Avatar of Butter

This is an interesting idea. If it's a title box, that means that they haven't said anything about it because there's going to be another Master we haven't seen in there yet. Exciting!

Y'know, that's a really interesting point. I went and did a quick count in the app, and Malifaux actually has 40 recognizably human masters, exactly. I did some napkin math, and got some interesting results: 65% White 7% Black 18% East Asian 10% other (5% Hispanic) Now, we can argue all day about what the demographics of Malifaux SHOULD look like. The Breach is, ostensibly, in North America, although we've never been given a precise geographic location. In comparison to the modern United States, the Malifaux masters are a little more white and a little less black, (65% vs 60%, 7% vs 12%) but the big outliers are actually the Hispanic and East Asian groups, whose representation should actually be flipped if we were trying to represent the American population. A lot of that is probably due to the fact that there is a Breach right in the middle of the Ten Thunders' Earthside holdings (which is why they have their own faction, I suppose). I, for one, am looking forward to seeing some Abyssinians showing up in Malifaux proper. I think that Abyssinia is the coolest part of The Other Side, and It'd be nice to get some of their signature style up in here.

Right, I am jealous as heck of this crew. An interesting gimmick in the Configuration with plenty of meaningful decisions to make during the turn, a Master with a pile of different abilities (LOS-range out of activation movement/protection, piles of different card manipulation abilities, AoE Injured, and more), a Henchman that is the platonic ideal of "all killer, no filler", minions that pass all the "good 5-stone minion" tests, Premium-grade False Claim scheme runner, Discount Arik Shottemer, a second chunky-boy Henchman with a no-demise lantern, and 4 stone utility minions with marker control. The more times I read over the cards, the more cool stuff I can see that they can do. I'm excited to see how they perform on the table, to see how many of their abilities they can actually Configure to get running. I hope EVERY new keyword is even half as exciting as these folks.

"In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or apagogical arguments, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity" -via Wikipedia I agree that Leveticus is fine the way he is, but boy are your arguments... internet-flavored. If Wyrd decided to "clean up" Malifaux, it would not be censorship (removal by external authority) or cancellation (use of mob psychology to publicly shame an individual). It's their world, and if they decide everyone is a My Little Pony in 4e, all the power to them. It wouldn't lead to the cancellation of Law & Order, and saying so is a little disingenuous. I'm on your side of this debate, but once you strip the hyperbole out of your position, I'm not really sure what your arguments are.

Out of curiosity, what kinds of boxes DO the Vasssal meta like?

I think that, overall, Malifaux's fluff is in a healthier place than it started out. The women are, by and large, wearing clothing that looks more like clothing and less like fetishwear. The non-white characters have gotten more character traits than their race (anybody else remember "Injun Joss"? I remember). Every character in every story can be analyzed through the lens of the universe that they exist in, but they can also be analyzed through the lens of the author writing them, and through the lens of the person experiencing the story, too. There are very few people in Malifaux who would think that Leveticus was anything but an abomination (if they knew everything he got up to). Everyone who isn't a necromancer pretty much thinks that necromancy is irredeemable, for a lot of very valid reasons. It's hard to divine what the authors are saying about him, or indeed any of the old masters, because they've been through so many revisions, and have been written by so many people. The Levi in one story is not necessarily the Levi in another. As for making value judgements on the Leveticus who exists in your head, well, that's up to you to figure out. If you want to rationalize his actions into something heroic, well, nobody can stop you. For me, personally, I like that Leveticus is socially odious. He is, after all, single-mindedly determined to defeat entropy, even if he becomes something other than human as a result. He is perfectly willing to give up his ability to relate to people in pursuit of that goal. He's a solipsist, for whom other people become less real every time he returns from the dead. I don't think that older people finding younger people attractive is an uncommon occurrence in the human condition, we are just all revolted by the fact that Leveticus doesn't understand why he shouldn't pursue those impulses. I also like the tension between his inability to have healthy relationships and his obsession with passing his knowledge on to others. It fits with his hatred of entropy that he wants his research into immortality to exist forever, and the best way to do that is to teach other people. Neither Marlena or Alyce seem to like, or even particularly care about Leveticus. That is, in fact, a good reflection of Levi's outlook, and shows that he has made an impression on the two of them. None of them are good characters, but I do think they are all interesting characters. As a side note, I find a lot of the talk about the use of the Dead Man's Hand as a way to kill characters that you personally dislike through their plot armor to be really interesting. The fact that so many people hold to the idea that there is good and justified murder, which is something that is patently against the themes of Malifaux as written by the authors, is a downright intriguing trend.

So, I've been busy community building, and I'm going to be running some demos on the weekend. I don't have a tablet computer, but it'd be really nice to have a rulebook to reference. The 3e rules PDF is beautiful, but the page texture would be murder on my toner supply. Is there a plain-text version of the rules kicking around anywhere?

So, after discussing the topic for a while, the points everyone seems to agree on are: "bad" minions tend to be combat-focused. Minions that have support abilities, high defense, or scheming efficiency are not typically considered bad. This is because the attack action of a 4-5 stone model is typically less valuable than that of a 6+ stone model. On the other hand, good defense-for-cost ratio makes. all enemy attack actions less efficient, all interact actions are equally valuable, and support effects improve and enable a crew's "heavy hitters". Changing the cost of cheap minions is problematic, as discounting a "bad" minion enough to make them worth taking means invalidating the models that people are currently taking instead. It sounds to me like the best way to make these generalist minions more valuable is to make them less generalist. Malifaux is full of niche "counter" rules, like Laugh Off, Containment Suit, and Ruthless. Maybe shifting some of the power budget of these models into stronger, but less generally applicable rules would carve out a niche for them in crew building as "counter pick" models. The only problem is that a lot of these "bad" minions also come in a master's crew box, and reducing the general power of a crew box in return for more skewed matchups in one direction or another makes starter games even less easy.

I find data like this incredibly fascinating. Does anyone know if there is other stuff being tracked? I'd be interested in everything from percentage of stones spent of versatile models to scheme selection to individual master win percentage breakdowns...

You hit the nail on the head: Plague is a keyword where the models have deliberately terrible stats to make up for the rat and blight synergies. The Piper has much less rat synergy than Hamelin1, so most people are just ditching all the rat-centered models (Rat Catchers, Rat Kings, Rats, Benny) in favor of generic Versatile picks. Masters only taking 13 stones worth of keyword models (Nix and the Wretch) is, to my mind, not a signal of a healthy design. I'm not saying that Hamelin2 is a bad master (Obey masters are never BAD), but he's certainly never going to outshine Hamelin1 in my eyes.

I definitely think this would be the best fix, but I think that it's harder than you think. Every keyword I can think of with an unloved 5-stone minion either has a 6-7 stone minion that outshines it, or a Versatile model that does the job better. There may just not be a power level where the 5-stone minion is worth taking where it also doesn't invalidate the existence of the models that were outshining it. Malifaux has become a big game, and when a game gets big, some models are just not going to be worth taking. As for the initial idea of making combat minions cheaper, I don't think we want to go down that road. Adding a discount to a 5-stone minion steps on the toes of 4-stone minions, and 4-stone minions are already almost universally not taken.

I guess I'll be a dissenting voice, and say that I haven't heard a lot of positive things about the Outcast titles from my play group. Hamelin2 does have Obey, but it turns out that a lot of Plague keyword actions aren't valid Obey targets because they mention Rats. It turns out that the efficiency of Unclean Influence was the only thing that made the "rat cycle" work, and the loss of the Black Staff hurts. On the other hand, the stuff that the Piper gets feels a little janky. Spreading Death lets you re-use Blight Tokens... but they spread onto your models. The Piper's Influence lets you add a suit to opposed duels... but with the notable exception of the Rat King's Onslaught, there aren't many suits you need in the Plague keyword. Eyes in the Walls lets you remove markers from range... but you need to drop an 8+ to trigger it. Von Schill2 has gotten a lot of mediocre reviews. I haven't played him yet, but I've heard a few people complain that his new tools are more finicky to apply than they look, and his improved damage output rarely makes up for the reduction in support abilities. Zipp2, as has been mentioned elsewhere, is a little bit confusing and probably not as good as Zipp1. although that might be more an issue of Zipp1 being amazing than Zipp2 being disappointing. Leveticus2 is really cool, but he might as well be $150 considering the cost of Horsemen that Outcasts otherwise won't be able to use. Tara2 does cool things, but, much like Asami2, her crew becomes notably vulnerable to getting tabled when you aren't able to summon more. Once the 33 kidnap inevitably gets errata'd, I'm not sure that she's going to pull enough weight to justify taking her over Tara1 Parker2 is... hotly contested. This is the model that has the most varied opinion on it. Some people love him, some people hate him. So, of the Outcast title masters, Jack Daw2 is the only one that I've heard unambiguously good things about, and he's not going to be "replacing" Jack Daw1. I haven't heard anything about Viktoria2 one way or another, so I'm not sure what to make of that.

Dead Outlaw is... meh? Dang, y'all really do play the game differently than I do. For 1 SS more than a Bandido, you get two more wounds and HTW, trade Reposition for two much more relevant triggers on the gun, gain the ability to shoot into melee, a situational Obey (that you can use on Guilty), and some totally cracked Tactical actions. Covetous Cravings is Scheme Marker removal with up to 12 inch range that can fire around corners... and it gives your arc node fast? Too Greedy To Die allows you to push other Dead Outlaws in LOS (infinite range) out of melee whenever ANY model drops a scheme marker within 6? That's not even counting the way that a pair of Dead Outlaws can daisy-chain pushes up the board.

We may have to agree to disagree with the Freikorpsmenn, it has been a long time since I've had space for them in crews considering the plethora of good Freikorps models at 6-7 Soulstones. Regarding the Riflemen, it's a little more complex. A free interact at the cost of a card is not strictly better than fast at the cost of a scheme marker. Life of Crime is harder to set up, but 1 general AP is categorically better than an Interact action. The Bandido DOES have a way to get out of melee off of it's defensive trigger, it has better DF and WP, it has Run and Gun (which somehow keeps getting left out of conversations?) and it benefits more from Bandit keyword synergies (let's face it, we're only talking about Parker crews). On the flip side, the Rifleman has no engagement range and no movement abilities. If you think the Rifleman is just better than the Bandido, then feel free to sub them in to your Parker games, but I certainly wouldn't. It's all kind of moot in the end; the Dead Outlaw is a STELLAR minion for 6SS, and I'm not sure that the changes you'd have to make for Bandido to be competitive would be justified.

I think this cuts to the heart of the matter. Banditos are actually better than average 5-stone minions, but they are totally outmatched by "meta" minions in the same slot. They have all the tools they need to really shine as scheme runners except for survivability, which puts them in the unenviable position of being fairly high priority targets that require a negligible investment of resources to kill. The issue is that "average humans" are just not very good investments in Malifaux these days. It's not just Banditos that suffer from fulfilling a bad role; I've been feeling pretty disappointed about the performance of Witchling Stalkers, Orderlies, Freikorpsmen, Rat Catchers, and Catalan Riflemen in my games.