admiralvorkraft

5 minutes ago, Azahul said:

One of the more entertaining aspects of running Parker this way is that I have found the uncapped nature of Swarm Them to be more relevant more consistently than Bleeding Disease ever has been I've played Hamelin since I started Malifaux about two years ago, and I've hit exactly one 9 damage Bleeding Disease. I've barely got into double digit games of Parker and I've hit that mark with Swarm Them a couple of times and it isn't even all that hard. Eight rats can be a surprisingly low bar if your opponent didn't pack AOEs, and unlike Hamelin Parker doesn't immediately signpost that he will be bringing anti-swarm tech. In one game for example I only summoned two rats with Benny on Turn 1 and had him move onto the front line, where he got punched twice for two more rats, then another two times on Turn 2, and then he again only made a two rat summon (well, three, because he killed one of the newly summoned rats himself to get a Perdition pulse plus card cycle plus another marker for Pearl to heal him with when he summoned) and there we have it, eight rats in the brawl.

That's funny. One of the reasons I like Benny is my regular opponents just don't attack him 😛

Don't depend too much on Distracted - she has ways of using it to her advantage, especially her title. 

I'd expect to see Auguste, Dade, Gage, Undercover - or at least three of the four.

8 hours ago, Morgan Vening said:

Not a fan of this. Changes the impact of several abilities (Stealth and Rush for starters), but also disrupts Run and Gun in a way I don't think is necessary or fair.

I'd be fine with just a change requiring you to target the model when declaring the action. Might have to reword Stealth to not make it better Disguised, you're right.

I think the current way Rush works is silly but that's neither here or there. What I care about is having positioning choices that matter beyond a top down measure of proximity. Limiting charges seems like the most elegant way to achieve that to me.

22 hours ago, solkan said:

As far as combat goes, I know there were certainly some of the changes from M2E to M3E that were motivated by one of the designers saying (paraphrasing) "Killing the other player's models should sometimes be a mistake."

If that was the goal then I'd argue they didn't succeed. Combat is across the board cheaper and easier to force in 3e than 2e and the structure of scoring actively punishes crews that don't prioritize combat.

The best fix is just allow EoG scoring on schemes to be any turn after the first scheme is revealed and give non-combat (but still interactive) paths to scoring - old school Headhunter was brilliant and interesting where Recover Evidence was the boring version. The only other tweak if like to see if requiring targeting a model in order to charge it, and making the charge a push towards that model. The board gets a lot bigger and more impactful immediately.

7 hours ago, trikk said:

The issues I have with this is
a) this is still a wargame
b) you might end up with very uninteractive gameplay where both players do what they want.

Not saying I disagree with you but I think both things have to be taken into account

A) the war side of the game is by far the weaker side.

B) so? I had great, tense games of 2e that were races to ten and they were some of the best games of anything I've ever played.

And C) I never said a packet that made for passive games, but a scoring structure that takes pressure off of combat to be the be-all-end-all.

I should say, I like the combat in Malifaux fine. It's appropriate as one-of-several-things-going-on. It's just that most of what survives in the meta is exclusively what can force engagement at will so the game devolves into another fine scrum.

Part of the issue when talking about errata or buffing models is that Malifaux is (still) a game with a number of different lines of play. Buffing models tends to make them better at fighting because most people play the game as a big punch-up.

My favorite games of Malifaux have very little "action" and lots of fencing around the edges grabbing points. So buffing everything for combat doesn't speak to me or my engagement with the game.

Which is not to say don't do it, it's just to say that iterative adjustments will move the game in a direction. To Rufess' point I'm sad that you can beat Nexus1 now by slamming into it with an agro crew. Obviously they needed adjustments but I really appreciated having one crew in the game that shut down that most relentlessly boring line of play. *Shrug*

I appreciate the room for creative play in Malifaux. I appreciate that there are keywords that are OP if you follow their lines of play. I think the best thing for balance would be a gg document that's much closer to a 2e Gaining Grounds with more avenues for scoring in more parts of the board and less focus on attrition.

I'm looking to fill out my Witch Hunter keyword, specifically;

Spelleaters, Witchling Thralls, a Guild Mage, and a Machine Gunner.

I've got most of m2e Ressurectionists available for trade including day glow Kirai.

Yup! And of course if they survive a turn they can push towards a friendly model to break engagement, then run off to scheme. 

Winged Plagues are still super squishy, but now they're pretty reliably getting three+ blight out by the time they go.

I tried Hamelin last night into Ivan2 and boy do the new Winged Plagues function as intended. I still wish they had Fly With Me but I didn't regret bringing three.

I like that it takes some of the daisy-chaining out of Lucius 1 builds and gives you another interesting minion to try and maximize instead, but that's part of my 2e nostalgia coming through.

Hamelin is a big winner with the faq/errata. Winged Plagues should now be able to function in their intended role, Hamelin2 can obey his models more freely, and Barbaros is now even better in the keyword he's most useful in.

I like it. Orderlies are a decent little generic scheme runner/support now, and I've been looking at Witch Hunter anyway since Unmasked got teased.

Gotta find the 1e Sonnia model...

3 hours ago, Noxious Nephlim said:

there are 2 master boxes that do not have 3+ minions, perdita's and kirai's.

if you don't count totems, there's also lord cooper's box.

and if you don't count insignificant models, there's also hamelin's box too.

how many internet points do i get? 😄

Ironically? 3. 

Naw, I just get slammed with agro plays regardless of the pool because reasons. Or my opponent plays hard denial and I need every tool to try and crack it.

If Aionus gets isolated in a game with the folks I play against he's gonna get splattered.

Fill out your keywords, run ten games in each then think about holes you may yet need to fill. 

Fair enough! I find after turn 1 I've generally got multiple existential threat type models in my face and can't afford to have him just playing the pass token game, unfortunately.

2 hours ago, Azahul said:

Is that to buy crows? Because 33 largely removes that tax by just giving you the 7 of crows most turns.

Or rams on Tick Tock, or Crows on Eventuality, or (rarely) Tomes for Glimpse on Eventuality or Stutter Time...

On 2/3/2022 at 4:43 AM, Azahul said:

Haha, I'm the other way around (bit of a theme emerging), but it is neat that such a small Keyword is still able to give that sort of flexibility in preferred playstyles. Something to be said for having every model feel worthwhile.

I've thought about it a bit more and with Tara1 I've always gotten good results with Aionus if I've just assumed he'd need 1-2ss per activation and budgeted accordingly. And he does do game-warpingly good work then, I just don't love how needy he feels 😛

4 hours ago, Adran said:

Apart from the fact I wouldn't include "aren't scorable by big models", I would say that there are plenty of hypothetical schemes that do the other 3.  One of the reasons Outflank as a scheme is so tough to score is that in this edition you often can't afford to sit big models out on the flanks to score it. They can score it, but the game cost to achieve it is very rarely worth the reward. 

In earlier editions it would have been the case that you could score outflank with a couple of cheap models in turns 2-4, and they could still be doing something else to score in turn 5. It is also the case that they would have scored 30% of the available points, rather than 25% (schemes used to be up to 3 points each), so it was easier in terms of it was easier to keep the models alive, you didn't have to keep the models alive as long, you didn't have to telegraph exactly where they would need to be at a set point of the game, and it was worth more points. 

This is a very good point, and something that is often not remembered. Due to the fact you have 3 points in the game that you score at the end of turn 5, it is much harder to be able to set up all those points and keep them safe if you aren't alive. In the last two editions I had several games where I lost my entire crew yet still won. But most of the time that last turn had only been 1 or 2 points out of my maximum 10 on the line for me.   I've not played as many M3 games, but none have come close to that. It is a much less likely outcome. (I think I would need to be crushing the opponent  by turn 4 in score terms, to let them have a whole turn on me and them still not catch up). It also isn't helped by the fact that in this edition every strategy point is harder to score than the last one, so even if you are at 3 strategy points to 1 at the end of turn 4, the likelyhood is that the second point for your opponent is much easier to score (and harder to deny) than the 4th point for you. 

There needs a much bigger overhaul of the scoring to encourage cheaper models enough to make up for the losses they suffered this edition if you were only going to do it via gaining grounds. 

My best (read most fun for me) game of 3e I was tabled save for Yan Lo, my opponent had their whole crew left, and I was able to force a 5-5 tie. Otherwise games are decided by turn 3 and you're playing for diff. Which makes me kinda sad.

I'll say one other thing, which is that in 2e I was never at a loss for something to do. Turn 1, set up, turns 2-5 there was scoring to be done that turn. Now it feels like turns one and two are just spinning my wheels, 3 I try to get activation control and score a scheme. It's significantly less fun for me to have two and a half turns of, "nothing useful to do, guess I'll fight about it?" than the dynamic scoring structure of 2e.

I understand that there were conscious design choices to force crew engagement - which is why stuff like Deliver the Message and Cursed Object were so great. They forced engagement but also a more interesting (to me) set of problems than apply-combo-to-face.

I think Tara1 is often a stronger choice, but I have way more fun with Tara2 😛

6 minutes ago, RisingPhoenix said:

Schemes scored over subsequent turns (so both points can be scored before endgame)

Less schemes that end up taking 4-6 scheme markers to complete.  Schemes that require markers down for point 1 and pick them up for point 2, for instance.

 

I've been thinking about schemes and strats a bit more. What I want to see boils down to schemes and strats that encourage non-attrition play either by actively discouraging it (the old Cursed Object and Deliver the Message) or by providing incentives to just do other stuff (the old Plant Evidence or Power Ritual). 

Looking at it in terms of creating more physical areas on the board to score, and also more temporal spaces. I feel like every pool is identical because almost every scheme comes down to "control bottom of turn, take one action with a model that makes scheme x trivial," and it's just boring? M2e allowed way more lines of shutting and denial and I'd like to see some of that come back. Give me more schemes and strats that I can work ahead on, give me more ways to interact with the other crew and the table.

And yes, please make scheme crews viable by enabling in-game scoring of the second scheme point.

2 hours ago, Azahul said:

That's fascinatingly inverted. I usually find on any given turn I only need a little help getting everything unburied. I'd have assumed that between Tara2 being able to do it cheaply with Expedite and in having fewer models to unbury without summons that she'd have less for Aionus. What are you using him for out of interest?

 

To be fair, I've found Obliteration better at resource management as I've gotten better at remembering card order for Time Warps. And as mentioned 33 helps a lot, turning your otherwise usually useless weaks into the low-moderates with specific suits you need for your TNs.

With both Aionus and Timeless, one of them can generate pass tokens while the other holds activation in order to unbury and capitalize. 

Time Warp is great when it works, I find it more of an opportunity to jump on than a plan A, but that could certainly be a matter of experience.

4 hours ago, belorey said:

Thats a good point, with his df5/wp5 and shielded +1 looks so weak so you need a LLC and Rider brings you more.

I would change:

Dispel Magic for Seeking Flames.

+1 Df and Arcane Shield +2

 Blaze on his Collier Revolver

A tactical like I've got your back with a nice trigger could be fine.

He's got the bear trap, give him Create Trap with a trigger to place a Pyre instead. That and Seeking Flames should give him play I think.

15 hours ago, Azahul said:

This does actually make a lot of sense. Aionus is a lot more important to Tara1 than 2 in my view, and you can't summon Void Hunters in 2, and of course in a pinch you can even have a Void Hunter do Aionus's role of unburying a model, so they have a lot more reasons to be taken with our Rewind friend. I can see the logic. 

 

With Tara1 he just does too much for me to pass up. He guarantees that I have 3-4 activations at the end of every turn that the opponent can't respond to. Just as importantly, he gets my models on the board without needing to win opposed duels with enemy models. The mobility of Obliteration as a Keyword is basically unsurpassed but it has its limitations, namely that you can usually only get models on the board where both you and your opponent already have models. Aionus lets you have a presence anywhere he is, massively increasing your flexibility, and he can run around while giving Fast to friendly buried models so his AP always feel efficient to me. Not as impactful in the traditional ways for a Cost 10 model, but an amazing lynchpin for Obliteration's unique mechanics.

I actually like him better in Tara2 😛

33 probably changes the equation a bit but he's just so resource intensive. I've liked a pair of Hunters for Glimpse built in, access to positives, and a TN-less unbury.

I guess that's basically Obliterations big leveling factor though, everybody needs tns and suits, no one generates resources, and there are (basically) no tactical actions in the crew. And their mobility is all tempo-locked.