I have thought about this question several times, actually. I think there are several different ways to think about it,
1) Cost to earn: At its most basic you could imagine how much to earn a CP. You could assume that whatever detachment has 0 value for the units in it and then go from there. The guard battalion is the easiest and obvious. ~180 pts buys 5 CP's + the two reroll traits/relics, which are usually worth ~6 more =11 CP's /180 points or ~23 points per CP just as a purchase. This is clearly a good purchase, bought in many many imperial armies. Indeed, I think it might be purchased EVEN IF the guardsmen have no value, although they clearly also are great as chaff. But it still gives us some insight. If we give them some value, we start seeing people willing to just straight buy CP's in guard battalion form as worth at least ~10 points. Since this is an obvious good pick instead of a marginal one so is most likely an underestimate. This gives us some idea of a lower bound, however. An interesting approach might be to look at the cheapest battalion in each faction and then see what a CP costs there.
2) How much would you be willing to spend in list creation for +1 CP?. Here, I mean substituting towards a slightly weaker army to earn more CP. The strongest armies of course, don't have to pay much tax for it, but for many, you have to build in slightly less effective troop choices or unnecessary HQ's to get more CP's. Here I'm talking about lists like Eldar/DE, where the troops don't do much, or necrons, with expensive troops. Here my answer is much more just from personal observation. I'm typically willing to consider upgrading a spearhead, outrider or vanguard to a battalion if the upgrade will cost less than ~150 points, putting my value for the CP's at ~ 37.5 points, again assuming those are troops or HQ's I don't really want. Obviously the troops have some value, so this is likely an overestimate of the value of a CP.
3) Value of use: You give a good example of CP for d3 mortal wounds on dark reapers but not guardians. That would be a reasonable place to look for where we spend CP's. Similarly, people will often try to reroll a d6 damage result to get the last wound off a valuable vehicle. If we pick a marginal situation (where many but not quite all would spend the CP), we might gain some insight. How about a Rhino on a small number of wounds left with the last lascannon you have, rerolling a d6? a living rhino has almost full value, protecting the squad inside since its guns are weak. If we take the Rhino to be fairly costed (Which is a major assumption). we would say
2 W left= 5/6 * 70pts= 58 points. I think most people would spend a CP on that.
3 W left= 4/6 * 70 pts = 46 pts. I think most would still spend for the reroll
4 W= 3/6*70-35 points.
5 w= 2/6 *70= 23 points. I think this is about where people start considering whether to reroll.
6W = 1/6 *70= 11 points. Probably not many takers.
So somewhere at about 23 points, based on the rhino example, I think, in this scenario. We could work it through in several other scenarios as well. I think this is the most robust of my answers.
4) The hard cap: Most of the strongest lists I see built from some armies (imperial or chaos soup for example), use such efficient HQ's and troops that they run out of detachments before they run out of troops or HQ's that are independently valuable. I'm talking about guard battalions, smashcaptain+scouts, Demon princes+nurglings, abaddon or ahriman+cultists etc. Here, some lists are routinely earning 18 CP's without much 'tax'. (3 battalions+battle forged). Under this assumption, your CP's are not really limited by a points constraints but remain a finite resource. Not really helpful in answering the question, but you still end up with a number like 1 CP per 111 points. Clearly an overestimate.
5) the bargin method: Ask players how many points they would pay to have an extra CP? Here, ther obvious feature is that the value of the first CP is much much greater than the 15th or 20th. That first will be on the single most important strategem in the entire game. The 2nd, hopefully, on the 2nd most, and so on. The 15th reroll is much less valuable than the first. I think I'd usually be willing to give up ~15 points for 1 more CP in many lists, the last marginal one that I can't squeeze in any other way. This is more subjective and personal though. It also depends on how strong your stratagems are for your army (the rhino example, sort of).
So putting it all together? I think the first is worth on the order of 25-30 points and the ~12th more on the order of 10-12 points.
|