I’m not a fan of kill points as a mission type. I’m not even a fan of kill points in the 5x5 system that Stelek espouses. Though his is a very substantial improvement on the rulebook mission.
My reasons for this hatred of kill points can be enumerated:
1. Simple: Eldar aren’t good at them.
2. In my opinion they favour close combat armies simply due to the increased ease of wiping out an entire unit using close combat versus shooting.
3. They unfairly punish a player for having cheap things in their list. That just seems pointless to me. I guess if everyone comes to the game knowing that’s the case, maybe GW saw it as a counter to the tactic of using lots of small things to contest objectives in the other two mission types. But in general things like single piranhas (Dont get me started on the drones) become a liability.
4. If players know kill points are a major part of a tournament then lists which I think are silly become very powerful. Now, I’m aware that this is hypocritical, since I’ve said previously that I like the idea that lists become more and less powerful according to tournament/mission setup..... but if you refer to item 1, you’ll see my problem.
5. They don’t mesh with the other missions. This means that in a tournament where tactics are being played throughout the other missions, you have this one mission where its quite likely that rock paper scissor will shut you down.
If you gave me a tournament where every game was kill points. At 1750 points, this is the sort of thing that appeals to me:
Draigo – 275
10 Paladins, Apothecary, 4 psycannons, 1 hammer, master craft all four psycannons and the hammer
10 Paladins, Apothecary, 4 psycannons, 1 hammer, 3 halberds, master craft the four psycannons and the four special hand to hand weapons.
So, I’ve got a total of 3 kill points in my army. It puts out on average 14 S7 rending hits per turn against each of two targets.
If I bring down three kill points total, so three rhinos...then you have lost unless you table me.
Have fun tabling 40 wounds worth of FNP terminators plus draigo.
You can’t kill me with small arms fire, you’re unlikely to have enough heavy arms fire to do the job and god help you if you have to rely on close combat. The front unit with the halberds and draigo is not a fun prospect for anyone.
Want to take it to 2000 points, you can add another squad...or a librarian to make it even sillier lol. Oh look, my paladin unit has stealth.
I can’t make an Eldar army that can beat that in a kill point mission. Hell, I can’t even get close.
If they get within 24” of an Eldar army, that’s game. One round of shooting will completely wipe a walker squadron. Heck, one decent round of shooting has a pretty good chance of downing a serpent. If anything gets out of a vehicle...its toast.
So the paladin army needs to kill three things to win....oh wait no it doesn’t. It only needs to kill one if you don’t have a way to kill any of its three. That sounds silly right? Of course you’ll kill one.
Go make an Eldar army that can reliably kill one of them at 1750 for me. I bet it’s got fire dragons x 3 and that’s your only hope. If they stop a dragon serpent on the way in, it is quite likely you will not take a single kill point.
Take a balanced Dark Eldar list and see how it fares. Dark lances are great and you can hold range (with night shields the termies shouldn’t get a shot at you). Its only 20 something dark lance wounds to kill a full squad. Of course Draigo takes the first one each time and he’s got a 3+, and he can shift between squads.... but realistically you will probably manage to kill a squad over the course of a game if you’ve got 12 or more dark lances at your disposal. Assuming the opponent doesn’t teleport in or just walk in from reserve and cut down your time shooting and if he DOES teleport in, assuming he doesn’t nail two raiders on the turn he arrives.....want to do the math on him landing within 18” of a raider and NOT killing it?
Against any other army, any three light vehicles or small squads is game
I guess my concerns can be summed up by this:
Kill points as a mission type takes away almost all of the variables in a game besides list building. I like list building to be an important part of a tournament, but I don’t want it to be the only part.
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