Maniacal_cackle

On the Constructive Criticism discord (invite here), Rosmarus asked me about dealing with summoners as Bayou. Before I answered that, I wanted to delve into some base strategic theory for GG4. At the moment I would argue we have a bit of rock-paper-scissors of strategy (except when certain crews can dominate multiple strategies). And so I am posting those thoughts here so share them a bit more widely. I believe we have durdle-value, high tempo, and brick strategies as the current dominant strategies. I'll delve into each a bit. Durdle Value This is the classic summoner - they sit back and generate value. Nekima 2, McMourning 2, and pre-nerf Asami are good examples of being able to do this at a brutal level. You can also generate value in other ways, like replacing into higher cost models or attaching upgrades. The gameplan here is that if you get some time to prepare in rounds 1/2, you will be so far ahead of your opponent on the board that they cannot keep up with you and you win the board and take control of the objectives. This strategy is weak to having its strategy-relevant models killed early in the game. High tempo This is a gameplan that tends to be very aggressive - often aiming to delete 5-15 stones of enemy models turn 1. Crews like Molly or Neverborn are good at this style. They pick their fights and murder key scoring pieces as early as possible. This in turn means they have a scoring advantage for the rest of the game. Ever seen me use Dead Rider to reap Archie 6 inches up the board after the enemy is done activating so I can leap and murder a scheme runner? That's an example of a high tempo play. Often works best when you can hit and run - leaving the combat when needed so you are not trading your alpha strike model for their scheme runners. Tanky bricks This is the defensive gameplan. Create a crew where every important model is too protected to be murdered, and then just go stand on the objectives. Arcanist, Ten Thunders, and Guild are good examples of factions that excel at this strategy. For example, a Ten Thunders crew with several tanky models and the weaker models are protected by Thanh or Terracotta is a good example of a crew that can just go stand on objectives and fight off most attacks. How do they interact? Durdle crews are vulnerable to early pressure, so they tend to lose to high tempo crews that can start murdering turn 1. High tempo crews see their gameplan fall apart when they cannot murder key pieces, and struggle to outfight the tanky brick crews that are just standing on objectives. Tanky brick crews can't put that early pressure on a durdle crew, and then see the value generated mean that the durdle crew is better in a fight. This forms a nice rock-paper-scissors effect that we can see in the game and judge some matchups by. This of course is not the only metric - a durdle value summon crew is also going to be countered by the exorcism trigger. Some crews are just so powerful they can dominate multiple categories - Linh Ly 2 is able to dominate both as a tanky brick crew and a high tempo crew in a single game. But this basic framework can help us understand the basic matchups of the game and how we need to tackle them. If a crew we are playing is not in any of those categories, we have to ask what the gameplan is for winning. In GG4, board dominance is very important. The objectives are in relatively predictable and close locations. You can score all your points without ever crossing the centreline until turn 4. Such ease of scoring leads to dominating the board being the core concern, so that's why I think we see the above game plans being dominant. I think high tempo might be the weakest currently, but am not sure. Bonus strategy: outscore/denial This is a gameplan that focuses on points. In M3E this can be tricky as 75% of the points can be scored on turns 4 and 5. Developing a points lead and then winning after being tabled is very rare at high level play (it does happen in games where people are just embracing their bloodlust). It has been viable in the past. Essentially you need scoring to be in unpredictable locations or hard to reach locations. With Symbols, Public Enemies, Reckoning, Recover Evidence, etc, it was difficult to predict where scoring would happen or it was difficult to reach scoring locations. This allowed for strategies that focused primarily on points or point denial. So in future GGs look for strategies that fit this format, and then embrace your denial/scoring crews once again.

One heads up is if you are playing the title, McMourning Insanitary, you will notice a very large power gap for Rogue Necromancy between the crews. It is fine in Molly, but you may feel a bit sad about how much stronger it is with McMourning.

What? I am running a 3-round event (4-rounds if it gets big enough) including Ashes of Malifaux content. The event will run on vassal and discord and uses the Singles format. You can sign up for the event here: https://malifaux.longshanks.org/event/14833/ Where? On the brand new Constructive Criticism server! It is a strictly moderated server with the intention of only having constructed discussion around playing the game of Malifaux. The following link will work for seven days: https://discord.gg/HEvck5du You are welcome to join the server even if you don't play in the event. When? You have one week from the time of this post to sign up. The event will then run three to four weeks. Hope to see you there!

At this point could a mod like @Adran move this to general? Not quite a resser specific one now!

Trail of gore seems super strong this season, so I imagine Dashel will be making some appearances as well. And of course Hoffman also has two trail of gore models.

Overall I think ressers excel at mobile GGs, so I expect we will do well. Kirai, mcmourning, Seamus, von schtook, Yan lo, reva, Molly all have a lot to offer here 🤣

Ignored for strategies only applies the turn of the summon I believe. So they can score on later turns unless the strategy says otherwise. However, they can never interact with strategy markers.

Fixed, thank you!

My Australian friend is having no trouble and has cheap shipping. So may be an NZ issue. I see Fed Ex. He sees Australian Drop Ship. So the website maybe doesn't know to use that for NZ?

Waldo's Weekly has been hyping a new shipping system for Australia and NZ to reduce costs, but I just went to shop in the Black Friday sale and it costs $50 to ship Vagrantsong or $35 to ship two core boxes. Surely that isn't the expected price for these things? Does anyone know if the NZ shipping is still to go into effect, and if so when that will be? EDIT: looks like Australia is correctly switched but NZ is still using Fed Ex.

Usually you can contact Wyrd directly and ask for a replacement (unless you bought it second hand).

Lol I just hired him in a McMournint crew on standard and he died turn 1 xD A lot of crews will delete him from the map from 15+ inches away. Meanwhile Archie was a boss and survived most of the game. I'd say Archie is generally better if you can deal with the issue of leap not being built in (Whisper, tools for the job, or card draw help).

I think Manos is overrated in a lot of crews. He has the downside of demanding a lot of attention - shaping your activation order and resources to get your value out of him. That said it basically comes to leap allowing you to choose your battles. And he can move three times, and attack three times, or interact leap interact, or many other lines. On top of that, leap plus gun kills a lot of important support totems, and with assassin he can run away to be safe after. I just don't think he belongs in every crew.

In terms of purchasing overlap, Dreamer and Pandora share a lot of models in common. They also cover a lot of pools between them. In terms of completely different playstyles, I'd say Lucius 2 or Marcus might give you huge variety but don't have much purchasing overlap.

Giving keywords to models that don't initially have them is a high risk of creating broken interactions IMO, so I'd go a different direction.