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I don't play in as many tournaments as I used to. However, I'm going to one this weekend and looking over their scenario's I realized that it's been a long time since I've seen a straight up kill point mission at a tournament. Recently I've seen the following different modifications to kill points.

Pick 5 of your units, each of them is worth a kill point.
Pick 5 of your opponents units, each of them is worth a kill point.
Percentage based (ie if I have 10 units you kill 5 you get a 50%).
Total what you have left and add what you kill.
And probably a few more that I can't think of.

All of the above make the kp given up by a mech list a lot more palatable. I'm starting to wonder if putting a straight up kp mission back in would alter the meta and reduce the high kp mech lists currently in use?

Have you been seeing the same lately or have my results just been skewed by the region I play in.

It is just the times and the rulebook. Back in 3rd ED you could move any vehicle up get out fire anything the squad carried and then assault. Saw a lot of Mech back then as well. Along came 4th ED where vehicles were rolling coffins due to immediate disembarking on any penetrating hit and the unit getting autopinned if it was destroyed. The pendulum has just swung back the other way again with 5th ED.

I actually kind of agree with the OP's point.

I think, to some degree, regular KP missions can act as a balancing factor for the effectiveness of highly mechanized armies.

It's hard to deny that a lot of the most highly effective builds for many different armies use a lot of transport vehicles. I think the desire for many people to use these more effective builds have caused a lot of the complaints against KP based missions, so a lot of tournaments have done away with straight kill points to assuage those players who want to use their stronger mechanized lists.

It's kinda like letting mech players (of which, I am one), have their cake and eat it, too.

I believe that if more tournament missions used the basic KP rules from the main rulebook, that would force competitive players to diversify their lists so as to not be handicapped by the number of potential KP their lists can surrender.

[Edited: the posting software hates me.]

Dunno... most of the KP missions I see in RTTs around here are straight KP based. Occasionally there will be a VP one, but most are just normal KP.

I do think KPs act as a check to certain MSU builds, but oftentimes the advantage gained from that type of build outweighs the extra KPs.

I think Killpoints are fine, with the exception of Tau gun drones on vehicles. IG had issues & were fixed, Nids had issues with sore mines and they were fixed. I don't understand why killpoints is seen in so negitive a light. Gone are the days of MSU builds unless you alter how killpoints work in a tournament.

That being said, I LOVE how the SOCAl Slaughter does killpoints.

By tournaments altering killpoints and using scoring on Massacre system they are promoting a mech heavy enviroment. Of course GW's rules writting is also promoting a mech heavy enviroment as well.

Mech is overpowered in this edition without KP modifications, the reason being how many rolls you have to do just to destroy a 35-55 point mobile gun that provides cover.

Last year at ard boyz Tau drones and spore mines wern't counted for kill points unless they used a FOC. A Podded Nid list suffers the same fate too.

In my opinion the OP has the idea reversed. By limiting kill points to a fixed amount high kp mech lists are penalized because they have fewer points per kp in their army making it much easier to kill your allotment, while the mech player must kill 60 to 70% of your army to win. Those type of missions favor "kp efficient" armies such as foot IG or horde orks with a lot of points in each kp.

To address the wider issue. I play Tau and have come to the conclusion that building "kp efficient" lists is simply not effective in my case. I know to play a competitive army that I have to give up 15 or more kp. That is the only build for tau that works for me. Sacrificing effectiveness for lower kp counts makes my army less deadly and I can't afford that. CAVEAT if your codex has more than one build than perhaps choosing the most kp efficient build will provide a small boost at some tourneys. The overarching idea I'm getting at is that people play mech because it is the most powerful build right now for almost all codices. To really competitive players if the list wins it wins even if it has 50kp.

To finish up I don't think it is the kp missions that push people to play mech armies it is the objective missions. Mechanized armies have to combination of speed and durability that is necessary to win in missions with many objectives that are often widely scattered across the tabletop.

razorlead wrote:To finish up I don't think it is the kp missions that push people to play mech armies it is the objective missions. Mechanized armies have to combination of speed and durability that is necessary to win in missions with many objectives that are often widely scattered across the tabletop.

I believe you misunderstood the original post. The contention is not that KP missions make players choose mechanized builds. The contention is that the lack of straight up KP missions in tournaments removes one of the only penalties for choosing to run a highly mechanized force.

Mechanized forces have every advantage: additional shooting units to fire on multiple targets, increased maneuverability, increased survivability for transported troops, etc.

The added KP represented by the transport and the cost of the transport are really the only down sides.

If tournaments decide to modify KP missions such that the KP penalty for taking a highly mechanized force is mitigated or removed entirely, then that acts as an encouragement for people to continue playing that style of list.

The supposition is that if more KP missions existed in tournament play, then otherwise competitive builds might start losing games because they give up too many KP. This would shift the metagame in the direction of less mechanized forces in order to play to the scenarios.

Granted, some armies don't really have an option if they wish to be competitive at any level. My 1500 point DE list has 22 KP. Theoretically, I could get it down to around 10, but I doubt I'd win a single game, KP or no....

So your going to take a subpar army so that you have a slightly better shot at winning 1 or 3 missions?

Even if 1/3 of missions were straight up KP missions, who wouldn't run mech. (not that anyone runs good mech armies at tournaments anyways)

Remind me again of how many tournies you've won Timmah?

I run a good mech army at tournies. I also encourage TO's before events to put in normal KP missions otherwise they are giving an advantage to armies like mine. If they don't I sleep soundly at night knowing I tried and if they do then I have to overcome the handicap 5th Edition designed for armies like mine.

Remind me again of how many tournies you've won Timmah?

Do hobby competitions count?

Players affecting the meta? No way!

Every tournament I go to and every GT tournament I cover for my blog. I see the same thing over and over again.

Heavy Mech lists end up losing.

A balanced force from light to medium mech played by skilled players win.

The game is about a few lucky rolls, who you end up playing, and most of all tactical skill.

I would give list building about 15-20% credit at most for tournament wins.

With all that being said, KPs are the balancing force against Mech. Of course if people play only objective games then you might see an imbalance towards mech armies especially when they happen to go last at the end of games.

I agree. KP missions are a good equalizer. I wouldn't take an army to try to win that one KP mission, but I wouldn't take an army that would get hammered in it either. Around Chicago we almost always have a KP mission or two (we play 3 tiers of objectives). Couple this with the rule that whiping out the enemy does not get you an auto-win, you must complete the mission and I think it goes a long way to enforcing a soft ceiling on army comp.

DarthDiggler wrote:I agree. KP missions are a good equalizer. I wouldn't take an army to try to win that one KP mission, but I wouldn't take an army that would get hammered in it either. Around Chicago we almost always have a KP mission or two (we play 3 tiers of objectives). Couple this with the rule that whiping out the enemy does not get you an auto-win, you must complete the mission and I think it goes a long way to enforcing a soft ceiling on army comp.

Sounds fun. You guys should try playing 40k though, I hear its good.

asugradinwa wrote:I think Killpoints are fine, with the exception of Tau gun drones on vehicles. IG had issues & were fixed, Nids had issues with sore mines and they were fixed. I don't understand why killpoints is seen in so negitive a light. Gone are the days of MSU builds unless you alter how killpoints work in a tournament.

That being said, I LOVE how the SOCAl Slaughter does killpoints.

By tournaments altering killpoints and using scoring on Massacre system they are promoting a mech heavy enviroment. Of course GW's rules writting is also promoting a mech heavy enviroment as well.

IG still HAS issues if you want to use anything other than homogeneous blobs of infantry squads. RRs, SWS, HWS, all small IG units are giant liabilities in a competitive environment.

I will have to agree with the OP as well. Kill point missions knock the sails right out of those mech lists. All those rhinos are nothing but free kill points.

Vehicles are harder to kill in 5th than in 4th. 2/3rds of the rulebook missions are objective based missions. Some tournaments do not have kill points at all(stop using KP entirely!).

People will always play Mech, walking is for Fantasy.

I believe KP was a built in mechanic which can actually affect how a person builds an army. Granted it is a 1 in 3 chance to randomly draw it in the rulebook, but I've participated in several tourneys that like to modify KP or replace it with VPs.

I know I've won a few games against mech spam armies b/c of KPs. Not the most exciting thing to do, but if I've got to blow up Drop Pods to get easy KPs, well....

If you know in a tourney that KP will be utilized, in one or more games, will you still build a fully mech army, especially ones like Chimera, Drop Pod or Razorback spam? Personally, I'm still building my RB spam SW army, but I realize KP is my achilles heel and will have to play the mission carefully.

I don't think we are enabling heavy mech, however. Many players realize the benefits of mechanized and try to mitigate their losses in the 1 or 2 games that utilize KPs.

Hulksmash wrote:Remind me again of how many tournies you've won Timmah?

I run a good mech army at tournies. I also encourage TO's before events to put in normal KP missions otherwise they are giving an advantage to armies like mine. If they don't I sleep soundly at night knowing I tried and if they do then I have to overcome the handicap 5th Edition designed for armies like mine.

Please don't derail the thread by trying to bait Tmmah. I'm assuming you guys have some sort of existing beef, but the fact remains it shouldn't matter how many tournaments someone has won for them to be able to comment in a topic. Otherwise every single thread will turn into a 'well, how many tournaments have YOU won' war.

So if you disagree with his assessment perhaps you can just post your own without digging at him and the whole internet can just be a more friendly place.

Unless Hulk is mad at me for unknown reasons, I don't think we are. and Yakface, I am not easily baited, being one of the best forum trolls ever (on another forum, I swear) I easily recognize if people are trying to do it to me.

Anyways, onto the question.
I have won plenty of tournaments locally. Obviously they are not nationally known so I suppose you wouldn't know about them.


Obviously I don't believe that no one brings good mech armies, however when people show up to events with 2 rhinos and a predator and call it mech, it usually makes me laugh.

On a side note. My tau list bleeds killpoints. First I sacrifice my piranhas, then their gun drones and then my kroot squads. So thats 6 killpoints that I intentionally try and lose each game. Does it make the mission more difficult? Sure, but not by enough that I wouldn't play my tau.

@Tim

Actually, I think Tau are in a similar position to the DE that I play with usually.

Both armies are not terribly effective if you build them such that you mitigate possible KP losses. Some other armies have the ability to make strong lists both with using high or low numbers (relatively) of KP. These are the lists I believe might be forced to modify.

With DE, at 1850 points, I cannot actually make a list that has any chance of winning at all & has less than about 15 KP in it. My current tournament list has 22.

I could be wrong, but I think that Tau are in the same boat. Under current rules, what is the minimum number of KP you could include in a Tau list that you believe would be tournament competitive?

Truth be told, DE have the capability ro be devastating in a high-killpoints list, particularly in a Mech-heavy environment. the sheer density of Lance weapons, even at 1500 points, assure that this happens, as they will quickly kneecap a good portion of the mech lists that they DO face, and the fact remains that they can pack for higher numbers as well. IG can't actually get away with running Infantry Platoons in a KP environment, either, without actually running Mech Vets, either in Valks or Chimeras, because a single infantry platoon gives up at least 3 KP, unless the squad mobs up, which can create it's own issues, just due to the sheer volume of fire that you're now allowing it to eat.

Yep, my tau sit at like 16 KPs at 1850. And I lose about half every single game no matter how well I play. Don't get me wrong, I still win a lot with them. But I lose KPs like no other (except DE prolly).

In fact I think I like KP missions the best with them. It means I don't have to worry about getting my troops in position to capture objectives.

I've got no beef with Timmah. He just made a sweeping generalization of all events in the US while probably never attending one of the multiple large scale events in the US (that I know of, see the irony if he has ). If he'd said locally nobody brings a true mech list I probably wouldn't have commented on it at all

Oddly enough I agree that I would take my same list no matter if KP's were being used or not but I would point out I actually want TO's to have standard KP's to help balance out my list. Having no KP's and instead have a VP based mission only gives me another leg up and I don't think I should be rewarded for running 9+ Vehicles.

I agree with Hulkk on that. There are so many advantages already to having lots of vehicles that it is silly to reward those lists further by removing the one mission type that seeks to offer some mitigation to those advantages.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dronze wrote:Truth be told, DE have the capability ro be devastating in a high-killpoints list, particularly in a Mech-heavy environment. the sheer density of Lance weapons, even at 1500 points, assure that this happens, as they will quickly kneecap a good portion of the mech lists that they DO face, and the fact remains that they can pack for higher numbers as well. IG can't actually get away with running Infantry Platoons in a KP environment, either, without actually running Mech Vets, either in Valks or Chimeras, because a single infantry platoon gives up at least 3 KP, unless the squad mobs up, which can create it's own issues, just due to the sheer volume of fire that you're now allowing it to eat.

But the flip side is that if a DE player runs into something like Horde Orks, we have problems. The DE Airforce has little way to deal with an opponent who shows up with 120+ infantry models. Also, a list like Horde Orks has enough S4 shooting to wreck a DE Airforce.

Idk, DE airforce still runs wyches and potentially flamer haemonculi. Meaning they could potentially wreck horde orcs. Ofc that is a totally different discussion.

Timmah wrote:I have won plenty of tournaments locally. Obviously they are not nationally known so I suppose you wouldn't know about them.

Links please.

Timmah wrote:Idk, DE airforce still runs wyches and potentially flamer haemonculi. Meaning they could potentially wreck horde orcs. Ofc that is a totally different discussion.

That's actually the combination that I run. The only point I was trying to make was that, at least in KP missions, the DE Airforce can easily give up a ton of KP for the simple reason that almost all of the DE vehicles can be knocked down by most other armies' basic infantry weaponry.