Justin

Just a quick design point. In my opinion, summoning without other resources is problematic. However, it is problematic because it discourages interaction. If the best strategy is to turtle in your backfield and summon, not only is that probably broken, it's also boring.

The two summoners who can summon without having to go fetch Markers both require interaction. Molly's summon is a downright offensive tool, forcing you into combat. Asami's is a bit more subtle in that, if you summon without fetching those Markers or interacting you're wasting your time. In other words, Asami needs to go and find a corpse (yay, she had to kill something and interacted!) or she got close enough to the enemy that the Oni was able to Charge effectively from within 4" of her. If she's doing that, she's not turtled in her back field.

Of course, she may still be broken. I don't think so and I certainly hop not: just giving the design reasoning to the restrictions on summoning.

2 hours ago, daniello_s said:

I agree totally with you. Just laughing out of this statement that we should explore him far more than just a hard hitter. Like he had something more to offer than that on his card

Rather than cherry picking a single line, I think my intent was fairly well explained with the paragraph I wrote on Levi's role:

"Leveticus is still the wily old scavenger we all know and love. He still eternally dies and comes back. He still fields abominations and necromancies from multiple Factions, and he will still stalk the board removing your opponent's weaker pieces. His role on the battlefield will just change slightly. You may find that, after the errata, it is better to have Leveticus finish off already damaged models (which he is excellent at, due to the wide array of defensive abilities he still ignores) rather than having him deal the bulk of the damage. In fact, you may even find that activating him later in the Turn is more advantageous as he can pick off weakened targets. I feel that this is actually even more thematic to his role as a scavenger."

If I was not clear I apologize. And if you still disagree, that is very well your right.

2 minutes ago, Frisch said:

I don't mind the changes much; Levi will be fine, but different. Hamelin received a 'boost' in the way that he is now the only one to employ the true rat engine; Fine. I never saw either of those as a problem, and I have played both as Levi and against Levi quite a lot, and against the rat engine a couple of times without problem.
To be honest; I found they forced the opponent to think out side their comfort zone which is a good thing.

However, the errata is in - the change is done - and the game will go on and still be good.

It does require a follow up question;
When will you fix the masters *under* the power curve? Lucius and Yan Lo are quite underperforming at events, especially our poor secretary. If you are willing to start hot-fixing models like this, then give these guys some love.
And how about the Ca8 Belles that, if I remember correctly Justin himself said he would have liked to change to Ca7, when will they be changed?

I love this game, and I like the openness of the design-decisions, so it is hard to be properly furious, but I simply believe there were more important issues to fix than these.

Just because I'm sure there will be more posts like this (why fix this when X is still broken?) I'll make some brief comments here, and I hope I can explain it to your satisfaction.

A Master (or any model) being too powerful is always going to be more detrimental to the game than a model being under powered. The heart of any game is choice. Players should feel like they have a wide range of choices, and that those choices matter in terms of winning the game. If a model is under powered, only one choice has been taken away (the choice of using the under powered model to achieve maximum effect). If a model is over powered, it takes away every single other choice other than itself. As such, over powered models will always be a bigger concern and be the targets for things like errata.

This isn't to say that I think the models you mentioned are under powered (Yan Lo, in particular, I think is better than people give him credit for), simply explaining why "too powerful" is far more likely to be the target of errata than "not powerful enough." And we never know what the future holds, as new models and upgrades are released the meta changes certain models may come into favor again.

As to your other point about other models you think are too powerful, balance exists on a spectrum. It will never be completely perfect. Since we can't cost models at fractions of Soulstones (and because we are not perfect) sometimes some models are slightly better or worse than others. If our goal was to make every single model perfectly and completely balanced, we would never leave playtest and the game would have no consistency. Instead the goal is to make sure that balance is as close as we can get it to perfect and that every model has a place in a game (whether it's just with a certain Master or when certain schemes, etc, are available is sometimes the case). Often times a slight lack of balance may be due to models existing on a spectrum (maybe one model is an obvious choice in a vacuum, but all of a sudden it has a lot of competition if you need a scheme runner). And other times it is simply due to your own personal opinion (we all have our favorites).

Hope that helps explain things.

Hey all,

Along with this month's FAQ, we see a few fairly important erratas. They are as follows:

• Leveticus has had his Cache dropped to 1.
• The Channel Ability on Leveticus has been rewritten to allow him to gain Focus once per Activation at the cost of 2 damage.
• The Malifaux Rat has had the Hamelin's Pets Ability added, which states that it may only be hired into Crews led by a Nihilist and that, if it is summoned into a Crew which is not led by a Nihilist, then it may not Activate on the Turn it was summoned.

These cards are already available for purchase through print on demand with Wargame Vault: https://www.wargamevault.com/browse/pub/5162/Wyrd-Miniatures?site=wgv

Also our resources page has been updated with the July FAQ, which comes with free PDF downloads of all cards with errata: http://www.wyrd-games.net/malifaux-faq-errata

I'll address the Malifaux Rat errata first. Most of you have probably heard of the dreaded "Rat Engine." This was a tactic which Outcast players used to get excessive Activations using Malifaux Rats and, once their opponent had no more models left to Activate, they attacked their opponent with Killjoy, Viktoria, Leveticus, or any other number of high-impact models which greatly benefited from attacking while the opponent had no models available to respond.

After careful consideration, viewing event results, and trying it out ourselves, we determined that this tactic was both too powerful and simply not fun for the opponent. The changes to the Malifaux Rat will prevent the Crews which were using this tactic from getting an excessive number of Activations. It is worth noting that while similar "out-activation" tactics are still available to Hamelin, he was tested and designed around the notion that he would be able to maintain more Activations than his opponent. The "Rat Engine" was effective with Leveticus and Viktoria because, not only were they able to assault their opponent with Killjoy without opposition, they also had a very potent Master in terms of raw damage with which to back it up. Hamelin is less high-impact in terms of damage output, and was very much designed with the Malifaux Rats in mind. As such, we believe that out-Activation tactics are still balanced (and fun) for his Crew to use.

While we are hesitant to restrict the availability of models to certain Masters, we are confident that this change is the best one for the game. It will allow Outcast players to come up with more interesting, varied lists and prevent their opponents the pain of being obliterated by the Rat Engine. We did not make this change lightly, and restricting models to certain Crews or Masters will only be done in the most extreme circumstances: this just happened to be such a circumstance. Additionally, Malifaux Rats are still available to every Outcast Crew through the use of summoning due to other models in the Faction. This is a big change, but the whole of the game will be better for it.

Now, on to Leveticus. For years we have all heard rumblings that Leveticus was too powerful, and after a careful consideration of the data and feedback, Wyrd agrees. Leveticus is a Master who was excellent at dealing damage, nearly impossible to kill, highly mobile, and had excellent options in terms of Crew. A few of those things are expected on a Master, but all of it combined was simply too much. We have chosen to reduce the amount of damage which Leveticus is capable of by limiting his Channel Ability to once per Turn and making it grant the Focused Condition. His Cache was also dropped by 1. This will greatly limit the amount of damage he is able to deal since he can no longer rely on positive flips to avoid cheating, get around cover, or increase his damage for every Attack.

We chose to limit his damage because one of the aspects at which he was excellent needed to be toned down in order to balance him. Reducing his survivability would go against his well-established theme of being undying, so that was ruled out. Limiting his Crew options would not be respectful of the real-money purchases of Outcast players, so that was ruled out as well. Limiting his mobility was an option, but likely would not have done enough on its own and would have necessitated further, radical, change and we wanted to keep the model as close to its core concept as possible. As such, reducing his damage-dealing capabilities was the best solution, and Channel was the most obvious target.

Leveticus is still the wily old scavenger we all know and love. He still eternally dies and comes back. He still fields abominations and necromancies from multiple Factions, and he will still stalk the board removing your opponent's weaker pieces. His role on the battlefield will just change slightly. You may find that, after the errata, it is better to have Leveticus finish off already damaged models (which he is excellent at, due to the wide array of defensive abilities he still ignores) rather than having him deal the bulk of the damage. In fact, you may even find that activating him later in the Turn is more advantageous as he can pick off weakened targets. I feel that this is actually even more thematic to his role as a scavenger.

I hope that Leveticus players see this errata as an opportunity to explore the wide range of possibilities which Leveticus still offers. He is no longer locked into the role of damage-dealer, and you may even find that his play is more interesting and dynamic.

Although such a change often comes with cries of "Doom!" from both sides (whether you think Leveticus is now useless garbage or this errata changed nothing and he is still the most broken thing ever) I strongly suspect that Leveticus will remain one of the better Masters in the game. He simply will no longer be the "obvious best option," and instead become another strong choice for his Faction.

All of the changes (both Rats and Leveticus) went through careful planning and testing. I am confident that they are for the betterment of the game as a whole.

I hope you like the changes and you are able to keep enjoying the amazing Malifaux universe as we continue to attempt to perfect the balance of the game we all know and love.

29 minutes ago, Trample said:

This is the first new master I really don't like much. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but I sure like a master with a sword or a gun than I do one with a pen. I think it's great that Wyrd brings in new things like this though. She's different and interesting, just not for me. 

Even though you don't like her, I really appreciate the way this was put forward. Thank you.