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I, personally, think 35pt Rhinos is a flaw. At that cost it's almost stupid NOT to take them, but that is only true with Space Marines. Kill points do help contend that, but VPs wouldn't help it either, because it is still 35pts, in which case, KPs is still affective, even when averaged, just not as much as counting.

ArbitorIan wrote:How many times do we go over this on Dakka?

One of the major advantages of KP is that they balance the other two missions. They're not meant to be FAIR, regardless of your army selections. They're meant to give you something to think about when building your army - to stop you from Min/Maxing and encourage you to take large units rather than multiple small ones. KP provide a counterpoint to the other missions, which encourage armies to take lots of troops choices.

Shall i take an entirely mechanised army? Well, on one hand I might get a C&C mission and my transports will be a massive advantage. On the other hand, I might get KP and they'll be a liability. I guess I'll just have to BUILD A BALANCED FORCE...

If you use VPs, or a 'fair' KP system based on 'points' or allocation by the players, then you remove the restrictions the THREAT of KP places on your army selection.

Suddenly, we're back to Mix/Max units and all-mechanised armies, because there's no reason NOT to take them. The only thing you ever have to think about when selecting your army would be objective-grabbing.

Obviously all this counts for nothing for IG, and I agree that for the time being they're in a bad situation. However, only a couple of months till a new codex, I'm sure we'll see this addressed...

Why should people be forced into building a balanced force? Aren't there already inherent Pros and Cons for not building your army in a balanced fashion? (An answer for everything) For unit size, there are already Pros and Cons for fielding large units versus small units. (Morale and Staying Power v.s. Maneuverability) What about force organization charts? Its seems to me there are already several rules mechanism geared toward what you say KP's accomplish. KP's just add another mechanism that pushes army lists in a narrower pigeon hole of viable options.

I think the purpose of KP was to try to simplify winning calculations, but as was mentioned before, if you can calculate an army list you can calculate VP.

The greatest argument against KP I have heard is a subjective one. "The battle didn't seem to be going that way." "Wow, that looked like it had gone a completely different way." Sure, KP's can bring a different level of strategy to the game, but is it the kind of strategy people want? Its just something else to numbermance, and from what I have witnessed, it hurts the theme and flavor of the game. Shouldn't a player's cinematic perspective of the results of a battle match the system's determined outcome as much as possible? KP's seem to fail in this.

I have never personally witnessed VP's to fail in this regard, and they use a mechanism that is already used to balance the game in the first place. Sure, with VP's if I lose my 300+ unit, it seems like a double whammy as I've lost that unit's effectiveness and the VP's, but it makes sense both mechanically and in theme.

Purchase costs match VP. If that unit is destroyed, the enemy has deprived me of that many points of my starting total.

If I were fighting a real war with my armies, and the enemy destroyed my uber unit. Wouldn't that be a milestone in the war and the battle? If the Land Raider survives, it continues on to be effective in more battles.. if the Land Raider is destroyed, well.. that's something to cheer about if you are the enemy, and VP's more then adequately represent this.

If the VP system seems like too much of a headache, then I'd say go to the percentage of KP system that was proposed. I have a feeling that statistically, they come out about the same for determining victors which really does bring a lot of merit to the idea in my opinion.

Hi. I'm an Imperial Guardsman. I'm normall pretty easily killed.

But check this out. If I stand in this rubble, stick my vickies up to you, and then duck, I'm as hard to kill as a Sister of Battle which costs considerably more than I do..neat trick huh.

Whats that? No, you're right, I do have to miss shooting back at you, thats true. Then again, it's also why I brought something in the region of 60 or 70 mates with me to deal with that sort of stuff! Not to mention the Tanks which will give you a proper answer to your weedy little popgun...

Advantage 2/3rds of the time, I think so. Remember...you are not meant to be rolling for the Mission type until just before you setup the board. By then, your army list should be written. You brought 9 Kill Points worth of stuff? Good look competing for those precious objectives. You'll never shift me with that little.

And hey, lets not forget, every KP I knock off you, if you have that few, is drastically reducing my incoming firepower. And since IG tend to have around One Hundred and Eleventy Twelve guns kicking about...and each of your units can, at most, take out one squad. At a time.....I guess I kind of have some kind of advantage there!

Are KPs perfect? Nope. Better than VPs though and if you really get your head into it, it shouldn't be a hinderance at all.

And I'm a Space Marine!

I'm big and fat.

And everybody hates me because they all bring AP3 (or better) weapons

Crap.

I am confused as to how all these "fixes" for KP's still keep the spirit in which KP's are to balance the advantage of having a lot of units in objective missions?

Fixed number of kill points and kill point ratios don't counterbalance having a lot of units for scoring/contesting objectives.

Does someone have a fix that still accomplishes this goal?

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Frankly, _is_ having lots of troops choices all that valuable in the other 2/3 of missions?

We certainly dont have any good assault units for driving enemy units off those objectives. Blasting stuff to death off their objectives doesnt work well anymore, given the ease of obtaining cover saves in 5th. And if theyre playing an assault-oriented army theyre going to be positively delighted that at least some of your stuff is coming to them instead of vice versa. Basic line squads also lose a big portion of their effectiveness since theyre going to be moving constantly instead of firing heavy weapons... which one could argue is why they even exist in the first place.

You cant stack tons of troops on a distant objective marker unless you've got some way to deliver them. Those methods are:

Footslog: Guard squads will have to leave cover to get near the objective. Guard squads in the open are easy prey even to the basic standard issue bolter. And theyre slow on foot. Advancing using vehicles for cover is all well and good but really not that hard to get around. And if theyre running an assaulty oriented army you're playing completely into their hands by meeting them mid-board.

Chimeras: Hey, theyre only 25-30 points overpriced. And carry a single scoring unit each.

Light Infantry outflanking: Not a bad option, relatively. But unless the objective is uncontested and near the table edge, you run into the usual problem of getting their stuff off the objective. What, you're going to assault it in melee? Even multiple squads blazing away with lasguns and plasma are going to have a hard time significantly hurting a squad of say 10 marines (particularly if theyre in cover). Also, you look at your opponents army list before the game begins. Upon seeing all that outflanking, WHY would your opponent be silly enough to put his objective markers near the board edge?

Drop: Another relatively good option. You can try to grab objectives that arent near table edges... but again you have the problem of getting their stuff OFF it. By the time you factor deviation on the deep strike, the piddly firepower of Guard infantry squads, their fragility, and the liklihood that you're deep striking in the open hence no cover... again, it often doesnt work out too well. And a smart opponent may very well spread his squad out at max cohesion on the objective to make scattering even more risky. Dont get me started comparing it to drop-podding marines.

Compare that to marines. Guard have more scoring units, sure. But worse delivery systems, are trying to claim positions that put their severe fragility at dramatic highlight, literally cant assault their way out of a brown paper bag, are forced to decide if they want to cut their firepower significantly by dropping a heavy weapon they likely wont get to shoot often, etc.

So really, ARE Guard at a big advantage for objective claiming missions? I've not encountered it, frankly.

Mech Guard certainly are! They are fast enough and that many tanks can simply push enemy units off of objectives. Drop Guard can have the numbers to simple swarm an objective in the late turns. As long as they can contest the mid/back field objectives and hold their own they can win.

Remember, you don't need to get their stuff off it, just use your stuff to contest it. I've won games by holding my own objective and then using non-scoring units (like a Dreadnought) to contest their objectives.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Right, the "just contest it" arguement. But keep in mind that most other armies have great tools for doing the same to us. Jump infantry, Drop Pods + cargo, 35 point Rhinos, teleporting Necrons, Eldar/Tau skimmer APCs, fast moving vehicles, etc etc. So like assaulting, we're forced into a position where we dont have as good tools as other armies.

Also, keep in mind that running swarming Guard tanks gets expensive. Which usually means you're not running as many infantry selections, hence the whole "Guard have too many scoring units" arguement loses weight in the balance.

Really, I'm not trying to be cynical. But I've tried the "just contest it" route too. And well... lets just say I havent had much success with the whole concept of "Guard lose KP but have a huge advantage in objective claiming".

Honestly, apart from the officer nonsense, I think the IG fall behind more because of their simple lack of power than anything else.

IG can't hold objectives well despite having many small units?

It's purely the fault of the codex then. Multiple small units do have advantages that make them better in non-Kill Point games, it's purely the guard codex that's not powerful enough for these advantages to make enough of a difference.

Ivan, this thread is how to fix Kill Points, not how to fix IG in Kill Points scenarios. Right now arguing about the competitiveness of IG is silly as they are getting a new codex in a few months. I agree that IG are in general not very competitive in 5th ed.

Go back and reread my first post, I don't even mention IG at all.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Ozy I am soooo with you on the KP thing.

You've popped up in at least three recent KP threads stating, with such clarity, EXACTLY why KP exist.

It is a perfect counter to the MSU that would spring up in a system that was based entirely on scoring objectives.

It is temporarily imperfect thanks to the existence of the antiquated IG book, and to a lesser extent the dark eldar book. IG coming in May, and dark eldar not too far after.

No one wants to face the logic. No one wants to make the adjustment. I do understand that people who only own an IG army can't make the adjustment until may.

to paraphrase Ozy with my own kill point mantra....

Kill Points reward players who have constructed lists with few units. Armies with fewer units have less units to score and less units to contest objectives.

66% of the games randomly generated in the rulebook are objective based. 60% of the GT missions were objective based and the two kill point scenarios awarded bonus points for having more units left alive at the end of the game than your opponent.

KP don't need to be fixed. Some codexes need to be fixed.

iphoenix wrote:Calculators are perfectly acceptable tools.

Look what happened with laser pointers... I sure as hell wouldn't use something not recognized by GW in or near a game of 40k. "They're not part of the game so they shouldn't be used with it." is what people thought about laser pointers, IIRC.

Shep: I suppose I could have just copied and pasted the exact same thing in three threads but that felt lazy.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

There is absolutely no question that Kill Points are a foil to the other two types of missions, which is exactly why even though I think they are horribly imbalanced with some armies (IG) I do still think they are necessary in tournaments in order to balance things out.

Certain army builds can have tremendous advantages and in many cases one of their only drawbacks is how they perform in Kill Point scenarios. Once you take Kill Points out of the equation a whole lot more army types become really powerful in a way that many of us would consider abusive. Kill Points also penalize players for taking really small fragile units that in many cases would otherwise be fantastic in a role of objective-contester units (like lone Piranhas in a Tau army, for example).


I do think however that the Kill Point ratio idea still does penalize a player for taking lots of small fragile units (which is what Kill Points is supposed to do) in that your opponent can focus on killing all the fragile units and therefore has as easier time of achieving a better Kill Point ratio than you. However, what the Kill Point ratio ensures is that you always have a chance because there isn't a finite amount of Kill Points that any army can reach where the game is effectively over.

In an Ork vs. IG Kill Point game currently there can most certainly be a situation where the Guard player simply has no possible to chance to play for even a tie beyond completely wiping out the Ork player. With Kill Point ratios even if you have a ton of fragile units that get killed early on, if you stick to your game plan and focus on wiping out whole enemy units you absolutely can still end up winning the game by the end of it.


In other words, a Kill Point ratio system still penalizes players for taking lots of small, fragile units but not nearly as much as standard Kill Points and it ensures that players always have a chance to win without completely wiping out the opposing army.

That's a good explanation. I still think that KP ratios would then weaken the ability of KP's to balance out Objective scenarios, but without playing a few games I don't really know.

But what armies really struggle with KP's? IG certainly do, as do Dark Eldar and Tau to a lesser extent. The rest can make pretty competitive, low KP armies. So 2 3rd ed Codices and one early 4th ed can't compete but the rest can? In that case, rather than trying to fix KP's, why don't we fix those codices?

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Ozymandias wrote:That's a good explanation. I still think that KP ratios would then weaken the ability of KP's to balance out Objective scenarios, but without playing a few games I don't really know.

But what armies really struggle with KP's? IG certainly do, as do Dark Eldar and Tau to a lesser extent. The rest can make pretty competitive, low KP armies. So 2 3rd ed Codices and one early 4th ed can't compete but the rest can? In that case, rather than trying to fix KP's, why don't we fix those codices?

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Yeah, Guard are the only army that is completely and utterly hosed because they are literally forced to take tons of small fragile units.

The other (less visible) issue is that some factions are simply much better able to make armies that can excel at both objectives and Kill Point missions. For example, Orks can take gigantic Troops choices that are fantastic all-around units. They are good at shooting, great in CC (especially with a PK Nob) and they have enough cheap bodies to make a really durable objective grabbing unit.

So an Ork player can really build his army around these units and they are great in objective games and they are hard as hell to get rid of in Kill Point missions. A Tau player, on the other hand can also load up on Firewarriors, but the max unit size is 12, they are twice as many points as Orks, they suck in CC, can't kill AV12+ vehicles with either shooting or CC and they have a pretty abysmal leadership which means they often run off the table.

In other words, the Tau player has to build his army to fill in the cracks that his Firewarriors fail at. He has to take anti-tank units, he has to take anti-MEQ units, etc. He doesn't have the luxury of building an army that can perform well in both objective and Kill Point games.

It is this inherent inbalance which frustrates many players.


Now, you are absolutely correct that the way to address it is in the codexes themselves. Unfortunately up until this point GW has shown absolutely zero interest in making any tweaks to the game in acknowledgment of this imbalance. In fact, the SM codex doesn't even seem to recognize that Kill Points even exist in that they have several units that cause most players to scratch their head and wonder how they're even supposed to play with them in regards to Kill Points (Chronus, Thunderfire batteries).

So while I will be pleasantly surprised if GW releases the IG codex with all sorts of balancing tweeks for Kill Points, my gut feeling is that they will proceed business as usual and leave guard basically in the same Kill Point lurch they are in now.


And when it comes to running a tournament, if you're trying to make things a little more fair and balanced, sure the optimal way would be to put special Kill Point rules in place for certain armies, but if you do that you're going to have to be making up rules for those specific codexes and no matter how well intentioned that plan is people are always going to start screaming about how your rules favor this that or the other army.

By using a Kill Point ratio system everyone is on the same playing field, its just a slightly different playing field than with standard Kill Points. One that is more forgiving for a wider array of armies.

Wow, good thing GW is releasing a new IG Codex in a few months.

Next time I play a KP game I'll suggest we try the ratio method out to see how it plays differently from the norm.

I guess we'll know in May how GW has responded to IG and Kill Points.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Does anyone have a solid source of this May release date for the IG codex?

Skinnattittar wrote:Does anyone have a solid source of this May release date for the IG codex?

Try reading BoLS / Warseer / DakkaDakka News and Rumours...

I do not know what BoLS is, but those other two are community fed, not official or solid sources of information.

"I heard from a guy on one forum who heard from a guy that heard from a guy that worked with someone who delivered pizza to someone on the phone with somebody they thought worked for Games Workshop mutter something about a release date in May for something, and they saw a bunch of IG models on the guy's table, so that's what they could have been talking about." Obviously nobody SAYS all of that, if anything about their sources. Hence my asking if anyone has an actual source that is even mildly verifyable other than by public opinion, real or otherwise.

BoLS = Bell of Lost Souls Blog

They have some ins with GW and they are usually spot on when it comes to rumors.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Kill points are not in any way, shape, or form a balancing act for the objective missions. Especially when you have troops-only scoring.

Plus, at least to me, the more useful units out there, the more fun the game is. The new trend towards less, larger squads of the blandest units in the codex (Troops) combined with pillbox vehilces make the new edition a major fail for me (So much so that I refuse to play 5th edition)

The only viable fix to kill points is to have both players agree to build thier army to a certain point total and a certain kill point total (And to not count created units such as spore mines/spawn as giving kill points)

skyth wrote:Kill points are not in any way, shape, or form a balancing act for the objective missions. Especially when you have troops-only scoring.

But non-troops can contest. In Objective games there is an advantage to more units and in KP games it's a disadvantage. How are they not there to balance?

Ozymandias, King of Kings

@ Ozy : I would have more sniped at skyth's "I refuse to play 5th edition". Which pretty much means he has no actual experience in judging Kill Points. My only problem with kill points is that they punish certain armies that can not make low KP forces, such as the Guard, Tau, and Dark Eldar. The IG get beaten up the most by KP because they have difficulty boarding their opponents due to lack of mobility and they fight by expending troops, giving your opponent KPs.

Ozymandias wrote:

skyth wrote:Kill points are not in any way, shape, or form a balancing act for the objective missions. Especially when you have troops-only scoring.

But non-troops can contest. In Objective games there is an advantage to more units and in KP games it's a disadvantage. How are they not there to balance?

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Because you have armies that have very effective troops (See Orks and Chaos) that don't need much in the way of other things and can operate on a low kill-point total.

But the biggest grief with them is that they make the game less fun by encouraging people to take less units.

How are fewer units less fun?

"What the major thing is here is that the player decides where to put those KP's."

I, personally, think this makes things much more complicated! So now some units are not worth ANY kp, if you do it that way? That's pretty confusing... you'd have to have tokens next to each unit to prove (to a judge in a tourney for example) that you really did assign KP that way. Or it'd have to be on the army list. Either way... ugh!

I think dividing it by the amount you started with, or adding back in surviving KP, is the way to go (if you're going to stick with KP at all... which even as a 'nid player, I think is doable... but then I'm only take 3 troop squads at max size, 32 gaunts).

Agree that guard get the short end of the stick... but either the dividing or adding in surviving KP could fix that without making it Extra complicated (or at least, too much more than it already is!)

And with ratioing KPs, you are still encouraging larger, fewer units, not as much as raw KP, but then armies like IG don't need special rules. I think KPs are a decent idea, just needs some more work to make it less "huh?"

You have 3+3 Objective Markers, you can have 3+3 Kill Markers. Not difficult at all.