Math Mathonwy

This thread should be titled, "What's better: rock, paper, or scissors?"

I disagree and feel very fortunate to able to do so. I mean, as far as I can tell, the design philosophy behind Malifaux isn't "Rasputina easily beats Zoraida who easily beats Vickys who easily beat Rasputina" (to pick three random masters) but rather aims for balance most of the time. Doesn't mean that there are no bad match-ups (Hamelin vs Gremlins) but I don't see that as an ideal Wyrd is working towards but rather an unfortunate side-effect.

(Because look up just about any Hamelin thread and its non stop Rage of OP rants)

Nice!

From game strength perspective, Hamelin is currently the top dog. The other first tier Masters are Colette, Dreamer, Pandora, and Zoraida with Perdita, Kirai and someone I'm blanking on at the moment hot on the heels.

Wait, are we arguing?

Because it seems to me that you're pretty much spot on with everything you've said, and I'm spot on with everything I've said, and thus far we've just agreed and agreed again.

Well, you said that defeating Hamelin is very easy, which I don't think is spot on and I doubt that Omenbringer (or pretty much anyone else) thinks so, either.

If i had to define OP in the way that i mean it, I would say that it is a rule, model, or scenario that causes a breakdown in the game or causes the game to no longer be playable. This would not include players needing a higher level of skill nor would it include greater and more in depth levels of strategy.This would include but not be limited to, an infinite loop, an auto win, contradicting rules, and other things along this line, which as stated with auto win would include Unbeatable.OP should not be used to describe " Really really hard." I would use "[url=http://define.com/rendered] Rendered powerless especially by an excessive amount or profusion of something." Though he would be OP by the definition " Having more than the required power", but at that point there are defiantly more master than Hamelin that meet that definition.

So, a Lady Justice with, say, 40 wounds wouldn't be OP? As it doesn't break down the game in any meaningful way, it would just make her really, really hard to take down.

A pretty strange definition, but at least it's more usable than the previous one that was considered.

While i think Hamelin is at the highest end of the power scale (with LCB keeping him company) I dont think he is OP. I dont think you REQUIRE X Y Z to beat him but having too much of "V" (gremlins) would cause you a loss against him. There are going to be match ups where people are at a noticeable disadvantage.( Raspy Vs Schill). Yes some(Many) people dislike playing against him, yes some(many) people think he is OP. ->I<- think that we all know that he is beatable, people seem to focus more on how they cant beat him than how they can. Ive noticed over 22 pages some arguments and points get restated over and over. Sometimes debates get heated over these disagreements. much like people do Tatica for playing people maybe someone should put one together for playing against the higher tier masters.

Is your definition of "OP" "unbeatable"?

I can almost taste the animosity.

Huh? I have absolutely nothing against Hookers, I assure you. The only person that I would say I bear animosity towards I've ignore listed for their horrid behaviour.

Hamelin is imbalanced, but not always Overpowered.

Do you use the same definition for "Overpowered" as Hookers? Because if you do, can you name even one model/army in the history of minis wargames that would be "Overpowered"? I mean, even the original Nicodem with 12 dogs is beatable in certain scenarios so doesn't fulfill Hookers' definition.

(I can, mind you, but only one and it's pretty obscure and was fixed quickly)

Due to the limitations on the crew, a counter is very easily built.

"Very easily"? That's a pretty bold claim, don't you think?

I mean, it's obviously possible that everyone magicpockets played in the tournament that spawned this thread sucked fiercely, but I'd say that the more likely hypothesis is that it isn't quite so "very easy" as you say.

Have you considered that your skills are just so high above the usual player's that you simply can't generalize from your own experiences?

Hamelin isn't overpowered. He is not going to win every tournament just for taking him. If you win a tournament with hamelin, you are still a good player (the same as if you win any tournament with anyone).

That's an extremely weird definition for "overpowered" that a) is not used by anyone and seems basically impossible to meet. So why on earth would you use that definition?

The main problem that alot of people have is that they believe their will be true balance. This can never happen. It is more likely no matter how many things happen there will always be a top 5.

Not very sure about that "alot of people". The way I see it, I'm the only one in the thread who believes that balance is achievable and my definition of balance is a situational balance, not an absolute one. Right now the top tier Masters are almost unconditionally better than the second tier ones.

The only thing I'm saying is bring down the top 5 (dreamer, pandora, colette, hamelin, and X) to where its a acceptable level compared to other masters. They will still have a advantage but it just won't be so wide.

This I agree with.

Perhaps it's just that I have played such a huge number of minis games, I dunno, but I seem that I come to this from a different angle to most.

But balance is very difficult in a game where multiple options are available to every player. If we are talking every crew needs to be balanced against every crew I don't know how likely that is to happen. Malifaux as a whole is very well balanced because of how the VP system works. You declare your faction, find out what you are doing, then hire your crew.

I agree. The question "is Lady J better than Rasputina?" is something that can be answered with "sometimes, depends on the schemes and the situations and such". And you can replace Lady J and Rasputina with most of the Masters. But there's a couple, where the answer will be more clear cut. "Is LCB better than Rasputina?" "Yes." "Is Colette better than McMourning?" "Yes." Maybe not exactly always, but most of the time.

And my thesis is that it wouldn't take much work in balancing to bring all the Masters into the first group. Not a popular opinion, I know.

Yeah, there will probably, even then, be a Master who wins the most and a Master who wins the least. Such is the nature of the beast, but that's not a problem in my view. That there is too big a gap between the best and the worst Master, now that is, if not a problem, then at least a non-ideal situation.

Overall he should be on a power level with Collette and LCB

What's your reasoning here? Why do you think that he should be top tier as opposed to middle tier? An honest question, mind. If Wyrd aim for balance, it would be easier to cuddle five masters than to buff fifteen of them.

Rofl, love when people use dirty forum tactics and then get pissy when they get called out...priceless.

You've got to be kidding me. Are you, like, twelve or something? Yeah, you go rolling on your floor as much as you like.

P.s. You weren't the only person I was refering too.

And you somehow believe that this makes what you said better? Wow. Never thought I'd have a need to use the browser plug-in to ignore list someone on the Wyrd forums, but my patience with childish personal attacks has been getting kinda lower the older I get. Bye-bye.

As for Bully, would it be a crazy idea to allow the opposing model to override it for an activation (or action) by discarding a card from hand?

Sounds like a great game! It's always fun to end the game with a Red Joker killing (well, driving away in this case) the opposing Master

I kill one of the weakened belles with candy who is in return killed by cybelle and the newly resurrected belle.

We called it there as I still hand Candy and Pandy while he had cybelle and one belle left.

Huh?

Yeah...kinda with Magic on dropping out of the debate...now it's come down to Grammar Trolling/Nerd Raging, so there's no need to continue. The only other thing I'll say is that when talking about fixing something in a game, balance has to be considered, so it does have a place in the discussion, but maybe not to such an extreme level.

So when the discussion gets back to Hamelin himself I'll continue. Unless some asshat want's to point out how I spelled something wrong or used something out of context to try and make their own argument look better.

Wow, way to escalate into personal attacks. Not cool man, not cool.

As for the suggestion Magic made about COnstructs and Gremlins being immune to Bully, might that push the balance the other way against crews made up solely of those types of models, e.g. Ophelia and Ramos.

Would someone be willing to test with immune-to-bully gremlins against Hamelin? I doubt that the balance would shift too drastically, but this is just theorying. Personally I really like the sound of that solution to the particular problem (of it being nearly impossible for Gremlins to win against a well-played Hamelin).

A problem with anti-Hamelin tactics is that they all seem to rely a lot on specific crew choices (like Convict Gunslinger or Perdita in Sandwich's long and somewhat self-contradictory post with, nonetheless, probably a lot of merits), which is something of a problem. Since you don't know whether you will be facing Hamelin or Vickys or Ophelia, choosing a very specific anti-Hamelin crew will spell trouble against, say, Ophelia. Now, some disparities are natural and all right, but right now I'd say that the balance is too skewed and you need a very specific anti-Hamelin crew to have an even chance of winning (other than slaughter but no one will choose to play Hamelin in a slaughter).

It may be' date=' that you need to bring specific miniatures or specific masters to deal with Hamelin. It doesn't make it paper-rock-scisors, because the modification doesn't merely depend on the opponent you face (in fact, you don't really know what you'll face until after you hire your crew)[/quote']

The point of RPS is that you don't know what your opponent is playing so that's a pretty weak argument.

Yup. Still, some crews are rock to another's paper on the crew level. The fact that there are other variables on different levels doesn't invalidate this.

It wasn't a strawman. You said that fun is the most subjective thing there is, which is simply not true. I demonstrated that through a trivial example to make it easier to grasp.

Try playing ten matches of Ophelia vs Hamelin and then try playing ten matches of Lady Justice vs Nicodem (or even Rasputina vs Pandora to take magicpockets' top and bottom tier Masters). I'm pretty sure that I know which ten matches will be more fun.

Now this here is a strawman since no one said that it blocks interaction altogether. I suggest you familiarize yourself with what a strawman means as it obviously is eluding you in a bit of an embarrassing way.

It's an automatic ability that denies the most common way of interaction between opposing models, therefore it crucially lessens interaction is what everyone has been saying.

People notion of fun differs. For some it's pwning face, for some it is inventing insane combos, for some it is obsessing over a list you cannot beat till you manage to beat it.

Either way, the worst possible motive for asking for re-balancing your opponent's master is to say it is "unfun" for you. If it isn't fun for you, tell him not to bring the master - it's personal matter between you two, not a balance or gamestyle issue at all.

Imagine a Master with zero interaction from the opponent that wins exactly 50% of the time. Have, I dunno, play solitaire with the faith deck with rules that makes the game 50% win or lose. Perfectly balanced and you'd love to play against one time and again?

So yeah, fun has quantifiable components to it. One is interaction. Taking away interaction means less fun in 95% of the cases (unless there is too much but that doesn't seem like a problem that is likely to be had in Malifaux in the near future).

Right next to the fun factor is asking for balance because your favorite list build with your favorite models cannot deal with something. We are supposed to change the lists on a whim and collect the entire range of miniatures (at least the entire range our masters can hire). It is not a game where you are at the top of all your options from the get go - it is a collectible game and collectible means your power and ability to address some crews grows as you collect the minis.

If you feel you lack an option, buy a mini that gives you the option. Change the master. Get some new terrain to play in (which may shift the balance). Again, this is not something which should be dealt by Cuddling and rebalancing of the models themselves.

*citation needed

In other words, what do you base these claims on? Did Wyrd say at some point that they intentionally strive to make some of the Masters rock-paper-scissors so that if you happen to pick Gremlins to go against Hamelin you autolose? I somehow doubt that.

Also, you fail to justify the idea. Why make that hypothetical design decision (well, to sell more minis, but that sounds a bit tinfoil hat territory)? How does it produce a better game?

Finally, why extend it only to some crews and then not make this implicit? Ortegas have no hard counters. Colette has no hard counters. Actually, it seems that most Masters have no hard counters. Kinda blows you theory out of the water, doesn't it?

@Q

Agree 100%. Start swinging the cuddle bat with reckless abandon and there will be consequences in the long term...mark my words.

"With reckless abandon?" That kinda takes the meaning out of your statement. Of course doing X with "reckless abandon" leads to bad places! Now, was there someone who suggested doing the balancing with reckless abandond?

Gross! The nipples are too much.

You could easily paint the breasts to be a part of the armor as opposed to skin, if you wanted.

(Also, I'm mildly amused that on a model with flayed skin hanging exposing the flesh beneath, it's the nipples that are too gross).

Eek...now, I know how much of a pain in the ass Hamelin can be, but with those changes I think he would be a pretty weak Master.

You did notice Omenbringer saying "not necessarily all of these", right? So you are honestly of the opinion that implementing any of those suggestions makes Hamelin a third tier Master?

I don't think that they can balance it. They can balance it so that each faction has an equal chance to win, but as is the current state of Arcanists...only 1 master from each faction will become the Power Master. Granted these balances will shift as new books are released but anything they would try to do to balance some older masters would just make others broken.

Eh, as a silly simple fix, you could just, say, add to the basic stats of Rasputina until she is competitive. Give her Ca 12 and she starts looking a whole lot less third-tier! OK, not a serious suggestion, naturally, but I refuse to believe that some semblance of balance is impossible to achieve.

I absolutely agree that not every player will see a tourny as the Superbowl, but the "fun" players shouldn't hold it against the players who do. I'm a very competitive player (hands up wo's surprised - no-one? ) and certain tournaments are my chance to be hyper-competitive. At a club level I'm more than happy to play Zoraida with a bunch of gremlins for fun, but in tourny's my point is you should expect a certain level of "power-play" and you make a decision whether to join in or let it pass you by (in reality, a swiss tourny should naturally split so the powerplayers end up playing each other and the more casual gamers end up playing each other by round 2/3)

I consider myself rather a good player with a huge number of tournament wins under my belt from different game systems. In fact, the older I get, the more I kinda feel that I've won enough and can sorta lay back and enjoy. Still, I occasionally like to bring my A-game and see if I've still got it, you know. But my attitude isn't the same as it would be were playing in some huge poker finals or Superbowl or whatever. Superbowl is professional, minis games are a hobby is what I'm trying to say.

I can't speak about Helldorado personally so will naturally defer to your experience - however is Helldorado as complex as Malifaux with so many special characters interacting? If it is, hats off to them, but if not I'm guessing that's where the inevitable imbalance is going to lie. Either way, do you think Wyrd could "balance out" Malifaux now like you say or is it too late?

It's not as complex but offers basically just as much tactics-wise (though in a different way). Not quite as comboriffic as Malifaux, though there are certainly interesting combos to be had. And it isn't perfectly balanced (no minis game is), just that there are no push-overs among the Officers (Master-equivalents).

If it's a friendly game and your opponent is a d*ck, walk away. On the other hand, if you're playing in the Superbowl you should leave the reserves on the bench and bring your A Game - and if that isn't good enough you don't complain about how unfair it was that the other team had better players.

I'm not sure that there is an event comparable to super bowl in miniatures gaming. Every tournament I've been to, I've been there to have fun first and foremost with winning a long, long second. More so the older I get. And now I don't mean that playing competetively isn't fun, I mean that thinking of tournaments with a super bowl mentality (with millions of dollars at stake) isn't going to lead anywhere healthy.

I also think that every Master should be at least in the same ballpark power-wise. Not every crew, mind, but a well constructed crew that complements the chosen Master should always have a place at tournaments. Helldorado, for example, manages this, so I can't see why it would be impossible for Malifaux.

I can minimize the chance of catastrophic flips very well by hiding in the back corner all game. Will that yield more wins?

Again with the "scoring points" style of debate. *yawn*

If holding the black joker were free, then there wouldn't even be a question. But it's NOT free. You're giving up a resource in order to reduce that chance of catastrophe. Hooker's soulstone example was intended to illustrate that - playing a soulstone down is more extreme than playing a card down, but the concept is the same, and hardly silly.

There is no upside to losing a soul stone. There is a definite upside to holding on to the Black Joker. Therefore the analogy doesn't make any sense except as a failed attempt to score yet more points.

Holding onto the Black Joker denies you the card you use for the initiative flip. If it's a high card, good, high ini flip is usually a blessing. If it's a low card, no big deal, exchanging the BJ for a low card is usually a bad trade. So yeah, basically only if the card is a moderate card with a good suit that ends up losing the ini flip it is a major detriment and even then it is a price that I'm willing to pay with many crews.

So the question is whether the general handicap you take is an acceptable cost for the reduced chance of catastrophe. We've said that's personal, and those of us who don't feel the need to hold it have suggested that it's driven largely by a very typical human tendency to remember big events, and apply undue weight to them. That's a perfectly normal, well-known reaction to catastrophic events, I'm not sure why you seem to be getting so defensive over it.

As a systems engineer working on my PhD I'm extremely well aware of human risk assessment capabilities and tendencies. No need to lecture me on that account, I assure you. I have been constantly talking about winning more in the long run. That one time that my Seamus died to Black Joker really doesn't matter in that perspective, but feel free to keep tilting at those windmills.

This conversation has taken a pretty silly turn...

So people don't use Reaper minis for non-collectible tabletop miniature games?

They differentiate between Warmachine and Hordes. You honestly don't see anything funny in lumping all (some? Who knows?) Reaper minis under a long defunct game line?

Overall a very close tourney and there were about 6 people who could ave won I on the flip of a card.

Thank you for the report! A very nice read

I'm kinda taking away from this that Hamelin might very well still be the best Master but the margin isn't all that huge. Of course the sample is very small and tainted by the fact that you were playing him (in that perhaps you are simply an incredibly good player) but a good data point nonetheless. Thank you again and congrats on the win.

Did you win the tournament? Also, what did you face and how did the games go? No need for an in depth blow by blow, just the general feel.