Open War: The Basics

With less than four weeks to go until Open War, I think that now would be a good time to talk about some strategies that will hopefully keep me from finishing last. I'll talk about each of the three missions in turn but first I'll go through the general rules for the tournament.

Scoring

There are a maximum of 100 battle points available for the tournament. There are 25 points for painting and modelling and then 25 points for each mission.

The painting and modelling is either 5 or 0 points for the following considerations

Based
WYSIWYG
Banners & Markings
Roster
Cohesive Colour Scheme

So, which of these can I pick up? Well, my army should be based in time so one tick there. They're definitely all WYSIWYG so no problem there either. I've not put sorted out the squad markings yet but I should get that done as well. Roster is a piece of cake. Now, the last one. Technically, my army does have a cohesive colour scheme. Unfortunately that colour scheme is half painted. Hmm, I should pick up 15 for the non-painting parts and may pick up another 5 if I'm lucky. The thing is I expect everyone else to pick up 25 here so I'm 10 points behind before I start.

Kill Points

Of the 25 points for each mission, 10 points are awarded for getting Kill Points. 11+ KPs get you 10 BPs, 9-10 get 9, 7-8 get 7, 5-6 get 5, 3-4 get 3, 1-2 get 1 and 0 gets you 0. So, there are quite a few points to be had from KPs. Now, since you're guaranteed 5 points from each mission even if you get absolutely battered, is it worth concentrating just on KPs? Well, no. However, as we get near the end of the game it is definitely worth trying to take out those small enemy units to pick up some extra points especially if you're pretty set for the main objective.

As an interesting aside, if I was playing against my own army, there are 10 Kill Points in the Troops section (5 squads and 5 transports) If I were to take them all out the worst I could do would be to draw the first two missions and take home 19 Battle Points. Space Wolves playing for a draw? Well, maybe. As I said I'll talk about mission specific strategies when I look at the missions themselves.

One final point - tabling. This automatically wins you all 25 Battle Points for the mission. Although it is easier said than done...