admiralvorkraft

That's pretty similar to my experience of Tara. I like Timeless better (minus the kidnap) but I think she's generally not as powerful. 

Big difference is that I'll often hire one or two Hunters and I never seem to get value out of Aionus. Or maybe I just don't appreciate the value I get from him because it all feels marginal. Idk.

But yeah, Obliteration is extremely good. Best keyword in Outcasts. Please nerf the kidnap so I don't feel bad playing this.

7 hours ago, Azahul said:

Honestly I don't rate Tara2 very highly. The kidnap needs a nerf, outside of the kidnap she's got some fun tricks, but she just never feels as good as Tara1 in the pools I think Obliteration is good at.

She expands the range of pills Obliteration is good at to (approximately) all of them 😛

But yeah, nerf the kidnap please. The rest of her kit is super cool.

I'd honestly just like to see a higher percentage of models actually be effected by terrain. I'd like to see A LOT less flying, incorporeal, Unimpeded - especially on combat models - and a lot fewer models ignoring any of cover/concealing/friendly fire let alone all three.

But I'm probably the only one so whatever.

4 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

It does sound nasty 😏

What would you imagine would be the lynchpins of a Ramos crew?

Honestly I'd probably bring four mannequins to usher each other into the enemy crew. Ramos is going to spend the game blowing them up and summoning off the scrap. Otherwise you can hire whatever scores you points.

13 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Yeah I also love Plant Explosives!

Although apparently it rewarded some wonky styles of play? Not sure, I didn't play in a big meta back then.

And what, may I ask, is wrong with wonky styles of play?

But seriously, what I loved about it was how many viable approaches to scoring there were.

Plant Explosives was a fun strat. I way prefer it to symbols.

It's a good trick though.

And he's probably got more depth I just played enough to get the vibe of him.

Played with him very briefly early coming back to 3e. He's not as oppressive as Collodi so there's that.

An average turn you're summoning a spider in their face, blowing it up with a tome to summon an Electrical Creation, which you then blow up for three instances of unresisted 2 damage in a pulse. Turn one you're summoning as many spiders as possible to jam into their crew and force 1 damage pings any time something activates.

Of course if you get set up for it he can go off with a flurry of Electrical Bolts but in the <1 game I had with him it didn't come up.

If you played him in 2e the changes to summoning and pass tokens make him very sad. Not that he's bad it's just kind of dull.

19 hours ago, RisingPhoenix said:

People think that stopping you from bringing OOK models would somehow cause more diversity.  It'd cause less.  People are not going to suddenly bring bad models because of that rules change, what they'll do is find crew lists that let them play with good models.  The faction that currently is the closest to "all stars" is probably Guild, and a brief glance at most of their henchmen and enforcers reveals the great secret why.  They're awful.  The other one that goes there is explorers, because Calypso/Bebe and Intrepid Emissary are completely busted models that go in every list.

So what's the proper solution?  Nerf the busted models, buff the bad models.  The Outcast master I currently go OOK with the most is Parker, because he has exactly two good models in keyword (three if you count the new one we have to proxy).  If you made me play with only Bandit models, I'd never play Parker. 

It's just a bad suggestion.  If your keyword's 9 stone model is worth 9 stones then people will take it.  If it's less effective than an 8 stone model from another keyword, that's the problem.  Why should a 9 stone model ever be less effective than an 8 stone model in a different keyword, unless that 8 stone model solves a very very specific problem (which is called interesting parts of list building)?

You've got a point. I think games are really boring when crews are made up of optimal picks because there's minimal room for creative play. Limiting hiring in a new edition - for example - would have to go hand in hand with a principle of keyword design that forced sub-optimal hiring. But again, that's way beyond the remit of an errata, in my opinion.

Errata wishlist; clarity in terrain rules, address the VWS FAQ and either incorporate or explicitly reject their rulings, make sure the timing charts work with the current game-state (all instances of Instead effects work cleanly, etc.), and change the EoG scoring condition of schemes to be After Revealing or some similar change to allow aggressive scoring strategies rather than exclusively attrition based approaches.

Or the opposite of Face in the Crowd - they gain Concealment so long as they aren't withing 6" of another model? Something along those lines. 

Full disclosure of my own preferences and biases; I hate Magic the Gathering. I really bounce off the part of this game that is knowing the meta and guessing what my opponent is bringing so that I can bring counters. If I'm playing seriously I bring in-keyword crews that have a game into whatever already - currently that's Obliteration but it could be Tricksy, Monk, Infamous, Savage, etc. If I'm playing for fun however, then I want to see the full expression of the character of a keyword because it's that great character expression that keeps me coming back to Malifaux over anything else. Keep that in mind if you want to read the Bad Take I've posted below.

In playing this game over two editions now I've read the argument over and over that open hiring allows for more creative crews and I've genuinely not seen it. What I've seen over and over is the meta agreeing on a few highly efficient models and taking them in every crew.

Now that's not to say it's everyone all the time. I know Maniacal comes up with weird interesting builds, and if it weren't for open hiring I wouldn't have figured out in m2e that Lucius and Santiago made for an extremely efficient master-deleting duo. Obviously there's neat stuff to uncover but that genuinely seems to be the exception that proves the rule. The rule being that if you played Guild in 2e you took Papa Loco and put him in a Point Box, and if you play Guild now you bring the horses and a Lawyer and that's just incredibly sad to me.

I think we all want more variety in what hits the field. My only argument is I don't think you can design for that without exerting more control over the hiring process.

Side note for Maniacal - I just got pasted last night by some Conductor Molly jank. All in keyword, and yet a build like nothing I've seen online. 

EDIT: I should clarify that anything like this is probably beyond the scope of an errata. Scoring changes, clarity on timing and cover, those are my actual desires as outlined above.

1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

My understanding of the playtesting process is they're already trying their best to properly balance/design keywords to be playable with unique strengths and weaknesses, so I'm not sure a rules change would help with that.

Right, they seem to be trying for that, it's just not really possible with open hiring. If you make a keyword where the master is the carry and the rest of the keyword is less efficient (Performer, Red Chapel) then folks just hire the master and "good stuff."

If you design a keyword with certain weaknesses and open hiring then folks just hire the models that cover their weaknesses or skip the keyword models entirely. If you want to achieve the apparent design goal of keywords with unique strengths and weaknesses you do need to force people to accept the weaknesses in hiring.

17 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

An increase in OOK penalties also doesn't really address the problem.

In my experience, if you have a 'keyword only' tournament, it just strongly incentivises taking the busted keywords that have answers to everything in keyword.

Limiting out of keyword hiring creates space for properly rebalancing/designing keywords to have explicit and unique strengths and weaknesses. It also, ideally, opens up more creative lines of play by loosening the efficiencies that currently shape the dominant style of play. 

As I said in the errata thread, schemes and strats that encouraged non-combat interaction and that score points by leaving models alive.

I don't know how to do it, but I feel like the various timing charts could be unified in a more intuitive way. It mostly works as is but there's room for improvement.

There's also maybe room for additional clarity on terrain - if I'm ignoring the blocking terrain based on my height am I ignoring cover generated by it's shadow? I've seen it played both ways.

My wish - though I understand this isn't happening - would be an adjustment to the way schemes. I hugely preferred how they worked in 2e, where I could score the full scheme in-game. It opened up so many lines of play that weren't based on attrition and made fragile tricky scheme-y crews (Elite, Performer, looking at you) way more viable. If the EoG point became available at the end of any turn after you scored the reveal point it would hugely improve the game imo. It would require rewriting some of the kill schemes so they didn't become too easy, but that's not a huge lift.

This is a GG wish, not an errata, but please bring back schemes and strats that encouraged interaction that wasn't fighting. 2e Cursed Object was amazing, lets see more of that.

EDIT: since you asked, I'd just cap cross-keyword hiring at 11ss and remove the tax.

I posted a pitch a while back for an Asylum master that was basically a visionary artist locked away by her embarrassed family who took over the Asylum by blurring the line between reality and her paintings. 

She was a terrain manipulation master with a bit of an Overlook Hotel/House of Leaves vibe.

3 hours ago, Azahul said:

Possibly. I don't know if I love spending hitpoints off Tara and removing debilitating conditions off a model to give my opponent activation control for scoring. Outside of the Turn 1 kidnap it isn't an ability I've actually benefited from much. But it is very strong on Turn 1 when there are no scoring considerations to worry about.

 

Having Rewind bury a model en route to placing though gives your opponent considerably more counterplay. Now you need to leave 33 in the middle of their crew if you want to keep the target buried, and instead of getting stunlocked by Tara your opponent can just activate a beater near 33 and kill her to force the unbury.

 

Cycling back to models that actually do need a buff, what would Winged Plagues need to actually see play? I remember an old, old suggestion I once saw that I loved was giving them Fly With Me. As Size 1 models they'd only be able to carry rats, but that is a fabulous mental image anyway and I love it. That would in turn actually make them fast and good at scheming, which is a role Hamelin desperately wants.

 

They would also need, like, absolutely any defensive rule. I think Hard to Wound would be enough? They are very nearly undead models, and at 4 health there's not much else you can give them to keep them alive.

I run Winged Plagues...

But I also suggested they get Fly With Me for the hilarity of rat taxis and I'd definitely not complain if they had it. I'd also appreciate The Plague Spreads reworked to be less bad. Something like, "During the end phase this model may take a Walk action ending as close as possible to an enemy model without a blight token."

2 hours ago, Azahul said:

I should note that I agree that I don't think Aionus is either too good or too weak, so wasting dev time on a change there seems unnecessary when there are more important models to address.

 

Losing Incorporeal would make 33 extremely squishy, and the problem seems to be squarely on Tara2's side. I would rather see changes there than nerfs to a model that doesn't seem problematic with Justice or Tara1 (or OOK).

 

One solution might be to have Rewind bury the model as an intermediate step? I.e. instead of placing a model base to base with an echo marker, you instead bury it and then unbury it base to base with an echo marker. That would make 33 "drop" any model they have in their Pine Box. It would all resolve at once at the end of the activation so it wouldn't let you use it offensively to get an opponent buried for another model to capitalise on either, though it would trigger a handful of auras like on Aionus and 33 but I don't think that's problematic.

5 hours ago, admiralvorkraft said:

 

You're right, removing incorporeal would be a bit much.

I still think the core issue is just perpetually stun-locking an enemy model. Giving them fast keeps you from doing it too many times in a row and maintains the Obliteration risk/reward dynamic.

If we're talking about Tara we need to limit the kidnap somehow so that the rest of her very cool card sees play.

I'd either change the aura to apply Fast rather than strip a condition, or limit the range of the echo marker bounce back to like 10". 

But that should happen more or less immediately.

I don't get any value out of Aionus, but that's probably a play style issue. Or rather, I get the "bury a model, charge it for fast, unbury," but there's a lot of text on his card that just doesn't seem relevant most of the time.

EDIT: Giving 33 Unimpeded instead of Incorporeal wouldn't be a bad thing either.

12 hours ago, Azahul said:

This is a tricky one, because I want to be clear. I 100% agree, Tara2 is a really cool Master. I just have yet to have a game with her where I didn't feel like Tara1 would have been the superior choice. It's not that she's bad so much as she feels like she lacks a reason to be played, save for the threat of the aforementioned kidnap potential with Thirty Three.

I should do a write up in the appropriate thread once I get a few more games in. There's a lot of efficiency there.

2 hours ago, Azahul said:

The fix to the Tara-Thirty Three kidnap should really be on the Tara side, not Thirty Three, since there's such little reason to play Tara2 over her original version outside of the kidnap. Take that away and she probably needs a fairly substantial rework, and if doing so removes the problem with Thirty Three I don't see her needing any changes. 

Man, I disagree. Tara2 is so good.

It's Ophelia. They'll be bringing a lot of guns, might be worth considering The Captain just for Middle of the Storm turn 1 and diving into somebody with his shielded ignoring relic hammer turn 2...

Just now, Yore Huckleberry said:

Family seems like it would have strong capacity for Nightmare'ing, but Perdita, Francisco, and Santiago already have alt-sculpts, and there are multiple versions over the editions.

Still, I'd love to see them done up any number of ways.

Addams Family:
Perdita as Morticia (let's stay lady-led!)
Thing as the Nephilim
Francisco as (fencing) Gomez
Fester Loco
Santiago is your Lurch
Abuela as Grandma (with baby Gomez Jr?)
Wednesday and Pugsley as Monster Hunters
Cousin It and the Twins as Pistoleros?

Hear that Wyrd? Print it.

I'm 100% down for either tank girl Hoffman or comedia Lucius.

11 hours ago, Burnin4tor said:

I find outcasts in general don’t lack for guys to do what mad dog does, ie murder things. He’s a good consideration for armour heavy crews, but at 11 stones OOK that’s a pricey model. Every crew has plenty of killy models around the 9 stone mark that synergise better with their keyword shenanigans. I can see a place for him in Hamelin 2 but only because that title’s obey doesn’t seem to work the way it should do, but other than that he’s definitely no auto-pick

Hamelin 2 is designed around obeying enemy models. He's got two triggers on Obey that only effect enemy models, and a front-of-card ability written to facilitate enemy obeys.

Not saying you can't build a crew around friendly obeys, it's just not how he's designed.