What can we do better than Gremlins ?

[Omenbringer]

At the risk of getting off topic.

Exactly this death stars, where everyone has +1 armor, a free ram, healing from slophaulers, perhapts some anti-WP duel tech is a problem. Especially if there are more than enough points left for sheme runners, because gremlins are so cheap.

 

You should try it out, it makes some guild players cry

 Som'er can always just summon more to the party during each turn rather than having to hire them.

 

Deathstars are vulnerable to blasts and other such effects, besides the fact that I also don't run Slop Haulers all that often either, no real reason to since Bugs are that much awesomer.

Remember Merris? She can take that bite away for a large segment of the Deathstar. Part of her popularity and "auto-include" allure.

 

Several Masters have 14 wounds, but mainly I think it's rather optimistic to except them all to hit at all with Sh 4. Maybe if they are shooting at an Ice Golem, but a lot of the worthwhile targets are going have 5-6 Df.

 

Somewhat true, however in a Deathstar there are usually more than enough extra models to just pile on more attacks.

 

Again though, the primary emphasis is on achieving a tie on the attack duel. The entire premise of this option is predicated only on succeeding to get a damage flip, it doen't care about anything else. Df 5-6 against SH or Ml 4 will primarily raise the cheatable success threshold. This has a huge effect on models that want to do moderate or severe damage, not really those that only want to hit. Bayou Gremlins and Piglets in this configuration dont care about cheating damage, only succeeding. Ties can generally be achieved with middling card values. Sure some unfavorable skews may happen, but for the most part achieving a tie on the attack flip isn't that difficult. And if you fail to kill the target with the first few models, just concentrate another Bayou Gremlin or Piglets actions upon the target.

 

Also consider, with Som'er in particular, that the opponents crew is not likely to have a control hand to cheat from, while the Som'er player has ways of rebuilding his discarded control hand. Even without this, Bayou Gremlins always have access to Bayou Two Card. Even those Wd 14 masters with layers of defenses eventually fall to enough pin pricks from a Gremlin Gunline, especially once they have burned through that last Soulstone.

 

When I have run the Deathstar Gunlines, I have never had an issue killing anything I concentrated enough Bayou Gremlin fire upon, within range, in a single turn. Your experiences of course may differ significantly.

 

This concentrated fire upon a single model may seem counter productive to achieving objectives but generally speaking removing a "lynch pin" model from your opponents crew is almost always a worthwhile expenditure of AP and activations. In the Gremlin faction, neither of these resources are in short supply, especially with the summon factories churning out more each turn.

 

The best method of countering gremlins, is to kill their support systems and disrupt their activation orders, anything else can really be handled or adapted to by a reasonably competent player.
 

[dgraz]

 Even those Wd 14 masters with layers of defenses eventually fall to enough pin pricks from a Gremlin Gunline, especially once they have burned through that last Soulstone.

 

This concentrated fire upon a single model may seem counter productive to achieving objectives but generally speaking removing a "lynch pin" model from your opponents crew is almost always a worthwhile expenditure of AP and activations. In the Gremlin faction, neither of these resources are in short supply, especially with the summon factories churning out more each turn.

Because I always walk my Master and 'lynch pin' models right out in the open of a gun line. I think that Sh 4 is a lot more telling when shooting into cover and not being able to cheat at all.

[Math Mathonwy]

I mostly agree with you but a couple of things.

The general Gremlin Leader upgrade Liquid Bravery goes a very long way toward countering the old handicap against Wp duels. It isn't like their WP is that far below average after all. That 8" aura is also fairly large, and with Som'er in particular can be projected even further via Skeeters.

It does work well with Somer due to Skeeters and Wong can also do it somewhat nicely, as can Zoraida but since it's a (0)Action it has heavy competition from other nice (0)Actions that the Masters have. So if the Wp stuff forces the Gremlin player to use Liquid Bravery each round, they aren't doing something more annoying. Ooh a Girl for example is a fantastically powerful and versatile tool.

 

I have also never found Armor particularly troublesome for Bayou Gremlins or piglets.

Not really disagreeing but I wish to note that when you're doing ten points of damage, Armor isn't really a problem for the elite Gremlins either. Also I'm surprised that Rgarbonzo, the great Lightning Bug fancier of the forums, finds Armor troublesome

[Omenbringer]

I mostly agree with you but a couple of things.

It does work well with Somer due to Skeeters and Wong can also do it somewhat nicely, as can Zoraida but since it's a (0)Action it has heavy competition from other nice (0)Actions that the Masters have. So if the Wp stuff forces the Gremlin player to use Liquid Bravery each round, they aren't doing something more annoying. Ooh a Girl for example is a fantastically powerful and versatile tool.

 

Not really disagreeing but I wish to note that when you're doing ten points of damage, Armor isn't really a problem for the elite Gremlins either. Also I'm surprised that Rgarbonzo, the great Lightning Bug fancier of the forums, finds Armor troublesome

 

Ah true on both of those but I would weigh the benefit of Liquid Bravery's 0 Action more heavily in a situation where you are facing spammed WP duels than almost any other option.

 

I agree that elite gremlin builds can definitely churn out high damage values that make Armor a bit of a joke, however I dont use them as much, so figured I would stay to areas I am more comfortable with. Not a huge fan of having to hit well enough to insure the cheatable damage flips honestly, think of my approach as a mitigation of fate method.

[rgarbonzo]

Also I'm surprised that Rgarbonzo, the great Lightning Bug fancier of the forums, finds Armor troublesome

I don't find it troublesome at all but I hear a lot of Gremlin players aching about Armor and such. 

[Brewmaster]

[Joke] I believe the Daleks best described what the Guild are better at to the Cybermen: "you are superior at dying!" [/joke]

[Bengt]

So I went and calculated some probabilities with a formula used for dice pools.

 

I arbitrarily decided that the Gremlins have a 60% chance of getting a tie or better. This sounded reasonable for Sh 4 with Two card vs Df 5 with no other twisting or cheating, but maybe it's a bit of.

 

For 12 shots; first column is how many hits; second column is the chance of getting exactly that many hits; third column is that many hits or more.

1 0,03% 100,00%

2 0,25% 99,97%

3 1,25% 99,72%

4 4,20% 98,47%

5 10,09% 94,27%

6 17,66% 84,18%

7 22,70% 66,52%

8 21,28% 43,82%

9 14,19% 22,53%

10 6,39% 8,34%

11 1,74% 1,96%

12 0,22% 0,22%

 

So those 4 Bayous have a very decent chance of killing a 6 wound model, but it drops of pretty quickly after that. That is for 12 SS worth of models, 17 if you count the Slop Hauler that needs to heal them if they are going to keep it up. And yeah, you can summon more, but like most summoned models they start out slow and with only 2 Wd, wounds they need for their abilities, so the Slop Haulers have to work over time.

 

---

 

If anyone want to play with the math this is the formula I used

 =(FACT($E$3) * POWER($E$4;E6) * POWER($E$5-$E$4;$E$3-E6)) / (FACT(E6) * FACT($E$3-E6) * POWER($E$5;$E$3))

If your preferred spreadsheet uses different formula names Fact is factorial and Power is exponentiation.

 

E3 has the total number of events.

E4 has the numerator of the success chance for one event.

E5 the denominator for same.

E6 the number of success you want to know the chance of.

[Omenbringer]

Not intending offense but I am very skeptical about your assumptions and numbers. The Card Mechanic is much more complex than a simple dice pool calculator formula like you have up there. It omits consideration of an awful lot of gremlin strengths, especially when Som'er is running the crew.

 

Aside from the discussion on the esoterica of the probability calculations though, from what I have experienced it isn't at all as difficult as you are making out. Granted there will be times when the cards dont draw your way, but for the most part it is a fairly reliable method of mitigating fates influence. Your experiences may differ as always.

[dgraz]

Again, I think all these numbers and "Gremlin strengths" are a bit more different when they're taking the lowest of two cards and not able to use Bayou 2 card at all due to my previous conveniently ignored statement.

 

Because I always walk my Master and 'lynch pin' models right out in the open of a gun line. I think that Sh 4 is a lot more telling when shooting into cover and not being able to cheat at all.

 

Sitting in a big ball of ranged death is great if you aren't using enough terrain....but played on a good table, most of the enemy crew can hit that squishy ball of death all at once by bouncing from cover to cover....and plenty should be able to avoid being in LoS all together.

[Bengt]

Not intending offense but I am very skeptical about your assumptions and numbers.

Exactly what assumptions do you disagree with? To significantly shape a deck you would have to kill a large amount of gremlins the previous turn and draw cards for them, do you do this a lot? Also, the more shaped the deck is the larger your discard pile will be at the start of the turn so you will be reshuffling earlier. And these guys are flipping cards like it was going out of fashion.

 

In general, a card deck get more consistent result than from dice, so I don't think that using virgin probabilities significantly skews the analysis. Besides, the main point is that this kind of situation gives a pretty stable hump in the number of hits, with an extremely low chance of getting either no hits or having all hit.

 

That said, they are consistently doing at least a certain number of wounds (I pointed at 6 wounds in my previous post as they had a very high chance of getting at least that, they still have decent chance of getting 8) and I don't actually these numbers are bad for 17 SS models, but not nearly as amazing as you presented earlier. They are semi-ignoring several common defences (Armour, HtK, HtW, ItW and things that require ongoing resources from the opponent). Though they kind of go to pieces vs Cover and things that otherwise give  , e.g. Vent Steam, and they can have trouble with Manipulate and Terrifying.

[Ludvig]

I have to strongly agree with Dgraz here. Shooty deathballs aren't that reliable. You usually get one turn of shooting into cover before your deathball is engaged by something and that is if you are lucky enough to get to shoot at all. There are lot of ways to shut it down. I guess the Gremlins might do better than the Guild Riflemen in combat at least.

[Myyrä]

So I went and calculated some probabilities with a formula used for dice pools.

 

I arbitrarily decided that the Gremlins have a 60% chance of getting a tie or better. This sounded reasonable for Sh 4 with Two card vs Df 5 with no other twisting or cheating, but maybe it's a bit of.

 

I was going to chastise you for arbitrarily deciding the probability instead of calculating it, but you actually got remarkably close, as the actual probability to hit with those assumptions when both decks are full is 60.4%.

 

So those 4 Bayous have a very decent chance of killing a 6 wound model, but it drops of pretty quickly after that. That is for 12 SS worth of models, 17 if you count the Slop Hauler that needs to heal them if they are going to keep it up. And yeah, you can summon more, but like most summoned models they start out slow and with only 2 Wd, wounds they need for their abilities, so the Slop Haulers have to work over time.

Most Guild models with 6 wounds can also kill a single bayou gremlin per activation. You are also assuming that the guild models are standing out in the open, which they really shouldn't be doing.

[admiralvorkraft]

As of Wave 3 I think the Guild can also break up engagements better than Gremlins.

 

Gremlins have Trixibelle's weird "lure" and triggers; Guild has Francisco, Mounted Guard, Master Queeg's built in pushes, Lucius' Lackey's, basically Hoffman's entire card, the Enslaved Nephillim's stuff... But then maybe I just know the Guild that much better.

[Math Mathonwy]

As of Wave 3 I think the Guild can also break up engagements better than Gremlins.

 

Gremlins have Trixibelle's weird "lure" and triggers; Guild has Francisco, Mounted Guard, Master Queeg's built in pushes, Lucius' Lackey's, basically Hoffman's entire card, the Enslaved Nephillim's stuff... But then maybe I just know the Guild that much better.

At the very least you're forgetting Zoraida and Mah Tucket. Also sort of Lenny, Burt and Assistant. And if the ability to move friendlies counts, then Piglets, Ophelia and of course a lot of ways to move Pigs around in various ways.

[Myyrä]

At the very least you're forgetting Zoraida and Mah Tucket. Also sort of Lenny, Burt and Assistant. And if the ability to move friendlies counts, then Piglets, Ophelia and of course a lot of ways to move Pigs around in various ways.

And both of you are forgetting Squeel in its various forms.

[Math Mathonwy]

And both of you are forgetting Squeel in its various forms.

I didn't, but it's a bit uncontrollable unless it's of the loudest kind so decided not to mention it. I also didn't mention, e.g., Raphael's push out of engagement or Francois' Push or Moon Shinobi's or MacTavish's, or War Pig, or, or...

I did however forget Brewmaster who is pretty damn good at that.

[admiralvorkraft]

I mentioned triggers generally.

 

Clearly I haven't tried to lock Gremlins in combat recently

 

I guess I'll stick to Sonnia and Cherufe's Imprint to keep the little bastards (somewhat) under control.

[Omenbringer]

Because I always walk my Master and 'lynch pin' models right out in the open of a gun line. I think that Sh 4 is a lot more telling when shooting into cover and not being able to cheat at all.

Very true, however again Gremlin's have a bit of an advantage in this area. They can typically out activate an opponents crew by several models essentially freezing target models in place and then using Pig ladders and the Truffle Shuffle to get around intervening cover. This is even with plenty of terrain covering the table, i.e. the high side of  the recommendation.

 

Cover and denying cheating are definitely good ideas but they can be gotten around, same as any crew that has access to movement shenanigans and or out activation

 

That said, they are consistently doing at least a certain number of wounds (I pointed at 6 wounds in my previous post as they had a very high chance of getting at least that, they still have decent chance of getting 8) and I don't actually these numbers are bad for 17 SS models, but not nearly as amazing as you presented earlier. They are semi-ignoring several common defences (Armour, HtK, HtW, ItW and things that require ongoing resources from the opponent). Though they kind of go to pieces vs Cover and things that otherwise give  , e.g. Vent Steam, and they can have trouble with Manipulate and Terrifying.

I did qualify my initial statement with if they all succeed with their attacks, never really intended to imply that they all necessarily would every single time. From what I have seen however, it is a hell of a lot more reliable than trying to work a few high damage strikes to succeed high enough to protect the cheatable damage flip. When facing a high damage output model, an opponent is much more likely to cheat or soul stone than when facing a Bayou Gremlin attack. Like I said I have never really struggled to kill anything I wanted to utilizing this method, again your experiences may vary.

 

I still contend that they dont "fall to pieces" to cover, they are a very mobile crew after all with lots of activations that makes maintaining cover bonuses difficult.

 

Ludvig, on 05 Jul 2015 - 03:34 AM, said:

    I have to strongly agree with Dgraz here. Shooty deathballs aren't that reliable. You usually get one turn of shooting into cover before your deathball is engaged by something and that is if you are lucky enough to get to shoot at all. There are lot of ways to shut it down. I guess the Gremlins might do better than the Guild Riflemen in combat at least.

 I would agree that Bayou gremlin's are a bit less concerned about being engaged than Guild Riflemen in this configuration. They can utilize the exact same concept when the death star is engaged in melee.

 

 

 

Just to be clear I am not suggesting that Gremlin's are anywhere near "the end all be all" for Malifaux, merrily pointing out that in a lot of situations they do present many great options. This is especially true when they are run by competent players that have learned their nuances. Consistently beating gremlins requires understanding how and what the crew is trying to do and all the options available to achieve that goal. My posts are attempting to do exactly that in a way that isn't simply "Kill the Slop Hauler".

 

I will however leave this thread alone as it seems to be receiving a very different response.

[dgraz]

 Consistently beating gremlins requires understanding how and what the crew is trying to do and all the options available to achieve that goal. My posts are attempting to do exactly that in a way that isn't simply "Kill the Slop Hauler".

 

I will however leave this thread alone as it seems to be receiving a very different response.

I haven't really seen any of that. I've seen plenty of 'they're great at this' and 'they don't care about that'...but no real suggestions on how to beat them...and when someone posts something like that, you say 'yeah, they don't care about that either'.

[Dirial]

*peeks back into thread*

 

This still going on?

 

So, what are you talking about at the moment? Did some one actually discover a strategy or build for Gremlins that beats Guild consistently?

[zFiend]

So, what are you talking about at the moment? Did some one actually discover a strategy or build for Gremlins that beats Guild consistently?

 

Reading this thread apparently any gremlin pool beats any Guild pool all the time, every time, without fail. 

[Dirial]

Reading this thread apparently any gremlin pool beats any Guild pool all the time, every time, without fail. 

 

Ah. Well, nothing I can do about that. I'll just slink back to the Guild headquarters again and wait for my unavoidable defeats then.

 

*leaves*

[zFiend]

Ah. Well, nothing I can do about that. I'll just slink back to the Guild headquarters again and wait for my unavoidable defeats then.

 

*leaves*

 

I shall accompany you there fellow officer.

[admiralvorkraft]

It really is amazing about these Gremlins that they can come to a game and somehow anticipate exactly whether they'll be facing Sonnia with Papa's Favorite Box or a Hoffman Terrifying bomb, or even Lucius' patented Surprisingly Mobile Gunline.

It's no wonder we can't win against such foresight. Ah well, chalk it up to drunken luck and we'll call it a day then.

But seriously, Gremlins can come up with a good counter to anything if they know what's coming in advance. Just like a Ressur player can drop Kirai and her god-awful armor ignoring spirits if they know I'm playing Hoffman, or Seamus and a bunch of hard-to-wound flesh bags if they know I'm playing Sonnia. Just like the Guild can bring two Austringers against Levi, or the Ortega's against anything.

 

How often are Gremlins really going to take Liquid Courage and Ol' Cranky against the Guild? A faction not known for its Wp tricks. What do they lose out on if they do?

Last point and then I'm done with this thread. In my experience the Guild tends to either lose early or win, Gremlins tend to either win early or lose. That can definitely make it feel lopsided, but if a Guild crew can make it through the first couple turns those little green creeps are going to start to fold fast.

[zFiend]

So we got Francois' damage track now! 

 

Then again it's a (2) action and Francois' is a (1) action with the possibility of Reckless.. Yeah, Guild just sucks.