Yore Huckleberry

Symbols of Authority Love is a Battlefield Round 3 Kirai 4 Assassinate 2 Vendetta 1 Basse 3 Assassinate 1 Hidden Martyrs 0 Flank Love is a Battlefield Round 3 Lady Justice 4 Vendetta 1 Hidden Martyrs 0 Molly 3 Leave Your Mark 1 Assassinate 0 Love is a Battlefield Round 3 Hoffman 6 Vendetta 1 Hidden Martyrs 1 Asami 3 Research Mission 0 Leave Your Mark 1 Vendetta Love is a Battlefield Round 3 Sonnia 5 Assassinate 1 Hidden Martyrs 1 Ivan 5 Assassinate 2 Vendetta 0 Assassinate Love is a Battlefield Round 3 Zipp 7 Research Mission 2 Leave Your Mark 1 Sonnia 6 Leave Your Mark 2 Hidden Martyrs 1 Research Mission Love is a Battlefield Round 3 Lady Justice 2 Vendetta 1 Hidden Martyrs 0 Lady Justice 6 Vendetta 2 Hidden Martyrs 1 Leave Your Mark Love is a Battlefield Round 3 Basse (ES) 5 Assassinate 1 Leave Your Mark 2 Sonnia 2 Vendetta 2 Leave Your Mark 0 Hidden Martyrs Love is a Battlefield Round 3 Dashel 4 Vendetta 1 Leave Your Mark 1 Kaeris 5 Assassinate 2 Leave Your Mark 1 Round Three Guild had middling performance (including one Guild Lady J mirror, where Lady J unfortunately lost, but at least Lady J won!). In spite of Assassinate in the pool, Lady Justice performed fairly well here, while Hoffman also took a win. This map included enclosed buildings and lots of severe terrain, which several players tried to accommodate through Basse or Dashel builds.

Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Lady Justice 5 Claim Jump 1 Let Them Bleed 1 Colette 3 Claim Jump 0 Leave Your Mark 1 Corrupted Ley Lines Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Dashel 6 Let Them Bleed 2 Catch and Release 1 Jack Daw 6 Let Them Bleed 2 Claim Jump 1 Corner Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Sonnia 5 Let Them Bleed 1 Catch and Release 0 Zoraida 3 Leave Your Mark 1 Claim Jump 0 Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Sonnia 5 Catch and Release 1 Let Them Bleed 0 Leveticus 5 Claim Jump 1 Leave Your Mark 1 Claim Jump Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Dashel 6 Leave Your Mark 1 Let Them Bleed 2 Ivan 6 Claim Jump 1 Let Them Bleed 1 Leave Your Mark Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Perdita 5 Let Them Bleed 2 Claim Jump 0 Mei Feng 4 Catch and Release 0 Leave Your Mark 1 Let Them Bleed Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Sonnia 8 Leave Your Mark 2 Claim Jump 2 Ivan 2 Claim Jump 0 Leave Your Mark 0 Catch and Release Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Kirai 4 Catch and Release 0 Leave Your Mark 1 Lady Justice 4 Let Them Bleed 1 Leave Your Mark 0 Runic Binding Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Lady Justice 3 Claim Jump 0 Let Them Bleed 1 Sandeep 5 Leave Your Mark 1 Catch and Release 1 Love is a Battlefield Round 2 Perdita 6 Claim Jump 1 Leave Your Mark 1 Pandora 3 Leave Your Mark 1 Claim Jump 0 Round Two saw strong Guild success across a variety of masters. We only took one loss as a faction, with a number of draws (this was a HIGHLY drawn matchup across the entire tournament!). Corner plus some fast units and ranged power seems to have favored us, here, with Perdita and Sonnia showing strongly.

Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Hoffman 3 Take Prisoner 0 Claim Jump 1 Ulix 3 Breakthrough 0 Claim Jump 1 Recover Evidence Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Hamelin 5 Take Prisoner 2 Claim Jump 0 Lucius 4 Breakthrough 1 Claim Jump 1 Wedge Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Wong 5 Claim Jump 2 Spread Them Out 1 Hoffman 3 Claim Jump 1 Breakthrough 0 Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Misaki 7 Claim Jump 2 Spread Them Out 2 Perdita 3 Breakthrough 1 Claim Jump 0 Claim Jump Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Nellie 3 Breakthrough 1 Claim Jump 1 Zipp 3 Breakthrough 1 Claim Jump 0 Take Prisoner Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Dreamer 4 Claim Jump 1 Breakthrough 2 Hoffman 2 Claim Jump 0 Sabotage 0 Spread Them Out Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Lady Justice 7 Claim Jump 2 Sabotage 2 Nekima 3 Sabotage 1 Breakthrough 1 Breakthrough Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Nexus 5 Breakthrough 1 Spread Them Out 0 Dashel 3 Take Prisoner 1 Claim Jump 0 Sabotage Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Ophelia 5 Claim Jump 2 Sabotage 1 Hoffman 2 Claim Jump 1 Sabotage 0 Love is a Battlefield Round 1 Lady Justice 8 Claim Jump 2 Breakthrough 2 Von Schtook 2 Breakthrough 1 Claim Jump 0 Round One saw two fairly decisive wins by Lady Justice, several draws, and a breadth of losses. Recover Evidence with 3 scheme-oriented schemes on a map with some impassable areas may have impacted our faction here

Hi all! Below please find our Guild results from the February Vassal tournament. I'll put each game in a separate post, and then some final observations. Notes about this tournament: - There was a 15-SS cap on anything "not in keyword," including versatiles (excluding upgrades and the SS tax, though). - Because there were only 3 rounds, the players were put in two "pods" based on performance-to-date -- eg., the upper 38 played and the lower 32 (?) played. With some variables (several new players were placed in the lower bracket), this suggests that these games are likely to be closer in skill level than fully randomized games.

Sure; I agree that Arcanists can run a more powerful Hoffman than Guild and that they're a stronger faction in general. I also agree that Peacekeeper with SS Cache is nuts. But if someone is playing Guild the question is still, "How do I run Guild Hoffman" and not "Should I switch factions to run this master more effectively?"

As Third Floor Wars one put it on a podcast, the question isn't "is the master better in faction X or Y," but rather, "does this master answer questions A, B, or C in my faction?" Hoffman is a good generalist that requires the opponent to tech hard or deal with tough attrition. Guild Hoffman has some particular anti-counters (eg., No Prisoners' riot gear is a help against, say, hazardous terrain pings from Titania or Mah Tucket) and can beef up defenses on Joss or Howard with an extra LLC. Phiona Gage allows the crew to play in a whole different fashion, even if she's an expensive piece at 10 SS ook, using a single AP to bring opponents into range of a melee blender or pulling Hoffman up the board 6" at a time, often healing her while you go. If you really want to move a Peacekeeper, you can try the No Prisoners upgrade on a Hunter and get some clever work out of shifting the PK with a power token for a surprising position before using "Catch Them!" to toss it up the field. If you're just going to main Hoffman at whatever over and over again, sure, go ahead and play Arcanists (I've honestly considered doing that in a local tourney with the right pools, but never had the guts) for the sweet upgrades and scheme-rider, but Hoffman can absolutely play in Guild if you want to play this faction.

Dreamer is one of the few matchups where I'll consider bringing a Death Marshal Recruiter to the table. It can back up two ruthless exorcists and turn them into Death Marshals when they finally die, keeping your attrition pace up decently, and you can attack the buried summons directly. The card cycling engine is tough to deal with.

I'm showing: 9 wins 7 draws 11 losses With, I believe, two Guild games to play in round 3 still. Round Two had a huge number of draws across both player groups and all factions. Guild could conceivably finish exactly even with 2 more wins. I'll run a more concise games list this time.

I'm going to try to consolidate some Guild stats again after this tourney, but the new formatting makes it a bit more complicated to pull something OUT of Tableau to show faction performance.

Here's the link:

You could join the Malifaux Vassal Discord here: https://discord.gg/4GN3YD2N Using that, you can listen in (mute yourself for courtesy) to active games by watching along during Vassal. 2-3 games are usually played per day, and you can simply reference the players' pack for each tournament. Or ... sign up for the next one yourself? ;D

I got good mileage out of Inspiring Swordplay this last Feb tournament round: the fight was in the center, and she pulsed focus twice to Domadores and at least once to the Lone Marshal. 5 free focus, most of which went into meaningful actions (Lone Marshal shots or defenses; Domadores used it to beat concealment in meaningful actions). I would agree that Unnatural Vigor has some play vs Cadmus, too, and potentially so does the strong mask trigger, since you're likely to have multiple targets within 2" range especially. Ranged staggers off the judge and lone marshal seem good too.

We're showing better in round 2, so far. Guild's getting wins while there have been a TON of draws. Explorers and Nexus are looking pretty tough to solve so far.

Obviously Dashel needs a bump to bring him up to the curve of other Guild masters so he'll see some play!

This original post is the first time I've ever used the "respectfully disagree" button. I do think Guild could use a few more baked-in suits on triggers and a little more trust that a powerful model in the faction is fine to leave there (looking at you, Michael XVI). I'd be happy to see Pine Box work at 1" and target the model being presently-buried, and a few other things. And Greed is just a step away from being a powerful assist to dropping soulstone users. We've got a good-but-weird toolbox and I've enjoyed playing it.

Yeah, Kyle B is a frequent podium player in the central US (of Schemes and Stones fame) and was planning to switch to Guild. He lost games with Hoffman (which he knows well as a general arcanist player), but also took a Dashel loss. So that's an inexperienced pilot, but also someone who should know how to handle a purported "s-tier" master. Landon S took 4th overall in his December tournament with a 2W/1L/0D record and a +8 diff ... but he lost with Dashel round 2. Dmitry took 5th overall in his December tournament with a 2/1/0 record and a +5 diff ... but his Dashel win was only 4/3 vs Yan Lo in round one. Dmitry also accounts for the other Dashel win across the two months, which was a 7-2 stomping of Molly in round 2 of Fauxvember ... but he also LOST with Dashel in round 1, 6-3 vs Misaki, so he was playing in the bottom half round 2, which could be described as "submarining." I'd also point out that half of those losses are in rounds 2-3 across various players, which should mean that player skill has begun to stabilize match-balance (even if one of the players went 0-3 twice over). Dashel's wins were by, iirc, Anyway, it really IS a small data set, but the idea that Dashel is an insta-win button or that there's one net-deckable list that is so efficient it can't be overcome are overstatements.

I've had middling success with him. It super depends on the board and scheme pool, to my mind. Factors that help Basse: High forest count (most of the crew ignores concealing and severe and picks up cover from being near it; Basse can MASSIVELY reposition a model out of the terrain, or dart back out of melee in a forest on any crow or stone to prevent big alphas) Wedge Deployment (early blast threat forces the opponent back and adds to your board-portion advantage) Corrupted Ley Lines (Basse and Reichart can create an easy front line to pressure the opponent back; 2x Bring It to pull opponents off markers; high model count, traps potentially block opposing scoring by sinking AP) Recover Evidence (Bring It on Bernadette and Reichart) Vendetta in the Pool (Austringers score point one fairly well and can survive well by outranging and discarding the bird) Take Prisoner in the Pool (2x Bring It in keyword) Leave Your Mark in the Pool (Basse can commit to the center and pick up markers) No Assassinate in the Pool (if dealing with Basse becomes an AP sink for them, they aren't scoring points)

Here's the full results for Guild in Nov/December vassal MWS events. Dashel literally won ONLY the game in question in this post in December, and went 2-8-1 overall. I don't mean that as a "haha!" moment to the OP or anything; I'm mostly just worried that the devs might read this and decide to raise the price on executioners or something without referencing actual play numbers.

Seek and ye shall find: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CMYuBlbvqVYWdMZBFpS0ORhEoUjSuAR9HWzLc7LjpkY/edit?usp=sharing I'll drop this in the original post, too. The data set on round 3 isn't fully complete yet, and the document will likely have some marginalia if I get some time to tabulate similar results for the other factions.

Hello fellow Guild Members! We've added 20 tournament games to our Guild roster (one of our highest-table players had to take a scheduling forfeit in round 3). I'll add some notes on final positions when we get one more game in, but we had Guild playing across a broad level of tables. As below, in December Guild players won 9 games, lost 9 games (+1 forfeit), and had one draw, for a basically even spread. In November, Guild had 6 wins, 7 losses, and 2 draws. Combined Nov/Dec record? Guild has won 15, lost 17, and Drawn 2 games in the Malifaux World series. My November Working Doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18zIZCXiSaXK6QE1fyady3htLn4P3aAevI7Xel3nCzuI/edit?usp=sharing My December Working Doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CMYuBlbvqVYWdMZBFpS0ORhEoUjSuAR9HWzLc7LjpkY/edit?usp=sharing Wins and Masters: December Hoffman 5 1 0 6 Lady Justice 0 3 1 4 Dashel 1 5 0 6 Basse 0 1 0 1 Perdita 1 0 0 1 Sonnia 1 0 0 1 Nellie 1 0 0 1 Lucius 0 0 0 0 Faction 9 10 1 20 Our stand-out star for this set of pools was Hoffman, who went an impressive 5-1. Perdita, Nellie, and Sonnia were each taken once for a win as well. Lady Justice went 0-3, Basse went 0-1, and Dashel had a mirror performance of Hoffman, going 1-5. This included just one Guild vs Guild matchup, Hoffman into Lady J in Public Enemies, which went 5-3, and obviously yields the faction both a win and a loss. Total Nov/December combined? Hoffman 8 3 0 11 Lady Justice 2 3 2 7 Dashel 2 8 1 11 Basse 0 2 0 2 Perdita 1 0 0 1 Sonnia 1 0 0 1 Nellie 1 1 0 2 Lucius 0 0 0 0 Faction 9 10 1 20 Looking at the combined data, Hoffman remains our generalist all-star. He has an impressive 8-3 record. Lady Justice is batting about average with 2 wins, 3 losses, and 2 draws. Dashel, despite occasional complaints and quite a bit of hype over the past six months, is having trouble converting his efficiencies and summons into wins, with a 2-8-1 record (almost an inverse of Hoffman's). Guild players aren't picking beyond those three often, with our "shooty set" of {Basse, Perdita, and Sonnia} combining for 2 wins and 2 losses, and Nellie and Lucius (our "control and draw" masters) seeing little play, which may be a matter of playstyle: perhaps Guild draws the "bring it on; I prefer a fair fight to all this sneaking around" crowd? Scheme Selection and Matchups: Round One: Corner Recover Evidence Guild did well with Assassinate, Leave Your Mark, and Catch and Release. Spread Them Out was attempted and failed, and Sabotage was ignored. R E Total Times Taken Max % Completed Assassinate 4 4 8 5 10 0.8 Leave Your Mark 5 2 7 5 10 0.7 Spread Them Out 0 0 0 1 2 0 Sabotage - - 0 - #VALUE! #VALUE! Catch and Release 3 1 4 3 6 0.6666666667 Strat 16 Matchups: Rasputina beat Lady Justice 5-3 Bayou Zoraida beat Basse 6-4 Hammelin beat Barker 6-3 Barker beat Yan Lo 4-3 Nellie beat Reva 8-0 (this is a played match) Hoffman beat Parker 7-3 Hoffman beat Von Schtook 6-3 Faction won 4, lost 3 Faction Diff Round One: +9 (or roughly even without the Nellie game.) Round Two: Flank Public Enemies Every Guild player too Hidden Martyrs, and it was scored to a high degree. Leave Your Mark was taken quite a bit and scored well, while we had even luck with Take Prisoner and Breakthrough. R E Total Times Taken Max % Completed Sabotage 0 0 0 0 0 #DIV/0! Hidden Martyrs 7 3 10 7 14 0.7142857143 Take Prisoner 1 1 2 2 4 0.5 Breakthrough 1 0 1 1 2 0.5 Leave Your Mark 4 2 6 4 8 0.75 12 - 28 0.4285714286 Matchups: Hoffman beat Pandora 6-2 Hoffman beat Lady J 5-3 (Guild mirror) Bayou Zoraida beat Dashel 5-4 Arcanist Hoffman beat Dashel 5-4 Ophelia beat Hoffman 4-3 Perdita beat NB Zoraida 5-3 Faction won 3, lost 4 Faction Diff Round Two: +3 Round 3: Standard Symbols of Authority Guild spread our scheme choices more broadly here, and our best scoring came off of Catch and Release and Research Mission. Vendetta, Claim Jump, and Let Them Bleed (which stereotypically might seem better suited to our "fighty" faction) were weaker-scored. R E Total Times Taken Max % Completed Vendetta 0 0 0 2 4 0 Claim Jump 1 1 2 4 8 0.25 Catch and Release 2 1 3 2 4 0.75 Research Mission 2 1 3 2 4 0.75 Let Them Bleed 0 1 1 2 4 0.25 17 - 24 0.7083333333 Molly and Lady Justice played to a 5-5 draw We had one forfeit Kaeris beat Dashel 4-3 Hoffman beat Sandeep 6-5 NB Zoraida beat Dashel 7-3 Sonnia beat Marcus 5-4 Somer beat Lady J 7-4 Faction Won 2, Lost 4 (including forfeit), and Drew 1 More when we get our final standings and I have a minute to return to this!

As an update: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CMYuBlbvqVYWdMZBFpS0ORhEoUjSuAR9HWzLc7LjpkY/edit?usp=sharing Hoffman 2 1 3 Lady Justice 1 1 Dashel 2 2 Basse 0 Perdita 1 1 Sonnia 0 Nellie 0 Lucius 0 Faction 1 2 0 7 I'll crunch numbers more fully after the event (the spreadsheet has the full list), but of note, one game was guild vs guild (Hoffman vs Lady Justice). We went 3-4, with our wins coming from Hoffman and Perdita. We saw losses from Hoffman, Lady Justice, and Dashel. As we go into round three, Guild players are playing on table 3 in one bracket, and tables 3 and 4 in the other, so we have some people with at least a puncher's chance for a podium!

Signed up! Looking forward to this format.

Another thing to note about the specific game in question is that it was a Corner Deployment game, which gives Dashel the time to set up without being disrupted. And as the OP pointed out, he didn't fare too poorly against Dashel -- it was a 4-3 game with Dashel scoring 2 recover and the reveal of Assassinate and Leave Your Mark, and Yan Lo one recover evidence marker and the reveal point on sabotage and leave your mark. (This is player-reported, so I may have R/E points flipped). This wasn't exactly a stomping. Dashel Barker 2 Assassinate 1 0 1 Leave Your Mark 1 0 1 4 Yan Lo 1 Sabotage 1 0 1 Leave Your Mark 1 0 1 3 In general, Dashel had a pretty poor showing in the Vassal tourney in Fauxvember: (Dashel went 1W/3L/1D), including being piloted by people who podium their local scenes regularly. He's 1W/1L so far in the December tourney -- and this is the win, which as you can see, is by 1 point. Guild overall finished 6th of 7 factions (roughly equally represented, apart from Rezzers, which had twice the player count). If it felt like a challenging game to both players and the score stayed tight, that's good Malifaux, to my mind. Guild's design problem is actually that we're incredibly predictable because so few of our keywords have the flexibility to move beyond "drag a model out, kill it, scheme later." The two crews that stay largely in keyword are the cross-faction Arcanist and Explorer's crews. We barely take Peacekeepers outside of Hoffman because they're slow and we can't generate the scrap effectively, and we barely take our emissary at all because it only turns into a speed bump once you add a LLC. Everyone walks into a Guild game with a plan for ranged threat, a plan for Phiona, and a plan for the Rider. And if you declare Hoffman your crew predictability goes even higher. We heard a lot on podcasts last year that Guild power couldn't be brought up because of Agent 46 copying good tools and pairing them with Inhuman Physiology, but that got resolved in the March errata. We also had two totems repaired to different degrees, a rider nerf/redesign, and some small adjustments to other models, but Guild still hasn't been balanced into its keywords to any serious community agreement that I've seen.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CMYuBlbvqVYWdMZBFpS0ORhEoUjSuAR9HWzLc7LjpkY/edit?usp=sharing Here's my spreadsheet -- it may not be 100% accurate, but I try to keep up to speed as people report in. Cheers!

Also if you need to sign up for the next tournament in January, it's here: Fun stuff with this one -- you declare a pool of five masters to use once-per-each, and there are four games total. Plus Explorers should be legal for that one!