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I don't think I've ever met a player who was happy with the current victory point system, to be honest, and I've played in too many games where the last couple of turns come down to victory point shenanigans where both players kind of half apologise for moving the battered remants of units away from the fighting and stuff like that. It's gotten to the point where I'm happy to play any scenario with objective points only, just because I don't like how victory points makes the game play.

So I thought instead, why not a system where you get the points not for units you kill, but for each and every model you kill? So if you kill ten white lions out of the unit of twenty, you get points for the ten guys you kill. If some Chaos Knights romp right through you line and wipe most of your army, but you kill one of them, well at least you get the points for killing that one guy. The drawback here is that there'd be a bit more maths at the end of the game needed to calculate the scores, but the positive would be getting credit for the actual damage you inflict on each other's armies.

The other option is just to go back to giving half the unit cost for bringing a unit down to half strength.

In either case I think all the little bonus stuff like capturing banners and underdog bonuses would be added on top of that stuff.


So, any thoughts? Any other victory point systems you guys use?

I think this was batted around where you get half points for models in a non-destroyed unit. Maybe that was an old rule, I don't know.

The problem with full points is I think it makes war machines and spells and templates too powerful.

Also, there are some armies (and units) that are simply meant to die. A tarpit becomes less valuable because you're still losing points and you're not going to inflict anything on the monster/hero/elite you're fighting. So then everyone is looking to field elites or rezzable or something.

Like, O&G I think would be at a disadvantage. Ogres would not. Unless someone had Dwellers, and then Ogres would never win. Also, big blocks are a valid point-denial method. But it also sets you up for big blasts, so it's a risk. I think you'd see a lot more MSU, which would also hurt the low LD and low Movement and such armies.

Armies flee. And strategically retreat. They've been doing it since we started fighting (maybe). It's certainly a lot better to have your battallion make a withdrawal and keep some resources. That was the entire American Revolution. We lost like every damn battle. If it was considered a true loss, like annihilation, our population would have been massacred like 50 times over. So obviously it wasn't.

I do think objectives are cool. I've always liked take and hold type things. But you also get shenanigans there where some lone gnoblar is holding the Circle of Power (or whatever). I've seen it more in 40K where they can do the wacky 1" spacing. And capping objectives at the very last second, which is a completely arbitrary time limit. It's not like the universe ends on turn 6.

Anyway, getting sidetracked. I think you could start with something really small like 10% victory points for killed models. And see how that plays out.

Most Tournaments around my neck of the woods have gone back to half VPs for less than 25% or fleeing at the end of the game. It helps stopping those I kill all but one guy in that 500 point unit and I get nothing for it but still doesn't give you everything. Same for fleeing, sometimes with rolls units can start running turn 2 and never make it off table, might as well get something for that.

DukeRustfield wrote:I think this was batted around where you get half points for models in a non-destroyed unit. Maybe that was an old rule, I don't know.

That was the rule in 7th.

The problem with full points is I think it makes war machines and spells and templates too powerful.

Also, there are some armies (and units) that are simply meant to die. A tarpit becomes less valuable because you're still losing points and you're not going to inflict anything on the monster/hero/elite you're fighting. So then everyone is looking to field elites or rezzable or something.

Meh, if you tool up a character and all he does by game end is score you half victory points for the unit of goblins he's fighting then so be it. It's still an overall win for the O&G players, and hardly a reason to stop taking goblins.

Also, big blocks are a valid point-denial method.

Well, no, they're presently an effective points denial method. Whether or not they're 'valid' depends entirely on subjective, personal criteria such as 'should the ability of a large unit to only give up its points when completely destroyed an important game concept?'

And I suspect that's a question you'll find most players disagree with you on.

I think you'd see a lot more MSU, which would also hurt the low LD and low Movement and such armies.

There are always winners and losers in every rules change. I've seen you argue against a lot of rules proposals because it'll hurt or help other armies, often in very minor amounts.

Well so be it, this game has always had, at the very least, slightly weaker and slightly stronger armies. The game rolls with it, and the stream of new army books fixes up those issues or makes them worse, and in the meantime vagaries of player skill and dice hide most of the inequity.

Armies flee. And strategically retreat. They've been doing it since we started fighting (maybe). It's certainly a lot better to have your battallion make a withdrawal and keep some resources. That was the entire American Revolution. We lost like every damn battle. If it was considered a true loss, like annihilation, our population would have been massacred like 50 times over. So obviously it wasn't.

And the ability of Washington to keep his army intact and functioning despite those losses was an incredible feat, and not something you can just take for granted for all other commanders in all points of history, or in a fantasy setting for that matter.

Retreating was always a risky gambit, and frequently turned into a rout. To end a game with a unit half killed and the rest in retreat and say 'then the battle ended and the survivors were all fine so it's just the same as if the unit had been entirely untouched' is most certainly not ideal.

Now, it might be argued that while its a bit goofy in and of itself, that abstraction is worthwhile for ease of game rules (don't have to calculate half the points) or to encourage interesting tactical play elsewhere (use of fast cavalry to run down or harry routed units off the board, for instance).

I do think objectives are cool. I've always liked take and hold type things. But you also get shenanigans there where some lone gnoblar is holding the Circle of Power (or whatever). I've seen it more in 40K where they can do the wacky 1" spacing. And capping objectives at the very last second, which is a completely arbitrary time limit. It's not like the universe ends on turn 6.

Objective based games need random turns, in my opinion. Otherwise you get the silliness of the landspeeder moving on to the objective on turn 6.

Anyway, getting sidetracked. I think you could start with something really small like 10% victory points for killed models. And see how that plays out.

That'd be too irrelevant to bother with, to be perfectly honest. Who cares about 10% of a goblin enough to do all that extra maths?

And the guy is dead, I cannot fathom any logic that says a dead model should be worth any less than the points it cost to put him on the field.


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oneball wrote:Most Tournaments around my neck of the woods have gone back to half VPs for less than 25% or fleeing at the end of the game. It helps stopping those I kill all but one guy in that 500 point unit and I get nothing for it but still doesn't give you everything. Same for fleeing, sometimes with rolls units can start running turn 2 and never make it off table, might as well get something for that.

Interesting that they went to down to 25% of starting value, not straight back to the old 7th ed VPs. Thanks for that.

I've seen you argue against a lot of rules proposals because it'll hurt or help other armies, often in very minor amounts.

Er, okay. But it would hurt horde armies in a large amount. Because they rely on hordes to counteract their horrible LD. And in some case armies don't have anything to field except cheapo big blocks.

That'd be too irrelevant to bother with, to be perfectly honest. Who cares about 10% of a goblin enough to do all that extra maths?

It's not 10% of a goblin. It's 10% of the most expensive unit you can possibly imagine!!!!111 AND goblins. The point is a tarpit should still be a tarpit. You want to nudge the change enough that people don't treat units as things they weren't intended to be. I think the army books pretty clearly have units which are hammers, anvils, chaff, redictors, etc.

You mentioned a tooled up hero killing some goblins, but that's just the extreme of extremes. You all of a sudden look at goblins and go, "gee, ANYTHING that fights this will make its points back fighting it. The best I can do is tie." That's a horrible unit. It needs to be a huge block for steadfast, but it's gonna lose to anything, regardless if it's killed 100%. If it tries to go small unit, it will obviously break and lose 100% anyway.

I think it would be a really large shift in how players play (over time). I think O&G and Skaven would be pretty horrid except a few builds. And whole swathes of unit types would vanish from use. At least semi-competitively and above.

The issue with this system is it takes too long.

Ok, so you killed 23 White Lions(one of them was a champion so add another 10 points), 20 Swordmasters, 1 Lion Chariot, 15 Pheonix Guard, etc...

See how annoying this gets? It could take a good 10 minutes to see who won. And thats kinda how it was in 7th.


8th is the best way of doing it. Count whats dead + banners captured + underdog challanges + general + BSB.

The only annoying part is the occasional part where a unit is just one or 2 models away from dying. But thats the price you pay for not finishing them off.

I don't know if 10 mins is an excessive time for a big game. I think it's more concerning you could get the count wrong. As you're right it gets harder because you have to add up the rank-and-file along with command, which all have different point values.

Thinking about that, it even means taking the 50% for over half killed is technically innacurate, because the most valuable units are the ones that are removed last. Though if only 2 were remaining, you'd still get 50%, so I guess that's the compromise on time efficiency.

Time is important for people. Tournaments need all the time they can get. 10 minutes is a long time.

The only thing I would change to the current 8th scoring system would be to make units that are reduced to below 15% of their starting numbers count as destroyed. But a minor change at that. I think the current system is very agreeable and it makes sense.

One thing you can do if every unit counts is you keep score as you play. If it's not your turn, for instance. Unlike now, you don't have to wait until the end because it's irrelevant if the entire unit is destroyed. If you killed 5 rank and file models, those points WILL be added to the end total.

With that in mind I think the time concern might be mitigated.

(Though pointing out I still think 100% is too much.)

DukeRustfield wrote:Er, okay. But it would hurt horde armies in a large amount.

Yeah, but so what? As I've pointed out before you can't assess structural rules changes by their impact on every conceivable unit in the game. Ensuring balance is not the only goal of rule design, especially in a game where balance is a pretty loose concept anyway.

It's not 10% of a goblin. It's 10% of the most expensive unit you can possibly imagine!!!!111 AND goblins.

No, it'd 10% of a goblin. Or 10% of an ogre bull, which is still very few points.

And why calculate only 10% of his value. He's dead. He got killed, and if you want to represent that in a game, why represent anything other than 100% of his value? What on Earth is the logic in saying 'this guy was cut down and killed and so the other player scored 10% of his value... then when the rest of his unit broke and were run down the next turn they got the rest of the 90% of the value for that guy who was already dead'

The point is a tarpit should still be a tarpit.

Um, okay, sort of. But giving up couple of points for every goblin that dies doesn't stop that goblin block being a good tarpit, because it's still tying up that elite enemy unit, and preventing it from scoring substantial points hacking through your Black Orcs.

It needs to be a huge block for steadfast, but it's gonna lose to anything, regardless if it's killed 100%. If it tries to go small unit, it will obviously break and lose 100% anyway.

You would still make it a huge block, and just like before it will have to sacrifice 20 or 30 goblins to hold that big enemy block in place for the last three turns of the game. It's just that now there'd be some rules recognition that those goblins had died, and their deaths will have given up 50 or so points.

Meanwhile the White Lion horde you managed to reduce to its last 5 guys will have given up 375 points.

I think O&G and Skaven would be pretty horrid except a few builds. And whole swathes of unit types would vanish from use. At least semi-competitively and above.

I don't think that's even remotely true.


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Grey Templar wrote:The issue with this system is it takes too long.

Yeah, that's an issue. I actually meant to add that in as an issue in my first post, but missed it out. My bad.

I'm not sure it's as bad as you'd say, especially as you wouldn't be calculting fractions, just the direct cost of models. It shouldn't take ten minutes to do (12*5) + (38*6) + (8*25) + 65 + 115 or something similar. But I admit it'd probably have to be seen in play to see if it was annoying or not.

The only annoying part is the occasional part where a unit is just one or 2 models away from dying. But thats the price you pay for not finishing them off.

That's one problem, and has led to some really silly games, where both sides are almost completely decimated but the score ends up like 350 to 500, because some tiny faction of the big units are still left on the board.

There's also another potentially bigger problem in my opinion, with the silliness you see late in games where people run and hide with the two or three remaining models in a unit to protect those points. No criticism of the people who do that, they're just playing to the rules system in place, but that rules system produces silly play, and that's a good sign of a flaw in a rules system.

Well, if I was one of the few remaining soldiers of a unit and the battle was well in hand I wouldn't go looking for a fight, especially since my contribution probably wouldn't be meaningfull. Id stick around to snag a promotion.

Grey Templar wrote:The only annoying part is the occasional part where a unit is just one or 2 models away from dying. But thats the price you pay for not finishing them off.

All the tournaments I've attended in 8th had a rule about this.

Either 50% VPs for units under 25% (or wounds, for monsters, chariots, etc.) or 25% VPs for units under 50% strength/wounds.

Both are real easy to calculate, and lead to interesting tactical choices. You know you can't finish those chosen with a depleted unit of orcs, but 1-2 more casualties will net you some points and might be worth it.