Anyone misses old school victory points?

[Knight of the Raven]

At least, I think they were called victory points in English back when I first started reading White Dwarf. The concept was that destroying an enemy unit or character gave you as many victory points as their own cost in points, or half if the unit/character lost half its numbers/wounds, along with some bonuses for slaying the enemy general, capturing standards in close combats, holding table quarters, completing objectives...

 

I haven't played a game with the new edition yet, so I checked the free rules to see the objectives and they don't appear to be what I'm talking about.

 

To be honest, I've not actually ever played a game with the old system since I didn't play before kill points, secondary objectives and, I think, randomized victory points based on a die roll. But when I picture the loss of two minimal squads of conscripts being a bigger setback than ten terminators, nobz being shaken by a bunch of lollygagging grots being the first casualties of the battle or losing the game when you've got five objectives and your opponent rolls a six with his own sad little backfield flag, I'm just a little bit... unimpressed.

 

Maybe my willing suspension of disbelief needs to be recalibrated, but am I the only one who wouldn't mind some games with the old, admittedly-harder-to-count victory points of old?

 

N.B. I welcome suggestions for fitting tags for this thread.

[Eddie Orlock]

Only sometimes.

 

It also depends on which era of Victory Points you're trying to call back to, 'cause VP's were a thing for a very long time.

 

In the deep days of yore, you used to see things like ~99 point jump-pack and vortex grenade assassin techmarines on the premise that if they could get the jump out from behind their skirmish screen correct you'd be happy to trade that single VP against what ever otherwise hard to kill nuisance you'd chosen to trade it off against.

 

This, of course, deformed the environment around things like the inclusion of 'vortex detonators' and lead to an odd kind of 'guessing game' about what to attempt to hit of if you even bothered.

 

As it is, playing for more finely calculated VP's produces its own narrative deformations. Outcomes where mission parameters get neglected and the tactics always revolve around eliminating the enemy. History contains a number of examples where one side slew the other in droves but still ultimately lost the strategic objective.

[Wargamer]

I always thought it failed to properly encourage fully wiping out units. Hence why I liked BFG's victory points more - 25% value for crippling a ship, 100% for destroying it, 150% for destroying and recovering the hulk (ie: forcing the enemy to disengage - or destroying all their ships!).

This system not only rewarded players for beating on one specific enemy until it keeled over, but it also encouraged Admirals to bail out of the fight before their ships were lost - appropriate, given the value of ships in 40K!

Edited December 8, 2017 by Wargamer

[Ficinus]

I do like the old system more. Or, at the very least, I prefer the old system to kill points. I see the argument for prioritizing mission objectives in games (because, yes, it was always just kill kill kill in the old days), but that could still be accomplished either by having some games be based solely on objectives (like most missions in the BRB) or have a mix of VPs (based on point or at least power level cost) from kills and VPs from mission objectives (based on a percentage of the points/power level played).

 

I agree, though, that is seems odd that a Land Raider or ten man Terminator squad is the same number worth in kill points as six man mortar team.

[Wargamer]

Kill points based on Power Points could be a good way of doing things. It avoids the argument that victory points were "too complicated", but it's a lot fairer than Kill Points.

[Lexington]

I like VP as a minor means of determining victory, but as a singular mechanic, I was never a huge fan.

[Mileposter]

In an 8th Edition Campaign I've run, we used the standard victory conditions in most missions (Tactical Objectives), but we used the amount of Power Level killed on each side to determine whether the win was a 'Major' or 'Minor' Victory.

 

I do think the current system is much better than the old kill points. It's no problem to have a game where you're just duking it out, but it's always good to have a secondary way to win the game when you're down to little enough that wiping the table isn't an option.

[Rik Lightstar]

The "Open War" card set has additional missions, including at least one where you score VPs based on Power Cost, double for the Warlord I think too.

 

Haven't got them to hand but there's quite a few variations in there.

 

Rik

[Irbis]

I agree, though, that is seems odd that a Land Raider or ten man Terminator squad is the same number worth in kill points as six man mortar team.

 

It's a balance mechanism. Elite armies are already heavily disadvantaged, make chaff squads grant no KPs and the elite army might as well pack and go home without even deploying, GG, you won.

 

Ditto for VPs, they were great if your idea of a game is having a pile of models crash into another pile of models right in the middle, followed by frantic rolling to see who will remove more models from which pile, then GG, the side that rolled more bigger numbers won, with little strategic or tactical thinking. The 'sad little backfield flag' is supposed to encourage you to spread out instead of dumping whole army in one pile, take units that can hold/assault objectives thanks to durability/speed instead of crunching what has best damage/points ratio and spamming that exclusively, and hopefully have something resembling a real battle. It might not be a perfect system, but it at least encourages thinking other than 'how I roll more dice per 500 pts'...

[Knight of the Raven]

Thanks for the replies and explanations everyone. Didn't think one instant about balance, just to name one of the thoughts this conversation gave me to ponder about.

[taikishi]

In some ways, I do and I don't. 

 

The one thing I didn't like about the 2nd edition VP system was that it was more advantageous to play an "elite" army, such as one unit of twenty Wolf Guard because even if you spent your entire army budget on that one unit, it only gives up 2VP -- one for being a unit at 100+ points and taking at least 50% casualties, another for being a 100+ point unit and being wiped out/broken at the end of the game. In essence, they're somewhat like KP.

 

Beyond that, the only additional way to get VPs from such a small force unit-wise was through mission cards, which were drawn at random and gave VP to the player based on certain objectives.

 

For example:

Dawn Raid: Having a squad with fewer than 50% casualties OR an undamaged vehicle in opponent's deployment zone at the end of the game: +5VP

The Assassins: Enemy commander wounded: +1VP. Enemy commander killed: +5VP

 

I somewhat recall a time when a unit's VPs = its cost, but I don't know if that was a later 2E rule or an optional rule in 2E or 3E. I also remember a time where VP = 1 for every 100 points of cost and half that if the unit was below 50%/below half wounds/vehicle damaged at the end of the game, so a 207 point model or unit was worth a maximum of 3VP.

 

As far as the missions themselves, balance issues aside I preferred 3E's missions to 2E or even 7 and 8E, because each side seemed to have their own objective and narrative to them, and VP (IIRC, it has been almost 20 years) were used to help determine if some missions were a major victory/minor victory/draw

[Zuvassin]

^ Not sure what you mean on that last comment, as in 2nd edition each side literally had its own mission (i.e. I might have drawn Dawn Raid and you drew The Assassins), plus IIRC missions weren't revealed until they were completed or the game ended - so I wouldn't know ahead of time your goal was to assassinate my commander unless I guessed it from your tactics, and even then I wouldn't know for sure.