Bazlord_Prime

No! Making up those Rankings, there's players who show up once - or just play a faction once - then don't come back. That's the issue with including them in the rankings - they create a huge tail in the statistics, so when they're counted for establishing an average they count just as much as anyone who regularly plays, but their scores are negligible (usually 5.00). People who SUCK (like me!) simply just exist. The average ranking of the Gremlin faction doesn't change much whether you just take into account the Top 5 or Top 10 - they're just a middling faction - no way around it. And that's fine - i don't begrudge the faction that. But they're not objectively OP.

@trikk NOOOOOOO!!! I thought you'd understood what happened with those Rankings!? What do you mean "'zombie accounts' apparently"? Did you not go and look at them for yourself??

Don't know why i didn't see that thread! Thanks!

Rusty Alyce's "Snares" Ability says "Enemy models cannot end a Charge within 3". Would a model with a Range 3 Attack still be able to Charge Rusty? If the reason for my confusion isn't obvious, it's just that I interpret something like Snares as meaning "no closer than 3", as it uses the word "within". And Taelor's (for example) maximum range is exactly 3". Just wondering if you think that the RAI of an Ability like Snares was to prevent Charges from things with <4, or <3. Thanks!

I like that idea of the Drinking Contest being more about giving out Slow. Will have to think about that one - how would it work? Wave 5 has the 10T Tanuki coming (5ss Tri Chi minion), but it doesn't sound as though that's going to hand out much Poison, and not at all at range. It does sound good for giving out Fast & Reactivate to Brewie's crew, though. What I'd really like to see is a mid-cost (7ss?) Tri Chi Enforcer or Henchman - something that can throw Poison at range, and that can take the 2ss Drinking "Problem" upgrade without it having to go on Fingers or Whiskey (upping them to 12ss if you want to take it). This model already sounds quite support-orientated, so perhaps it could be a Gremlin rip-off of a 10T Archer/Katanaka Sniper? Could have a Gremlin blow-pipe with poison darts. Or it could be a grenadier, lobbing around glass flasks full o' dregs. Just something to fill the gap.

I'd be 3 thumbs up for more/any Voodoo zombie Gremlin shenanigans. That side of the Looziana bayou trope hasn't been tapped nearly enough yet. MOAR!!! Maybe another Gremlin Master one day: "Baron Same-Day". He's an Undead Gremlin postman, who was murdered for his postbag full of goodies, his body thrown to the Gators but resurrected by a shadowy and chill presence deep in the swamp. He was taught its ways, and now practices the necromantic arts amongst the beasts of the bayou. And that includes the odd, unwary Gremlin...

Isn't that what "One For The Road", Survivors and Akaname are for?

Just to note that WolfCry-Faux *IS* going ahead now, on Saturday 19th August. Checked the FB page for deets.

I was using Podcast Addict to listen, but that seemed to have it's link cut many months ago, and it hasn't worked since. Is anyone else out there successfully using Podcast Addict for Tales? Or is there a way of fixing things up? Thanks!

That's a level of certainty that must be backed up with data. If however you meant "I'm fairly certain that...", then sure. Okay - where does "97%" come from? That's oddly precise. If you've got data for which models are taken, by every player, in every tournament worldwide, then you can state the above. And you can share the data - they'd be pretty interesting!

Hadn't read this till now, but I've got to admit - it's where my thinking had started to head re: getting some serious work done with Brewmaster. Swill is the real deal, and it can make monsters out of mediocre attackers, so there might not be as much need to take the Manchas, Burts and whatnot, when Bayou Gremlins, Gators and Shinobi can be so elevated. Haven't got/tried Akaname yet, but i was also thinking that pairing them up with Moon Shinobi ought to work. And later, they can potentially move twice and drop a Scheme marker in one activation. Got a tournament in a month's time, so I'll give this a go and report back (if i can scare up some Akaname before then!). My mileage may vary ;-)

Understand your point, but i might not go from zero to one hundred like that, disparaging the entire game design because of one or two corner-case loopholes. Those can be fixed. Stuff like this apparent 40k 8th Edition "First Turn = Win" problem - those are a bit more serious.

It's Trixiebelle's "Lure" that does it for me. Even against something horrific, undead, and mostly probably entirely asexual (like Killjoy) her charms are apparently somewhat disturbing...

I think ^^this should be pinned to the top of every post about anything that's being claimed to be OP, silly or gross. +1

Ahhh, one thing - in Enforcer Brawl, you can only take one model, so there would be no other friendly Gremlins around to Slippery the damage onto :-)

Thanks all! I've got to say, i was tiring towards Burt as the "smart" choice, but i also had visions of Poison flying all over the place if i took Whiskey not that Poison would score points in this format - it just might be a laugh! It's only for fun anyway, so i might try Burt first, and Whiskey another time. And by then hopefully my Ophelia box will have arrived

We're going to have an Enforcer Brawl next week, and we've never done one before - I'm really excited to give it a go! So the Gremm Enforcers that I actually have in my box are: Burt Lenny Whiskey Golem I've discounted Lenny. Because he's so damned slow, has Wp 1, and has no-one to buff with his auras. Fair? But I can see some pretty good arguments for both Burt and Whiskey. Both can get 3 AP (kinda), both hit hard in , and while Burt can't self-heal like Whiskey can, he has a attack that might work quite well if the other players bunch up, and he's 3ss cheaper... Thoughts?

Well, you did say the following: But I get that you only asserted that after being pressed to clarify your position - it wasn't your original assertion. As for Joel Henry, fair enough. But there may be a lot of other great players around the world who aren't included in the US, UK and Polish rankings, so we can't really go down that path. I get it though - Joel's score did exist, and then was removed. But honestly - we're done here. The stats don't back up any assertions that Gremlins are anything more than quite well balanced in tournament play, as far as the relatively small sample sizes can be trusted to be fair representations. The idea that perhaps Reckless should instead grant "Fast" seems at first blush to be a pretty un-disruptive way of going about changing Reckless. I don't see that any negative interactions would arise from that, since you'd take the Wd at the start of the activation, then use the Fast during the activation, so there'd be little to no issue with anything that can capitalise on an enemy's Fast condition (Void Wretches), and it would be used up before it could be removed by anything, right? Are there any models who put out standing that prevent Conditions from being gained by enemy models?

I still haven't gotten my head 'round Sammy either - beyond the obvious carrying of a Master upgrade. Taking her with Zoraida is great - she can do horrible things through the Voodo Doll - but with other Masters I just don't seem to be able to make her do much else. Somehow, I just never seem to be able to get her into the fray. I know she's Mv 6, but somehow I just never seem to be able to get her within 8" of an enemy model in order to use her Ca. Maybe I'm just being too shy and protective with her? Shall keep trying, cause I love her model, and her sneaky-evil abilities ;-) P.S. MOAR Batreps, @daniello_s!! ;-)

Thanks! Yeah - it would be a good thing to point out to them. I'll set about trying to find the contact details.

Ol' Pere Ravage, eh? That's good to know... ;-)

Okay - of COURSE i went and did the analyses for Top 5 & Top 10 players... Couldn't help myself. But shhhh! Don't tell trikk! Here's the results. UK Top 5: Pos Faction Avg 1 Arcanist 384.27 2 Resurrectionists 372.21 3 Neverborn 366.91 4 Gremlins 354.54 5 Guild 350.49 6 Outcast 345.40 7 Ten Thunders 343.38 UK Top 10: Pos Faction Avg 1 Arcanist 358.14 2 Neverborn 346.08 3 Outcast 330.10 4 Gremlins 324.85 5 Guild 323.20 6 Resurrectionists 322.31 7 Ten Thunders 310.89 US Top 5: Pos Faction Avg 1 Ten Thunders 299.66 2 Arcanist 287.25 3 Gremlins 273.75 4 Resurrectionists 273.63 5 Neverborn 272.15 6 Guild 266.94 7 Outcast 245.39 US Top 10: Pos Faction Avg 1 Arcanist 253.59 2 Ten Thunders 253.25 3 Resurrectionists 238.86 4 Neverborn 225.86 5 Guild 217.07 6 Gremlins 215.74 7 Outcast 204.46 Okay - now I'm done P.S. looks like Ten Thunders might need a cuddle next. In the US, at least

@trikk If you dislike the number that I chose for the analysis, then you can always pick something you do like, and have a crack at it yourself. I'm not going to spend more time crunching numbers on your behalf to re-prove a point that you've not taken the time to disprove - the ball's in your court Player numbers: to use your example above, if you're worried about having 5 very good Gremlin players plus 15 mediocre ones in the top 20, etc, then you're already conceding that the results are more about the skill levels of the five or so players who - for their own reasons - decided to pick up and play Gremlins (and do well with them), rather than anything to do with the OP-ness of the Faction as a whole. Yes, the averages get skewed - and that was the point I was making about all these zombie accounts, and how the average you initially quoted was all up the creek - but if you want to cherry-pick only the best players in each Faction for your analysis, you're now guilty of selection bias and - again - are trying to analyse the players more, than the Faction. I thought the top 20 for each faction was a reasonable number to start with, as you want a decent sample size, but not so many that you start including more and more of the casual players, thus defeating the purpose of the exercise when talking about the elite players. At that point, the answer to the question "Based on the results of the top 5 players, are Gremlins OP?", is "Maybe - but we can most easily and fairly solve that by getting Alex Schmid to play Guild instead". Which might work Alex Schmid - the US Gremlin #1 - has a score of 386.63. The #2 Gremlin player has a score of 296.18. That's a difference of 90 points, in a scoring metric that I assume tops out at 400? So, a 23% difference between them. It's true that there are gaps between #1 and #2 in the other US Faction leaderboards, but none as large as that (8 between Arcanists #1 & #2, 48 in Guild, 28 in Neverborn, 80 in Outcasts, 16 in Rezzers and 28 in Ten Thunders). By the by, the UK rankings show a much tighter grouping at the tops of the Factions, with higher overall scores. Are the two groups scoring tournaments differently? Another problem is that you have unique player ID's appearing in multiple factions. Of course you do - we all play more than 1 Faction, I'd assume. Damn your ways, Wyrd... But what this means in a sample size as small as the Polish one is that it has a larger effect on the scores when a player shifts to a different Faction, as - after a certain amount of time - their old tournament results are removed from their Faction scores, and that lowers the average for the Faction while their name stays on the list and makes them look like an active player. I think that's the way it works - after 1 year, a result is dropped? And it must be the most recent, or top, "x" number of results that're used to calculate the player's total score, since it seems to top out at 400. We can agree that we're going to get different results depending on what we take into account - that's how statistics works. But I'm not with you in terms of agreeing that the analysis is of no use, just because you think - without proof - that the data might also support your claims at the same time. And if you still hold that opinion, and want to convince others that it's still valid, then you'll need to put forward a counter-analysis. I see though from your last post on here that you've had enough of the to-and-fro, and I completely understand that - we've all basically stated our positions multiple times, and I think we've managed to convince you that Reckless isn't OP in and of itself, and that Gremlins are not dominating the tournaments. They're far from it - I've shown that they're in the bottom half of the Factions overall. If one or two players seem to be dominating with Gremlins (e.g. Alex Schmid), then that's actually about their skills - not the Faction's lack of balance. As far as models like Burt, Lightning Bugs, Slop Haulers etc go, I still think that if they were so so busted, then Wyrd would've cuddled them by now. Which isn't to say they won't in future, and if that happens then your opinion will be validated. Until then, when Wyrd has already done something like cuddle LENNY (of all Gremlins), and Rooster Riders, but not Burt, Francois, etc - then that should put your mind at ease somewhat. And to echo a lot of the other players on here - have a crack with the Gremlins yourself sometime! They are, after all, the least played Faction in your Polish rankings...

@trikk TL;DR: Those ranking sites take into account loads of zombie accounts, massively skewing the results and rendering useless any conclusions based upon the "Faction Rankings" information summaries. Gremlins turn out to be actually the 5th best faction by tournament results when considering the top 20 players only in each Faction, so you really can't draw any objective data from these to help your case that Reckless is somehow propelling Gremlins into the role of OP Faction. In fact, Arcanists are ranked #1 in the US, and #2 in the UK. So I'm going to say that Armor is probably OP, and needs to be scrapped. Yep. I said it Okay, here's the problem with those data on the Ranking sites: they can't be taken at face value. I had a long look at the figures on the three of them, and a couple of things stood out. 1). The pie chart at the top of the "Factions" tab tells you how many players each Faction has (who've previously registered at formal tournaments, I assume). But when you look down the list of ranked players below that, there's never as many ranked players as there are players counted for that pie chart. Try it - go to the UK rankings site, and you'll see for instance that the Gremlins supposedly have 100 players, but there are only 61 names on the rankings list. Add up the scores that those 61 ranked players have achieved - it comes out less than the total score shown in the "Faction Rankings" table to the right of the pie chart. So you have to assume that past players have been registered but have then lapsed for whatever reason, and while their scores still count for the Faction totals, their names no longer appear on the lists. These are the "zombie players" I referred to above. (Sorry Rezzers - I know this is insensitive labelling on my part...). For example, the UK site says there are currently 334 Arcanist players, and yet there are only 85 ranked and actively playing. But the average score presented in that table is still derived from "Total Score / Total Players", so you get a horribly meaningless number. The simple fact that the Arcanists are the most popular Faction, and have had so many more players dabble in them at tournaments, means that their average score is dragged down well below any level indicative of how their top competitive players are performing. 2). The bottom-most players tend to have scores of 5.00 points each, and while I don't know how these points are awarded, I figured that anybody with a score of 5.00 probably just attended one event using that Faction, didn't place, and moved on (either from that Faction, or from Malifaux entirely. Or perhaps just from tournament play). Also, there's a long tail of players in each Faction who have really low scores, indicating that they probably stuck at it slightly longer than the 5.00 Club, but are certainly not the elite, competitive players that I think you're referencing when you talk about Gremlin tournament dominance. So I made up a spreadsheet, and used only the top 20 ranked players for each Faction, as I figured that ought to capture a good snapshot of the players who're actively attending tournaments, and who best represent how the Factions are performing currently. I could've taken the top 10, or the top 30, but I just chose 20. 3). The Polish rankings website doesn't really have enough players to make a reasonable assessment (there's only 15 ranked Gremlin players, for instance), so I didn't do this analysis for you guys. You shouldn't read anything meaningful into those numbers, either - with lower player numbers, faction averages are easily skewed by individual results. My point is, there's just not enough data in the Polish set about which to make any claims about Faction dominance. Not through any fault of theirs - nor would there be enough in my native New Zealand, or most areas other than the US and UK. So, adding up the scores for the top 20 players in each Faction separately across each of the UK & US rankings, I calculated the Faction average scores per player (the number that you're quoting to illustrate Gremlin dominance), and here are the results: UK Rankings: Pos Faction Avg 1 Neverborn 307.12 2 Arcanist 305.30 3 Outcast 293.11 4 Resurrectionists 267.65 5 Gremlins 259.59 6 Ten Thunders 249.97 7 Guild 244.61 US Rankings: Pos Faction Avg 1 Arcanist 204.92 2 Resurrectionists 192.69 3 Ten Thunders 187.66 4 Neverborn 180.68 5 Gremlins 165.53 6 Guild 159.08 7 Outcast 157.53 So there it is. Don't believe the data - believe the data! Good old stats...

My man! I also have a tendency to go away and do silly amounts of work on data gathering in order to bring objectivity to a discussion, so I appreciate your efforts in going through all those cards.