The Shifting Meta

[The Zinc Lich]

So, we have seen another Beta cycle come and go, we have had a few weeks with new (rebalanced) strategies, and new blood has been flowing in, brought in by the sweet, sweet lure of Wyrd's gorgeous models. Has anyone else noticed a shift in the metas they play in, either local or general?

 

From my experience, as Gremlins get more releases, people are flocking to them for the humor value and the pure, unadulterated winning power they bring with them. No other faction has gotten as many "Wait, that does what? Let me see that card!" as Gremlins have, and they have yet to even get their shiniest toys.

 

With the release of the book two upgrades, Ten Thunders player's opinions on minions have suddenly skewed away from the various cross-faction models towards the in faction ones: Samurai, TT Archers, and Oiran have had their good names restored by creative upgrade use, proving that Wyrd's upgrade scheme is pretty smart.

[SpectreEliteGaming]

I think the meta is always in state of change - things get popular - people find things to beat those things and then rinse and repeat.

The Levy crazy in the US will die down a bit once other plastic stuff is released... like Colette.

Everyone should be playing gremlins.

[TehMik]

I've been seeing a lot more ressers and arcanists, actually. And NB, too. Mostly people proxying and learning with models such as Molly, Colette, and Collodi. 

[The Zinc Lich]

The Levy crazy in the US will die down a bit once other plastic stuff is released... like Colette.

 

 

Yeah, it is pretty crazy how dominant Leveticus is in the Outcast boards. He is literally in every person's master selection pool, usually with Jack Daw and the Viktorias. I don't think I've heard anyone even mention Von Schill's name in the last few months, and I've never played against him. Misaki is also at a pretty low play percent, from what I can see, although there are people at least interested in changing that.

 

It doesn't help that Leveticus is one of the best masters in the game, with a rich, rewarding pile of tools at his disposal combined with being, for all intents and purposes, unkillable. The five-turn game that balances out summoning master's ability to bring infinite forces to the table, unfortunately, swings Leveticus' survivability really far...

[E.T.A. Hoffman]

Gremlins do got me worried. I've read though em and sometimes im like....who balanced this? Whose did this?! But, we'll have to see what happens when people start playing them.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Massive +1 to the above.

[TehMik]

Gremlins do got me worried. I've read though em and sometimes im like....who balanced this? Whose did this?! But, we'll have to see what happens when people start playing them.

 

Gremlins are totally balanced. Don't know what you're talking about.

[Stryder]

Indeed. As an example...Ophilia's gun can do as much damage as Seamus's gun...and has positive flips...and can be used more than once...all at the cost of 1Wd per shot...which is recovered when she cheats the next attack flip...

 

Very balanced, wouldn't you say?

 

Counter argument: Seamus is more versatile and tougher. True, but being tough is not required when there's nothing left to attack you.

[Dirial]

Very balanced, wouldn't you say?

 

Well, at least she's really slow... not.

[Kadeton]

My local meta has shifted to playing Henchman-led games with the end-of-beta Campaign rules. It's been fun.

[zFiend]

Indeed. As an example...Ophilia's gun can do as much damage as Seamus's gun...and has positive flips...and can be used more than once...all at the cost of 1Wd per shot...which is recovered when she cheats the next attack flip...

Very balanced, wouldn't you say?

Counter argument: Seamus is more versatile and tougher. True, but being tough is not required when there's nothing left to attack you.

Yeah exactly. And she ain't made of paper entirely. 12 wds, df6, Squeel.

[The Zinc Lich]

Unfortunately, Gremlins are a totally new faction that very few people, in the beginning, wanted to playtest. The power level on their stuff is all over the place, and, at some point, people are going to figure out what is on the top of that power curve, and they will be unholy terrors to play against. I understand that they are supposed to be a high risk/high reward faction, but I fear that the tools they have to mitigate the risks on their random stuff is just a little bit too strong.

 

On the other hand, that is the reason why pretty much all of the new models in the recent beta were balanced around making Mei Feng more competitive and do comparatively little for the faction as a whole. Sorry, Gremlin players, but I think your toys from the first two books are a little bit too shiny, which means you'll be getting coal over the next few books.

[enderwiggin]

It doesn't help that Gremlins are not as well repped in the field due to model shortage. With most people in the Beta disliking proxying more than a few models (to test powers + simple memory imo) slapping together an entire proxied crew was usually not the order of the day.

 

I won't make an argument for/against their power level as a whole, but I do think the Ulix shot in the rear thing will get a bat to the face once it's in plastic if Lynch was anything to measure by (if damage fears were truly the reason behind that Cuddling).

[SpectreEliteGaming]

Sorry guys... but all you're doing is making me want to play gremlins more... hehe.

I'm the asshole who always had to get kicked off GM Island in WoW and I'm the jerk who rerolls a faction just because they are the strongest. I seriously play games because I love to break games - I love the exploits and its stuff like that that has always gotten me excited. I'm not saying that I'm ever the best, but I'm always looking for the top tier stuff and always aiming for the most optimal builds. Listening to people talk about combos and the next hot crew configuration, all that stuff. If those things get patched or changed, then its off to the next best thing I go. Tweaking for efficient lists is one of the things I put the most effort into (I mostly blame Magic, mostly). It's stuff like Apocalypse rules in 40k that almost got me to want to play that hideous game. I want power!!!

I want gremlins!!!

[Patzer]

Indeed. As an example...Ophilia's gun can do as much damage as Seamus's gun...and has positive flips...and can be used more than once...all at the cost of 1Wd per shot...which is recovered when she cheats the next attack flip...

 

Very balanced, wouldn't you say?

 

Counter argument: Seamus is more versatile and tougher. True, but being tough is not required when there's nothing left to attack you.

Counter argument 2: Ophelia can use her bloody gun in melee with no drawbacks. Seamus will slap you efficiently. 

 

Well see how it goes with the Gremlins. I do agree with they have tech that are very competent of mitigating their weakness (I am looking at you Slop Haulers), and they have some really strong models/masters that we will have to see how they really fare "out in the wild".

[SpectreEliteGaming]

Counter-counter argument though, again, is that, much like Leveticus, once those things really hit the table for real people will figure out how to beat those things (wong and ulix, specifically).

After all, Ophelia is out in plastic and I would certainly say that she does not wreck other crews to a significantly higher degree than say, a comparable master like Perdita (at the present time, anyway).

Keep in mind that all this talk is highly speculative anyway - gremlins seem very strong, and they are, but on the table they somehow seem to be not so bad in some strange way - certainly manageable anyway.

This game has a funny way of having an answer to any outrageous situation - trick is to find it.

[Adran]

Sorry guys... but all you're doing is making me want to play gremlins more... hehe.

I'm the asshole who always had to get kicked off GM Island in WoW and I'm the jerk who rerolls a faction just because they are the strongest. I seriously play games because I love to break games - I love the exploits and its stuff like that that has always gotten me excited. I'm not saying that I'm ever the best, but I'm always looking for the top tier stuff and always aiming for the most optimal builds. Listening to people talk about combos and the next hot crew configuration, all that stuff. If those things get patched or changed, then its off to the next best thing I go. Tweaking for efficient lists is one of the things I put the most effort into (I mostly blame Magic, mostly). It's stuff like Apocalypse rules in 40k that almost got me to want to play that hideous game. I want power!!!

I want gremlins!!!

 

And here we have our Barometer.

(at least it seems for the Net list, I don't know how much effort you put in to deciding the most powerful faction, what I've seen is that you seem to have gone with the Internet Wisdom so far).

 

On the whole, over the past 6 months, I would say the meta largely changed as new plastic kits came out.

Crews like Leveticus and the dreamer became more common, partially due to the plastic, and partially due to the difficulty in facing them if you don't know how.

Now they are much more common, and people are learning the counters, so they are becomeing just a strong choice, but one that the general skill level is the decider, rather than just "do you know how to answer Levi?" (And probably also because there are so many threads saying Levi is broken, and people following the percieved wisdom that he is the most powerful, increasing the number of Levi players, and therefroe more liekly to see them at the top of the tournements).

 

My Predictions are that over the next 12 months Kirai and Ulix will become the new wonder crews, as they exist/have common crew choices in plastic. (and I feel there will be a lot of threads about how to face the Brewmasteer)

 

Locally we play everything, almost randomly. I've not managed to make as many tournements this year as I would have liked, but I've seen it seems to be very similar player names at the top, regardless of what they are playing.

 

It reminds me of the UK scene about 4/5 years ago when the top players all got fed up of playing Neverborn, and decided between them that they were going to go to other factions. Largely the same players won, but different Masters rose to the top.

 

Deciding a Meta seems much less clear here than in magic, as restricted Pool/master tournements will naturally lead to different choices compared to fixed faction, but largely we lump the Master results together across all tournement types. And the appearance of the models is often a strong decider of who people play, rather than just style/power level.

 

Or maybe we're just lackadasical locally, and other places take things much more seriously,

[katadder]

I have faced gremlins alot including Ulix and they do seem to have some very OP stuff.

lots of models get psuedo fast which is normally countered by slop haulers, even Ulixs summoning is countered by slop haulers.

Also if facing Ulix dont take chaff for init as his shot in the rear will clear out all your chaff in one turn with a warpig or sow and still leave them their normal activation (which for something with pig charge could be 4 actions as well if it charges twice in the turn).

main gremlin player here says they cant be OP as otherwise they would be top of the tourneys, but as I say to him thats because hardly anyone plays them yet

[SpectreEliteGaming]

@adran - I'm not 100% sure net-lists really exist in Malifaux, I'm not even sure how you got that from what I said. Even after you compile a list of "top-models" you still have to utilize them properly.

At Adepticon I saw every Levy player playing him very differently and I had a fairly different list for all 5 rounds. Also, I've said before that I'm pretty sure, if you generalize the factions, that arcanists seem to be the most solid faction over all - not really "net-wisdom" just personal opinion. I'm not seeing what you mean by relying on internet wisdom unless you just mean the gathering of information through discussion on message boards and listening to podcasts? This game really only has the internet to exchange info and, well, maybe 5 people in all of Canada actually play Malifaux so I'm forced to consider a lot of discussion to fill in the blanks, as it were. :/

I was really just trying to illustrate my goal of pushing the power boundaries of any game I play and gremlins seems like a great faction to do it with, nothing more than that.

[Math Mathonwy]

At least here, the Gremlins seemed utterly insane at first but their drawbacks, though on paper really minor, do add up in actual play. They actually are squishy and do have various weaknesses. I'm not saying that they aren't powerful - certainly they are, but I would be surprised if they are really "OP".

Indeed. As an example...Ophilia's gun can do as much damage as Seamus's gun...and has positive flips...and can be used more than once...all at the cost of 1Wd per shot...which is recovered when she cheats the next attack flip...

 

Very balanced, wouldn't you say?

 

Counter argument: Seamus is more versatile and tougher. True, but being tough is not required when there's nothing left to attack you.

Are you saying that it is as powerful as Lynch's gun? And Perdita's as well? If so, I agree.

On a slightly different point, what new, non-limited models do we have in plastic that weren't available in metal (or in plastic during M1.5)?

Samurai, Low River Monks, Fuhatsu. Barbaros. Merris. Hannah. Some totems (Steam Trunk, Scribe). Anything else? I'm most probably missing something.

But my points is that that's extremely few unless I'm missing a helluva lot! And I do agree that models without M1.5 presence were playtested less during the open betas so it will be interesting to see what happens when the new stuff starts to come out.

Soon Ironsides, Brewmaster, and Tara as well as Whiskey Golem. Interesting times.

[Victoria]

I'm not looking forward to everyone bringing out the brewmaster once he comes out!  My games so far with him have felt rather demoralizing.  But I suppose we will all just have to learn how to deal with him!

[Math Mathonwy]

I'm not looking forward to everyone bringing out the brewmaster once he comes out!  My games so far with him have felt rather demoralizing.  But I suppose we will all just have to learn how to deal with him!

He has a bubble where models do nothing productive. Vickies have a bubble where models cease to exist. I know which one I find scarier

[zFiend]

He has a bubble where models do nothing productive. Vickies have a bubble where models cease to exist. I know which one I find scarier

 

Answer is both. 

[Ferossa]

This game really only has the internet to exchange info and, well, maybe 5 people in all of Canada actually play Malifaux so I'm forced to consider a lot of discussion to fill in the blanks, as it were. :/

 

I've been to two different Canadian cities and found easily 20ish players at each of the nine locations. (Three in one city, six in another.)

 

I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Uktena]

Ophelia doesn't have access to Rotten Belles or summons, and there is a whole hiring pool she was balanced for! Not to say she isn't good, but she's the master I've faced the most and she's just good. Regular good, though. Not auto win good.