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We all know that Annihilation is cruel to certain army lists. Yes, I am looking at you IG.

I would like to suggest using a little math to even up the score.

After the game, for each player divide the number of kill points lost by the number of starting kill points and then compare the percentages.

This will even out the possibilities when someone brings 9 kill points versus your own 24.

Comments appreciated.

But that rquire people to be smart

Calculators are perfectly acceptable tools.

Or better yet: count survior points for each unbroken unit on the board, and each non-Immobilized Vehicle. Whoever has more units surviving, wins.

That's also fast and easy.

Or just use VP's.

If you can make an army list, your can work out VP's.

Really, really not that difficult, and it's balanced because each unit is worth what each unit is worth, rather than every unit, regardless of type, being worth the same.

BYE

Actually, come to think of it, wasn't there a solution to KP proposed by Stelek and Yakface (an unlikely couple I know). That one was quite good. Anyone remember what it was?

BYE

I think you're referring to the proposal where each player has 6 KP that they distribute across their units. I like that.

CK

Yeah, that was it. Quite a nice way of solving the problem as most people would put them on their hardest or more valuable units (and good, nothing's worse than you getting a KP for wiping out 30 Orks and them getting 2 KP for killing a pathetic Platoon Command Section).

BYE

Hmm the 6 KP idea sounds nice, however I think it should scale for the size of the battle (more KP in a 2000 point game than a 1000). Not sure how it would scale though (and be fair to non swarm armies). Perhaps up to 1 KP for every FOC unit?

I know it would make it more complex....

Good catch with the scaling thing Casper. The idea of tying it to points level works quite well. Say it was 2 KP for every 500 points or part thereof. So a 2000 point game would have 8 KP. A 1000 point game would have 4.

Easy. Amazing that GW couldn't think of this.

BYE

Not to try and be the naysayer of the bunch but...that system dosn't "fix" the kp issue. Nids for example get the ugly stick for that where as SM could just toss it onto Termies and have no fear. In my Nid army things are dirt cheep, so everything is relatively easy to kill. So i put one on my fex, and tyrant. But other that nothing else is too hard to kill. The Sm player tosses them out to Temies, HQ that he then sticks with Tems. He has is Landraider and a slew of other hard to kill. I may have the larger squad size that he has to break but ive seen a squad of 20+ Horms slaughtered by focused fire from his army fraction of his army. the other part then oped up with las cannon on the fex that was trying to get cover, by by fex.

The option stays, Toss them to the tings that i know hes going to pick out anyway and hope that he can ignore what is going to be hitting him B4 he knocks out all my KP or toss it to the things he wont at much of a issue being able to kill.

That and then there's the 5-man unit of whatever that stays way out of LOS so you can't get to it.

Sorry guys, but nothing of what you've said is any different to:

A). Denying VP's in 3rd/4th.
B). Denying KP's in 5th.
C). Made any better or worse with the Yakface-Stelek-Casper system (as I'll call it) of KP's.

What the major thing is here is that the player decides where to put those KP's.

You, psf3077, complain about a Marine player throwing the KP's on a unit of Terminators and how that's bad for your Tyranids. Well, I'm sorry, that's your hangup, not the fault of the proposed rules. With KP's being decided by the player, rather than arbitrarily handed out with no basis in actual unit value (like the current system), it is up to the player to create lists to go around that. If you know you're going to be playing, say, a 1500 point game (6KP) then you design your list knowing in advance where your KP's are going to go. If you can't find good units to act as your KP units then that's hardly your opponent's fault now is it?

By the same token, Spellbound, yes someone can hide a 5-man unit of whatever in a corner and assign a KP to them... but so can you. And even if you don't and they do, that's X points worth of their army you don't have to face.

You haven't found a flaw in the system, you're just complaining about what the other person could do to you, ignoring the fact that the system works both ways. Anything they can do you can do, and as the decision for where the KP's lie happens before the game, if your KP's end up on bad units that it's the fault of the player, not the system.

BYE

HBMC does have some good points. If you know your opponent is going to put his KP on hard to kill units, just bring killy units to counter them.

If you are trying to hide a unit, then what you are doing is taking out their effectiveness towards your army and just easily factoring out x amount of points your opponent has to get through.

IMO, the way to make the Stelek 6-KP thing work is to do it similar to Apoc Objectives, with each player assigning some KPs. Each army is guaranteed to have 1 HQ and 2 Troops, so that makes it easy to assign KPs:
- 1 KP on one of your HQ units
- 1 KP on one of your Troops units
- 1 KP on one of their Troops units

Can the system be gamed? Sort of.

If you take the minimum 1 HQ and 2 Troops, then you know pretty clearly where the KPs must go. But then you're not going to have an easy time in Objectives missions with a maximum of 2 Scoring units. In such a case, you want a sturdy HQ and 2 super-sturdy max-size Troops.

But even if you have weedy Guard Troops, you can mitigate things somewhat with Transports and self-screening

Why assign it to Troops Choices? How do you assign it to Guard Troops choices? One squad in a Platoon? The whole Platoon? Does you have to kill the whole platoon? 50% of the platoon? [Arbitrary requirement] of the plantoon?

The simplest solutions are often the best (but Ocam's Razor-y of me, yes, but bear with me here), and it's far simpler to just go:

You have X KP per 500 points. You can assign them to any unit, but no unit may have more than one KP until every unit has a KP (in those rare instances you're playing Deathwing or Grey Knights and have very few units).

There's no ambiguity there. There's no 'gaming the system', or, to be more accurate, no more than any other 'points' system (present or past) and you don't require a system of qualifiers or prerequisites or any of the stuff whathisface above me is babbling about.

It's simple. It (should) work.

And the name is good - Yakface-Stelek-Casper (YSC).

BYE

I don't like it simply because it will lead to deathstars like in fantasy. Now, yes, the unit of 10 biker nobz with a painboy is worth 1 KP and that's really hard to get - luckily I can kill the rest of his army and still hope to win.

When the kp are isolated on the two squads of nobs he has and the warbosses within those incredibly deadly units, and the rest of his army counts for NOTHING, but I can't ignore it [9 killa kanz really kind of demands your attention, lest you regret it], it makes the game an incredibly uphill battle.

For those armies that don't have fearless units of 2-wound, 4+/4+/4+ save models that are incredibly deadly at shooting AND assault, the game's a bit more difficult. Yeah, nids can have a T7 regenerating 5 wound carnifex but that's hardly unkillable, and not nearly as deadly as the squad of nobz, and probably costs more points. Armies like guard have nothing that "dead 'ard", nor do Tau or, let's face it, just about anyone else. Or, if they do, it's only one unit that's that tough, meaning if anyone wants to be KP-competitive, they'll all be using the exact same army build featuring the exact same units.

I like the 'Ard Boyz system. It kind of swings too far the other way for imperial guard [having to hunt down every single squad and sentinel in a platoon for that single kp sucks], but it balances most other things and also keeps lash princes honest by making them incredibly high KP in return for their usefulness [and they're unfortunately incredibly easy to kill]. I like the 3 KP per HQ though as it makes LEADERS actually IMPORTANT and it penalizes you when you let them get killed. Not quite as badly as Warmachine but there should still be SOME penalty to losing your commander besides "aw, my WS6 I5 power weapon is gone".

The game's likely to revolve around such a unit anyway isn't it? Someone who takes a two Biker Nob army intents to use them as the focal part of their force, so they should be worth something. It's not like they're taking two Nob Biker units, assigning 4 of their 6 (say) KP's to the unit (2 for both units, 2 for the attached Warboss) and then hiding them in a corner where you can't get them.

Again, I don't see the issue here. Furthermore you're not pointing out a flaw in the YSC system, you're pointing out a current imbalance in the Ork Codex.

BYE

BYE

iphoenix wrote:We all know that Annihilation is cruel to certain army lists. Yes, I am looking at you IG.

I would like to suggest using a little math to even up the score.

After the game, for each player divide the number of kill points lost by the number of starting kill points and then compare the percentages.

This will even out the possibilities when someone brings 9 kill points versus your own 24.

Comments appreciated.

Man that's an awesome idea.

Whatever method you use to determine victory should be simple and easy to understand. It shouldn't take long to figure out since you want the tournament to end on time. It takes over 9 hours to play 3 games of 40K at a big event. KP does this nicely... unfortunately that is all it does.

I think the only easy solution is to never determine victory by damage inflicted upon the enemy unless it is something specific like Kill the HQ. Objectives are easy to understand and if you want to know where you stand during the game you just look at the board. Viva la objectives!

Surely working out surviving KPs as a fraction or percentage of initial KPs can't be considered difficult?!

I think the best method is, was, and will always be, KP tied directly to point value. No other solution can rival it for fairness.

One thing about doing VP is you can specifically change a unit's VP:

"Though not critical to the battle, the PDF governor is an asset your force must protect. They are worth +100 VP over their points value to reflect their importance to your side."

"Your mindless robot servitors can be sent to die without qualms. The only loss is the future shots they might fire and take. Their VP is only 1/2 of their points value."

Percentage of kill points works no better than the straight kill points solution. It's still able to be gamed, in this instance you want an imbalance between your units -

EG Army 1:
Captain
2x 10 Assault Terminators
4x 10 Marines
4 Rhinos

Army 2:
Captain
2x 10 Assault Terminators
4x 10 Marines
1 Predator

Killing a unit of Assault Ternimators in the first army is worth 9%, killing a unit of assault terminators in the second army is worth 12.5%. Rhinos go from a kill points vulnerability to a potential advantage. Plus the system requires a calculator for most people.

I have yet to see a "fix" which is as simple as Kill Points or as fair as Victory Points.

yakface wrote:

iphoenix wrote:We all know that Annihilation is cruel to certain army lists. Yes, I am looking at you IG.

I would like to suggest using a little math to even up the score.

After the game, for each player divide the number of kill points lost by the number of starting kill points and then compare the percentages.

This will even out the possibilities when someone brings 9 kill points versus your own 24.

Comments appreciated.

Man that's an awesome idea.

I always hated calculating KPs at the end of the battle. It wasn't that hard but I never really felt that it properly reflected how the battle had gone. So I feel that this solution is rather good.

Neil wrote:Percentage of kill points works no better than the straight kill points solution. It's still able to be gamed, in this instance you want an imbalance between your units -

EG Army 1:
Captain
2x 10 Assault Terminators
4x 10 Marines
4 Rhinos

Army 2:
Captain
2x 10 Assault Terminators
4x 10 Marines
1 Predator

Killing a unit of Assault Ternimators in the first army is worth 9%, killing a unit of assault terminators in the second army is worth 12.5%. Rhinos go from a kill points vulnerability to a potential advantage. Plus the system requires a calculator for most people.

I have yet to see a "fix" which is as simple as Kill Points or as fair as Victory Points.

You ignore the fact that in the first army the rhinos still are a "kill points vulnerability." Why kill a squad of assault termies for your 9% when you can just las cannon a rhino for the same price? Do it twice and now you're up to 18%, which is more than a unit of assault termies in either army.

And as much as people are praising the old VP system, I never liked it. You had to pay for your units twice. Once when you bought them, and once when they died. That 250 point land raider didn't just mean that you could take less units in your army because it was so expensive, it also meant that with a single heavy weapon shot your opponent could claim one sixth of the available victory points.

Now kill points was no perfect solution by any means, but I do like the OP's proposed idea.

What I do like about Kill Points is that it discourages cheap suicide units and removes the penalty to more expensive that aren't well protected considering their points value. Sending in a unit to disrupt or on the gamble that they will take out one high value unit doesn't help as much anymore, tactically anyway. Pretty much I feel it encourages the hunting of the weakest units, which is more realistic, rather than the most expensive units.

My problem with KPs is that they currently aren't working as they are assigned, with some armies getting over a dozen or so while their opponent will have five. Pheonix's suggestion, which I really like, fixes this rather nicely. Armies with lots of KPs are still at a bit of a disadvantage, but are generally better off otherwise.

How many times do we go over this on Dakka?

One of the major advantages of KP is that they balance the other two missions. They're not meant to be FAIR, regardless of your army selections. They're meant to give you something to think about when building your army - to stop you from Min/Maxing and encourage you to take large units rather than multiple small ones. KP provide a counterpoint to the other missions, which encourage armies to take lots of troops choices.

Shall i take an entirely mechanised army? Well, on one hand I might get a C&C mission and my transports will be a massive advantage. On the other hand, I might get KP and they'll be a liability. I guess I'll just have to BUILD A BALANCED FORCE...

If you use VPs, or a 'fair' KP system based on 'points' or allocation by the players, then you remove the restrictions the THREAT of KP places on your army selection.

Suddenly, we're back to Mix/Max units and all-mechanised armies, because there's no reason NOT to take them. The only thing you ever have to think about when selecting your army would be objective-grabbing.

Obviously all this counts for nothing for IG, and I agree that for the time being they're in a bad situation. However, only a couple of months till a new codex, I'm sure we'll see this addressed...

I would completely disagree, both with your suggestion and your interpretation. All mechanized armies have never really been a big problem in 40k, at least as far as I've heard, basically because you tie up a lot of points in your transports. Knocking them out not only takes away your advantage of having vehicles but also removes those points from play. Taking mechanized isn't min/max it is a gamble, one YOU have to weigh. If I take more guys, that means I have more options over time, if I take vehicles, I have fewer options, but I can move faster, making time less of a factor to battle, though if I lose the speed, I am much worse off. There are very good reasons not to take vehicles.

Skinnattittar wrote:I would completely disagree, both with your suggestion and your interpretation....Taking mechanized isn't min/max it is a gamble, one YOU have to weigh.

You COMPLETELY disagree?

Ok, there is a major disadvantage to taking Mechanised armies, one of points, and you're right that this must be taken into account when you choose your army. As a slight recompense, we find that rhinos only cost 35pts each now. But still, there is a cost involved, and you have to take this into accoutn when building your army. I completely agree

But min/max was still a problem in 4th, as you seem to agree. KPs are specifically designed to counter this and, just like a mechanised army, they are something you need to take into account when building your army. They're an influence on your army-building, and in this way they work exactly as intended. Any 'fair' 'solution' to KP ignores this....