Drunken Monkey

Hi everyone After your advice I got my hands on a copy of Shifting Loyalties in the late spring this year and started pondering. Sunday the 15th a small tournament finished our first campaign. We did start with 18 players almost 14 weeks ago and on Sunday the 15th of this month eight of them played a tournament with all Injuries, Skills and Equipments gathered on the way 🙈 In order to give everyone enough time to play their games, we played six "Weeks" (rounds) of two calendar weeks each. In my experience a campaign should probably not be much longer than that, as after “week” 5 or 6 many crews won’t need new hires any more and will have pretty much all the Skills and Equipments they want. We had a total of only 1 traitor and 4 annihilated models on the way. This feels a little like it was too easy to avoid Injuries. On the other hand it can be pretty unfun to get too many disadvantages from Injuries while others tend to flip a Red Joker on an Injury every game (Yes, this occurred “week”1🙈). It was quite fun and I really can recommend this style of playing. In preparation for the campaign I tried to reformulate the rules section in the book and made some additions in order to make it work in M3E. So far it worked pretty much okay, but for next time I will have to take much more time for Skills and Injuries and stuff. Especially the Lucky Misses and the Faction specific Bounties need a make-over, I guess. Maybe I get lucky and there is a official M3E Campaign guide soon😇 I've read that @Ozzac did ban summoners because of the huge advantage. As we played GG3 I decided to try it with summoners allowed. So it would not escalate too much, I restricted summons to models in the arsenal and made sure they also get Injuries when killed. Even multiples if killed multiple times in a single game. I think this was a good approach, but we did not have that many summoning crews attending to evaluate that enough. A future consideration is the question if it is intended that injuries can be stocked on not so important models to lower one’s campaign rating. That's something summoner crews can pretty easily do and profit from additional Soulstones and Scrip. It can be seen as part of the game, but can also feel a little like playing the rules instead of playing the game (hope this is somehow understandable🙈). If anyone would like, I could share some more details on the campaign and I would be happy to discuss some changes in rules and rewards.

I am with Adran here. It depends on what you and of course your players want. For me as an organizer and player there is a huge difference between having a league or a campagne. A league fits better for a more competitive crowd. You try to evade randomness and therefore an evolving crew is probably not what you want. In a campagne on the other hand, development is key for me. In a campagne it should be more about narratives and not about winning. Therefore randomness and even unbalanced games do not have to be a bad thing as it might fit the lore. If your players are complaining about the small crews at the beginning and the advancements, a league might be the better choice for them and writting a lot of lore might be a wasted time... But if you have a community that loves roleplaying, weird stuff happening and a plot, then every minute you invests in writing background stories is more than worth it. Also, if you try to motivate new players to get into the game, starting with a small crew and let it grow is pretty nice, as they can buy, build, paint and learn step by step😇with or without lore

Hi everyone. I am player and organizer and am planing for a small campain starting this summer. I was browsing for ideas and found the Shifting Loyalties. I missied that sadly back then. Had to build a local community first to even get the opportunity to play 😁 I wanted to ask those of you playing the game a little longer, does Shifting Loyalties kind of work for the 3rd edition as well? Would it be still worth getting a copy, or doesn't it work at all? Thanks in advance

Sounds reasonable, but Gremlins are pretty squishy too. Especially the low coast ones. I am a little afraid that this leaves me with almost no models left in turn 3. And outnumbering with more models does not really do the job early in the game due to the pass tokens either. Jack can just wait and pass until he knows, where to catch the Schemers🤔

I was thinking of playing Ophelia as well, but I did not play her that much so far😅 Guess thats the opportunity to gather experience😇 Inferior Complex is is a good choice for sure, but terrifying is not my main problem. My problem usually is more that I tried to outrun Jack with different Crews, but I don't know how. The crew has that many movement tricks and is mostly uneffected by any terrain which give em a huge advantage. I can't even hide behind walls and buildings or close gaps with pianos or underbush markers to slow them down. Seems I really have to play the big bonks and go for kills? Kinda sad... but if it helps🤔 Thank you very much

Holderio fellow Bayouans, I have a full Bayou collection and I think the Master I face the most in our community lately is Jack Daw. I never stand a chance. The one playing Jack is a very strong player so, no big deal. But the last game i conceded at the begining of turn 3, even though I usualy play till the end no matter how it looks. That time we had a real non game and i would have lost all my miniatures by just activating them in turn 3 with no chance to prevent any damage besides a few Soulstones i had left... It was the first time I met the new Jack. For me it always felt as if Jack and his crew have the better evasion, hit harder and have the better movement tricks then everything i find in the Bayou😅 Could you give me some advise? What would you play as Master/Crew? What do I have to watch out for or how should I work around Jacks Crew at different Strategies or Schemes?

First off thank you for the great advice. I am about to start with Big Hats as almost the last Bayou crew in my collection and it's very helpful. On the other hand I feel like I am missing something essential in M3E when reading this. Multiple times you all wrote about how good Skeeters are for scheming... They are Insignificant and can neither collect Evidence, drop schemes for Sabotage or count anyhow for Schemes and Strats at all. What am I missing here?

Like others have pointed out, I am not sure if this can be done by Schemes and Strategies... I have a game in a couple of hours that made me think about the whole thing about pass tokens. One of the main advantages of cheap minions is, that especially in the 1st and 2nd turn you could have your opponent make his monsters activate, before you had to make your real move. With pass tokens, its the opposite, now it's the week spot of cheap models since you have to move your small guys and the big ones can wait until their prey is where they want it to be. One way to make low coast models more attractive could be that in the first turn pass tokens are only gained, if you opponent summons and not at the beginning of the turn. This would make an noteworthy advantage in turn 1 for crews that outnumber the opposing one and perhaps more cheap models would be played to do that... Just a thought that I had while preparing for today😅

I was thinking on a different approach for balancing in GGs. Balancing power levels of models and crews is more a question for erratas imho and not something that can be done with a GG document probably. But GG could give an other kind of tool for balancing the game. There could be some limitations for combinations of strategies and schemes. A strategy could exclude certain schemes from being chosen along with them. Or even schemes could have an exclusion for certain schemes that cannot be scored in the same game. I came to think of this after two frustrating games with Bayou crews against Yan Lo. One game was Public Enemy, the other Recover Evidence, both games had Claim Jump and one even paired with Leave your Mark. Of course I had good schemes to play around the center, but I had almost no chance to interfere in the center and deny any points. If strategies focus on killing, there could be an exclusion for schemes that need control of the center of the board for example. Like that, crews would perhaps need more models with different kind of specialisations. Like that if there is something like the best Master or the best crew for a certain strategy, they should not be able to choose their best fitting schemes along with the strategy. Or instead of excluding stuff, there might be extra points given. For example there could be bonus if you score Take Prisoner along with a kill based Strategy like Public Enemy.

It feels a little like there are not really good reasons to play low coast models in M3E anymore😔 Generating Schemes or Strategy that will change that are challenging to find I guess. But as the thread is not just about Schemes and Strategies there might still be a way in GG2 to tackle that. Could be a new limitation for crewbuilding, such as no more then 2 miniatures with a cost of 8 or more. Something like that. But in the end, there will always be Keywords that will profit or loose from such changes and it is part of the game to adept to rule changes.

Less killing Strategies, down to none at all, would be great. Killing opposing models always grants advantage, even with no VP gained for it, as it helps deny opposing crews the scoring. As such, there is no need for having half of the Strategies beeing based on killing models. There will be always enough reasons for fights and heavy hitter crews still work for those who like to play that way. Even if its just a tanky hitter guarding your Strategy Markers.

After some delays due to the Covid situation, we finally had our finals today. We'd had 6 participants and played 3 rounds over more than 2 months to make sure everyone could play in a safe environment. Better safe than sorry atm. Final standings were as follows, named by the Fixed Leaders: Titania Toni Ironside Jack Daw Mei Feng Leveticus Kaeris If you are a little more interested in details, I've collected some data. Mainly to get a better feeling for GG1 for further leagues and tournaments. Round 1 was played Standard Deployment, Public Enemy, Vendetta, Take Prisoner, Hidden Martyrs, Breakthrough and Spread Them Out. Titania won against Kaeris Jack Daw won against Toni Ironside Leveticus won against Mei Feng Public Enemy was scored for a total of only 10 VP in all 3 games. Much less than in the other Strategies later on. Hidden Martyrs was the most chosen Scheme. 4 out of 6 players played this Scheme. Each of them scored at least one point, one scored both. Vendetta was chosen twice and 2 points were scored. Take Prisoner was chosen once and 1 point was scored. Breakthrough was chosen 3 times but only 2 points were scored in total this round. Spread Them Out was chosen twice and 2 points were scored. Round 2 was played Flank Deployment, Symbols of Authority, Assassinate, Claim Jump, Research Mission, Runic Binding and Take Prisoner. Titania won against Mei Feng Toni Ironside won against Kaeris Jack Daw won against Leveticus Symbols of Authority was scored a total of 13 points in all 3 games. Assassinate and Claim Jump were both chosen by 3 players each. But while with Assassinate were scored 5 points only 1 point was scored by Claim Jump. Research Mission and Take Prisoner were both chosen twice. But again, while Research Mission was scored a total of 4 points only 1 point was scored for Take Prisoner. Runic Binding finally was chosen once but no points were scored. Round 3 was played Wedge Deployment, Corrupted Leylines, Let Them Bleed, Catch And Release, Leave Your Mark, Sabotage and Breaktrough. Titania won the finals against Jack Daw with a difference of just 1 VP. Thats what I call a finals! Toni Ironside won against Leveticus Mei Feng won against Kaeris Corrupted Leyline turned out to be the one to be scored best. With 18 VP in total this makes an average of 3 points per player out of 4 possible. Breakthrough was chosen from 5 out of 6 players and scored 6 points. Catch And Release, Leave Your Mark and Sabotage were chosen twice each. For Leave Your Mark 3 points were scored, the other two just 1 each. Finally Let Them Bleed was chosen once and scored no points at all. Big thanks to all that played in our small league! I am looking forward to the next one 😉 As leagues give us the opportunity to play in small groups, we will go for a new league soon, as we won't take the risk of a tournament in near future. Stay healty and keep on playing!

We talked a lot about the Tormented lately and a Question came up. If I have an ability like Guilty as Charged that lets me treat a friendly model like an enemy one, when do I have to decide? If Jack wants to target a friendly Guilty with Jack's Suppressed Memories and want to declare an On your Heel Trigger, can the Guilty be treated as friendly for the attack but enemy for the Trigger? Like that no Upgrade would be attached but the Trigger could still be applied. It seems there is nothing to prevent that, since he meets both conditions, but it kind of feels like it is not intended... Or is it that you declare the Guilty a Enemy so you 'pay the cost in Italic' from the Trigger and therefor he will be considered enemy for the whole attack?

I played a lot against Jack in M3E and I read a lot about tactics to play against him and I disagree with many points. You can attack the Jack players hand, you can go for pin damage and you can take a load of soul stones. There are abilities (Stunned for sure) that are very useful against Jack, but this ain't the problem. Each crew and each tech has its counter, thats part of non-symmetric games. The problem I see with Jack is, that it is a crew you have to build a counter crew against to even stand a chance. If you for example would be bound to Fixed Leader or similar restrictions or if you are simply limited by the few models you own, Jack is not beatable. The Tormented have possibly the best card draw engine in M3E. So make them discard takes more resources then it will bring in the end. You could decide to not playing Upgrades, so he would at least have to add his to draw cards. But then already you give him an advantage. A possible fix I would see here is, that they can draw only when there is one of their own Upgrades and not for Upgrades in general. Slow em, especially the Hanged doesn't do the Job either. As Attuned Minions with an Up your Heels trigger and even the possibility to target his own Guilty they do not depend on Movement to be scary. Well placed the 2 possible Hanged can even make it almost impossible to outrun the crew for Schemes. Toss the Noose with Stat 6, a range of 10" they can easily catch any runner and again... they are Attuned! Ping damage doesn't do the job either. As Resser Jack has even the option to get the Grave Spirit's Touch and does not depend on skipping his draws to heal. Again it takes a lot and brings little. Having Staggered as essential part of their mechanic, and having almost only attacks that make a duel against Mv is another huge advantage. Not only makes this combo attacks even more dangerous than the Monk's with their Chi tokens as it is so to say +2 on every single attack without a cost. In addition to that, they evade all kind of defensive triggers as most are only on Df, only a few work on Wp too, and non on Mv if I'm not missing anything. And that Jack let you discard as part of the effect on his attack, that can then be even followed by a Execute Trigger feels wrong. If he is able to charge a staggered model this makes up to -6 cards in the opponents hand in one activation if you want to keep your model. I think the problem with Jack is, that you have to play too focused against him. For a tournament with crew limitations this might be a problem. Playing an allrounder crew against Jack won't work. A friend of mine is about to write a detailed "how to play Jack" guide, so we talked a lot about him lately. We both agree that there should be a little work on the crew.

I agree, but is a condition for a trigger the same as paying a cost? Thats basically what confuses me. If a trigger asks for a specific type of model, it does not sound like a cost to me. If a trigger asks for removing a certain marker or something like that it is obvious, but if it asks for a type of model or a conditional value like in the case of the example with Fingers, is this considered a cost? In the case mentioned it kind of feels like it would be intended that the trigger can be applied when it has the poison level after the attack but before the triggered effect happens. And something like "Once per activation" or "Non-Master only" is nothing that can be paid, but rather a condition that can be met or not.