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Taken from my blog:

I've seen ALOT of complaining about Kill Points.

Truth is, they will NEVER change until the next edition of 40k comes out. Even then, I have my doubts.

That said, there are alot of threads on the internets that I haven't bothered to read, all wanting to fix KP's.

Want to fix KP's?

There is an easy, painless way to do so.

Every army has a fixed number of KP's assigned to it, say, six total.

Each unit in your army can be assigned a single KP. Non-Troops must be assigned KP's first. After that, you can assign KP's to anything you want to with the caveat that you cannot assign another KP to a unit with a KP until every unit already has a KP.

The secret? You designate your KP choices during army creation, before you choose a mission. There can be no 'secrets', your opponent must know which of your units are KP units before you do ANYTHING.

This makes the game missions less about 'I brought the rock army for KP missions, so I win' and more about the gameplay.

This essentially makes what GW wants (a troops centric game) even more so.

Everyone has the same amount of KP's in their lists, no matter how they choose to build their list--and it makes the KP system mesh with the rest of the game missions where there are clearly set objectives. Also, it's easy to scale the KP's to the points level, if desired. So you can have 2 KP's for a combat mission. 3 for 1000 points. Whatever GW desires, can be done.

The current KP system is a mismanaged bungle, and it hurts SALES. Why? People want to play in balanced game systems where ANYTHING THEY BUY WORKS. This is not the case in KP missions, where a IG horde full of 60 point units is somehow worth "more" to the enemy with five 300 point units...it's not like the Codices were balanced or even written with this in mind, so why was it allowed?

Very poor game design indeed.

Will it be fixed?

Doubtful. Sadly, it needs to be fixed NOW before enough players have played the KP missions and "lost" because of this. Don't tell players to do what they want in army creation, then tell them in the mission section that they have a unsporting army and this is the penalty.

' you' is always a bad message to send to someone giving you money.

I like your idea a lot, even better than my Kill Point ratio idea.

Kudos.

I'd have to agree to you in most, if not all, respects. As a (rabid) Guardsman, Kill Points turn the Guard Infantry squad, already a great liability for a Guard player, into an even bigger one. The only greater liability would have to be the command squads, as they are squads composed of 5 Guardsmen that are worth 2 KPs.

I'll curtail my post here to prevent going on a bitter tirade.

Thats a very clear and very refreshing post on KPs. It seems very practical, and would definitely level the playing field hugely. I like the idea of putting them on non-troops first, thats pretty cool. And a fixed total makes So much more sense..!

nice one, now send it to GW and we'll sit on our thumbs.

Ibushi

Hmmmm. I wasn't really thinking about Guard (the achillies heel of the whole KP system).

With your revision Stelek, a Guard player could possibly assign his KPs to six of his squads then do his best to keep those squads hidden away.

Of course, fighting without some or all of six units is going to be pretty harsh for the IG anyway, and most good players would figure some way to root out those hiding Guard units but still, I'd say it's a small weakness with the (overall great) concept.


I'd say that using a Kill Point ratio would still be the most "fair" for all army types, but in terms of simplicity and ease of use your idea seems worth any strangeness the IG causes to it.

Thanks Yak (and everyone else).

I sent it to Dave.

KISS, ya know?

It can still be abused, to a certain extent by running very expensive units and minimizing your choices.

However that usually means low model count, and that usually means you can't compete very well against alot of armies.

The new 'elite' isn't, really.

At the minimum, I'd rather have a system where everyone is at least 'technically' equals than one where no one is (which IMO is the current state of affairs).

However you are correct, hiding 60 (or 30) guys...well, you can ALWAYS game a system.

Keeping units offboard (cough skyleap needs fixing because of the utter trash of facing a 3 KP eldar army) is one way.

I'd say everyone will want to hide KP's, but once you realize you really cannot hide them--people will stop making abusive lists and just go back to fun/competitive ones.

I will post said abusive list so people can see why skyleap needs fixing (the only example I can think of really) and link it here.

Discussion is a good thing, IMO.

From my understanding, I think Dave is committed to sticking with the basic Kill Points as written in the book for this year's tournament just so people can get a good hang of how the 5th edition rules in the book work (which I don't think is a bad idea).

But perhaps next year if enough people complain about KPs after the tournie it seems like he'd definitely consider some alternate ideas.

Lists like this WILL show up. Designed to try and take a couple KP's from you, and deny you the ability to win.

Is this really what GW wants? I hope not.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/215253.page#339638

yakface wrote:
From my understanding, I think Dave is committed to sticking with the basic Kill Points as written in the book for this year's tournament just so people can get a good hang of how the 5th edition rules in the book work (which I don't think is a bad idea).

But perhaps next year if enough people complain about KPs after the tournie it seems like he'd definitely consider some alternate ideas.

Oh, I just want the feedback to get to GW is all.

I have very very low expectations.

The janitor will clean today.

That low.

I don't think a list like that will do particularly well in non-annihilation games though.

Sure 30 Wraithguard are tough, but many armies can either blow them away by the end of the game (or better yet) assault and kill 'em by the end of the game.

Since Annihilation won't be used in every (or even most) GT mission those who build specifically for it are probably not going to do that well overall.

It's the armies that do well in both Annihilation and non-Annihilation missions that will do especially well (Ork hordes come to my mind).

True, but I'm tired of 'Denial' armies. They don't bother me personally, I bring balanced armies...but I see the problems with the GT circuit (attendance, soft scores) and this doesn't help in the slightest that you can essentially be a in 2/3 of the games.

What's that gonna be? 3 out of 5 games where you can't win against this army?

That will drive players away from the hobby, IMO.

With Annihilation making up only 1/3 of the rulebook missions I would expect the GT to probably have 2 of the five games use it.

Every time I try to anticipate the missions at a GT, I am unpleasantly surprised. lol

One year I swear it was kill the other HQ all day Saturday.

The only problem with the proposal is that it requires KP markers or counters to be placed on each unit.

The default 1 KP/unit has the advantage of not requiring markers.

I think that advantage, or disadvantage, is so significant in the grand scheme of things..it would really change nothing. Besides, GW has gone crazy about making tons of markers for all kinds of units these days. As if keeping up with wounds on multi-wound models wasn't complicated enough..and thats existed as long as the game has.

I really don't see the potential adding of markers having any influence on this kind of KP scoring, but when I get a chance I would quite like to test it out myself.

As for the Guard hiding their small units worth KPs, like you said, it is going to take them out of the game, basically wasting those points. And I really cannot envision them being able to hide all 6, that would be very difficult. Similarly, the only other abusive list might be yo-yo hawks, and I really can't see them being a long-term threat for any kind of tournament or gaming environment, so I wouldn't worry about them too much really...Just small snags in the game really

Ibushi

IMHO

Truth is, they will NEVER change until the next edition of 40k comes out. Even then, I have my doubts.

PLUS

I wasn't really thinking about Guard (the achillies heel of the whole KP system).

EQUALS

The largest part of the problem could/should/might be fixed by the new Guard codex.

I think the largest problem actually is:

Number of points spent = irrelevant for KP value.

I don't know how you can fix Guard without being alot of bull.

Oh yes my 5 squads are 1 KP. I have 15 squads, and my army is 4 KP. Enjoy!

See, that too is "broken".

Everyone should be equal, and KP should be determined by the army owner.

How about this then?

Kill points are supposed to encourage large units - but they penalise you for taking any option that counts as a seperate unit (transports, IG squads and vehicle-mounted tau drones being the most obvious).

Why not just base kill points on FOC slots rather than 'units'?

And while we're at it can we change the ridiculous Dawn of War deployment rules to be FOC instead of units too...

I'm looking forward to seeing what C: SM says about Combat Squads and KP.

Who wants to bet that Tactical Squads are still 1 KP, even when split into a couple of Combat Squads?

JohnHwangDD wrote:I'm looking forward to seeing what C: SM says about Combat Squads and KP.

Who wants to bet that Tactical Squads are still 1 KP, even when split into a couple of Combat Squads?

Nah. Combat squads are already a sweet deal since you can keep the unit together in KP missions to preserve the amount of KPs your army gives up but you can split the unit up in objective games in order to have more scoring units available.

Stelek - Wow. That's actually a really cool idea. Might even try that in normal, non-5th Ed games. Thanks.

JohnHwangDD wrote:The only problem with the proposal is that it requires KP markers or counters to be placed on each unit.

And this is a big deal... how?

BYE

If that goes into effect, I'm switching to Eldar. 3 Falcons, there's 3 KP's, 3 Swooping Hawk squads, 3 more KP's. Good luck getting any of those. Try running the math on a Fortuned Falcon in cover with upgrades...it's insane how resilient they are.

Well, it's already like that...so...how will things be 'different'?

I'm confused again. /cry

Thought:

Why not just force players to put their Kill Points on their six most expensive units (Troops or otherwise)?

Wouldn't that basically turn Annihilation games into
"kill the enemies baddest (most expensive) units" game, which is kind of what the point of the mission is supposed to be anyway.

It also stops people from taking lone Vypers *just* to throw their KPs on it and go hide somewhere in a corner. . .or on yo-yo hawks (unless you dump a crapload of points on 'em).

Whadd'ya think?

the only problem I can see with that is people deliberately taking lots of small units and hiding the marked ones.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:the only problem I can see with that is people deliberately taking lots of small units and hiding the marked ones.

Are you responding to me? Because making the marked units having to be the most expensive units in the army would pretty much kill that tactic, which is why I proposed it.

Yakface, that's a great addition to Stelek's cool idea. Of course, it does take the choice away from the player a bit (which is what Stelek was trying to avoid) but it's still a good idea.

Dang though, those land raiders are going to be hard to kill!
The best thing about this idea from my point of veiw is that it looks like it would make for simple-but-fun games.
Good job!

Sorry yak, didn't make myself clear.

I was meaning if you took as many min-sized units as you could, the bulk of your army could be 'in the open' laying down fire (or assaulting) without needing to worry about taking any casualties at all, while the units that would count for KP's could hunker down in good cover and stay out of the fight.

But if there are a significant number of Kill Points in the scenario (6, for example), then "hiding" your 6 most expensive units rips the guts out of just about any army list in existence.

Stelek, Yak, this is an excellent idea and I'll see what my gaming group thinks of it.