Spreadsheet on Each Master's Focus Areas

[TableTopical]

I'm writing a series of articles on picking your first master, and in my most recent one I put together a Spreadsheet that rates each master on which areas they focus on. The idea is to have a "quick reference" guide to the playstyles of each master as a first step in the Master choosing process. Since I don't have experience with all of the masters, I would appreciate any feedback on the ratings I gave .

My article explaining the categories can be found at http://tabletopical.com/picking-first-malifaux-master-part-2/, and the spreadsheet can be found on Google Docs here.

Let me know what you think!

Ken

[Dogmantra]

I have more thoughts later but I'm procrastinating on an assignment so o keep it short I think that you should maybe consider merging Casting Damage into the other two since it plays out in basically the same way, it just has a different stat associated with it (close damage threat and ranged damage threat) and then replacing it with area damage, which would be like Rasputina, Sonnia, Wong, anyone with blasts or other ways to deal lots of area damage, since that's a bit more than just a surface difference.

[Masquer]

Red Tape trigger on Lucius counts as control, think it's worth 1 for the spreadsheet?

[Nef]

What do you consider as resource management for Mei Feng?  

[Bengt]

Resource manipulation seems to thrown in as filler on a lot of masters. It's defined as "Utilizes a specific resource in an interesting way." but when Ramos gets a two for using scrap markers in the most typical way possible it feels kind of forced. Titania doesn't get a number at all even though she is the poster child here (she uses scheme markers to deal damage instead of what they are "supposed" to be used for).

I agree that casting damage isn't a useful distinction. But having ranged, melee and AE is also problematic as AE can be both ranged (Sonnia) or close (Viktoria).

Some individual critique.

Ironsides: She gets Melee 1, Conditions 3, Resilience 2 even though she deals middling damage and only uses a condition on herself as a resource. Her stand out things are Hand Picked Men, one of the the more powerful buff auras in the game (force multiplier 1), her ability to push enemies and keep them near her (control 2) then I guess you could maybe put resilience or damage 3 since she can do some healing or damage under the correct conditions.

Mei Feng: I'd put in Force Multiplier for Vent Steam instead of resource management (which I assume is there because Railwalker can use scrap, though I think it's more common for her to step on constructs directly). Not use about the exact order on her as Vent Steam can see a lot of use depending on opposition.

Ramos: Summoning 1 is fine, I'd put force multiplier as 2 (he has several buff auras) and damage 3 (Electrical Fire and Uncontrolled Detonation can both be strong in conjunction with his summoned Arachnids).

Rasputina: No idea what resource she is supposedly using? Damage is her primary focus sure and she have control with Ice Pillars and Paralyse. Then I guess I'd put Force Multiplier 3 for December's Touch if I had to put something.

Kaeris: Force Multiplier 1 without a doubt, she has several auras/pulses. Mobility 2 perhaps, but then it gets tricky as she is spread quite thin over several areas (ranged, melee, summoning, control, scheme, resource manipulation (having burning on the correct model in the correct location is quite important to her)). She really needs a tick the Jack of All Trades column.

Colette: I think I'd put resource manipulation rather than mobility as she uses scheme markers as a resource to fuel other effects.

Might do more later.

[Adran]

I personally would put Perditas melee damage as at least the 3 if not the 2. (She is generally happy to get stuck in, and does more damage in close combat than she does at range. I would agree that her ranged damage is the more normal play style.)

I agree that there is little use in Casting damage as a separate category for the purpose of picking a master. Area damage is probably useful, knowign if the master is good at dealing with hordes of figures, the how they do it is slightly less important. 

[Nikodemus]

With moderately lucky flips Shenlong can do quite good damage with Drunken Kung Fu or blasts, but I wouldn't rate that among his top-3 characteristics. Scheme manipulation and force multiplication are where he shines. He can easily push models and markers into or out of scoring positions, hands out fast/slow with his pushes and also heals like a boss.

[TableTopical]

Hey all, thanks for your feedback! 

On 1/14/2017 at 11:07 AM, Dogmantra said:

I have more thoughts later but I'm procrastinating on an assignment so o keep it short I think that you should maybe consider merging Casting Damage into the other two since it plays out in basically the same way, it just has a different stat associated with it (close damage threat and ranged damage threat) and then replacing it with area damage, which would be like Rasputina, Sonnia, Wong, anyone with blasts or other ways to deal lots of area damage, since that's a bit more than just a surface difference.

I actually debated something like this, and ended up going the easy route of lumping them all together as the generic "Casting damage". Based on your feedback, and others below, I'll update the file!

On 1/14/2017 at 11:58 AM, Masquer said:

Red Tape trigger on Lucius counts as control, think it's worth 1 for the spreadsheet?

I haven't played against/with him before (since he was so maligned before his buff). What do you think his top 3 should be? If I remember correctly, I was sort of stretching to find 3 things he focuses on when I was going through all of the masters.

On 1/14/2017 at 9:55 PM, Nefarious60 said:

What do you consider as resource management for Mei Feng?  

It was just her use of scrap markers for Railwalking, but I'm going to replace it with Force Multiplier as Bengt recommended below. I think the Railwalking is realistically covered by Mobility anyway.

On 1/15/2017 at 2:18 AM, Bengt said:

Resource manipulation seems to thrown in as filler on a lot of masters. It's defined as "Utilizes a specific resource in an interesting way." but when Ramos gets a two for using scrap markers in the most typical way possible it feels kind of forced. Titania doesn't get a number at all even though she is the poster child here (she uses scheme markers to deal damage instead of what they are "supposed" to be used for).

I agree that casting damage isn't a useful distinction. But having ranged, melee and AE is also problematic as AE can be both ranged (Sonnia) or close (Viktoria).

Some individual critique.

Ironsides: She gets Melee 1, Conditions 3, Resilience 2 even though she deals middling damage and only uses a condition on herself as a resource. Her stand out things are Hand Picked Men, one of the the more powerful buff auras in the game (force multiplier 1), her ability to push enemies and keep them near her (control 2) then I guess you could maybe put resilience or damage 3 since she can do some healing or damage under the correct conditions.

Mei Feng: I'd put in Force Multiplier for Vent Steam instead of resource management (which I assume is there because Railwalker can use scrap, though I think it's more common for her to step on constructs directly). Not use about the exact order on her as Vent Steam can see a lot of use depending on opposition.

Ramos: Summoning 1 is fine, I'd put force multiplier as 2 (he has several buff auras) and damage 3 (Electrical Fire and Uncontrolled Detonation can both be strong in conjunction with his summoned Arachnids).

Rasputina: No idea what resource she is supposedly using? Damage is her primary focus sure and she have control with Ice Pillars and Paralyse. Then I guess I'd put Force Multiplier 3 for December's Touch if I had to put something.

Kaeris: Force Multiplier 1 without a doubt, she has several auras/pulses. Mobility 2 perhaps, but then it gets tricky as she is spread quite thin over several areas (ranged, melee, summoning, control, scheme, resource manipulation (having burning on the correct model in the correct location is quite important to her)). She really needs a tick the Jack of All Trades column.

Colette: I think I'd put resource manipulation rather than mobility as she uses scheme markers as a resource to fuel other effects.

Might do more later.

Resource manipulation is definitely a filler. I was trying to figure out the best way to get all of the different resource interactions into the sheet, but it ended up as a pretty bloated category. Any recommendations for how to improve it are appreciated! :). I've also gone through an updated the sheet based on your suggestions.

Do we think there should be a "Flexible" category to cover masters like Kaeris?

On 1/16/2017 at 5:13 AM, Adran said:

I personally would put Perditas melee damage as at least the 3 if not the 2. (She is generally happy to get stuck in, and does more damage in close combat than she does at range. I would agree that her ranged damage is the more normal play style.)

I agree that there is little use in Casting damage as a separate category for the purpose of picking a master. Area damage is probably useful, knowign if the master is good at dealing with hordes of figures, the how they do it is slightly less important. 

Thanks for the feedback. I've updated Perdita, let me know what you think of the new ratings!

On 1/16/2017 at 6:28 PM, Nikodemus said:

With moderately lucky flips Shenlong can do quite good damage with Drunken Kung Fu or blasts, but I wouldn't rate that among his top-3 characteristics. Scheme manipulation and force multiplication are where he shines. He can easily push models and markers into or out of scoring positions, hands out fast/slow with his pushes and also heals like a boss.

Thanks! I've updated Shenlong, so let me know what you think!

[Dereikt]

As it's currently represented, the Resource Management category feels more like a weakness than a strength, in that it generally acts as a limit on certain abilities-for example, Ramos is limited in his summoning by the need for a scrap marker. Since you're listing his strengths, it seems best to simply put summoning in, and leave the scrap marker as a subset of that ability. A better way of looking at it as a strength might be 'does this Master create resources that their crew can make use of?' The simplest example of this would be the many abilites to draw cards, but some Masters also generate Soulstones, additional AP, or even extra actions in Sandeep's case.

 In the case of Cards and Soulstones, you could also give a mark for masters which are largely independant of these resources-Kaeris, for example, has high Ca values and most of her suits built in, meaning she doesn't depend on high cards and soulstones, which leaves these resources free for other members of her crew to use. Using less resources is subtly different to actually generating them, but the end result is much the same. Combined with Truth in Flame, I'd actually rate this quite high in Kaeris's abilities. Her dependence on Burning, by contrast, is her biggest *weakness*.

A better alternative to a 'flexible' category would probably be to divide the 6 points between more than three categories-for example 2-2-1-1 instead of 3-2-1. Neatly portrays a slightly less focused master which can do a larger variety of tasks, but isn't great at any of them. For example, I'd personally be inclined to place Kaeris as Control 2, Resources 2, Scheme manipulation 1, mobility 1. Conditions, as above, is in her case a weakness rather than a strength, since she's dependant on burning for many of her abilities, and has to spend AP every turn to apply it. She doesn't increase it's effect, or even apply it enough to do large amounts of damage.

[Bengt]

5 hours ago, Dereikt said:

As it's currently represented, the Resource Management category feels more like a weakness than a strength, in that it generally acts as a limit on certain abilities-for example, Ramos is limited in his summoning by the need for a scrap marker. Since you're listing his strengths,

It isn't listing strengths (at least not directly), it list "focus area", i.e. what are you most likely to spend their Activation doing. For some Masters this will just be their strengths as you will tend to do what they are good at, but if a Master has some "necessary evil" it might still get ranked even if it isn't very strong in itself. E.g. Colette uses Scheme Markers as fuel for several abilities, so in addition to what you need for schemes you will have to plan ahead for that (e.g. should you Walk Colette over there so that model can (0) interact from her  or would it be better to summon a Dove and use it as scheme marker?).

5 hours ago, Dereikt said:

A better alternative to a 'flexible' category would probably be to divide the 6 points between more than three categories

In the current chart the numbers are ranks, not points. So 1 is the area the master's primary focus, 2 is the secondary focus and so on.

[AnderGdeT]

Is really Titania so complicated to play? I was going to start playing Malifaux and I wanted to start with a Titania band, but I may have to look for another band if I want to avoid becoming the punching-ball of our group xD

[Adran]

I would say learn to play with a crew you like the look of. If, after you have learnt to play, you don't like their play style, then you might want to consider a different crew, but no crew is automatically going to be a punching bag. Some are easier to gain competency in, so if after 3 or 4 games your opponent seems to be much better/more powerful than you, it might be that they have "clicked" with their crew earlier than you have, which is part of what I would say that difficulty means. Don't dispair, and see where you are after 8-10 games. 

[TableTopical]

On 2/6/2017 at 4:30 AM, Adran said:

I would say learn to play with a crew you like the look of. If, after you have learnt to play, you don't like their play style, then you might want to consider a different crew, but no crew is automatically going to be a punching bag. Some are easier to gain competency in, so if after 3 or 4 games your opponent seems to be much better/more powerful than you, it might be that they have "clicked" with their crew earlier than you have, which is part of what I would say that difficulty means. Don't dispair, and see where you are after 8-10 games. 

I started with Tara, so I 100% support learning to play with what you like to look at!

As another note, I've been away a while, but I'm planning on getting back to writing more articles and updating the file more. If I haven't already responded to your post from above, fear not! I will do so when I am not writing from a tiny phone screen.

[Corn]

I play Guild pretty heavily, so I can give some feedback on the Guild portions of the list.

 

Lucas McCabe IMO should be Force Multiplier 1, Resource Manipulation 2, Mobility 3.  Lucas is bar none the fastest master in guild, in terms of raw stats, as well as free pushes throughout his crew from tossing upgrades.   The main focus of his crews are the manipulation of his upgrades, with McCabe tossing upgrades to different models, reclaiming those upgrades, and using them to buff minions or models in key positions.  He is a pretty decent melee combatant, but that is secondary to the other three.  

Sonnia: I would replace Control 3 for Summoning 3.  Sure she can do some solid control with the Cheruffe's imprint upgrade, but she is really fist and foremost a Damage master, and a combat summoner with the Reincarnation upgrade.  

Lucius: I would replace Resource Manipulation 3 with Mobility 3.  Lucius doesn't really manipulate a lot of resources with the exception of Soulstones through Devil's Deal, but unless you are taking a lot of healing through the Brutal Emissary, or a Terra Cotta warrior you won't use it that often.  What he does bring to Guild is a lot of out of activaiton movement and attacks, allowing you to set up your minions effectively.  Despite his low walk stat, Lucius himself is really fast if he targets himself with Commanding Presence, He speeds up his crew, and he can use movement tricks like "What Lakeys are For" to swap places with his crew.  

Hoffman: Needs a third specialization.  Resource Manipulation 3 and Resilience 2.  Hoffman juggles a lot of things, between choosing which models to bring into the power loop.  Determining which models will get his upgrades, etc.  Unless arcanist ties is brought as an upgrade, Hoffman cannot change these upgrades once they are on a model.   The other main option is Resilience, Hoffman's crews tend to have some of the best defensive tech in the game, between possible Guardian Buffs, High Defense across multiple models, heavy armor, and lots of healing including area of effect.  When a new player picks up Hoffman the very first things they will notice are, "This crew is very durable" "These upgrades are very good, I need to think carefully about where I put them", and "wow, a fast nimble peacekeeper hits like a ton of bricks"