40K Editorial: An Argument for Kill Points

6 Minute Read

Nov 2 2010

Hello again boys and girls, Unicorns and children of all ages; Brent here, and today it almost seems like I’m picking a fight. Mind you, I’m not trying… but c’mon! I can see the reaction to this one a mile away.

Because I think Kill Points are a huge improvement to Victory Points.

(Doh! I forgot to highlight the topic sentence: failing to do so could result in another ‘What’s the Point?’ comment. Let’s do that again…)

I think Kill Points are a huge improvement to Victory Points.

There. Fight picked and I’m so out of here.

Okay, it’s never that easy. Let me say up front that, as always, I value your comments. How would I know what to think if you don’t tell me?

I’m being serious. I steal all my best ideas.

Let’s get started.

To bulk this article out some, let’s chat history. We are all of us used to 5th Edition so some of the monumental changes are old hat, but for those of you around back then, remember what it was like waiting for the new system to drop? On everyone’s mind was the rumors of 1) True Line of Sight, 2) the Run move, 3) improved vehicles, 4) the revision to close assault, 5) the change to Rending – and all that is just off the top of my head.

What I don’t remember is much discussion of the changing battle missions; maybe it wasn’t included in the pre-release rumors. That said, I have a vivid recollection of me and the locals crowded around the preview copy of the Big Black Book processing the change to the basic missions.

Three times three is nine, right? Three objectives, three setups… it’s anarchy! In 4th, there was a main chart and some secondaries, but for some reason everyone assumed Pitched Battle was the legitimate way to play. So after processing that paradigm shakeup, someone said, “What the heck are Kill Points?”

Frankly, I think the change is as fundamentally significant as any of the others I mentioned, and maybe more than most. Yet it has become almost fashionable to gripe about it.

Yup, I was going to use another word, but I guess I have to settle for ‘gripe.’

The competitive crowd resent Kill Points as a dumb, watered down rubric for scoring a game. “Victory Points,” they will argue, “measure the actual worth of what each side has destroyed, presenting a more accurate picture of who won.”

Is that about right?

Here’s another: “My army is penalized for having lots of units.” This is usually the dude who’s playing a trimmed-to-the-bone Mech Guard army while occasionally pointing out his army is fluffy ’cause, “…the Imperial Guard are supposed to have a lot of tanks!”

Don’t feed me a line, brother: club your baby seals and stand proud. You get a cheap, effective tank in your army. Just don’t gripe when it gives up a Kill Point. That’s a small price to pay.

Yes, there I go again using ‘gripe’ when another word just works better.

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Here’s the thing, Kill Points are now the rule. I wonder how many people have a hard time accepting change they don’t like. What exactly am I implying? I’m glad you asked but let’s save something for a future ~~rant~~ editorial. I’ll need to do my homework before tackling the big dogs.

Here’s my We Need a List list. Yup, you could have skipped ahead.

Kill Points are easy to calculate
Kill Points balance differing army types
Kill Points are a simple complexity

One: Kill Points are easy to calculate.

This is the anti-Victory Points argument, because the bottom line is I’m not sure you know how to add.

This isn’t much of a point in a friendly game with your buddies, where you can reach across the table and snatch the chicken-scratch out of his hand and recalculate his bad math. In a tournament setting, I imagine it’s rude to say, “Listen, you repeatedly confused the most basic rules and your grasp of the language seems lacking, so I’m pretty sure the education system has failed you. Care to use my calculator?”

The last time I said that, my opponent docked my sportsmanship.

Look folks, while I’m sure you’re not dumb, somebody is bringing down the bell curve. Keep in mind, there have been several tournaments lately where the lists weren’t calculated properly – and that the dude had time to prepare, right?

Two: Kill Points balance differing army types.

Let’s start this way: the two primary tournament armies at the moment are Mech Guard and Razor-Wolves, and both give up a ton of Kill Points. While that’s almost an argument in its own right, since these builds are so obviously not hurting, you have to consider what they have in common.

Multiple Small Units, or MSU, is the philosophy of optimization through points-efficiency… and it’s in the term: these builds by their nature outnumber most armies unit to unit.

It should be noted the proponents of this system are those screaming the loudest about Kill Points. Funny that!

Certain Codexes lend themselves to MSU builds while others most certainly don’t. The Eldar, for example, aren’t going to match the inexpensive Mech of any of the Space Marines. What they can do, however, is play a strategy of points denial, attacking the easy Kill Points of the MSU-build while carefully hoarding their more limited numbers.

If you’re playing an army which can’t match the numbers of other, newer Codexes, it may not be a bad strategy to play for fewer Kill Points and win through a minimalist approach. That sometimes means your army is practically destroyed but you’ve taken more KP’s from your opponent, and it’s that kind of mismatch win that has some folks howling!

Couldn’t that represent the battlefield sacrifice of an army group to win a larger aim? It’s futile to try and explain everything in terms of the miniatures.

Three: Kill Points are a simple complexity.

This one might be hard to swallow if you begin with the assumption the games developers at GW use a Ouija Board to develop their ruleset.

It’s playing the game in a different way, and one I alluded to in the above example.

It’s the difference between a straight fight and a smart one; it allows different ‘dexes to play to their strengths in a manner Victory Points don’t encourage.

There was a reason Victory Points were replaced by Kill Points, after all, and it was to do more than simplify scoring.

By forcing armies to kill entire units to claim the full value, it changed the entire landscape of 40K. Armies are more mobile, less static. The Gunline of editions past has been replaced with something – several somethings – better. We’ve given up Checkers and started playing something closer to Chess.

My contention is Kill Points were one of the influencing factors shaping this change, so be careful what you wish for! If Victory Points become the primary and/or only condition for victory, you’re begging for a more boring game.

So, do I believe all that or do I want to get you talking? Feel free to shed some light on your favorite argument for or against Kill Points or Victory Points. Which do you prefer? Why?

Comments? Thoughts? Hugs and Gropings?

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Author: Brent

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