Gremlins and GG18 - A new hope?!? (current state)

[Flinroz]

41 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

@Flinroz

A player with some experiebce against Brewmaster ajould surely be avle to cope. Fight the good fight until everyone has woken up with a hangover and adjust their play to face him!

If you can break gremlins you can probably break any other faction and feel you have to police yourself there. Switching up factions is fun though, wish I'd done it a lot sooner.

Shh, let me justify putting all this other plastic on the table.

[edopersichetti]

5 hours ago, PolishSausage said:

I honestly think that due to large model availability we are running into problematic combos, usually its very "master thematic" models being used in other crews.

I know combo's are all good an nice but do we really need to give viks/misaki 4 abom -> to deso engine and 4 cards? It is starting to feel like rat engine activation control in a non-hemlin list.

 

Also do all outcast masters need access to void wretches? With cheap desperate mercs that are now a faction staple we do not need some of the more "wankier" combos out there.

At this point its starting to feel we need to restrict certain theme models to master only hiring in order to prevent current and future abuse.

Simply put, the game is bloating (and we all knew that) and the more models come out, the harder it is to balance the whole ecosystem. Indeed, I also noticed that most of the times the crazy gimmick combos happen when certain models are used in other crews from the original one, even worse, sometimes mercenaries!

Look at McTavish being constantly played out of faction...just why?! Thematically makes little sense to me, in the end it became such a problem he had to go up 1SS.

McMourning with Forgotten Marshal, Malifaux Raptor (Arcanists) and 2 Grootslang (Neverborn) is just silly. Really, how on earth is a crew such as this even legal?!

Glowy Lazarus + Bloodwretch + Sparks in a Wong crew...is like...what the hell? Who even thought of that??! As a Gremlin player, I'm like, how did you even come up with that idea?

I could go on forever  
Unfortunately, I think restricting models is exactly the opposite of what Wyrd is trying to do (more and more out-of-faction hiring seems to be the thing now).

[edopersichetti]

4 hours ago, Flinroz said:

No worries. That was the point I was making as well. I really was just seeing if the gimmick would fall on it's face immediately out of the gate.

The idea to not play gimmicks is interesting. I think we can all see that the tanuki-pault is a gimmick, but where do you start calling synergies gimmicks. As it stands at the moment I'd personally rather just play a different faction where I don't have to self-police my lists. Just what I'm feeling about gremlins ATM 

Very true, and this is the problem. If you like Brewmaster then you are kinda in a sticky situation. You either play him like he is supposed to be played, and make things un-fun, or just don't play the master you find fun. I personally don't see a solution to this problem, haha.

The answer for me personally is to take a break from Brewmaster, and just play other things that are more fun for both sides. 

I agree that it's hard to draw a line, some of the lists I play could be considered kind of gimmicky too I guess...

[daniello_s]

5 hours ago, edopersichetti said:

Simply put, the game is bloating (and we all knew that) and the more models come out, the harder it is to balance the whole ecosystem. Indeed, I also noticed that most of the times the crazy gimmick combos happen when certain models are used in other crews from the original one, even worse, sometimes mercenaries!

Look at McTavish being constantly played out of faction...just why?! Thematically makes little sense to me, in the end it became such a problem he had to go up 1SS.

McMourning with Forgotten Marshal, Malifaux Raptor (Arcanists) and 2 Grootslang (Neverborn) is just silly. Really, how on earth is a crew such as this even legal?!

Glowy Lazarus + Bloodwretch + Sparks in a Wong crew...is like...what the hell? Who even thought of that??! As a Gremlin player, I'm like, how did you even come up with that idea?

I could go on forever  
Unfortunately, I think restricting models is exactly the opposite of what Wyrd is trying to do (more and more out-of-faction hiring seems to be the thing now).

It is a good way to sell, say Resser player models he wouldn't need otherwise (Raptor, Grootslang). Excellent tactic from marketing point of you.

I also agree that we start to have too many models but I don't think this will end here

[I'm a Teapot!]

19 hours ago, edopersichetti said:

 

@I'm a Teapot! the fact that other factions have their own "filthy" combos should not justify Gremlins following suit, but rather the opposite, it should hopefully lead to said combos to be addressed as well (see Papa in a Box, for instance).

p.s. I also play Neverborn and Arcanists, so I do have quite a few different perspectives
p.p.s. last time I saw Ironsides appear in the middle of my crew Turn 2 (together with Joss), I won the game 9-3
p.p.p.s. that combo with Oxfordian mages + Captain pushing like there's no tomorrow is nevertheless quite bonkers

From my perspective playing combos can be the main part of what I and others I know find to be fun in malifaux. There is no need to fix such things as long as they are clever and well prepared in my opinion. Whenever I fall victim to a cool combo I really enjoy the game and try to think about how I could use it in my crews and how it can score in gg18. For me it's super fun to see a new combo in action and then trying to adapt to it and find a solution.

The things that need fixes are the most boring things in malifaux in my opinion. 

I enjoy the games vs those combos ten times more than the games vs Hamelin or Ramos or whatever activation list that basicly just does one thing over and over again just because its incredibly powerfull from a resource gaining perspective. 

Hamelin, Nicodem, Kirai, Somer, etc have been the most boring npe games by far, because it doesnt feel like 2 players are playing the game, it feels like the summoner is playing a minigame with himself. Thank god this was, to a degree fixed by ours and ply. (Which tends to be 1/2 of 3/4/5 rounds in a tournament)

 

PS: I use Anna Lovelace and a Malifaux Raptor to deliver Ironsides and Joss and it has been really nice so far.

 

[SAYNE]

Not sure I agree that summoners are now and boring per se. After all summoning is what summoners DO, so I don't think that summoning by itself needs fixing. It's usually the unintended endless resources part that needs addressing. If Nico could summon but then not have a hand, He'd have to carefully decide when to summon. Hamelins has so many methods of activation control etc, but it was the fact it took almost no SS at all to do, there was no trade-off. Somer does need a degree of set-up, and he only really summons bayous (and skeeters and piglets on melees), so arguably nothing he is summoning is worth THAT much. He just floods the board. 

They all have pros and cons, but it's the combos they've acquired that actually allow them to feel broken and not the summoning itself. 

Combos are the same. It's usually a mixed bag of cool and fun versus stifling and oppressive. Sometimes it's fun, getting to see a list that works really well together, but it's usually only fun if there's a chance that it can be beaten. Certain combos are designed to not allow true retaliation if it goes off, but if it doesn't it tends to fall apart. In which case they simply concede and try next time. That to me is boring and leads to people quitting. Sometimes if it's just a powerful list (but thematic) people are more willing to try to find a way around it and experiment. If it's really all over the place, it feels like min/max netbuilding instead. 

I guess it's hard to convey why certain combos feel out of place and others just feel natural I suppose.

[Wildcard626]

I've just had my first 2 ranked tournaments and in the 1st i dabbled with certain combos and tactics that I'd read here and their but ended up coming last and didn't really have any fun  Was kind of out of my comfort zone of how i usually play but so wanted to do well but got slaughtered with all the mistakes i was making trying to get certain combos and synergies off . So 2nd tournament that i didn't want to really do at the time after coming last in the one before (wooden spoon) i just went with my gut instincts and took lists like l normally play i tried wong for the 2nd time and took zip and ulix to mix it up a little as love the non slow pigs ulix summons and i came 2nd won all 3 matches and had a great time doing so .I would say gg18 and running gremlins is harder in some scenarios depending on what schemes you draw but still achievable and will leave the combo stuff to my opponents from now on 

[Adran]

15 minutes ago, Wildcard626 said:

I've just had my first 2 ranked tournaments and in the 1st i dabbled with certain combos and tactics that I'd read here and their but ended up coming last and didn't really have any fun  Was kind of out of my comfort zone of how i usually play but so wanted to do well but got slaughtered with all the mistakes i was making trying to get certain combos and synergies off . So 2nd tournament that i didn't want to really do at the time after coming last in the one before (wooden spoon) i just went with my gut instincts and took lists like l normally play i tried wong for the 2nd time and took zip and ulix to mix it up a little as love the non slow pigs ulix summons and i came 2nd won all 3 matches and had a great time doing so .I would say gg18 and running gremlins is harder in some scenarios depending on what schemes you draw but still achievable and will leave the combo stuff to my opponents from now on 

This is an important lesson to learn. So much of the malifaux game is based on making the right choices at the right time, just using the "net lists" does not always work, if you eitehr don't understand what they need you to do, or they just don't work with your play style. Well done on the results