Are we actually underpowered?

[fauxreigner]

There seems to be a perception among tournament players that The Guild is currently the weakest faction in the game, and struggles to muster crews capable of facing off against the competitive builds of other factions. The UK Malifaux Rankings offers some data to back this up, showing that Guild are the lowest in terms of average tournament points per player. Its hard to tell whether this is particular to the UK meta, because not enough data has been collated in other countries (USA tracking system has just gone live), but anecdotal evidence suggests Guild tournament performance is often underwhelming. 

I can think of two possible explanations for the current perception of Guild being weak:

Explanation 1: The simplest explanation is that Guild are actually the weakest faction under the current ruleset. This could be due to a combination of overcosting, underwhelming rules, lack of viable options, whatever. If this explanation were true Guild would come out worst, even given an even distribution of player skill among factions. You could then imagine a positive feedback loop, in which the top players move away from Guild to remain in contention at tournaments, making Guild results decline even further.

Explanation 2: An alternative explanation is that Guild can be played just as competitively as any other faction, but they offer a play experience that tends not to appeal to the top players.  If this explanation were true, The Guild would achieve average results given an even distribution of player skill among factions, but under-perform in reality because the top-tier players prefer other factions. It may be that our blunt-object damage-dealing masters of Wave 1 (while quite powerful) did not appeal to top players as much as subtler control masters or tool-box summoners of other factions?

Maybe its both? Or neither? Or some other factor I overlooked? Whatever your thoughts, I'd like to hear them.

 

[Fetid Strumpet]

Explaination 3: The theme of the Guild isn't as popular as other factions. In a game where you can play as childhood nightmares made manifest, zany backwater bayou gremlins, Undead monstrosities, a ninja inspired criminal conspiracy, and many others, generic gunfighters and guards that don't even have the shiny gloss of being "The Good Guys" have a bit harder selling point I feel. I'm not saying that IS the reason, but it could be a contributing factor. Let's not forget that last year Adepticon Gen Con and NOVA were both won by a Guild player, and that the world wide Nythera campaign was won by Guild as well. 

 

Corrected.

[Justin]

Guild won Gen Con and the nationals at NOVA last year.

[thebarbalag]

Did well at Adepticon this year, too.

[fauxreigner]

So then the USA just needs to teach the UK to play Guild? 

[Justin]

3 minutes ago, fauxreigner said:

So then the USA just needs to teach the UK to play Guild? 

Or the UK needs to teach the USA to play everything else.

Just a matter of perspective.

But yes, there is definitely some disparity here between regions.

[Math Mathonwy]

14 minutes ago, Justin said:

Guild won Gen Con and the nationals at NOVA last year.

Was it the same person using the same list (Sonnia with Papa-in-the-box)?

(I really wish that the big tournaments included some kind of a results service for the community to be able to see the results. The big 40k tournaments are like sports events in that people are following them with keen interest but there doesn't seem to exist a similar culture in Malifaux. Which is why @Icemyn's reports are so brilliant)

[Fetid Strumpet]

From what I heard, yes it was the same person, who ran pretty much the exact same list in every game.

[Justin]

2 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Was it the same person using the same list (Sonnia with Papa-in-the-box)?

(I really wish that the big tournaments included some kind of a results service for the community to be able to see the results. The big 40k tournaments are like sports events in that people are following them with keen interest but there doesn't seem to exist a similar culture in Malifaux. Which is why @Icemyn's reports are so brilliant)

Same person, same list.

Mostly Sonnia, at least one game I saw with Perdita. No Papa Loco (in any games I saw, Sonnia or Perdita).

[fauxreigner]

Just want to be clear - I'm not trying to argue one way or another that Guild are underpowered.

Personal experience: having gotten into the game ~6months ago with a large group of ex-WHFB players, I (as the only Guild player in the group) have not felt myself to be at a disadvantage.

But I have felt the perception from more experienced players (talking at tournaments, or following online) that Guild are relatively weak. So I'm trying to offer up some explanations for that perception.

[Gnomezilla]

I can't find the quote right now, very sorry, will attribute you when I do, but someone had a level-headed analysis of how the UK's meta played differently from a US player's perspective. Two points jumped out at me: the UK players liked independent models more than combos, and they didn't like high (10+) soulstone cost models. On the first point, I'm not sure, I don't have the experience playing masters which don't rely on combo/synergy, or facing enough models out of faction. On the second...that means no PapaBox, no boxaport Lady J, no emissary support in general, no beater+Queeg for mobility, no peacekeeper, a generally unhappy Hoffman with much less of a punch...a lot of our tools are high-priced (correctly so) and that is in disfavor.

[Justin]

3 minutes ago, fauxreigner said:

Just want to be clear - I'm not trying to argue one way or another that Guild are underpowered. Having gotten into the game ~6months ago with a large group of ex-WHFB players, I (as the only Guild player in the group) have not felt myself to be at a disadvantage. But I've felt the perception from more experienced players (talking at at tournaments, or following online) that Guild are relatively weak. So I'm just trying to offer up some explanations for that perception.

I think Guild has a select few excellent lists (Sonnia, McCabe, and even Perdita though I think other players tend to undervalue her), and a lot of middle of the road lists.

Traditionally they do have some of the weaker Upgrades, which I think is a big limiting factor for the Faction.

My 2 cents.

[4thstringer]

Nope,  we are powerhouses.   We just haven't realized it yet. 

[Surrealistik]

 

4 hours ago, Justin said:

Same person, same list.

Mostly Sonnia, at least one game I saw with Perdita. No Papa Loco (in any games I saw, Sonnia or Perdita).

 

What was used in lieu of Papabox? More Austringers/Witchlings? Was Brutal Effigy used? Assume Malifaux Child made the list.

[Omenbringer]

7 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

(I really wish that the big tournaments included some kind of a results service for the community to be able to see the results. The big 40k tournaments are like sports events in that people are following them with keen interest but there doesn't seem to exist a similar culture in Malifaux. Which is why @Icemyn's reports are so brilliant)

This is definitely an area that could use improvement, as these events (not just the ones that Wyrd attends) could provide a lot of valuable information.

[Icemyn]

8 hours ago, Justin said:

Same person, same list.

Mostly Sonnia, at least one game I saw with Perdita. No Papa Loco (in any games I saw, Sonnia or Perdita).

This was my brother and every time he played Sonnia he played the PapaBox list.
The one time he played Perdita he was very confident his opponent was going to play something Armor heavy and was rewarded for that.

[solkan]

I think part of the issue is making everyone take the extra time during the game to record their crews for posterity.

In all of the big 40k tournaments, those lists are all written ahead of time and you have all of the paper records essentially created ahead of time.  Likewise for the Warmachine/Hordes tournaments, there's more documentation produced in advance so it's easier to review things like composition after the games.  And I'd expect that even Privateer Press's view of their tournament scene gets skewed by the information they can collect at their official events vs. what people play out in the stores.

It's actually kind of impressive what Corvus Belli is trying to do with integrating their official army builder with their tournament reporting system for their tournaments:  They get the more of the lists and more of the results, all while avoiding making the tournament organizer do more work.

But for something like Malifaux, a crew creator that doesn't have the card information is pretty much negatives:

- It doesn't have the model information, so you need to have the cards handy to make decisions.

- If a model is available to you, you pretty much already know because you went out and bought and painted the model.

- You're making crew decisions at the start of the game, so the crew creator needs to be working right then.  No one wants to see thirty people all hoping a convention center's wireless is going to hold up during the start of a timed event.

so you're back to asking people to write things down and fill out forms after the game.

 

[Icemyn]

1 minute ago, solkan said:

I think part of the issue is making everyone take the extra time during the game to record their crews for posterity.

In all of the big 40k tournaments, those lists are all written ahead of time and you have all of the paper records essentially created ahead of time.  Likewise for the Warmachine/Hordes tournaments, there's more documentation produced in advance so it's easier to review things like composition after the games.  And I'd expect that even Privateer Press's view of their tournament scene gets skewed by the information they can collect at their official events vs. what people play out in the stores.

It's actually kind of impressive what Corvus Belli is trying to do with integrating their official army builder with their tournament reporting system for their tournaments:  They get the more of the lists and more of the results, all while avoiding making the tournament organizer do more work.

But for something like Malifaux, a crew creator that doesn't have the card information is pretty much negatives:

- It doesn't have the model information, so you need to have the cards handy to make decisions.

- If a model is available to you, you pretty much already know because you went out and bought and painted the model.

- You're making crew decisions at the start of the game, so the crew creator needs to be working right then.  No one wants to see thirty people all hoping a convention center's wireless is going to hold up during the start of a timed event.

so you're back to asking people to write things down and fill out forms after the game.

 

The new app "Crew Faux" lets you save lists which is really neat, so you can just save all your rounds maybe even your opponents if you want and go back later.

[Tawg]

47 minutes ago, solkan said:

so you're back to asking people to write things down and fill out forms after the game.

I don't think writing down crews is too difficult.

In M:tG for prereleases in the past, they had check boxes for all the cards in the set, and when you open a pool, you note the number of cards of each you opened.

You could make a similar form for Malifaux, with listed models, and have a box to fill for quantity.  Might be easier to just actually write down a short list, since most don't have more than 10 models, so it's realistically not that much writing.

But yeah, it would take support, and effort.

[Math Mathonwy]

3 hours ago, Icemyn said:

This was my brother and every time he played Sonnia he played the PapaBox list.

It's easy to miss since Papa isn't very visible during the game  

But man your family is good in Malifaux!

[trikk]

3 hours ago, Icemyn said:

This was my brother and every time he played Sonnia he played the PapaBox list.
The one time he played Perdita he was very confident his opponent was going to play something Armor heavy and was rewarded for that.

Can you forcefully make him write a report here ;)?

[Adran]

Speaking on the UK meta, I think part of the reason that the guild are not so well represented is that at the moment the top players aren't playing them. Regardless of which masters and factions they use, the top 15--20 players get good results and tournament wins. The top 2 2014 Guild players didn't play a ranking game in 2015 with Guild. (That was Joel Henry using McCabe and Joe Wood using Sonnia, but never papa loco). 2014 Ben Crowe played every faction, and got top 5 results with every one. 

I can't say for certain why the top players aren't playing them, but I don't think its because they feel they are rubbish, rather that they are not the play style they want. 

(I know Joe's sonnia lists well. I know he never did papa in the box, and don't think he took Flame walls very often. It was largely based around reincarnation, and used Franciso to help protect Sonnia. Most turns he would be able to summon at least 1 stalker from an enemy model. Brutal effigy was used).

 

 

[4thstringer]

I still think guild took a hit in gg2016.   Finish the job, evidence tampering, legalese, and plant evidence all got considerably worse when schemes moved away from end of game scheme marker scoring.  Similarly, the need to have your markers down early makes guilds "kill them all then drop markers" style less practical.   Hunting party and show of force as suited schemes were the final hit needed to finish off lucius.   We have approximately 2 models who actually have survivability to sit in the middle and upgrades are worth it on them, so if SoF is in there you better take them.  And if sonnia and dita are killing everything then you arent getting hunting party points.  Exhaust is great for models with fast, nimble, reckless or leap. Since we as a faction lack those things, we are going to struggle there comparatively.  And both take prisoner and exhaust dont want you to kill, which hurts our 2 best masters.

While you heard a lot of complaining about dreamer and levi in neutralize, that doesnt come up all that often.  

Now gg2016 has done some good things for us.  I think it has made the executioner playable again (though ive been told I am wrong pretty consistently).  The in game marker placement makes the emissary better, though the in game removal takes away from that.  

[Argentbadger]

I think that it is likely that the factions are not identical in power level.  Therefore one of them is the weakest, and it could be Guild.  My experience has been that player skill is a bigger factor in determining wins and losses than choice of faction.  Anecdotally, I played Ten Thunders from the start of M2E until the end of 2014, then Guild throughout 2015 and am now playing Outcasts in 2016.  My results appear to be more-or-less the same across all three factions, supporting my theory that the balance between factions is close enough not to have a major impact on the game results.

I keep my own data on my own torunament games and post the results in the battle report forum.  I think that there is something to be said for recording the data across the wider tournament scene, and I know that Kai Young is constantly updating the rankings programming to allow capture of schemes and masters.  Interpreting the data can be hard though, as it could be the case that one faction is considered to be a good 'starter' into the game (maybe this will be the case for Guild and Neverborn since they are in the starter box) and hence have a disproportionate number of inexperienced players using them in events and hence bringing down the mean score per player for that faction.

So in summary, I don't consider Guild to be meaningfully weaker than other factions.  More tournament data would be great even if it is hard to interpret.

[AK1979]

In Belgium it seems I'm the only one using Guild in tournaments, but I think they are very competitive. Still have to lose a game when playing Perdita. 

Main problem is that other factions have more competitive masters and competitive  options to build a list and differrent paly styles.