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Well, the start of a debate is brewing in the finals thread, so I figured I would open this up for discussion on that as to leave that thread for finals/finals results discussion.

Also, some people might not have anything to care about the finals, but they might have feelings on this.

KP: Helps keep the ever efficient IG and MSU armies down. Everyone always realizes units are worth one, instead of constantly asking points costs for opponent's units.

VP: Each player always has a consistant 2,000, so it's less of army A always beats army B... less rock-paper-scissors, more 40k no?

I see both constantly different at tournaments I attend, and both are prefectly fine, so I have no strong pull towards one way or the other.

Queue for the debate!

I voted for a hybrid of both, simply that you need to win both victory points and kill points to win an Annihilation-type game. Winning only one means a tie.

I prefer the hybrid as well, perhaps as a European player it's already the way most games work already here. Often winning conditions are a mix of objectives (KP's, Objectives, etc) and VP's. With the balance between those depending on the specific scenario's the tournament is running.

A specific scenario we had in the past in a local tournament was allocating additional KP's to units over a certain point value. This meant the real cheap units still added additional KP's (mostly min squads/5th edition codex transports), but meant the mega-unit squads still gave multiple KP's as well.

I voted for a hybrid of both.

Mostly, that both missions have their place.

As I stated in the other thread, the distribution of objectives-to-missions in the BRB falls out like:

11% - 5 Objectives
11% - 4 Objectives
11% - 3 Objectives
33% - 2 Objectives
33% - Kill Points

I believe that this sort of distribution is important in running a Warhammer 40k tournament, especially if anything like a consistent metagame is to be established.

As such, a three game tournament should almost certainly have a mission with either one or two objectives, and should almost certainly have a mission with kill points. The third mission can be some variant with multiple things to do, such as quarters, or multiple placed objectives.

As the number of games goes up, this ratio should be maintained as best as possible. In a four game event, one mission type is bound to get doubled-up, but as you go to a second day, no mission type should ever have two more than another.

Victory Points make a good tie breaker, and they make a good secondary or tertiary objective, for systems that use those. I don't think they're a good primary objective in any case, largely because that's not how 5th ed is designed. The victory point mechanic is added, almost as an afterthought, on the back page of the appendix.

The further away from this ideal you get, the more advantages certain armies/builds get over others. I believe that the balance in 5th edition is designed with these three mission-types in mind. And while people moan and complain about 'draw-fest' or about how kill points screws their armies, it's more likely that they're just not designing armies that can win these missions, instead hoping that negativity will decrease the chance that they have to play these missions.

Yo should get a kill point for every 100 points a unit is worth, rounding normally.

Not perfect at all but fixes the problems associated with both types of systems and it is pretty dang easy to add up.

Seconded Reece's idea. MSU armies will still give up more KP's but won't get screwed by armies that bring 5 units.

I voted KP, it's in the main rules and it is a balancing factor during the list building stage of preparing for a tournament. VP should only be used as a tie breaker (also in the rule book).

Reecius wrote:Yo should get a kill point for every 100 points a unit is worth, rounding normally.

Not perfect at all but fixes the problems associated with both types of systems and it is pretty dang easy to add up.

If you round "normally," then rhinos are free. Ick.

The "Slaughter Style" kill points are just victory points, at a lower resolution - you may have a few outliers (a list with a bunch of 55 pt Chimerae, say), but essentially a 2000 pt list will give up about 20 of these modified VPs.

If you take it one step further, and require that everything is worth at least 1 pt, plus the one per/100 pts, you've essentially created a "weighted" KP system, only different in mechanics from the 3rd 'Ard Boyz mission that everyone was bitching about. You also introduce a different metagame mechanic, as units get optimized around costs - no more than X49, lest you give up that every mKP (modified KP).

KPs are a goofy system. But it's hard to argue that they aren't being factored into at least some costs, when you look at the changes in transport costs, or the rules for the Lone Wolf.

I like missions with multiple objectives, but I prefer them to be "pure" objectives.

i voted KPs.

However, a hybrid mission where you need to have more KP and VPs to score a win would be interesting. It would mean an MSU army could potentially give up more KPs but earn more VPs leading to draw on that mission, but possibly not overall.

In 40k you pretty much always round up, no matter how small. That was how I took Reece's idea. That even a 35pt Rhino=1 KP. Personally it's a nice mix to me. Simply always rounding up will keep most people in the 20-25 KP level. Some armies (Mech IG/MSU Marines) will have closer to 30ish. I think it works pretty well actually.

ah yes, haha, no freebies!

I voted both... People will always want the mission objectives to always favor what thier personal army or list excels at.

If I play something with low KPs then missions punishing high KPs or weak small units which I don't use is good.

If I play something with high KPs, then I want victory points.

Both sides are wrong and just are going to rail against anything that doesn't benefit them personally.

I like when the missions are drastically different and totally punishes extreme or min-maxed armies that are trying to game the 'mission imposed comp' with thier list.

Reecius's idea doesn't solve the inherent problem that MSU armies are simply better than non-MSU armies, and therefore doesn't address the game-balance issue.

If I have five units, that means, barring special rules, that I can target at most five things/turn, and be in, at most, five places/turn. An army with 23 kill points can be in 23 places each turn, and can address 23 different targets. They better manage their firepower to boot. A unit of 15 tankbustas may have as many S8 shots as three units of longfangs, but they're required to declare all their shots up front. The three small units can fire sequentially, and select their subsequent shots based on the results of the previous ones. MSU is a force-multiplying effect, both by granting additional choices, but also by granting you more of the special and heavy weapons that are important.

In the real-world, MSU tactics have completely replaced the massed hordes that dominated warfare pre-1920. As I stated in the other thread, modern combat doctrine calls for four-man fire-teams (not so unlike a SM combat squad).

The problem comes that, in a game, if every army does the same thing, the game is kind of dull. So some armies don't do the MSU thing, or do it badly. Some codexes present a troop with a weakness (Ld7) and allow you to overcome it by fielding a horde, playing to the theme of the race.

But, that 30-man squad of ork boyz is limited in its mobility (footslogging) and its target options (one unit/turn). Compared to space wolves, who can field 2 razorbacks and 10 men w/ 2 special weapons for the same points, the orks have a quarter the targeting options, half the ability to score objectives, and half the mobility to get there.

In two of three of the missions in the rulebook, the orks are fighting at a disadvantage simply because they don't do MSU as well, and MSU is inherently better.

Kill points aren't mean to be fair in a vacuum, they're designed to give the armies that are thematically large a chance against what is simply a superior approach to warfare. That final 1/3rd of the games puts an extra consideration onto the table, one that's not based on real-world warfare, but that makes the game more balanced, and that allows for a greater variety of "viable" armies.

In my opinion, the greater variety of viable lists, the better the game. And, Reecius's proposal detracts from this. Using the wolf vs orks example from above, the orks are still worse off in objective missions, they still suffer the over-all impact of lesser mobility and targeting flexibility, but now, they're looking at a 3:4 ratio in the killpoint game, compared to the 1:4 ratio that currently exists. Why would anyone play anything except a MSU-favoured army in this system?

Amen Brother Redbeard. I don't see GW addressing the MSU imbalance in a strong way. The MSU style army, with transports, is a big moneymaker for them and Godbless them for it. I say let MSU be inherently advantages in gameplay as it is in the core rules now, but don't give them any more bonus' than they already have.

The contrarian vote:

Get rid of kill points and victory points, because they're both open to scamming in one way or the other. Instead, force each player to determine the points for each wound or damage result on their models, and assign points PER WOUND or damage result.

No more "Oh, you only killed 2 guys out of that unit, you get nothing!" business. If you kill something, if you wound somebody, if you blow something up, you deserve points!

Disclaimer: I personally favor having multiple missions with contradictory winning strategies, like missions with both objectives and kill points, since those require more work by the players to optimize.

Redbeard:

So what about my proposal?

Nurglitch wrote:Redbeard:

So what about my proposal?

Re: having to win both KP and VP to win an annihilation game? Again, it gets rid of the balancing factor.


Let's look at two armies - 500 points, to keep it simple;

Army 1:
Tyranid Prime w/ Adrenal glands
6 genestealers w/ toxin
6 genestealers w/ toxin
6 genestealers w/ toxin
6 genestealers w/ toxin


Army 2:
Tyranid Prime w/ Adrenal Glands
12 Genestealers w/ toxin
12 Genestealers w/ toxin


Same points, right? Same models even. So they should be balanced.

Except...

In missions where you need to hold more than two objectives, Army 2 can't do it. Army 1 can pretty much auto-win a five objective game.

Not only that, the they've also got tactical flexibility. Army 1 can throw a unit out as a sacrifice, allowing Army 2 to charge (and w/ furious charge, from the adrenal glands, they'll probably clean up that fight), but then Army 1 can counter-charge their own Prime in, and, swinging first and hardest, setting it up so Army 1's prime always gets the charge on army 2's prime...

Your solution doesn't address that. The MSU army can always play for the wins in the objective games, and play for the tie, at worst, in the VP/KP mix. And the big-unit army is denied the mission that is supposed to be to their advantage for overall balance, instead probably tying it up there (because it's awful hard to kill enough SMU points when you can only be in a few places at once).

Why would anyone ever take a big unit of genestealers? Isn't this supposed to be balanced? Having more units to do stuff with is more options. More tactical options. Just plain better. For nids, not a big deal, they can take small stealer units. Not all codexes can do MSU though.

Kill points seem gamey - but this is a game. It's an artificial construct that may well not address which side appears to be winning the battle, but it serves a vital role in allowing more army archetypes to be viable. I mean, troops as the only scoring units is gamey too. And having one lone guardian sitting on an objective when the game ends on turn 5, against 1000 points of enemy models doesn't really reflect who won that battle either does it. But random game length is another game-balance rule, and it has a place.

I always prefer multiple victory conditions.

Objectives and Kps for example.

Redbeard:

So how exactly do pure Kill-points avoid the criticisms you've leveled at my proposal?

Nurglitch wrote:Redbeard:

So how exactly do pure Kill-points avoid the criticisms you've leveled at my proposal?

In the KP/VP missions you suggest they both have an equal chance of succeeding, one having far fewer KP that the other and one having much greater tactical flexibility. Where it breaks down is in objective missions, where the army with greater tactical flexibility gains a much greater advantage, where as the army with few KP gains nothing. Pure KP missions are required to balance the game, so that armies that can take MSU units effectively do not completely dominate armies that cannot.

Regwon:

Okay, let me put it this way: How do pure Kill-Point missions balance out the Objective missions if all the criticisms that Redbeard leveled at my hybrid proposal apply to pure Kill-Point games?

Nurglitch wrote:Regwon:

Okay, let me put it this way: How do pure Kill-Point missions balance out the Objective missions if all the criticisms that Redbeard leveled at my hybrid proposal apply to pure Kill-Point games?

The criticisms dont apply to pure KP missions, which is exactly the point. If they did there would be no argument. KP missions balance the game over all. If you are playing a one off pick up game then obviously some army lists will lose out to KP, but since this is a tournament discussion there will be other objective based games to play as well.

In objective missions there is a clear advantage to MSU armies. If a KP/VP hybrind missions there is no clear advantage to either MSU armies or large unit/low KP armies. That means that in 2/3 of the missions low KP armies lose out and in a KP/VP hybrid mission it is a tie, since one is more likely to win on KP and one is more likely to win on VP.

In a pure KP missions you would expect the low KP army to have a much greater advantage than a MSU army. In redbeards example above army 2, having fewer KP, is likely to beat army 1 in a straight up fight, because army 1 has almost double its KP. In an objective mission army 1 would be able to cover more of the board, hold more objectives, threaten more areas and set-up many more useful situations for itself.

Pure KP missions must exist to balance this discrepancy, and while hybrid missions are certainly better than pure VP missions for this, they are not enough to balance out the advantage of MSU armies.

I'm pretty sure that Redbeard pointed out that Army #1 there could fight to a tie at minimum because of the advantages lent to an army fighting an opponent consisting of fewer units. That's the point: handing out fewer Kill-Points does not make up for the advantages conferred by having more units.

Sure it does.

If VP are part of it, then Army 1 can lose units as long as they stay even on VP, giving them the tie, under your proposal.

If VP are not part of it, then Army 2 actually gets the initiative in the KP mission. With larger units and less KP to give up, they can engage and accept the greater point loss if they take some stuff out on the way.

If Army 2 kills three of Army 1's stealer units, but loses both of their stealer units (keeping the prime out of the conflict), then in a pure KP scenario, Army 2 gets the win (3 KP to 2 KP).

Under your hybrid system, Army 1 would have a 100 point VP lead, 20% in a 500 point game, and would therefore win VP while losing KP - a tie for both under your proposal.


So that's the difference. In a pure KP scenario, a large-unit army can make unequal point trades if such trades net them a KP bonus - an advantage to the large unit army, and one that gives them the tactical initiative in the mission. If you add a VP condition to the annihilation mission, they cannot make these unequal point-value trades unless they're willing to settle for a tie.

Kill Points for main.
Victory Points for ties.

5th Ed Codicies are (hopefully) made with 5th ed Missions in mind.
RAW, it includes Kill Points.

It is balanced as it gets IMO and easy to work with.

@Redbeards example:

KP: Tie. Why? 2x12 stealers hunting 4x6 all over the board not falling into the trap where they suddenly have to fight 3 of them. Nothing happens.
VP: Tie. Why? 2x12 stealers are defending and refuse to assault because they will be trapped into a countercharge. They stick in terrain and keep distance. Nothing happens.
Objectives: The only interesting matchup there because you have to be at a certain location on the field when game ends and therefore defend a certain point which is much harder. I think it depends on the player. If the MSU guy keeps one unit at back to save an objective he is most likely to get eaten by the big squads and perhaps lose because the big squads save 2 objectives. If he doesnt he is in the melee anyways and it depends on good micro and timing on both sides who will win. large unit are as good as MSU concerning the defence of objectives. They are even better, because they can take the 3" space completely and so deny the objective to any enemy infantry. So they can hold even with enemy presence. MSU can not. And they can hold multiple objectives with one unit where MSU needs 2. (ok actually you can hold 2 obj with 5 men but MSU normally doesnt expose 5 men to the enemy...)

OK back to the topic, I think Objectives is also a tied starting point.

The problem is, the large unit army is always on the defending part in the missions: VP and objectives. They are most likely NOT to win. But defence is the main strength of large units so the MSU guy will have a hard time beating the defence and is most likely NOT to win too. The difference is, if the large unit army attacks, it is toast. If MSU does it is not.

Same circumstances we have in KP mission. But the other way round. MSU is on the defence there. Denying killpoints by hiding stuff going out of range spreading out to hav local superiority and perhaps go for the main target kill and win 1:0. Large unit army is on the offensive because each unit is able to score a killpoint while it denies itself to the enemy.

But that is not a good example of MSU, because there are no tanks included. And tanks are most valuable in denying enemy objectives by last turn tank shock. That puts the large unit army on the losing path concerning objective missions. Especially an infantry based large unit army.

Redbeard:

Well, I'm convinced.

For the sake of the discussion,


http://novaopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/KP-by-Rank.jpg

That's the graph of Kill Points by Competitive Rank for the NOVA Open.

The average # of kill points brought was 16.18, the eventual winner brought 17 (the high seed at the end of day 1 had 19)

The average remains roughly the same throughout, with over-20 individual armies being present across the entire rank spread.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, we ran 2 leagues and a tournament last year using KP for missions and tiebreaking with VP, but recording both every game.

There was a difference in VP scored and KP scored only once, across over 300 game samples. I'll try to dig out that spreadsheet while I'm at it.


My frustration with the discussion is that it actually doesn't matter. Barring strange outliers and bad luck draws, MSU armies are simply better ... you don't balance that with KP, you just hope to, and hope is not a strategy. KP is a bad mission, b/c it fails to balance 40k, and other than its attempt at balance is actively counter-intuitive.


Dust and Diamonds in a Dollar Store. I'll continue to accumulate facts via league play that uses KP (b/c it's fine in league play) and tourneys that generally don't (though we'll see how that continues) while people continue to ignore them either way.

I don't see how the data from a tournament that publicized the fact that there weren't going to be any kill point missions is useful to this discussion.

People brought armies that had no consideration given to how many kill points were in them, and there were no missions that penalized people for how many they brought. Of course the graph is going to be all over the place.

The point should generally be taken, that even though there was a wide spread of KP, the army that won was right at the average, and the armies that went true MSU and spammed the gak out of KP did not necessarily do well.

That's to say, that if you check the # of KP in most of the winning armies at major conventions, you will find most are probably around the 15-17 mark, regardless of the inclusion of KP as a mission.

You see fewer LOW KP armies at the event, but I don't see how that's a bad thing - MSU spam is not being given some kind of proportionally dominant advantage, which is the theory presented by "VP are bad and encourage X"

Again, we also have an enormous data set from our KP-inclusive tourneys and leagues that show no material divergence between VP-superiority and KP-superiority among winners of missions, either.