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How did you adjust for the randomness of pairings involving Necron players who would give up full VP's for getting phases out. A player would get 2k vp vs. Necrons but never have to kill all the models on the table. In the Adepticon Gladiator the luck of the draw early on would mean someone would face a Necron player and get full VP's while most everyone else would not be so lucky. I didn't have a solution when I ran those events.

I'm not arguing with you on this, I'm just curious because you take the randomness of player pairings seriously and I couldn't solve that one.

DarthDiggler wrote: VP is never balanced. An MSU army where every possible unit is under 120pts will always be superior in a VP game against an army with just one Land Raider at 250pts. It takes one Lascannon to knock out a Land Raider and get 250 VP, but against the MSU list there is no way to get 250pts from one lascannon shot, everything is so cheap. A player would need to target multiple units across the board and get destroyed results from all of them. The MSU list is to spread out and can mitigate the lose of a few 75pt razorbacks here or there, by knocking out one Land Raider. There is no balance in that.

Ah, but herein lies the rub my friend. When I present a VP mission ahead of time, everyone knows that they can score no less than 2,000 points off their opponents, and no moer than 0. Everyone will have the same number of score-able units.

In a KP mission, I can't guarantee that in any capacity. They may find themselves able to score 24 kill points, or only 5.

So while the randomness and luck of MATCH-UP will never be controllable, the inherent randomness of CAPACITY to score in the actual mission CAN be controlled.

You see the difference?

I think Mike's point is that VP is inherently more balanced than KP because everyone, at every table, is working with the same "budget" of 2000 points.

While a MSU apporach will "never" yield 250 points to a single lascannon shot, statistically the number of lascannon shots it would take to yield 250 points on average will likely balance out with the MSU list. IE, its extremely unlikely that 1 lascannon = 1 land raider, but much more likely that 1 lascannon could = 1 razorback.

I'll post up some basic stat's on that when I get home from work if I remember.

And just as another note, take this year's ard boyz for example:

Round 1, mission 3, fast units are worth 3 KP's. My guard army went for somewhere around 54 KP.

Now, I still took 2nd. Why did I take 2nd? I'd like to say it's because I'm an amazing player, but a big reason is that I was paired against a similarly KP'd opponent in a mech DE raider spam, with ~50 KP. We both had a relatively equal number of KP looking across from us.

I do know of games that happened just at my store, for example my friend played the Shrike assault terminator army, which clocked in at ~10 kp or so. He played a mech opponent who he nearly tabled. His mech opponent had 30-40 kp. In that instance he was almost ASSURED to win the game, and the mech opponent was almost definitley going to LOSE. After all, he could lose everything but 4-5 models and keep enough kp on the board that as long as he'd blown up 3-5 opposing transports and nothing else, he would still win.

Was it fair to the other mech guy that I got to face another high kp army, while he had to face kp denial? Not really I'd say. Were the results of that mission a good indicator of the skill level of the players? Id also say they weren't, it was more than ever the "luck of the draw" with pairings.

DarthDiggler wrote:How did you adjust for the randomness of pairings involving Necron players who would give up full VP's for getting phases out. A player would get 2k vp vs. Necrons but never have to kill all the models on the table. In the Adepticon Gladiator the luck of the draw early on would mean someone would face a Necron player and get full VP's while most everyone else would not be so lucky. I didn't have a solution when I ran those events.

I'm not arguing with you on this, I'm just curious because you take the randomness of player pairings seriously and I couldn't solve that one.

This one's a tough one to manage - but phase-out is tabling, and tabling ANYBODY gets you max VP. The one thing that we do is not grant max BP for people who table - you have to play out the game even by yourself going for the other goal components, of which VP are only 1/3 of the contribution to your current seed rating.

IIRC the Ard Boyz used a VP mission. So GW has the capacity to do VP missions.

Its not competitive when one army starts off the game fighting for a tie or having to go for the tabling to get a victory. The biggest issue is free KP like Tau drones from devilfish and formerly sporemines. For both armies there are no equal victory scales with KP. With VP you know you will have to kill 1850 points as every army has them. As for MSU, they are far easier to target and destroy than bigger fuller squads. With each unit lost, they also lose some heavy/special weapon.

targetawg wrote:While a MSU apporach will "never" yield 250 points to a single lascannon shot, statistically the number of lascannon shots it would take to yield 250 points on average will likely balance out with the MSU list. IE, its extremely unlikely that 1 lascannon = 1 land raider, but much more likely that 1 lascannon could = 1 razorback.

I'll post up some basic stat's on that when I get home from work if I remember.

It's not a question of how likely is it that a single lascannon shot will kill the 250 pt Land Raider; rather, it is that such an event can occur. A single lascannon shot will never yield 250 VPs against a list with no units that cost that much.

I think the issue with it was that some people would go up against an army with 10 troops choices, and some would go up against an army with 2, making it easier for some opponents to score much higher in a tournament where battle points determined who ultimately won.

Here, I think, is where we fundamentally disagree. If you draw the army with 10 Troops choices in a 5 objective mission, you will have a harder time than if you drew the army with 2. If you draw the army with 2 Troops choices in a KP mission, you will have a harder time than if you drew the army with 10. Dropping KPs completely attempts to account for the latter, but (in my opinion) greatly incentivizes lists which can bring more units for objective-claiming. This may actually tilt the board a bit, in favor of armies who have the option to utilize MSU tactics in this way.

Regardless of any theoretical differences, you certainly deserve congratulations - it sounds like you had a very successful tournament, and your attendees are all sounding very happy (in spite of it being Washington in August). That's the best measure of success.

Agreed. Mike, it looks like you did an amazing job, and introduced some impressive new innovations with this tournament. I hope that a good result doesn't cause you to conclude that it was perfect and incapable of being improved upon. I would really like to attend this next year, and am already looking forward to it with the promise of two days of games.

Congrats to all the winners! Congrats also to the Dakka guys who did well, like Dash and Yermom! I barely eked out a win over yermom at the Showcase Ironman event, and have no doubt I'll be seeing him in Vegas next year.

As for KPs, the arguments have already been clearly expressed, so I won't go on at length. I will note that I think
KPs are clearly taken into account by the designers when pricing transports in 5th edition codices. They got cheaper and more durable in 5th. The counter-balance to that is KPs. In 8+ years of playing 3rd & 4th ed, MSU was always the best way to play. There was no question- you always tried to max out your force org chart as best you could for maximum maneuver elements. 5th edition has introduced a radical and significant balancing factor to that- 1/3 of the missions are KPs. As a competitive player, I bought my first Land Raider last year. If 5th still used VPs instead of KPs, I strongly doubt I ever would have done.

MVBrandt wrote:
To your question, I don't think they actually do. It's more likely that you'll see odd situations such as in Stelek's first game at the Open. He went against a list that was openly inferior / "bad," even by the admission of the guy who played it. Like three land raiders with 1k sons squads in them, and a few other things. If he didn't table the guy *and I don't think he quite did* were the mission KP instead of VP, he'd have lost, instead of winning by around 1,000 vp. In this situation, the "gamey" construct creates a BAD result, in almost anyone's book - an inferior list piloted by an inexperienced player beating a superior list piloted by a veteran player? Just take the inferior/superior list component out of that question and it still is "wrong." Better players should win, period.

Better players will win, period, if they're better players, and account correctly for all the parameters involved.

In your example, Stelek took a MSU list to a tournament without a KP mission. This is a sign of a good player, sure. But, would he take the same list to a tournament where there was a KP missions, and, if he did, is that still being a good player, or being single-minded and ignoring the fact that in 40k, 1/3rd of all missions should be based on KP and penalize MSU armies.

You're changing what the game is.

MVBrandt wrote:Red, more of my reply is up there, but at the heart of it that 33% is the problem.

2/3 of the missions in the book strongly benefit people who take MSU and lots of scoring units / contesting units. I think the draw mission is pretty bad, most people seem to, but on the subject of KP you run into the fact that everyone takes very different armies at a tournament, and BECAUSE of that the KP inclusion makes a tournament situation inherently imbalanced.

I disagree with your primary analysis. 1/3rd of missions are designed to be a drawfest and can be won just as easily by an army with two scoring units as they can be with five. 1/3rd of missions have a random number of objectives - sometimes 3, sometimes 5 - and when there are three objectives, you can win with two scoring units.

...
Basically, I can guarantee that in the objective mission, both players have to battle over 5 objectives.
In the Quarters mission, I can guarantee that both players have to battle over 4 quarters.
In the VP mission, I can guarantee that both players have to battle for a maximum of 2,000 VP.

In the rulebook, there is no 5-objective mission. The rules of the game state that I am only required to bring two scoring units. So, if you force the objective mission to be about five objectives, you reward the player with 10 scoring units in their army (SM, Guard), and penalize the army that brings 20 necron warriors because they're a liability in general.

In the rulebook, there is no quarters mission either. Quarters are also rewarding a MSU approach, especially if you include the clause that the unit must be "wholly within".

Your view that MSU armies are inherently more competitive, and can overcome KP missions might be formed from the insistence on running other missions that benefit the army with more scoring units versus the one that doesn't. If that's the basis for your stance, then I can see why you think that a KP mission is irrelevant overall.

If you breakdown, by odds, how many objectives you should need to battle over via the 5th ed missions, you end up with:

5 Objectives: 11% of the time
4 Objectives: 11% of the time
3 Objectives: 11% of the time
2 Objectives: 33% of the time
0 Objectives: 33% of the time, penalizing the player with lots of units

Compare that to your guaranteed mission set above, which has:
5 Objectves: 33% of the time
4 Objectives: 33% of the time (quarters)
0 Objectives: 33% of the time, not penalizing the player with lots of units

You can see how significantly different your setup is to the one in the book.

Now, that's fine - you advertised your event, it's your call, and people knew what to expect when making their lists. But, it's not 5th ed 40k. In 5th ed 40k, if I bring two big, hard-to-kill scoring units (think 20-man plaguebearers, or 10-man nob biker units), I should have a good shot at 77% of the expected missions (figuring I can use two scoring units well enough on the 2 and 3 objective missions, and denying KP to my opponents), whereas a MSU approach is good for only 66% (as it gives up the KP mission). Isn't knowing this breakdown also part of the game's skill?

You're right - you can't guarantee anything. And that's where skill as a listbuilder comes into play. A skilled listbuilder knows that MSU has a weakness, and makes concessions accordingly. An event that takes away this balance just shows how well MSU armies can do in an environment designed to reward MSU armies. I don't think that this rewards skill any more or any less than running the mission proportions as setup in the rulebook.

It sounds good that both armies give up 2000 VPs, but those VPs are vastly harder to get from a MSU army than a smaller army.

MSU armies are spread out all over the table, and it is like playing whack-a-mole to kill them all. Especially if you are playing a smaller army you simply can't go after all of those targets.

MSU armies on the other hand have no problem going after, and tabling smaller armies. All of their points are concentrated in a few units, and they can be killed.

In most cases if you have an army with say 15 KP against an army with 24 KP it will be almost impossible for the 15 KP army to get 24 KP out of that army because it just can't kill units fast enough. The 15 KP armies will be hard pressed to beat the 24 KP army in both VPs and in objective based missions. At least with KP missions it will give the smaller armies a slight advantage that they lose in objective based missions.

We all know that all codexs are not created equal, and some codexs or types of armies can't do MSU well.

Blackmoor, I recognize that.

My point here is that if you know in advance that there's a quarters mission, a 5-objective mission, and a VP mission ... you know how you need to build your army to best excel at these.
I also make the recognition and choice based upon the way our local metagame (if you will) functions in playtest that EVERY codex capable of competing regardless, can compete in these situations if built appropriately. That's to say, maybe Dark Angels and Necrons suffer a little more, but they suffer ANYWAY, regardless of mission / tournament. Every other dex can easily manage the missions to a top tier level.

If you are running a SW codex, and take a 5 kp army with 2 scoring units, you're setting up to fail.

For the KP mission, the problem becomes not solvable. You could bring an army with fewer kill points by design, and still run into an opponent with even less than you. You could choose not to, and run into someone with more kill points anyway, etc.

In the VP situation, or 5-objective situation, there's no chance you could optimize for it and have the missions ... NOT happen. In the KP situation, the chance is ever-present.

As a tournament organizer, it is a person's responsibility to shunt blame for random/bad luck AWAY from the tournament, and onto a player's preparatory choices. Hence the issue.

This is definitely one of the better threads I've read on Dakka Dakka in a while. So I have very little to contribute, except to point out that using VPs means that armies with spawning units (Tomb Spyders, Tervigons) can give away more than 2000VPs in a game. The significance of that is something I'll leave to other people to discuss.

MVBrandt wrote:As a tournament organizer, it is a person's responsibility to shunt blame for random/bad luck AWAY from the tournament, and onto a player's preparatory choices. Hence the issue.

If you take this thought to its logical conclusion, and remove all preparatory choices from the equation, in an effort to test only player skill, you'll end up with a tournament where the TO creates the army lists (and, perhaps necessarily, supplies the armies).

Matchup draws are always going to be a part of 40k. Forcing everyone towards an MSU approach doesn't alter that, it just constrains what the viable choices are.

As a person who BROUGHT 2x land raiders to a tournament dominated by MSU...

seriously, it doesn't matter. If my land raiders go down in a killpoint game, the terminators are going to be fairly useless, and i'll probably lose the game anyway. Same thing here.

the ONLY thing I didn't like about VP's, and I think could use a tweaking, was the fact that weapon destroyed results count for half the VP's of a vehicle. Meaning if you blow one of the FOUR weapons off of my land raider, you score 130 points instantly. And its not uncommon for that to happen. Also, if its immobilized against terrain, thats another free 130 points for my opponent. Just make it so VP's for vehicles are only awarded if fully destroyed, and boom, you have a fairly fair system.

Again, if I lose my raider in a KP mission i'm still going to lose. This isn't so drastic of a departure. (the one game I did lose during the nova open, I lost both raiders to melta guns against the very skilled player mark ferek)

Honersstodnt wrote:As a person who BROUGHT 2x land raiders to a tournament dominated by MSU...

seriously, it doesn't matter. If my land raiders go down in a killpoint game, the terminators are going to be fairly useless, and i'll probably lose the game anyway. Same thing here.

the ONLY thing I didn't like about VP's, and I think could use a tweaking, was the fact that weapon destroyed results count for half the VP's of a vehicle. Meaning if you blow one of the FOUR weapons off of my land raider, you score 130 points instantly. And its not uncommon for that to happen. Also, if its immobilized against terrain, thats another free 130 points for my opponent. Just make it so VP's for vehicles are only awarded if fully destroyed, and boom, you have a fairly fair system.

Again, if I lose my raider in a KP mission i'm still going to lose. This isn't so drastic of a departure. (the one game I did lose during the nova open, I lost both raiders to melta guns against the very skilled player mark ferek)

That might be true for you, but take an army with two 800pt Seer Councils vs. the uber MSU (uber = 20+ units). A council could spend 6 turns kills 8 units that will never equal the councils points cost. If that one council goes down at the end, they lose. In KP it would have been much different. As to the change you mention about vehicles. If you needed to destroy every one of those razorbacks and rhinos to get any points, you might not get any points at all. Though I see your point about losing 130pts for getting a hurricane bolter knocked off. In the world of MSU melta spam it isn't any harder to knock out a LR as it is a Lascannon to knock out a razorback.

It doesn't force everyone to a MSU approach, and true MSU is not the best solution for the missions. That's why the Tournament Champion went through mostly opponents with MORE kill points than he had, on his way to undefeated.

An important fact to note, and take into consideration (I like statistical data and analysis far more than the alternative).

In fact, in the final rounds ... 17 KP beat 23 KP, 15 KP beat 16 KP, 14 KP beat 18 KP, 13 KP beat 16KP, 17 KP beat 19KP, etc.

Yes, I agree that taking that thought to its logical conclusion leads to same armies / same models / etc., but I think that's a little hyperbolic/strawmanish (not to say you're throwing a strawman at me, just that it's not really realistic to the 40k situation).

The point here is to allow player choices with army builds to be predicated safely upon the missions as presented ahead of time with transparency.

Until you bracket based upon KP, you can't implement it as a mission fairly, whereas implementing VP as a mission is INHERENTLY fair - with the caveat that the unwinnable argument about "codex balance" still remains (and never goes away, anyway).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DarthDiggler wrote:

Honersstodnt wrote:As a person who BROUGHT 2x land raiders to a tournament dominated by MSU...

seriously, it doesn't matter. If my land raiders go down in a killpoint game, the terminators are going to be fairly useless, and i'll probably lose the game anyway. Same thing here.

the ONLY thing I didn't like about VP's, and I think could use a tweaking, was the fact that weapon destroyed results count for half the VP's of a vehicle. Meaning if you blow one of the FOUR weapons off of my land raider, you score 130 points instantly. And its not uncommon for that to happen. Also, if its immobilized against terrain, thats another free 130 points for my opponent. Just make it so VP's for vehicles are only awarded if fully destroyed, and boom, you have a fairly fair system.

Again, if I lose my raider in a KP mission i'm still going to lose. This isn't so drastic of a departure. (the one game I did lose during the nova open, I lost both raiders to melta guns against the very skilled player mark ferek)

That might be true for you, but take an army with two 800pt Seer Councils vs. the uber MSU (uber = 20+ units). A council could spend 6 turns kills 8 units that will never equal the councils points cost. If that one council goes down at the end, they lose. In KP it would have been much different. As to the change you mention about vehicles. If you needed to destroy every one of those razorbacks and rhinos to get any points, you might not get any points at all. Though I see your point about losing 130pts for getting a hurricane bolter knocked off. In the world of MSU melta spam it isn't any harder to knock out a LR as it is a Lascannon to knock out a razorback.

Well, and councils tend not to win tournaments regardless, b/c of how badly they are screwed when you don't go first ... if your whole army is built around their success or failure. See, this is the point ... a double seer council army is a rock that HOPES for the right "go first" against the right opponents all games, and has an advantage in KP missions, but is hardly a "great" and well-balanced / all comers' list. Lists like these GAME a kill point situation, instead of building to properly handle and win (Even if by bare margins) all missions regardless of opponent. I don't see why we should be encouraging rock / random armies that simply hope for a good draw in the right missions, vs. those that are genuinely built to tackle an all comers situation in missions that don't inherently advantage certain "rock" builds that are unwise in the greater scheme of things, but capable of pulling off hinky wins vs. certain opponents in certain missions.

MVBrandt wrote:If you are running a SW codex, and take a 5 kp army with 2 scoring units, you're setting up to fail.

For the KP mission, the problem becomes not solvable. You could bring an army with fewer kill points by design, and still run into an opponent with even less than you. You could choose not to, and run into someone with more kill points anyway, etc.

In the VP situation, or 5-objective situation, there's no chance you could optimize for it and have the missions ... NOT happen. In the KP situation, the chance is ever-present.

As a tournament organizer, it is a person's responsibility to shunt blame for random/bad luck AWAY from the tournament, and onto a player's preparatory choices. Hence the issue.

I can understand your concerns, but I think you're removing the most interesting preparatory choice in 5th ed list building. The constant tension between the opposite design priorities of objective vs. KP missions. People building armies within that framework have tough choices to make, and (for example) vehicle squadrons can be a viable choice, sacrificing flexibility of fire and maneuver for durability within KP situations. By going with the mission framework you have, you have removed this dilemma and tilted the entire balance of the tournament in favor of MSU. Don't get me wrong, I love playing MSU, but I got my fill of it in 3rd and 4th ed, and I find the 5th ed missions more interesting. Your example of Stelek's game against Daemon-Archon Ren's LR list is a classic example; you would call it a "bad" result if Stelek lost, whereas most of us who play 5th edition would see it as a predictable consequence of his army design choices- he took a high-KP army. Now, this is not to imply any criticism of the army. He knew he was playing in an environment without KPs, and took a list optimized for the environment. That's smart. But if he took it to a normal 5th ed event which includes KP, there would have been a risk inherent in building an army so focused on the other 2/3 (objective) of missions.

Redbeard's mathematical breakdown of the missions is pretty enlightening.

MVBrandt wrote:As a tournament organizer, it is a person's responsibility to shunt blame for random/bad luck AWAY from the tournament, and onto a player's preparatory choices. Hence the issue.

There was also a big dose of luck in the pairings at Nova. What would have happened if Mark and Stelek would have been paired game 1 instead of game 6? There was luck involved in that. How is that any different than a MSU army getting paired with a KP denial list in a KP mission? Both sets of occurances are 'lucky'

As Redbeard said the only true way to test skill would be to have the same armies across the board, but that's no fun and then you have the randomness of die rolling. Now to mitigate that every roll, or group of rolls, must be the average. This is not a game most people would enjoy playing.


No one is bad mouthing the tourney. It sounds like a great one that will go up there with all the other great tourneys run. From my perspective I feel uncomfortable hearing that this system is the best system for determing the best player, especially when there seems to be a flaw which narrows list construction to a set path. I think the best players are the ones consistently in the top 10, not the one who wins the tournament per say. Anyone can have a good day of rolling, but to maintain that high level of performance is what makes the best players the best. The Yankees are the best team in baseball, yet they have lost 46 games. That doesn't mean 46 times they stunk. The breaks just didn't go their way those days. That doesn't stop them from being the best team in baseball.

MVBrandt wrote:Until you bracket based upon KP, you can't implement it as a mission fairly, whereas implementing VP as a mission is INHERENTLY fair - with the caveat that the unwinnable argument about "codex balance" still remains (and never goes away, anyway).

I reiterate my theory that vehicles (particularly transports) in 5th edition are priced within the context of KP missions being 1/3 of the games. How else would it make sense for them to univerally get better AND cheaper in every 5th ed codex than they were in the prior versions?

MVBrandt wrote:Well, and councils tend not to win tournaments regardless, b/c of how badly they are screwed when you don't go first ... if your whole army is built around their success or failure. See, this is the point ... a double seer council army is a rock that HOPES for the right "go first" against the right opponents all games, and has an advantage in KP missions, but is hardly a "great" and well-balanced / all comers' list. Lists like these GAME a kill point situation, instead of building to properly handle and win (Even if by bare margins) all missions regardless of opponent. I don't see why we should be encouraging rock / random armies that simply hope for a good draw in the right missions, vs. those that are genuinely built to tackle an all comers situation in missions that don't inherently advantage certain "rock" builds that are unwise in the greater scheme of things, but capable of pulling off hinky wins vs. certain opponents in certain missions.

Council armies can certainly win going second as long as the tables have appropriate amounts of LOS-blocking terrain on them. The council usually needs to hide in a corner, but due to going second he can refuse the flank and (with terrain) minimize the number of shots he has to take before he gets a turn to cast Fortune.

As long as we're talking specific army builds, I'll mention horde infantry guard again. That's an army which is designed to do very well in all missions, being particularly durable/nasty in KPs.

MVBrandt wrote:
Well, and councils tend not to win tournaments

I guess I disagree with this statement and this might be where our quandry lies. I don't think a lot of people play them here in the states, but they regularly win tournaments overseas where they are more popular and only the straight book missions are played. They also seem to be the hard counter to the uber MSU style appoach.

DarthDiggler wrote:There was also a big dose of luck in the pairings at Nova. What would have happened if Mark and Stelek would have been paired game 1 instead of game 6? There was luck involved in that. How is that any different than a MSU army getting paired with a KP denial list in a KP mission? Both sets of occurances are 'lucky'

One of them would have lost, and not made it into the second day, but they both still had the same chance of winning.

The biggest problem I see with KP is that it can seriously hurt the chances of certain armies, and it can cause auto-win conditions in games. Armies like Dark Eldar and Tau have little choice but to play lists with a large number of killpoints if they hope to be competitive in any mission. If the DE player get matched up against a Deathwing player in a KP mission, it really doesn't really matter who the better player is, because the DE player has a huge disadvantage coming into the game already. The DE player can kill 90% of the enemy and still lose.

At least with VP they are both on a more or less even playing field with at least the same number of points available. Sure maybe the balance swings more towards the DE, but the skill of the players is much more prominent.

Seer Councils have a hard time in our environment because:

1) Everyone knows to take a form of Psychic Defense

2) People know what Councils do, so thereby offer sacrifices or just shoot them with a lot of shots, they go down.

3) It's eggs in a basket syndrome.

I used a Council for awhile, and MSU defeats this when the MSU offers sacrificial units, which it can and will if played well.

I otherwise agree VP > KPs as my main gripe with KPs is that 1 KP = insanely hard to get rid of or super easy.

In one case - 10 Differed Nobs vs. 10 Grots. Both 1 KP. KPs are good because?

Herein lies the truth of things.

I think there is no mission that effectively gets away from the subject of random pairing, and so you can only attempt to develop missions that level the playing field from the tournament organizer's p.o.v., and allow players to predictably prepare a list that is appropriately all-comers for them.

Kill Points cannot accomplish this, again because someone who does not build an "all comers" list for a tournament with kill points (i.e. he spams kill points and hopes) can get lucky with his draw and avoid actually playing the kill point "game," in terms of list building quandary, while someone else can play the game actively by taking fewer kill points, and still be screwed.

Wherever you go, if the tournament is advertised enough in advance, the best players will expend their energy planning out a list that will enable them to compete at the missions presented. So, avoid taking ones that place the burden of unpreparedness for the players on the tournament itself ... leave it entirely on the players to prepare appropriately.

KP renders this impossible, BECAUSE of the impact of random draw.

In the issue of the Kopach vs. Stelek early example, Kopach in theory would have still won the match, and gone on to win his other matches ... format-wise, missions aside, that's where we get a lot of "praise" (though I avoid applying it myself) for being a better way to evaluate things, b/c we go on a single elim for the Best General path. Only one person will win all of their games, and that person is the inherent best-of-the-weekend (which is all a tournament CAN evaluate).

We also take care to have the Best Overall be truly balanced on the overall, with perfectly equal contribution of sports, appearance and competitiveness.

Anywho, good discussion - very sensible and open.

At the heart of all this is the understanding - I hope - that there's probably not a "best" mission to go with, because best is a subjective term. What matters is the presentation of your missions ahead of time, effective stress testing of them to ensure that the various codices can compete evenly (and we did this, extensively, across 1,100+ game samples, utilizing EVERY codex against every OTHER codex in multiple samples each), and then utilizing a matching / pairing / seeding / etc. format that effectively ensures the "best" player for the weekend wins (and we can all acknowledge that "best" should remain in quotes for the inevitability of random pairing regardless of missions in the first round[s] and the luck of dice in a dice-based game).

- Mike

dahli.llama wrote:The biggest problem I see with KP is that it can seriously hurt the chances of certain armies, and it can cause auto-win conditions in games. Armies like Dark Eldar and Tau have little choice but to play lists with a large number of killpoints if they hope to be competitive in any mission. If the DE player get matched up against a Deathwing player in a KP mission, it really doesn't really matter who the better player is, because the DE player has a huge disadvantage coming into the game already. The DE player can kill 90% of the enemy and still lose.

At least with VP they are both on a more or less even playing field with at least the same number of points available. Sure maybe the balance swings more towards the DE, but the skill of the players is much more prominent.

For those two examples, maybe you get back to a more or less even playing field. But you do so by disadvantaging Tyranids (no cheap transports), Necrons (no cheap transports), DA (more expensive transports), and the various Inquisition armies.

If you're "stuck" with having to choose a system that tilts the field one way or another, I prefer using the system that 5th ed gave us. As Ragnar keeps pointing out - the pricing on transports in the 5e codexes strongly seems to suggest that KP are a balancing factor. It's only 35 VPs if I kill a Rhino, making full-mech a no-brainer choice in a VP scenario. But in a KP scenario, that 1 Rhino is a little more significant.

Smurfy wrote:Seer Councils have a hard time in our environment because:

1) Everyone knows to take a form of Psychic Defense

2) People know what Councils do, so thereby offer sacrifices or just shoot them with a lot of shots, they go down.

3) It's eggs in a basket syndrome.

I used a Council for awhile, and MSU defeats this when the MSU offers sacrificial units, which it can and will if played well.

And I find it odd, has anyone mentioned here that Stelek's list is indeed NOT MSU?

Look at his Grey Hunter units, they have some meat to them.

I otherwise agree VP > KPs as my main gripe with KPs is that 1 KP = insanely hard to get rid of or super easy.

In one case - 10 Differed Nobs vs. 10 Grots. Both 1 KP. KPs are good because?

1) Hey! None of my opponents brought any, I fought loganwing, daemons, dual lash, nine obliterators, and vanilla marines, two of the armies had an easy access pass to anti-psychic powers, but they didn't take them.

2) Well, the serpent went down, and they usually slogged towards the enemy, then lashed out at a few units before going down.

3) I don't think there is anything wrong with that. :p

I went 3-1 with a council (not even a jetcouncil no less!).

I might ditch it for next year, but that's a different matter entirely.

Anyway~

VP's are probably better, sure, they help MSU lists out, but the amount of KP imbalances are too much. Grots vs diversified nobs is one, thirty-five point rhinos versus land raiders is another. VP's make sure you get your worth of everything, and it's just more balancing.

Janthkin wrote:

targetawg wrote:While a MSU apporach will "never" yield 250 points to a single lascannon shot, statistically the number of lascannon shots it would take to yield 250 points on average will likely balance out with the MSU list. IE, its extremely unlikely that 1 lascannon = 1 land raider, but much more likely that 1 lascannon could = 1 razorback.

I'll post up some basic stat's on that when I get home from work if I remember.

It's not a question of how likely is it that a single lascannon shot will kill the 250 pt Land Raider; rather, it is that such an event can occur. A single lascannon shot will never yield 250 VPs against a list with no units that cost that much.

If we don't factor in unlikelyness, then couldn't a lascannon blow up a razorback, kill the squad in side and then also kill 2-3 squads around it in the ensuing explosion? I mean, technically its possible. And you just said we aren't using statistics at all.

So there you go, a lascannon can be just as effective against an MSU army when probability isn't factored in.



On the subject of VP vs KP. MSU has certain problems with VP missions that other armies don't just like they do with kill point missions.

For example. You can kill 8 marines across 2 5 man squads (5 from one squad and 3 from the other) This would in turn yield 3/4 of those 2 squads points total. However in a non MSU army, if you killed 8 squad members you would only get 1/2 the squads point total. So its much easier to gain VP's against MSU armies with less shooting. Only needing to kill 3 models in a unit to gain VPs vs 5 with "normal" armies.

I really think that this whole KP vs. VP debate really highlights the need for some other format. Stelek's 5x5 mission where before each game each player openly nominates 5 of the opponent's unit as KP for the game seems like a good compromise. It still has some imbalances (for example a Nob Biker army vs. MSU Space Marines would be easier for the Orks if he were to nominate the Rhinos), but at least the available points in each game would stay the same.

It seems that in the kill-point vs victory-point discussion the people preferring victory points believe that 2000 victory points is an equal playing field, and the people preferring kill points believe that 2000pts of kill points is an equal playing field.

In the first case, the problem seems to be that with kill-points you can get uneven match-ups so that the player with fewer units wins a MAD scenario, so that they can win by trading units (or kill-points) worth more victory-points for units worth fewer victory-points.

Likewise, in the second case, the problem seems to be that with victory-points you can get uneven match-ups so that the player with more units wins a MAD scenario, so that they can win by trading units worth fewer victory-points for units worth more victory-points.

In fact this can probably be put in better terms, so that it's the case with kill-points that they benefit from having fewer units than an equivalent enemy points value, and with victory-points benefit from having more units than an equivalent enemy points value.

I suppose you could chalk it up to the style of play you're trying to encourage: Multiple-Small-Units or Death-Star.

So naturally, I suggest a hybrid combining the benefits of both systems: The winner is the player that wins both kill-points and victory-points, which already exists with the method of tabling one's opponent. If the player wins only one or the other, then the game is tied pending tie-breakers such as Objectives.

I believe that this would encourage a style of army selection that would allow both Death-Stars, MSUs, and less extreme styles of play to all compete on the same level playing field.

MVBrandt wrote:Herein lies the truth of things.

I think there is no mission that effectively gets away from the subject of random pairing, and so you can only attempt to develop missions that level the playing field from the tournament organizer's p.o.v., and allow players to predictably prepare a list that is appropriately all-comers for them.

This is no more true about KP than it is about any of the other issues in random pairings. If I build an army around lash, and get matched up against a mechanized Njal army in round one, I'm in the losers bracket. If I build an army based on AV 14 vehicles and face 9 broadsides in a spearhead mission in round one, off to the losers bracket with me. You cannot get rid of the matchup equation. And, in an event where one loss = not winning, any number of armies could be matched against their Achilles heel and knocked out of contention in round one.

A good 40k player is one who understands the subtle balance between KP and scoring units, and about the trade off that MSU presents in gaining tactical flexibility in exchange for additional Kill Points. If someone (a not-so-good 40k player) wants to bring an army with 10 scoring models, and expects to win by tabling every opponent they face, that's their choice, they understand the risk involved. If someone wants to bring an army with 23 Kill Points, and win every KP mission by tabling their opponent, that also is their choice.

I applaud the effort to publish the missions ahead of time. I am a firm believer that no one should lose to a mission. But, that's not the same as losing to an unfavourable match up, which is part of the 40k tournament scene. If you published, ahead of time, the fact that there would be a KP mission, people would have prepared for it (or taken their chances) the same as they did knowing that there would be none, the only difference is that the metagame for the tournament would be closer to the actual 40k metagame.

Anyway, I'm not trying to bag on you or anything, from all accounts it was a successful event. But understanding the mission selection does go a long way to explaining the dominance and prevalence of certain builds.

DarthDiggler wrote:How did you adjust for the randomness of pairings involving Necron players who would give up full VP's for getting phases out. A player would get 2k vp vs. Necrons but never have to kill all the models on the table. In the Adepticon Gladiator the luck of the draw early on would mean someone would face a Necron player and get full VP's while most everyone else would not be so lucky. I didn't have a solution when I ran those events.

I'm not arguing with you on this, I'm just curious because you take the randomness of player pairings seriously and I couldn't solve that one.

Just a quick note regarding balancing since its not a Battlepoints system your score from the previous round only effects your seeding into the next round not your overall score. Thus in the system presented even causing phase out or tabling your opponent would only net you a better placement into the next round not in an overall better position for the tournament.

Possibly true, except that if you build a list to which 9 broadsides is your achilles heel, you've got a failure in list-building of epic proportions - but we get back at that point to discsussions you and I have had before where building "hoping" not to face your weakness is what you do or see as appropriate, and I view it as superior to build a list that can well and truly handle any threat (and this can be done with any dex).

To the above, we're back in a situation where I don't want to reiterate my point too much, but it hasn't been addressed yet - random match-up can hurt you in terms of your opponent's skill, or if you built a list that isn't all-comers capable, but the mission can be built for reliably if it is vp, objectives, quarters, and a couple others.

Kill points CANNOT be built for reliably, because you cannot control the number of scorable kill points you'll face. In all the other situations, that which you must score is STATIC (2000 vp, 5 objectives, 4 quarters, etc.), whereas in kill points not ONLY could you be "harmed" by a poor match-up, your match-up alone determines the number of objectives you have to score and the number of objectives your opponent has to score.

You might as well have a mission where every one of your opponent's troops selections becomes an objective when you kill it.