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Forgive me for not posting this in one of the several other threads about "How to Fix Kill Points". But I thought this topical and did not want to post in one thread and link to it in the others.

Permit me to play Devil's Advocate for a bit.

Perhaps Kill Points in their current incarnation (or something very close to it) needs to stay. WHAT?!? I hear you ask. I hear myself ask it as well. I'm not a real fan of it and think that it causes a real breakdown in certain lists.

Maybe GW intended that to happen. Granted, based upon past history of their game development, that may be giving too much credit. But still...

The new Objective-based game that has become 2/3rds of the games has already fostered a certain kind of list. Multiple Troops selections - some with no purpose other than to objective camp. More/cheaper/faster units to get out to contest objectives or to remove the opponent's campers.

Myself? I took a 23 KP Sisters list to the Vegas GT, because I wanted to prove a point about Immolator spam. I was fortunate to have two extremely favorable matchups in the two KP missions. But I think that had I played a competitive list designed to take my KP and deny their own, I'd have been hosed... and I think the game needs this.

Spamming the table with so many units that your opponent has no possible way to deal with them all in an objective mission should not be the "end all/be all" of army-list types. KP cuts that down. At the very least, it forces you to consider your list in another light. I know that in certain matchups with my Immolator list, that my only hope is to table my opponent. And I'm beginning to think more and more that that is how it should be.

The idea of fixed Kill Points or Ratios just goes back to telling people that it's OK to have list spam.

Yes, IG are currently in a world of hurt as far as KP go. I offer no solutions. But I do say that the other solutions I have read do no better. So each army has 6 KP... big deal, my 6 units of Plague Marines are much harder to kill than your 6 guard squads. It's also much harder to kill even one large Plague Marine unit gaining any ratio at all.

Keep KP. Fix the "bugs" in it: IG Platoon Commanders, Tau drones off of vehicles, spore mines... any "free" or created during play unit should probably not ever be worth a KP. But on the flip side, should probably not ever be able to capture/contest objectives, either.

Having rethought the whole KP debate, I no longer see KPs as a major issue. I mostly play Apocalypse Guard lately, so KPs don't come up very often.

Even if they did, eh, it's only 1/3 of the time. So players *should* be spamming Scoring units. The only questionable thing is whether they should also spam non-Scoring units.

But if players really need pseudo-VPs, have each player score KPs earned *and* KPs denied. This balances the ratios out. For example, 15 KP IG vs 8 KP CSM, IG score 4 KP, while CSM score 6 KP. IG total 4+9 = 13 vs CSM total 6+4 = 10. IG win 13 to 10 in a game with a total of 23 KPs available.

The underlying problem (for me) is this:

It forces players to either go anti-scoring (and points sink) or go scoring (and not a points sink).

It forces players to either go with lots of units or a few huge ones.

Some armies can effectively do both, with 300-600 points spent on a single unit.

The new paradigm of 5th edition is not 'making your points' as many players (erroneously, in my mind) did in 4th edition.

It's all about not giving them up. How is this different?

You burn your big squad of guys (say, 8 thunder hammer/storm shield terminators) until there's one left. Then you hope in the nearest land raider and move the squad away.

No KP, and if you don't just beat the opponent...only half points towards a minor win. Removal of last man standing has made this a possibility.

So I am mostly worried about the following lists:

Ones so tough, you can't really beat them down. Nob Bikers, Seer Council, Crusher Horde, Plaguemarine/bearer horde, Terminator horde.

You can spend a crazy amount of points on those units and still be effective. You can still have "an army" that kills, denies KP's, and can take objectives by giving you such a high priority target you can't afford to deal with the troops sitting in the back until turn 5. You can easily lose those games while killing a handful of KPs and the majority of the enemy army.

I also took a KP heavy army to Vegas. I didn't care about the so-called "objective". I had a weakness, and I masked it sufficiently well to beat my opponents. I can only say I had one favorable scenario/matchup, that was the final game of the GT. The other 4, I dealt with the scenario after I'd beaten the other guys army.

Alot of people brought small KP armies, others did not. No one really 'spammed' targets like you, Jimmy, and I did. We had alot of KP's to give up between us.

I think playing to win with an army is the goal, and I think KP are a bad idea because they try to mold army lists into conformity and take away from the fun of objective based missions.

I think if you can't deal with the enemies units effectively, no matter how many there are--doesn't that actually HURT a small KP force even worse in a KP mission?

Here's my reasoning:

If I have 18 units, all of which shoot...and you have 9 units, only 2 of which shoot...how are you going to win?

You can replace shoot with assault in the above sentence.

If you want to make KP's work properly, I think you need to put in a kill ratio system like FOW uses.

In other words, using the example above:

Right now, if you kill 1 more KP than the other guy...essentially you win. At the GT, they had it a little too simple and you'd score a massacre by doubling the other guys KPs. Well, that can be 2-1 KP and you massacred me?

It needs to be clearly defined as a ratio of enemy KP versus what you lost.

In short, if you lose alot of units versus his few losses, you should lose.

If you lose a couple and he loses one, it should be a draw.

KP's should not be as stupidly simple as they are now. They should reflect your overall performance--did you bring a big horde and only lost 2 units but you killed 8 KP from the enemies mass of vehicles? Then you get a solid win. If you however only killed 3 and lost 2, it's a draw and you go to VP's...where it will probably be a victory for the other guy.

Something like this:

9-5 Massacre.
7-4 Major.
5-3 Minor.
Anything lower, draw do NOT go to VP's. Both losers.

That is the only way I can see keeping KP's as they are in the game, by taking the stupid out and putting in ratios that actually encourage players to fight each other's armies instead of playing so damn defensively.

Note the numbers are totally arbitrary. They are just examples.

This way, players can feel free to make any army they want to--and by forcing them to fight for a win...they actually will fight it out and I think have fun doing so.

Hope that helps ya some.

stjohn70 wrote:Spamming the table with so many units that your opponent has no possible way to deal with them all in an objective mission should not be the "end all/be all" of army-list types. KP cuts that down. At the very least, it forces you to consider your list in another light. I know that in certain matchups with my Immolator list, that my only hope is to table my opponent. And I'm beginning to think more and more that that is how it should be.

HURRAH! Exactly - you take too many KP units, you're gonna be disadvantaged in 1/3 of games. You take too few scoring units, you're gonna be disadvantaged in 1/3 of games. You take a load of slow troops choices, you're gonna be disadvantaged in 1/3 of games. KP forces lists to be flexible, rather than just the Immolator-spam, Landraider-spam, Terminator-spam armies we had in 4th. Here's to NO SPAM ARMIES AT ALL!

stelek wrote:It forces players to either go anti-scoring (and points sink) or go scoring (and not a points sink).

It forces players to either go with lots of units or a few huge ones.

No, it doesn't FORCE you to do anything. However, if you want to build a competitive list, you have to strike a balance, which I think is the intended point.

stelek wrote:You burn your big squad of guys (say, 8 thunder hammer/storm shield terminators) until there's one left. Then you hope in the nearest land raider and move the squad away.

I agree, this has become a problem. But I don't see it as too different to the old "I'll just reduce each of your squads to 50%, and then you can't win" theory of 4th ed...


Aside, does anyone else foresee a trend starting on here of people building armies specifically to win one type of mission, and then complaining when they get the wrong one. "Oh yeah, you won, but my army was built for minimal KP, and we rolled an Objective mission, so I can't be expected to win, can I?". Shouldn't wash. Concentrate on building lists to achieve ALL sorts of missions. As Stelek says,

stelek wrote:I also took a KP heavy army to Vegas... I had a weakness, and I masked it sufficiently well to beat my opponents.

You go too far one way, you have a weakness, but this doesn't mean you can't win, you just have to play with that in mind....

To be fair, I'm not sure I should have brought up the Vegas GT. Yes, I brought a KP heavy army (as did my fellow travelers), but as the first real 5th Edition big event... there were a lot of people still with 4th Edition lists that weren't designed with the whole Objective/KP thing in mind, so you could probably get away with more.

That said, I still think that a slightly corrected KP system as it stands now is better. A ratio system does nothing to alleviate the "uber" units, or the "got one guy left - quick hide" syndrome.

ArbitorIan wrote:HURRAH! Exactly - you take too many KP units, you're gonna be disadvantaged in 1/3 of games. You take too few scoring units, you're gonna be disadvantaged in 1/3 of games. You take a load of slow troops choices, you're gonna be disadvantaged in 1/3 of games. KP forces lists to be flexible, rather than just the Immolator-spam, Landraider-spam, Terminator-spam armies we had in 4th. Here's to NO SPAM ARMIES AT ALL!

No, it doesn't FORCE you to do anything. However, if you want to build a competitive list, you have to strike a balance, which I think is the intended point.

Neither of these comments bears out in the game, sadly.

You can take 2 scoring units and win, you can take spam armies and win, you don't need to strike a balance--period.

It's not so much that it forces you to do something, it's that people tend to overreact and will go along with fewer KP's as if it's a good thing.

It's a bad thing for the hobby, because GW is telling new players that troops are good.

Then they get destroyed because troops actually suck.

This forcing of player thinking into what works and what doesn't, along with crippled codices and crippled troops (new marine troops are cripples, specifically tactical squads) makes for a bad gaming environment for the new players.

Then we have no new players, and the hobby takes another hit.

Bad all around.

I have to heartily disagree with you Stelek. Regardless of what you say, you do have to strike a balance... or at least account for it.
You either have to build your army to the missions - or you have to plan and account for how you're going to deal with those missions that are not optimal for your build. Some armies can do it. Others cannot. My Sisters list has a pretty decent chance of winning even in KP missions because of its ability to flat-out table opponents. IG that can only sit back and shoot for 5-6 turns - they have very little hope of tabling anyone, so their KP losses are really felt.
If you only bring two scoring units, you had better learn to accept that even if you win a lot with them, you're probably only going to be able to get minor victories. And I bet you draw a lot more often vs savvy opponents.

People will always overreact to new rule types. Always. But they'll figure it out... that's part of what Dakka is here for. Heck, it took most people a year to figure out how to not auto-lose to 4th Ed Space Marine Drop Pods.

I don't think that GW is telling is that Troops are good. I think that they're telling us that Troops are necessary. Two different things. When was the last time a real battle was won by an infantry charge? Troops are there to hold ground (capture objectives).

I think that the worse gaming environment is one that leads towards one-dimensional play - which is what we would have without KP.

stjohn70 wrote:I think that the worse gaming environment is one that leads towards one-dimensional play - which is what we would have without KP.

QFT.