Use the Whole Ring and the Full Two Minutes
For those of you that aren't aware of it, in my non-gaming life, I am a martial artist. Some time back, I heard a fellow practioner saying that he'd, "Used the whole ring and the full two minutes..." to win against his opponent. What he meant was that he had gotten an early lead in the match, and then used his movement to keep the opponent from scoring on him until time had run out in the match. It occurred to me that that was a very good description of the old tactic of Victory Point denial. It is also a good description of how to win a Kill Point mission in 5th edition. While it is very satifying to win a match or a game outright, sometimes that's not a realistic expectation to have. You may realize that you have a temporary advantage over your opponent, but that it won't last for long. Alternately, you might decide to "play it safe" and try to keep from making a mistake that could give your opponent the game.

This is a part of gaming that I've traditionally had a difficult time with. I tend to get "caught up in the game" and lose track of the victory conditions. It's very easy to get involved in taking out the enemy army and trying to keep your units from dying. However, if you pay just a little extra attention, you can make a huge difference to the game. The first time I realized I had done this effectively was in a 4th edition game. I had a pair of Genestealer Broods poised to assault a Black Templars unit. One of the broods had been reduced to a single member. Usually I would just throw that one in with the others to help in the assault. In this moment, I realized how easy it would be for the Templar player to kill that Genestealer, giving him the full points for that brood. Instead, I moved the Genestealer away and behind cover while the other brood assaulted the Black Templar squad. In the end, I found that I would have won the game anyway, but the point differential would have been much closer. In a 5th edition Kill Point mission, that would have been the difference between giving the opponent 1 Kill Point and 0 Kill points. That, in turn, can be the difference between a loss and a tie or a tie and a win. As I mentioned, if you pay a little extra attention, you can make a big difference to the game. As each turn ends, try to keep track of how many Kill Points you have achieved and how many Kill Points you have given away. If you find that too difficult (sometimes I do) consider writing it down. Just keep a running tally. Each time you kill a unit in your turn that's worth a Kill Point, put a check or hash mark down. During your opponent's turn, each time he kills a unit, put a check or hash mark down in another spot. That way you can keep a running tally throughout the game. At the beginning of each turn, take a quick look at the tally to see if you are ahead or behind.

Playing it Safe
If you find that you are a point or two ahead, you might consider using a defensive strategy. Obviously, you'll want to keep as many Kill Points from your opponent as possible. But how to do that? One possibility is to hide your units. Get them behind cover or out of sight, move them as far away as possible from the enemy. However, that's not always the most effective way to play defensively. If you are doing little or no damage to the enemy, they may more easily kill off your units, since they can keep their firepower over the succeeding turns of the game. In addition, if you do little damage to them, they can play more aggressively since they don't have to worry about how much damage you might do to them. You need to damage the enemy army, partly to keep them from getting too aggressive and partly to wear down their firepower. The key is to protect your most vulnerable units (the ones that are low in number or are easily damaged.) If you need the firepower of these vulnerable units, at least get them behind your other units and try to limit enemy line of sight to them.

Looking for the Kill (Point)
While you are trying to keep the enemy from snagging your more vulnerable units, you want to keep ahead of the game by taking out his or her more vulnerable units when possible. This will keep your Kill Point advantage, even as the enemy kills some of your units. Characters and vehicles both have potential for giving up easy Kill Points, so watch for opportunities to take them out. Even if they are difficult to kill, put a few shots into them. While it's never a good idea to count on "getting lucky" as a tactic, the odd pot-shot can pay off in spades. I remember a game against a Khornate player back in 4th edition. He had a Massive Daemon Prince that was incredibly tough and strong and was more powerful than a Bloodthirster in Close Combat. My Tyranid army included several antitank weapons (in the form of Carnifi with Venom Cannons) but this player had little in the way of vehicles. Once I'd killed the vehicles, these weapons were mostly useless, so I threw a couple of shots into the Daemon Prince. It was only Toughness 5 to Instakill, so the S10 of the weapon could kill it if a single shot got through the defenses. One of the shots went through, the Daemon Prince went down and it was easy pickings to then roll up the rest of the army. This is an example of using "spare" firepower to great advantage. It was not a high percentage shot, as the armor could have shrugged it off, but it had a decent chance of succeeding and wasn't going to be used elsewhere. If you have firepower that will be mostly wasted on other targets, try a long-shot. Sometimes it will pay off, and if it doesn't, as long as the shot would have been mostly wasted otherwise, you don't lose anything much by trying it. (This usually means firing it last in the turn, to make sure it doesn't have a better target.) After characters and vehicles, start looking at multi-part selections. (Zoanthropes, for example) These are models selected under a single choice on the force organization chart, but deploy and move separately. These almost always count as separate units in terms of Kill Points and they are typically very easy kills. Beyond these, look to small units and units made up of easy to kill targets. (For example, a unit of 3 Terminators can be very vulnerable to AP2 or 1 Weaponry or Power Weapon type attacks, and a unit of 10 Imperial Guardsmen will easily fall to Rapid Fire or multishot weapons.)

Playing Tag (don't get "it")
While you are trying to prune Kill Points out of the enemy army, prevent them from doing the same to you. Take stock of your army and determine which units are the most vulnerable to the enemy. Use Terrain and vehicles to shield them from the bulk of the enemy army, or at least the most dangerous of their units. Then shoot the enemy units that can threaten your vulnerable units. Use all available firepower first to kill the units that have line of sight to your vulnerable units. Secondarily, shoot the enemy units that can do the most damage to you in the next turn or two. You can use mobility to limit enemy line of sight, since every unit that cannot see you is less damage that your units have to take. You can also use your movement to keep assaulters at bay, by moving away from them or putting difficult terrain between you and them. You may have to choose at times between keeping a nearly-dead unit alive or using it's firepower to hurt the enemy. Most of the time, choose the safe road and move it out of harm's way or keep it hidden. The two exceptions to this are if (and only if) that unit's firing has a good chance of keeping an assault unit away from your lines, (Since a good assault unit could possibly take down more than one of your units, giving up more Kill Points) or if you realize that you don't have a good chance of keeping that unit safe. (Perhaps it cannot move far enough to be completely out of the line of fire.)

Exploit Differences
Typically, you will have more than one kind of target in an army. The most obvious version of this would be Vehicles versus units. An alternate version might be heavy armor versus weak armor (For example, you have a bunch of Terminators and a bunch of Space Marine Scouts.) Either way, you can use this to your advantage. Most weapons will be good against one, but not as good against the other. In both of the above examples, Lascannons would be good against the tougher target (Vehicles, Terminators) and not very effective against the lighter target (other units, Scouts.) In turn, Heavy Bolters would be great against Scouts and most other units, but lousy against most vehicles and Terminators. If you can somehow make sure that the opponent has to shoot the wrong target with his guns, you'll have a huge advantage. There are two ways to manufacture this situation, and using them both together will pay off handily. The first way is to only present him with one type of target. (This might be moving your vehicles in front of your other units, or it might be putting the Terminators in front of your scouts.) This means that all of one kind of weapon will be used ineffectively. (The above examples would allow the Lascannons to work just fine, but would make the Heavy Bolters nearly worthless.) The other way is to decide which type of weapon he has less of and concentrate on killing all of that kind. If you can rip all the Lascannons out of the enemy army, your Terminators or vehicles will be in great shape and can pretty much run amok without you having to worry about losing their Kill Points. Combining these two ideas makes them wildly more effective, however. If you rip the lascannons out of the enemy army _and_ use your heavier units to screen your lighter ones, you will have made great strides in making your units nearly invulnerable. Terminators and Vehicles mostly laugh at Heavy Bolters, and Scouts with a 4+ cover save (from the Terminators in front of them) get a pretty good laugh as well. (For those Math-inclined out there, they go from 1.32 Dead Scouts per Heavy Bolter to 0.66 DS)

Better by Design
Most of this article is predicated on the idea that you are playing with what you've got. In other words, that you've already designed an army and you take it out to play and happen to roll a Kill Point scenario. (Since that's usually the way it works.) On the other hand, maybe you are specifically designing your army for a Kill Point mission. Maybe you have challenged someone to a Kill Point mission and can tailor your army around that. Maybe you've just had your head handed to you in a Kill Point mission (possibly multiple times) and want to design your army to better handle it. Or maybe you just want to redesign a few units to give you the upper hand in a Kill Point mission. Any way you slice it, this next part covers it.

Accentuate the Positive
You want to make sure your units are robust. Give them solid armor and lots of friends. Make each unit hard to kill. Give each unit solid firepower. Don't think in terms of how many units you can have, think in terms of how solid you can make each unit. If you start the game with 6 units and your opponent starts with 12, which do you think will have the advantage by the end of the Kill Point mission? One great advantage of solid units with solid firepower is that you have a better chance of Wounding everyone in your target unit, which gives you a chance to prune out those heavy weapons or whatever they have that can do the most damage to you, while they'll have a much harder time doing it back to you. While you are at it, try to bring out the different armor or target types. If you only have one vehicle or one small Terminator unit, it won't do too much for you. If you have those units take up a large part of your army, you've got a Target Differential to exploit (see above under Exploiting Differences.)

Eliminate the Negative
Try to get rid of, or at least greatly reduce, the number of vulnerable units that you have in your army list. Eliminate the multi-unit choices like Zoanthropes, give those Characters squads to start and stay with, make sure those vehicles have better protection or don't bring them along. Basically, cut out as much as possible of the vulnerable units before the game starts. There's no sense in just giving Kill Points to your opponent.

Latch on to the Affirmative
All of this boils down to concentrating on large units. Take some of the biggest units you can find and give them solid firepower and good armor. Have some sort of armor differential, so that you can exploit that differential in your games. Take those plans, concentrate on pruning out easy Kill Points from the enemy and playing defensively with your own units, and you will find Kill Point games to be much, much easier.

If you have found this guide helpful, please keep an eye out for next week's article on Objective-based games. When I have written it, you will be able to find it here.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

Return to Warpstorm!