July 2018 Errata

[Clement]

On 7/2/2018 at 9:47 AM, Mason said:

PDF versions of the new cards are attached below, and they will be added to our website's errata page shortly. If you would like physical copies of the changed cards, they will also be available on DriveThruRPG very soon.

Will Amelia Bathory also be getting a card up on DriveThruRPG?

[Mason]

2 minutes ago, Clement said:

Will Amelia Bathory also be getting a card up on DriveThruRPG?

It is my understanding that she will.

[cbtb11235813]

37 minutes ago, Terry Bailey Sr said:

Why do minis companies make armies weaker to fix rules that should have been playtested in the first place.

They should make the other armies better instead.  No one wants to work on a army/crew only to get it they way they want and have it

nerfed. No one minds having their army improved. It is only logical. Why do the companies not first playtest and second when mistakes are

made why not improve the other armies instead. Plus they seem to do this on a yearly basis. Get the game right from the start. Learn from

board game companies. They play test and get it right before release. Even if they don't they fix it in one pass. This is madness. You may argue

that I am upset because I play one of the nerfed masters. Perhaps, but think about it would you like it if it happened to your favorite master.

Think of the industry as a whole. It makes more sense to improve what is weak instead of making what is strong weak.  Think of the time and

planning with all the painting and tweaking put in by players only to have the army/crew cut back. Like I said no one likes going back to the

drawing board after a nerf. But no one minds an improvement to their army/crew.  I already know how this will be responded to. The national

tournament elites will praise the nerf. The casual player that honed his crew will be pushed in the back ground. Asked to be silent. But I felt

compelled to express my opinion. Even though I will be shouted down.

Im sure Wyrd would have love to get everything right the first time. But Malifaux is not a board game, self contained with a very limited number of mechanics to worry about. Instead it is a complex game with what, 700 different stat cards? I'm not sure of the actual number but its a rather large pool of things that have to be compared to and tested against during playtesting. Maybe they dropped the ball with some of the more recently released models, maybe it is the fact that you can't possibly test every single interaction with every other model and rule. Especially when you have an entire community of players specifically looking for the things that slipped through and are above the power curve. So if they can't get it right the first time around (which would be laughably difficult to achieve), what can they do to keep the game as balanced as possible? Regular and well thought out errata. 

As for your claim that they should make everything else in the game better, what seems like the easier method to playtest? Nerf the two masters that are breaking the game, or buff the 20-30+ masters that would need major tweaks to get to a similar level. That seems like a situation where some things would just get out of hand end up being even more broken than the current broken things. Eventually you end up with a system so busted, and every thing so powerful that its no longer fun for either player (looking at you competitive 40k)

[KingCrow]

Speaking of errata's in general, I've wondered why Wyrd doesn't put out specific faction erratas every few months? 

Yes I completely understand that this would take a lot of work but with ToS being released soon, maybe they would have more time freed up? By doing faction erratas, this allows Wyrd to focus on a much smaller pool of models to change while also giving that faction more time to find OP models and changes and such.  I realize this could lead to "flavor of the month" factions like 40K but it honestly might be the easiest way to deal with the massive amount of models that now exist in M2E.

[Gnomezilla]

GG18 open beta—just the open part, not whatever polishing it got before it came back to us, and with dozens of us working on it—took something like three months for eighteen items, so maybe twice a year is the absolute maximum frequency for new stuff as it is. 😕 

@KingCrow for awhile there was a trickle of bimonthly FAQs, but that has slowed down.

[Zebo]

There's 453 different profiles in Malifaux. Boosting 452 every time 1 is over is simply not reasonable. 

[KingCrow]

22 minutes ago, Gnomezilla said:

 

@KingCrow for awhile there was a trickle of bimonthly FAQs, but that has slowed down.

Yea, I've played since the beginning days of M2E and the bi-monthly FAQ's were nice and I realize why they went to an errata every six months but now with nearly 500 models in the game, I would like to see a faction FAQ every 3-4 months.  Like I said, it would allow Wyrd to focus on a much smaller pool of models and masters and tweak them how they felt was needed.  Plus, it would allow them to see how newly released models have impacted the game and thus respond to them in a scheduled fashion.

[Adran]

Terry, if you think board games don't get errata, I've bad news. Lots of them have errata, but if you don't buy the new edition you don't know. From scrabble, rummykub, and monopoly to settlers of catan and game of thrones I've seen changes to the rules. 

You not knowing they have changed is basically the same as you not knowing wyrd have issued an errata. But because of the way miniature games are played its changes are much more widely publicized. 

[Terry Bailey Sr]

4 minutes ago, Adran said:

Terry, if you think board games don't get errata, I've bad news. Lots of them have errata, but if you don't buy the new edition you don't know. From scrabble, rummykub, and monopoly to settlers of catan and game of thrones I've seen changes to the rules. 

You not knowing they have changed is basically the same as you not knowing wyrd have issued an errata. But because of the way miniature games are played its changes are much more widely publicized. 

While I am not versed in miniature gaming as most here, I do know a thing or two about board games. Errata sometimes yes. Even new editions. But not annually for each game like minis games.

Here is my collection if curious. It is only a small collection I know compared to a lot of my friends. But I think it is enough to back up what I am saying.

https://boardgamegeek.com/user/Skyjack

 

Terry Sr.

 

 

[Artiee]

4 minutes ago, Terry Bailey Sr said:

While I am not versed in miniature gaming as most here, I do know a thing or two about board games. Errata sometimes yes. Even new editions. But not annually for each game like minis games.

Here is my collection if curious. It is only a small collection I know compared to a lot of my friends. But I think it is enough to back up what I am saying.

https://boardgamegeek.com/user/Skyjack

Terry Sr.

Board game companies are not releasing new expansions that will effect the base games mechanic's like miniature companies do.  Too many different variables.   Sometimes even in extensive play testing someone may not even see that variable combo that makes the master over powered until it is released. 

[WWHSD]

5 minutes ago, Terry Bailey Sr said:

While I am not versed in miniature gaming as most here, I do know a thing or two about board games. Errata sometimes yes. Even new editions. But not annually for each game like minis games.

Here is my collection if curious. It is only a small collection I know compared to a lot of my friends. But I think it is enough to back up what I am saying.

https://boardgamegeek.com/user/Skyjack

 

Terry Sr.

 

 

I didn't go through your list exhaustively but there are plenty of games on that list that either get rule changes with expansions or have had erratas after expansion. Miniature games aren't really much different than a board game that puts out multiple expansions a year. 

I think you also tend to get much more of a focus on balance and fixing broken things in miniatures games because they tend to have more committed players. Most board games players I know that have a weekly game night with a regular group rotate through so many games that it is rare for them to play the same game more than once a month. Some games never get a second play. The board games that do get multiple successive plays are going to be something like Descent or Imperial Assault where an ongoing campaign is being played but they generally don't replay the same campaigns. Most miniature players that I know are only actively playing one or two miniatures games at a time and will usually play their active games at least once a week. 

Miniatures players in my experience also tend to play with more different opponents than board game players do which makes "fixing" a game that you feel is unbalanced via house rules much harder to do. 

[WWHSD]

1 hour ago, KingCrow said:

Yea, I've played since the beginning days of M2E and the bi-monthly FAQ's were nice and I realize why they went to an errata every six months but now with nearly 500 models in the game, I would like to see a faction FAQ every 3-4 months.  Like I said, it would allow Wyrd to focus on a much smaller pool of models and masters and tweak them how they felt was needed.  Plus, it would allow them to see how newly released models have impacted the game and thus respond to them in a scheduled fashion.

I would worry that faction specific FAQs would lead to the same sort of issues that GW has with Codex releases. 

If Wyrd released a faction specific FAQ/errata documents on a 3 month cadence it would be almost two years between changes for each faction. In the case of buffs, this potentially puts the most recent faction to get their document released at a bit of an advantage. In the case of nerfs it would mean that one faction takes a hit before others. 

If you want players jumping from faction to faction based FAQ/errata cycle, faction specific documents are a good way to get it.

[Zebo]

Also is the fact that in many board games there's not really balance. Like taking always the shame characters because they're the best combination. 

[Terry Bailey Sr]

Exactly my point. These changes hurt the players who don’t make a “career” of playing.  I am talking about the guy who buys some minis paints them and goes to the local game store to play in a local sponsored tourney with a henchman a few times a year.  Those guys buy the product too. But they usually dont have the time to rebuild often. They want to get a crew together and have a decent chance to not embarrass themselves at the tourney.  I would almost guess there are more of those guys than the hard core gencon tourney guys out there. But I could be wrong. It is that guy that gets turned off by that kind of stuff and plays something else. Which hurts sales and eventually kills the product. I know you need to keep the “pro” guys happy.   But hurting the “amatuer” guys can be bad for business too. 

[Adran]

Honestly, I think the errata here won't make a huge effect on the experience of the "amateur " player. They can still play exactly the same list as they used to in largely the same way. And for nico you just have slightly fewer cards and fewer wounds on a your summons than before. For sandeep it's just rembering to worry about people cheating damage against you, and very occasionally failing a beacon action that would have worked before. 

They have more to worry about with the release of new models and a new gaining grounds every year because they will change their game experience more than this errata. 

[KingCrow]

29 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

I would worry that faction specific FAQs would lead to the same sort of issues that GW has with Codex releases. 

If Wyrd released a faction specific FAQ/errata documents on a 3 month cadence it would be almost two years between changes for each faction. In the case of buffs, this potentially puts the most recent faction to get their document released at a bit of an advantage. In the case of nerfs it would mean that one faction takes a hit before others. 

If you want players jumping from faction to faction based FAQ/errata cycle, faction specific documents are a good way to get it.

Right.  That's what I mentioned might happen in my posts. 

If Wyrd wanted to avoid this from happening, maybe instead of it being faction based, they perhaps do it by station? Every few months, revise a few of the Masters, then Henchman, and so on and so on.  I realize there is so much more minions than any other station but that could be broken down into two or three different errata's. 

But from a sales point, this could be a driving force to sell more to those players that wanted to play the "flavor of the month". 

I would just love to see some continuous changes that positively affect the game rather than a few changes every 6 month to a year.  There are plenty of models in the game that can use a tweak or two (or more) to be viable and there are still plenty of ideas for models that Wyrd can continue to release to keep up their sales. 

[WWHSD]

23 minutes ago, Terry Bailey Sr said:

Exactly my point. These changes hurt the players who don’t make a “career” of playing.  I am talking about the guy who buys some minis paints them and goes to the local game store to play in a local sponsored tourney with a henchman a few times a year.  Those guys buy the product too. But they usually dont have the time to rebuild often. They want to get a crew together and have a decent chance to not embarrass themselves at the tourney.  I would almost guess there are more of those guys than the hard core gencon tourney guys out there. But I could be wrong. It is that guy that gets turned off by that kind of stuff and plays something else. Which hurts sales and eventually kills the product. I know you need to keep the “pro” guys happy.   But hurting the “amatuer” guys can be bad for business too. 

For the guy that plays a few games a year, it doesn't matter what master he brings and the balance changes typically aren't big enough to really affect them. The balance in Malifaux is generally good enough that people and the bottom tables can bring whatever they want to play. 

You've just hit on the huge difference between miniatures games and board games. Your hypothetical guy is grabbing his minis and going to play with people he doesn't really know, many of which play the game weekly (or more). If he was breaking out a boardgame a couple of times a year, he'd probably be playing with a group of folks he knows that don't play the game any more frequently than he does. It doesn't particularly matter whether or not the Shoe is better than the Race Car and the Iron and that the Dog is the worst because it's unlikely that anyone has played the game to the extent that small imbalances will make much of a difference.

[Adran]

1 hour ago, Terry Bailey Sr said:

While I am not versed in miniature gaming as most here, I do know a thing or two about board games. Errata sometimes yes. Even new editions. But not annually for each game like minis games.

 

I'm a fairly large board game player too, but the only one that is in comparable plays to malifaux is base set pandemic, and I can tell you that the 7 roles aren't all equal in that by a long way. Just about every other board game I have played is exponentially fewer than the number of malifaux games I've played. Part of that is the difference in gamer styles, but a large part is because malifaux is made to have a huge amount of replayability partially because each game is very different. 

[burroughs]

Just bought Amelia Bathory. Thank you, Wyrd.

[Terry Bailey Sr]

58 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

For the guy that plays a few games a year, it doesn't matter what master he brings and the balance changes typically aren't big enough to really affect them. The balance in Malifaux is generally good enough that people and the bottom tables can bring whatever they want to play. 

You've just hit on the huge difference between miniatures games and board games. Your hypothetical guy is grabbing his minis and going to play with people he doesn't really know, many of which play the game weekly (or more). If he was breaking out a boardgame a couple of times a year, he'd probably be playing with a group of folks he knows that don't play the game any more frequently than he does. It doesn't particularly matter whether or not the Shoe is better than the Race Car and the Iron and that the Dog is the worst because it's unlikely that anyone has played the game to the extent that small imbalances will make much of a difference.

Monopoly? Really ?!?! That is your idea of a modern board game?  You might want to check out Ticket to Ride or Agricola or anything released after 1995 for that matter. Wow. The shoe.   Lol

[Erik1978]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

Honestly, I think the errata here won't make a huge effect on the experience of the "amateur " player. They can still play exactly the same list as they used to in largely the same way. And for nico you just have slightly fewer cards and fewer wounds on a your summons than before. For sandeep it's just rembering to worry about people cheating damage against you, and very occasionally failing a beacon action that would have worked before. 

They have more to worry about with the release of new models and a new gaining grounds every year because they will change their game experience more than this errata. 

I agree, I fail to see how a nerf or errata ruins the game for an amateur player just because he plays rarely and happen to play Sandeep (in this case). I have a feeling the arguments and points aren't really getting through? To each his own, I suppose. Malifaux is still the best and most balanced game I've ever played and it's true very few board games are this balanced (as WWHSD explained), but we rarely notice because we don't play the same board game 50 times a year, as we do Malifaux.

[WWHSD]

17 minutes ago, Terry Bailey Sr said:

Monopoly? Really ?!?! That is your idea of a modern board game?  You might want to check out Ticket to Ride or Agricola or anything released after 1995 for that matter. Wow. The shoe.   Lol

Way to miss the point. If you were going to latch on to something irrelevant I would have bet that it would have been that the selection of game piece in Monopoly makes no gameplay difference. 

"It doesn't particularly matter whether or not Father Reinhart is better than  Heather Granville and Zoe Ingstrom and that Brandon Jaspers is the worst because it's unlikely that anyone has played the game to the extent that small imbalances will make much of a difference."

There, now it's way more modern but will probably make way less sense to anyone reading it. 

In a board game being played by 3-5 players, balance issues aren't a huge concern. Most people never play the game enough to figure out the really broken combos and even if they do, in my experience, whoever is winning usually becomes the target that all of the other players team up against.

 

[DonCheadle]

Hagla Bangla balloo walla walla natafalem. Mag'nef thessaleim maftaraband Hagla bagoo'we nelishma lha? 

Fa, prote maf tfi mef, boskarapfawand. Hin'terabewend demizilia megwera malu metesh mal bof pom. Ze wege netefelem pesh kor tewalassaim mois mal yig fo' telissîm. 

Egwere yed? 

[Adran]

44 minutes ago, Terry Bailey Sr said:

Monopoly? Really ?!?! That is your idea of a modern board game?  You might want to check out Ticket to Ride or Agricola or anything released after 1995 for that matter. Wow. The shoe.   Lol

Just out of interest. Do you know if they fixed the flaw in the original ticket to ride, that the best way to win was to ignore your routes and just build as many long lines s you could. I know all the expansions I've played were made to avoid it. If I suggest it as a game to friends I always suggest they ignore the original game for that reason.

And my local gaming group banned the Chamberlain as too powerful, it was almost impossible to beat someone that had extra turns access to those extra powerful actions with no contest. 

 

 

Edit- sorry gone off topic. I understand if people aren't happy with the errata, and you're welcome to comment on it here. I just don't like reading flawed arguments. 

[WWHSD]

11 minutes ago, DonCheadle said:

Hagla Bangla balloo walla walla natafalem. Mag'nef thessaleim maftaraband Hagla bagoo'we nelishma lha? 

Fa, prote maf tfi mef, boskarapfawand. Hin'terabewend demizilia megwera malu metesh mal bof pom. Ze wege netefelem pesh kor tewalassaim mois mal yig fo' telissîm. 

Egwere yed? 

Did Cthulu actually rise from the deep after you typed that or does that only happen if it's read aloud?