Zethal

Curator.... There has been pages of discussion about this, it's more then a bit rude to enter the a discussion 12 pages in without reading pretty much any of it. Every single one of your points has been addressed, most even within the last few pages. It would require many more pages to go through all the arguments and socratic questioning again.

We are getting way off topic here as we aren't discussing the nature of discourse...but simply because a rhetorical device prevents some people from reading it, due letting their emotions overrule their critical thinking, does not devalue nor create a lack of validity in a argument. It simply has a negative rhetorical effect on the audience. If Nilus had stated "Your argument, no matter how clear and concise, is much harder to respect or care about for me when you start calling people names" he would of been logically true while also getting his point across. It is also more likely to influence someone's behavior as it is logically consistent; as humans have a tendency to find arguments that are logically invalid but phrased as valid to be an attempt to control us. Which we don't like and generally react very poorly to.

It doesn't actually. Not that its ok to be name calling, but that doesn't make an argument invalid. And suggesting so is disingenuous. And its not like his reaction was entirely unprovoked. Calling a category of people pitiful and suggesting that people who play competitively have some sort of fetish for winning is often going to get a strong emotional retort from that category. I think Daniele meant to state something other than was is easy to infer from her words, but the post was not very articulate either so...

And the people who want to spend time doing both, the competitive players, are so how at fault because their opponents do not invest that time? Besides that appeals to popularity are fallacious arguments I think this thread sufficiently shows that your assumption of what most people will agree its a sign of a '*poor player' is wrong. *I assume by poor play you mean one that you consider to be a bad sport, not one that is bad at the game. As then we have to debate your definition of poor player. Straw Men aren't going to get you anywhere either. We are talking about card counting, not people who conveniently only remember the rules when the rules help them. Beyond that I'll again refer to the Playing to Win article. That you use the terms 'cheesy lists' and 'power gaming' suggests that you don't understand the arguments from my side of this issue at all. And knowing the rules of the game is not something to be looking down upon. It wasn't an attack on anyone. I was just stating the realistic reasons why people don't get good at games. I'm learning Go but I'm not great at it and I'm certainly not putting a lot of time into mastering it. Which is due to my own apathy and laziness towards Go. I'm a mediocre poker player, again largely due to laziness and apathy, but I don't go to poker leagues and poker tournaments and then complain that I come against against players who actually care about learning the game at it's highest level and being great at it. And doing so with Malifaux or any other game is just as absurd.

Exhaustion has a 1" area of effect not 3".

Quite welcome. Aye, it's just becomes difficult when the two are mutually exclusive.

I think you are unaware that people have different feelings on what fun means then you do. I enjoy being good at a game, I enjoy thinking about strategy and tactics, mastering the game-play and really engrossing myself in the skills of the game. I enjoy playing my best game and playings against the best opponents I can find. Fun for me != limiting my ability or my opponents because I'm lazy/inept/apathetic.

35 SS crew Kirai Datsue-Ba (7) Lost Love (2) Seishin (2) 8x Gaki (24) 0 SS remaining, 3 Cache (can drop one Gaki for a cache of 6 by preference) No master or unit seems to really open itself up to a swarm list like Kirai and the Gaki. Kirai & Lost Love: Basically her just is to keep the spirits pouring out. Ideally she is always within 6" of the Gaki Swarm, giving them the bonus damage and being within 8" of anything they kill or for the Gaki dying. With the Placed Seishin she can evolve them into Onryo (whose slow movement won't be as problematic as they will hopefully already be close to enemies), and importantly these models are placed so they get a full activation on their turn. So yeah...her primary job is just to keep the swarm's numbers up, through healing flips, spirit food while helping out the weak Cb of the Gaki with Chill of Death when she can. Lost Love is mostly around to bring back Kirai. It's not really worth summoning with him due to his bad Ca and the Wd cost. Another Chill of Death is nice but really I'm fielding him for this... TricksThe most noticeable trick to me is forcing the Lost Love's For Love on the first turn. The Lost Love is a fairly easy kill and presents the challenge of keeping it alive before they kill Kirai. So either your hiding him throughout most of the game and wasting his actions or hes probably in danger of dying. Then many fast lists can find and kill him easily enough. So instead, if you draw a 6+ Mask early having Kirai Make herself a spirit (and possibly move up a bit) then have her use Absorb Spirit on herself she ends up at 5-6 Wds remaining (depending on if wanted to use the Don't Blink trigger) and you get to cycle 2 cards. If you could also summon Ikiryo in most instances it should of been done before she does this. Now that Kirai is a spirit for the remainder of the encounter she can move more easily, can heal herself all battle, switch places with other spirits and generally be effected all things spirit related (Call Spirits, Guide Spirits, Soothe Spirit, Harvest Sinners, Face Your Sins, oh and you give a corpse counter to a Gaki). This is much superior to In the Spirit World as she doesn't have to be activated and you don't need to use the (0) action or hold a Mask. The obvious down side is that you use the Lost Love to come back, assuming it would of been around at that point in the game anyway. But I strongly believe anyone trying to kill Kirai pretty much has to go for the Lost Love first anyway and if they are successful you loose her entire life as a spirit. Ikiryo: Kirai's wonderful offensive side. Not the hardest thing to kill so be careful with summoning fo far. But as you can resummon it with most spades and Kirai is quite easily to heal if she's a spirit its can't often be a good idea to send it out to harass or draw fire. Besides the only ranged attack in the crew Ikiryo offers some amazing speed to the list with Call Spirits really making the swarm of Gaki a treat on the second turn and allowing them to roam around the board smashing spread out opponents on later turns...thats really all there is to her I guess. Beat stick that drags everyone along. Datsue-Ba: Speedy, amazing support, decent melee, weak but available Crowd Control (CC) with Face your Sins, and summons Gaki. Should go in pretty much every Kirai list. Fairly jack of all trades but she does it so well. Gaki have amazingly great damage for a 3 cost unit. Weak hits that do 2 wounds is rare on such a cheap unit, and really these guys hit for 3 damage on weak flips if they are where they should be. These little guys are very speedy for a Ressie crew where 4/6 is the standard Wk/Cg, Insatiable Hunger and spirit allowing them to all but ignore terrain for movement. That plus Ikiryo and Datsue-Ba's movement support really makes this a frighteningly fast Ressie list. They are also decently hard to kill despite their low defenses with 4 wounds, eat your fill, snack and spirit. And on a crow can give a buddy an extra attack on the defender. As for playing the list, it plays like really any swarm list. Charge forward take your hits, heal, resummon/evolve, and ideally overwhelm your opponent with shear numbers and really great damage but a low chance to hit. Obviously be wary of any Blast or Burst damage and summon Ikiryo into melee preventing any attacks on rounds where its they can threaten you. Pretty straight forward but I imagine really effective, although it has all of the nice tricky options presented by Kirai. Switching, evolving as needed, Reactivating, etc.

My mistake, I assumed basic card counting meant passively noticing that cards of have up vs actively counting them in your head. Not that you are opposed to devices that assist the counting.

Beyond what RisingPhoenix said, at this point you are defining every aspect of skill as dishonest. One player being better at something is what you've just defined as an unfair advantage. Good poker player's know the odds of an winning with their hand, good Warhammer players know how many expected wounds they are doing with a given round of combat as well as the standard deviations. Card counting in this way is the same thing, knowing your odds. As for devices that count cards for you...well all games are tests of skill. Different games test different skills. If you want one of the skills for Malifaux to be figuring out odds in your head then using a device that would do that for you is cheating. If you think playing Malifaux should not include a skill relating figuring out odds inf your head then using a device is perfectly legitimate. It is absurd to think that players aren't going to pay attention to their cards and plan some things accordingly. Even players that aren't very good at counting are just about always going to know of the Red and Black Joker have come up for them that round. What should be decided is if Malifaux should be testing card counting as a skill or not. And IMO, yes. Its a skill of the game and something that should separate good players from bad, and thus using a device to assist you with that skill is then by definition as cheating.

Looks amazing. As for suggestions I always think of Malifaux as fairly Gothic in architecture. So something like this?

Well specifically with Nico he got an amazing new summon with the Rogue Necromancy. Granted it costs 4 and only drops 3 counters but attacks with Poison or Paired a great Cb and the ability to attack 3 times on the turn it is summoned is phenomenal. On a turn with lots of counters and only one chance to summon this in a wonderful addition to his options.

Who does that? Lilith and Nephilim squad are awesome in serious play. Having lots of abilities isn't the largest complexity to most games. Although I have enjoyed playing a showgirl crew, my opponent however has to suffer through my turns that last an extra ~5 mins while I play them.

Never worth it with Nico as his summon is a 1 action and a spell. So he can cast it 3 times per round. It's half decent for Doug though giving out some varied summons and allows for more then one summon per round.

aye sorry I meant marionettes.

Well you don't need wicked dolls for that. You can just move 40" summon Kill Joy with a Marionette and move up to 15" anywhere to protect Collodi if you want to. You leave a few dolls behind, although they snap back to him if they are still around next turn. Plus he can just summon the Marionettes back so they are easier to deal with. The Hag's Toys ability is really good with him and Zoraida who can summon them. Collodi can run off where he wants and Zoraida can just summon a Wicked Doll each turn which can teleport to Collodi. Zoraida can then still Obey who ever she targeted with Voodoo.

No, just have to higher Collodi as a Henchmen and not a Master. I've played only one game with Collodi at 35 points, and was a little baffled when I realized his movement possibilities on the first round. That said...one good Blast or Burst and hes completely hosed. But the movement is crazy. Even just 2 Marionettes and a Wicked Doll and stand a good chance of killing something, which still leaves 30" of movement. The hardest strategical part for the opponent IMO is Wicked Intentions. That the Marionettes can get anywhere and likely kill one thing suggests that grouping together isn't a bad idea. But grouping opens up Wicked Intentions to really mess with your activation plans. I have no clue how this is really going to be balanced once there are more doll options, but Wyrd has done an amazing job at keeping the top tier well balanced so far (with only an exception or two)...so I guess we will see.

So Molly looks really cool, but what makes her looks so cool is Necrotic Spray and Impossible Knowledge. Unfortunately in this game more things are non-living then living. Unless I miss counted the break down is below. Living/Total 23/30 guild 8/34 ressie 17/35 arcanists 15/33 Neverborn Total non-Merc Models. Only 63/132 or 48% of models in the game are living. Which really creates a problem. Even if you know what Faction the opponent is playing as each group can create an all non-living force. Thus Necrotic Spray and giving it to other units is greatly lessened and highly situational. Its going to be amazing vs Lilith and Marcus but useless vs Ramos, Hoffman, all other Ressies, Dreamer, Tina and the others are somewhere in between, and the faction with the most living is the Guild and they are going to want to stay far away you making the 1" range not super useful. This greatly weakens her if you expect to be using her in a tournament, but incredibly powerful if your just playing with a few friends and they tend to use living models. Otherwise Extraordinary Dead and Whispered Secret[/b are pretty decent. But as you have no Belle's to use ED or Imbue Vigor to good effect I wouldn't suggest using Molly. Necrotic Machine on the other hand...amazing. And I'm going to jump in the give sebastian another try group. He is one of the most powerful models available to the Ressies IMO and now that you can easily make him undead... He does great damage with a weak strike of 3, passes corpse counters, companions dogs (I know you took yours out), is a melee expert and most importantly has your most reliable AoE damage with Bloody Harvest. The extra body part counters for Doug is nice or the summoning a dog with his own is a nice perk as well.

Its not a matter of agreeing with me; its a matter of game theory which is far more relevant in, well...games then it is in economics. As in this instance each player (well good player) is omniscience of the rules and in a 1v1 competitive scenario cooperation and super-rationality are largely irrelevant. As am I; well that and study. Many war game tournaments run based on a system such as this, that doesn't make them necessarily bad or unfun it just makes them relatively worse then a tournament with a ranking system that better understands game theory and people. Of course I'm not going to stop you from running tournies they way you want to, but the OP asked for guidance on running a tourny and thats what I'm giving. This still irrelevant despite it being a decent straw man. And that you are trying to appeal to authority (and a false one) is also rather...flawed. Authority doesn't matter if the authority is wrong, attack the ideas and practicality not the person. You have some emotional reason to stick with your ranking system which is fine. Just know that there are better ones out there. That generally create better effects and add more fun. The system you are arguing for perpetuates the rock-papper-scissors problem that is often inherent to most competitive war games. Your system allows individuals to make lists built around getting VPs rather then winning, built around destroying 1/2-2/3s of the opponents rather then being able to fight all opponents near equally. It's been kept around in local and national tournaments for a lot of reasons but that doesn't make it good.

Cool thanks. I missed the link.

You are using Blood Offering to make them Matures?

of course... Generally regardless of how victory is achieved close battles happen when skill levels are close and high level games are more likely to create close games then two newbies hoping their actions lead to good results. Large differences in points happen most often when there is a great difference between skill levels. Punishing good players for playing against other good players is exactly the opposite kind of system you want to create.

It requires less work of the TO. You only have to input wins/ties/losses rather then VPs. At the most it is the same amount of work. You are now just finding excuses to back your feeling of how things should be rather then looking at this objectively. Scoring based on VPs in any system almost never ends up benefitting the better and certainly not the nicer players. Except that it isn't at all. Mostly what measuring by VPs is measure who is a truly horrid player. If two of the best players face each other early in the tourny and the game ends 2 to 1; these players could very easily be out of the tournament for not fault besides that both players probably played a phenomenal game. While a mediocre player thrashing a new/bad player for 8 VPs is not a better player for drawing a worse opponent. The amount of VPs gained almost entirely measures how bad your opponent is, while winning or losing is generally much more determined upon your own abilities. Thats not true at all. I don't have data to back my argument because I've not done a proper study. All I have is years of anecdotal experience in competitive games. But I can tell you with great certainly that the primary the amount a player wins by are generally determined by the skill of your opponent and available models (so money invested) rather then personal skill. Not to mention it really creates a unfun atmosphere for all but the most competitive. You have good strategiests going for the throat destroying weaker players while they kind of just sit back and watch. While if you base it on wins and losses you start to experience strong players loosening up once they have secured their victory and loosing players start to do very fun and risky things for cool effects rather then run their couple models away and never fight just to avoid giving up another VP or two. Using VPs as tie breakers is an option, and I'd hope that you are having a couple finals games rather then just doing 3 rounds of swiss and expecting to find a clear victor.

Care to give us a run down of your games, the rules of the league and the list you used as well as your opponents?

Not sure if you are being serious or not; honestly I hope you are joking. This is unlikely to benefit you or your community in the long run. To suggest an alternative; why not have an entry fee to the league that gets waived if they purchase X dollars of products from you. This is easily understood by your locals and allows them to feel like part of the community rather having you try and control the scene, something that is likely to result in you losing a few players.