Math Mathonwy

First of all, absolutely fantastic that you're doing an extensive errata to the new stuff ahead of the usual schedule and it looks like this addresses most of the high power outliers. Absolutely brilliant! Love how many profiles got looked at! I also really appreciate this post and letting us know the reasoning behind all this stuff. Very good communication! I am a bit saddened to see that Bayou wasn't touched at all so Somer and Wrastlers and such still won't see the table at all and I had hears some grumblings about the Madness Bayou stuff being OP as well. But all that said, I think that it's best to consider this one a bonus errata and hope that Bayou will get looked into in the winter errata. So yeah, great stuff - thank you for this!

I actually think that Burns was remarkably well balanced considering the absolutely insane scope of doubling the number of Masters in the game. Sure, there were a couple of OP ones and a couple of lackluster ones but I think that no one could've gotten that amount of stuff right on the first try. Madness is a sadder case, IMO, since the scope was so much smaller and the OP stuff being so far above the curve. But all of that said, I very much doubt that they are intentionally making the new stuff OP. There is always the incentive of making new stuff appealing and erring on the side of too powerful instead of too weak kinda makes sense (making stuff that doesn't have any impact seems like a bad idea even from the players' POV) but I very much doubt that anyone in the design team is going "let's make Witness completely bonkers in order to make it sell well."

Balancing all of the current stuff to a new system will be an absolutely monumental task. I wonder if balancing a smaller set of Keywords at first and leaving the rest into a "wild" format would be the way to go. Then they could balance the wild keywords and slowly add them to the standard format or even have a rotating cast of standard keywords. I dunno, it seems an utterly massive undertaking (especially since the balance of Madness is suspect and there's only a handful of models there). The switch from M2e to M3e with they keyword shuffle and Deadman's Hand very nearly killed the game in my neck of the woods and the meta never recovered so I would very much hope that they could avoid it but there's been so much added to the game that I dunno.

I very much doubt that M4e would come this Gencon and that means that something else will come in Gencon. A new faction? A new set of titles for everyone? I dunno, maybe it's just a campaign system and a new model for every keyword or something. But can you imagine balancing all of the profiles for M4e? That will be absolutely insane.

I love the art but the ridonculous balloon boobs really don't do it for on the mini - what on earth was the sculptor thinking there?

It depends - she can work just fine without anything but all three have their uses for her. Intuition from The Whisper can be fantastic in setting up her turn and Killer Instinct can work when Ruthless is important. Most commonly I've ran her without any Upgrades as two extra stones is quite valuable in itself but it depends a lot on the rest of the list and what my plans for her are.

I feel that Schtook2 excels in less-killy pools. His keyword is durable and he can make them very mobile and Interact-heavy while hampering the enemy. Necropunks play well into this style so I rather like them with him. He has good card draw which makes their Leap more reliable. Certainly like them way more than Canine Remains. Anna Lovelace is a fantastic tech piece - you take her against certain opponents that rely on Summons and buffs where her Gravity Well and Hostile Work Environment shine. If she doesn't get much out of those I don't feel that she is worth it so very match-up dependent. I really like Grave Spirit's Touch on Students of Viscera - makes them fantastically tough. Killer Instinct can be good against certain keywords that get countered by Ruthless. Schtook 1 and 2 are very versatile and can do basically any type of pool but Schtook 2 is especially good at Carve a Path.

My gut feeling is that it would favour summoning as it is generally more powerful in smaller games and quite a few of the summoning Masters don't have the best actions outside of their summoning so losing an AP isn't as big a deal. Perdita2 was a good shouout from Maniacal as she does so much passively and summons on top of it. Dreamer1 would probably be very good as well since much of his power is in Chompy and he summons. I also wonder how it affects the various Schemes and Strats and how easy they are to score. Seems quite radical among the various alternate formats.

And they still suck I haven't seen Witness use them and they have even less synergy and even less of a place in Wizz-Bang. A huge missed opportunity, unfortunately.

This errata was very welcome - thank you! I was wondering - does this take the place of the traditional spring errata or can we except another one in a few of months?

I am of the opinion that simply this sort of thing existing already kinda fosters the attitude that it's OK for a TO to alter their tournament in these sorts of ways. And I see that as a net positive. I mean, naturally a TO can run their tournament whichever way they like ("Arcanists get +5 SS for list building and Witness models gain Distracted +1 at the start of each turn") but that isn't normally done. Latter day Warhammer Fantasy Battle had several comp systems which all saw tournaments and were refined based on the results. If I were to organize a tournament next month, I would have to think long and hard between this version of Balancefaux vs simply banning Madness but I wouldn't go for "normal" Malifaux. Then the attendees can choose to participate or not based on how they feel about the format on offer.

What are the TT feelings on Mei Feng and Yan Lo title nerfs? Both got hit pretty hard but are they still fine choices? At least with Mei Feng, the title is still probably way better than the original? Is three Scrap for a Gamin a fine price to pay?

Out of interest, were there other versatiles besides Yannic that were deemed as problematic balance-wise? Also, there's no mention of the Bayou starter in the list?

I am extremely worried about the Madness stuff. But I guess time will tell. The errata probably makes it so that Burns can now be included into BalanceFaux so on that front it delivered. Though I was really looking forward to some buffs as well.

Yeah, I'm not saying that a nerf wasn't needed - it was an extremely silly ability originally that really shouldn't have passed playtesting.