran a nob squad, a 15-man burna squad, and ghazkull. Three deathstarish investments, frankly.

The top 8 also contained another army w/ Mephiston, large wolf guard untis w/ terminators, blood crushers and fateweaver, etc. Only ONE army was really true MSU w/out any material strongpoint units, Stelek's at #3, and he lost his first game of the finals to an army with 7 fewer KP.

Good armies are good armies, and same can be said for good generals. The only impact KP has on a tournament is encouraging people who know no better to take weaker armies and *hope* to win the KP mission while getting crushed in the other missions.

Those who know better and possess the skill do well regardless of the mission (And take fewer or more KP as it suits them).

My opinion (opinion!) and that of many others (the vast majority who took the time to add input and thus influence the NOVA's format) is that KP harms newbs, just as comp does, and simply gives those who effectively play the system a *different* consideration from KP.

If there's an influence from the metagame, it's that even our most widely successful local tourney players who bring nob bikers, bloodcrushers, seer council, etc. are routinely crushed in the KP and other book missions that we routinely play, b/c - as you state - some level of MSU is typically superior to investing enormous VP into one-off hammer units. That said, as the top 8 you quote relatively proves, some level of deathstarring and not MSU'ing still does well even in a KP-less situation, presuming the person piloting these lists knows what they're doing.

But do quote the armies that were in the top 8 a little more appropriately, no? Dash's list being the best example, at 6-1 and #4.

MVBrandt wrote:

My opinion (opinion!) and that of many others (the vast majority who took the time to add input and thus influence the NOVA's format) is that KP harms newbs, just as comp does, and simply gives those who effectively play the system a *different* consideration from KP.

I'm not really sure why people think this. Is it because newbs try to make low KP lists to avoid the KP problem? Well that's poor list design and newbs will succumb to that anyway. I could make a compelling argument that VP's harm newbs more because they have no idea what anything costs outside of their own army and will make poor target decisions because of that. Or even worse they will just get cheated out of VP's at the end of the game when their opponent "forgets" what certain units cost and gives them bad data for VP calculations.

If there's an influence from the metagame, it's that even our most widely successful local tourney players who bring nob bikers, bloodcrushers, seer council, etc. are routinely crushed in the KP and other book missions that we routinely play, b/c - as you state - some level of MSU is typically superior to investing enormous VP into one-off hammer units. That said, as the top 8 you quote relatively proves, some level of deathstarring and not MSU'ing still does well even in a KP-less situation, presuming the person piloting these lists knows what they're doing.

But do quote the armies that were in the top 8 a little more appropriately, no? Dash's list being the best example, at 6-1 and #4.

Chumbalaya had 2 units above 150 points, Sam had 4, Stelek and Mark Ferek had 1. Tony had 2. None of those guys had units worth more than 300 in their lists. Nothing close to a Seer Council or Maxed Bloodcrushers or Nob Bikerz. Dash had 2 large (not massive) units around 300 points but I think Dash did well in spite of his list not because of it. I'll have to take another look at the BA lists but nothing is sticking out here as a large 500+ point unit in any of these lists and there are very few in the 200 range.

Even with my assertions that VP's are problematic, and I believe they are, I'm not seeing the more important point: A compelling reason why KP's are bad. We both agree they don't really hurt MSU. They are easy to calculate, far more easy than VP and IMO more newb friendly. So what's the problem here? If they are the default and they aren't broken then why are we fixing it?

Kevin Nash wrote:
Even with my assertions that VP's are problematic, and I believe they are, I'm not seeing the more important point: A compelling reason why KP's are bad. We both agree they don't really hurt MSU. They are easy to calculate, far more easy than VP and IMO more newb friendly. So what's the problem here? If they are the default and they aren't broken then why are we fixing it?

KP's are bad because there is no value attached to them. Simply destroying discrete elements of maneuver is meaningless.

To use my example from eariler, if you destroy 4 Rhinos, and I destroy two Land Raiders and a Daemon Prince, by what sane measure should you be declared victorious? I have clearly defeated a much greater proportion of your fighting capability and far more important and powerful units.

Annihilation, as the rulebook defines it, is described as such "Find your enemy, crush him utterly and take away his means to mount further resistance". With KP's, it is *very* possible that the player who does exactly that loses. My 2k mech platoon IG army for instance can fight my 2k mech CSM army, 24 KP's to 15, and leave it with nothing but a single Chaos Space Marine hiding in a corner, and still lose the game with three Chimeras, three 10 man infantry squads, and two Leman Russ tanks left on the board. By no standard should that be an IG loss. If that is the case, the system is *borked*, flat out.

Again, to reiterate my earlier point, you can say you won a game 10 KP's to 6, but nobody really knows what that means. That may mean you had 3/4ths of your army left or it may mean you have 1 unit left, and your opponent may have been nearly tabled or still have more than half their army left. With VP's, if I saw I won 1200 VP's to 800, everyone knows exactly what that means and about what shape each army was in. KP's don't mean anything, they have no intrinsic measure of value.

VP's however tell you exactly what proportion of the enemy force you have destroyed and how much of their fighting strength remains



And honestly, if someone can't whip out a cell phone calculator to figure out victory, I have no sympathy. If the win condition has to be borked in order to make it easier to calculate, something is wrong. A system that grants as much advancement towards victory for destroying a unit of two Tau Gundrons off a devilfish or a Rhino as for killing Abaddon, Eldrad or Logan is borked. When a Leman Russ is worth as much as a sentinel or a Land Raider a Land Speerder, that's a meaningless measure of victory.

KP's are bad because they result in wins that should not be wins, and losses that should not be losses, and do so quite often.

Vaktathi - From your logic an army that brings Astrorath and 6 units of Death Company should win in an objective based game as long as they inflict more damage on the enemy. Forget that the army has no scoring units and could never claim an objective. This sounds like you just want to play shoot 'em up with your opponent and whoever brings the most guns win.

There is another element to tactical tabletop gaming and it is the tactics part of that. An IG army that can't get rid of the last CSM squad, while losing 15 units in the process did lose the game if they can't kill the last guy. That's the objective of that particular game. Likewise in Capture and Control if I have 1 Fire Warrior on my objective and you have 20 Thousand Sons on yours, you don't win the game because your one scoring unit is bigger or has more points assigned to it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Janthkin wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:So you're suggesting that an army that literally suicides, completely dying while only knocking a few guys out of their rides, is a good army and should be encouraged? Or that those are good tactics? Or even fun (turbo, roll cover save dice, roll melta dice, wee)? Or even fluffy (marines suiciding to kill a few tanks?)?

The SM force wins by playing the mission (KP), and should win. Similarly, an Eldar grav tank army that tank shocks it's way onto objectives in the bottom of the last turn (often as dictated by time, rather than random game length) wins by playing the mission.

Fun is relative; facing mech IG with Tyranids on a fairly open table is rarely my perfect idea of fun, and it's when you really have to focus on playing the mission. It seems strange to worry about fluff at this late date.

In general, Tyranids, Kan-wall Orks, Horde Orks, Nob Biker orks, Jetbike Council Eldar, and foot BAs/Templar can make better use of fewer, larger units.

Good point. Is it fun to turbo boost into a mech gunline to kill all the mech on the next turn? Is it fun to sit in your deployment zone with 6 Razorbacks and 3 long fangs and not have a movement phase? We've got a guy with a Bike list in Chicago who won Best General at the Big Waagh in Memphis and he regularly finishes in the top 5 of our monthly tourney.

I think what should be encouraged is anything that increases the variety of armies that can play at the top table. If SM Bikes beats MSU mech, then let them play.

MVBrandt wrote:In a non-confrontational way, which codices are actually helped by taking big large units as a general rule?

Nob squads are pretty ... bad, especially in the "s8 everywhere" metagame of today, and in the world of psyker battle squads.

You know, a Nob biker army took 2nd at the ard boyz finals in the midwest, after sweeping all its opponents in the prior rounds, playing against psyker battle squads and S8 guns. Don't believe everything you read about how bad this army is, nob bikers are still pretty core. Part of me wonders if internet hate against some strategies/archtypes is done in an effort to minimize the chances that you actually have to play them. If you convince everyone that nob bikers suck, maybe no one will bring them, right?

They don't suck, they're actually pretty darn good. They have some weaknesses. Jaws kinda owns them, and lash tricks can muck them up pretty good. But not everyone has that stuff, and even if they do, it takes some skill to play it right.

MVBrandt wrote:So you're suggesting that an army that literally suicides, completely dying while only knocking a few guys out of their rides, is a good army and should be encouraged? Or that those are good tactics? Or even fun (turbo, roll cover save dice, roll melta dice, wee)? Or even fluffy (marines suiciding to kill a few tanks?)?

Yes. We're playing a game. We're not trying to create a military simulation. Geeze, if we were, wouldn't guard players deploy three tables away and bomb you with ordnance? Games have rules, and the rules exist to create balance, not reality. Reality is asking yourself how 180 orks somehow started the game 18" from my basilisk lines. That doesn't make any sense either, but it happens because this is a game, not a military simulation.

The objective isn't to destroy the enemy, it's to win the game. If winning the game means putting a unit of grots in reserve for four turns and then hiding them when they show up, while suiciding 20 nob bikes and 2 warbosses to kill six rhinos, then those are indeed good tactics. Good tactics are those that win games, not those that crush your opponent. And, yes, I think this should be encouraged, they're the natural counter to the MSU tactics that get used everywhere else. And if the MSU armies can still win, good for them, that shows that MSU really is all that.

In chess, if you lose most of your pieces, but checkmate your opponent, you still win, you know.

DarthDiggler wrote:Vaktathi - From your logic an army that brings Astrorath and 6 units of Death Company should win in an objective based game as long as they inflict more damage on the enemy. Forget that the army has no scoring units and could never claim an objective. This sounds like you just want to play shoot 'em up with your opponent and whoever brings the most guns win.

My arguments were within the context of an "annihilation" mission, where the only point is to inflict more damage on an opponent than one takes in return. My most abject and humble apologies if that wasn't rather immediately apparent.

There is another element to tactical tabletop gaming and it is the tactics part of that. An IG army that can't get rid of the last CSM squad, while losing 15 units in the process did lose the game if they can't kill the last guy. That's the objective of that particular game.

Right, but at that point you're talking about a mission that's artificially stilted in favor of small unit count armies and isn't true to how it is presented in the rulebook or what it is meant to represent. It's not really a battle of annihilation. It's a battle of destroying discrete maneuver elements. They are *not* the same thing. Destroying three squads of infantry and destroying a platoon of infantry are identical outcomes, but KP's rewards you triple for destroying the three squads as opposed to destroying the platoon as a whole, which makes no sense.

Using that IGvsCSM example above, and you asked an average person who would have won a pitched battle of roughly equal forces with one side having destroyed 99% of the enemies force (or 98% in terms of model count) while having only lost 66% of their force (or less than 60% in terms of model count), they'll say the force that only lost 66% of their force won. Individual unit count doesn't *mean* anything, especially if not done on at least a comparative basis, but KP's aren't even done on a comparitive basis. If KP's were done as a fraction of the enemies army (e.g. I destroyed 12 of 15 of your KP's, you destroyed 13 of my 24, I win) it would solve some of the problems with KP's, albeit not all.

Likewise in Capture and Control if I have 1 Fire Warrior on my objective and you have 20 Thousand Sons on yours, you don't win the game because your one scoring unit is bigger or has more points assigned to it.

True, but that's not what the mission is about or how it's portrayed. You're holding the objective, plain and simple. Value isn't necessary there.

In a battle of annihilation, value is everything (or rather, *should be* everything). You want to hurt your opponents army more than they hurt yours. In an objective mission, only the objectives matter, value is taken out of the equation as everything is expendable in order to capture said objectives.

Isn't the image of one small unit of Marines (or whatever) holding off and mowing down hordes of Greenskins, Traitor Guard, Tyranids, etc sort of essential to Warhammer 40K?

To me that is what Kill Points represents in game terms.

Redbeard wrote:Reality is asking yourself how 180 orks somehow started the game 18" from my basilisk lines.

Is it not entirely possible that army of Orks started out with more than 200 bodies, and that the Orks across the tables are the ones that were left?

Matthias wrote:Isn't the image of one small unit of Marines (or whatever) holding off and mowing down hordes of Greenskins, Traitor Guard, Tyranids, etc sort of essential to Warhammer 40K?

To me that is what Kill Points represents in game terms.

That sounds more like an objective game to me. How do KPs represent that?

Matthias wrote:Isn't the image of one small unit of Marines (or whatever) holding off and mowing down hordes of Greenskins, Traitor Guard, Tyranids, etc sort of essential to Warhammer 40K?

To me that is what Kill Points represents in game terms.

If we just want marines to win all the time why don't we just make that a victory condition?

VP's portray that just as well. A 10man marine squad for 170pts stands a good chance of fighting off and destroying 30something guardsmen for about the same number of points. That's the whole point. We have a system of points values to represent the value of units, heroic and supremely capable troops cost a lot of points. Troops that aren't cost very little. They balance out, 10 Space Marines are worth, in points terms, about 30 guardsmen, and thus such "heroic" capabilities and feats are already taken into account.

Vaktathi wrote:If we just want marines to win all the time why don't we just make that a victory condition?

I don't really know why they haven't yet.

Sure - it could represent any army fighting any other force over any of the main objectives...the point being that a unit dealing with vastly superior numbers in the face of certain annihilation is essential to the 40K story. One way to represent that in game terms is KP.

Are units prevented from earning more than their VP value in kills or KP? of course not. I wasn't arguing that one was vastly superior to the other in terms of tournaments, just that they all have their place in telling the same story.

The main rulebook is first and foremost a game. Imposing a tournament system, sports analogies or a true measure of 'fairness' is outside the realm of the basic rules - hence the great division on opinions on measures of this matter, but it all just opinion.

I go for Hybrid.

Matthias wrote:Sure - it could represent any army fighting any other force over any of the main objectives...the point being that a unit dealing with vastly superior numbers in the face of certain annihilation is essential to the 40K story. One way to represent that in game terms is KP.

Except the game already does that through the points system. With KP's, the way you're talking about them, what's the point of playing anything but Marines if we want to make Victory conditions tailored to make Marines win just for cinematics sake? If everything else is just there to make Space Marines look cool, that doesn't sound very fun, and it sounds extremely one dimensional from a storyline standpoint. It certainly cheapens the SM's victory against overwhelming odds when the conditions for victory basically ensure that the attrition based enemy loses.

If you want to hamfist a marine victory by stacking victory conditions, I guess KP's are one way to do that, but it doesn't sound like anything I'd want to play.

Vaktathi wrote:Except the game already does that through the points system. With KP's, the way you're talking about them, what's the point of playing anything but Marines if we want to make Victory conditions tailored to make Marines win just for cinematics sake? If everything else is just there to make Space Marines look cool, that doesn't sound very fun, and it sounds extremely one dimensional from a storyline standpoint. It certainly cheapens the SM's victory against overwhelming odds when the conditions for victory basically ensure that the attrition based enemy loses.

If you want to hamfist a marine victory by stacking victory conditions, I guess KP's are one way to do that, but it doesn't sound like anything I'd want to play.

Not even close to what I am talking about. I only used Marines in my first example because that is iconic image in the history of 40K (the history of 40K being told by Man - so no wonder we don't have examples in reverse). The word 'any' was used a few times and the outnumbered/outflanked scenario can easily apply to any army.

KP and VP are both part of the rules (and VP suggested only a tiebreaker at that). I am a firm believer in a hybrid system - but again, that is my opinion.

100% agree with Kevin and Redbeard. And Mattias.

Mike, please don't marry this idea that KP are bad. Just because you cut out 1/3 of the core rulebook victory conditions this year doesn't mean you have to next year.

One way to represent that in game terms is KP.

Can you please explain how, because I really don't get how KP represents that. In my opinion it's already represented, and in a better fashion, by the fact that Marine armies typically have less models than everyone else. You can tell Orks and Tyranids outnumber them by looking at the average game and seeing 5-10 man squads of Marines dotted here and there with huge groups of Orks or gribblies bearing down on them. The points system itself is supposed to do that, too, as Vak said earlier. 10 Marines are worth about as much as 30 termagants, aren't they? Sometimes they're even more expensive than that.

Mike, please don't marry this idea that KP are bad. Just because you cut out 1/3 of the core rulebook victory conditions this year doesn't mean you have to next year.

So now we're going to browbeat Mike until he turns the NOVA into another Adepticon? Whatever happened to letting people run events their way?

Oh right, Mike's doing it "wrong" and we can't have that. Adepticon gaks all over the core rules with the INAT FAQ and we all praise them for that, the only thing Mike did was swap KP for VP and now he's not "playing by the rules"?

Kill points represent who's winning.

Victory points do it better, and are actually fair.

Sidstyler wrote:

So now we're going to browbeat Mike until he turns the NOVA into another Adepticon? Whatever happened to letting people run events their way?

While I certainly support Mike's decision to run his tournaments however he wishes, swapping out VP's for KP's is does not "turn the NOVA into another Adepticon."

Your comment was good for a laugh though.

Wait doesn't the core rulebook tell us to use VPs to determine who wins in a tie? Didn't NOVA use VPs for secondary and Tertiary objectives? Which essentially are used when primary are tied? Or am I missing something?

So I exaggerated a little bit, crucify me.

Red: I don't think so, it just says "The game is a tactical draw."

While a good discussion, "begging" me not to use VP in the NOVA format is probably not a resolution to use for it.

We've been running KP *AND* VP-based events for years now, and have a lot of data to function off (hundreds - thousands of games). A handful of petitions from the other side of the fence only go so far ... I wasn't aware this was a referendum of a few folks' who didn't attend on how the NOVA should be run. KP vs. VP discussions are as old as 5e.

That said, our narrative track next year will probably use closer to raw book missions (in conjunction of course with the narrative), and our standard tourney may move closer to using VP as purely a tiebreaker.

People who have learned to apply extreme skill to handicapped armies like nob bikers and jetseers to compensate for their difficulties in non-KP missions will continue to succeed regardless of the mission, so I'm not really sure that's at stake. That said, more variety of unsuccessful kp-optimized armies is not ideal, and the NOVA saw even inexperienced players *NOT* doing that across all tables. That's not to say everyone was spamming MSU, and the MSU spammers were generally unsuccessful. Still, you didn't see people running giant expensive blobs of things, and the comments that resulted en masse were a more "competitive" feel even at the lower tables. That's a win. for this style event. The absence of KP as a mission was often cited by these lower table types.


I'm generally with Matthias in that KP should not be an exclusive win condition, and possibly VP should not either. You could include them somewhere in there as a tiebreaking COMPONENT, but the NOVA missions encourage tight, tactically deep games (that's actually their design intent, and proof via extensive global playtest; that playtest by literally people from around the world is in fact WHY they're not the same as their first iteration ... we DO change based upon feedback and playtesting) ... not bean counting and shooting immobilized, weaponless rhinos late.

At the heart of it, KP is too arbitrary a mission; the book has NUMEROUS missions in it (3 with 9 total variations); tying yourself to one that leaves a TON of players feeling as if it's absurd is foolish if you're running a tournament. Tying yourself to anything in particular is.

That doesn't make the good points of others invalid or not useful ... just not something you should be married to.

Some codices flourish in the absence of KP.
VP=MSU=Trukk spam!
VP=MSU=razorback spam!

Of course, the argument is made that some codices are harmed by KP. MvBrandt seems to think MSU builds are the most competitive [period] regardless of the codex or the mission. If everyone brings 17 KP armies on average this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Olympia, from one Italian (by heritage) to another, no, that's not what I'm suggesting.

I really wish you would read what I've written. I've specifically stated that raw MSU DOES NOT WIN, is not the most competitive, etc., but that players who are newer to the game are more encouraged to bring far suboptimal choices as a result of the inclusion of the KP mission.

Our average at NOVA was only 16, and that's not way different from elsewhere. I brought ~18 kp to Adepticon, and had fewer than all of my opponents for the day.

I've also stated, repeatedly, that outside of tournament 40k you should simply play the book missions as written ... pick-up games, casual play, hobby event weekends, etc.

If you care not for discussion or give and take, fine, but don't put words in my mouth please.

warboss wrote:
while hardly scientific, i've tried calculating the KP in the first page of pics on the adepticon 2010 40k championship gallery. the first mission in adepticon this year had KP as the primary objective (but not the only one) and they weren't used in the rest of the missions IIRC; if people didn't tailor their armies, there shouldn't be a significant difference. obviously, i don't have access to the army list so i've had to make assumptions. in general, those assumptions have been made generally IN FAVOR of more killpoints using common army types (if i see 3 razorbacks and 15 marines in front, i assume 6 KP with 3 transports and 3 squads of 5... two IG sentinels as separate killpoints). there's always the chance i'm off by a killpoint but here's what i found.

11, 13, 23, 9,
skip, 12, 11, skip
11, 15, 12, 18
8, 12, 12, 9

skipped 5th pic (repeat of the 1st)
skipped 9th pic (some parts of army off pic)

http://www.adepticon.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=11317

MVBrandt wrote:Our average at NOVA was only 16, and that's not way different from elsewhere. I brought ~18 kp to Adepticon, and had fewer than all of my opponents for the day.

here's page two of the gallery as best (yet again in favor of more killpoints when unclear like two identical leman russ tanks with two HS slots open) i see it...

13, 14, 19, 18,
13, 10, 15, 9
10, 17, 12, 10
10, skip (can't see lots even when using next picture of other army behind it), 16, 10

And the average for the first two pages combined is 12.8 roughly. I'm not sure what types of opponents you faced... but your total of of 18 means that, of the people on the first two pages of the gallery that i could count the KP somewhat reliably and IN FAVOR of more KP, 25/29 had less KP than you. The NOVA average of 16.1 (your stats) so far is easily above what Adepticon seems to have had this year; your deletion of KP as a list building factor DOES have an effect on the army comp of your tourney. Is the problem that you don't see a 25% or more increase in average KP "way different from elsewhere"? because taking off the same percentage from the adepticon average but in the other direction would mean an average of around 9.5 KP. they're both way different. or maybe the inherent problem with the discussion is in the definition various posters have of what a MSU army is. I'd consider an army of 16 kp to be flush with them while you think it's nothing special.

You're counting pictures, and have accounted for 29 of 240.

MSU is by usual definition the spamming of multiple small units. Stelek's list from the NOVA Open was MSU, for example.

Tony's list, although it had 17 kp, was not.

Distributing points into numerous combat effective threats is typically a good idea. Spamming as many min-size units as possible is not always a good idea. Encouraging new players to take large, unwieldy and points-intensive units is a BAD idea.

You'll also want to look into the top finishers at Adepticon, i.e. the guys who lost none of their games, and the KP totals there. The heart of my own thesis, based on a great deal of collected data (not ... pictures), is that KP has little to no influence on top table results, but encourages less experienced players to eschew decisions that would benefit them in 2/3 the book missions for decisions that at most benefit them in 1/3 the book missions.

When a particular component of the rules harms newer players and has no impact on the final top scoring averages, I don't see it as a positive ... more importantly, it's an opinion that is widely shared - I very rarely do ANYTHING based purely off bullish ego and personal belief.

MVBrandt wrote:
1) You're counting pictures, and have accounted for 29 of 240.

*snip*

2) You'll also want to look into the top finishers at Adepticon, i.e. the guys who lost none of their games, and the KP totals there. The heart of my own thesis, based on a great deal of collected data (not ... pictures), is that KP has little to no influence on top table results, but encourages less experienced players to eschew decisions that would benefit them in 2/3 the book missions for decisions that at most benefit them in 1/3 the book missions.

3) When a particular component of the rules harms newer players and has no impact on the final top scoring averages, I don't see it as a positive ... more importantly, it's an opinion that is widely shared - I very rarely do ANYTHING based purely off bullish ego and personal belief.

my numbering scheme above, not MVBrandt's, simply for easy of replying...

1) and you're basing your opinion on the half dozen opponent's you faced. i'm posting my numbers along with a reference to what pics; while it may not be 100% accurate since i don't have the lists, you can at least double check it. we only have your memory that your 18kp army at adepticon was on the low side and it doesn't seem to jive with the little data we actually have. feel free to pic a page and post your findings.

2) sure, got pics of the top finishers armies and their lists? i only have the adepticon gallery of pics without links to the real names of people who placed there. So, if your thesis (based on a "great deal of collected data" from a single large tourney (n=1) and no control sample) is "that KP has little to no influence on top table results"... who are you running the tourny for? the top two tables or the 90% of the other attendees? are effects that change who wins the top prizes the only things you're interested in changing the core game rules for? btw, using your collected data from local game and league play is NOT applicable because people are willing to try different things in leagues that they wouldn't dare to in a major tourny.

3) do you have proof that it harms new players? i didn't see you post any, just your opinions. Other people have opinions that differ from that (including in this thread) that are also widely shared. you're simply assuming that it does.

Your tourney was successful and i'm hopeful that it will continue to be but you're misunderstanding a few things. Taking out KP as a factor does significantly change what armies come as well as affects WHO comes. You said that you have strongly positive feedback for your taking out KP; did you ever stop to think that people that LIKE kp simply used that as one of their deciding factors to not come to the tourney? you've biased your sample by declaring ahead of time that you wouldn't be using them and then asked who attended if they liked it. just like in any discussion, you'll have a majority of people who don't care (but will attend), those who like something (and will attend), and those who don't (who won't). you're effectively running a republican-agenda convention, polling the attendees, and then trying to convince the democrats that didn't attend that your results reflect them too. it doesn't work that way.

1) I don't think my army was on the low side; I simply think that the average KP total was probably closer to 13-15, not 12. Compare to 16 at the Open, and marginal impacts + only one 20+ KP army making it to the finals should help identify that the removal of the mission didn't cause MSU "out the ass."

2) The great deal of collected data is from years of running 40k leagues and one off tourneys (16-32 size) with KP and standard book missions, plus the Open and the ~1100-1200 total test games we had run of it by players around the world. Not n=1/single large tourney. The Open is only a fraction of our total data set.

2b) Remember that we don't change any of the game RULES. We use the OBJECTIVES component of the missions, and the VP from the tiebreaker section in the back (optional), with the addition of quarters. While those may change, they are the missions in which you play ... a portion of the rulebook, but not the rules by which we play - simply the framework of a mission within which those rules are applied to determine a winner, loser, or draw. While certainly integral to the game (and not something I advocate abandoning in average play), they aren't the core rules themselves ... it's hyperbolic exaggeration by intent to claim it. I don't disagree that they're part and parcel of the whole shebang, but let's not exaggerate eh?

3) There's no assumption here. I can actually point to players and stats that argue for their army being "optimized" for KP and getting slaughtered at every event they attend. Honestly I don't want to throw names under the bus.

4) Hulksmash is the perfect example of someone who came and enjoyed it more than *any* event since 07 GW GT's, despite being a much bigger advocate of KP than VP. We advertised the missions and invited feedback from a global community of players for the past half a year+ ... and received enormous feedback from everywhere around the globe; Russia, Australia, mainstream Europe, and of course America. Don't think there weren't plenty of people asking about KP in there, and plenty of people who would have preferred them. I can promise you I don't live in a world of myopia on this subject; controversial, interesting, fascinating, and something we should never get angsty about ... but certainly not cut and dry.

I'm glad hulksmash said he (as well as plenty of others) enjoyed the tourney; it sounded like it was a well run fun event and I (as a supporter of KP) probably would have enjoyed it too. You've obviously got a strong already cemented opinion as to KP and their role in tourney play. As a tourney organizer, it's 100% your right to be able to set whatever nonstandard victory condition you want. Just keep in mind that it DOES significantly change the gameplay and comp of armies compared to other tournies.

p.s. how did you arrive at 16.1 KP for the nova open? i didn't see anything about turing in a max KP total or army lists in the 40k rules packet. Did you require people to give you a copy of their army list?

Yes, everyone gave me a copy of their army lists.

Please note that my opinion is never cemented, I just need hard facts to easily refute it on a lot of occasions. All of the arguments for and against kill points are just that ... arguments; opinion is opinion, none of them are "wrong."

MVBrandt wrote:
Distributing points into numerous combat effective threats is typically a good idea.

Agreed.

Spamming as many min-size units as possible is not always a good idea.

Agreed

Encouraging new players to take large, unwieldy and points-intensive units is a BAD idea.

Not sure I agree here. If a new player wants to play orks, why should you encourage them to take small, easily manageable units when the ork codex is stronger when playing larger, sometimes unwieldy units. The only way you learn to wield such units with skill is by playing them, and as you have stated, players with skill will do just fine with their big units.

...but encourages less experienced players to eschew decisions that would benefit them in 2/3 the book missions for decisions that at most benefit them in 1/3 the book missions.

Shouldn't we allow players, (all players, new, old, good, bad, etc) to make their own decisions. I have no doubt that your data is correct, and that you're absolutely right, making a choice that benefits you more in 2/3rds of the games is smarter than making a decision that benefits you in 1/3rd of missions. But it's not all "22 KP or 8 KP", and the varying in-between choices are a factor in list design. All other things being equal, a player gets to choose, do they want their two landspeeders in a single unit or as two distinct units. That's a one-KP at the expense of one extra threat. You're saying that because you believe the correct choice is always to take the two units, that the consideration that would lead one to take one unit should be dropped. That's taking a skill-test out of the hands of the player.

I think that the more things players get to decide on for themselves, they better the competitive state of the event. Let the player decide whether they think the KP consideration is worth changing their list over, don't make that choice for them.

I'm not sure if I agree on the last point. To wit, I encourage all veteran players to develop lists on their own and work out what they function best with on their own ... but when someone comes up to me asking for advice on how to build their first list, I generally suggest min-maxing off the bat .... bring a hard a list as you can at first, as you're learning the game, and tune it to your preferences as you gain experience.

As for the Ork comment ... not sure I agree; I don't think the dex works better with large unwieldy units. But that's a discussion for another forum altogether, no?

Squadrons is the only function I think we can point to and definitively say there's a difference. Especially as NOVA scored it, with each vehicle counted separately for VP purposes-- without KP, there's absolutely no reason (barring FOC considerations) to run a squadron.

Landspeeders in particular come to mind, but Leman Russes, Valkyries, maybe Kans (I still ran 3, but that was really the theme of the list, so...).

In 'normal' games, I usually see people running two units of two speeders- at the NOVA, the two lists I faced with Speeders had them all as individual units. Yes, yes, small sample, anecdotal, etc... But, I think it's a safe assumption to say that VP over KP removes a lot of the incentive for running squadrons.

I much prefer victory points it seems more fair to me. That way IG can't pull their blob squad shenanigans. SM aren't penalized for using combat squads and tau devilfish aren't worth double because of our gun drones.

I mean I know an IG player who can run a 3 KP list, so if he kills at least 3 of your units you can only win by tabling him.

Shas'O Dorian wrote:I much prefer victory points it seems more fair to me. That way IG can't pull their blob squad shenanigans. SM aren't penalized for using combat squads and tau devilfish aren't worth double because of our gun drones.

I mean I know an IG player who can run a 3 KP list, so if he kills at least 3 of your units you can only win by tabling him.

blob shenanigans? it's the entire purpose of the rule to make up for the KP-apoloza that the IG codex is. as for your "IG player who can run a 3 KP list", do you and your friends only play 250pt-500pt games? because thats the limit you'd need to have to run a 3 KP list with the ig (two vet squads and any HQ choice). if you want to play anything over that point total, you'll need significantly more KP. has your friend actually read the codex?

As for comparing the Adepticon to Nova on KP averages...Didn't the Space Wolf and Blood Angels codexes get released after Adepticon, thus changing the Meta (And those books tend to be the ones that use high-KP armies)?

The new Space Wolves codex was legal at AdeptiCon 2010.

skyth wrote:As for comparing the Adepticon to Nova on KP averages...Didn't the Space Wolf and Blood Angels codexes get released after Adepticon, thus changing the Meta (And those books tend to be the ones that use high-KP armies)?

space pups were last october or so (way before) but the BA were around adepticon... i don't recall if it was a little before or after.

warboss wrote:

Shas'O Dorian wrote:I much prefer victory points it seems more fair to me. That way IG can't pull their blob squad shenanigans. SM aren't penalized for using combat squads and tau devilfish aren't worth double because of our gun drones.

I mean I know an IG player who can run a 3 KP list, so if he kills at least 3 of your units you can only win by tabling him.

blob shenanigans? it's the entire purpose of the rule to make up for the KP-apoloza that the IG codex is. as for your "IG player who can run a 3 KP list", do you and your friends only play 250pt-500pt games? because thats the limit you'd need to have to run a 3 KP list with the ig (two vet squads and any HQ choice). if you want to play anything over that point total, you'll need significantly more KP. has your friend actually read the codex?

Irrelevant, as Guard barely broke .500 at the Open, and didn't even crack the Top 8.

MVBrandt wrote:

warboss wrote:

Shas'O Dorian wrote:I much prefer victory points it seems more fair to me. That way IG can't pull their blob squad shenanigans. SM aren't penalized for using combat squads and tau devilfish aren't worth double because of our gun drones.

I mean I know an IG player who can run a 3 KP list, so if he kills at least 3 of your units you can only win by tabling him.

blob shenanigans? it's the entire purpose of the rule to make up for the KP-apoloza that the IG codex is. as for your "IG player who can run a 3 KP list", do you and your friends only play 250pt-500pt games? because thats the limit you'd need to have to run a 3 KP list with the ig (two vet squads and any HQ choice). if you want to play anything over that point total, you'll need significantly more KP. has your friend actually read the codex?

Irrelevant, as Guard barely broke .500 at the Open, and didn't even crack the Top 8.

its irrelevant that his friend is either blatantly wrong in how he calculates his army or is possibly cheating in 1/3 of normal games? i'm sorry to break this to you but not everything in this thread revolves around you and the nova open; the post was clearly directed at shas'o dorian.

MVBrandt wrote:MSU is by usual definition the spamming of multiple small units. Stelek's list from the NOVA Open was MSU, for example.

Distributing points into numerous combat effective threats is typically a good idea. Spamming as many min-size units as possible is not always a good idea. Encouraging new players to take large, unwieldy and points-intensive units is a BAD idea.

Arguing extremes is never a good idea. However, you state that taking large units is a BAD idea, which implies that taking smaller units is a good idea. I agree that it may not always be smartest to take as many min-sized units as possible, but in general it seems to be the better solution for most armies. This maximizes specials, which maximizes killing ability. As you and others have previously noted, MSU's also have better mobility than LU armies.

So, there is a strong incentive to take MSU type armies. Kill Points are one way to help balance out the inbalance described above. My question is then, how do Victory Points address the described imbalance? According to the underlying theme of the rules, points are supposed to be a way to balance army lists. However, it seems to me that you have described a way in which the points are unbalanced and favor MSU, and are arguing against a victory condition that disfavors MSU.

MVBrandt wrote:You'll also want to look into the top finishers at Adepticon, i.e. the guys who lost none of their games, and the KP totals there. The heart of my own thesis, based on a great deal of collected data (not ... pictures), is that KP has little to no influence on top table results, but encourages less experienced players to eschew decisions that would benefit them in 2/3 the book missions for decisions that at most benefit them in 1/3 the book missions.

When a particular component of the rules harms newer players and has no impact on the final top scoring averages, I don't see it as a positive ... more importantly, it's an opinion that is widely shared - I very rarely do ANYTHING based purely off bullish ego and personal belief.

I don't think that looking at the top players or the bottom players is how KP versus VP should be evaluated. You should look at the middle bracket. Top players, as you yourself have mentioned, are likely to do well regardless of the victory condition. Bottom players are new or unexperienced and will make mistakes other than those purely related to KP/VP. IMO it is in the middle bracket that you will find players with enough experience not to make significant mistakes but who's victory may be influenced by KP vs VP.

If you take a player that will always win, then victory condition doesn't matter. If you take a player that will always lose, then victory condition doesn't matter.

Now, I'm an ork player and would love to run a Green Horde army, as it's a thematically correct ork army. Unfortunately, as I see it, all of the horde armies (Orks w/ lots of boyz, Nids with lots of gaunts, IG with lots of blob, etc) are at a disadvantage for all of the mission types except KP. VP favors MSU due to the greater killing power. Objectives and Table Quarters favor MSU due to the increased mobility. I would love to see one of the top players take a horde army and win a major tournament, but I don't see it happening.

From an ideal standpoint, army points should be equal. From a realistic standpoint, they are not. As you know there is an imbalance, wouldn't you think it is better to try to address the imbalance, rather than selecting missions that push players into a certain build type?

You know, I was threatened with suspension for speaking my mind in the Adepticon feedback thread, which was inevitably locked for that very thing, because I didn't actually attend and they didn't really want any criticism...I guess the thread title was deceiving.

I'm just saying, it was clearly established there that you have no right to speak ill of an event unless you wasted your valuable time and money attending it anyway, despite having no desire to go. And we have people in here admitting they didn't go because of the KP/VP issue, that are insisting that Mike change the rules of his tournament to suit them.

Ha. Let's just add that to the insane conspiracy theories being floated by some out there...if you want I can send you all the missions in advance so you can dominate the event...or better yet, just pretend like you came, lie about it repeatedly, and then you can bash us all you want!

1. That thread isn't locked.
2. We (AdeptiCon) have zero saying in what Dakka Mods do, nor do we care. We welcome all positive and constructive feedback - REGARDLESS of the source. What we do ignore is loud-mouthed braggarts who want, no NEED, everything to be about them. The hobby is much bigger than that. The AdeptiCon staff responses to you are measured and polite.
3. We get it - you HATE the INAT and you wouldn't be caught dead at our lame event. I am accepting of that viewpoint.

Sidstyler wrote:I'm just saying, it was clearly established there that you have no right to speak ill of an event unless you wasted your valuable time and money attending it anyway, despite having no desire to go. And we have people in here admitting they didn't go because of the KP/VP issue, that are insisting that Mike change the rules of his tournament to suit them.

Why are you trying to derail a nice, polite debate about the (general) merits of KPs vs VPs in a tournament setting, by dragging in baggage about other tournaments?

This thread is called "Kill points or victory points." Nothing in the OP limits it to "Feedback on the Nova Open," so many of us who didn't attend the Nova have felt free to participate.

Sidstyler wrote:You know, I was threatened with suspension for speaking my mind in the Adepticon feedback thread, which was inevitably locked for that very thing, because I didn't actually attend and they didn't really want any criticism...I guess the thread title was deceiving.

No you weren't. There was a general moderator note in the thread about trolling. You did not receive a personal warning. The thread was not locked. It's still open now. Everyone can speak their mind, within the boundaries of the forum rules, which include being polite and not trolling.

Sidstyler wrote:I'm just saying, it was clearly established there that you have no right to speak ill of an event unless you wasted your valuable time and money attending it anyway, despite having no desire to go. And we have people in here admitting they didn't go because of the KP/VP issue, that are insisting that Mike change the rules of his tournament to suit them.

Oh, so you accept that argument? Most organizers are primarily interested in feedback from attendees, as those are the people who have the best perspective on what actually went down and what they experienced. That said, Mike has solicited feedback from everyone, though naturally he weighs how much credence he gives any given response based in part on how well they seem to know or understand what they're talking about, and how cogently they make their argument.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/90/287787.page (Hey, I guess it wasn't locked...but in my defense it did immediately die after all that red text, so it might as well have been.)

Criticizing an event you didn't attend = "trolling". So that means Mike is getting trolled here.

And speaking of which, because my local store is adopting the rules/scenarios now, I don't have to attend Adepticon in order to complain about it, because they came to me. So now if I even want to play in local tournaments I have to put up with their rules, or stay home and never play, the latter of which I think everyone would agree isn't a realistic option after spending so much money on all those toys.

I think I'd better drop it though, at this point I'm just projecting my frustration at my local store at people who can't do anything about it anyway.

MVBrandt wrote:People who have learned to apply extreme skill to handicapped armies like nob bikers and jetseers to compensate for their difficulties in non-KP missions will continue to succeed regardless of the mission, so I'm not really sure that's at stake.

I really think you're bordering on a circular argument here. Armies/units which are given an advantage in KPs (like Nob bikers, jetseers, or Straken IG infantry horde) are not necessarily "handicapped" armies. Though if you remove the 1/3 of missions in which they particularly shine, you are certainly handicapping them.

MVBrandt wrote:At the heart of it, KP is too arbitrary a mission; the book has NUMEROUS missions in it (3 with 9 total variations); tying yourself to one that leaves a TON of players feeling as if it's absurd is foolish if you're running a tournament. Tying yourself to anything in particular is.

I don't see how KP is any more arbitrary than the game ending on a given turn, or the objective missions. As someone else noted, if in Capture & Control when the game ends I have a single Grot holding my objective, with a squad of berserkers six inches away, and you have 20 Thousand Sons holding your objective, it's still a tie. Despite how "realistically" the chaos player would easily win if the game lasted another turn.

A "TON" of players always complain about any change in the rules. Look at any Warhammer Fantasy forum right now to see the angst over True LOS being added to that game. For the most part, people get over it and learn to play the game the way it is now. Sometimes they don't. Over on warhammer.org.uk a bunch of folks are talking about a house ruled LOS system to use instead of the book rules. This really isn't that dissimiliar to what you've done with KPs at your event.

I don't think I've seen you respond yet to another point someone raised (and I apologize if I just missed it): what about the army books which have special rules specifically made for KPs? The big example is Lone Wolves, but they're not the only one. Heck, even the way SM & IG can split or glom their squads/platoons is a special rule clearly intended to give them interesting tactical options particularly in KP missions. By eliminating KPs from your event, you make that Lone Wolf rule meaningless, and you remove a dimension from one of the big special rules SM & IG have.

Sidstyler wrote:And speaking of which, because my local store is adopting the rules/scenarios now, I don't have to attend Adepticon in order to complain about it, because they came to me. So now if I even want to play in local tournaments I have to put up with their rules, or stay home and never play, the latter of which I think everyone would agree isn't a realistic option after spending so much money on all those toys.

Well..I imagine in terms of rules/scenarios you will enjoy the 2011 direction much more (even though it really isn't that much of a departure)...hopefully you can convince them to adapt that instead. Optionally, you can organize an event using whatever rules/scenarios you want - prove that it is a good time and then share the burden of organizing and running an event with others. The local Chicago group has been doing that for 18 months now (using the AdeptiCon format and swapping TOs every month so all have the chance to play). Works fantastically.

The problem with your take...attending AdeptiCon is much, much, much, much more than rules and scenarios and writing off the entire convention (which last year was 99 events strong) over one or two events is short-sighted. Writing off the convention over your disagreements with some rulings in the INAT is even more so.

Sidstyler wrote:http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/90/287787.page (Hey, I guess it wasn't locked...but in my defense it did immediately die after all that red text, so it might as well have been.)

Criticizing an event you didn't attend = "trolling". So that means Mike is getting trolled here.

Nkelsch and Anaxagoras said that to you. Not a moderator. You chose to go into a thread for feedback on an event and climb on your old hobbyhorse of complaining about the INAT. C99 and Yakface very courteously, and at length, responded to your comments. Another moderator then put up a general warning about trolling, and a request that INAT discussions go in a new thread. You didn't get a personal warning, nor were you threatened with suspension. We allow a lot of very warm discussion here, which is why you have gotten very little moderator correction.