Kill Points, Attrition, and Imperial Guard.

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**Vaktathi**

Janthkin wrote:
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.

While I agree with much of what you stated, the other *huge* issue with KP's is that they fail to take a units relative worth into account. 10 Chaos terminators is worth only the same Kill Point as a Rhino or a set of Tau Gun drones. A unit can be 1000pts or 10pts, and as long as it is a single discrete unit its still only worth 1 kill point.

the other problem with IG is that even in IG armies that don't use platoons (like mine) there are still a huge number of discrete units. I have exactly 3 scoring units in the army, 65 infantry (3 grenadiers, 3 stormtroopers, 1 HQ squad) and then 11 tanks. that makes for 19KP's just because there are a lot of units. Other armies, epecially mechanized armies, suffer the same problem, my Tau have 19 KPs as well, the Troops are 3 KP's each (gundrones, devilfish, firewarriors) and even without the drones its 16 kp's, where my fairly solid CSM army has 9-11 KP's typically.

The problem with simply counting the absolute number of discrete units towards annihilation count is that it takes no measure of their relative cost value.

**JohnHwangDD**

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

VP only worked with an honest opponent and automated scoring. Totally unsuited towards tournament play.

I say, assign 3 KPs at the start of the game similar to how one might assign Objectives: any enemy HQ, any enemy non-HQ, and any friendly unit.

If Apocalypse can get away with 3 Objectives per side, then regular 40k can get away with 3 KPs per side.

**H.B.M.C.**

JohnHwangDD wrote:VP only worked with an honest opponent and automated scoring. Totally unsuited towards tournament play.

It's worked for the past decade John.

Don't know where you were playing, but if were truly worried about the honesty of your opponents then VP's are the least of your problems...

BYE

**kadun**

Nurglitch wrote: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.

Do you have any suggestions for an IG army list that can table Nidzilla, Mech Eldar, and Orks?

**George Spiggott**

Traditionally IG's inability to table opponents reliably has been one of (if not the) reason IG tend to do badly in Tournaments

**don_mondo**

While I'd love to see some changes to the IG structure to accomodate Kill Points, I've managed fairly well in KP missions. There were two at the Vegas GT, won one lost one. In both, my opponent only claimed 6 of 21 possible kill points, while I got 3 of 9 (IIRC) and 7 of 11. In the loss, my Dark Angels opponent had three one or two man units hiding at the end of the game to deny KP.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

You know, I think I have just struck on a solution....

Rather than the numerical difference in KP's scored, why not compare Percentage of KP's scored.

Thus, If, purely for arguments sake, I scare 5 out of your possible 10, and you bag 9 out of my possible 20, the Laurels would go to me, as I have nipped out a higher percentage of your force.

**kadun**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:You know, I think I have just struck on a solution....

Rather than the numerical difference in KP's scored, why not compare Percentage of KP's scored.

Thus, If, purely for arguments sake, I scare 5 out of your possible 10, and you bag 9 out of my possible 20, the Laurels would go to me, as I have nipped out a higher percentage of your force.

Check the Proposed Rules section. Yak made the same suggestion a couple of months ago. I personally favor Stelek's solution.

**Ozymandias**

Janthkin wrote:

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.

You mean this one Mad Doc?

Sorry, Yak beat you to it.

I have hopes that the new IG dex will resolve the KP issue. Until then, hide!

Ozymandias, King of Kings

**Ozymandias**

The problem with Stelek's solution is that it no longer balances the missions. As Janthkin said (I think), KP's are to balance out taking a lot of units for Objective games. Stelek's solution (and Yak's to a lesser degree), doesn't balance the other two scenarios out.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Just goes to show what a good idea it is then! :p

Can't stand First Past The Post Gaming.

**Vaktathi**

Ozymandias wrote:The problem with Stelek's solution is that it no longer balances the missions. As Janthkin said (I think), KP's are to balance out taking a lot of units for Objective games. Stelek's solution (and Yak's to a lesser degree), doesn't balance the other two scenarios out.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

This is assuming however that large KP armies truly have an advantage in objective games that warrants the huge KP problem in annihilation missions, which I really have seen no real basis for. Sure an army can have lots of potential scoring units, but if they are easily killed, slow, easily made to run, and function best when stationary, I think that more than outweighs it. Furthermore not all armies with lots of KP's have lots of scoring units.

Also, balancing missions where one army has a huge disadvantage in one mission type and a perceived advantage in another isn't really good balancing. If one side or the other starts with a huge advantage, why bother playing? Why not just design missions and scenarios that can be fairly decently balanced all around?

**Somnicide**

I thought it was cool at the Vegas GT how you had to double the number of kill points your opponent got in order to get a major win. That went a long way towards balancing things out a bit (I felt, anyway).

**Janthkin**

Somnicide wrote:I thought it was cool at the Vegas GT how you had to double the number of kill points your opponent got in order to get a major win. That went a long way towards balancing things out a bit (I felt, anyway).

How so?

I would disagree completely - it's impossible for some armies to claim a massacre in those games against, say, Orks - they might have 6 or 7 KPs total in 1750 points, and if you lose 4 KPs (which is only a token portion of a Guard army), they cannot massacre. It magnified the problems with KPs.

**Somnicide**

Janthkin wrote:
Somnicide wrote:I thought it was cool at the Vegas GT how you had to double the number of kill points your opponent got in order to get a major win. That went a long way towards balancing things out a bit (I felt, anyway).

How so?

I would disagree completely - it's impossible for some armies to claim a massacre in those games against, say, Orks - they might have 6 or 7 KPs total in 1750 points, and if you lose 4 KPs (which is only a token portion of a Guard army), they cannot massacre. It magnified the problems with KPs.

Because it was easier for those armies to get massacres on the objectives missions. St John had a ton of kill points in his army - more than any guard player I have seen, and he did okay. Which army did you play there? Were you one of the guard players?

**Janthkin**

Somnicide wrote:
Janthkin wrote:
Somnicide wrote:I thought it was cool at the Vegas GT how you had to double the number of kill points your opponent got in order to get a major win. That went a long way towards balancing things out a bit (I felt, anyway).

How so?

I would disagree completely - it's impossible for some armies to claim a massacre in those games against, say, Orks - they might have 6 or 7 KPs total in 1750 points, and if you lose 4 KPs (which is only a token portion of a Guard army), they cannot massacre. It magnified the problems with KPs.

Because it was easier for those armies to get massacres on the objectives missions. St John had a ton of kill points in his army - more than any guard player I have seen, and he did okay. Which army did you play there? Were you one of the guard players?

St. John did okay, and he did it with very few scoring units. His "I'll just contest every objective I'm not holding" strategy must have worked out okay - I haven't read his reports yet.

I had a stealer shock army (10 KP). What I was seeing/hearing all weekend, though, is that the ability of one unit to hold multiple objectives made the number of scoring units much less important than the size (and quality!) of those scoring units. One ork mob or 'gaunt swarm can easily hold 3 objectives, provided the player placed his objectives to facilitate that.

**Somnicide**

Ah cool, were you the magnetized stealers? I really liked that display if so.

The counter assault tactic works to pull units off of multiple objectives, but personally I would rather see a single unit able to claim only a single objective.

**Janthkin**

Somnicide wrote:Ah cool, were you the magnetized stealers? I really liked that display if so.

The counter assault tactic works to pull units off of multiple objectives, but personally I would rather see a single unit able to claim only a single objective.

Nope, though it is okay to like that display anyway; I did, too.

Though the older 'nids do look a bit dated now.

I don't mind the units claiming multiple objectives per se, but it does rather undermine the argument for KPs as a balance to armies with many scoring units. There is no way to prevent an opponent from placing several objectives in relatively close proximity. And while you can force an enemy unit to counter-assault off the objectives, some of the armies lack anything with which to accomplish that goal (e.g., IG aren't likely to have an assault unit that can get past the front lines, in order to assault that 'gaunt brood claiming 3 objectives).

I look forward to the evolution of missions with time. We're only 2 months in; I fully expect Adepticon to find new and interesting ways to force players into balanced lists.

**Kilkrazy**

A lot of good points have been made in this thread.

As far as I can tell there are four 'great' things about Kill Points.

1. They are not related to the size of units.
2. They are not related to the combat value of units.
3. They allowed victory on completely unbalanced results. (I kill 30 Boyz, you kill four gundrones and you win.)
4. There is so much unhappiness about them that several different schemes were proposed for changing or dumping them within a few weeks of them starting.

KPs were apparently supposed to prevent VP hunting. Instead we have got KP hunting. What's the difference?

Take the example of Tau Devilfish and Piranhas. If you replace the D'fish's drones with SMS, you halve the KP value while increasing the VP value by about 25%.

With the Piranhas, you can have a squadron of one skimmer worth 2 KPs, or a squadron of five skimmers worth 2 VPs. It doesn't make sense.

Won't we just get lists optimised for KP denial rather than VP denial? Is that an improvement? Were VPs that bad? Where are all the archived threads complaining about how bad an idea VPs were? (It's an idea that has been succesfully used for decades in Ancients and other games.)

Is it really all just to save the kiddies from doing a bit of maths? Wouldn't it have been easier to make a rule that you have to exchange lists at the start of the game, and tick off models as they get killed?