Avatars RIP?

[Ironmonger]

Sorry if this isn't the right place to post this, but I've done a lot of searching, and have yet to turn up straight answers. What's up with the Avatars?! Are they really, really gone for good (not just 'as proxies for' Emissaries)? Are they campaign only? Why were they gotten rid of? And, most importantly, if you have answers, where did you get those answers from? I've read a lot of "I've heard this here..." kinda stuff, but can't find a single dedicated thread to Avatars!

And, of course, if there IS a dedicated thread, please be so kind as to link it here so I can read it!

[Pyrflamme]

1) They're gone from the base game for good, except as Emissary proxies.

2) They're campaign only in terms of function.

3) I don't have a good link, but the wave 2 beta test (basically for book 2 stuff) had rules and stuff for Avatars to be used in the base game, but after a while Wyrd folks came out and said they couldn't figure out a way to properly balance Avatars in the base game, so they got bumped to the campaign rules.

 

I would speculate any commentary back in the day on it by Wyrd folks went away with the deletion of the beta forums, so we'd really need a new post from them here on the regular forums to have something solid.

[solkan]

To put it another way...

The current Gaining Ground event rules contain the statement:

Any Avatar may be used as a proxy for one Emissary of Fate. The Avatar must be the same Faction as the Emissary of Fate to be a legal proxy, regardless of which model is leading the Crew. For example, Kirai may proxy Avatar Seamus as the Carrion Emissary, but a Guild Crew could not use Avatar Seamus as a proxy. Sim 29 counts as an Avatar for proxy purposes.urposes

The document wouldn't say that if the models could be used as something else during the event.

At the moment, the only Avatar cards which exist are the ones in the Shifting Loyalties campaign rules.  Those avatars are specific to the campaign rules, and specify the Campaign restriction on the card to prevent any accidents.

If someone wanted to set up an event and say "Any of you all who want to manifest avatars, go ahead and use the ones in Shifting Loyalties," that's up to them.  But that's going to be a non-standard event format.

Change is always possible in the future, but right now that's where the situation stands.

 

[Fetid Strumpet]

There were a few reasons for this, of the two big ones one was mechanical, and one was economic.

First the mechanical reason. Avatars had a massive amount of conflicting and competing design directives. I'll quote Justin from his blog post from the time before the decision was made to make them Campaign mode only:

Sometimes, when designing a game, it helps to look at the design process as a game. Here are the rules for avatar design:

1) Every Master needs an avatar
2) Manifesting rules need to be in the core book out in August
3) Masters need to “turn into” their avatar during the game
4) Avatars need to be purchased at the start of the game with soulstones
5) Avatars can’t screw up the game (obvious, but it’s one of the rules, listing them helps)

Here is my current issue:

Avatars are supposed to be big, flashy models. Additionally, by their very definition, bringing them into play removes your most powerful model (the master). And, on top of all of this, they only are in play for a very limited number of turns. To make up for all of these drawbacks, they need to have an inflated significance on the game.

Unfortunately, this generally puts avatars into two camps: useless because they simply couldn’t achieve enough considering their limited time on the board and removal of the master, or totally game warping. The line where they can be balanced is incredibly thin, and although I’m sure we can hit it with a handful, I’m not convinced it’s possible for every master in the game. In other words, rules 3 and 5 (above) aren’t playing well together.

 And in practice Justin mentioned he felt we could get close if not there on may of the masters, but probably not to that edge on all 39 masters in the game.

 

The second reason was economic. Consider that Avatar models are incredibly specific models. Aside from those individuals who will buy anything they like to model and paint, regardless of how it fits into a collection based on the game itself, the only people who are going to buy an Avatar model, are those who play that master. It doesn't matter if Lady J's Avatar is the most awesome thing ever sculpted if in general the only people who want to buy it are Lady J players. Consider also that Avatars are incredibly expensive to produce (and the company would need to create 39 of them) and that they would be among the most specific and hard to market and sell miniatures in their line. Totems were mentioned as an example from 1.5. The only people, in general, who were going to be interested in buying a Copy Cat Killer model, were people who were playing Seamus, which compared to the Malifaux player base is just a subsection. And Justin mentioned that their sales data backed that up, which is why totems are now included in the crew boxes. So the company was faced with producing some of the most expensive models in their range for them to produce, production wise, which were marketed at the smallest targets in their customer base, and the company would have to commit to producing 39 of those.

As a secondary consideration, and I'm not sure how much this fed into their discussions, but I know the topic was talked about at length during the beta, was the required cost, shall we say, of starting up a master. If you decided to play a master with a really good avatar you could almost add the cost of the avatar to the model as a sort of tax in order to play the master competitively. Additionally as much as we want to divorce ourselves from the link between economics and mechanics, that link is there, and in many cases there could have been an expectation from a player that if they had just spent $35+ dollars on a model which amounted to basically just a very specific master oriented upgrade, they would have wanted it to feel superior to an upgrade they got "free" in their master's box, and in general the balanced ones didn't.

Justin went in depth on the topic at the start of the last open beta, and the basic reasons were as mentioned above. The doubt of getting all 39 master's avatars to that very thin line, and the economic realities associated with their production.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Fetid Strumpet

[Ironmonger]

Just what I was looking for: thanks! Still not psyched (I 'payed that tax' on the C. Hoffman crew because the Avatar was so bloody excellent), but I can understand. It just means players in my group will be playing the campaign a lot more (and still can't wait for the drop-in 50mm surrounds to come out for the other masters that never got a mini...Von Schill...looking your way...).

[Fetid Strumpet]

Well, and as Justin said, in a casual setting nothing is stopping you or your opponent from just agreeing to let each other use their avatar in a non-campaign game. Remember the Story encounters aren't "official" scenarios for use in Tournaments. It is explicitly stated the Story encounters aren't necessarily all that balanced, but that balance is going away in favor of narrative. Same with Avatars. 

[StormLordXIII]

Well, and as Justin said, in a casual setting nothing is stopping you or your opponent from just agreeing to let each other use their avatar in a non-campaign game. Remember the Story encounters aren't "official" scenarios for use in Tournaments. It is explicitly stated the Story encounters aren't necessarily all that balanced, but that balance is going away in favor of narrative. Same with Avatars. 

 I don't know how balanced it would be, but I think a non-campaign game with avatars, while slightly unbalanced, would be a ton of fun if both players agree to use their avatar masters. With the exception of the few M1E avatars that are not on 50mm bases (Collette, Pandora off the top of my head), the old avatar models are definitely fair game for this purpose.

[jonahmaul]

Just what I was looking for: thanks! Still not psyched (I 'payed that tax' on the C. Hoffman crew because the Avatar was so bloody excellent), but I can understand. It just means players in my group will be playing the campaign a lot more (and still can't wait for the drop-in 50mm surrounds to come out for the other masters that never got a mini...Von Schill...looking your way...).

I'm still considering buying that bad boy anyway and using it as a 'counts as' Rail Golem.  Think it needs to be on a smaller base (I think the Hoff Avatar is 70mm?) and want to get rid of Hoff himself so some slight conversion but it's a bloody cool model!

[Adran]

All Avatars except Colette were 50 mm bases. (Although there was a Pandora, Avatar of Woe model that was produced before Avatars existed that could squeeze onto a 30 mm base). 

I've seen a good conversion of Avatar Hoffman with a huge box on its back to make it the Emissary. 

[Math Mathonwy]

The only sad thing about using Avatars as proxies for Emissaries is that you still need to buy the Emissary if you want the cards for it. Which is a bit of a bummer.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Actually the official release of the Pandora Avatar, the one with Candy the Petulant Youth included, was a 40mm base. But you are largely correct that she and Colette were the only non-50mm base Avatars.

[Philosfr]

I'm using Zoraida's Avatar as my Mysterious Emissary proxy currently, and since we're playing a campaign, I've got Lilith's Avatar when we actually hit the half-way point and I can hire Lilith.

That said, I also am trying to figure out how to squeeze some of the Avatar's on 30mm bases. I would think Zoraida's Avatar on a 30mm would work a legal proxy for Zoraida. It's on a 30mm so there's no doubt it's the Emissary or anything, it is Wyrd, it is Zoraida, and if not a campaign game, it can't be an Avatar either. Using one of Colette's 30mm Avatar would be a no-brainer in the same way. Trying to squeeze Perdita or Rasputina onto a 30mm might not be very practical though, but it would look cool if you had an elaborate enough base to do so.

[solkan]

... why would you be squeezing Avatars on 30mm bases? They're supposed to be 50mm

Using the avatar model as essentially a Nightmare style version of the master's model would be why someone would try to squeeze it on a 30mm base.

Plenty of 30mm based masters out there.

[Tuttleboy]

After struggling through the play test to get Avatars into the base game, I'm quite glad that they aren't in it.

[PraetorDragoon]

After struggling through the play test to get Avatars into the base game, I'm quite glad that they aren't in it.

I would like to hear more about this

The whole Avatar beta was a pain. Because they costs ss and used an upgrade slot, the front needed to be useful, but not too useful so you didn't want to Manifest, and the Manifests needed to be achievable, but not too achievable so you could manifest in turn 1. And then you also needed to balance the backside of the Avatar. 

The whole process was a pain. 

[Fetid Strumpet]

Well, and there were adherents who wanted to be able to reliably manifest turn 1. Their argument being this is an impressive and expensive centerpiece model so why should they have to wait to use it.

Basically the whole avatar process was a pain not only for the company's reasons, but additionally because the core game was very tightly constructed that adding avatars was just going to potentially warp the game. Additionally and more importantly there was no real sense of community consensus about what avatars should be.

They couldn't go back to what they were in 1.5, which I think we can all mostly agree were not a very successful venture, with only the very few avatars who improved the base master seeing any play, IE Sonnia, Seamus, and Ramos being the prime examples, and all the rest only trotted out for fun silly games.

There were sizable portions of the community that all wanted different things from not bringing them back at all, to those who wanted them to be a varient master like war machine, effectively doubling the masters in the game, to those who wanted them to be nothing but an upgrade no more powerful or significant than any other, to those who demanded that if they were going to spend $35.00 on a model to replace their master the rules had better make them feel like an AVATAR and not just a variant of Unnerving Aura.

I think if there had been more community unity on what exactly we wanted from Avatars then Wyrd might have been able to have gone in that direction. Ultimately I think the compromise the Wyrd came up with, IE old avatars are legal proxies for the emissaries but the avatar rules were not available for competitive play was ultimately the best path they could have taken.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Fetid Strumpet

[Tuttleboy]

 

I think if there had been more community unity on what exactly we wanted from Avatars then Wyrd might have been able to have gone in that direction. Ultimately I think the compromise the Wyrd came up with, IE old avatars are legal proxies for the emissaries but the avatar rules were not available for competitive play was ultimately the best path they could have taken.

That first sentence says it all. We went through to separate rounds of testing trying to get the avatars into the base game and I don't think there was a single person that could have been called satisfied with what was happening with them.

 

The second sentence sums up my feelings on how things turned out. I've got a few Guild and Neverborn Avatars I that I can still use and I've been looking for a Peaches that I can use when I play Somer.

[Omenbringer]

 I don't know how balanced it would be, but I think a non-campaign game with avatars, while slightly unbalanced, would be a ton of fun if both players agree to use their avatar masters. With the exception of the few M1E avatars that are not on 50mm bases (Collette, Pandora off the top of my head), the old avatar models are definitely fair game for this purpose.

Including the Avatars in casual games should be no more or less balanced than playing a non-standard point value or an asymmetric story encounter game. Truthfully I have more fun with asymmetric story encounters than I do with the standard ones anyway.

[Pierowmaniac]

New hardcore tourney format.

Avatar bust up

 

[zFiend]

New hardcore tourney format.

Avatar bust up

 

... go on. 

Yes. Continue.