Kill Points: Good, the Bad and the Ugly

[Master Gabriel]

What is you take on Kill Points? Are they bad on so many levels? Give your option on Kill Points.:cool:

[entendre_entendre]

simple concept, but doesn't really make sense in some instances

e.g. 10 guardsmen are "worth" the same as a ten man Terminator unit :confused:

it really just needs a few tweaks to be a bit more fair

i like the idea of going in 100 point "blocks" for KP's: 1-99 pts = 1 kp 100-199pts = 2kp's, etc. basically just a simplified victory points system

so for the above example: guard squad = 1KP while the termies are @ least 4KP's

[Lerra]

I prefer Victory Points. It's frustrating to kill the 450-point mega-squad of guardsman for one measly kill point. It's also frustrating to give up a kill point for a 0-point gun drone squad with two models, or to be required to shoot at an immobilized tank with no weapons in order to secure a kill point. I end up making decisions that feel odd and "fake" in order to win kill point games - like making drop pods a priority target.

Victory points are slightly harder to calculate, but they make a lot more sense and seem to be more fair.

[Eyespy]

10 guardsmen are "worth" the same as a ten man Terminator unit :confused:


Pretty much. CSM's have the real edge in KP games because of the huge squad sizes. 20 chaos marines will run you about 400-500 points compated to that 65 point Guard squad.

I don't mind KP's for 'Bonus Victory Points", but they are little fun against an equally skilled player with a low KP list


450-point mega-squad of guardsman .

Even with all the trimmings the combined squad won't run much past 350. And after you cause 10 wounds they will break and run off the table immediatly because thats what Guard do.

[zealot]

I chalk it up to game balance. You have to think about kill points as well as holding objectives when you make your army list.

[Lerra]

Even with all the trimmings the combined squad won't run much past 350. And after you cause 10 wounds they will break and run off the table immediatly because thats what Guard do.

I'm not that familiar with Guard, but my friend plays with a mega-squad of Ld10 Stubborn Guardsmen with 6 or so power weapons, and 5-ish Lascannons. It's 45-50 models in total, and extremely hard to kill! Especially because he can shoot an officer to re-roll failed morale tests. I once tossed 3 full-strength terminator squads into that pile of guardsmen, and lost. I remember hearing that the platoon cost about 480, but there was a little 4-man squad with a Junior officer that couldn't join the blob. I'm not sure how much they cost.

I know that was the hardest-earned killpoint I've ever gotten, though.

[Melissia]

Kill points and victory points never really appealed to me the way objectives games do. But kill points are typically worse, as they make transports worth more than they should be to the enemy.

[Cryl]

Kill points and victory points never really appealed to me the way objectives games do. But kill points are typically worse, as they make transports worth more than they should be to the enemy.

Totally agree. I'm not convinced by kill points at all for all the reasons already posted on top of which as a marine (amongst other lists) player it forces me to keep tactical squads as ten man units instead of combat squading, victory points wouldn't do that.

PLus objectives feels like there's a reason or story for the game, kill points just feels forced to me.

[Chumbalaya]

I understand the idea behind KPs, attempting to balance out mech armies and giving people something to consider when building their armies. Unfortunately, it's a very hamfisted attempt. VPs had their problems (denial, having to kill 5 space marines as opposed to 4), but generally they performed better in a kill 'em all scenario.

I personally don't like kill 'em alls anyway, preferring objectives and the like. If Annihilation were killing all the enemy's troops or we had something else like old recon or a king of the hill type game I wouldn't dread rolling it up.

I haven't played it yet, but ******'s system of 5 KPs and 5 objectives seems interesting. 1 objective in each corner and in the center and your opponent picks 5 of your units as his KP while you do the same. Do you pick easy pickings and give your opponent the option to hide them, or go for lynchpin units and force your opponent to commit them? Seems fun.

[BuFFo]

What is you take on Kill Points? Are they bad on so many levels? Give your option on Kill Points.:cool:

I play IG and Dark Eldar, and I have had ZERO issues with Kill Points.

I am a casual gamer, and I don't obsess over things like "Why is this cheap unit worth the same kill points as this expensive unit".

I don't mind Victory Points either. I'll play the game either way.

[Melissia]

Doesn't matter if you're a casual gamer or competitive one-- you can still be annoyed by game mechanics. I'm certainly not a competitive player in the traditional sense (I don't go to tournaments, ever), and kill points annoy me to no end.

[BuFFo]

....Doesn't matter if you're a casual gamer or competitive one...

Yes it does, since the context of my comment was for how I felt for my games, not how the game should be for everyone else.

[sirrouga]

Kill points aren't the greatest thing but they do the job and they are somewhat quick to figure out. Certain armies are better in the KP game than others but I don't think its that big of an advantage. The easiest thing to do if KP bother you is simply just do objective based missions, not like there are shortage of those type of missions.

I have seen some other variants out there through, such as different FOC slots granting different amounts of KPs (Troops = 1, HQ = 3, Rest = 2; or something like that) or I'm sure you go look you could find a bunch of homebrewed rules for KP. You could always try Victory Points too but I find they are more of a pain for both players to do the math correctly, rather get an other game in than sit and figure out VP on a calc.

I personally don't think Kill Points are THAT bad of an issue, but I trend to play more objective games where KP don't matter and I also play Necrons which trend to be on the low end of the amount of KP in the army.

[Jwolf]

I have found that Kill Points are extremely annoying to theoretical and limited-play gamers, but that people who play a lot of 40K find them perfectly fine as they are. Before 5E was released and I heard about the mechanic, I hated it and thought it was terribly unfair to my IG. Playing IG under both the old and new Codecies, I have found that KP are great for Guard, and that IG are, as I play them, at a greater advantage in KP than objective based missions. Of course, I don't think that having 7 or 8 (or 12) scoring units is a great advantage in the objective-based missions. One has two objectives (so you need to hold one and contest the other to win) and the other has an average of 4 objectives, so any legal force has the ability to control half of the objectives. In KP, the ability to use the right amount of firepower to kill units completely is essential, and IG have not only a lot of shots, but many discreet elements to shoot from, which means you aren't firing a whole 300 point Devastator squad to kill one last model to earn a KP.

I have never made a single army construction decision based on Kill Points, and I do not regret fielding armies with 20+ Kill Points for those missions. I may very well Reserve a lot of units in some KP missions, but having missions that encourage different tactics is a good thing, isn't it?

[DarkLink]

I have found that Kill Points are extremely annoying to theoretical and limited-play gamers, but that people who play a lot of 40K find them perfectly fine as they are. Before 5E was released and I heard about the mechanic, I hated it and thought it was terribly unfair to my IG. Playing IG under both the old and new Codecies, I have found that KP are great for Guard, and that IG are, as I play them, at a greater advantage in KP than objective based missions. Of course, I don't think that having 7 or 8 (or 12) scoring units is a great advantage in the objective-based missions. One has two objectives (so you need to hold one and contest the other to win) and the other has an average of 4 objectives, so any legal force has the ability to control half of the objectives. In KP, the ability to use the right amount of firepower to kill units completely is essential, and IG have not only a lot of shots, but many discreet elements to shoot from, which means you aren't firing a whole 300 point Devastator squad to kill one last model to earn a KP.

I have never made a single army construction decision based on Kill Points, and I do not regret fielding armies with 20+ Kill Points for those missions. I may very well Reserve a lot of units in some KP missions, but having missions that encourage different tactics is a good thing, isn't it?

I agree. People focus too much on theory, worrying about "oh, I need to take as many scoring units as I can, and as few KP's as I can".

The only scoring units that matter are the ones that live through the game. SM's can get by with just 2-3 tactical squads, even in large battles. You just need to keep those squads alive.

I've also found that KP's tend to work themselves out, with rare exceptions. I never worry about how many KP's I have in my army (though as a Grey Knight player, KP's are slightly to my advantage. But hey, don't blame me for taking every advantage I can get:p).

[Lord Azaghul]

KP: As a guard player. I don't really worry about it.

When I first started playing I did, but now my mind set is that I have to table my opponent - and with guard that isn't too far-fetched of an idea. Just keep shooting!
I do think VP would be a little more 'fair', but I don't think its out of control of anything. However I do find the objective games far more interesting.

I find more people to be annoyed with dawn of war then with KP. But both drasticly change how you'll be playing each mission.

[BuFFo]

Honestly, I can recall only a single game, out of about 30ish I have played since 5th came out, that KPs mattered.

I was IG, and my opponent Nids. My opponents nearly tabled me, but we didn't realize until the last turn I had more than double his kill points. why? His lone Lictors and Ravaners racked up KPs for me.

On the flip side, in objective missions, more than once have I nearly tabled my Nid opponent, but, in the last turn, he would extend his lone Troop choice and grab multiple objectives, and tie me.

In theory, KPs seem bad. In practicality, KPs are perfectly fine, especially since KP is in a mission that only shows up 1/3rd of the time.

[Melissia]

Yes it does, since the context of my comment was for how I felt for my games, not how the game should be for everyone else.

And yet it still doesn't matter. A competitive player could easily feel very similarly to how you stated your post-- why should they stress out over things they can't change? A good competitive player works with what they have, not what they want.

[BS FADE]

As a 40k player game wise I don't mind either victory points or kill points. It usually doesn't come down to either being horribly unbalanced as Ive seem them and as I've played them.


But as a Tau player kill points piss me off all most as much as my war-gear counting towards 25% casualty checks.

[DarkLink]

Honestly, I can recall only a single game, out of about 30ish I have played since 5th came out, that KPs mattered.

I was IG, and my opponent Nids. My opponents nearly tabled me, but we didn't realize until the last turn I had more than double his kill points. why? His lone Lictors and Ravaners racked up KPs for me.

On the flip side, in objective missions, more than once have I nearly tabled my Nid opponent, but, in the last turn, he would extend his lone Troop choice and grab multiple objectives, and tie me.

In theory, KPs seem bad. In practicality, KPs are perfectly fine, especially since KP is in a mission that only shows up 1/3rd of the time.

Yeah, we've had one, maybe two games like that, where KP's were significantly different.

Just before the new IG 'dex came out, one of our IG players used his deepstriking veteran list against a Chaos player. The Chaos player won due to KP's, despite only having a single gone-to-ground Berzerker left on the table, to about half of the IG player's army remaining.

Other than that, KP's haven't been overly unfair.


Now, I personally preffer VP's, and dislike objective. In war, objectives rarely matter until after everyone has killed each other off. Playing objective game feels like I'm only watching the first half of a battle. Just isn't very satisfying compared to playing until someone gets tabled.

[Wildwolf45]

I don't really play many pick-up or tourney games anymore, but my little playgroup was dissatisfied with how KP's were working. So we reverted to the VP system (cuz w3 kan dew mathz!) and simply awarded the objectives points values appropriate to the scenario.

2000pt game with 2 objectives? Each one is a solid 1000pts to the side that holds it. We found that meant that objectives were still very critical to the game, but it gave different builds more of a chance and let us try out armies that we might not be using under the KP system.

[Morgrim]

I have to say I'm not particularly fond of KP, possibly because I've never looked deeply into them or really tried them in depth. Even in the one tournament I entered I completely ignored them (I knew my raiders were going to get blown up, no point stressing over it when I can spend that time attempting to rip out my opponent's throat*).

The friends I play with casually don't bother with kill points. When we play annihilation, it is a case of 'last one standing wins', and generally the loser is either tabled or almost tabled and concedes. Although for that matter, even our objective matches tend to end with us only paying minimal attention to them and attempting to table the other guy...


*The army's throat, not the actual player.

[Sam]

Even with all the trimmings the combined squad won't run much past 350. And after you cause 10 wounds they will break and run off the table immediatly because thats what Guard do.

1. You have to kill 13 guardsmen to force a morale check on a 51 man squad (51 because if there isn't a commissar in that big of a squad, they are doing it wrong).

2. They have to fail a morale check at Ld 9 to run.

3. If they fail that morale check, they then execute a sergeant and must fail it AGAIN to run.

4. Unless you kill 26 guardsmen, they can still regroup, again at Ld 9.

5. If they fail to regroup on their own, they can be ordered to regroup, again at Ld 9.

That's a lot of things that have to happen if you are going to run them off the table.

[SombreBrotherhood]

I'd like to second Entendre^2 on his earlier post. I think that KP are a poorly implemented revision of Victory Points, which I prefer and use even now. Although the proffered 1KP/100 points is interesting and seems a logical (prolly why GW never thought of it) interim between the VP-KP spectrum.

[AbeSapien]

My commander just lost a wound... and is now hiding for the rest of the battle.

KPs force you to play out of character. Space Marine Captains should never run and hide.

Land Raider = 250 points = 1 KP
Rhino = 35 points = 1 KP

No, this system is not fair at all.

[RocketRollRebel]

I don't have a huge problem with kill points but with that said I don't quite understand what was wrong with victory points. With that said tho I do like the new 5th edition missions and deployments much more than the old 4th edition ones for sure.