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This maybe in the wrong forum, of so, my apoligies.

I played an annihilation game today with my 2k point Ork Kan Wall against a Space Wolf 2k point list.

The game went as it usually does, with my wall just crashing over the enemy. The end result, however, miffed me quite a bit.

At the end of the game, this is left on the board:

Space Wolf:
Immobalized Bjorn
5 Scouts
6 Grey Hunters
3 Terminators

Ork:
3 kans
3 kans
1 immobalized kan (last of his squad)
BW w/ Deffrolla
Deff Dread
Big Mek
Full squad of 30 Boyz
10 gretchin + runtherd

I won this game by a SINGLE killpoint. The one and only game I lost ended a lot like this, against the same army, where I lost by one killpoint and in the last round my opponent took the last surviving member of two decimated squads and everything else he had and ran it away from me. All out retreat. And he WON this game by a KP because I couldnt drag him down with the half of my army that was still remaining?

Ugh.

/rant over.

What do other people think about killpoints?
How do you fellow greenskins deal with this?

I'm about to re-do my army list and get rid of any "easy" Killpoints. I'll be running something like 4 full squads of boyz (one of them hardboyz), 3 full squads of kans, two big meks, and a full squad of like 15 lootas. I'm so fed up with having close games that are easily called "blow-outs". The fewer KP, the better, it seems.

Thoughts?

I love killpoints. Won a game last week in the tournament with only 4 models left on the board. This was in 1850 list and I had 1 Sternguard Sergeant, 1 Rhino, 1 Vindicator with no guns, and 1 Termator. Won 11-9 on kill points because the other guy took drop pods.

Kill points is the great equalizer. You can't just take a bunch of powerful units that are easy to kill. You have to tone it down in the firepower department if you want to have some resiliency. If you build your army to destroy the enemy, or capture objectives, you should have to face a weakness in kill point games. If your army was just better than everyone elses in every game..... what would be the point of playing? Where would the drama be?

-Myst

It just means you have to do things differently I guess.

If you haven't adapted to kill points by now then the problem is with you.

And I think they keep certain armies from being horrendously over powered. I win in VPs virtually every game with my guard, kill points are a lot harder to win with.

KPs also discourage suicide units some, which makes the game more realistic. Suicide missions do exist, but you would run out of troops quickly if you got your bravest troops killed every battle.

Sounds very similar experience to my 1750 ork kill point game i was playing last week. i won by 1 point. Despite my opponent making it his lifes mission to destroy my 30 gretchin mob. He got it down to one runherd who fled into a position he couldnt shoot at. Thus denying him the all important point!

Well, I hate it when fielding SM but just LOVE it with crons
It helps balancing some FTW lists, but still is flawed imo

Killpoints balance MSU armies. In theory.

On the flip side, I play DE, and I have 24-27 KP in my list pretty much all the time. If you table your opponent, you win KP missions even if you lost more KP. =D

Don't feel alone, I'm a Guard player. I have consitently higher KP's thanks to tranports and individual infantry squads inside of platoons.

One thing to keep in mind is how can one fix the problem? Are they infallible, of course not. But are victory points any better? They in theory balance things by focusing on the important mantra of 'making the units points back', but that starts to fall apart when dealing with some of the older codexes who have over-costed units and fails to take into account things by be making the points back in ways other then killing off the opponents units, such as instead protecting important units like troops.

Just something to think about I suppose.

As it has been said, Kill Points balance MSU. Without KP, there would be no reason not to go entirely MSU. There would be more targets for your opponent to deal with and more opportunity to engage multiple targets, often times with min-maxed specials. There has to be a drawback. Enter Kill Points. MSU is obviously still viable, but it can easily lose the game for a player as well. You want the versatility and power of six min Razor units? Well, don't complain when your 1500 point list has 21 soft killpoints to your opponents 12.

A common arguement I hear is "why is killing Abaddon worth the same as killing 3 ripper swarms?" The answer is, it isn't. Look at it this way. A player can deep strike in a Landspeeder and blow up a Landraider. The speeder is likely to subsequently die. Regardless, the tradeoff of 1:1 killpoints is still worth it to the Landspeeder player. Why? Because they are taking out something far more valuable to the other player. If kill points didn't exist, this scenario would be even more lopsided for the Speeder player. As it stands, it's still a good move, just not a super OTT one because of the KP offset.

I guess growing up with VP's has had an effect on my views... and i prefer them overall, and still play the odd game with VP's
However KP's are easy to adjust to, they are open to some abuse but the same can be said about VP...

*shrug* My little gaming group ignores killpoints because, well, what better way to show your army was good than wiping the opponent's army off the table

Victory points are a much better representation of game performance than kill points.

Yes, hiding that last model in cover...thats not tactics, that working the inadequacies in the system.

Every single event I have been to does not use them, they use victory points.

Yes, victory points are a bit more work (you have to do math! Oh no! ). Also, regarding balancing MSU...if a unit is small, its easier to get it to 50%, so it still balances out.

We need to raise the IQ in this game, not lower it.
(well, this is the last part of the dumbing down that needs to be addressed, but it is one of them).

If you don't like kill points, tell you opponent you would rather use VP. If they are a douche-bag about it, play someone else.

davethepak wrote:Yes, hiding that last model in cover...thats not tactics, that working the inadequacies in the system.

So in a warzone, you wouldn't hide behind a building, you'd run out in the open and get killed? Work on your arguments a bit more.

I personally tolerate KP. Without them, mech armies would become supremely overpowered, with them, heavy mech has some significant downsides.

Gavo wrote:

davethepak wrote:Yes, hiding that last model in cover...thats not tactics, that working the inadequacies in the system.

So in a warzone, you wouldn't hide behind a building, you'd run out in the open and get killed? Work on your arguments a bit more.

I personally tolerate KP. Without them, mech armies would become supremely overpowered, with them, heavy mech has some significant downsides.

I play tau, I hug cover better than lichen.

However, there is a difference between tactically maneuvering units (putting your long fangs in cover) for a tactical advantage and working the system (I have only two guys left, let me run them totally out of LOS where I can't use them the rest of the game, but do so to deny the other player a kill point!).

I tolerate kill poitns as well, I just don't like them. They are like reality tv: they can showcase the worst in human behavior and promote it.

IG mech are already overpowered (a colossus is how many points?Really?), and heavy mech suffers from squadrons.

HOWEVER, I may not fully grasp the details of your statement about mech, so may need more clarity before my responses either make sense, or you change my opinion.

As an IG player, you'd think I would hate KP missions..but I don't...

I voted for the second option..in all honesty there are more advantages to playing with a lot of effective units than thinking about how much KP's they offer to the enemy..I say kill or be killed....so focus on killing those units which are the greatest threats in getting those KP's from you, and the game will swing your way...

I put down "I love it!" in part for this reason:

Dashofpepper wrote:Killpoints balance MSU armies. In theory.

Objectives missions exist to hurt armies who only fill their list with toys. Old, ultra-bottom-heavy 4th ed lists were purposely made uncompetitive. But what's to stop MSU troop spam? Something that penalizes you for taking a bunch of weak units. Hence kill points.

Plus, it's a strong counter to mech armies, which rely on cheap, disposable transports. If you think mech spam is ridiculous now, imagine that there was no penalty to taking them.

It's not 100% perfect (rules don't always have potential meta in mind when they are written), but I think it's WAY better than people give it credit for.

Plus, I've yet to read about a good enough replacement...

Wow, talk about getting a response!

I love all the talk here, and getting so many opinions.

I guess I'm just bias because I like having a little of everything, especially the cool stuff, but with KP thats a negative.

Going to post an army in the army builder section that is my attempt at running a kan wall with minimal KP's. Check it out!
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/351452.page

Objectives missions exist to hurt armies who only fill their list with toys. Old, ultra-bottom-heavy 4th ed lists were purposely made uncompetitive. But what's to stop MSU troop spam? Something that penalizes you for taking a bunch of weak units. Hence kill points.

Plus, it's a strong counter to mech armies, which rely on cheap, disposable transports. If you think mech spam is ridiculous now, imagine that there was no penalty to taking them.

It's not 100% perfect (rules don't always have potential meta in mind when they are written), but I think it's WAY better than people give it credit for.

Plus, I've yet to read about a good enough replacement...

+1

Mech and MSU is already good enough. There would be no check to it without KP. Obviously, some sort of weighted KP system would be a bit better, but I have yet to see that flushed out. Maybe 1 KP for every 100 points of a unit to a minimum of 1. So a Rhino is still worth one but something like Abaddon would be worth 3? I don't exactly know if that would really solve everything. I suppose MSU would still have a bit more KP than a balanced list, but it might quite the min-max crowd a bit.

It's a shortsighted one-size-fits-all system that the 5th ed writer spit out because they were too ignorant of their competitive playerbase to build and test good enough mission packs.

davethepak wrote:Victory points are a much better representation of game performance than kill points.

Yes, hiding that last model in cover...thats not tactics, that working the inadequacies in the system.

The exact same thing happens in VP games, to conserve half points for the unit. The exact same thing. Your anger is misplaced.

davethepak wrote: Also, regarding balancing MSU...if a unit is small, its easier to get it to 50%, so it still balances out.

This is not even vaguely true. Re-read the Landspeeder & Landraider example from earlier in the thread.

5th edition codices are specifically designed with KPs in mind. It is an all-important balance on cheap vehicle spam. 35pt Rhinos and 55pt Chimera are incredibly good as they are; without KP they become broken as heck.



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ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:If you haven't adapted to kill points by now then the problem is with you.

And I think they keep certain armies from being horrendously over powered. I win in VPs virtually every game with my guard, kill points are a lot harder to win with.

KPs also discourage suicide units some, which makes the game more realistic. Suicide missions do exist, but you would run out of troops quickly if you got your bravest troops killed every battle.

This.

I played with VPs for most of my games over the first nine years I played. It was okay, but far less balanced and enjoyable than the objectives/KP mix we have now.

I only started playing again last year after over a decade (last time i'd played was 3rd edition) and when I first encountered Kill points I hated them. The penalized some armies far more than others which didn't seem balanced especially as I was starting up a mechanised Ork army so lots of cheap, weak transports.

Having played more and more game though I've begun to see the point, It makes you more careful about throwing units into certain death situations for one.

As Ailaros said, it's not perfect but it's not as bad as it's made out to be.

I normally love killpoints and don't see that much wrong with them.

The only time I really disliked them was in a 1k game I had against a CSM. At the end of turn 7 he had a Defiler w/o his Cannon, and I had a Battlewagon, no damage, and 2 Nobz, both with PK's and a Painboy. He won by 1 KP which I thought was bull****, but sometimes that's just the way it happens.

Yup. Sometimes if your opponent has significantly fewer KPs than you, Annihilation is an uphill battle for you. That said, he has the same uphill battle when you two use the same army lists to play Seize Ground.

I do not like kill points.

Yes, they have a balancing effect on list building and general gameplay, but it just feels lame.

Playing with objectives makes me feel like an army commander with strategic goals. Playing kill points makes me feel like a pair of six year olds throwing army men at each other. Obviously in 40k, the strategic goal will often be the annihilation of the enemy, but I guess I find it sort of stupid in actual gameplay.

Also, I play infantry guardsmen. So there's that.

Well whatever, at least it's not victory points, that's even lamer.

I would say that they balance things out. as BA I only field about 10-11 KP in a 2000 point list, This means that I probably have a grand total of about 55 units on the field, including vehicles. At the end of the game, regardless of how well I'm doing, I will be down to 1-2 units and Tyranids or Orks will have half their army left. by kill points I stomped them but if the game went to turn 18 I'd never have a chance ever against those armies. against guard, those tanks makes them insanely survivable, I feel they should have a drawback of costing them a kill point.

I also think that if your games are coming down to 1 kill point that it looks like KP are working as intended, the two armies are fairly balanced against each other in those fights.

I must say, this is one of the most balanced polls I've seen, so kudos to the OP.

I prefer victory points, I must admit, but then again, Kill Points do a good job of providing some draw-back to MSU armies.

As such, I voted for like, but flawed.

Kill points are okay. We usually play them, although we usually just ballpark the KPs I don't have a problem when I play Nurgle marines, but DE suffer, especially against MEQ.

...Not disregarding everybody's thoughts on balancing MSU's, but if this was the case why are there so many lists that are razorback spam or equivalent of? Not exactly balance since it appears the codex itself has a bigger impact than KP's.

I like Kill points in theory, they tend to break down because of inadequacies (single models surviving out of 30 model units etc), and because there are serious problems with integrating the codices into the KP model, even in some of the 5th ed codices (IE, Parasite of Mortrex's ability to spawn single model units, the laughably easy to kill/crappy offense drop pods and spore pods).

It goes from balancing the game against MSU, and into making certain things instant lose buttons when KP missions come up. Plus the issues with needing to actually finish off the last grot, lasgun guardsman etc, which further unbalances the game in favor of assaulty armies that can take out a unit instead of just rendering it ineffective.