Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Well the Daemons armies I saw running were around 14-16 KP's MVB so we're a nice middle of the pack. But Daemons also seemed to have some solid players running them (Yermom, Me, and the last list looked good too) which might account for them being the second most "competitive" army their (based on win/loss). Neat information

I love analysis!

I completely agree that the lack of success of IG points towards "no KPs is fine", but the huge success of SW points the opposite way. daemons...may not have had enough players to know either way, and either way being a good KP army doesn't make you a bad VP army by default. I'd need to look at individual match ups per mission, etc to dig deep enough, and I still might not be able to glean much due to small sample sizes, and lack of real information about player quality, and of course the large amount of random events in a 40k game. But it is always fun to play with numbers.

I don't really care how a tournament is run - the rules are the rules. I think it's very likely that GW at least attempted to balance the codexes around the book missions, so the theory that transports are undercosted due to KPs would make sense, but in the end it doesn't matter. The tournament organizer can do what he wants, and you build your army to adjust for that. We all know the books aren't balanced, and well maybe the organizer makes it worse and it's less balanced, or maybe they make it better, or maybe it just changes things. If that is what the general player base likes, then more power to them. The only thing I would take issue with is calling an army that is unsuccessful in this format a bad army, when in reality it is just bad in a non-standard format of 40k.

Well, depends; 3 1ksons squads w/ gift of chaos, 3 land raiders, 1 tzeentch demon prince and ahriman = bad. That's the lowest KP army that attended.

Working on the kp stats

Its' also possible that space wolves prospered in a VP environment simply because they're the most generally low costed book out there that can also take and hold objectives. IG are dirt cheap, but still aren't the best for holding objectives, especially outside of the DZ.

In "normal" 5th edition, IG's KP weakness (tons of KPs) is balanced by their sheer ability to kill enemy units. SWs don't have the pure offensive output, with the same weakness. In VPs, the ratio is flipped a bit. SWs can, pound for pound, grind out VPs against nearly anything. IG still have fragile but expensive units (Artillery in particular, CCSs as well. even valks).

So I think when you take the best "pound for pound" army (SW) in an environment where all they have to do is fight and take objectives, they'll prosper.

MVBrandt wrote:Well, depends; 3 1ksons squads w/ gift of chaos, 3 land raiders, 1 tzeentch demon prince and ahriman = bad. That's the lowest KP army that attended.

Working on the kp stats

How did this army perform?

0-4, but "would" have beaten Stelek's army (eventual #3) on KP if that mission were the first instead of VP ...

I'm sure that means VP broke the system and the above list REALLY REALLY shoulda won b/c of its awesomeness ...
BTW, the guy who wrote it is a local, this was his first tourney, and he was almost proud of its pure whackiness


Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://novaopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/KP-by-Rank.jpg

That graph shows KP by rank

There's a very slight trend downward, but it's pretty much irrelevant, on this one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The average Kill points for the event = 16.18

The eventual winner had 17

So ... yeah

There were only three armies with less than 10 KPs.

So now I guess what we'd need is a similar graph comparing KPs/results for a tournament that was similarly competitive, but used KPs. See how the army composition differed - do all of these armies have 3 more KPs than they would in a different format, or are they basically the same? I don't have the answer, I'm just wondering.

If you were to look around the hall at Adepticon 2010, I think you'd find the average was the same or possibly even higher (more mech IG by far than we had).


Still, I don't have those stats ... maybe someone else does.

KPs for all armies fielded at AdeptiCon 2010? No - those stats do not exist.

/sadface Matt :(

I'm not sure where to throw this out, so here is as good as any sice we are talking about the tournies results. I talked with a buddy who went to the event and asked about the SW armies (since I have one).

I was wondering if the builds were similar or diversified. He said he saw lots of different things for the SW. Most were pretty competitive. It seems like that codex really did go out of its way to make many effective builds. Maybe not all were dominating, but very competitive and effective. Which could be why they had such a strong showing. How do you fight against SW. who knows until you get to the table because there is no way of knowing what your going to face. With other armies in a competitive environment its pretty easy to guess what is going to be on the table with very few surprises. I think thats one of the strengths of the SW codex, just so much variation.

I'm wondering about all those BA, IG, and SM lists. How diversified were their builds? I'm looking at armies that had 10 or so entries.

I think its important not to draw the wrong conclusions though.

3 Daemon armies went a total of 9-3 with lower KP armies than others. Does that mean that lower KP armies do better?

There's an alternative explanation. Two of the daemon players (Hulksmash and Yermon) are both incredibly talented players, and everyone should fear being across the table from them, regardless of what army they are using.

Here's the trend I see, both locally and on the RTT / GT scale:

An average player with a decent Space Wolf list has a better chance of winning than an average player with a non-Space Wolf list.

The same may be able to be said about mechanized IG.

The Demon armies had 13, 15, and 16 ... pretty close to the average, Dash, and not materially different from the winner at 17.

It's better to evaluate where Jayden is getting - the SW lists presented all had some significant variation in them; so did several of the other successful lists.

Codex VARIETY is important, b/c it makes it harder to properly evaluate an opponent's list and decision-making likelihood at a glance. We could spin off into bizarre kp arguments, but it more lies there IMO.

So the variety of good SW builds leads to overall success for the army, regardless of general, because the opponent has more variables to process when trying to beat it.

At least that is what I am seeing in this discussion.

1) MSU is good in 40k.
2) When you do not know what form the units will be in, they are harder to prioritize and counter.
3) SW codex gives a large pool of units to pick and choose from.
4) When opponents do not see the same units, game after game, they may not deal with them appropriately.

I think anyone who thinks that the SW book is not ahead of the curve is in a state of denial. In addition to some of the most efficiently priced core troops in the entire game, they have a myriad of customizable options, the likes of which have not been seen since 2nd edition. Guard are up there too, as their stuff is EXTREMELY point efficient, but they really don't have all of these crazy options and the marine staying power of the Wolves. Both armies due well, even in adverse conditions. Wolves are slightly better due to having a solid CC element and serious advantages in a VP based environment.

I mean, I am no statistician, but the bulk of the top tens in the last year have been Wolves and Guard, with a smattering of Orks and BA mixed in there. I think guard has fallen out of number one, due to people actually adjusting to it in the metagame, though. Plus the lack of options makes handling it much easier, since you pretty much know what you are dealing with, while the other three top armies can greatly vary the setups and performance of even their basic troops. I also think VPs hurts guard, since their vehicles tend to get banged up a lot and their troops have no staying power at all, but thats a discussion in another thread.

skrulnik wrote:So the variety of good SW builds leads to overall success for the army, regardless of general, because the opponent has more variables to process when trying to beat it.

At least that is what I am seeing in this discussion.

1) MSU is good in 40k.
2) When you do not know what form the units will be in, they are harder to prioritize and counter.
3) SW codex gives a large pool of units to pick and choose from.
4) When opponents do not see the same units, game after game, they may not deal with them appropriately.

Pretty much.

The SW codex is good because of the variety. For example, if I told you I was playing Eldar at a tournament, you could pretty much guess that the army will have Wave Serpents, Fire Dragons, min-troop squads and maybe a Seer Council. If I said Tau, it would be Crisis Suits, Broadsides, and Kroot. Now if I just tell you I'm playing Space Wolves, it could be Razorback spam, it could be Loganwing, it could be Tunderwolf Cav, etc.

A lot of the old codices only have 1 or 2 really viable builds (maybe a few wacky variants, but not much), while the new ones, especially the Space Marine variants, have many different builds. This variation makes it tougher to plan a strategy until you actually see the list on the table.

skrulnik wrote:So the variety of good SW builds leads to overall success for the army, regardless of general, because the opponent has more variables to process when trying to beat it.

At least that is what I am seeing in this discussion.

1) MSU is good in 40k.
2) When you do not know what form the units will be in, they are harder to prioritize and counter.
3) SW codex gives a large pool of units to pick and choose from.
4) When opponents do not see the same units, game after game, they may not deal with them appropriately.

Its not the variety of SW that is the issue. How about a bullet #5:

5 Grey Hunters in a rhino with a Melta x 5. Add in a power weapon per squad. Maybe toss in a combi-melta on a Wolf Guard.

You've now got extremely lethal anti-tank in redundancy that has counter-attack and some very decent close combat abilities. No other marine codex has the ability to put together such cheap, effective units.

My advocacy of Orks has always been predicated on the idea that they can do anything that another codex can do, and do it better....but only one thing at a time. The more I think about it, the more I think that Space Wolves do it better than Orks do. Granted, as BoLS and elsewhere have pointed out, the U.S. doesn't use NEARLY the amount of BLOS terrain that the rest of the world does, which is probably why Long Fangs are so killer right now; they can range anything easily and not every really have to deal with more than cover saves.

*shrugs* Maybe I should stop trying so hard with my Orks and DE (and soon to be Necrons) and just switch to Space Wolves for the easy road out?

it could have something to do with maybe those SW players are GOOD players......not just using a good book (the book is good though, I wont sit here and say there isnt codex creep and the SW book is on par with my eldar book, because, well its not).

I also dont think SW is the "easy road", its not auto pilot (guard is more auto pilot than SW). It still has to come down to proper list build and a good general. Ive played lots of crappy SW builds.

Can someone please link me to the podcast interviews please.

Daemons are also a jank army in the current meta game, they have the combat ability to out shine thunder puppys, and the speed and or resilliancy to win over mech guard. Many armies fold to them, I've personally found my biggest challenge with the army to be orks and dual lash. (IMO to GREAT armies in 5th ed)

Woot yermom is scared of my list lol.

yermom wrote:Daemons are also a jank army in the current meta game, they have the combat ability to out shine thunder puppys, and the speed and or resilliancy to win over mech guard. Many armies fold to them, I've personally found my biggest challenge with the army to be orks and dual lash. (IMO to GREAT armies in 5th ed)

Daemons and their close brethren drop pod nids are the paper to IG and mech SW rock. They run into trouble when someone brings scissors which just happen to be the two armies you mentioned.

The enourmous nerfs to the Nids in the FAQ (No ICs joining pod units, no stacking of Tyrant reserve bonuses, ect) kind of killed the reserve based Nid army, as well. The nids (and some Daemon armeis) suffer from the sucko troop syndrome, too, without something as utilitarian and resilient as a marine to fall back on as an objective holder. You wind up having to play killhammer instead of the mission, most of the time.

On the bright side hordes of slavering Daemons trying to kill their enemies to the exclusion of rational strategic considerations is very fluffy.

Nurglitch wrote:On the bright side hordes of slavering Daemons trying to kill their enemies to the exclusion of rational strategic considerations is very fluffy.

Nurglitch, always looking on the bright side!

I don't think removing KPs from the tournament slanted it.

Some people probably just looked a little harder at the rules than others and built min/maxed units to take advantage of VPs when there was no worry of KP losses.

As Mike and others have pointed out, many competitive lists don't give two hoots about KPs anyways.

I imagine many (most?) of the lists at the top tables would be the same or very similar even with KP- I know my list didn't change.

kartofelkopf wrote:As Mike and others have pointed out, many competitive lists don't give two hoots about KPs anyways.

I imagine many (most?) of the lists at the top tables would be the same or very similar even with KP- I know my list didn't change.

You could exploit the fact that in VP games Rhino's are probably a better value than say a Land Raider.

It's not necessarily better or worse but it does slightly change the dynamic of the game. Death-star units like Seer Council, Nob Bikers, expensive HQ's and THSS in a LR are discouraged while solitary Deffkoptas and 5 man vanilla marines in a rhino are probably better off.

It's funny because I play nids too, and the first thing I tried when I got the new book, was reserve drop nid list as a counter to IG and wolves, personally I gave up on that style of play because it couldn't deal with guard, because the power of the guard list comes from vets in chimeras, you can out range them, but not if you deep strike in their face. Perhaps, with the rise of puppies and the downfall of guard I'll bring my drop nids out again. They were very fun. That was before they came out with the FAQ which doesn't really bother me too much.

"Shadow of the warp doesnt work on units embarked in trnasports nids are unplayable!" Well if they're in land raiders they arent shooting me with psychic powers, if they're in rhinos BLOW IT UP ITS A RHINO WE HAVE HIVE GUARD THEY gak ON RHINOS!

the end.

I am more annoyed by the inability of a Prime to join other warriors in a spore pod, when every marine army can do the same thing, personally. I'd rather not get my face melted by 15 long wangs with missle launchers before I even get one trigger pull out of my warrior unit.