Karina - She is just too OP!!!!

[SpiralngCadavr]

Agreed- the easy access to focus helps out, but that 2 damage on weak is pretty horrible on a model that expensive, and yes, you can never have a wholly nothingness-based army, so something's losing out, and either way, you're usually only getting it up to average defense until late in the turn so (unless you get unlucky with that first initiative, in which case the NB is a sitting duck) the NB is usually going to be a normal target until late turn at which point it becomes very hard to directly hit..

And on Karina, she's got a good (enough) pistol and I have a higher estimation of autopsies in combat (late turn, forcing something to take a hit or allow a reactivate can be strong), but otherwise, yeah, agreed on the rest. Really wish they'd heavily errata'd her to make her more than an upgrade- think a cheap model with healing (thematic, could be something else, IDK.) and a pistol, and summoning on an upgrade, would have fit the bill.

I still think someone must have overestimated how strong or easy burying was, given all the restrictions on glimpse and how expensive Karina is (in her first iteration, with the upgrade, easily the most overpriced model in the game IMHO, esp. considering how good deals totems tend to be), and to a lesser degree the NB is.

 

[decker_cky]

20 minutes ago, SpiralngCadavr said:

I still think someone must have overestimated how strong or easy burying was, given all the restrictions on glimpse and how expensive Karina is (in her first iteration, with the upgrade, easily the most overpriced model in the game IMHO, esp. considering how good deals totems tend to be), and to a lesser degree the NB is.

I just think the untested beta stuff was at a softer level of balance than where public playtesting ended up. Both the Tara box and the Transmortis stuff ended up needing to be buffed, which just happens to be the only early M2E stuff that was not tested in a public beta.

[MR TORGUE]

Its a shame really as Tara and her theme crew is one of the coolest looking and feeling options in malifaux. In practise they are just not that great. Their frustrating to use if you want to run the bury mechanic and save for the void wretches, their points costs are just baffling when compared to similar totems and enforcers. Even Tara herself seems a bit meh in comparison to any other master. 
I still continue to use her in games but its upsetting to know that with a few tweaks her theme crew could be so much fun to use and fairly competitive. 

Suggestions of what those tweaks could be would be interesting.. 

[SpiralngCadavr]

Yeah, extra AP's are strong enough that it shores up a lot of flaws, placement tricks are also always strong, and DM's are just a nice option, but there are a ton of flaws in her make up. The whole theme construction forces you to jump through a lot of hoops if doing it the way it's clearly designed to work, and while I've got a strong record with her, I always feel like I hit a moment of "I want to try to squeeze in some more-than-superficial void theme, but X is so much better for her..." when designing a list.

At least she finally got aionus as a second de-facto thematic henchman, since I'm really not a fan of either of her big and fully thematic models (despite loving the NB and the art for the scion)

 

[Erorior]

3 hours ago, MR TORGUE said:

Its a shame really as Tara and her theme crew is one of the coolest looking and feeling options in malifaux. In practise they are just not that great. Their frustrating to use if you want to run the bury mechanic and save for the void wretches, their points costs are just baffling when compared to similar totems and enforcers. Even Tara herself seems a bit meh in comparison to any other master. 
I still continue to use her in games but its upsetting to know that with a few tweaks her theme crew could be so much fun to use and fairly competitive. 

Suggestions of what those tweaks could be would be interesting.. 

It might be to take the whole discussion a bit of topic, but this is something I have mused over quite a bit. Might as well post my thoughts here, and get the opinions from the rest of you.

As you have said, the original thought behind Tara's (and her crews) playstyle is cool. However, the rules are so full of clauses that they stumble onto themselves. In my musings I have thought about the following as "core mechanics" of Tara:

1. Burying and interaction with buried models

2. Manipulating fast and slow, on both friends and enemies.

3. Discarding cards for other advantages.

I will adress my thoughts in the order above:

1. As a number of people have pointed out, Tara's options for burying seems a bit situational and hard to really use to your advantage. You can only have one model buried to use Glimpse the Void (which seems to be intented as the main Burying option of the crew) and to even use it you need to hit, declare the trigger and the opponent need to fail the wp-duel (and then there are ofcourse the other restrictions). While I can understand that it isn't really balanced to easily bury half of the opponents crew, I belive that it would be more useful if the "only one model may be buried-clause". It will still require a tests and the like, but that seems more reasonable. I would also like to change the unbury-condition to perhaps after initiative during the next turn, or semthing like it. The "when a model is killed" can really hamper everything else. You might feel great after burying a dangerous model, only to realize that you now cannot kill any other model during this turn. And then the opponent might kill a model somewhere else, even delivering his/her beater to a better location. 

The interacting with buried models is also a bit limited. While the Beastie Bomb is nice, it's something of a one-trick pony. The Void Wretches can do their thing with buried models, but using 2 AP each turn on an otherwise dedicated scheme runner becomes a bit counter-productive. As a remedy, I would want to modify the Knowledge of Eternity, moving Pull the Void to Tara's card instead of the gun and replacing it with a rule which allow void wretches within range X to take a 2 action at the end of the turn. This would allow them to interact with the different buried models while still performing their other duties. 

 

2. A lot of Tara's mechanics seems to encourage giving fast to enemy models as well as friendly. This is rarely done however, since the great advantage of fast is too bad of a trade-off to give out freely. The potential damage of Karina or the ++ Flips to void Wretches is rarely worth it. If Tara had some other way to give a disadvantage to fast enemy models (- flips, guaranteed damage or the like), it might not be so bad to give fast to a few enemies as well. 

Moving Pull the Void to Tara's card, as I mentioned above, feels more thematic. While the gun is a nice touch, the Ca is more in line with Tara's purpose in a crew.

 

3. In the same way as point 2, discarding too many cards is generally too big of a disadvantage to do. If there were other benefits from this which affected all friendly models, then it wouldn't only be Tara's thematic crew that would reap the benefits. This might also allow the Nothing Beast to see more play. An example could be an an aura of +flips to duels when having X or less cards in hand. 

 

 A wall of text, but I tend to muse about Malifaux a lot.  

I really like Tara, and she was the first master I wanted when I got into Malifaux. It would be nice if all of the possible mechanics they seemed to have in mind for her were more playable in the current state of the game!

[SpiralngCadavr]

On point 2 in specific- I use that a ton- on an isolated runner/counter-runner that hasn't gone by mid-late turn, fast can really prevent them from doing anything to a wretch. Also, giving everyone fast is well worth risking something weak or hurt on my opponent's side getting it, especially when tagging them gives them vulnerabilities and/or tests, too.