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It still baffles me that everytime a primary/secondary mission revolving around killing something in 40k comes up, its done by raw units or wounds destroyed. We're in 9th edition, anyone with money to spend on this game has a smartphone or can at least afford a calculator. Why are we not calculating scores for these missions by point/pl killed?

It really makes no sense a 25pt IG platoon commander is worth the same as a space marine chapter master for Assassinate. An ork boy is not worth the same as an eldar guardian when it comes to Take No prisoners, etc.

Am I in the minority here? I always thought this was stupid and just unnecessarily punishes certain armies. Killpoints by unit works for some games, but those games dont have the potential for an army consisting of 5 supeeheavy models to fight an army consisting of 200 infantry. I can kill a primarch and score less points than the opponent got for killing a no name commissar and officer with the current mission system, that just seems insane to me.

I get the idea of secondaries involving killing things, I actually kind of like it. I just hate how GW has it setup because as it sits, if youre not an elite army that only needs a few of each unit, you get punished pretty hard by 9ths current kill secondaries. Id love to run more little characters as a Guard player for example, but as it sits if I bring even just a few 25pt characters I automatically give myself a 15vp handicap every game.

Ogryn are weak to both lasguns and lascannons, Guardsmen are only weak to lasguns. If you take only Guardsmen equivalents in your list your opponent's lascannons will be wasted. If you take only Ogryn neither your opponent's lasguns nor lascannons are wasted.

Kill secondaries should exist to combat skew lists. An Ogryn spam list isn't really skewed because it is weak to everything, there is no need to punish it via kill secondaries.

Ogryn have to be balanced around the fact that they cannot be countered via secondaries but every kind of weapon can counter them. Guardsmen have to be balanced around the fact they some weapons don't counter them, but if you spam them then you'll get hit by certain secondaries.

Balancing going wrong and allowing mid-tier units like Bullgryn or SM to dominate isn't a reason to have a kill secondary against them, since that would impact units like Ogryn and Genestealer Cults as well.

Elite units also have more difficulty with various missions, devoting a Primarch to raising a banner would be a total waste, but a fitting job for a no-name Commissar. They each have strengths and weaknesses within the mission set.

I think the idea behind the kill secondaries is to give options against different types of units. In that context I don't have a problem with it being done on a unit or model basis, rather than points. It's an optimisation choice made at the start of the game, with different options being optimal depending on your army and the enemy's.

Skew is created by defensive profiles, not by unit types. You could have a skew list created from monsters, cavalry, bikers and vehicles and none of the secondaries would apply.

What they really do punish are support characters and big vehicles, outside of that it is just an uninteresting exercise of looking at your opponent's list and see if his faction didn't allow them to build a list that doesn't give up easy kill VP.

I'm trying to run a mech ork army list, not one of the OP buggy spam lists, kans and dreads and mek guns. WANT to add more kans and dreads, and maybe another mek gun or two (I have two presently), maybe some trukks, and deffkoptas (they're vehicle right?).

6 kans are toughness 5, 5 wound models, worth 6 VP. Dread is T7, I want two of them. Mek guns are I think T5, and only have a 5+ save. I don't know deffkoptas but they're what, T5, 3-4 wounds? Just from those, that's 15 VP, and half of them can die to strong breeze, the guns usually being the only ones that earn their points back if they aren't targeted turn 1 by basically anything, and are wildly unreliable.

I don't care about losing, I know I'm running a super sub-optimal list and just love having models on the table, but it feels kinda bad when my units that are hardly more durable than heavy intercessors (especially against high damage weapons) are each worth a victory point and basically guarantee someone is getting max VP off it.

I don't particularly like that any kill objectives are in the game, but I know it would take away a lot of options to not have them. I'd prefer that it's point based, so my 45 point and 40 point models don't count as a whole VP each, but it would be a little annoying keeping track of. At the very least power level based.

But again, I honestly don't care, so whatever the competitive players would like. I still win games just because people know my list is bad and take it easy on me

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
It still baffles me that everytime a primary/secondary mission revolving around killing something in 40k comes up, its done by raw units or wounds destroyed. We're in 9th edition, anyone with money to spend on this game has a smartphone or can at least afford a calculator. Why are we not calculating scores for these missions by point/pl killed?

It really makes no sense a 25pt IG platoon commander is worth the same as a space marine chapter master for Assassinate. An ork boy is not worth the same as an eldar guardian when it comes to Take No prisoners, etc.

Am I in the minority here? I always thought this was stupid and just unnecessarily punishes certain armies. Killpoints by unit works for some games, but those games dont have the potential for an army consisting of 5 supeeheavy models to fight an army consisting of 200 infantry. I can kill a primarch and score less points than the opponent got for killing a no name commissar and officer with the current mission system, that just seems insane to me.

I get the idea of secondaries involving killing things, I actually kind of like it. I just hate how GW has it setup because as it sits, if youre not an elite army that only needs a few of each unit, you get punished pretty hard by 9ths current kill secondaries. Id love to run more little characters as a Guard player for example, but as it sits if I bring even just a few 25pt characters I automatically give myself a 15vp handicap every game.

Why would killing 4 weak IG characters VS killing 4 SM characters matter of importance if your only goal was to kill their leadership? Why would the points matter at all? To an IG army their leaders are just as important to them as a Captain is to marines. Forge a narrative and pretend you are trying to disrupt their plans by killing leadership.

All in all its there for balance and making it points vs units doesn't always make sense for balance. If you had Assassinate and now 0-90 are 3pts, 91-199 are 4pts, and 201+ are 5pts you'll see players fudging their lists to make sure it stays at 10pts or under so its never the best pick, this also doesn't help IG bc now a Tank commander is worth more so its a wash in points.
Or even worst you make it 0-60 2pts, 61-160 3pts, etc... well now you gave the green for people to try to get that character under Xpts which many armies can do making Assassinate an even worst pick than it is already.

Secondaries should not involve killing at all. Killing should be done in order to control objectives and the reward is control of the objective.

Actually, on second though they should involve killing if its interesting, like the secondary objective in Malifaux where you nominate one of your own models to try and get killed.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Secondaries should not involve killing at all. Killing should be done in order to control objectives and the reward is control of the objective.

Actually, on second though they should involve killing if its interesting, like the secondary objective in Malifaux where you nominate one of your own models to try and get killed.

Why have secondaries if none of them involve killing?

 Sim-Life wrote:
Secondaries should not involve killing at all. Killing should be done in order to control objectives and the reward is control of the objective.

Actually, on second though they should involve killing if its interesting, like the secondary objective in Malifaux where you nominate one of your own models to try and get killed.

Yes a game about war and killing should not reward killing in a tactical way to win the battle. Good game ideology.

It shouldn't reward killing with victory points because the armies are going to be doing their best to kill each other anyways. Killing is almost the only thing you can do in Warhammer; there's no suppression or capturing, forcing units to fall back or keep their heads down. So a clever solution is to reward armies for doing something more than what they do as a default.

 Nurglitch wrote:
It shouldn't reward killing with victory points because the armies are going to be doing their best to kill each other anyways. Killing is almost the only thing you can do in Warhammer; there's no suppression or capturing, forcing units to fall back or keep their heads down. So a clever solution is to reward armies for doing something more than what they do as a default.

Expect more than 1/2 the secondaries and the primary don't give points for killing, its not like 3rd/4th where that was the most important part of the game, now its not. Many armies don't even take kill secondaries or just 1. Heck even as DE there are times I don't take kill secondaries.

So why is it bad? bc I see nothing bad about it.

Number of units because maths is hard and I don't like it.
That being said, generally, I don't like the "Kill Units" secondaries from Eternal War(?) or whatever it's called.

 vict0988 wrote:
Ogryn are weak to both lasguns and lascannons, Guardsmen are only weak to lasguns. If you take only Guardsmen equivalents in your list your opponent's lascannons will be wasted. If you take only Ogryn neither your opponent's lasguns nor lascannons are wasted.

Kill secondaries should exist to combat skew lists.

What makes a Guard list with eight 10-man squads of Guardsmen more of a skew list than one with six 30-man squads of Conscripts?

Number of units is not a good way to address skew. It's easier than totaling points, but it has wildly unequal outcomes across armies.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Secondaries should not involve killing at all. Killing should be done in order to control objectives and the reward is control of the objective.

Actually, on second though they should involve killing if its interesting, like the secondary objective in Malifaux where you nominate one of your own models to try and get killed.

This.

Killing enemy models is its own reward, getting bonus points on top is double dipping, same problem that ITC had back in 8th.
By killing your opponents stuff, you prevent them from doing their objectives.


Secondaries like RoD or warp ritual are what the game needs more of IMO. Reduce lethality by forcing units to take actions instead of shooting.

 catbarf wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Ogryn are weak to both lasguns and lascannons, Guardsmen are only weak to lasguns. If you take only Guardsmen equivalents in your list your opponent's lascannons will be wasted. If you take only Ogryn neither your opponent's lasguns nor lascannons are wasted.

Kill secondaries should exist to combat skew lists.

What makes a Guard list with eight 10-man squads of Guardsmen more of a skew list than one with six 30-man squads of Conscripts?

Number of units is not a good way to address skew. It's easier than totaling points, but it has wildly unequal outcomes across armies.

I am not advocating for # of units. I think # of wounds is the right choice personally, part of that might just be me not wanting things to change. What I am fighting against is points because killing 800 pts of Ogryn is not the same as killing 800 pts of Guardsmen, killing 2000 pts of Monoliths is not the same as killing 2000 pts of Warhound Titan. Here is how I'd like kill missions to look:


Then I'd go over units and balance them around these secondaries.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Secondaries should not involve killing at all. Killing should be done in order to control objectives and the reward is control of the objective.

Actually, on second though they should involve killing if its interesting, like the secondary objective in Malifaux where you nominate one of your own models to try and get killed.

This.

Killing enemy models is its own reward, getting bonus points on top is double dipping, same problem that ITC had back in 8th.
By killing your opponents stuff, you prevent them from doing their objectives.


Secondaries like RoD or warp ritual are what the game needs more of IMO. Reduce lethality by forcing units to take actions instead of shooting.

Killing an army composed of 50% tanks and 50% Guardsmen is easier than killing one that is 100% tanks or 100% Guardsmen. Elite armies have a higher opportunity cost for taking actions than cheap ones do.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
It still baffles me that everytime a primary/secondary mission revolving around killing something in 40k comes up, its done by raw units or wounds destroyed. We're in 9th edition, anyone with money to spend on this game has a smartphone or can at least afford a calculator. Why are we not calculating scores for these missions by point/pl killed?

It really makes no sense a 25pt IG platoon commander is worth the same as a space marine chapter master for Assassinate. An ork boy is not worth the same as an eldar guardian when it comes to Take No prisoners, etc.

Am I in the minority here? I always thought this was stupid and just unnecessarily punishes certain armies. Killpoints by unit works for some games, but those games dont have the potential for an army consisting of 5 supeeheavy models to fight an army consisting of 200 infantry. I can kill a primarch and score less points than the opponent got for killing a no name commissar and officer with the current mission system, that just seems insane to me.

I get the idea of secondaries involving killing things, I actually kind of like it. I just hate how GW has it setup because as it sits, if youre not an elite army that only needs a few of each unit, you get punished pretty hard by 9ths current kill secondaries. Id love to run more little characters as a Guard player for example, but as it sits if I bring even just a few 25pt characters I automatically give myself a 15vp handicap every game.

Why would killing 4 weak IG characters VS killing 4 SM characters matter of importance if your only goal was to kill their leadership? Why would the points matter at all? To an IG army their leaders are just as important to them as a Captain is to marines. Forge a narrative and pretend you are trying to disrupt their plans by killing leadership.

All in all its there for balance and making it points vs units doesn't always make sense for balance. If you had Assassinate and now 0-90 are 3pts, 91-199 are 4pts, and 201+ are 5pts you'll see players fudging their lists to make sure it stays at 10pts or under so its never the best pick, this also doesn't help IG bc now a Tank commander is worth more so its a wash in points.
Or even worst you make it 0-60 2pts, 61-160 3pts, etc... well now you gave the green for people to try to get that character under Xpts which many armies can do making Assassinate an even worst pick than it is already.

Well, IIRC, one Company Commander plus two Platoon Commanders is 85 pts. So is a naked Captain. Killing all four of the characters is a 100% on-board leadership loss for both armies. Why does the SM player get more VP for the same number of points killed and same percentage of enemy leadership eliminated?

vict0988 wrote:I am not advocating for # of units. I think # of wounds is the right choice personally, part of that might just be me not wanting things to change.

My issue with even number of wounds is that it's so lopsided across armies. See this:

waefre_1 wrote:Well, IIRC, one Company Commander plus two Platoon Commanders is 85 pts. So is a naked Captain. Killing all four of the characters is a 100% on-board leadership loss for both armies. Why does the SM player get more VP for the same number of points killed and same percentage of enemy leadership eliminated?

This shows how the problem relates to HQ choices (a Guard player is yielding more wounds and more models as VP for the same points), but it extends to the entire army. If I take a 'balanced' Guard list with a few dozen infantry and some tanks, you can take a secondary for killing vehicles and a secondary for killing infantry and have a good chance of maxing out both. Meanwhile if you're a balanced Primaris army, I have no good choices and there are no kill secondaries I'll be able to max out.

The implicit assumption that a T3/5+ wound is as valuable as a T4/3+ wound deserves scrutiny. It rewards elite armies and punishes cheaper ones, even when no skew is in play.

If we have to have kill secondaries (I think there are better ways to address skew), I'd rather have it be by points, but preserve the idea of roles. You're right, vict0988, that 1000pts of Ogryns is not the same as 1000pts of Guardsmen. But I would expect that an anti-heavy-infantry secondary would only reward the former, and an anti-horde secondary would only reward the latter. What matters is that an army has decided to skew half of its points into a single defensive archetype, and that should be punishable regardless of how many models/wounds that actually comes to.

I don't have offhand knowledge of the points cost of most things in my army, I don't want to be on the hook for knowing the points cost of everything in my opponent's army.

Well, please spare a thought for the chaos knights and imperial knights. We can't perform actions and so we rely heavily on the kill secondary objective even though sometimes we get very few points from it.

The kill secondaries and secondaries in general need to be expanded and made more interesting. Some can be performed much too easily and some are basically an auto lose. The state of them makes me miss maelstrom which is saying a lot.

 catbarf wrote:

vict0988 wrote:I am not advocating for # of units. I think # of wounds is the right choice personally, part of that might just be me not wanting things to change.

My issue with even number of wounds is that it's so lopsided across armies. See this:

waefre_1 wrote:Well, IIRC, one Company Commander plus two Platoon Commanders is 85 pts. So is a naked Captain. Killing all four of the characters is a 100% on-board leadership loss for both armies. Why does the SM player get more VP for the same number of points killed and same percentage of enemy leadership eliminated?

This shows how the problem relates to HQ choices (a Guard player is yielding more wounds and more models as VP for the same points), but it extends to the entire army. If I take a 'balanced' Guard list with a few dozen infantry and some tanks, you can take a secondary for killing vehicles and a secondary for killing infantry and have a good chance of maxing out both. Meanwhile if you're a balanced Primaris army, I have no good choices and there are no kill secondaries I'll be able to max out.

The implicit assumption that a T3/5+ wound is as valuable as a T4/3+ wound deserves scrutiny. It rewards elite armies and punishes cheaper ones, even when no skew is in play.

5+ Sv is weak to AP-, anything more than that is wasted opportunity to go after something with better Sv characteristics, 3+ Sv is weak to AP-, AP-1 and AP-2, that's why elite skew is not a problem that needs to be solved with missions but should instead be solved with points in the cases where elites turn out to be superior to vehicles. 2+ Sv spam can be a problem because the damage reduction against AP- is extreme, but if the Toughness is 5 or less you can still just pour lasguns into it.

If we have to have kill secondaries (I think there are better ways to address skew), I'd rather have it be by points, but preserve the idea of roles. You're right, vict0988, that 1000pts of Ogryns is not the same as 1000pts of Guardsmen. But I would expect that an anti-heavy-infantry secondary would only reward the former, and an anti-horde secondary would only reward the latter. What matters is that an army has decided to skew half of its points into a single defensive archetype, and that should be punishable regardless of how many models/wounds that actually comes to.

I'd be interested to hear what you think is the right way to address skew. The alternative I've heard most often is "have a mission where it sucks to have a lot of x/y/z unit type" or "have a mission where it sucks to not have x/y/z unit type", but that IMO ends up being roulette. You could end up going to a tournament with your mono-Knight army, play round 1 against Tyranid monster-mash in a mission that punishes taking lots of big things, round 2 against a Daemons of Chaos horde in a mission that punishes hordes and round 3 against mono Chaos Knights in a mission that punishes Titanic units. In your experience, there will have been no skew punishment for taking a mono-Titanic list, while the Tyranid and Chaos Daemons players will end up having been punished for taking a monster mash and horde list respectively.

Anti-skew rules need to be in the list-building or mission secondaries for the system to be good. A possibly good alternative could look like the old Slay the Warlord, except with Warlord replaced with killing a lot of units with the same T or Sv characteristic.

You probably know that the current GT missions are based on the Nova mission set which the ITC Champions Missions were also based on, in the ITC missions there was an anti-elite mission that punished taking a single big unit because that's what was unbalanced back then. I cannot help but think of that secondary whenever we talk about this being an option. What would you like an anti-elite secondary to look like?

 Kommisar wrote:
The kill secondaries and secondaries in general need to be expanded and made more interesting. Some can be performed much too easily and some are basically an auto lose. The state of them makes me miss maelstrom which is saying a lot.

I am curious which ones you would like to see? Do your care about whether it is thematic or would you like something like the Malifaux objective mentioned earlier where you have to attempt to lose a specific unit? Do you remember any mission sets that did kill objectives in an interesting way?

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Well, please spare a thought for the chaos knights and imperial knights. We can't perform actions and so we rely heavily on the kill secondary objective even though sometimes we get very few points from it.

Titanic units could get buffs to their ability to do actions, Stratagem support, an easy action-secondary, whatever. Like they've just buffed Knights' ability to hold objectives, something could be done for actions as well.

The idea of awarding points based on discrete units of maneuver alone was always really silly, and has always been an ease of record keeping thing, or at least was when the change was made from 4th to 5th. The idea of it serving some sort of anti-skew balance purpose largely came from internet forums post-facto. It's just easier to tabulate victory by counting dead units than having to add up the value of various models or determine value from half-dead units. It's grossly disproportionate and hamfisted as an anti-skew mechanism, and when we see events that don't use such scoring they're not typically overrun with armies consisting of gazillions of microunits.

Few other tabletop wargames with such disparate unit values use such a victory mechanic, and there's a reason for that.

 vict0988 wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Well, please spare a thought for the chaos knights and imperial knights. We can't perform actions and so we rely heavily on the kill secondary objective even though sometimes we get very few points from it.

Titanic units could get buffs to their ability to do actions, Stratagem support, an easy action-secondary, whatever. Like they've just buffed Knights' ability to hold objectives, something could be done for actions as well.

I think the "counts as (X) models for controlling objectives" and adding obsec to Armigers should help Knights quite a bit. Now they just need to address the movement issues that big models have on the current terrain heavy boards to help them score things like Behind Enemy Lines. And it would be nice if they'd extend the "counts as (X) models" rule to other vehicles.

 vict0988 wrote:
5+ Sv is weak to AP-, anything more than that is wasted opportunity to go after something with better Sv characteristics, 3+ Sv is weak to AP-, AP-1 and AP-2, that's why elite skew is not a problem that needs to be solved with missions but should instead be solved with points in the cases where elites turn out to be superior to vehicles. 2+ Sv spam can be a problem because the damage reduction against AP- is extreme, but if the Toughness is 5 or less you can still just pour lasguns into it.

I agree that that sounds great on paper, but the reality of it is that if I take a balanced, well-rounded Guard list, you can score high on three secondaries (anti-horde, anti-vehicle, anti-character) without too much trouble. But a Primaris army with a similar composition yields no secondaries, because it just doesn't have nearly as many models of any one type. 'Having more models than a Primaris player' is not skew, and there's no actual imbalance there that the secondaries are addressing (you have targets for all of your weapons either way); it's just that armies with generally cheaper units get screwed by kill secondaries. We've seen this pretty consistently throughout 9th. A Carnifex is cheaper and less effective than a Dreadnought, but worth the same VP. A Guard character is cheaper and easier to kill than a Captain, but worth the same VP. A Marine tank company has fewer models and yields less VP than a Guard tank company even though both are the same skew with comparable defensive profiles. It punishes skew, but it punishes non-elite armies significantly more.

 vict0988 wrote:
I'd be interested to hear what you think is the right way to address skew. The alternative I've heard most often is "have a mission where it sucks to have a lot of x/y/z unit type" or "have a mission where it sucks to not have x/y/z unit type", but that IMO ends up being roulette. You could end up going to a tournament with your mono-Knight army, play round 1 against Tyranid monster-mash in a mission that punishes taking lots of big things, round 2 against a Daemons of Chaos horde in a mission that punishes hordes and round 3 against mono Chaos Knights in a mission that punishes Titanic units. In your experience, there will have been no skew punishment for taking a mono-Titanic list, while the Tyranid and Chaos Daemons players will end up having been punished for taking a monster mash and horde list respectively.

First off, while I don't think objectives that specifically penalize skew are the optimal solution, it's important to recognize that there is an element of randomness inherent to any tournament environment. You're already getting randomly matched up with an opponent with unknown force composition relative to yours, on a board with unknown layout, and then mediating the result via dice. You can go to a tournament and win your first three matches against weak players, play a round where the table setup favors your army, and then face off for the win against an army that you hard-counter; that's just luck of the draw. I think role-oriented missions are coming from the right mindset, because they shift the paradigm from 'pick the objectives that best complement your strengths', which rewards skew, to 'here are the objectives, bring the tools to accomplish them', which discourages skew. If someone wants to take skew anyways and happens to get a mission that they can't perform, that's entirely on them.

That said, rather than have the core mission be role-focused, I'd rather have a variety of missions so as to intrinsically reward army flexibility. 9th basically has one mission at its core, with holding objectives for progressive scoring- throw in a hold-at-the-end, an asset retrieval, a breakthrough, and even just some old-fashioned asymmetric missions and then army composition becomes less solvable. A static gunline may struggle in asset retrieval, while a fast objective-grabbing army may struggle to hold at the end. Then instead of player-chosen secondaries, have each mission come with three secondaries that reward additional capabilities. So yes, you can still take a mono-Knights army and play to the core objective, but maybe you'll miss out on a 'plant the flag' secondary that requires you to get (x) number of Infantry on the objective, or an 'aerial reconnaissance' secondary that requires you to get a Flying unit into the enemy deployment zone. Bundling the secondaries with the mission also allows them to be tailored to reward a broad set of capabilities, so you don't have the luck-of-the-draw factor you get with random missions as in Maelstrom.

In terms of objective design, I think rewarding players for bringing a variety of tools is fairer, more intuitive, and less feels-bad than punishing players for bringing lots of a certain thing. It encourages designing your army to accomplish the missions, rather than designing it to avoid arbitrary pitfalls.

Or the boring/simple way is to start putting hard requirements and limits on army composition for Matched Play, like the new restriction on how many Flyers you can take. It's a brute force solution to limiting skew, and it still affects armies unequally (a Fire Raptor is not equivalent to a Valkyrie), but it's easier than putting real design effort into the objectives.

This is a tough one but a great question. I personally like the "kill X amount" from a narrative perspective since it's nice keeping a tally of how many Necrons, Guardsmen, Tyranids, etc. you squished throughout the game.

Balance wise I think doing it based on points would be better, but I think it would also lead to slow downs in the game. Depending on how you do the cut offs you would also need to do some rounding as well. Power Level might be able to get around that.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Secondaries should not involve killing at all. Killing should be done in order to control objectives and the reward is control of the objective.

Actually, on second though they should involve killing if its interesting, like the secondary objective in Malifaux where you nominate one of your own models to try and get killed.

This.

Killing enemy models is its own reward, getting bonus points on top is double dipping, same problem that ITC had back in 8th.
By killing your opponents stuff, you prevent them from doing their objectives.


Secondaries like RoD or warp ritual are what the game needs more of IMO. Reduce lethality by forcing units to take actions instead of shooting.

If we take out all kill secondaries out there is no check and balance for spam now, thats one of the main reasons its there, now I can take all tanks, or I can take 7 super characters, there is no restraint other than going back to a FoC.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Secondaries should not involve killing at all. Killing should be done in order to control objectives and the reward is control of the objective.

Actually, on second though they should involve killing if its interesting, like the secondary objective in Malifaux where you nominate one of your own models to try and get killed.

This.

Killing enemy models is its own reward, getting bonus points on top is double dipping, same problem that ITC had back in 8th.
By killing your opponents stuff, you prevent them from doing their objectives.


Secondaries like RoD or warp ritual are what the game needs more of IMO. Reduce lethality by forcing units to take actions instead of shooting.

If we take out all kill secondaries out there is no check and balance for spam now, thats one of the main reasons its there, now I can take all tanks, or I can take 7 super characters, there is no restraint other than going back to a FoC.

Ro3 is a thing, and given that people seem to keep making skew lists despite the existence of kill secondaries...

Also, as has been noted upthread, some armies basically can't not make a skew list as far as secondaries are concerned. Either they do a proper skew list and give up the relevant secondaries, or they do a balanced list and still give up the relevant secondaries because they're still taking enough units to trigger the secondaries because that's how those armies work.

 catbarf wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
5+ Sv is weak to AP-, anything more than that is wasted opportunity to go after something with better Sv characteristics, 3+ Sv is weak to AP-, AP-1 and AP-2, that's why elite skew is not a problem that needs to be solved with missions but should instead be solved with points in the cases where elites turn out to be superior to vehicles. 2+ Sv spam can be a problem because the damage reduction against AP- is extreme, but if the Toughness is 5 or less you can still just pour lasguns into it.

I agree that that sounds great on paper, but the reality of it is that if I take a balanced, well-rounded Guard list, you can score high on three secondaries (anti-horde, anti-vehicle, anti-character) without too much trouble. But a Primaris army with a similar composition yields no secondaries, because it just doesn't have nearly as many models of any one type. 'Having more models than a Primaris player' is not skew, and there's no actual imbalance there that the secondaries are addressing (you have targets for all of your weapons either way); it's just that armies with generally cheaper units get screwed by kill secondaries. We've seen this pretty consistently throughout 9th.

You can score about 10 VP against a balanced Guard list if you kill all the appropriate units and you take a kill secondary, I don't think that's over the top and I am still very convinced that spamming Intercessors is less dangerous to the health of the game than spamming Guardsmen is.

A Carnifex is cheaper and less effective than a Dreadnought, but worth the same VP.

I think that can be factored into the pts cost of Carnifexes, there are always going to be less competitive units, going to a "by pts value" system would not change that. Given how Redemptor Dreadnoughts have 10+ wounds I actually think you'd be buffing Dreadnoughts more than Carnifexes by going over to "by pts value" since Carnifexes only give 1VP and cost more than half a Redemptor and a fully kitted out Dakka Fex is 160 while the VolCon is only 150.

A Guard character is cheaper and easier to kill than a Captain, but worth the same VP.

Captains have to get into melee to get their full value, while Guard characters can generally stay in safer positions. Would you consider a Guard list with 15 characters worth a total of 500 pts to have the same level of character skew as an SM list with 500 pts spent on 5 characters?

I'm not really sure what to think, I never designed missions before 9th and have never hosted a tournament, I've always designed my homebrew content and army lists around missions designed by other people.

A Marine tank company has fewer models and yields less VP than a Guard tank company even though both are the same skew with comparable defensive profiles.

It seems like that has already been more than baked into the points costs of Gladiators, a Hunter is only 110 pts, same as a Hydra. I think the question is whether the GW has to factor in that Gladiators are hurt less badly by the anti-vehicle skew secondary than Hunters or whether players have to use calculators to determine VP.

First off, while I don't think objectives that specifically penalize skew are the optimal solution, it's important to recognize that there is an element of randomness inherent to any tournament environment. You're already getting randomly matched up with an opponent with unknown force composition relative to yours, on a board with unknown layout, and then mediating the result via dice. You can go to a tournament and win your first three matches against weak players, play a round where the table setup favors your army, and then face off for the win against an army that you hard-counter; that's just luck of the draw. I think role-oriented missions are coming from the right mindset, because they shift the paradigm from 'pick the objectives that best complement your strengths', which rewards skew, to 'here are the objectives, bring the tools to accomplish them', which discourages skew. If someone wants to take skew anyways and happens to get a mission that they can't perform, that's entirely on them.

If the best Guard list in the GT mission set spams vehicles then you're best off spamming vehicles, even if that sometimes loses you the game due to a bad mission roulette roll, that's no different than saying that <insert spammy list> gets countered by <insert spammy counter list>, but we still see spammy lists pretty often, because for some armies you're better off on average just rolling the dice and hoping you don't face a counter than going with an army that is always underwhelming but never terrible.

That said, rather than have the core mission be role-focused, I'd rather have a variety of missions so as to intrinsically reward army flexibility. 9th basically has one mission at its core, with holding objectives for progressive scoring- throw in a hold-at-the-end, an asset retrieval, a breakthrough, and even just some old-fashioned asymmetric missions and then army composition becomes less solvable. A static gunline may struggle in asset retrieval, while a fast objective-grabbing army may struggle to hold at the end. Then instead of player-chosen secondaries, have each mission come with three secondaries that reward additional capabilities. So yes, you can still take a mono-Knights army and play to the core objective, but maybe you'll miss out on a 'plant the flag' secondary that requires you to get (x) number of Infantry on the objective, or an 'aerial reconnaissance' secondary that requires you to get a Flying unit into the enemy deployment zone. Bundling the secondaries with the mission also allows them to be tailored to reward a broad set of capabilities, so you don't have the luck-of-the-draw factor you get with random missions as in Maelstrom.

In terms of objective design, I think rewarding players for bringing a variety of tools is fairer, more intuitive, and less feels-bad than punishing players for bringing lots of a certain thing. It encourages designing your army to accomplish the missions, rather than designing it to avoid arbitrary pitfalls.

Very interesting ideas. Have you played any games that had a secondary mission objective that rewarded aerial recon or something similar? The rewards for bringing a unit capable of doing an aerial recon existing in one mission and not another one would be somewhat arbitrary as well right? Getting rid of pick your own secondaries would make the game easier for newbs, the old secondaries were uninspiring, I am definitely inspired now.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
This is a tough one but a great question. I personally like the "kill X amount" from a narrative perspective since it's nice keeping a tally of how many Necrons, Guardsmen, Tyranids, etc. you squished throughout the game.

Balance wise I think doing it based on points would be better, but I think it would also lead to slow downs in the game. Depending on how you do the cut offs you would also need to do some rounding as well. Power Level might be able to get around that.

Balancing them for lower pt level games at the same time is a whole other mess. I think I'll try to make a 500 pt and/or 1000 pt mission set without a pick your own secondaries system.

 waefre_1 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Secondaries should not involve killing at all. Killing should be done in order to control objectives and the reward is control of the objective.

Actually, on second though they should involve killing if its interesting, like the secondary objective in Malifaux where you nominate one of your own models to try and get killed.

This.

Killing enemy models is its own reward, getting bonus points on top is double dipping, same problem that ITC had back in 8th.
By killing your opponents stuff, you prevent them from doing their objectives.


Secondaries like RoD or warp ritual are what the game needs more of IMO. Reduce lethality by forcing units to take actions instead of shooting.

If we take out all kill secondaries out there is no check and balance for spam now, thats one of the main reasons its there, now I can take all tanks, or I can take 7 super characters, there is no restraint other than going back to a FoC.

Ro3 is a thing, and given that people seem to keep making skew lists despite the existence of kill secondaries...

Also, as has been noted upthread, some armies basically can't not make a skew list as far as secondaries are concerned. Either they do a proper skew list and give up the relevant secondaries, or they do a balanced list and still give up the relevant secondaries because they're still taking enough units to trigger the secondaries because that's how those armies work.

Well most of the skewed lists right now is bc the power level between books is bad, if you can take 20 vehicles and know they will only kill 3, do you care about secondaries? No. Once the balance is better +/-_5% winrates (45%-55%) for most factions then this will become a problem.

Also Ro3 doesn't matter to things like Talos and Cronos, they are in units of 3, or Dreads when you have 10+ different types of dreads, or etc.....

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
It still baffles me that everytime a primary/secondary mission revolving around killing something in 40k comes up, its done by raw units or wounds destroyed. We're in 9th edition, anyone with money to spend on this game has a smartphone or can at least afford a calculator. Why are we not calculating scores for these missions by point/pl killed?

It really makes no sense a 25pt IG platoon commander is worth the same as a space marine chapter master for Assassinate. An ork boy is not worth the same as an eldar guardian when it comes to Take No prisoners, etc.

Am I in the minority here? I always thought this was stupid and just unnecessarily punishes certain armies. Killpoints by unit works for some games, but those games dont have the potential for an army consisting of 5 supeeheavy models to fight an army consisting of 200 infantry. I can kill a primarch and score less points than the opponent got for killing a no name commissar and officer with the current mission system, that just seems insane to me.

I get the idea of secondaries involving killing things, I actually kind of like it. I just hate how GW has it setup because as it sits, if youre not an elite army that only needs a few of each unit, you get punished pretty hard by 9ths current kill secondaries. Id love to run more little characters as a Guard player for example, but as it sits if I bring even just a few 25pt characters I automatically give myself a 15vp handicap every game.

This has existed before, it gets messy unfortunately. Too much maths, too much back and forth between what upgrades individual models have, etc. We had calculators then too. Also there was a cheating element. Some players held their lists sacred and didn’t like to constantly show them, they’d give wrong point values or values before upgrades. Lol.

I do see your point, but something like a Guard platoon commander would on the other hand be protected by more models. A marine captain might be protected by only 5 - 10 models, maybe a dreadnought. Any Guard character might be protected by 30+ models, or X vehicles.