What can we do better than Gremlins ?

[Jimbobovalsocks]

I really don't get it. Sorry. I beat Gremlins pretty regularly with my Guild.

 

I don't see the vast inter-faction imbalance between the other factions, either. What factions would you claim to be a bad matchup? Which pairings are especially unbalanced?

Where's Mythic Fox and his mod stick when you need him? 

[Dirial]

Well yeah.. But I think you might come of as a bit hostile with that post.

A little. Tiny bit. Yeah.

[Clockwork Top Hat]

*puts arm around top hat's shoulder*

 

Interested in the Guild, I hear?  Good , good.  Now let's take a little stroll whilst i hand you these papers.  And a pen.....

*railwalks away* not today!

[Myyrä]

The reason they aren't winning tournaments is because a lot of the faction isn't released and some (like me) won't proxy thus limiting options. For the very first AWP Vassal League I ran the exact same list for every strat and scheme and made it to the semi finals which was the only game I lost.

Getting to semi-final in AWP Malifaux league isn't that huge an achievement. In the current league that uses double eliminaton format after three rounds 3 out of 4 players without any losses were playing Guild. Currently the only player without a loss is also playing Guild.

[NoHero]

Trollbloods had a hard time against Cryx.

 

 

Every faction has a hard time against Cryx.

[Dirial]

Every faction has a hard time against Cryx.

 

My understatement meant: Trollbloods only have a chance in hell against Cryx when playing pGrim. But your point doesn't lessen my point of suboptimal faction balance....

[Meliondor]

To the topic where the problem with Gremlins is:

There 3 different types of missions in Malifaux:

• The ones where you have to walk (like line in the stand or even worse all the missions where you need to do stuff on the other side of the table)
• The ones that are too easy to accomplish (distract for example)
• The killy / surviving ones (bodyguard, reckoning, assassination)

With guild I like the ones where walking is not necessary of course, because this is something they really can’t. The killy ones are of course our territory, where we shoot stuff and keep our stuff save (with Franc, Guardians, condition removal, flame walls, whatever).

Perdita is our prime master for this. She can assassinate most stuff in the game and her family models are all just very very strong (loco in a box, Franc, Granny or cheap pistoleros that increase defense all around).

If an elite crew around Perdita is not the answer, the answer is called Sonnia with lots of witchling stalkers and malifaux child for double flame wall. You can hide what you want save and burn away your opponent.

This worked against any of the factinos / missions, as long as you do not have to walk to much (90% Perdita, 10% Sonnia). If you have to walk it becomes a bit more challenging and you need to include stuff like the watcher, guild hounds, hunters and hope that they accomplish their job…but the hole games becomes much harder for your team to win.

 

 

Well then you meet this Goblins. They did not just copy the family team, they improved it, made it cheaper and gave it access to a swarm of cheap models, that may interact and are not incredibly slow.  The pigapult alone forbids using Sonnia, since it will kill her even behind flamewalls.

Against the family it will remove Franc or other important models (the box around Loco for example) in a single activation, so it is not a bad choice here too.

The really bad part then starts if you realize that Ophelia is just better than Perdita. Perdita may choose to ignore cover or armor, Ophelia gets positive flips, so she nearly ignores cover, shoots better at targets without cover and deal so much damage, that armor becomes irrelevant. So you can just loose if you try to outkill them before playing on shemes.

But the moment you go for shemes this pesky little goblins will outactivate you and use their last activations to kill your models and remove markers if possible.

Against the other factions the game is mostly balanced (even against Lilith I went at least 50-50 after learning her tricks), but gremlins are just this step ahead. For other factions this might not be that obvious, but guild is the faction they copied and improved to create gremlins.

The forum is full of complains or threads about gremlins / mechanical riders (the current top OP things in the game), so I should not have been surprised that this actually holds true…

Oh by the way, the gremlin player is one of my standard opponents and he is playing half of the factions in the game (and buying more stuff this very moment perhaps…) and I win more games against him than I loose. He agrees that with the gremlins he found either “his perfect faction” or that they are just plain OP, because his win statistic with them is really crazy J. Or our meta has to change completely, but I think we will need at least an other wave full of anti-gremlin stuff to keep up with the luck of the gremlins (not only is it printed on their cards, they even had luck during beta that this rules did not change…)

[Justin]

 Where's Mythic Fox and his mod stick when you need him? 

 

Don't need him at the moment. Removing the rest of this post, as it is one of the more mod-worthy ones in the thread. Please keep it civil, especially when telling people to keep it civil.

[Math Mathonwy]

Well then you meet this Goblins. They did not just copy the family team, they improved it, made it cheaper and gave it access to a swarm of cheap models, that may interact and are not incredibly slow.  The pigapult alone forbids using Sonnia, since it will kill her even behind flamewalls.

Huh? Nino is arguably better than Rami, Papa Loco is heaps better than Pere Ravage, Francisco is very difficult to compare to Francois but both are ridiculously good, Raphael is indeed a lot better than Santiago and finally Perdita and Ophelia I think are very evenly matched. With a single Perdita's damage track is 3/5/6, with two it's 4/6/7 so not very far from Ophelia's and then there's the ignoring Armor and Incorporeal or Cover (note that a to attack doesn't nullify hard cover unlike Perdita's ability). Oh, and when in melee, she gets on extra ram so can even outdamage Ophelia. Finally, she has a higher Sh stat.

Now, naturally Ophelia has a slew of other stuff (as does Perdita) so I'm not claiming that either is clearly worse than the other.

I think that you should play a couple of games with Gremlins yourself to see how they actually work and what their weaknesses are.

[Dirial]

Meliondor, I disagree with a lot of points you just made, and share Math's opinion. I'd add that the Gremlins are a lot more vulnerable to attacks on their linchpin models than Family. I also don't see how the Pigapult reliably kills Sonnia.

 

My main complaint is that you don't compare any factions, you just claim that Family needs to be balanced directly against Kin, while you improve the weaknesses of the Kin with Pigapult, Slop Haulers etc. but fail to mention the Hunters, Guardians, Watchers, Peacekeepers the Family could bring.

 

I also am a lot on these forums, and I don't see it as full of threads complaining about Gremlins. There are some pretty vocal Gremlin "haters", and some people fear that the Gremlins had too little testing in the beta, but as of yet, no one can claim conclusively that Gremlins dominate any matchups, much less any faction comparison.

 

Your opinion seems to be solidified, and now you seem to try to convince us of it. When you go through the thread again, do you think all counter-arguments by the community pale to your experience? If so, why?

[zFiend]

I'd like to see how Perdita vs Ophelia plays out actually. Math you up for it?

[zFiend]

Also I'm in no way a Guild expert player, I haven't actually played Guild all that much. But if you want Meliondor to play in Vassal sometime with Gremlins I can take you on with Guild. 

[Math Mathonwy]

I'd like to see how Perdita vs Ophelia plays out actually. Math you up for it?

[Math Mathonwy]

[zFiend]

[Math Mathonwy]

(I'll stop now)

[Meliondor]

I worked on answering the big question of this thread: What can guild do, that gremlins simply canoot do better AND cheapeer.

 

I found some things they did not have:

 

1. Pale Riders for late game

2. Pine Box against big models (not useful against gremlins, but Gremlins have a harder time against some stuff here)

3. Nothing as strong as a peace keeper

4. And the one and only thing that is really something gremlins might actually like: Our Guardsmenstuff. Riflemen, Pathfinder and Austringer

 

This are actually the only things that allow us to outshoot Gremlins in mass of medicore shots.Let's see what happens if I try to bring the shooting match to a new level.

[katadder]

pale rider (or any rider) I give you, although they do have rooster riders

no pine box but gremlins dont worry about big models from my experience due to large damage tracks

whiskey golem will beat a peacekeeper even normally let alone if it has glowy (bigger damage track and if you hit it you need a 10 flip to even carry on plus get poisoned)

gremlins have bayou bushwhackers to match your pathfinder (or 2 bayou gremlins) or rami lacroix

would take bayou gremlins over riflemen and a pigapult can pretty much do an austringers job

 

I am sure your nice guild riflemen group would also like merris lacroix to stop the blasts from killing them. 

 

i am still of the belief that gremlins can outdo the guild at most things

[Meliondor]

The Whiskey golem is something special. Nimble, Flurry, Defense 7 and most of the time a model gets only 1 melee attack off against it (+ it can heal...).

Its offense is great, too (nimble + Flurry or charge...).

 

But the peacekeeper has stuff the golem does not have: h2w, a great ranged weapon that has won me games by pulling models and the option to remove many markers at once.

 

I think both have their place in the game, but of c ourse in a direct duel the whiskey golem is (again) just better. Oh and thanks to nimble he is also better at schemes. 

 

Oh and I just learned what the Bufhwackers Boost their confidence makes: If an other gremlin misses a shot they may shot an other time at the target...with their shooting of 6 this is quite nasty. And the Bayou gremlins...it is not their fighting stat, but just the 3 actions in combination with their cheap point costs, that lets them win schemes.

They are just the better guild hounds with guns and they do not need a friend near them to place markers...

 

Yes hard to see what we have, that gremlins might lack. Our only advantage is, that not all gremlins are released yet. Then the cries of despair in this forum should increase :-).

[Breng77]

Reading this to me really sounds like.  "I go into a game with a set strategy, and it does not work against gremlins.  Thus Gremlins are OP."

 

So much of this game is building toward strategies and schemes that direct comparisons of killyness are kind of pointless.  When you approach a set of schemes with the idea that there are some (those requiring crossing the table) that you are never going to take, you are really hamstringing yourself.  Maybe the crew you really love is not great at all types of schemes against all opponents, but that is really not how malifaux works  It is not as simple as I kill my opponent and win the game.

 

at one point the OP said

 

Back to topic: I want to play the way I want and this is shooting stuff, moving out of melee, shotting stuff even more and have models that are far superior to any thing my opponent has on the field what works only with buffing + killing enemies if my models die :-)

 

 

This does not read as I want a balanced game.  It reads as I want a game where I can ferret out the hidden super combos and pummel my opponent.  Now maybe I'm misreading the intent, but a game where my models are far superior to anything my opponent has does feel balanced to me.

 

TO me guild seems to have the ability (much like any other faction) to accomplish any schemes/strategies in the game just fine.  It might just mean not playing one specific master for that scheme pool.  That may mean malifaux is not appealing to you because you cannot use the same strategy in each game.  My crew build and strategy for Headhunter is far different than it is for say Reconnoiter and even within those strategies it will vary based on what schemes are available.  Do I need a good bodyguard target?  Do I need a way to deliver a message?  etc. 

[dgraz]

^ This.

 

[SpectreEliteGaming]

Actually... I've found zerging your opponent in an attempt to board them early is an excellent way of producing devastating disruption. Efficiently removing your opponent's key models is probably clutch in both winning and gaining a large differential. For example, I often find people saying that protect territory is difficult to deny - the answer is to KFE (kill f*cking everything). Go through all the strats/schemes and see how many can be denied simply by boarding then cleaning up afterwards. There's no reason that you cant victory by annihilation - even in Malifaux.

Also, although I find myself somewhat interested in the Guild - I feel strongly that the Guild is generally the worst (read: weakest) faction in the game. Prove me wrong. >8)

I repeat: Guild is the worst faction in the game. Come at me.

[Breng77]

While it is true that tabling can lead to victory it by no means happens all the time (or even often.). Killing all your opponents key models is often easier said than done especially before those models have been used to secure vp. I agree for protect territory killing everything can be effective, but for something like head hunter it may prove your downfall. (I routinely win that strategy by collecting my own heads and killing my own models) same thing with frame for murder etc.

As for schemes that can be obtained/denied through boarding

Assassinate -though maybe not max points

Bodyguard (though maybe not fully denied)

Entourage

Make them suffer

Protect territory

Vendetta (if played correctly)

Take prisoner

Outflank

Murder protégée.

So 9/20. And those may not deny/ full points, depending on how early things accomplished. Obviously if you manage it turn 2-3 then it shuts down most things. However, I routinely win games where I kill very little, and lose a lot of models.

My point generally is, sure it works. It may even work most of the time. But when you run into a game of

Headhunter

Line in the sand

Breakthrough

Distract

Plant explosives

Frame for murder

You may want to rethink your strategy

[Math Mathonwy]

The Whiskey golem is something special. Nimble, Flurry, Defense 7 and most of the time a model gets only 1 melee attack off against it (+ it can heal...).

Its offense is great, too (nimble + Flurry or charge...).

 

But the peacekeeper has stuff the golem does not have: h2w, a great ranged weapon that has won me games by pulling models and the option to remove many markers at once.

 

I think both have their place in the game, but of c ourse in a direct duel the whiskey golem is (again) just better. Oh and thanks to nimble he is also better at schemes.

Have you tried the Whiskey Golem in a game? Because that Flurry means that it won't have the Defense 7. Charging means that it won't have Defense 7. Its damage output is nowhere near Peacekeeper. It's synergy in the Faction is minimal unlike Peacekeeper's. And, finally, with the Angry Drunk upgrade (no Flurry otherwise) it's more expensive than the Peacekeeper. All in all, many Gremlin players consider the Whiskey Golem somewhat subpar.

 

Oh and I just learned what the Bufhwackers Boost their confidence makes: If an other gremlin misses a shot they may shot an other time at the target...with their shooting of 6 this is quite nasty.

Did you also learn that the 6SS Bayou Bushwhacker takes two damage from the ability and they have 6 Wounds? And that their weak Damage is 1 on their Sh 6 gun?

 

And the Bayou gremlins...it is not their fighting stat, but just the 3 actions in combination with their cheap point costs, that lets them win schemes.

They are just the better guild hounds with guns and they do not need a friend near them to place markers...

3 Actions that do two damage to them while they have four Wd? I mean, yeah, Bayou Gremlins are a lot better than Guild Hounds (outside of McCabe crews) but it isn't as if they have three Actions very often in games. I've used them a lot and have took three Actions out of them maybe 20% of the time or something.

It seems that you are looking at ideal situations without taking into account the cost that Gremlins pay for those abilities. And healing isn't everywhere and Slop Haulers aren't all that fast when they heal nor are they very durable. And otherwise the Gremlin healing is pretty limited.

[Meliondor]

It seems that you are looking at ideal situations without taking into account the cost that Gremlins pay for those abilities. And healing isn't everywhere and Slop Haulers aren't all that fast when they heal nor are they very durable. And otherwise the Gremlin healing is pretty limited.

 

 

The question is not: Are gremlins strictly OP. The answer will come to people after more gremlins get released and people have to play against them more often. They have their weaknesses or at least a price to pay. If they can build a bubble you will be surprised how much healing 2 Slop Haulers can throw around and if you take a low def caster that could destroy such a bubble you would be surprised what a pigapult will do to him, but if this is OP or not against other factions time will tell.

 

The question in this thread is still: What can guild do that they do not better ? I am talking about small stuff like a single ability to remove conditions. Before gremlins guild was the shooting faciton, no faction could bring as much guns as them.

This was their advantage and the reason why models like guild guards, Death Marshals or similar stuff were priced right. Now suddenly an other faction came and took this place as best shooting faction from guild.

Against other factions you could get 1-2 shots off and could remove / damage their sheme runners. Even if you were not fast enough to catch them you could still just shoot them (or even drag / pull them).

Against gremlins you start realising that you have no Silurids / metal gamins, that your guild hounds are just a bad replacement for the great scheme runners in this games, because you do not have your guns to carry the game for you.

 

What is left ? We are not the summoning faction (btw gremlins are the second best here...), we are not the high armor or the fast moving faction (btw. Gremlins are one of the fastest factions with Reckless...). 

So what is the spot that is still left for guild ? Or what can we do better than gremlins ?