GG 18 - summoned models

[Paddywhack]

While I need more time to digest, this feels like a bit of a kick in the pants. it is only the strategy, but that's 40% of our possible points. Resurrs already pay more typically for models as summoning is our thing. They also tend to have lower Df and die pretty quickly. Not being able to use summoned models for strats could really hurt. I'm not sure if there was a big problem before? I know summoning is strong and has only gotten stronger as so many other crews have ways to summon now, but it sure feels like resurrs will be hard hit this year. Nicodem may not see much play at all. 

Im not sure how written in stone that new rule is. This is Beta, but I'm not sure if that part is up for debate or not. I'm guessing yes? 

Going to have to re-read all the strats a few times to see how hard this will make some of them. Some masters may not care (Molly, McMourning, Seamus maybe, Yan Lo maybe), but it will still hurt. I wonder why the sudden issue? Was it the surge of new ways for others factions to summon (looking at you Sandeep and Asami!)? Its not like resurrs tend to dominate the rankings from what I've seen. 

[Ludvig]

I think summoners have dominated the quarter strat since forever. They are also strong at out-activating which deniea certain schemes and strats.

I think it would lead to you starting with more cheap schemers and summoning stuff like hanged and punks that the opponent can't ignore if they want to have models left at the end of the game. I think a lot of summoners have entire cards of unused actions and the idea is for it to not always be a no-brainer summon spam. Nico can do some cool atuff with elite crews and just a few summoned veaters for instance.

If you playtest it and summoners manage to fail miserably it should change.

[Justin]

I think it's a good direction.

Summoning a model onto the table gets you extra activations and extra AP without having to pay for that at the start of the game. This is generally balanced against in-game cost (AP from the summoner itself, cards, wounds, etc) with the assumption that the summoned model won't be in play the whole game. In other words, a model summoned on turn 4 can only see two turns of play, where as a model purchased can potentially see the whole game.

But if a model drops into play and is suddenly scoring you victory points, it's easily as valuable as any model purchased at the start of the game, while having been paid for with only a few cards/AP.

While ressers may not have been breaking the tournament scene, summoners certainly dominate certain pools.

Ressers really don't pay more for their models than other factions. And their low Df is generally offset by more wounds/hard to wound, not summoning.

I think this is a pretty great change.

[WWHSD]

Not all of the Strategies are anti-summoner with the new rules. There's 1 that I'd consider bad for summoners, 1 that's good for them, and the remaining three aren't really stacked for or against them too much either way.

Ours - Probably a bad strat for summoners. I think this one is interesting because it may reward you for bringing a tough 10-12 model that will be able to hold a quadrant by himself unless his opponent commits considerable resources to taking the quadrant.

Ply For Information - This one is a wash for summoners. Without the new "summons are peons for strats" rules this would have been dominated by spammed summoned minions. Having activation control and having bodies to run schemes and hunt down enemies with the Enemy Secrets condition while playing conseratively with your own models with the condition seems like it will make up for summons not being able to get the condition for themselves.

Public Execution - Summoners have the advantage here. Summoned models can be used to generate, collect, and defend markers without having to risk giving up tokens to your opponent.

Symbols of Authority - Maybe a slight disadvantage for summoners but one that can probably be powered through by winning activation control. The summoned models can't interact to remove the markers on your opponent's side but they be used to defend the ones on your side and to clear defending enemies away from the markers so that your models that can interact are able to do so.

Put Out A Hit - Peon status doesn't make a difference in this one.

[Paddywhack]

1 hour ago, Lalochezia said:

I think it's a good direction.

Summoning a model onto the table gets you extra activations and extra AP without having to pay for that at the start of the game. This is generally balanced against in-game cost (AP from the summoner itself, cards, wounds, etc) with the assumption that the summoned model won't be in play the whole game. In other words, a model summoned on turn 4 can only see two turns of play, where as a model purchased can potentially see the whole game.

But if a model drops into play and is suddenly scoring you victory points, it's easily as valuable as any model purchased at the start of the game, while having been paid for with only a few cards/AP.

While ressers may not have been breaking the tournament scene, summoners certainly dominate certain pools.

Ressers really don't pay more for their models than other factions. And their low Df is generally offset by more wounds/hard to wound, not summoning.

I think this is a pretty great change.

There's quite a large discussion in the other forum that tends to disagree. I would disagree that our models are the same as many other factions. I look at what some other factions get for SS cost and then look at resurrs and go....heh... The summon tax is most definitely a thing we pay for our models. 

I'm not saying this is going to totally break things (yet), but there are some major concerns with this sweeping of a change to a core mechanic for scoring without any change to the base mechanic (summoning). Yes, it's 'only' Strats, but that is 40% of the total VP in a game. I'm not sure dominating in one Strat (Interference) was really a call to jump straight to this.

I do think this might be some 'playtesting' for M2.5/3 and how they might try and tone down summoning in general, but I think it might be too soon. 

[Paddywhack]

1 hour ago, WWHSD said:

Ply For Information - This one is a wash for summoners. Without the new "summons are peons for strats" rules this would have been dominated by spammed summoned minions. Having activatiln models and having bodies to run schemes and hunt down enemies with the Enemy Secrets condition while playing conseratively with your own models with the condition seems like it will make up for summons not being able to get the condition for themselves.

You should not take a summoner for this strat. Your summons can be Plied for info, but cannot score it themselves. Similar to headhunter, but worse, every summons you bring in gives your opponent another opportunity to Ply. Definitely a disadvantage for summoners that rely on being able to summon. 

And this is coming from a player that plays Nicodem without Mortimer or the Emissary. I Never play the corpse engine, but I understand that summoning is a core mechanic of how Nicodem was designed. Yes, he can buff and heal, but that is not why you want to play Nicodem. You play him so you can summon Undead. And all of our Undead models have to be tested to balance with that in mind (including paying a bit more sometimes).

[Goret]

I had people complain about my Nicodem play and the summoning. Apparently the fact that Nicodem didn't kill a single model but needed 7 ss to start the game and Mortimer costed 12ss with his upgrades to be sitting next to Nico and produce corpse markers, doesn't count.

 

[WWHSD]

11 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

You should not take a summoner for this strat. Your summons can be Plied for info, but cannot score it themselves. Similar to headhunter, but worse, every summons you bring in gives your opponent another opportunity to Ply. Definitely a disadvantage for summoners that rely on being able to summon. 

And this is coming from a player that plays Nicodem without Mortimer or the Emissary. I Never play the summon engine, but I understand that it is a core mechanic of how Nicodem is meant to function. 

Ply doesn't score until the end of the game and there's no limit to the number of enemy models that can get the condition from a single model of yours. 

To score all points off of Ply you need to keep four models alive until the end of the game that all have the condition. If there's an interact heavy scheme pool you don't want to get the condition on too many of you models too soon.

Summoners are going to tend to have a higher model count. They'll be more able to afford to grab the condition on a handful of models early on and then just turtle up while their summons go run schemes and hunt down enemy models with the condition.

[Justin]

1 hour ago, Paddywhack said:

There's quite a large discussion in the other forum that tends to disagree. I would disagree that our models are the same as many other factions. I look at what some other factions get for SS cost and then look at resurrs and go....heh... The summon tax is most definitely a thing we pay for our models. 

I'm not saying this is going to totally break things (yet), but there are some major concerns with this sweeping of a change to a core mechanic for scoring without any change to the base mechanic (summoning). Yes, it's 'only' Strats, but that is 40% of the total VP in a game. I'm not sure dominating in one Strat (Interference) was really a call to jump straight to this.

I do think this might be some 'playtesting' for M2.5/3 and how they might try and tone down summoning in general, but I think it might be too soon. 

I'm not sure what other forum you mean. But those people are free to be incorrect.

Sounds like a 'grass is greener' situation to me. *shrug*

Either way, testing it is certainly the way to go! I could be wrong. Cool to see new GG stuff now, either way.

[(Keenan)]

So summons turn into deniers instead of scorers.  It's a change, yes, but isn't that part of war gaming? Adapt and survive?  I think for some summoners (maybe not all, maybe not any rezzers) it means making other upgrades or play styles viable.

[hydranixx]

2 hours ago, (Keenan) said:

So summons turn into deniers instead of scorers.  It's a change, yes, but isn't that part of war gaming? Adapt and survive?

I don't think things are quite as simple as that. Our minion roster is littered with specialised and awkward models, overpriced to hire but excellent to summon... excellent provided they can earn us VP, that is.

If we can score most strategy based-VP only with hired models, this substantially weakens the value of our summons, which lie at the core of our faction.

[DrunkenAussie]

Models are still AP and Activation control wins games. Summons not Counting isnt a huge deal. If its really a concern for people take a different master. Reva and Tara come to mind. Either way all Summoners have non summoning abilities which people seem to forget. Playing the same way for all games gets stale quickly. Its only going to show up 1in4 times anyway. People need to chill out about it until stuff has been play tested. Unless people can read Aarons mind ob what will change it pointless worrying about it

[Ludvig]

1 hour ago, hydranixx said:

I don't think things are quite as simple as that. Our minion roster is littered with specialised and awkward models, overpriced to hire but excellent to summon... excellent provided they can earn us VP, that is.

If we can score most strategy based-VP only with hired models, this substantially weakens the value of our summons, which lie at the core of our faction.

Necropunks are hardly awkwardly specialised and overprised in my book. They score any scheme really well. The specialised models are usually killers and they will still kill shit, you will probably just need to think a little differently at the hire step and with what you summon or play summoners in fewer games kinda like gg-17 made kill-focused masters less popular than summoners/supporters because frame was so common.

[DrunkenAussie]

2 hours ago, hydranixx said:

I don't think things are quite as simple as that. Our minion roster is littered with specialised and awkward models, overpriced to hire but excellent to summon... excellent provided they can earn us VP, that is.

If we can score most strategy based-VP only with hired models, this substantially weakens the value of our summons, which lie at the core of our faction.

With that logic taking beaters in a scheme based game weakens their value as they contribute little to the scoring of VPs?

 

[thatlatinspeakingguy]

I fully support the change. It will encourage people who play nico and kirai to think outside the box, which is perfectly fine for me.

[Paddywhack]

10 hours ago, DrunkenAussie said:

Models are still AP and Activation control wins games. Summons not Counting isnt a huge deal. If its really a concern for people take a different master. Reva and Tara come to mind. Either way all Summoners have non summoning abilities which people seem to forget. Playing the same way for all games gets stale quickly. Its only going to show up 1in4 times anyway. People need to chill out about it until stuff has been play tested. Unless people can read Aarons mind ob what will change it pointless worrying about it

Because that's a great way to design games? 'Here, we're going to make this overarching change to how most of your faction plays, but hey, you can just change and play one of these two master so its OK.'? 

I'm curious to see how it goes over play testing, but there are a lot of other consequences as discussed in the below topic. I do think that this will hurt Resurrs a bit for the year. It might hit other Masters in some factions just as hard, but it has an overall effect on Resurrs as summoning is built into the faction. I'm not saying that summoning might not need a change, but that is something that really has to happen in a M2.5 or M3 edition to make sure it is properly handled across the board and factions/masters can be redesigned. 

 

 

[Nutella]

meh, All this change says to me is to take a larger starting model count and summon in the more murderous models. Kind of compounds the activation / AP problem people are complaining about though..

[Gnomezilla]

I think @Paddywhack hit the nail on the head, saying that this is a test of future summoning and not so much meant for next year. (Who knows? Maybe it will end up as summoned models can't score for XYZ but, unlike now, can immediately interact, and summoned models will be dedicated marker droppers.)

I am certainly going to be 'double scoring' summoning matches for awhile though, with VP tabulated as if I had the restriction and also if I did not, to see what a difference it makes.

7 minutes ago, Nutella said:

meh, All this change says to me is to take a larger starting model count and summon in the more murderous models. Kind of compounds the activation / AP problem people are complaining about though..

I played into Molly at a tournament not long ago and that's exactly what the player did, a swarm of hired crooligans into Interference. I'm sorry to note that it worked, and that against a crew which was better specialized to clear out multiple chaff per AP than most (I had Ryle and the Brutal Emissary with automatic triggers to keep firing at new targets).

[PirateCaptain]

6 hours ago, Gnomezilla said:

I am certainly going to be 'double scoring' summoning matches for awhile though, with VP tabulated as if I had the restriction and also if I did not, to see what a difference it makes.

I love this, this is exactly what people should be doing, testing it and posting reports for Aaron and the design team to see.  I am definitely stealing this idea for play test games.

I think if a bunch of people wrote up reports this way the data would be insanely helpful.

[hydranixx]

16 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Necropunks are hardly awkwardly specialised and overprised in my book. They score any scheme really well. The specialised models are usually killers and they will still kill shit, you will probably just need to think a little differently at the hire step and with what you summon or play summoners in fewer games kinda like gg-17 made kill-focused masters less popular than summoners/supporters because frame was so common.

You're correct, many people hire Necropunks now and will continue to hire them, partially because only one master can summon them and partially because they're just overall great models.

I'm not talking about only one of our minions though - an independent scheme running model that everyone agrees is fast, equally capable of doing strats and schemes, and that is already happily hired even out of faction minion, at that.

I'm talking about our genuinely awkard, not-so-great to hire models, for example The Drowned.

The Drowned is a 6ss model with Wk4 with stat5 attacks. 6ss for Wk4! It has no abilities to help it accomplish schemes or do strategies outside of Finish the Job, and it's attacks are not accurate so it isn't doing anything helpful there. 

This is a model that is never worth hiring since it is prohibitively slow and their niche in Ressers is so small it's forgettable. They see occasional play with Jack Daw, but that's another story completely. No other master would pay so much for so little, but it is priced the way it is due to what it can sometimes provide in summoning.

It is summoned generally for two reasons in Ressers - summoning in with Molly to instantly die if you want an expensive, long ranged Scheme Marker. Or summoning directly into a group of models (where it's sole defensive ability actually does something) to try contest objectives. These cover 95% of reasons why you'd ever bother with this model; the other 5% belonging to people who somehow convinced themselves that their synergy with Hazardous Terrain is worth something. The proposed change to summoning would render this model obsolete outside of Molly's scheme marker option. At that point, should I even bother owning this model, or is it ok if I just announce that I'm summoning The Drowned, use a 30mm place holder within 6" to check where my Corpse and Scheme Markers can go and then move on?

My concern is that a change like this would make a hired Necropunk even more common than it already is, while making a model like The Drowned see even less play than they already do since they wouldn't be able to contest at all.

16 hours ago, DrunkenAussie said:

With that logic taking beaters in a scheme based game weakens their value as they contribute little to the scoring of VPs?

 

Yes. But surprisingly, you can actually cater your beaters to the schemes and strategies just as much as your scheme runners or support models. There's no reason your model can't earn VP just because their attack is good at bashing other models. However, when you take a beater exclusively to beat up models when the pool cares only about raw Interacts and Scheme Markers, then yes, you're handicapping yourself. And you sound like you play Guild

For instance, Izamu is a beater or a beater/tank hybrid, but he also excels at Headhunter and Accusation, and by the sounds of it this new Hold Them Up scheme. If these schemes are present, he becomes very useful so I will consider him a reasonable option even if the rest of the pool is Interact and Scheme Marker VP. If there's only Interact or Scheme Marker based VP available in the pool, I will never hire Izamu.

[Ludvig]

@hydranixx

I don't understand your point at all. You can still summon a drowned to get scheme markers so you could both gain 3vp from the markers it drops as well as potentially deny three of my points from blocking claim jump or some other marker scheme. It is still a signifacant model that blocks schemes.

Besides that you and I both hire 50ss worth of models to stand in quarters, you don't need to spam cheap activations because Philip your card engine is now worth his points in the quarter strategy for instance. The difference is that you then summon somewhere between 20-40 additional soulstones to attack my models and kill them while also completing and denying my schemes. Meanwhile the models you started with play it carefully and go in behind the wave of summons.

Maybe drowned suck but it sounds more like an early wave problem before everyone got really high attack stats. Death marshals are similar but have a lot less defensive capability in both abilities and raw stats, their deal is that they have a cool attack (also at stat 5 btw). Drowned also pay for their hazardous synergy when it then turned out no one is playing with hazardous terrain. Try having about 50% of the center line hazardous and see if they improve slightly.

[Math Mathonwy]

16 hours ago, Gnomezilla said:

I am certainly going to be 'double scoring' summoning matches for awhile though, with VP tabulated as if I had the restriction and also if I did not, to see what a difference it makes.

Not saying that you shouldn't do this but note that a player will play the models very differently based on whether they score or not.

In Quarters Strats  putting three Summoned Belles into the no-scoring zone in the middle to Lure enemy scorers inside is a very different prospect from spreading those Belles out to score with. Calculating the first scenario with non-scoring Summoneds and scoring Summoneds would yield the same result.

[ttsgosadow]

As a long time Nico player I really love these changes. Sure it might make some masters/match-ups less favorable for us. But it changes the game in ways I think is for the best.

Ludvig has a nice motivation why it's more balanced, I will just +1 to that

[mo11usq]

Seems an interesting change. Summoning has always seemed to me to have a net benefit, and I have felt that Resurrs are among the strongest 3 factions - toning things down a jot seems at least worth trying.

Looking at the current UK and US data, Ressurs seem to be a well subscribed faction (UK 3rd, US joint 2nd), with mid to low score averages (UK 6th, US 4th. Come on UK boys and girls, time to pull our socks up!). Hard to interpret meaningfully, (a median to mitigate skew would be useful), but my sense is that resurrs have a wide dynamic skill range (low skill floor, high skill ceiling) meaning that new or non-main faction players may struggle a little more on balance, whilst the faction may have a slight edge in the hands of a good player. Seems to fit for the UK scene anyway, where 2 of our current top 6 players are Resurrs (and we could add a 3rd if going by all time faction play). Always hard to disentangle player skill from faction power though.

All in all the current playing field seems pretty level with impressively little difference between lowest and highest performing faction (UK delta 7.99 score points, US delta 11.83 score points). Compare this with Guild Ball, a great game lauded for its balance (delta of 18 rank points - guessing these units are most appropriate to compare with Malifaux data, could be wrong). Therefore, although my impression from personal experience is that Resurrs are slightly above average in power, the broader data appears to show they perform at pretty much an aggregate mid level, in a game where variation in power between factions is minor to a point where we might say differences don't really matter.  

I guess I can sympathise with the idea that Resurrs don't need a de-buff, although think its worth bearing in mind that we aren't the only faction that extensively uses summoning, and therefore aren't being penalized alone. 

My main concern about the change is how frickin hard it is going to be to keep track of which models are eligible to score which points! Seriously, I know I'm going to mess that up in important ways.

[Daysleeper]

26 minutes ago, mo11usq said:

...
My main concern about the change is how frickin hard it is going to be to keep track of which models are eligible to score which points! Seriously, I know I'm going to mess that up in important ways.

Just add one more Type of Marker to your arsenal ... also Startegy Markers, so Yay, more clutter on the board :-D