KP or VP (or both)

[fritzthedwarf]

I have been following the discussions on DakkaDakka ref the Nova tournament from last weekend. Though the tourney was hailled as a great success a debate has developed over kill points and/or victory points (resulting in the Nova thread splitting into a separate Kp/Vp thread although the initial arguments are in the main thread).

Anyways, the argument is because the Nova tourney did not use Kp at all (and told everyone beforehand). Some said that Kp is important to use because the core rules missions have 1/3 as Kp missions and the newer codices (codexes?) are costed with this in mind and by not using it changes the way list are made. Others disagree. Out of the top 8 (out of 88 players), 4 were SW armies (and the winner was a SW player)(the others were 1 Ork, 2 BA and 1 Daemon).

So my question is what do you think about Kp? Does it really balance some lists in games or in a tourney; knowing it would used would you change your list? Or does it just create some bad match-ups (by chance in a tourney) where the game almost seems an auto-win for one team?

[Jack Shrapnel]

speaking from the owner of two horde armies, I'm not really a fan of kill points.... you mean my 10 gaunts are equal points to your one landraider? really?

just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me and favours elite armies over any cheap troop army....

[LizardTau]

yeah i played a horde army with my tau and got tabled but was still able to win the game cause i killed enough of his guys

[thesanityassassin]

As a brief aside, if you table your opponent you win a massacre, regardless of scenario, but I have seen games where a rhino is driving around avoiding about 1500 pts of remaining army, and its owner wins based on KPs.

My feeling on Kill Points is that I tend to either bend the rules with them or else use them as a secondary objective in an objective based game. I tend to prefer VP's quite a bit, as I feel it is the truer measure of how "killy" an army is. That said, KP's are unfortunately part of 5th, and you will see them in many events, and therefore I am loathe to actually remove them from tourneys, as I think it's a mistake to avoid something that is common to see.


That said I really hate how much disparity there is between forces. Dark Eldar for example, often give out 8-10 kill points in raiders, which are the same POINTS cost as 2 kill points worth of Land Raider. I've seen DE players lose games where their ONLY losses were transports. There should be some factor denoting the worth of units I think. I know for my personal army I feel it's ridiculous that a Rhino is "worth" the same as a 10 man unit of terminators...

There are also armies that can put such a foolishly SMALL number of kill points on the table it is absurd. Guard, for example can put down 100 infantry, a command squad, and 6 Leman Russ tanks in squadrons for 5 KPs. To compare with DE again, that is 250 points of Raider....

[fritzthedwarf]

All these comments are why I also feel KP is more a problem than providing some kind of balance to types of armies.

[LizardTau]

Ahhh ok, The person i played it was only the third time playing and i said i thought they won but he was like no you have more points.

[redshirt2375]

Best example I can give for why KP's aren't the best is during a tag-team tournament. I was playing Dark Eldar and my partner was Nids. Our opponents were 2 marines each running the Landraider/Termie squad.

As best as I can remember our side had something like 20 KP's worth of units. Our opponents had maybe 12. By turn 2 they had already gotten 8 KPs to our 1. Our only hope of winning that game from the start was to completely table them...and against double LR/Termie we had very little chance of doing that.

I also still remember the 'Ard Boyz one scenario last year. My Dark Eldar List (which was only there to fill in if needed so was very far from being competative) was worth 27 KP's in that one scenario. 27!! Yet there were lists there that even under those rules came in around 12.

KP's do seem to favour the SM/IG armies more than the Xenos.

[Jack Shrapnel]

Hey I remember that! lol....

[Admiral Agrippa]

I also prefer victory points to kill pionts for the balance factor.

But to play devil's advocate, I can see the idea behind kill points. When factoring victory points, some people's math might be, well, suspect either by accident or possibly on purpose (cheaters). We all know that players like that are ou there so there is no sense in denying it. Where there is competition there are those who are so driven to win that cheating is considered a viable alternative. Not everyone knows what the individual points costs are of your opponents models and all the upgrades and what not so points can easily go missing.

Kill points I think was their attempt to REALLY REALLY REALLY simplify things. If you destroy five of your opponents units you get a simple five points. Counting up the dead is a lot more simple when you don't have to considered half squads, half wounds, immobilized, etc. Cheating becomes a lot less of a possibility if your opponent has five dead units to your three.

Do I agree with kill points, no, as I don't feel they are balanced.

A few of my friends and I discussed this once and felt that overall a balance of kill points and victory points might be best. Where say 100 points = 1 kill point. Of course again it relies on math, but it adds a bit of balance in regards to units and point cost.

[Jack Shrapnel]

I like 100 points = 1 kill point... plus you could have right on your army list beside each unit how many kill points it's worth... makes it pretty easy....

[johnchurchill]

Kill points would be fine if tournaments ran at a balanced points level instead of the ever-increasing trend we see now. Foolish North American power gamers are to blame for this. Also, tournament games would all run to completion if points were lowered.

Sadly, in Canada, we live in a world where everyone grabs both cookies instead of saving one for later.

[fritzthedwarf]

I agree that tournaments, whatever scoring system they are using, should have sufficient time for the army point level to allow for the completion of most games and that means in some current formats that the points level should be a little lower. Some armies do fine with the time allowed while larger armies (horde)(or newer players) tend to struggle to complete hteir game.

[thesanityassassin]

I've seen that one before as well. I played an Ork horde for a while towards the end of 4th ed, and I simply couldn't win any timed games because I had too many models to move and too many dice to roll to pull out a win in 2 hours. If the game was played to completion my win rate was VERY close to 100%.
The biggest problem I've seen is "shooty" armies playing VERY slowly on purpose, and using the timer as an ally to keep CC armies from closing and cutting them up before time runs out. I once saw a Guard player in 4th being so happy he "crushed" a Khorne Berzerker player because the game lasted a turn and a half and the Chaos player only got 1 move against 2 guard shooting phases.

As an aside, always come to the organizer (IE generally me) if you feel that time is being unfairly managed by an opponent. Games should be won or lost by troops, not by tricky clock management.

[guis]

My feeling is that it both systems benefit some armies while penalizing others. Just like the fact that 2/3rds of the missions require troops for grabbing objectives really helps armies that have good troop choices. The most important thing in a tournament is that people know which system is being used beforehand so they can build accordingly. In my opinion a tournament should use a mix of both to be most fair.
Yes it's true that some codexes have trouble competing in a kill point system, but on the other end two of the most popular top lists, mech guard and drop podding grey hunter + long fang space wolves (two codexes built around 5th edition rules) become even scarier and more powerful when victory points are used to the exclusion of kill points.

[fritzthedwarf]

How many kp's does an average 1850pt mech IG or space wolf list (razorback spam or similar lists where kp is an issue)? I'm just curious to compare with my less than optimal tyranid list which tends to be around 12-14 KPs.