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There's no need for points. It's perfectly balanced that you can bring 7 dudes with lasguns; or 3 dudes with lasguns, 3 dudes with plasma guns, and a sergeant with plasma pistol and power sword. Balanced either way!

Am I reading it wrong or I can only have 1 of each special weapon Guardsmen? This "team building" is even worse than Warcry. With fix number of fighters and no point cost no one will take the cheaper crappier weapons like before to squeeze in more bodies.

No points is really progressive game design from GW. Maybe some of you guys will finally come to understand that there are other means and methods to balance competitive games, and that points in and of themselves are an incredibly poor way of doing so.

But I'm not entirely getting the warm fuzzies from how GW implemented it.

chaos0xomega wrote:
No points is really progressive game design from GW. Maybe some of you guys will finally come to understand that there are other means and methods to balance competitive games, and that points in and of themselves are an incredibly poor way of doing so.

But I'm not entirely getting the warm fuzzies from how GW implemented it.

Isn't "Giving equal amounts of currency to both sides and letting them spend it on what they want, with better stuff costing more" literally how every single competitive strategy game works on PC.

The faction pdf for SWA is still up, even the game might not be very fun to play, i still have a blast reading through it and try to build a team,simplified the list building phase is removing half of the fun :(

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/ShadowWar/SWA_Killteams_ENG.pdf

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
No points is really progressive game design from GW. Maybe some of you guys will finally come to understand that there are other means and methods to balance competitive games, and that points in and of themselves are an incredibly poor way of doing so.

But I'm not entirely getting the warm fuzzies from how GW implemented it.

Isn't "Giving equal amounts of currency to both sides and letting them spend it on what they want, with better stuff costing more" literally how every single competitive strategy game works on PC.

No no. Points don't work. That's why 1st ed. Age of Sigmar launched so successfully.

Chopstick wrote:
The faction pdf for SWA is still up, even the game might not be very fun to play, i still have a blast reading through it and try to build a team,simplified the list building phase is removing half of the fun :(

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/ShadowWar/SWA_Killteams_ENG.pdf

There still is a listbuilding phase from what we've seen today. You learn the mission, presumably your opponent's faction, and then build a fireteam out from your roster to best enact the mission. Per game, it seems.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
No points is really progressive game design from GW. Maybe some of you guys will finally come to understand that there are other means and methods to balance competitive games, and that points in and of themselves are an incredibly poor way of doing so.

But I'm not entirely getting the warm fuzzies from how GW implemented it.

Isn't "Giving equal amounts of currency to both sides and letting them spend it on what they want, with better stuff costing more" literally how every single competitive strategy game works on PC.

No, its a common method but not the only method. Some games use "deckbuilding" type approaches, of which there are several different sub-types. One subtype is that your "cards" are what you use, i.e. you can select say 20 cards, and can't take any single card more than 3 times, and then you just fight with whatever those cards work out to be. The cards are all equivalent to one another in terms of power/ability/utility, at least roughly speaking, so its balanced based around that paradigm. The other way of doing that is that your deck forms a subset of options that are available for you to deploy, i.e. you have a "codex" that contains 50 different units, from which you can select 20 of them - some of which may be duplicates but the number of duplicates is limited. Then as the game goes on you can purchase/deploy a limited number of units from that deck of 20.

There are other methods out there as well in terms of strategy video games - and an even more diverse array of balancing mechanics used in tabletop gaming.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
There's no need for points. It's perfectly balanced that you can bring 7 dudes with lasguns; or 3 dudes with lasguns, 3 dudes with plasma guns, and a sergeant with plasma pistol and power sword. Balanced either way!

I disagree. Do a guardsman with a grenade launcher and a guardsman with a plasma gun have the same value? The Kill Team team thinks so.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
No points is really progressive game design from GW. Maybe some of you guys will finally come to understand that there are other means and methods to balance competitive games, and that points in and of themselves are an incredibly poor way of doing so.

But I'm not entirely getting the warm fuzzies from how GW implemented it.

Isn't "Giving equal amounts of currency to both sides and letting them spend it on what they want, with better stuff costing more" literally how every single competitive strategy game works on PC.

no, there are other ways of doing it and "points" are usually just used to agree on a size, like small, medium or large battles

and while there are better ways of using points if you are not able to balance the options for each faction, I am not sure of GW is able to do it

and the other problem is, this game only has one size and does not scale
no small into games or faster medium sized games, 1 size that cannot be changed

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
No points is really progressive game design from GW. Maybe some of you guys will finally come to understand that there are other means and methods to balance competitive games, and that points in and of themselves are an incredibly poor way of doing so.

But I'm not entirely getting the warm fuzzies from how GW implemented it.

Isn't "Giving equal amounts of currency to both sides and letting them spend it on what they want, with better stuff costing more" literally how every single competitive strategy game works on PC.

No no. Points don't work. That's why 1st ed. Age of Sigmar launched so successfully.

Except it did have a points system - it used wound counts in place of a separate point stat. So uhh, nice self-own I guess?

Warcaster: Neo Mechanika actually forgoes the use of points and while its still a small game with a small community the feedback from its competitive community has been overwhelmingly positive.

I wanted to like Kill team but everything I read feels needlessly complicated.
I must be thick as gak because I could not make sense of the unit building rules.
It is very hot today which might explain that.

Yeah this was a real punch in the gut.

You actually lose a lot of flexibility in how you can build Killteams and that's super lame. You're never going to take a laspistol on your sergeant for any reason beyond masochism.

feth, I was so unbelievably hyped when I saw it was AA, but starting with the melee article every one has chipped away at that enthusiasm with another questionable mechanic revealed.

Yeah, I think my 4 lictor Kill Team is probably dead now :/

Which, yknow, admittedly kinda cheesy, probably shouldn't have been allowed in the first place, etc. So probably a good thing for the health of the game overall, but still.

I mean, based on my perusal of the different weapons listed in the datacards Adam flipped through on the stream, the only eye-brow raising wargear "option" I saw was the pistols line -- Las Pistol definitely is sub-par compared to the other two. Depending on what "Balanced" and some of the other keywords do, I could believe most of the other options are of similar value if you're comparing them to the appropriate target(s).

Meltagun vs. Plasmagun vs. Flamer are statted in such a way that I absolutely believe that which is "better" is a matter of what you expect to be shooting at. I don't remember seeing a Grenade Launcher (and if I did, don't remember its stats), but could similarly be convinced that it's got situations that it shines in sufficiently to be worth trading out another of the special weapons Gunners for.

Side note, this proves "GA/Group Allowance" doesn't refer to the number of models you're allowed in a unit.

I'm now pretty sure it's refers to the number of such models you can activate in one turn. So you can activate 3 Guardsman Scrubs at once if you want.
I guess this is intended to let them swarm a little.
Although from my experience of Necromunda 90% of the time that's a bad idea that'd hurt more than help.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
No points is really progressive game design from GW. Maybe some of you guys will finally come to understand that there are other means and methods to balance competitive games, and that points in and of themselves are an incredibly poor way of doing so.

But I'm not entirely getting the warm fuzzies from how GW implemented it.

Isn't "Giving equal amounts of currency to both sides and letting them spend it on what they want, with better stuff costing more" literally how every single competitive strategy game works on PC.

No no. Points don't work. That's why 1st ed. Age of Sigmar launched so successfully.

Except it did have a points system - it used wound counts in place of a separate point stat. So uhh, nice self-own I guess?

That wasn't in the game at launch, that was a player solution that GW later adopted as a suggested way to balance before the first GHB. AoS released with no balancing mechanism what so ever.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Except it did have a points system - it used wound counts in place of a separate point stat. So uhh, nice self-own I guess?

You're right. Three goblins *were* equal to an ogre.

It was such a good points system, that they literally patched actual points back in post-launch.

A further drawback of not using points is that it doesn't scale, at all.
Tight on time so want to bring the numbers down? Nope, there's no way to do that in current list building rules.

Really enjoying the game and want to size it up and use even more toys? Nope, there's no way to do that (unless you work in integer multiples like double).

 Platuan4th wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
No points is really progressive game design from GW. Maybe some of you guys will finally come to understand that there are other means and methods to balance competitive games, and that points in and of themselves are an incredibly poor way of doing so.

But I'm not entirely getting the warm fuzzies from how GW implemented it.

Isn't "Giving equal amounts of currency to both sides and letting them spend it on what they want, with better stuff costing more" literally how every single competitive strategy game works on PC.

No no. Points don't work. That's why 1st ed. Age of Sigmar launched so successfully.

Except it did have a points system - it used wound counts in place of a separate point stat. So uhh, nice self-own I guess?

That wasn't in the game at launch, that was a player solution that GW later adopted as a suggested way to balance before the first GHB. AoS released with no balancing mechanism what so ever.

IIRC according to James Hewitt that was meant to be included at launch (against his better judgement, but was forced on him by management), but then at the last minute they pulled everything and cut the rules down from a full size rulebook to just 4 pages (again against his better judgement, again forced by management).

 Lord Damocles wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Except it did have a points system - it used wound counts in place of a separate point stat. So uhh, nice self-own I guess?

You're right. Three goblins *were* equal to an ogre.
It was such a good points system, that they literally patched actual points back in post-launch.

But it *is* a points system. And as you've brilliantly illustrated - it sucked and did not produce balanced outcomes. Much like how the current points systems being used by 40k and AoS still don't really produce proper balance - just better balance than using wounds.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
A further drawback of not using points is that it doesn't scale, at all.
Tight on time so want to bring the numbers down? Nope, there's no way to do that in current list building rules.
Really enjoying the game and want to size it up and use even more toys? Nope, there's no way to do that (unless you work in integer multiples like double).

Thats flawed - you *can* scale the game, and also points don't necessarily scale well either. Theres a reason why every game that uses points usually comes with recommended game sizes, these are the range of values at which the points system is scaled to function properly. If you exceed those parameters then balance starts to skew, sometimes aggressively. In general, with GW games that range is around 500 - 2000 points. Going lower than 500 is hard to begin with, but going above 2000 is really easy, but unless you regularly play above maybe 4-5k points you typically don't encounter those issues. In part, this is due to the "synergy" aspect of the game design. aura abilities, strategems, etc. generally don't scale well and are super points efficient at higher point values where you can take more and larger units to leverage them with, as well as potentially more sources to generate them (in the case of characters with aura abilities).

In the case of scaling KT, simply adding more fireteams (so orks would get a second fireteam, whereas guard would get 2 based on how this is presented) would be the equivalent of scaling up. Like a points system, doing so might result in skew as you add more fireteams, but its an option.

Just when you thought they learned their lesson with AoS.

No points…lol

Also it occurs to me that with only 10DKoK in the box vs 10 Kommandos, they didn't actually provide enough guardsmen for a proper game, unless theres a separate roster to draw from for the Veteran Guardsmen from the one shown.

chaos0xomega wrote:


In the case of scaling KT, simply adding more fireteams (so orks would get a second fireteam, whereas guard would get 2 based on how this is presented) would be the equivalent of scaling up. Like a points system, doing so might result in skew as you add more fireteams, but its an option.

So you can double both sides... which I already addressed.
It's still a very limited way of doing things


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Also it occurs to me that with only 10DKoK in the box vs 10 Kommandos, they didn't actually provide enough guardsmen for a proper game, unless theres a separate roster to draw from for the Veteran Guardsmen from the one shown.

But it's been finely balanced! They have an algorithm and everything!

Although in all seriousness, they showed us the army list for Guardsmen. The boxset has Veteran Guardsmen. We can see on the website they're separate factions. I imagine the Veteran Guardsmen have slightly better stats/specialists but fewer models. You can also see the army list they showed doesn't include a lot of the krieg specialists we've already been shown.

Not sure I'm so keen on it for something like Kill team where I'd want to be more individualistic, but really it is a variant of what is quite common in general wargaming.

You get to choose prebaked groups based on historical formations. The game designers can then focus on keeping that pre packed group balanced with other pre packed groups, and not worry about trying to ascribe some 'value' to a specific model or piece of equipment which may vary by what else it is combined with. Only the balance of the group counts.

Switch 'historical' for 40k 'reality', and then argue whether they actually are balanced, but the concept is pretty tried and tested.

puree wrote:
Not sure I'm so keen on it for something like Kill team where I'd want to be more individualistic, but really it is a variant of what is quite common in general wargaming.

You get to choose prebaked groups based on historical formations. The game designers can then focus on keeping that pre packed group balanced with other pre packed groups, and not worry about trying to ascribe some 'value' to a specific model or piece of equipment when combined with different gruops. Only the balance of the group counts.

I agree it's normally a fine approach.
But it really doesn't work for a 40k sub-game where the empthasis has always been "your dudes".

I'm sure veteran guardsmen have a different way to build a roster, but if they don't, Pariah Nexus also exists, where 5 flayed ones vs 5 Heavy Intercessors, iirc, with one commander each was released. They didn't even match points, when the system had points.
I want to finish my Infinity models soon.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
In Star Wars Legion every time a unit gets shot at, you gain a suppression token.

It's also an FFG. Every time you do anything you get a token. Sometimes you get tokens for getting tokens.

That is indeed true, but Bolt Action and Epic did it before it was cool, for this specific instance

But it really doesn't work for a 40k sub-game where the empthasis has always been "your dudes".

.

Aye, I've long wished they'd do something more like with 40k itself - where the larger scale would make sense with that system.

But for a skirmish game of 40k I'd like more freedom. Of course nothing stops me playing how I want, it isn't like I will ever play in a tourney or something.

puree wrote:
Not sure I'm so keen on it for something like Kill team where I'd want to be more individualistic, but really it is a variant of what is quite common in general wargaming.

You get to choose prebaked groups based on historical formations. The game designers can then focus on keeping that pre packed group balanced with other pre packed groups, and not worry about trying to ascribe some 'value' to a specific model or piece of equipment when combined with different gruops. Only the balance of the group counts.

From how it's described in the article, though, you do get to pick specific models/equipment within each team, you're just limited to the number of models you can take and one of each specialist. This is functionally a points system in the same way that AoS's wound-counting was a points system- just as not all wounds were equal in AoS, it is unlikely that all specialists for a given faction will be equal here too. Superficially that might mean factions are balanced against one another, but every Astra Militarum team has (for example) a plasma gunner and a sniper rifle but never ever a comms specialist or meltagun, because some specialists are better than others. That's a balance issue.

For a historical comparison, I'd suggest looking at how Chain of Command does it: Each platoon has a historical composition, as you say, but then an additional bonus point value. Those points are then used before the game to purchase additional support assets, on top of whatever number may be provided by the scenario. So in this way, the platoons are balanced against one another by varying the amount of support they can bring along, and the designers can adjust balance by adjusting those totals. There are no choices to make within a platoon, so the designers can focus on that external balance.

Maybe there'll be a format that dictates that you must have one of each specialist. That could be interesting- but definitely takes away from the 'your dudes' aspect of it.

I'm also far more interested in the campaign system, if this is more just a starting point from which things vary (as they hint at) or one off games then I may be less bothered.