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lipman

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  1. Haven't stopped writing so much as haven't played any games. As a group, we have played 1 game since the last report. With BGGcon, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and 2 family vacations between the 5 of us, we hit a major dry spell. We decided to shelf the campaign in early december, picking it back up at the start of January, so there should be more content coming soon!
  2. Some buddies and I are playing through a Shifting Loyalties campaign. We are blogging our battle reports... http://malibreauxs.blogspot.com/
  3. Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but the Vassal Module is missing a marker for the Oxfordian Mages
  4. Well, my initial logic was that going from a 6 to 7 adds a lot more value because you are most likely going to be +1 against any attack. So that should give you the advantage of knowing you can pass with a 13 (ignoring the RJ) But the other aspect that I was considering is that somebody with a def of 6 is designed to be in the thick of things taking hits, so they would get more use out the +1. A model with a def of 3 is either designed to stay far away from danger, or has other defensive tricks that save them (like the silent one's statue ability), so the +1 def isn't as valuable. Having said that, it seems disingenuous in a theorycrafting post to throw out comments like that without having any backing. So I officially recant that statement
  5. I was hoping to start a discussion on the theorycraft behind Malifaux. I am a numbers nerd, so I enjoy doing this type of stuff, and like talking to others about it as well, so I welcome any input. A little background on why I started down this path. I am playing a Shifting Loyalties campaign with some buddies and I was thinking about 2 of the campaign upgrades (skills) that I have had the chance to buy. Off Hand Fighting costs 4 scrip to purchase, 0 SS to attach. It gives you a + to attack flips. Duelist costs 4 scrip to purchase, 0 SS to attach. It increases your Ml stat by 1, up to a max of 7. I started down the path of evaluating those two and realized that I needed to take a step back. First, how do you assign a value to something like that. I can think of a few ways to measure in Malifaux. - Soul Stones: Calculate the expected value in SS of the item. This is great for models and upgrades because you can easily compare it to the actual SS cost. It also helps you calibrate any formulas you have, as you can find an upgrades and models that have that ability and see if your numbers match up. While SS cost is a good baseline, it doesn't really capture what the end goal is, and it can really only be applied to models and upgrades. While you could assign a SS cost to a particular action, I am not sure it would be that easy to translate. - Victory Points: The Performer has an ability that lets her take an interact action while engaged. That action can easily translates to a VP value. Just figure out (or estimate) how often she will use that value per game and how many VPs it will gain each time. And presto, expected VP value! I don't think VP value is that great of a measure as well, since a lot of actions don't directly influence your VP (either denying opposition VPs, denying them activations, etc). So what we would likely end up with is a crew where the total expected VP is something like 15 despite the fact that you can only score 10vp in a game. You could just normalize it down, but then you would lose the clarity of saying something gives me X VPs on average, and I would get to do it Y times a game, the value is X times Y. - Win %: This might be the best option for actions and whatnot, but I think it is going to be a pretty convoluted calculation. Essentially you are trying to figure out what each action, model, upgrade, etc adds to the chances that you win the game. In a perfectly balanced game, the two crews add up to 50% each. This would need to be scaled to the crew size however, as a 10SS model would give a much higher Win % in a 25ss game than he would in a 50ss game. I think the best way to calculate all of these values is an iterative process where you assign a value to the basic building blocks, then use those to assign a value to the next level of complexity, and work your way up. For example, if you can assign a value to a single point of AP, then you can work from there to assign a value to Imbued Energies that gives a model fast at the expense of the card. So what all needs to have a value assigned to it in order to calculate the values of stuff. Not an exhaustive list by far, but where I am starting at... AP AP manipulations (fast, slow, paralyze, etc) Activation delay (either an ability, or the fact that you have more models than your opponent) 1 point of each stat (this will need to be on a point by point basis, as going from 3 def to 4 def isn't nearly as valuable as going from 6 to 7) +s and -s to attack/wp/def/etc flips Melee/shooting/casting range Damage spreads Healing flips and abilities Control hand card value (being able to have additional cards, cycling through cards, etc) Generic abilities (attack, walk, interact) Movement abilities (flight, ignore hazardous terrain, etc) Push abilities Wounds Summoning abilities Armor and defensive abilities (hard to wound/kill) And a ton more. The vast majority of my experience with Malifaux is playing Arcanists, so that is where my head is at mostly. I know that I am missing a lot of Arcanists type stuff that should be on the list, and I haven't played many of the other factions, so I don't really know any of their abilities, so I am likely missing a TON of stuff from that list. But it is at least a starting point. But after all of that, I am going to jump back to my original question that started me down the path. Which is better, + to melee attacks or +1 to your Ml stat? I ran some numbers and here is what I figured out. For a straight Ml vs Def duel, there are 2,916 combos of outcomes (54 cards for attacker * 54 cards for defender). That isn't the case in practice, as we know what our control hand is, what cards we have already flipped, etc. But while evaluating these things in a vacuum, it works. For a Ml vs Def duel where the attacker gets a + to the attack flip, there are 154,548 combos (54 cards for attacker's 1st card * 53 cards for attacker's 2nd card * 54 cards for defender) I assumed a Ml stat of 6 for both sets of test. For the +1 Ml stat, it raised your chance of success by anywhere from 5.8% to 7.2% (depending on what Def you are facing) For the +twist to attack, it raised your chance of success from 13.5% to 15.1% I was pretty surprised at that result, but I guess I shouldn't be as the average straight flip is a 7, while the average +twist flip is a 9. So +twist gets you 2 pts on average where the other option only gets you 1. Those raw numbers of course aren't the only thing to take into account. For the +1 Ml stat, there is an added value to either forcing opponents to have to cheat in higher cards to beat you, or knowing that you can cheat your 13 in and guarantee a success (against somebody who's defense is 1 below your Ml) There is also value in having a +twist to damage so that it can negate any -twists that you might have and let you cheat that attack flip. I think this value is much less for a Ml attack than it is for a Sh attack, as the Sh attack will have a lot more -twists due to cover. I am not sure how to value those two considerations. My gut says they feel pretty close to each other. Being able to plan out attacks and know that something is going to hit can be pretty powerful when planning out a turn. If I can use the 13 in my control hand to all but guarantee that my Performer will paralyze their master, then that is much better than having the +twist (bad example as that is a Ca action, not a Ml one, but you get the idea). So there are probably cases where the +1 Ml is preferential, but I think for 95% of the situations, the +twist is going to be the better option. Would love to hear other thoughts on this. Next time, I will try and tackle how valuable fast/slow is.
  6. Played Cassandra in a campaign game last night for the Man. Lost initiative on turn 2 and wasn't smart enough to have the wagon locked down, so my opponent grabbed the prisoner and whisked him away to his side of the board. Spent the next two turn trying to cover the ground (including a 4 AP walk turn by Cassandra). Managed to score a tie though, so didn't hurt the faction But very important to lock down the wagon to make sure turn a 2 initiative loss isn't a killer.
  7. I am three weeks into my first campaign, so I am only slightly ahead of you, but I can tell you my experience. First, do you know how many players your campaign is going to have? If it is 3 or 4, then you will probably want to wait to see what other people are playing and plan around that. For example, if one of the guys is playing a Black Blood heavy crew (deals auto damage close in), then you might want to pick up a ranged guy or two with your first couple of buys. However, if the pool of players is bigger than that, just pick up what works best for your crew, since you aren't likely to be playing against the same crew over and over. Second, how strict is the campaign? Can you proxy? Can you play unpainted models? For me, this would guide a lot of my decision making as I am a slow painter Third, how many games do you think you are going to be able to get in each week? For each game, I would expect to earn anywhere from 0-7 scrip. The campaign upgrades are pretty tempting, so you are going to be spending scrip on those, and if you want a master, you will need to buy a bounty early on so that you can complete it by the halfway point. Finally, you have to add 1 model a week, so your arsenal is always growing (unless you get a model killed or you play with the variant rule that allows you to scrap a model for 1/2 scrip). You get a 5ss discount on your 1st model each week. This has played out a couple of ways in my group, either somebody saved up a couple of scrip and bought a big 10ss model, or they spent their money on campaign upgrades and end up with a 6ss model each week. Remember that you will only be able to field a crew based on the opposing player's arsenal size. So those first couple of weeks, if you buy a big 10ss model, but the guy you are playing against bought a 6ss one, then you won't be able to play with the 10ss guy, or you will have to cut one of your original models from the game to pay for the 10ss. If you want a less generic example, I can run you through how my campaign has played out. I am playing with 3 of my friends at our houses (not at a store). We are very lax with model rules, so we allow proxies, unpainted, pretty much anything. If you are using a proxy, it is generally accepted that you will be purchasing the model at some point in the near future. We have also gotten 2 games in each week up until this point. I started with Cassandra as my henchmen. Week 1 - Played 2 games, earned 13 scrip. Spent 11 on campaign upgrades, took 2 into week 2. Week 2 - Annihilated my Mannequin for 2 scrip, bought a Angelica for 1 scrip (after 5 discount), and an upgrade for 2 scrip. Played 2 games, got 7 scrip. Took a bounty for 4 and a campaign upgrade for 4. Just wanted to note that my intention from the start of the campaign was to get a 2nd Coryphee ASAP. I changed plans after picking up a Gatling Gun in week 1. I did a bunch of research and ended up getting Angelica because I thought she would work best using that gun. So an example of how your choices might change as you get into the campaign. Week 3 - Only had 1 scrip left, so I bought a Silent One. I would have loved to get the Coryphee here, but ran out of scrip Going into week 3 here are our arsenal sizes me - 45ss player 2 - 48ss Player 3 - 55ss Player 4- 60ss Hope that helps
  8. You can go to http://www.wargamevault.com/browse.php?filters=0_0_0_44301 You can print on demand the LE stat cards now, like the Miss cards.. http://www.wargamevault.com/browse.php?keywords=malifaux+miss&filters=0_0_0_44301&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=
  9. Howdy all, this is my first time to go to GenCon with the full on Malifaux bug. A couple of friends and I recently got neck deep into the game, and we are on the hunt for some fun ancillary stuff to check out during GenCon. Are there any other booths of note that we should make sure to swing by for stuff like tokens, terrain, storage, etc? Essentially anything that isn't at the Wyrd booth. Thanks in advance.
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