Kill Point Games?

[jifel]

As a competative Tyranid player, how do you deal with Kill Point games? Almost every competetive army out there is now based on shooting, and most can outshoot us, and just run away in KP games with no objectives tying them down.

I just finished BeakyCon today, at 4-2 as my final record. I won my 4 objective games, against a GK/IG spam gunline, a 9 scythewing army and an Ork 160-70 model Shoota boy army. My loss in game 5 was table quarters, and I frankly should have won if not for some wonky rolling ( I lost on secondary, which was kill points.) But my game 6, against a 5 Scythewing army with wraiths, I just couldn't get enough kill points to keep up. Now, at this point I wasn't playing as hard, as I was out of the running for prizes (and rolling ones a lot), but still, kill points always give me trouble.

How do you win KP games?

For reference, my list:
Walking DakkaShellrant, OA and a guard
dakka flyrant
3 Tervis with 3 powers and Tox adrenal, one with claws
10 gants
19 gants
20 gants
2 Zoans
2x3 Hive Guard
2x Biovores

[syu]

A true concern especially vs an elite army, heck I even played against a gk army with only 2 units plus a few characters! May 5 kp I think....

Anyways some things I've learned but in no way a guarantee of success..

1. Don't spawn gants unless you really have to....spawning < 8 gants is sure to offer easy kp to your opponent
2. Think ratios: if I'm going to kill a unit and my unit gets wiped out from shooting the next turn, what's the point? So I'd max trading off a unit to kill 2 units at a time.

Example: usually I'd play w ymgarls. On a regular game I'd go for a full assault on an enemy unit to ensure victory. In kp, I'd look carefully and see what weak units are clumped together closely and do a multiple assault. True I'd loose the +1 attack but you can boost up your ymgarls with a +1 anyway... Mind you you can do this only with weaker units as chargin multiple elite units is a sure way to loose those ymgarls. Some targets:

A squadron of hydras
A soft unit witha character
2 venoms skimming closely together ( use the +1 s so you can glance them at a 5+, them venoms only 2 hpoints each)

On the other hand be mindful of the ratios against you ( don't plop down a spore and the unit inside in enemy territory since this will give your opponent 2 kpoints! Unless you can at least claim 2 kpoints when they arrive)

3. If you are out gunned, then have your unit go hth ASAP ( easier said than done) so he can't shoot you in his turn. Try to go for a win in his turn so you can consolidate then charge the next unit
4. Priority take his long range deadly shooting unit ( thunder fire cannon, obits, long fangs) with a one to one ratio then start taking down troops via shooting as nids shooting are primed at medium range ( r18 tl devs are excellent at this).. Note once youre ahead by at least 2 kpoints, FALLBACK...let him come to you this time and try to maintain a 1 to 1 ratio to maintain lead...

4. If given the chance, try to take the psychic powers that will slow him down ( making difficult dangerous. Forgot the name of the spell)

As mentioned these tactics are not easily done vs a veteran player, who will maximize his long range shooting as you approach... Still it's not impossible... Good luck bro and more power to you

[jifel]

I don't use spores for that reason, and Ymgarls have always been underwhelming... but I have a 12 kp list before spawns, and in an objective game there's nothing I fear (well, except for this one time I played a triple Jaws drop pod list...) But hiding and shooting leads to me losing a snipe contest, and the Ork style charge kills a lot, but I usually lose a lot and the opponent has a few units left, and wins KPs. MSU seems a lot, lot weaker in 6th sadly, and most armies just dont have many KPs. The KP game I did play was a bad matchup (5 flyers in a Kp game, we know how it goes.) Since most big Tourneys will have at least one KP game, it's something we have to account for. It doesn't help that this one happened to be in round 6, the most important...

[Deleted]

I personally would split those Termagant broods even to avoid giving too easy a kp on any one, 16/16/17.

[Jabberwocky]

Sometimes in KP games you are better off tabling them or playing for the draw while winning on secondaries.

Against lists like 2 unit GK just play for 0-0 and win on table quarters or the like.

Obviously easier said than done but these players had this in mind when building their lists so don't play into their hands.

[gloomfang]

With KP it boils down to keep your units alive and target one unit of his at a time until it is dead. Usually the best way to do this is with a refused flank. Hit each unit as hard as you can while trying to keep as much terrain in the way between you and the opponet's army. When a unit gets low on models then run them away and/or have them GtG in some cover.

[innocent]

Ha, I was going to post the exact same question as the OP

I had a KP game last weekend. From the start all the odds were against me. The guy had a nasty competitive SW list with Jaws, 3 Long Fang packs, Wolf Standards, single Terminators in all his squads (re-rolling 1s, thank you)... the works. We rolled the KP mission and Hammer and Anvil deployment. Doesn't get tougher than that! Despite that, I went in all guns blazing and had the game in my grasp. Lost by 5 KP in the end, but it was a damn good game and I gave the SW player a good run for his money. Here is what I picked up:

- Don't spawn gants. In that game, he killed 7 units of Spawngants, which in return might have killed 5-7 models (damn Wolf Standards ). I'd like to have others opinion on this, but I reckon I would have been better off without spawning.

- Hive Guards showed their worth again, gunning down all 4 of his vehicles and earning me 1st Blood in the process. This is a valuable unit in KP game: resilient and capable of racking in KPs via destroying vehicles.

- Speaking of 1st Blood, try to get as many secondary objectives as possible. I had 1st blood and Linebreaker, he had none.

- Keep Catalyst and distribute FnP like candy, you'll need it. I have dropped the third power from my Tervigons specifically for Kill Points games.

- Keep a compact formation or use a preferred/refused flank strategy as suggested above. I realised too late in my game that I had been throwing units at the wrong flank and gave him a couple of free kill points. Which reminds me: don't hesitate to retreat in cover

- Hug cover! My favorite tactic now is to move the Hive Guards midfield in area terrain or the upper levels of ruins, with Catalyst in tow, and fire away.

- If you play against non MEQ armies, a couple of Biovores will do wonders. Against MEQ, use them to snipe Missile Launchers/Independent Characters. But watch out that they don't get shot themselves (another mistake I made...). If there is an unsealed building on the table hide them in there after a couple of turns of shooting They are normally not a target earlier on when there is more dangerous stuff to shoot at, but get nailed during turn 4-5 for easy KPs.

And one last thing I'll do is have one big unit of gargoyles instead of 2 smaller ones. They are there to catch bullets while my Hive Guard move into the middle, so I don't expect them to live. And they normally end up deployed next to each other in one thin line covering the length of the board, so having one squad instead of 2 shouldn't change that.

That said, we will always be at a disadvantage in KP games, that's the price we pay for being able to have up to 13 scoring units on the board on turn 2... On the plus side, KP games is only 1 in 6 chance now if you roll for missions (although I understand this might not be the case in tourneys. I know one TO who is thinking of doing a 1:1 ratio of KP / OBjectives games, booo )

[syu]

Nice read... In our tournies its like mix and match with multiple vp you can gather.. For example the last scenario for this week is

1. Objectives that give up 3 vp each
2. Every unit dead give you 1 kpoint
3. Linebreaker, slay warlord, firstblood
4. And special vp for special situations: wipeout enemy, etc

Thereore armylist should be ready for all these...

[jifel]

I like the idea personally of a combined mission where you get three points per objective, 1 per KP and then bonuses, most total points is the winner.

[syu]

yup, its very balanced and does not give a specific army any undue advantage....

[N.I.B.]

Oct 8, 2012 0:20:27 GMT jifel said:

As a competative Tyranid player, how do you deal with Kill Point games? Almost every competetive army out there is now based on shooting, and most can outshoot us, and just run away in KP games with no objectives tying them down.

I just finished BeakyCon today, at 4-2 as my final record. I won my 4 objective games, against a GK/IG spam gunline, a 9 scythewing army and an Ork 160-70 model Shoota boy army. My loss in game 5 was table quarters, and I frankly should have won if not for some wonky rolling ( I lost on secondary, which was kill points.) But my game 6, against a 5 Scythewing army with wraiths, I just couldn't get enough kill points to keep up.

In 5th ed 1/3 of all rule book missions were kill points, now it's only 1/6. And in the 6th ed tournaments I've been to so far none has had kill points as the primary objective. But similar to you, I lost my only game last weekend because of kill points was the secondary objective (or rather due to time was up before I could even out the score).

Barring really elite armies (25 Terminators Deathwing comes to mind) I don't usually lose a lot because of kill points. Unless I play null deployment of course, 6+ Mycetic Spores just bleeds kp.

Terrain is a big factor when it comes to LOS blocking pieces you can hide your last Gant behind - in casual games, don't be bullied into playing on planet Golf-course, use the 6th ed rules instead.

jifel, I'm curious on your game against the 9-Scythe army, could you give us a rundown on the objective mission and how it played out?
Also your last game, was it kill points as primary objective? Wraiths are really hard to take down fast and Scythes are hard to kill. I would suggest switching your Zoans and 6 Gants for another 3 Hive Guards.

[jifel]

knighthammer40k.blogspot.com/2012/10/beakycon-game-2-scythewing.html

The Scythewing game ^ feel free to check out other Batreps.

And as to killing wraiths, I thought I could do it... Enfeebled, pointed a DakkaTyrant at them, over 30 gants and a Tervigon. The Flyrant did 10 IDing wounds, he only failed one... that's how his saves went all day. In the end he had one wounded wraith left out of 12 originally, but still that took 5 turns to do. I swear they have a built in dice modifier... his dice were only good fo wraiths, nothing else!

[N.I.B.]

Good reports, I see you have the same approach to competitive nid builds as me - lots of durable scoring units. You have a bit more durability and I have more damage output, but the template is similar.

A shame about the good Wraith saves, but them's the dice. I haven't had much trouble with Wraiths, other than killing them fast enough.

Imo the best Necron builds are the ones with a solid ground force. As you noticed, if we get our Blessings up, along with the normal 3+ armour saves, Tesla Cannons doesn't do all that much to MC's.