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Backfire wrote:Yes, but they have same basic problem as normal killpoints...massive inequality between Codices. Take a lone Piranha, with the integral Drone unit. Both are KP units, both are Fast attack...so this one ~70 point Piranha is worth 4 Kill points! By contrast, Orks can take 600 points of Nob Bikers as troops, so they are 1 Kill point. Woo hoo...

Exactly!

Which is why i mentioned basing KP's on points cost.

Perhaps 1KP for every full 100 points spent on a unit, to a minimum of one.

Rhino - 1KP
Marine squad - 1KP
Captain - 1 KP
Land raider - 2KP
10man termie unit - 4KP
etc

Look, you can't just arbitrarily assign something more KP without putting them at a serious disadvantage. Big, expensive units ALREADY suffer terribly in objectives games. If you made them suffer in KP as well, there would never be a reason to take them. In which case, why would they even be in the codex?

Just because you dislike deathstar units doesn't mean the game should be fundamentally restructured to exclude them.

Ailaros wrote:Look, you can't just arbitrarily assign something more KP without putting them at a serious disadvantage. Big, expensive units ALREADY suffer terribly in objectives games. If you made them suffer in KP as well, there would never be a reason to take them. In which case, why would they even be in the codex?

Just because you dislike deathstar units doesn't mean the game should be fundamentally restructured to exclude them.

I don't dislike deathstars, i've used seer councils often enough.
It would be interesting to see how games pan out with differing KP's.
I know for a fact that playing some of the BM scenarios that have them that it opens up a different set of tactical "what ifs" to take into consideration and, at least in those games, made them a little bit more interesting and fun.

All in all, KP are ok, if a bit silly (but so were VP's in their own way) but it would be fun to try out something different.

Augustus wrote:

FOXDIE wrote:

svendrex wrote:(IG Example)...THE ONLY THING THAT IS TRYING TO BALANCE MSU ADVANTAGES IS KILLPOINTS!

That is just blatantly wrong, actually what balances that is the fact IG are poor troops, with melee and morale vulnerability, and they are easy to kill, and therefore cheaper. It's glaringly obvious.

In point of fact the KP thing actually hurts IG more because they are cheaper and usually fight at a disadvantage with more KP in their armies! Have you two even played this game? It's actually the reverse of this example KP isn't a balance to the IG Blob! It's the other way round, where the blob is to help the low quality IG army have a way to even compete in the broken KP system and it was obviously grafted into the rules as such in the 5th edition publication cycle where it was new for the first time ever.

Depends on how you define "easy to kill". In the edition of 4+ cover everywhere and the ability to voluntarily Go to Ground, any unit of more than a couple of models is durable against shooting.

Assault kills quicker, but you have to GET THERE, and you can't Consolidate into a new combat like you could in 3rd, so a given assault unit is almost always killing at most 2-3 units in a given game.

IG were totally screwed by KPs before they got a 5th edition codex. The blobbing rule specifically helps them address the problem. It's easy to design an IG army which dominates in KP missions.
You have some simple choices in army design. Blobs for low KP & durability, or mech for super mobility and firepower but high KPs.

Funny thing, that all of the 5th ed codices bear KPs in mind in their design, with cheap transports which are balanced by KPs. SW also have Lone Wolves which have a special rule specifically for KP missions. SM have Combat Squads, which lets them tailor the number of KP on offer in their army at deployment. IG have blobbing.

The only army that's still screwed in KPs is Tau, due to drones. And that's because they stlll have a 4th ed book! As soon as they get updated (and here's hoping GW does it with a FAQ, like they did for BT & DA, rather than waiting for a new codex), you KNOW that drones off vehicles are going to be changed to be worth 0 KPs. It's obvious.

Augustus wrote:What all the KP fans forget is that High KP armies typically don't really have an advantage in the other 2 missions because there plethora of units are (low quality) easy to kill. Points balances that out, KP handicap is double indemnity for these armies!

Nope. You've got it backwards. Due to the plentiful cover in this edition, and the limited number of units an assault unit can possibly kill in the limited turns of a game, an army with the same number of models spread into more units is ALWAYS more durable. It takes more units to engage them, and they can cofferdam damage better. In VPs, the problem is aggravated further. Because cheap vehicles are almost as hard to kill as expensive vehicles. 5 Chimera come up to about the same point cost as a single Land Raider with upgrades, but the Land Raider is almost always easier to get VPs off of, because a squad with meltaguns kills it just as easily. This is why LRs were much less common in 3rd and 4th ed lists.

The more units you have, the better your army is in objective missions. Without fail or exception. Even the non-scoring ones can Contest. A team mate of mine runs a podding Dreadbash list which drops pods all over the objectives on the table. About the only mission that's dangerous for that army is KPs.

Augustus wrote:Furthermore there are entire armies now of low KP counts with high power units that (sometimes ALL) score, a disturbing pattern that began with Ork Nob Bikers and continued into other codices where they passed out scoring status to units that shouldn't have them:

Nob Bikes, Sternguard, Belial Terminators, Loganwing, Blood Angels

This is an interesting point. I suspect that GW may be going this deliberately, having realized that low-KPs are at SUCH a disadvantage in 2/3 of the missions that they need more Scoring.

Mannahnin wrote:
Nope. You've got it backwards. Due to the plentiful cover in this edition, and the limited number of units an assault unit can possibly kill in the limited turns of a game, an army with the same number of models spread into more units is ALWAYS more durable. It takes more units to engage them, and they can cofferdam damage better.

Exactly. If it was possible, I'd take every single model in my Tau army as a separate unit, because then all the shooting and assaulting could only kill one model at the time from me, whilst I would have a full firepower at my disposal. Those pathetic Drone units are actually very useful in non-KP missions. It's funny to see enemy players agonize whether his 30 Shoota boyz should waste their turn of shooting at two floating frisbees.

Mannahnin wrote:

Augustus wrote:Furthermore there are entire armies now of low KP counts with high power units that (sometimes ALL) score, a disturbing pattern that began with Ork Nob Bikers and continued into other codices where they passed out scoring status to units that shouldn't have them:

Nob Bikes, Sternguard, Belial Terminators, Loganwing, Blood Angels

This is an interesting point. I suspect that GW may be going this deliberately, having realized that low-KPs are at SUCH a disadvantage in 2/3 of the missions that they need more Scoring.

I think the designers simply want it to be possible to wield truly elite armies with small model counts, because there are always people who like to play that way, and also it's nice to have some diversity in HQ choices. It's true that some resulting combinations are kinda broken. It does seem that these FOC 'exceptions' have become more prevalent in recent years, and it's one reason why obsolete Codeci are screwed.

Btw, I would hardly call Deathwing a "Deathstar army". They can't take Terminators in larger squads than 5 and Belial himself is hardly a huge killing machine.

Ho boy, editing this to respond is kind of beasty... Ah to it then. Please forgive the egregious summary in italics (mine).

Mannahnin wrote:

Augustus wrote:

FOXDIE wrote:

svendrex wrote:(IG Example).....BALANCE MSU ADVANTAGES IS KP

...(Blob was a patch fix for 5th ed KP).

Depends on how you define "easy to kill". In the edition of 4+ cover everywhere and the ability to voluntarily Go to Ground, any unit of more than a couple of models is durable against shooting....(and chimeras are good and cheap)

When I say 'easy to kil'l I am mostly referring to the infantry in a general sense, largely I think this becomes an issue of vulnerability to morale and the deadly trio of T3, SV5, S3, chimeras are good, sure, but the infantry is unreliable.

Mannahnin wrote:

Augustus wrote:What all the KP fans forget is that High KP armies typically don't really have an advantage in the other 2 missions because there plethora of units are (low quality) easy to kill. Points balances that out, KP handicap is double indemnity for these armies!

Nope. You've got it backwards. Due to the plentiful cover in this edition, (and have a numeric advantage derived from multiples and splitting ifre etc.)... The more units you have, the better your army is in objective missions. Without fail or exception.

I don't think that's a fair analysis, to say that more (infantry) units are better because of cover and go to ground is situational. Perhaps, but then, perhaps there wont be any cover? I think the effects of morale, as in melee overuns and shooting fallbacks and inability to rally when below half outway the inconsistent balance provided by nebulous cover proliferation. Generally the armies in question loose their numeric advantage in these situations.

It's to the point where I wouldn't take an army to a tourney that didn't have a special morale rule like ATSKNF or Hive mind or was outright fearless. That's why the high model count armies don't really have much of an advantage. I agree, about the Chimeras in a general sense.

Mannahnin wrote:

Augustus wrote:(New Low model count armies score) Nob Bikes, Sternguard, Belial Terminators, Loganwing, Blood Angels

This is an interesting point. I suspect that GW may be going this deliberately, having realized that low-KPs are at SUCH a disadvantage in 2/3 of the missions that they need more Scoring.

Yea it is. I see it as another patchfix, just like Kp and then the IG infantry Blob. As in they had to write unique 'special rules' to fix the imbalance or the all elite armies would have handicaps that make them unplayable.

The problem with KP is that it is a patch for poor codex design. If MSU are such a problem they should be written out of the codexes, not left in and have KP slapped ontop to create the balance. Because the armies that aren't marines that have great MSU options get the screw. Thus IG needing the ability to blob and more and more elite units showing up.

You see scenarios like the original poster put up often. At least I do, I play guard and I begin every game by counting KP and working the math. I usually play a relatively small KP army and if my opponent has more I just work out how many units I have to kill before I auto win. The fact that I can do that is honestly utter crap and when I do this in tournaments I always feel bad because it feels like a cheap way to win. I'm not beating them and their army I'm just playing the system.

I advocate a proportional kill point system.

What you do is work out what proportion of your kill points has been killed at the end of the game. For example, team A loses 7/12 kp and team B loses 8/17 kp, then team B wins. I find this helps armies that have no way of winning KP matches at all. For instance, IG vs BA in a kill points game. The IG basically has to field more kill points than the BA, as platoons are one of the few choices that has to be at least 2 kp.

While I am the first to admit PKP are not perfect, I find that the system works quite well.

Nice summaries, Augustus! Well done, sir!

I normally mistrust such alterations, but you appear to have taken no liberties and represented other people's words fairly and with careful attention to their meaning. I hope you don't mind that I've slightly re-arranged a few of your paragraphs to group like thoughts and related subjects for convenient response.

Augustus wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:

Augustus wrote:

FOXDIE wrote:

svendrex wrote:(IG Example).....BALANCE MSU ADVANTAGES IS KP

...(Blob was a patch fix for 5th ed KP).

Depends on how you define "easy to kill". In the edition of 4+ cover everywhere and the ability to voluntarily Go to Ground, any unit of more than a couple of models is durable against shooting....(and chimeras are good and cheap)

When I say 'easy to kil'l I am mostly referring to the infantry in a general sense, largely I think this becomes an issue of vulnerability to morale and the deadly trio of T3, SV5, S3, chimeras are good, sure, but the infantry is unreliable

It's to the point where I wouldn't take an army to a tourney that didn't have a special morale rule like ATSKNF or Hive mind or was outright fearless. That's why the high model count armies don't really have much of an advantage. I agree, about the Chimeras in a general sense.

IME most armies in this game have pretty reliable Morale. IG are something of an exception, but still can easily build their armies to have more Ld8 & Ld9 than Ld 7 running around. Sgts in Vet squads being Ld8, of course. That's not even factoring in wargear re-rolls. The only armies I commonly see having LD issues are Eldar and Orks; and then only the smaller units; and then only once you get them out of their transports. I find infantry extremely reliable and durable against most shooting due to the ready and easy availability of 4+ cover.

Augustus wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:

Augustus wrote:What all the KP fans forget is that High KP armies typically don't really have an advantage in the other 2 missions because there plethora of units are (low quality) easy to kill. Points balances that out, KP handicap is double indemnity for these armies!

Nope. You've got it backwards. Due to the plentiful cover in this edition, (and have a numeric advantage derived from multiples and splitting ifre etc.)... The more units you have, the better your army is in objective missions. Without fail or exception.

I don't think that's a fair analysis, to say that more (infantry) units are better because of cover and go to ground is situational. Perhaps, but then, perhaps there wont be any cover? I think the effects of morale, as in melee overuns and shooting fallbacks and inability to rally when below half outway the inconsistent balance provided by nebulous cover proliferation. Generally the armies in question loose their numeric advantage in these situations.

Even with the too-light terrain found on many tournament tables, I infrequently see a situation where an infantry unit can't get to a cover save if needed.

That is, one can sometimes set up a shot which denies a target cover, but thanks to the rules about shooting across units, and the area terrain rules, and the fact that only a toe of an infantry model needs to be obscured from the firer's perspective for that model to claim cover, and that only half the models in the unit need to be obscured at all, getting cover saves for units is normally extremely easy. Even on tables with insufficient real LOS-blocking terrain, as are often found on boards which the owners have failed to update to proper 5th ed coverage.

As for melee overruns, IME these actually act in the favor of MSU lists. Because they can more easily to afford the loss of a unit here and there to assault without said losses representing major damage to their force, and the surviving units still possess enough killing power to respond and kill or cripple the assaulters.

As a comparison for contrast, in a game tonight I inadvertently moved a squad of 10 CSMs JUST into maximum assault range of a unit of nine Death Company in a Land Raider (I had moved the CSM aggressively forward to get into 6" melta range of an enemy tank). The DC were able to reach my CSMs and wipe them out. That represented a loss of 220pts (~12.6% of my army) and 1/4 of my scoring units. If a Mech IG player did the same with a unit of meltavets, he would have lost only 100pts of his army (5.8% of his army), and likely only 1/5 or 1/6 of his scoring units. He would have sustained lesser damage to his force as a whole, and have more units remaining and capable of responding.

Augustus wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:

Augustus wrote:(New Low model count armies score) Nob Bikes, Sternguard, Belial Terminators, Loganwing, Blood Angels

This is an interesting point. I suspect that GW may be going this deliberately, having realized that low-KPs are at SUCH a disadvantage in 2/3 of the missions that they need more Scoring.

Yea it is. I see it as another patchfix, just like Kp and then the IG infantry Blob. As in they had to write unique 'special rules' to fix the imbalance or the all elite armies would have handicaps that make them unplayable.

We seem to be largely in agreement. Though I still don't see KP in general as a patchfix. It is a little bit clumsy, and sometimes feels a bit unnatural, but to me no more so than the limited game length of a mission, the arbitrary deployment zones, or (more fundamentally) the whole "you go, I go" nature of the turn structure. The game has abstract systems and mechanics which don't always feel "realistic" or intuitive. VPs certainly feels more "realistic", in part because it's more granular, but IMO the improved quality and balance of play in 5th ed is well worth tolerating slightly more abstraction.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Trickstick wrote:I advocate a proportional kill point system.

What you do is work out what proportion of your kill points has been killed at the end of the game. For example, team A loses 7/12 kp and team B loses 8/17 kp, then team B wins. I find this helps armies that have no way of winning KP matches at all. For instance, IG vs BA in a kill points game. The IG basically has to field more kill points than the BA, as platoons are one of the few choices that has to be at least 2 kp.

While I am the first to admit PKP are not perfect, I find that the system works quite well.

It's just simplified VPs. It abandons the primary purpose of KPs (balancing the value of MSU in the other two mission types) and only preserves the ancillary purpose of KPs (simplicity). I am very much against it.

Mannahnin wrote:It's just simplified VPs. It abandons the primary purpose of KPs (balancing the value of MSU in the other two mission types) and only preserves the ancillary purpose of KPs (simplicity). I am very much against it.

The primary purpose of kill points has nothing to do with MSU, that may be a secondary purpose but that is debatable.

The primary purpose of kill points is so that the end of game process is as quick as possible, cutting out all the hassle of calculating victory points when many people just want to have another game. Plus, I believe that the effect of KP on MSU was not initially intended, and has simply been used as a justification after the fact.

Ailaros wrote:

Shivan Reaper wrote:I wonder how many people will still be saying this when GK come out, and are dealing with a 5 kp army that is almost impossible for a non-assault army to completely wipe out a unit?

What would I do? I'd take great joy knowing that this list, being 5 units, couldn't possibly compete in seize ground or capture and control.

Man, it's like whenever people look at kill points distainedly, they COMPLETELY forget about the other two missions.

Yeah, because 2 wound FNP terminators that can pull wound allocation hijinks as good as orks will be easy to shift off objectives, especially since at least one of them will have a 2++ save. They might have issues winning outright in objectives, but they will have no issue contesting enough to force a draw.

Trickstick wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:It's just simplified VPs. It abandons the primary purpose of KPs (balancing the value of MSU in the other two mission types) and only preserves the ancillary purpose of KPs (simplicity). I am very much against it.

The primary purpose of kill points has nothing to do with MSU, that may be a secondary purpose but that is debatable.

The primary purpose of kill points is so that the end of game process is as quick as possible, cutting out all the hassle of calculating victory points when many people just want to have another game. Plus, I believe that the effect of KP on MSU was not initially intended, and has simply been used as a justification after the fact.

Wow. I am surprised that anyone could actually believe that, but okay. If you do, then sure, Proportional KP FTW.

Mannahnin wrote:Wow. I am surprised that anyone could actually believe that, but okay. If you do, then sure, Proportional KP FTW.

Hey, I'm not saying it is the best fix ever or anything, it has many flaws. I think it is a nice attempt but I only use it in friendly games anyway and it is rare because objectives are simply better.

However, surely the primary reason they came up with KP was for ease of use, not some convoluted "this balances that" scenario. I'm willing to admit that it may have evolved into that, even if I may need more convincing. It is just you said:

Mannahnin wrote:...the primary purpose of KPs (balancing the value of MSU in the other two mission types)...

Which I believe was not the primary consideration when KP were first suggested.

GW's game designers can't possibly be as bad as you portray them. They have after all managed to make 5th ed quite balanced, so claiming that KP's is only to dumb down the game is silly.

DakkaDakka wrote:

Yes, forced obsolescence through escalation!

Augustus wrote: they passed out scoring status to units that shouldn't have them:

Nob Bikes
Sternguard
Belial Terminators
Loganwing
Blood Angels

I love how it's not something like "SG shouldn't score" no, apparently my entire codex shouldn't have scoring statues: "screw BA tac marines they get nothing!"

Really I find that part of the balance is the smaller elite units that mean only a 5 KP army are easier to table while having 20 KP in your army against an army that has 11 KP if it comes down to 2 units left, yes they won, but in the early game you also just have better capability to put down their units due to overwhelming firepower.

Most KP games I play have come down to only a couple KPs difference unless it's a one-sided game where one side may as well be tabled at the end, but that's not the fault of the KP system.

How about you guys? how many KP games do you play where at the end of the game it's 4-12 and both of you look at the table and think "I've still got half my army and could totally take him"

Che-Vito wrote:
The rules aren't very balanced. Assault armies can't consolidate into another assault.

But that is not a bad thing, that is a good thing.

Che-Vito wrote:
Cover saves are significantly more plentiful, and everyone can Run in the Shooting phase.

Which is also a good thing.

Che-Vito wrote:
Now the Codexes, is an entirely different issue. They all introduce their new form of "broken" (a lot of Turn 1 assaulting units, Valks/Vendettas/Manticores for insane mobility and shooting...etc.) when released in 5th Edition. The Codexes spend time ironing out the inadequacies of the BRB, and then take it overboard...requiring the next Codex update to go overboard...and so on.

Whereas the new books do have some over-powered units, is it really some new development? Hasn't it always been that way?

One also has to remember that lots of the "powerhouse" Codices today were ones which were amongst the weakest with their old books. BA, IG and SW did get huge power boost, but they needed huge boost.

This old argument =)

KPs balance the game. They are necessary to keep MSU armies from totally dominating.

I haven't read this whole thread, but I see the flaw in KP games. In one game against my friend (Necron vs SM), I got more KP off of him from what I killed than I had in my entire army and I only took out about 1/2 of his army. So...I see the flaws in it.

Trickstick wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:It's just simplified VPs. It abandons the primary purpose of KPs (balancing the value of MSU in the other two mission types) and only preserves the ancillary purpose of KPs (simplicity). I am very much against it.

The primary purpose of kill points has nothing to do with MSU, that may be a secondary purpose but that is debatable.

The primary purpose of kill points is so that the end of game process is as quick as possible, cutting out all the hassle of calculating victory points when many people just want to have another game. Plus, I believe that the effect of KP on MSU was not initially intended, and has simply been used as a justification after the fact.

This.

People that keep saying "Killpoints are needed to address MSU" forget how GW actually does things. At best, they don't even know what MSU is. At worst, they are actively hostile to the idea of players categorizing builds in a context like MSU.

And acting like it's a thing that needs to be balanced (Optimal squad sizes shouldn't be squad minimum! Rarr!) without pointing at the host of other things that need balancing is just being myopic in favor of the status quo. It's not like 4th ed players were running around demanding an even more arbitrary system to be layered on top of their game.

Why is it important trying to futilely attempt to read the original intent of KP? Its not like one side or the other is doing anything better than blowing smoke when you state with certainty what GW's reason was for making KP the way they are.

The important thing is that the primary effect of KP mission types being 1/3 of the random table is to make MSU style armies not have a massive advantage in all missions.

If you don't like KP, you have 3 options

1) Get with the times, and suck it up.
2) Play another edition instead.
3) Don't play KP missions.

Get over it imo.

Dracos, simply saying "Don't play because I, Dracos, have run out of arguments" adds nothing.

Saying "Kill points weren't invented to balance MSU" (we haven't even gotten into the fact that MSU lists are still doing just dandy even with 1/3 of the missions being KP) is presented in direct contrast to people saying they are OK because KPs attempt to counter MSU. KPs being a crap arbitrary system and people taking small units for their shiny toys currently being the superior way to build some lists are two different things, the KP fans have just kinda siezed on the meme as a sort of liferaft for the debate instead of actually addressing the fact that it's an arbitrary system and any benefits it might (or might not, and to be honest really doesn't) provide are accidental.

I never told you not to play. What I did say is that you have the option of either accepting the rules as they are, playing another edition, or not playing the KP mission.

All this whining about how unfair killpoints are is not a tactics issue. Nor is it productive in any way. If this thread was about how to overcome the inherent penalty given to MSU style armies in KP missions, then maybe it would have some merit.

This thread should be moved away from this forum as it has no tactical merit.