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Does the average change when its known that KP missions are a factor?

If the average number of KP does decrease, then the balancing is working - people are tempering their armies knowing that KPs are part of 5th edition.

If the average decreases, but the winners remain the same, you're punishing the average and the weaker players by encouraging them with false ideas of KP reduction improving their odds.

Savvy?



Balance is NOT about the average. That's the fail mindset that causes the GW Codices to often become IMBALANCED ... namely, that they balance around their notion of an "average" player, which leads to certain codex styles being far easier for superior players to take far too much advantage of.

Provide the "average" with encouragement to weaken their army's tactical capacity in the majority of missions and in straight combat, for the sake of "hoping" they have a better advantage by luck of the opponent draw in the KP mission(s), and all you do is harm the people who fall for that idea as actually being bright.

MVBrandt wrote:MSU spam is not being given some kind of proportionally dominant advantage
. . .
Barring strange outliers and bad luck draws, MSU armies are simply better

This is why I agree with Redbeard, despite being taken out of order (and context perhaps) it is still true.

You'll wind up, with me, at the conclusion that MSU is not absolutely better in a vacuum ... it's why numerous true MSU attendees at the Open did not do very well. Spreading your threats and bringing an optimal choice of units to tackle opponents, capture objectives and areas of the board, survive damage, etc., is always common sense tactics. Spreading your points as much as humanly possible (true MSU)? Well, provably not so successful. Which is why KP as a balancer against MSU is unnecessary; max MSU is self-destructive.

Establishing a balance between strong units and numerous units is INHERENTLY self-managing. KP just causes people to WRONGLY (at their own detriment) harm the best balance in "hopes" of a good pairing with someone that has too many KP in just the right round (when they'd probably beat that person anyway, in any mission, if they had a properly balanced force).

BUT reducing the # of units you would NORMALLY take to best optimize your army based upon the phantom hope that you get the perfect draw at the perfect time for a KP mission at a tournament ... yields unsuccessful results, harming the people that buy into that faulty premise.


There will be opinions on both sides here; the goal of a tournament organizer should be to create the most FAIR situation possible ... not one that appears to cater to one side of an argument yet unfairly punishes the people most in need of a fair field.

That's not the only side to balance.

You're looking at it from the perspective of someone trying to win an event by hoping for a matchup, rather than the overall impact of what armies are present, and what the spread of the field is.

Looking at your no-KP event, out of a field of 88 teams, 6 of the top 8 advancing armies were from two marine codexes that encourage MSU tactics, there was one ork army piloted by a very experienced, competent general, and one Daemon army that should have been a mono-nurgle CSM army (which I'd imagine was doing SMU stuff, as mono-nurgle would lean that way).

I'd like to compare that with the adepticon championship results, but the data for what armies were played isn't there. I'm fairly sure it was more varied.

Player skill isn't accounted for in any of these graphs. The impact isn't going to be a good player not doing well, or a poor player suddenly winning tournaments. The impact is seen in the variety of armies that can be brought with a chance to do well.

When 50% of the finals are all space wolves, something isn't right. You can't tell me that none of the 11 Space Wolf players was below average, yet their lowest finish was 2-2 (average) and 7/11 of them had winning records.

Adding KP to the equation means that some of those players aren't going to run as many kill points. Whether that is good for that individual player, I don't know. But it is good for the tournament environment overall. The more codexes that can field viable armies the healthier the metagame. And taking out KP doesn't seem to encourage variety.

The Mono-Nurgle army only brought 13 KP.

The Adepticon champ was a Space Wolf player, with 13+ KP (may have been 15, may have been 13, can't recall for sure) ... and I finished 9 out of 240 with 19 KP, winning my first round against someone with 6 fewer.

As far as army variety, Demons, SW, and Orks held the highest win %'s ... certainly not "marines spamming MSU" ... in fact, Marines and Guard maintained 50% level win rates.

As far as 50% of the finals all being space wolves, you had the eventual tournament winner with only 17 (around the average), a GT veteran in Sam P. with only ~14 in attendance of the top, and the 23KP SW of A. Sutton losing his first match-up in the final round.

Saying something isn't right is ... well, going "YOUR FACTS CAN'T MEAN ANYTHING," and if we're at an impasse where I can't convince you of anything that's fine ... I just don't think it would be productive to carry too far.

We've run tournaments and leagues merrily with KP as a win condition in the past, and facts / reasonable argument convinced me to adjust my case and presentation. While I'm happy to do similar, I don't think it's necessarily going to accomplish anything here if both sides aren't open minded about it. I'd rather stay positive with you, than butt heads.

Like I said, I can provide all the data I want, you'll interpret it to suit your position if there's no interest in adjusting.



In a final note, your last bit is exactly the point I'm making, but in the opposite - people who bring fewer KP get crunked at tournaments these days by people who optimize lists WITHOUT thinking about KP (just as people who try really hard to purely MSU get crunked). You help the effective balance of the game by giving people freedom to optimize their armies without a flawed constraint in place that GOOD players don't even bother with to begin with. It just widens the skill and success gap, and frankly the codex success gap as well.

MVBrandt wrote:it's why numerous true MSU attendees at the Open did not do very well.

Because they were beaten by another SMU army?

It seems that at least half of the players will lose (in only the first round). That is inevitable, considering the nature of the game, and yet MSU dominated in your listings? Or did I totally mis-read that?

16.18 KP is not MSU, nor is it a MSU-dominated field when the AVERAGE is 16 (implying very roughly equal parts above and below that #).

You won't find ANY 8ish KP armies that are actually successful. Nob bikers are horrible, for example, and are one of the few that even come close.

I'm willing to adjust my view - but at the moment, I don't have the same data that you do.

And, while I'm not saying that your facts don't mean anything, your facts, at least the ones you've presented data for, are only from a tournament that announced beforehand that there would be no KP mission. To think that people didn't adjust their armies knowing this would be foolish.

It's not an easy problem to get real data for. You could, theoretically, run the exact same tournament with the exact same people, but tell them ahead of time that there would be KP this time, and see what happens in that scenario - but that's not going to happen.

For a controlled experiment to provide meaningful data for this question, you need to run two events, where people know beforehand that one will use KP and one will not. Even tracking the difference between VP and KP in one event doesn't do it, because the question isn't do they yield different results, but do they change the metagame; do people build different armies when they know that they'll have KP missions and when they don't, and what impact on the tournament results do the effects of those changes have.

And this is data that no one has, it's an experiment probably too involved to actually run.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MVBrandt wrote:You won't find ANY 8ish KP armies that are actually successful. Nob bikers are horrible, for example, and are one of the few that even come close.

I have to disagree with you here. I won my last tournament (22 players) with an 8 kp army. (I think - ghaz, mek, boyz, boyz, nobs, boyz, wagons) - okay, nine...

I actually have the data from last year's outdoor tournament, which works out about the same (field of 32). If I have time, I'll dig it out and process it, but I can tell you that it was won by a 23 KP army in a field with a wide variety of KP despite the fact that EVERY ROUND was random rolled for by EVERY TABLE using pure book missions. The winner had 2 KP missions against significantly lower totals. Everyone played at least one KP mission over the course of the day.

As far as the latter point, well touche? Skill trumps list every time, even ghaz and 9 KP. <3 (!)

In a five round tournament, I think there should be one KP scenario, one VP scenario, and three objective oriented scenario. I think both VP and KP are abusable, but not when run in tandem, because it prevents stupid amounts of spamming, as well as Deathstar armies, making for more army variation. Its hard to say how the Nova was affected by its use of VP, because the Space Wolf book's general power level was also a factor of those results. In other words, the general efficiency and tons of options allow for identically powerful builds that are not MSU based.

In short, a variety of victory conditions encourages a variety of armies, instead of the kind of draw my friend got at the last GT he went to (Loganwing, Razorspam Wolves, Leafblower, Razorspam BA, Mech Guard) which bored the hell out of him. That GT used VP exclusively and the lists were slanted for it. Codex creep is deffinately playing a factor in this equation, though.

I don't think the "MSU" concept is the winning factor here, it's the diversity, flexibility, redundancy (and player skill).

For instance, Stelek had 3 long fang units, 4 GH units with melta, 2 mm speeders, and 4 plaserbacks. This effectively gave him 16 anti-vehicle shooting units (if you split fire with Long Fangs). Add in the IST's for possible use against light transports, and the TWC for punching rhinos etc.

Also, he had several options for scouting, outflanking, and deepstriking. He had shooting and CC units. Ending up with all of these things in a MSU format was one possibility, but not the only one. I haven't seen many lists besides those that were baterp'd, but I'd venture to say that few armies were as diverse and flexible.

The MSU concept wasn't the winning factor. He had redudancy across the board. Speeders had hvy flamers for anti-horde also. TWC can do just about anything. The combination of all the redundancy, extra shield units via dedicated transports/MSU's, and smart deplotment/movement acheived the end result.

*Off Topic*

Phazael do I need to win a GT with Orks now?

I know some people believe in codex creep but I personally don't. I probably would have beat my only SW opponent of the tournament with my daemons if I hadn't gotten the wrong wave and watched it (the shooty one) scatter into assault range

Space Wolves can create multiple builds which means more people will run them. Increasing the odds of winning. Heck the Slaughter had a DE win best general and a CSM win overall. I'd like to see an actual list of tournament winners this year and their armies. I'm pretty sure it's more varied than most people think.

*On Topic*

I do agree with a mix personally. While I don't take KP's into account when I build a list I do assume it's a weakness and removing that weakness makes it easier for me to win. Phazael's percentage on primaries makes sense to me. Maybe next year at Nova since it's 4 games day one it can be 2 objective/table quarter, 1 VP, and 1 KP (last mission). Then the only single objection most people had to the tournament would be done. And maybe make all 4 be on the list for breaking ties. Then you can gather even more data on it. Just some thoughts

In a final note, your last bit is exactly the point I'm making, but in the opposite - people who bring fewer KP get crunked at tournaments these days by people who optimize lists WITHOUT thinking about KP (just as people who try really hard to purely MSU get crunked).

This thinking is flawed. The poor and unlucky players are those who get crunked by the good and the lucky ones. Part of being a good and lucky player is designing your army accordingly. If I know I'm going to be playing 2 games out of 6 with KPs then thats going to factor into army design, and if I know ahead of time I'm going to be playing an event where KPs don't matter then I'll tweak my list accordingly.

And incidentally, I won my Vegas ticket with a 9 KP list at 1,750 points. My KP primary game was a walk-over: My opponent had around double my total and simply couldn't cope with the advantage my army had over his. He's a very good player, but his otherwise awesome army (mech guard) didn't have a prayer in that one mission.

There will never be a system that will please everyone or that cannot be manipulated in some fashion by "creative" list design. The goal should be, then, something that's quick and as fair as you can make it.

I like Reecius' idea, except that I would alter it as follows:

-1 KP per 50 points cost (round to nearest 50). Should eliminate some of the MSU/transport shenanigans.
-each army must have the same KP value at the same points level. If there is a difference, the army with the lower value must add +X KP to his list, where X is the difference in KP values. He then adds +1 KP to his highest value units until his top X units have added the extra KP. So, for example, if he was 3 KP less than his opponent, his top three units would each be worth +1 KP than they normally would. If tied, owning player may allocate the "bonus" KP.

It's more or less a hybrid system and should be fair, as far as you can be in something like this.

The Everliving wrote:

In a final note, your last bit is exactly the point I'm making, but in the opposite - people who bring fewer KP get crunked at tournaments these days by people who optimize lists WITHOUT thinking about KP (just as people who try really hard to purely MSU get crunked).

This thinking is flawed. The poor and unlucky players are those who get crunked by the good and the lucky ones. Part of being a good and lucky player is designing your army accordingly. If I know I'm going to be playing 2 games out of 6 with KPs then thats going to factor into army design, and if I know ahead of time I'm going to be playing an event where KPs don't matter then I'll tweak my list accordingly.

And incidentally, I won my Vegas ticket with a 9 KP list at 1,750 points. My KP primary game was a walk-over: My opponent had around double my total and simply couldn't cope with the advantage my army had over his. He's a very good player, but his otherwise awesome army (mech guard) didn't have a prayer in that one mission.

I 100% agree with alex, the Los do make mr modify my list... Had I ha the list I wanted to bring finished... I would not have had a land raider.

Btw, alex is in the top 5% of skill level of 40k players

What's wrong with points value of units killed?

I don't really understand how KPs work, I play casually and rarely... I mean, as an IG player I can shove all of my units into two platoons minimum... Doesn't that mean I have less KPs than my opponent?

VP's and Objectives.

KP's were a terrible idea and always will be.

Henners, most IG builds you see at tournaments cannot do that.

Since only infantry units can combine from the same platoon, it would be hard to make a successfull list with only CCS and infantry squads.

KP is part of the book missions, but just in case you haven't read that portion (not sure from your post), the basic idea is that every unit is worth 1 KP. So a chimera = 1kp, the squad inside = 1kp.

Basically, if it can act seperately, its a seperate KP. (And yes I know this is a generalization.

At 2k points at the NOVA open, my guard list ran...21 kp. I can honestly say the only thing that I changed due to the omission of a KP mission was I ran marbo, when typically I won't.

If you REALLY want to wring the sweat out of players - in a 4 game tourney day - have one mission feature Kill Points and the next one figure Victory points. Then you have to build lists to balance (or ignore) both.....

I mentioned that earlier (well, an equivalent), but Redbeard explained that it wouldn't work. Although I'm inclined to believe MVBrandt has some interesting figures that currently point in the other direction (that they're basically the same anyways).

Kind of an aside here, but one thing VP over KP does is remove any incentive for Squadrons, especially when VP are calculated per vehicle instead of per squadron.

Where KP might dictate taking Landspeeders in squadrons of 2, or a single 3 speeder unit, removal of KP and application of VP to all vehicles in a squadron really seem to act as a disincentive for taking squadrons.

hyv3mynd wrote:I don't think the "MSU" concept is the winning factor here, it's the diversity, flexibility, redundancy (and player skill).

Sorry, I just saw this post and I needed to comment. I've been harping on a similar theme for ages, though the three list design principles I advocate are Synergy, Flexibility, and Redundancy, with diversity as an extension of flexibility to an army level such that an army needs to be flexible to provide a floor for dealing with a range of opponents. Well, technically for dealing with their opponent's tools, and kudos to the people who pointed out the way player skill was being abstracted away from the success of the armies

Hybrid.

I am firm believer that Kill Points are not devil-spawn. At the same time I don't necessarily believe they are the great savior of balance. I think seeking true balance in a system not initially designed for true balance, where some armies are two editions old and where games are ultimately decided by the randomness of dice is an exercise in futility. There will always be small bits of chaos in the system and the trick is to manage that chaos to degree so that over time you settle somewhere that is more or less even. That is the middle ground I see between issues like KP and VP - both are part of the game and both should be manageable in tournaments.

The KP vs VP debate is similar in some ways to Comp vs No Comp, and I wouldn't be surprised to see many of the same people on each side of the discussion. Along the same lines, there is a strong division amongst players, and it often feels like one camp sees 40K as a sport - while the other sees it as game. Neither viewpoint is wrong, but instead of planting a flag and refusing to budge, people should seek a little more middle ground.

i voted hybrid. tournies should reflect the edition they are played in and should have roughly 1/3 KP missions per that stance. i do, however, think VP should be used as a tie breaker in all missions (objective and KP based).

Subjective KP per unit. Rhinos are typically worth 1 while squads are typically worth 2, HQs are worth an amount deemed "appropriate" as per the codex, etc. Make the better units be worth more. Point cost doesn't always reflect usefulness, and KPs don't account for single-model units and the like.

An idea Similar to Reecius'. A BP for every 100 points cost of a unit so like this-

1-99= 1 Pt.

100-199= 2pt

200-299=3

300=399 =4 etc.

This would bring the best of both systems. MSU armies would offer a larger amount of BPs however there wouldn't be the current rock/paper/siccors system that currently exists.

For example a 10man seer council with all the fixings runs close to 500 pts. In the current system that's only 2 KP but at 2000 pts that's over 1/4 of the eldar army and I only get 2 pts if I kill it? How does that make any sense? But getting 6 points for it seems fair. On the flip side A system like this would hamper MSU armies that take alot of cheap transports, since a death of a rhino isn't a mere 35 VPs its a whole battle point.

One of the Huge problems with the KP system is that it doesn't reward you fairly for killing those super large costly units that are hard to kill. (Nob Bikers, eldar seer council etc.)

One of the major problems with the VP system is that it leads to an influx of MSU armies and doesn't penalize in any way an overabundance of mech.

This system could be fair to both.

Except this, as has been explained, is low fidelity VPs. Basing it off a units points cost? VPs in all but name.

KPs work because they dont care about the value of the unit in game points.

KP's are one of the reasons I don't play 40k any more.

They don't reflect on the value of units killed, plus they encourage armies that are less fun to play.

To me, the more units of substance out there (Basically units that are a threat to things...5 scouts with bolters aren't, 5 marines with a lascannon are), the more dynamic the game is and the more fun it is. Plus you can reap small accomplishments even when you lose...Taking out a unit gives a little 'fun' boost and you get more of them when you have more small units out there rather than big, resilient units.

Well, according to KP, my gun drones that come free with all my vehicles that I can't get rid of, which are forced onto the field whenever one of them is destroyed and can be killed rather easily by practically sneezing on them, are worth the same amount of points when killed as a fething land raider. A stock devilfish is worth the same amount of points as a land raider with a terminator squad inside?

Yeah, no. KP are broken.

Also, I love how the same people who are complaining about the NOVA using VP instead of KP and how they're supposedly rebalancing the game (they aren't...and if they are it's for the better), are likely the same people who praise events like Adepticon, BoLScon, etc. which are infamous for rewriting core rules of the game for no real reason with their "FAQs", writing missions that favor certain armies over others, introducing comp or even ban lists of all things, etc. You guys haven't been playing "real" 40k for a long time, why is following the rules so important all of a sudden?