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The death of dual faction


izikial

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So is the two faction master concept dieing out? The stories have moved alot of two faction master very heavaly to one faction. Is it possible the fabled m3e will remove the majority of two faction masters.

I enjoy the flexability but i can see from a design stand point it would be so much easyer to design with less angles in play

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They could just let the stories and rules drift apart. It's already quite impossible for the guild to not know about McMourning when I play my mates with him each week so it already makes no sense. 

Some dual faction stuff has been in the game since 1st edition (Ramos and hoffman sharing a model pool). I would assume the faction crossover drives sales, the guild dual faction masters are responsible for me starting several other factions. There would also be a risk of pretty major backlash if large amounts of models became unplayable with a master that used to be able to take them.

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I think I agree with ludvig that it's more likely that the story and the rules will begin to have some drift involved in them.  I have a difficult time imagining that they'd be able to codify such a change without potentially making hiring even more convoluted than it can already be with some masters.  Besides, in the case of masters like McMourning, I can still see ways that he could manage to 'lead' a Guild crew even with the revelations as all he'd have to do is find some Guild members scared enough of him or ignorant enough of what's going on in Malifaux City to weasel his way into a 'crew' that he doesn't give a whit about lol.

Same's true for masters like Zoraida or Lucius who seem to have seen some of their cross-faction influence wane.  All it takes is them pulling from their 'second' faction outliers or finding groups that are still loyal to them out of fear.

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I think that it's a good idea to consider the Malifaux games that we play as "what-if type scenarios" and possibly historical ones at that. I mean, it isn't canonical that McMourning with Judge and Jury and Burt faced off against The Dreamer with Nekima and Vasilisa and Hannah over the position of some supply wagons in the Bayou while both were trying to set up the other side for murder and also with explosives. So the game is more about "what if such a thing happened?" In that framework you can easily have dual class Masters even after the events in the fluff.

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52 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

The problem with that line of thinking is then why even have factions? If I want to use Nekima and the Widow Weaver with Sandeep why can't I?

Trying to somewhat control which combos exist is probably part of the reason for factions I would assume. Probably some semblanc of unity in fluff as well even if that was pretty thinly stretched already even in m 1 for many factions. Playesting every concievable combo seems pretty much impossible these days which is why I think some people would be happy to see hiring more restricted again. Suggestions of splitting factions has also been brought up by players.

Factions give a semblance of order and a place for people to start. It's nice to have a road map for what to get next by having some hiring guidelines.

In all honesty I think completely free hiring would be doable, it'sjust people's expectations on mini games having armies/teams that hinders it. Not sure the combos would be a lot more broken than in faction combos are today, especially with a slight redesign so more abilities relied on keywords. Pre-made lists would probably be necessary.

It would probably scare away hopeful new players ubless the mastes at least gave some guidelines and formed troikas of campatability in hires though. People usually don't like jumping in at the deep end that much.

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While I can see some merit in the idea of open hiring as an alternate rule, I would hate to see it become the norm primarily due to what Ludvig says about it making the game appeal less to newcomers (especially newcomers to wargames as a whole).  The game already can be incredibly overwhelming to a new player if they pick up certain Masters as it is (Nicodem, Dreamer, Leveticus, Zoraida) due to their large summoning/hiring pools.

I think the toughest part about removing cross-faction hiring would be that it seems to me that it's what the Ten Thunders Faction is pretty much built around.  While the faction has developed it's own identity with many exclusive models, many of those models are still able to be hired by their respective 'section leader' Master.  I'm not sure what would happen with Ten Thunders if they were to completely eliminate cross-faction hires.

That said, I do feel like there's a lot of potential to clean up hiring pools a bit so that certain masters don't end up potentially skewing the results due to their impact on wide aspects of the game (Leveticus and Zoraida being the main ones that come to mind due to being able to hire either any undead or any construct, or in the case of Zoraida, any model with WP of 4 or less).  Perhaps do another run through of keywords and clean up any that are either too narrowly focused or that could be condensed somewhat to make things easier to check.

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How many of the dual faction masters are effectively "This monster has a hobby"?  (I blame auto-correct for the word choice, even though it's true.  ^_^ )

I think it's just the "I'm a secret agent" dual faction stuff that the story's pretty much trampled over.  That doesn't eliminate the ones that have two different groups of interest.

 

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I suspected you were one of the ones leaning towards more restrictions on hiring. I can get behind that although I am currently enjoying the cross faction masters a lot.

Not sure Marcus would survive as a fun master without his beasts from any faction but the other duals I play could probablyget by fine. Always risky restricting people's choices though, making minis bought unplayable, especially on such a large scale, is not a light decision. 

I could see keywords being more important even when hiring within faction. The henchmen used to have the role of unlocking certain hiring optionswithin faction. I could see the game moving in that direction again. Not sure on the balance aspect of it all.

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I view Infiltration abilities as different from dual Faction, and as such am for some cross faction. I have no issue with Misaki Infiltrating Outcast Last-Blossom into her 10T crew if she was made 10T only. Same with Marcus and his beasts. There is a lot more control over those abilities than a Master having to be balanced for two Faction size hiring pools/upgrades or mercs across all Factions everywhere. side note: screw you and your hiring pool Levi
That being said, I wouldn't be too sad (from a game perspective, would be sad from a hobby one) to see a model shuffle happen and have Faction boundaries go on hard lock down for hiring (and presumably summon?).

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37 minutes ago, solkan said:

I think it's just the "I'm a secret agent" dual faction stuff that the story's pretty much trampled over.  That doesn't eliminate the ones that have two different groups of interest.

So the 10 dual Faction Masters
6x 10T masters, all secret agents more or less
Lucius - secret agent
McMourning - secret agent
Zoriada - a not-so-secret secret agent?
Tara - not a secret agent

at least this is my view on their dual Faction-ness

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On 2018-03-01 at 10:21 PM, Ludvig said:

They could just let the stories and rules drift apart. It's already quite impossible for the guild to not know about McMourning when I play my mates with him each week so it already makes no sense. 

Some dual faction stuff has been in the game since 1st edition (Ramos and hoffman sharing a model pool). I would assume the faction crossover drives sales, the guild dual faction masters are responsible for me starting several other factions. There would also be a risk of pretty major backlash if large amounts of models became unplayable with a master that used to be able to take them.

Although I agree with what you are saying, I really hope that they don't distance the stories and rules from each other too much. My impression is that a lot of the people who play Malifaux really like the background and the world of Malifaux. The background is definately a selling point of Malifaux. But should the background begin to differ too much from the actual game, I think that might backfire. If I was younger and just got into the game with a Master that I really liked and then found out that that master should not be able to lead the crew I got (or a crew at all) according to the background, I would be pretty disappointed.

It will be interesting to see where the rules go after the recent story events, because they are starting to drift away from the background.

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@Mortarion I couldn't agree with you more...whilst following many discussions of rules and errata developments across the forum the one element that attacted me to the game was (1) the models and (2) the stories behind them...I really like the world of Malifaux and look forward to stories in Chronicles as a way of fleshing that world out....if the two no longer relate to each other then what will I be playing ?....although a complete novice the one element of the game that really appeals to both me and my partner is the idea of dual faction and mercenaries 

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17 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

The problem with that line of thinking is then why even have factions? If I want to use Nekima and the Widow Weaver with Sandeep why can't I?

Usually "alt history" is somewhat close to the real history and not a complete fantasy. Similarly I think that Faux games are kinda "alt canon" so not completely divergent into extremely improbable. This would also allow Wyrd to, e.g., kill off characters in the fluff and yet you could continue to use them in games. I believe that Guild Ball has this approach of characters changing, dying or getting mutilated or whatnot yet the models are still allowed to be played. You might get a "veteran" version of the character to represent the changes and you naturally can't play a normal version and a veteran version in the same list but otherwise you are free to build your team in the way you like.

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14 hours ago, 7thSquirrel said:

So the 10 dual Faction Masters
6x 10T masters, all secret agents more or less
Lucius - secret agent
McMourning - secret agent
Zoriada - a not-so-secret secret agent?
Tara - not a secret agent

at least this is my view on their dual Faction-ness

Agreed with maybe Yan Lo being sorta the exception among the TT. Maybe due to the disorganized nature of Ressers but he doesn't feel like such a double agent as the rest.

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