Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Deadshane1 wrote:Looks like I'm in there like swimwear!

No, Emperor protects!!

Ack, VP vs KP again!

More to come on this ...

For what it's worth, we actually based our decision upon its impact across a single event, vs. a league or series of events.

VPs are fine, KPs just discourage GEQ(Other then Guard <ironically> and some eldar lists) far too much to even merit a realistic tourny, they also leave for some dramatically unfair tourny results. VPs even the playing field, alot, I just think its funny how a thousand sons player could be fine with VP while most of the w(h)in(e)ners are running 5th edition dexs that do fine in either KP or VP...

The "dramatically unfair" results would be a KP game where you have 4 people, Joe shmo, Bob Mason, Myself and Dash.

Dash and his orks are playing me and my 1ksons in a KP game. Me being 1ksons means in 2k points Im taking about 7 kps, he as orks is taking anywhere from 10-15, lets say 12 for good measure. (This means I can still beat him by a significant amount even if he kills me down to my last killpoint)

Joe brings Dark Eldar to Bobs Blood Angels, and its looking like Joe (in 2k points) has 20 kps, bob Has 9.

Dash loses half his list, but in the end tables me, taking 7 kps (net gaining 1 if you count his losses)

Bob basically breaks even with Joe, both losing half their army, so bob wins by with total 10kps (net gaining 6 if you count his losses)

Dash clearly had a better result in his game against me, but as of now, Bob has a higher standing due solely to the luck of his match up drawing...

In VPs, both games are 2k pts vs 2k pts, so there is much less room for such dramatically different(and in many cases, contradicting) results.

@Daemon

They don't limit GEQ. The only army left that bleeds KP's like crazy is Tau. Everyone else gives out how many they give out. Shep actually made an excellent statement the other day that boils down to:

If you only have 7 units and I have 19. Well your 7 units aren't going to be able to kill many units per turn. And each loss hurts your abilities greatly where each loss doesn't decrease his combat effectiveness.

KP's are a balancer. They are part of the rules in the main book. I play Wolves with 17 KP's and have to grit my teeth everytime I see a tourney without KP's because KP's give my oponents a chance against my style of build. Same goes with DE.

I realize a lot of gamers out there don't like them or find them "unfair" but it is part of 5th edition. They do balance well over the course a tournament. It's like not having DoW deployment which a lot of people don't like but it's pretty neccessary to balancing. VP's are the past and it's time to move on.

@ Hulksmash

I am also a big advocate of using kps versus vps. I agree with your points here.

G

The problem w/ KP in a tournament setting is precisely the fact that they don't balance over the course of it.

It is just as likely for - unless you are treating kp like some form of rudimentary composition - someone with low KP to play someone with even lower as it is for someone with high KP to play someone with even higher.

Your point is to a T the problem Hulk - you play a 17 KP wolf army. You aren't changing your army list to 5 or 10 in order to protect yourself from the eventuality of a KP mission. Instead, you play what you play.

Over the course of a league or season (which we've run before), KP makes a lot of sense, b/c you are guaranteed to run up against each player in the league on multiple occasions, which means you're going to have to deal with KP missions - it "balances" in this regard. Unfortunately, in a tournament setting where it's one of the missions but not always the win condition, you're faced with the problem of terrifically poor imbalance due to "luck of the draw." One person with a high KP army faces another high KP army in that particular round, while one person with a high KP army faces a very low KP army in the same round.

Our intent at the Open is not to replicate the 40k rulebook ... if we were, if you went with the "main rulebook" as gospel, you'd simply random dice every round on every table ... who cares about consistency across the tables and who has to play what mission ... army's gotta be ready to play each! Tournament settings are too short in terms of the number of match-ups and your odds of facing "unfavorable" ones for it to be fair unless each player is given equal opportunity to score off his opponents what his opponents can score off him in any given mission.

To wit, in a 2,000 point tournament, *if* we utilize a seek and destroy mission at all as one of the three, everyone can score 2,000 points off each other.

KP are excellent in a longer-term format. In a tournament they are the very fabric of "unfair," for the pure reason that luck of the draw renders the "difficulty" of matches across all tables EXTREMELY variable based purely upon draw, and not player skill. For these same reasons we've been pondering the # of objectives for the objective goal, and other "fairness" issues.

It remains the fact that as soon as one mech guard goes up against a 20 kill point opponent while the mech guard at the table next to him goes up against a 10 kill point opponent ... the very inclusion of that mission type has rendered the tournament "unfair." Similarly, the very second that an 8 kp army faces a 6 kp army while next to him his buddy with 8 kp is facing a 25 kp army ... unfairness abounds.

5th edition is not purely defined by its "basic" missions ... you don't see even GW itself, or really any tournament, utilizing "book missions" in their pure and simple state. Since our goal for the Open is to avoid - where possible - "luck of the draw" screwing up the results ... it's hard for us to buckle to KP.

An important thing to note is that I've used them before in every tournament and league I've run to date ... and across hundreds of games recorded, there hasn't been a noticeable variance between vp totals and winners in KP missions, either ... generally, the better player wins regardless. So if we can avoid unfairness in luck of the draw while not materially altering the result ... it's a win/win. Not to say we don't take the points of view of all sides seriously ... again, we've used KP in the past ... so it's hardly the expression of TO bias, as I hope it's clear by now that's not how I operate in terms of organizational decisions.

One thing that is positive is the context of this conversation to date, however - while there have been both sides presented throughout, neither side has gotten itself all in a tizzy over it ... a rarity on forums these days.


PS Hulk - it's a shame you can't make it ... anything I can do to help, let me know; I know there were some folks that perked up at hearing of your possible attendance from across country ... as many have perked up over the possible attendance of some of the other "well knowns" coming.

Just added Ohio to the list of states, btw ...

@ Brandt

5ed was specifically designed for kps, vps should be used as a tie breaker only.

G

Interesting that they would spefically tailor an entire edition towards one of 3 potential gametypes, especially when they also go on to mention that Victory Points may (and should) be used in all three of those game types...

Black Blow Fly wrote:@ Brandt

5ed was specifically designed for kps, vps should be used as a tie breaker only.

G

That's of course not true ... as much as it would be true to say that 5ed was specifically designed for the draw mission.

As I mentioned on the WC forums, I appreciate and consider strongly any amount of in-depth analysis/critique/etc. - if the case is made beyond a reasonable doubt that the above mentioned "luck of the draw" problem is irrelevant in terms of how KP operates ... fantastic! Simply asserting that the entirety of an edition was built specifically for one of three possible missions, the other two of which completely disregard it ... is a little excessive, no?

As also mentioned, we're not doing "bookhammer" here ... in fact, nobody does at the tournament level, and rightly so - including GW. We're - to our best ability - attempting to establish a balanced, fair tournament approach. I'd also like to see data where KP as a mission possible actually deters people / balances the game. Example: we once ran a 4-round tournament where you rolled book missions every round (for serious) ... 32 players, wide variance of list build. Despite facing off against a 12 kp fatecrusher army during his KP mission, the winner of that tournament was a 24 kill point ork army. You can see similarities across the depth and breadth of the tournament results field ... numerous wins by high kp armies in tournaments utilizing kp, numerous wins by similar in tournaments that don't ... numerous wins by low kp armies in both tourneys that do and don't use them. What you don't see is the subtlety of situations where legitimate contenders with both low and high kp lists are screwed on score/battlepoints/win condition by extreme wide variance KP match-ups for that "one" kp round. That it doesn't screw "everyone" is not the issue, as it were.

Appreciate continued deep analysis/discussion ... not so eager for one-liner assertions, but to each their own.

- Mike

PS - B/GBF, you can call me Mike, as opposed to Brandt, if you'd like ... peers here

Double post....Hate that!

Hulk - not a problem at all. You've presented legitimate discussion on the subject ... I'd like to think we both have. I'm not the type to hate on a guy for civilly not taking the same exact position as me

And def' bummed you can't make it out there. Nonetheless, you let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

- Mike

MVBrandt wrote:KP are excellent in a longer-term format. In a tournament they are the very fabric of "unfair," for the pure reason that luck of the draw renders the "difficulty" of matches across all tables EXTREMELY variable based purely upon draw, and not player skill. For these same reasons we've been pondering the # of objectives for the objective goal, and other "fairness" issues.

It remains the fact that as soon as one mech guard goes up against a 20 kill point opponent while the mech guard at the table next to him goes up against a 10 kill point opponent ... the very inclusion of that mission type has rendered the tournament "unfair." Similarly, the very second that an 8 kp army faces a 6 kp army while next to him his buddy with 8 kp is facing a 25 kp army ... unfairness abounds.

You can construct this same argument for every mission type - EVERY tournament game is heavily matchup dependent. My Tyranids are going to work a lot harder to manage a win in a 5 objective mission against ninja Mech'dar, as opposed to an all-terminator army w/2 units of scouts for scoring units. Does that mean the only "fair" mission is VPs, since there are always the same number available? What if you run into a VP-denial army (Mech'dar again)?

5th edition is not purely defined by its "basic" missions ... you don't see even GW itself, or really any tournament, utilizing "book missions" in their pure and simple state.

This is a separate separation issue, since almost no one has the time to let pure win/loss records resolve to a single winner in any tournament larger than 32 people (5 rounds).

An important thing to note is that I've used them before in every tournament and league I've run to date ... and across hundreds of games recorded, there hasn't been a noticeable variance between vp totals and winners in KP missions, either ... generally, the better player wins regardless. So if we can avoid unfairness in luck of the draw while not materially altering the result ... it's a win/win. Not to say we don't take the points of view of all sides seriously ... again, we've used KP in the past ... so it's hardly the expression of TO bias, as I hope it's clear by now that's not how I operate in terms of organizational decisions.

This is actually at odds with my experiences - every tournament I've attended recently has had at least 10% of the KP games end where the "winner" has significantly fewer VPs remaining. Part of that is the mission - if a 300+ pt unit can kill 2 35 pt Rhinos, I'm willing to make that trade.

I'll chip $100 into Hulksmash's plane ticket - anyone else wanna help?

I'm planning on coming to this tournament, but just a few questions after checking over the rules packet;

1) I see primary, secondary, and tertiary goals. Its my understanding that if you achieve the primary, the secondary and tertiary goals don't matter at all. This seems odd to me, as often the primary is worth x points, the secondary is y, and the tertiary is worth z... x,y, and z at increasingly lower values.

2) For objective placement, is there any stipulation on how high in a building the objective can be placed? i'm planning on bringing a biker army. If its possible for objectives to be on the 3rd floor of buildings, I'm probably going to have to re-think what army i'm bringing.

1. They're used to determine pairings/rankings in rounds 2, 3, and 4.

Here's snippage from our club forum where Mike explained it to us:
To the ratings, we do not use "battle points." So you do not accrue points by winning/losing, or ... really, anything. Instead, you maintain a rating based upon your performance across the breadth of the tournament.

This rating is determined by the equation:

Win % x 10 + Goal 1 % + Goal 2 % + Goal 3 %

Basically, that means if you are undefeated your rating will be between 10.0-13.xx. (in case you happen to table everyone, score everything, and face some tervigon tyranid who creates more vp for you to kill)
If you are 3-1 at the end of the day, your rating will be between 7.5-10.5.
If you are 2-2, your rating will be between 5.0-8.0.
If you are 1-3, your rating will be between 2.5-5.5.
If you are 0-4, your rating will be between 0-3.0.

2. Not sure, but maybe the 'ignore height' bit in the primer mission objective rules covers this.....?

yea, I was under the impression the "ignore height" remark meant that if I make a biker sergeant 12" tall, he can't claim a 3rd story objective... its measured horizontally. not sure about that.

and good to know that secondaries count for SOMETHING other than bragging rights.

Dashofpepper wrote:I'll chip $100 into Hulksmash's plane ticket - anyone else wanna help?

he can stay at my place to avoid a hotel room (I could probably accomdate a few other trustworthies looking to save $ as well). I live in Vienna, a 15-20 min drive to the expo center and I have a big car that I can use (I personally own a 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse with 10pt Dirge Casters/Torture amps installed, but I have access to 2 SUVs and a Land Raider ((Old ass Van)))

Here, more snippage explaining the pairings. The rankings are basically determined by your success percentage of all three goals.

64 ---> 32 x 1-0, 32 x 0-1
32 x 1-0 = #1 vs #32
32 x 0-1 = #33 vs #64

This leads to
16 x 2-0
32 x 1-1
16 x 0-2

#1 plays #16
#17 plays #48
#48 plays #64

This leads to
8 x 3-0
24 x 2-1
24 x 1-2
8 x 0-3

#1 plays #8

Since all those with a loss are in their "final round" barring an undefeated drop out for Day 2, the rest of the brackets now go Swiss to improve final round competition across all levels (no sense the bottom guy getting bludgeoned again, etc.)

#9 plays #10
#33 plays #34
#56 plays #57

just for a clarification (i'm sleepy and all your fancy numbers confuse me)

a guy who wins all 5 games will get first, even if he looses all secondary and tertiary missions, over a guy who wins 4 of 5 games, who wins all secondary and tertiary missions.

Awwww.....Thanks Dash and Daemon You guys are gonna make me blush!

Honersstodnt wrote:just for a clarification (i'm sleepy and all your fancy numbers confuse me)

a guy who wins all 5 games will get first, even if he looses all secondary and tertiary missions, over a guy who wins 4 of 5 games, who wins all secondary and tertiary missions.

Four games, but yeah, that's my understanding. Mike does point out that it is theoretically possible for a 3-1 player to rank higher than a 4-0 player tho.

Here's the link to the posts on our forum so you can read it in it's entirety:

http://www.ironfistleague.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2849

Don, thanks for the question answerings ...

It's important to note that this is NOT like your typical tournament with primary, secondary, and tertiary "missions," where each one is a relevant and valid goal.

Instead, there are basically three missions, but they are always "scoreable" in every round ... in each round there's only a single true win condition, but if you tie on it, you break that tie with the 2ndary, tertiary for that round, and eventually simple VP if everything else ties.

So ... don't think of it like your usual battle point tourney where there are "three missions" per round. That aside, remember that best overall is not stringently tied to record (2-2, 3-1 could win it, in theory, if they score well on their appearance / sports scores, since each is equal in value to record). The only thing stringently tied to record is the best general equivalent, we call it Tournament Champion, and that's the 6-0 winner of the 2nd day's Final Four.

Correction. I'm gonna be making it afterall. Ebay is our good friend. I'm also gonna have some stuff up in the Swap Shop soon for sale. So I'll see all you east coasters soon!

excellent... just remember though, when I defeat my enemies, I rip out and eat their hearts... to gain their courage.

their rich, tasty courage.

as an aside, any ruling on the "height" of objectives?

@ Hulksmash - Born and raised in OC myself. Would you mind bringing me some Carne Asada? =P

Good Mexican is hard to find out here =(

Ah, yes ...

I'll clarify that in the final rules packet, suffice to say that terrain will be pretty uniform across tables and deployment zones to ensure fairness. That said, there's only so much I can make the terrain "identical," so to prevent shenanigans or unfairness, objectives on higher "levels" of terrain will be captured purely based on horizontal distance.

Probably unnecessary to state, and it'll be clarified / foolproofed in the final packet.

Steve your going? this is gonna be fun

Great to hear you are gonna make it Hulk, I might check the swap shop to ninja some good deals to help you on your way!

Btw just so everyone knows, as stated, im bringing thousand sons to the table for this event. Any and all pity is welcome

Daemon-Archon Ren wrote:Great to hear you are gonna make it Hulk, I might check the swap shop to ninja some good deals to help you on your way!

Btw just so everyone knows, as stated, im bringing thousand sons to the table for this event. Any and all pity is welcome

I hope to see you round 5 or 6.

My only real fears are good BA/Eldar/ IG(duh) players*. Most other lists, especially Vanilla marines (even Salamanders) I can swallow turn 3.

My 1ksons beat Khorn Daemons in melee ON THE CHARGE (thats right, I struck at Init 1, wanna fight about it?).

~~~Edit~~~~
* And obviously... the Pink Orkz!