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First of all, please accept my apologies if this subject has been done to death already, but I fancied discussing it!

Now, one of the few bugbears I hear people having about 5th Edition is Kill Points. When it comes to this, I'm very much in two minds. On one hand, as a Mission Objective, it certainly seems to favour some forces more than others. Most notably, Swarm Armies, such as Gaunt Heay Nids, Orks and Imperial Guard seem to suffer, and as you might have guessed, Imperial Guard get it particularly bad due to the number of Kill Points an army can give away being far in excess of other forces totals. But then, the obvious upside, is that the Swarm Armies have an equally natural advantage when it comes to controlling points on the board in the other missions.

However, this does not necessarily balance it out. Why? Sure, IG (to stick with the topic!) should do fairly well in 2 out of 3 Mission Types. But, when playing Kill Points, I can see why it might seem like such a foregone conclusion, that there is little point in bothering to play. And it is this I would like to discuss.

Just how much of a disadvantage are Imperial Guard facing when playing to Kill Points? At first, it doesn't look good. Not only does each squad stand to give away a Kill Point when it gets wiped out, but they are generally lightly armoured and very easy to take out, even compared to other Swarm armies, due to the smaller Squad Size. But is it really all bad? When you think about it in terms of potential, rather than statistics (Statistics I find very hard to apply in a meaningful way, due to not being able to factor in terrain, firelanes, opponents army composition etc) IG would appear to have a secret string to their bow, the very down side which can cost them the game.....lots of units.

What do I mean? I'll do my best to explain it. You see, Guardsmen cost about the same as a Gaunt. Yet, I can field a unit of 30 Gaunts, giving away just a single Kill Point. An identical number of Guardsmen (barring Conscripts!) are no harder to kill, in theory, but give away 3 times the Kill Points. Yet this is almost a false assaumption. The very fact that those 30 Guardsmen come in three squads can be a strength. Not only does your opponent have a greater number of targets, but the Guard player has more flexibility when it comes to garnering kill points. I reckon (and only reckon, I try not to deal in absolutes) that this can be used effectively to balance out the shortcomings. Total hypothetical situation where this would work would be 2 squads both near destruction (only a couple of spods left). Here, the IG player has as much chance as anyone of wiping one out, but has the added *chance* of nobbling the second as well...

So, what are your thoughts and experience thus far? Please keep it civil. I like civil.

It makes guard payers be smart with their units, "oops, 2 guys left? rallied them, cool, ok, back towards the table edge anyways, get yourself buried as deep out of line of sight as posible."

Also, with guard being redone in the spring, I can imagine platoons getting something special where the whole platoon is worth a killpoint, but you can get a half killpoint for wiping out some squads within the platoon. Maybe even Platoon + command squad = 2 KP, half the platoon (less the command squad) = 1/2KP

I do wonder whether they are willing to make an exception so soon after the rules are out, but you never know. Certainly appears to be a solution.

However, that is assuming the current situation is accidental, and not deliberate. As I pointed out, IG should do very well in normal, seize the chair type games...

This has been done to death on here - and I fear you won't get much sympathy for your position.

For myself, I don't believe KP's are the root of all evil, because I appreciate that you need a balance of missions which favour large numbers of units and those that favour small numbers of units.

I do, however, think that the mission was set up in a cack-handed way and should have been done better.

In essence, I agree with the idea but think the execution was terrible.

Unfortunately, the most vocal of dakka's posters will now hijack this thread to scream incoherently about how KP's are the worst thing in history and anyone who doesn't think this is going into 'fanboi rage' to defend GW.

meh (*shrugs*)

Oh, they haven't dealt with the likes of me before. I can tame them. I tamed Warseer.

One thing that many people seem to miss is that many KP heavy armies, even besides guard, don't necessarily have any huge advantage in objective games.

My Tau army has 19 kill points at 2000pts, 4 devilfish (with obligatory KP granting Gundrones), 30 fire warriors, 5 pathfinders, 9 crisis suits and 3 hammerheads, a pretty bog standard mech tau list, with 3 scoring units. Even without the gun drones, thats still 16kp to my CSM's average 10 KP's, a pretty huge disadvantage.

Furthermore, even IG with its potenetially large scoring unit count doesn't have the advantage many people claim that KP's are used to balance out in objective games, as its troops are slow and very easily killed, and other armies have a much easier time getting there troops where they need to be and making them stay.



So far, I've noted that IG games involving kill points tend to be very stilted. My most recent example was when a friend played my IG army against my Chaos, I actually lost almost everything but my basic CSM squads, and he still had most of the army left, but I still won because I killed a larger absolute number of units, even though he had a much greater amount of his total army left.

KP's really should have been 1 per FOC slot (or even 1 per FOC troops slot) - that would have been the perfect foil for large numbers of objective grabbing troops and would have avoided things like the gun-drone-shenanigans...

But then the guard player would have a huge advantage in being able to take a command platoon, for example, with 5 units that would all have to be completely wiped out to score one kill point. If it worked that way all you would see is guard, nids and especially orks...

And there's the rub really.

It certainly appears, from what people have said, that Kill Points might well have a certain inherent flaw. But from the view of a friendly gamer (I don't like Tournaments, but thats a whole other thread) I still see them as being infinitely better than VPs. You see, with VPs, I felt people spent too much time engineering their lists, and not enough time just enjoying the game. Kill Points, to some degree, cannot be engineered in or out of your list that well. To me, this encourages and to some degree rewards players who just pick a list they like the feel of and get stuck in.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Unfortunately, the most vocal of dakka's posters will now hijack this thread to scream incoherently about how KP's are the worst thing in history and anyone who doesn't think this is going into 'fanboi rage' to defend GW.

meh (*shrugs*)

You know, it's a little hard to paint yourself as a sensible moderate when you post stuff like this. You cannot say "I have a well reasoned and thought out opinion on the issue, and those that disagree with me are raving jerks!" Just keep that in mind for future threads....


To the OP: You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The problem with IG and KPs is that there is no way to mitigate them. Tau can take SMS on their fish, nids can take fewer bigger units, every army can squadron up their light vehicles, but IG cannot take any squad larger than 10 men aside from conscripts, and those fold easily in combat. If you except the premise that Tau are fundamentally weak in 5th, and IG don't work with KP at all, then the system works pretty well with the other armies, goofiness aside (the times when killing a landraider is worth the same as a lone attack bike).

As for their superiority to VPs, that's a matter of some debate. To be honest, I don't think people spent much time engineering lists to minimize their VP totals, as every list had the same VP count! Sure, there were some VP denial armies that relied on nearly unkillable falcons and the like, but I think KPs have a much more chilling effect on army design. Every time I consider adding a unit, I think "should I add another KP?"

I do think that KPs are the worst part of 5th, which in some ways is a bit of compliment to fifth edition. They were not horribly well thought out, they are not nearly as elegant as anybody hopes, and they literally turn 1/3 of all casual games into "however kills the most enemy units wins!" It has a chilling effect on army design not seen since Escalation, which cause entire classes of units to immediately be devalued until tournaments stopped using it. There have been a half dozen suggestions floating around dakka, all of them better thought out and more balanced then the current system.

I'm not sure this works. You only have to have one or two squads of guardsmen killed for them to be worse of under Kill points. It may not even be ten man squads it may be five man command squads that are killed. Interestingly Cameleoline will help circumnavigate this in two ways. 1. Your troops are harder to shoot 2. Your squads cost more; therefore there will be less of them. I play a Carapace and Grenadier heavy list and it still fares badly under kill points (compared to MEQ) though not as badly as other builds may. I suspect that Guard/Inquisition lists fare the worst under kill points.

Good list building in almost certainly the best to mitigate the kill point issue. I wonder if conscripts will become more common as they’re far harder to kill than guardsmen and not that much worse.

I play Tau and the gun drone situation on Devil Fishes was an easy fix. I just took the smart missle system as an upgrade. Gives more shots, making the devilfish a more effective anti-infantry tank. Since the new KP rules, I have also been sure to add two gun drone or shield drones to each Battle Suit Unit so as not to reduce the units toughness but still increase its effective # of wounds. And my comander gets a retinue.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:First of all, please accept my apologies if this subject has been done to death already, but I fancied discussing it!

Now, one of the few bugbears I hear people having about 5th Edition is Kill Points. When it comes to this, I'm very much in two minds. On one hand, as a Mission Objective, it certainly seems to favour some forces more than others. Most notably, Swarm Armies, such as Gaunt Heay Nids, Orks and Imperial Guard seem to suffer, and as you might have guessed, Imperial Guard get it particularly bad due to the number of Kill Points an army can give away being far in excess of other forces totals. But then, the obvious upside, is that the Swarm Armies have an equally natural advantage when it comes to controlling points on the board in the other missions.

However, this does not necessarily balance it out. Why? Sure, IG (to stick with the topic!) should do fairly well in 2 out of 3 Mission Types. But, when playing Kill Points, I can see why it might seem like such a foregone conclusion, that there is little point in bothering to play. And it is this I would like to discuss.

Just how much of a disadvantage are Imperial Guard facing when playing to Kill Points? At first, it doesn't look good. Not only does each squad stand to give away a Kill Point when it gets wiped out, but they are generally lightly armoured and very easy to take out, even compared to other Swarm armies, due to the smaller Squad Size. But is it really all bad? When you think about it in terms of potential, rather than statistics (Statistics I find very hard to apply in a meaningful way, due to not being able to factor in terrain, firelanes, opponents army composition etc) IG would appear to have a secret string to their bow, the very down side which can cost them the game.....lots of units.

What do I mean? I'll do my best to explain it. You see, Guardsmen cost about the same as a Gaunt. Yet, I can field a unit of 30 Gaunts, giving away just a single Kill Point. An identical number of Guardsmen (barring Conscripts!) are no harder to kill, in theory, but give away 3 times the Kill Points. Yet this is almost a false assaumption. The very fact that those 30 Guardsmen come in three squads can be a strength. Not only does your opponent have a greater number of targets, but the Guard player has more flexibility when it comes to garnering kill points. I reckon (and only reckon, I try not to deal in absolutes) that this can be used effectively to balance out the shortcomings. Total hypothetical situation where this would work would be 2 squads both near destruction (only a couple of spods left). Here, the IG player has as much chance as anyone of wiping one out, but has the added *chance* of nobbling the second as well...

So, what are your thoughts and experience thus far? Please keep it civil. I like civil.

I have a few problems with your summary:

1) Massed guardsmen as objective grabbers. Unlike Orks & 'gaunts, Guardsmen aren't fearless. They also are extremely easy to kill. The combination means that parking them on any objective before the last turn (which is random) leaves them very, very open to breaking/death from assault, or even a flamer or two.

2) It is much easier to remove 3 10-man Guard squads than a 30-gaunt swarm, largely because the Guardsmen CAN break and run away.

3) If the killing power of each Guard squad approached that of, say, a marine squad, you would have a point as far as versatility. However, the platoon structure is there for a reason - it takes a platoon's worth of fire to do much of anything to most targets.

4) You missed one of the more annoying parts of kill points, where the mandatory 40 point HQ squad and Platoon Command squad each give up 2 KPs.

Polonius wrote:I think KPs have a much more chilling effect on army design. Every time I consider adding a unit, I think "should I add another KP?"

I do think that KPs are the worst part of 5th, which in some ways is a bit of compliment to fifth edition.

I would completely agree. The biggest problem with 5th was the weighting of the missions. Instead of 2/3 Objectives - 1/3 KPs, it should have been 1/6 Mobility (most models exit Opponents DZ), 2/3 Objectives, 1/6 KPs.

At 1/6 weight, KPs are an annoyance that most players can live with.

But the problem is that Mobility isn't an option until 6th Edition, as the Codices haven't all been redone. But mark my words, 6th Edition will probably look more like this, with a default build of mech infantry before all else. As a happy coincidence, GW makes more profit off mech infantry builds than anything else, and GW can sell more transport for a long time, as it is rare to have players with full mech capability today. But I digress...
____

Janthkin wrote:the mandatory 40 point HQ squad and Platoon Command squad each give up 2 KPs.

How so? The Officers and Advisors aren't Independent Characters (excepting Doctrine Independent Commissars) - they're multi-wound Super-Sergeants.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Janthkin wrote:the mandatory 40 point HQ squad and Platoon Command squad each give up 2 KPs.

How so? The Officers and Advisors aren't Independent Characters (excepting Doctrine Independent Commissars) - they're multi-wound Super-Sergeants.

'Cause officers ARE independent characters. They just show up with a (mandatory) retinue at the outset.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Janthkin wrote:the mandatory 40 point HQ squad and Platoon Command squad each give up 2 KPs.

How so? The Officers and Advisors aren't Independent Characters (excepting Doctrine Independent Commissars) - they're multi-wound Super-Sergeants.

They *are* independent Characters, with a Retinue. While in the retinue they don't act as IC's, but the Kill Points description *specifically* points out that *two* kill points are awarded for killing an IC and its retinue, one for the retinue, one for the IC.

Hence why the smallest IG army that isn't using grenadiers has a minimum of 10 kill points just to start off.

I don't think it's so much how many KP an army has alone. It's also how easily they give them up.

The issue with the IG is that they must take a minium of 2 5-man command squads which each give up 2 KP (one for the officer, one for his squad).

How difficult is it to kill a unit of 5 troops with a T3 and a 5+ armor save?

So the way I look at it IG start 4 KP in the hole.

Thread not complete without the Kill Point Fix that has been bandied about.

From Stelek:

Instead of KP's being "fixed" at the rate of 1 per unit, give this a try:
Roll D3+2. Both armies now have this number of KP's in the army.

KP's must be assigned to scoring troops units first.

If there aren't enough troops, assign them out as the player sees fit to units (including transports of any kind) so long as no KP's are assigned to the same unit more than once.

If there aren't enough units in the entire army to assign all of the KP's to without assigning a unit a 2nd KP, assign them to troops with KP's until all KP's are assigned.

Feor wrote:It makes guard payers be smart with their units, "oops, 2 guys left? rallied them, cool, ok, back towards the table edge anyways, get yourself buried as deep out of line of sight as posible."

How is that any different to VP denial from 3rd and 4th?

BYE

It makes guard payers be smart with their units, "oops, 2 guys left? rallied them, cool, ok, back towards the table edge anyways, get yourself buried as deep out of line of sight as posible."

worth sending 3 ork bikerz on a mission to earn some KP's, zoom over there, "stik da boot in" then find some nice small units to pick on if they live.

Vaktathi wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:The Officers and Advisors aren't Independent Characters (excepting Doctrine Independent Commissars) - they're multi-wound Super-Sergeants.

They *are* independent Characters, with a Retinue. While in the retinue they don't act as IC's, but the Kill Points description *specifically* points out that *two* kill points are awarded for killing an IC and its retinue, one for the retinue, one for the IC.

Hmm... I don't have my IG Codex handy, so I'll have to check the Command Squad entry tonight. If the Officers aren't described in the Codex as "Independent Character", then we're back at 1 KP.

Vaktathi wrote:Hence why the smallest IG army that isn't using grenadiers has a minimum of 10 kill points just to start off.

Assuming that the IG Command Squad is 2 KP, then I get:

HQ
Command Squad [2]

Troops
Platoon Command [2]
+ Platoon Squad [1]
+ Platoon Squad [1]

AF Squad [1]
Chimera [1]

Total = 8 KPs. How are you getting 10?

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:The Officers and Advisors aren't Independent Characters (excepting Doctrine Independent Commissars) - they're multi-wound Super-Sergeants.

They *are* independent Characters, with a Retinue. While in the retinue they don't act as IC's, but the Kill Points description *specifically* points out that *two* kill points are awarded for killing an IC and its retinue, one for the retinue, one for the IC.

Hmm... I don't have my IG Codex handy, so I'll have to check the Command Squad entry tonight. If the Officers aren't described in the Codex as "Independent Character", then we're back at 1 KP.

P.38 under the "Character" description in the command squad entry.

Hence why the smallest IG army that isn't using grenadiers has a minimum of 10 kill points just to start off.
Assuming that the IG Command Squad is 2 KP, then I get:

HQ
Command Squad [2]

Troops
Platoon Command [2]
+ Platoon Squad [1]
+ Platoon Squad [1]

AF Squad [1]
Chimera [1]

Total = 8 KPs. How are you getting 10?

Ah, I was thinking of two min platoons and a command HQ. So yes, you could get away with 8, or even 4 with Grenadiers, but with 8 or 10 min KP' without using Grenadiers, IG have a base starting line thats 5-7 KP's higher than other armies start with for their basic 2troops+HQ.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Hmm... I don't have my IG Codex handy, so I'll have to check the Command Squad entry tonight. If the Officers aren't described in the Codex as "Independent Character", then we're back at 1 KP.

They are John. I know your world view refuses to let you believe that you could ever be wrong, but just admit it for once in your existance.

BYE

biztheclown wrote:Thread not complete without the Kill Point Fix that has been bandied about.

From Stelek:

Instead of KP's being "fixed" at the rate of 1 per unit, give this a try:
Roll D3+2. Both armies now have this number of KP's in the army.

KP's must be assigned to scoring troops units first.

If there aren't enough troops, assign them out as the player sees fit to units (including transports of any kind) so long as no KP's are assigned to the same unit more than once.

If there aren't enough units in the entire army to assign all of the KP's to without assigning a unit a 2nd KP, assign them to troops with KP's until all KP's are assigned.

I vastly prefer Yak's "Kill Point Ratio" solution - you killed 12/18 of my kill points, and I got 5/6 of yours - I win.

i say we go back to VP's
none of this KP crap, VP was a good system and didnt need changing.

JD21290 wrote:i say we go back to VP's
none of this KP crap, VP was a good system and didnt need changing.

Personally, I agree. None of the problems with it were unfixable and were problems with implementation rather than the core idea, as both sides had the same amount of VP's to win or lose, whereas with KP's the system is fundamentally flawed given that different armies by their very nature have a smaller or larger number of discrete units, thus making the KP system untenable from its foundations.

Personally, I agree. None of the problems with it were unfixable and were problems with implementation rather than the core idea, as both sides had the same amount of VP's to win or lose, whereas with KP's the system is fundamentally flawed given that different armies by their very nature have a smaller or larger number of discrete units, thus making the KP system untenable from its foundations.

someone actually agrees with me, 1st for everything i suppose

with VP's armies like guard actually stood a chance, now people will be hunting the smallest squads possible to steal some KP's here and there.
this will be more like a war scale asassination.
kill the units you need, leave the rest.

You can always bypass the kill points by tabling the opposing army. In an Imperial Guard army I'd imagine that involves callously spending your own units to kill those of your opponents.

i know nurglitch, but seems kind unfair that one of the softer 40k armies offers up more points than any other.

and IG would have to be used fairly well to start tabling opponents in a tourney.

Vaktathi wrote:

JD21290 wrote:i say we go back to VP's
none of this KP crap, VP was a good system and didnt need changing.

Personally, I agree. None of the problems with it were unfixable and were problems with implementation rather than the core idea, as both sides had the same amount of VP's to win or lose, whereas with KP's the system is fundamentally flawed given that different armies by their very nature have a smaller or larger number of discrete units, thus making the KP system untenable from its foundations.

I don't mind the underlying theory. Basically, KPs are an attempt to force you to balance your forces: in some missions, large numbers of (scoring) units are a benefit, e.g., objective-grabbing; to counter this, in some missions, large numbers of units are a liability, e.g., Kill Points.

The problem is the implementation. Different armies map into this "space" very differently. Take orks & IG for an example. Orks have zero reason not to take as many large boy mobz as they can afford - the troops are solid, useful in many ways, and can be used to claim objectives, or push enemies off objectives, with nearly equal ease. Because ork mobz can vary in size, the player can find a balance between the size of the mob and the number of scoring units he needs/wants. It's a good 5th ed list.

IG can also scale their troops, adding more firepower (and bodies) as needed. However, scaling an IG force up involves adding additional separate units, as opposed to adding more bodies to the existing units. Kill Point bonanza.

The problem with KPs is one that can be corrected with new codexii - as each 5th edition 'dex comes out, it needs to offer the ability to scale the versatility of the army within a reasonable number of kill points. Combat Squads is a great thing for marines, as they can choose on a mission-by-mission basis if they need lesser or greater numbers of units. I don't know, however, how anyone will approach the KP-denial of the ork 'dex, coupled with the strength of the list, at least until we get a 5th ed Tyranid 'dex. No need for transports makes for a great setup.

If I were doing Guard, and wanted to retain the platoon structure, I'd do 1 KP per 2 squads, with 1 pt for every officer.