Has variety increased in how the game is played?

[DES]

I was talking with an acquaintance at a local games club recently about miniatures games as a whole. He said "loads of tournament players move on from Malifaux and go to Warmachine. They get bored with Malifaux as you're only ever playing 1 type of game." This didn't chime with my experience, and it turned out he was talking about the game prior to M2E. I've not played any previous editions of this game so I'm in the dark. Also I ignored the internet for toy soldiers for years so don't have a sense of the broad forum opinions. 

 

So my question is this, has this new edition changed  broadened the feel of how many different games you play?

 

This is a tricky thing to discuss though. The depth of a game isn't always a problem to do with number of scenarios or ways of playing the game necessarily. WFB spent year sonly being played with one scenario as that scenario was a lot of fun and had broad tactical challenges. 3rd to 6Th Ed that is. I spent maybe 6 years playing Confrontation 3rd edition almost only ever playing the one scenario. That was easily my favourite game ever.

 

His criticism may have been the right sentiment but picking up on the wrong things. However it's happened has this game now got more depth or was he just on the wrong forums?

 

Cheers Chaps 

[Sholto]

Not sure what he was talking about, tbh. Malifaux 1.5 always had plenty of depth in the various Schemes and Strategies. There may have been a tendency in some areas to "play it like beatdown" or a perception that players always took the same Schemes (you could pick freely in 1.5), but even then I never heard any complaints that Malifaux was a one-note experience.

 

M2E is more diverse than 1.5 with the new Schemes and Strategies system, and with all the models being more balanced the game certainly now has more depth. But that is not the same as saying it did not have depth beforehand

[Adran]

I've played Malifaux since the first book, and I am surprised by the claim.

In my club we generally played individual stratergies, whioch does make a big difference, but it used to have many more scenarios to play, that were quite different. If anything, because of our normal use of individual stratergy and, so far, less interest in playign the story encounters (we are still getting used to trying out new models, so sticking with strats we know makes it easier) I'd say I currently have less variety than I used to.

 

Yes, you did find once you got to tournement play that the same schemes would be used, but they quickly moved to unique scheme pools over the tournement as the norm, and whilst there were 4 or 5 very popular schemes, knowing you can only pick them once lead tpo inbteresting choices, and quite a variety.

 

I'd go on the variety of Malifaux lists seeming to be much larger than Warmahordes lists suggesting otherwise. And whislt there are some tournement players who stick with a narrow model pool for all games, they are eitehr soemoen who only owns a small number or in the minority. very few Reconnoter games look like Reckoning games to me.

[Brightmore]

With M2E each game of Malifaux is pretty different in my experience, different scheme, strategy, terrain combinations can really change the game. Like I might skip over Plant Evidence(which is pretty easy), if I notice my opponent only has a 3 big pieces of terrain on his side of the board, etc.

 

 

The one thing I can say for absolute sureness, I leverage a great deal more of my collection in Malifaux then I do with any other game. To be fair there is not quite as many models in Malifaux, but I find that pretty much all of the ones I own are useful and hit the board, where as that is not the case in the other games i play.

[necroon]

Wow...

That's a complete 180 from my opinion.

I find Warmachine plays like "kill the caster" every game which is why I stopped playing it.

To be honest I thought Malifaux 1.5 played not much better... every game seemed like Bodyguard and Holdout or Breakthrough. 2.0 has changed that for me and I find every game to be fun, different, and unique.

[DES]

I was confused by his claims about Warmachine as well. I find it a deeply tedious and un-dynamic game. It is however quite popular, so it must have something about it even if I can't fathom why you'd play a game with such bland and/or rubbish miniatures in a power gamers walk 2 lines straight at each other rules set and see who gets to pull out their cheese first way. I am however aware of the subjective nature of all art and entertainments. 

 

 

How did strats and schemes work previously, if they even existed before? M2E appears interesting, dynamic and the depth of options looks good to me. I've not yet played a game where both players don't have options to win and what to do with their forces. I've not faced a Belle spam yet, but found the Ramos summoning really awkward but I still played the game. Luck's inherently a factor but I'm still of the opinion that making more better choices than your opponent drastically increases your chance of winning the game, so balance is probably pretty good. 

 

Possibly the purpose of starting this thread is seeking some reassurance that there is depth to this game. I've invested time and money now and it's a case of how much more can go in 

[LunarSol]

I sense some hostility towards Warmachine here....

 

I really like both games personally and both have a good deal of variety.  Much of Warmachine's comes from the Steamroller packet and is driven by the variety of scenarios and the variety of opponents you face.  The list pair system works quite well in this regard, even is casual play.

 

The big difference with M2E is that Schemes are somewhat dictated to you, which forces variety in your crew design and playstyle.  It can truly demand variety, even without accounting for your opponent, as your options to win can vary greatly game to game.

[Loveless]

I sense some hostility towards Warmachine here....

 

I'm not sure it's hostility I'm sensing so much as incredulousness at the initial comment.  Warmachine players saying that you only ever play one type of game in Malifaux is a bit backwards - with Warmachine, you pretty much always have a guaranteed way to win in caster-kill.  With Malifaux, you don't know your win conditions until you get to the table.  Malifaux is about the only game I can think of where "tabling" your opponent doesn't guarantee you've won.

 

I mean, I know Warmachine and Warhammer and what-not all have different "scenarios" but by far the only thing I ever seen played with either of them is "Kill your enemy"

 

It was just an odd statement to see, given that Malifaux is probably the most fluid in terms of win conditions out of the games I play or see played.

[DeleteAccount]

Yeah, I love me some warmachine, but Malifaux does force you more out of your comfort zone in normal play than warmachine does with scenario play. M1 did tend to be pretty stagnant though, so I can see how that could have persisted in his mind as how the game was, but M2 has become better leaps and bounds in that aspect, the scheme pool is the best rules change nobody asked for as far as I'm concerned.

[LunarSol]

A dynamic scheme pool is definitely the standout mechanic of M2E for me.  Having limited choice in objectives allows them to dictate crew design in a way that's just not possible in most games.  There's a good variety of objectives as well, creating a lot of unusual win conditions.

 

Warmachine very much plays like a game of football.  It's all about a line of scrimmage, and pushing the opposing army back to take ground while trying to open up holes to send a running back through for a big play.

[admanb]

Seems like there are people on both sides that are happy to talk mess about games they don't actually know much about. I play and enjoy both Malifaux (2E, only ever heard bad things about 1E) and Warmachine (pretty much ditto for Mk2 vs. Mk1).

 

Malifaux's variety definitely comes from the Scheme pool. I've played whole turns 2-3 that had almost no attacking because we were just jockeying for position over schemes and strategies, and I've had games where half our lists were dead by turn 3.

[Hateful Darkblack]

I haven't even played a wargame other than Malifaux.

 

Unless you count Battletech in high school with little cardboard dudes.

 

And I don't feel any particular desire to start playing a wargame other than Malifaux.

 

Mostly, I play RPGs, LARP and tabletop.

[Fetid Strumpet]

I could see the comment having some validity for last edition's Malifaux. In 1.5 the Strategies were much more important than they are now. You could only get a max of 8 VP and the strat accounted for half of it. The strats could be shared, or asymmetric, and every group I played in had their preferences. One group always used shared and another always used asymmetric.

 

One of the issues with this was that the strats before often weren't configured in how you gained VP like they are now. It often wasn't possible for both players to easily get points from the start at the same time. If you were doing shared it would often be that one player was gaining points and the other wasn't. And often, if I'm remembering right, they weren't accumulative, it would often be all, a chunk, or nothing at certain phases of the game. IE in Deliver a message you got points if you delivered the message and got more the earlier you did it. Or you would get a bunch at the end of the game if you did something, or would get the whole load as soon as you did it. This often lead certain Masters from being readily able to lock points up very early, that you couldn't touch, leaving them more free to focus on other goals with more of their crew for longer. A Dreamer, Kirai, or Colette crew would snicker if Deliver the Message came up as played correctly they would be accomplishing it first turn, locking those points away, and then they would be free to use all their models on something else for the rest of the game

 

Strats now are accumulative, you can't get the full load in one bunch, you have to devote models to the strat every single turn if you want those points. Additionally, while the strat is now the single biggest source of points you can gain, it serves more as a device to force you to interact with the opponent. You are both trying to do the same thing, and so will often have models in the same area, which will lead to conflict, and stopping an opponent from gaining a point on any one turn is a huge advantage. And with Schemes together forming a bigger source of points when combined, the strat is still important, but on a more equal level with the schemes.

 

Which brings us to schemes in 1.5. They were, to my mind, some of the biggest sources of breaks in the system, and still a very big draw. I really began to enjoy Malifaux because of them, as they were something you could individualize your win conditions with. The issue was they weren't balanced at all. There were general Schemes available to all, Faction specific schemes, and master specific schemes, and how easy they were vs how many VP the gave was seriously skewed. For example Seamus' master specific scheme required that the CCK, who was a terribly sub-par model in 1.5 who was almost never taken by anyone but fluff players, kill a model with a high SS cost. Which meant that an easy to kill model, with sub-par combat skills, was the source of VP in that scenario. All an opponent had to do was kill the CCK and you couldn't complete that scheme, or just had to save cards to prevent the CCK from ever hitting a valid target. Whereas Kirai had one that required her Ikiryo to deal the death blow to an enemy master, which while still not a great scheme, at least had the benefit of requiring a combat model to kill something, and the model could always be resumed if it died unless Kirai herself was dead.

 

The biggest issue was that all those, to various degrees, unbalanced schemes were ALWAYS available to the player for choosing. Unless an event said schemes were unique, and tourneys often did this, you could choose the same schemes over and over again in casual play, which people often did. And even in Tourneys the same schemes were often chosen every event, just in what order you chose them and when you used them would differ. If you were a strong player at an event and you got paired against a baby seal whose first ever game of Malifaux was that event, you'd break out the harder to accomplish schemes because you'd still most likely be able to club your opponent down, and you'd get to save your easier schemes for harder opponents.

 

So in casual play what often would happen is that a strat would be determined, the player would choose a crew that could easily accomplish that strat with minimal effort, and they would pick the same two schemes that were super easy for them to accomplish over and over again.

It for me got to the point where I could just tell what schemes were going to be taken as soon as I saw what faction my opponent was playing. I can't count the numbers of games I played against Colette where the schemes were Sabotage and Bodyguard.

 

So the OP does have a pretty valid point about last edition. Though the rules allowed players to have much more variance in their games, in practice the reality often was, especially for casual play, that the same game got played over and over again, because unless you personally were trying to make the game more varied or challenge yourself by taking varied schemes, those who were playing to win would just take the optimal schemes over and over again.

 

This edition is obviously not perfect, but there is much more variety in games now. The Scheme pool does bring variety to what schemes are chosen, and while there are ones that are very commonly chosen, they don't show up in every single game, and so while you might regularly face 4-6 schemes over and over again, its far better than the 2 or 3 that were in pretty much every game last edition. Additionally with points having to be accumulated via the strat it forces more interaction with the opponent, and its so much harder to score shut out victories now as it is very difficult to deprive an opponent of all of their points.

 

So while the rules allowed for it not to be the case, I can see how the OP's acquaintance could feel that the same game happened over and over in 1.5, especially considering the imbalance between masters in addition to the issues with the scheme and strat system.

 

I think if they were to play 2.0 many of the issues I mentioned have been ameliorated. There is better balance between the masters, so you will see a wider variety of them played more often, as opposed to the few powerhouses played over and over again from last edition. You have a pool of Schemes that you must choose from that is generated randomly, instead of being able to pick Bodyguard and Holdout over and over again like last edition. Strats give less of a percentage of your VP than previously, and you must devote models to accomplishing it over the entire course of the game as opposed to devoting 1-2 models to the strat turn 1, locking those points away, and then proceeding to use those models to deny the opponent points for the rest of the game, as was common last edition.

 

I think while the game is largely the same, the differences in how that game is implemented would appeal much more to those who found it much of a muchness last edition.

[Drool_bucket]

if you TL;DR Fetid's post above you are doing it wrong.

 

He is right.  Just right.

[ddot]

I remember doing things in M2EBeta that I never would have tried previously.  Like bring Sorrows with Lilith. (Sorrows were busted dudes  for years after one errata.) it did open up crew combos which never would have happened in 1E.  Also, I remember some of the upgrades contributing to this as well. Nexus of Power on a Mature nephilim added some much needed beef and killiness to my Pandora list, and also helped her survivability, which she desperately needs. In 1E, never would have happened as their playstyles were nowhere near coinciding, even tangentally.

 

Also, some of the model rule changes forced me to re-evaulate  stuff. The Crooked Men got an interesting change in how Shafted works, so now I need a fast and easy way to lay down scheme markers ahead of time to plant the minefield so to speak.

 

That's even before we get to changes in Strategy and Scheme...

[DES]

I sense some hostility towards Warmachine here....

 

 

 

I'm not sure it's hostility I'm sensing so much as incredulousness at the initial comment.  Warmachine players saying that you only ever play one type of game in Malifaux is a bit backwards - with Warmachine, you pretty much always have a guaranteed way to win in caster-kill.  

 

 

More a case of an exaggeration of my feelings for the game, for comic effect and to keep the discussion here moving along.

 

@Fetid Strumpet that's a well constructed post. Where did you learn to write like that? (This is not sarcastic, I'm trying to improve my writing currently and I'm interested how much is school/job/personal study)

 

The analysis does hit the spot on where his comments come from and how it doesn't match my thoughts so far. Although as veteran gamer I'm fairly confident with my ability to grapple with rules and see potentials, this game is too complex to work out quickly if it'll be shallow or long lasting. So cheers for that, most reassuring. 

[Justin]

I like that Fetid's posts are as much essays as they are posts.

 

But pretty much spot on.

[Mister Shine]

You should really start assigning grades Justin

[Justin]

You should really start assigning grades Justin

 

D+

[Mister Shine]

http://www.newstalk1010.com/news/2014/09/10/teacher-stabbed-at-university-of-toronto

 

Just pointing out be careful about grades and people from toronto

[Uktena]

Warmahordes is the biggest game here in Seattle, since we are right by Privateer, and all our Malifaux players that I've met think pretty highly of it. There are some cross game players, but mostly the WM players think that Malifaux looks and plays way better than it ever did these days, and the M2E players think WM is just fine, but it's no card sharkin moonshine extravaganza. Malifaux is seen around here as highly varied, game play wise. Nobody yet has said it was too similar every time they played/watched.

Edit: Wooo! 500!

[moxypoo]

Edit: Wrong thread!

[NIGHTHATER]

Des,

 

As someone that still ONLY plays 1.5 I can tell you me and my best friend had to address a ton of issues. One of the first thing we realized was *Individual* strategies created these games where enemy forces might not interact and fight, and that sucked badly. We addressed that issue by only playing *Shared* strategies. Now that both parties have the same strategy confrontation is almost always a must, although *Shared* Distract is still kinda lame.

 

After you hire your crew you would pick your Schemes.

 

This we realized like Fetid Strumpet had said that was not very balanced at all. They were as bad as take candy from a sleeping baby 2 V.P.s or swim out to the deepest part of the ocean and fist fight a Great White 2 V.P. This seems like a drastic over-exaggeration but it's really not. We addressed this issue by saying Schemes are random. You get 1 of the general 11 and 1 of the faction or master specific ones. Since your crews already been chosen this works pretty well. If you got 1 that was impossible you just redrew.

 

As for the master balance issue ya we realized this as well and limited or banned certain masters from the game. I guess it's not a perfect world, but when people strive to have fun as opposed to win all the time it becomes a little better.

 

"So has variety increased how the game is played?"

 

*I guess it depends on how people played before.

 

*If they "Had to" win or not

 

*What the local group thought was fair or fun.

 

Nighthater

[No Gods or Kings. Only Man]

if you TL;DR Fetid's post above you are doing it wrong.

 

He is right.  Just right.

Well, I did TL;DR it, then when I read your post, I had to go back and read the whole thing...

 

ameliorated.

...aaaand, I learned a new word today.

 

 

"So has variety increased how the game is played?"

 

*I guess it depends on how people played before.

Nighthater

While house ruling can be a great way to make any board game more fun in the meta of your current group (or make it playable at all, as is the case with 40k 7th ed.) it has the problem of being a local solution to a global problem.

Unless you're uninterested in playing with people outside of your group, you're going to have to face the rules as written at some point, or even having to deal with different house rules to your own, that you might not agree with.

[NIGHTHATER]

No gods,

 

 

While house ruling can be a great way to make any board game more fun in the meta of your current group (or make it playable at all, as is the case with 40k 7th ed.) it has the problem of being a local solution to a global problem.

Unless you're uninterested in playing with people outside of your group, you're going to have to face the rules as written at some point, or even having to deal with different house rules to your own, that you might not agree with.

 

I fully agree with this statement. Sadly enough Malifaux is so dead here in the bay area, CA that I don't think the Resurrectionists could revive it. When I find some other people to play with I'll be flexible.

 

Nighthater