Balance

[Dirial]

Dirial's tone came accross harsh but he is a cool guy with an encyclopeadic knowledge of malifaux and he has helped my game a lot with his advice.

 

Oh, I'm sorry if I sounded harsh! That wasn't the purpose. I blame it on language differences. Sorry, Vlad, if I stepped on your toes!

 

I just didn't want the thread to derail too much into the discussion of a single Master instead of the overall balance.

[Vlad]

It's all right, don`t worry. Actually, you and jimbobvalsocks said what I wanted to hear - that problem is not that some masters seems OP, but you just need specific tactics (and experience) when you struggle against them.

[Requirement]

However, figuring out how to deal with the wide variety of different issues you come up against is a big part of the fun of the game.

This is actually quite a bit of the Malifaux gaming experience and where a lot of the fun comes from. Even within a faction there can be such wildly different styles amongst the masters that you never quite know what to expect. This is also where, as Jimbob said, a lot of the feeling of unbalance comes from. Getting train-wrecked by Collodi a dozen times sucks (especially when you don't stay alive long enough to see how to beat him). The community here is great and provides a ton of experience and advice if you ask. That's a thing I like about Malifaux: there is some homework involved.

[bertmac]

Certainly playing any master you havent played before can be a big challenge also in a straight comparison some masters look a lot more powerful than others and can be relied on to take down an enemy model easily and even being less defensive than others soulstones keep them fairly safe but then they may not have access to ridiculously powerful crew models (my rail golem with a handful of tomes killed half a gremlin crew in one activation the other day), Gremlin bosses hand out a lot of damage but their crews are flimsy at best so there's certainly some balance inside factions.

[surly]

So far my own experience with the game was really positive too when it comes to balancing. My opinion may not be that huge though, since most people in our area are playing the same masters most of the time. So far I've faced or played Viks, So'mer, Pandora, most Guild masters, Rasputina, Misaki and seen Collodi and Dreamer, though these were no real competitive games but more fun games.

Within these masters I haven't seen a huge gap between the masters. Sometimes I feel though that my Viks are a bit on the strong side, since they simply kill half (or more) of my opponents crew singlehandly.

Reading through this forum and especially the tournament reports though it seems though that some masters show up more often than others in tournament play.

From the top of my head these include Levi with A&D and Mech Rider, Dreamer, Collodi, Viks and Colette.

Although I've seen Dreamer and Collodi so far, these games were not that competitive as stated. So are these masters simply a bit over the top, or what's the reason they show up that often?

[Dirial]

From the top of my head these include Levi with A&D and Mech Rider, Dreamer, Collodi, Viks and Colette.

Although I've seen Dreamer and Collodi so far, these games were not that competitive as stated. So are these masters simply a bit over the top, or what's the reason they show up that often?

 

Meta preferences. Those Masters have some interesting mechanics that are not that easy to grasp for the opponent, which gives them a slight edge against beginners, but also captures the imagination and interest of good players. Thus, good players like them and play them often. Yet, I have not seen any evidence that any of them is considerably stronger than other Masters by him- or herself. (Actually, I consider the Viks somewhat below the curve. However, there are only two players playing them in my play group, and they often do the exact same thing every game, which makes them easy to counter.)

[dgraz]

Totally agree with Dirial.

[moxypoo]

Dirial is definitely correct.

 

Another thing to consider is that the complexity of masters like Levy, Collodi, and The Dreamer (and Zoraida to an extent) makes them more difficult for the opponent to predict.  For example, Lady Justice is really good at hitting things with her sword - as her opponent, you can usually guess pretty accurately that Lady J wants to run up and attack you in melee. 

 

The more complex masters generally have more widely varied options which makes it more difficult to determine what they're going to do each turn.  I don't think any of the common top tournament masters are overpowered; rather, they're just more difficult to play against if you aren't very familiar with them.  Another example: Levy is one of my favorite masters.  When I play him against my most frequent opponent we always have very close, tense games, because my opponent is familiar with everything Levy can do.  However, when I play Levy against players who haven't seen him (ever or infrequently) I tend to stomp them.

 

This is true of any master, but I find the discrepancies are larger with the more complex masters than the ones who are more straight forward.

[Ratty]

I have to agree with the Summon thing, Nicodem being able to summon models is huge. But if he spends his whole time summoning he lacks the impetus to get into position. I find the Nicodem in the standard length game is fine, most crews can out maneuver him and win through objectives, in fact I possibly think he may be a bit behind the curve. I've had a few games against him that go all the way to turn 7, and at that point he becomes really really powerful. 

 

It's also worth noting that attrition style Masters (most summoners), need the game to go to length to get the most out of their summoning. Some crews hit fast and hard (like Lilith or Viktorias). If they can push the game to a win in 3 turns by hitting the important models, an attrition style crew can not hold up.