Tuning down Red Joker on damage

[Adran]

13 hours ago, mojopin said:

Hi, I've been sharing this opinion with some local players. Red joker is fine with value 14, and not allowing the enemy cheating when fliped, wild suit and taking it even with negative flips BUT...

we find that severe AND weak damage is too much for a random blow for an encounter. Fliping black joker most of times will lead to lose your AP or taking a hit but red joker on damage means a lot in AP eficiency because you are gonna deal a lot of damage that otherwise would require a lot of AP´s hitting and dealing more than weak damage.

What do you think of leaving it as it is but doing just regular severe damage?

Why do you find the damage is the problem and not the No cheating?

I've literally lost games because my Ml 7 wicked model with high cards in hand could not stop a Df 1 model on 1 wound disengaging. I've also lost games when I've saved the critical card in hand to complete something important (such as pass a terror test with my master) and then not been able to cheat it. 

The damage flip doing severe +weak itself isn't the issue. Ramos or Levi Red jokering their damage get the best increase by gettign to the severe ratehr than getting their weak of 1 added. If you remove the Red Joker damage bonus, then it becomes a much weaker card in your hand,  because its then just the 14 of the suit you want. Teh fact that you get to chose when to use it, and potentially play to get a cheatable damage flip with it probably makes up for you not beign allowed to use it on a negative flip, that flipping it from the deck allows.  

Wild swing outcomes based on joker flips are partially a player choice. If you have a critical flip with no redundancy, then you are leaving that open to luck. 

I make my in game choices based on the current rules, and so know I have to allow for the Red and black joker. I personally really enjoy that knowing that when those cards show up they can save a model that was otherwise dead, or kill a model that should have survived. When we play, its fairly common for us to go through our whole decks each turn, and occasionally more than once, so I "know" I'm likely to see those Luck swings. And most of my memories are joker related. I remember the gremlin that Black jokered both attacks against Bad Juju, but because Bad juju also black jokered a df flip he still died. 

Personally I don't find the Jokers a problem. They are a degree of randomness, but they aren't the only degree of randomness (The player that draws the better hand is probably going to have a better turn, should we just have a fixed hand each turn? Maybe allow us 45 points of cards,  and fixing a suit to a card costs 3 points). Weakening Jokers effect on the game would be disappointing. I'd probably rather you just removed them and played with a 52 card deck. It makes the numbers easier to calculate. 

 

 

[mojopin]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

Why do you find the damage is the problem and not the No cheating?

I've literally lost games because my Ml 7 wicked model with high cards in hand could not stop a Df 1 model on 1 wound disengaging. I've also lost games when I've saved the critical card in hand to complete something important (such as pass a terror test with my master) and then not been able to cheat it. 

The damage flip doing severe +weak itself isn't the issue. Ramos or Levi Red jokering their damage get the best increase by gettign to the severe ratehr than getting their weak of 1 added. If you remove the Red Joker damage bonus, then it becomes a much weaker card in your hand,  because its then just the 14 of the suit you want. Teh fact that you get to chose when to use it, and potentially play to get a cheatable damage flip with it probably makes up for you not beign allowed to use it on a negative flip, that flipping it from the deck allows.  

Wild swing outcomes based on joker flips are partially a player choice. If you have a critical flip with no redundancy, then you are leaving that open to luck. 

I make my in game choices based on the current rules, and so know I have to allow for the Red and black joker. I personally really enjoy that knowing that when those cards show up they can save a model that was otherwise dead, or kill a model that should have survived. When we play, its fairly common for us to go through our whole decks each turn, and occasionally more than once, so I "know" I'm likely to see those Luck swings. And most of my memories are joker related. I remember the gremlin that Black jokered both attacks against Bad Juju, but because Bad juju also black jokered a df flip he still died. 

Personally I don't find the Jokers a problem. They are a degree of randomness, but they aren't the only degree of randomness (The player that draws the better hand is probably going to have a better turn, should we just have a fixed hand each turn? Maybe allow us 45 points of cards,  and fixing a suit to a card costs 3 points). Weakening Jokers effect on the game would be disappointing. I'd probably rather you just removed them and played with a 52 card deck. It makes the numbers easier to calculate. 

 

 

Im ok with all other aspects of jokers, i would be playing chess otherwise but I guess its because an specific meta I usually face which is Extremely agressive with my models being hunted from turn 1. I dont mind losing an autopsy or a belle to a red joker, losing masters/henchmans at the begining of turn 2 to a jumping cerberus or imbuyed flurring howard flipping RJ is a different thing I dont enjoy despite the randomness of it. 

 

[Adran]

2 hours ago, mojopin said:

Im ok with all other aspects of jokers, i would be playing chess otherwise but I guess its because an specific meta I usually face which is Extremely agressive with my models being hunted from turn 1. I dont mind losing an autopsy or a belle to a red joker, losing masters/henchmans at the begining of turn 2 to a jumping cerberus or imbuyed flurring howard flipping RJ is a different thing I dont enjoy despite the randomness of it. 

 

Have you deliberately picked 2 occurrences that are relatively likely to happen without the red joker anyway? 

I know when I send my Cerberus in on turn 2 its because I think it is going to have a good chance of killing its target without a lucky red joker flip. Even if I have the red joker in hand I am more likely to want to use it as a tome for the maul trigger than as an extra weak damage flip most of the time. (or the decapitate trigger for Howard)

 

[mojopin]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

Have you deliberately picked 2 occurrences that are relatively likely to happen without the red joker anyway? 

I know when I send my Cerberus in on turn 2 its because I think it is going to have a good chance of killing its target without a lucky red joker flip. Even if I have the red joker in hand I am more likely to want to use it as a tome for the maul trigger than as an extra weak damage flip most of the time. 

 

well, the thing is that in an enviroment where saving you key piece depends on resisting one or two attacks more and you stone to give a negative flip and/or cheat that high card just to force de minus flip, FLIPING a random unexpected red joker doesnt add just the weak damage to the outcome, what it grants most of times is an additional severe which I think is too much. But well maybe being in this end of the beater is what gives that perspective.

[WWHSD]

17 hours ago, Azkral said:

Flipping a Black Joker in an Horror Duel or against some attacks leave you in a very sad position too.

Ramos flipping a Black Joker on his first round spider summoning is something he may never be able to recover from. That seems way worse than taking an extra 1-3 points of damage from a Red Joker flip.

[Nikodemus]

10 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

Ramos flipping a Black Joker on his first round spider summoning is something he may never be able to recover from. That seems way worse than taking an extra 1-3 points of damage from a Red Joker flip.

I've had Marcus black joker his (2)AP Alpha once. Misaki did the same on her terrify test when she only needed to flip a 4.

Needless to say, I'd hate it if the game got rid of jokers in their current form.

[Adran]

26 minutes ago, mojopin said:

well, the thing is that in an enviroment where saving you key piece depends on resisting one or two attacks more and you stone to give a negative flip and/or cheat that high card just to force de minus flip, FLIPING a random unexpected red joker doesnt add just the weak damage to the outcome, what it grants most of times is an additional severe which I think is too much. But well maybe being in this end of the beater is what gives that perspective.

But that's not what you said yu wanted to change. You said you were happy with the always select, it was the adding of weak you thought was too strong. 

I'm thinking that "always selecting it and it doing only severe"  actually will cause more damage than it"doing severe and weak but not selected on negative flips". 

 

 

[SurreyLee]

I like the element of randomness it adds to the game. It's not a lot, but it's there. It represents the unexpected. The anything could happen at any given time. The swings are also occasionally quite extreme, but it does happen. It severely hampered one game where Levi, having hit hit trigger for ABOMS 4 times to only flip the BJ each and every time...did it ruin my game....yes, okay it did, but it's given me a great story to bore the jeepers out of people with. I'll honestly never forget that. 

I've also cheated down to get more negatives to increase my chances of a RJ which has worked. Golden. 

I've also sat and said to my oppo, who is just about to finish off a key model and a key time "only the BJ will ruin your day right now" to see the BJ flipped. It sucks, of course, but it's great thematically. 

I think the jokers work perfectly as they are and would oppose any change to their current function. 

[mojopin]

Just now, Adran said:

But that's not what you said yu wanted to change. You said you were happy with the always select, it was the adding of weak you thought was too strong. 

I'm thinking that "always selecting it and it doing only severe"  actually will cause more damage than it"doing severe and weak but not selected on negative flips". 

 

 

hmmm you're right Adran, I think both options would do.But I feel like taking out the always selecting would be antifluffwise (im not supersure about this word XD) so I would stick to the other one.

Negative flips are way more common so red joker "ruins" them more frecuently than black jokers ruin positive flips. A black joker on damage wastes 1AP but fliping that red joker on damage gives a very big bonus. I feel like they are not simmetric in that matter.

Please forgive any dictionary punching

[Adran]

1 minute ago, mojopin said:

Negative flips are way more common so red joker "ruins" them more frecuently than black jokers ruin positive flips. A black joker on damage wastes 1AP but fliping that red joker on damage gives a very big bonus. I feel like they are not simmetric in that matter.

But the red joker on damage doesn't do as much as a Black joker on damage. 

In that you were already doing damage, you just do a bit more. Going from doing damage to not doing damage is a bigger step. Sometimes anyway. If you are on 1 wound, then the black joker has has a bigger effect than a red joker.

The argument that black only costs you 1 Ap is as valid as the argument that red only gains you 1 Ap. After all if you made 2 attacks against the model you could do 2 lots of severe, so actually doing more damage than the red gave you. (sure you might have missed. But you also may have spent other resources on hitting in the first place that the black cost you) there are lots of after damaging triggers that are the reasons I've put so much effort into that attack. 

Looking at your earlier complaints, you are looking at big hitters who probably have quite a high severe, say 6 (handy for the cerberus and howard mentioned earlier). A large numberof models die to the severe damage outright. Most of the time those models are getting 2 or 3 hits on you so they are probably gettign your higher wounded models to those health levels already. So its a very rare number of occasions when red joker damage actually makes a difference. Its just those occasions are often the death of a significant figure so they stick in the mind more. 

[(Keenan)]

I feel the need to clarify something because after my post stating that I don't think either joker needs to be tuned down, several people jumped in about competitive crowd and power gamers.  That isn't me.  I haven't played in a tournament since 1st edition and even then I was a casual player.  And if you want to play with house rules I'm all for that too.  I just wouldn't be playing that game with you because I think the RJ & BJ are fun the way they are.

[Thottbot]

12 hours ago, Bengt said:

I've never thought that Red Joker damage was all that amazing in the general case. Sure, it's noticeable for models like Howard or Nekima, but a lot of the time it's just 1 or 2 damage over severe.

Confirmation bias makes it easier to remember Howard getting a red, so I guess that can make people upset.

i had a game where the enemy ice golem hit my master, i managed to give it minus 3 flips, and it casually got a red joker on the 9/10/12 damage flip and instakilled a master

 

[Je ne c'est LaCroix]

I've introduced a bunch of people to the game (both gamers and non-gamers) and they've all come back for more. And the majority of discussions, excitement and hilarity about last night's game revolve around the dastardly deeds of the Jokers. And it's fun. And sometimes that Joker story can be regaled a month later, even though 10 games and countless other jokers have passed.

Jokers - both red and black, provide hope. Hope that your almost mortally wounded stoneless henchman at the bottom of the last turn can hold out just one more time. Hope that your tiny piglet can push that huge drooling Cerberus off the cliff edge before it bacons the place up. 

Remove Jokers and remove hope. And then all you're left with is eBay.

[Mason]

Richard Garfield (the guy that invented M:tG and some other great games) has given a couple very interesting speeches on luck in games. They are absolutely worth checking out, but the part relevant to this discussion is that he posits that as a game goes on, the skill level of players increase, which creates a drive to reduce luck. You can see this drive in lots of video games as well, and he even goes on to talk about Team Fortress 2 and how it changed to accommodate that change in the player base's desires.

Not weighing in one way or another, just pointing out some interesting speeches which might shed some light on the discussion.

[Hatter]

On 9/6/2017 at 2:02 PM, Azkral said:

I think a bad timed Black Joker is always worse than losing a key model.

So much this.  I had plus flips on a horror duel.  First card would have passed, but the second was the black joker.  Lilith paralyzed on her first AP.  Not the only mistake I made that game, but it nicely wiped away any chance I had of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

[santaclaws01]

1 hour ago, Hatter said:

So much this.  I had plus flips on a horror duel.  First card would have passed, but the second was the black joker.  Lilith paralyzed on her first AP.  Not the only mistake I made that game, but it nicely wiped away any chance I had of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

What model can give Lilith a positive to Wp or Horror duels?

[Nikodemus]

She herself by stoning for a + I imagine.

[the tick]

I'm a huge fan of the Jokers in their current iteration. Even though a Malifaux Raptor dropping the Red Joker on a damage flip to kill an Iron Skeeter was the proximate cause of me snatching a tie from the jaws of victory. Even in a competitive environment I think the Jokers add something, again, in their current state.

[santaclaws01]

59 minutes ago, Nikodemus said:

She herself by stoning for a + I imagine.

Huh... yeah. I guess I've just never been in a position where I would need that.

[Nikodemus]

3 minutes ago, santaclaws01 said:

Huh... yeah. I guess I've just never been in a position where I would need that.

Me neither.

I guess if the game has been rough enough where your best option is to stone to not fail a terror check for wp5 model but that's... Well, you lost long before you stoned for that terror flip.

[santaclaws01]

7 minutes ago, Nikodemus said:

Me neither.

I guess if the game has been rough enough where your best option is to stone to not fail a terror check for wp5 model but that's... Well, you lost long before you stoned for that terror flip.

Eh, I can see it happening without you necessarily being in that bad of a position. Could be end of turn and you have no cards in hand. 

[mojopin]

just to ilustrate, today I have redjokered lazarus in damage in turn one with reva. Vicky has redjockered reva in first chain activation of turn 2 dealing 11 damage and thus evaporating her who had already spent 3 stones for prevention and giving minus flip to damage. havent enjoyed the game very much, at least it was fast.

[Coyotebreaks]

i like it, red jokers should be really awesome to counter how annoying the black ones are. 

[Adran]

15 hours ago, mojopin said:

just to ilustrate, today I have redjokered lazarus in damage in turn one with reva. Vicky has redjockered reva in first chain activation of turn 2 dealing 11 damage and thus evaporating her who had already spent 3 stones for prevention and giving minus flip to damage. havent enjoyed the game very much, at least it was fast.

My point is that the red joker probably didn't matter. A tooled up Vik of Blood/Ash should Kill Reva in 1 chain activation, so the end result was about the same.  Reva is more than capable of Killing Lazarus in one activation without the red joker damage. 

[mojopin]

45 minutes ago, Adran said:

My point is that the red joker probably didn't matter. A tooled up Vik of Blood/Ash should Kill Reva in 1 chain activation, so the end result was about the same.  Reva is more than capable of Killing Lazarus in one activation without the red joker damage. 

I was hoping to stone prevent about 6 damage with reva and survive. Against lazarus I only had two AP's available as I had to walk once, so red joker did matter both times and both times showed up with negative flips to damage. Maybe its the enviroment I face with loads of heavy hitters with high dmg spread. My point is that red joker doing only severe might have left reva with a chance of surviving; 5+8+5-6 prevention= 12 wounds.

 I dont mean of course that it happens all the time, but when it happens it changes games in a way im not very confortable with but its a matter of taste I guess.