GG2016 Why do you hate Levi?

[Myyrä]

11 minutes ago, mythicFOX said:

I bought a Mech Rider knowing it was significantly above the power curve, and it's been hit three times (errata to itself, errata to metal gamin, and GG2016 schemes).

I myself have thought GG16 schemes being a buff for Mech Rider. Enforcers got some love, and there is high demand for good scheme marker placement tech now that scheme marker schemes got more difficult.

[mythicFOX]

Probably not the place for that discussion but Chain Spear isn't as effective as it's markers wont count for; Convict Labor, or Leave Your Mark. Summoning low wound minions isn't as strong given Hunting Party.  There are also less ways to score while evading than there were previously.

[Math Mathonwy]

I think that it is also worth noting that Levi, played in the killy mode, is extraordinarily good at getting three points from the Scheme himself so much of the time it just means that both of you will be getting the three points.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Another good point that is often overlooked.

[Stadon]

1 hour ago, Math Mathonwy said:

7 hours ago, Bengt said:

As for channel, if you are conservative and only use it when it matters, always staying at 4 wounds (since it's below half to get points), then heal with a Librarian you wont even give up 1 points unless your opponent puts in some work.

---

The "playing as designed" argument is much more compelling for melee masters and Deliver a Message. 

I think that it is also worth noting that Levi, played in the killy mode, is extraordinarily good at getting three points from the Scheme himself so much of the time it just means that both of you will be getting the three points.

Never being able to use the death and rebirth mechanic without giving away 2 VP is a bigger deal than the can only use Channel twice without using SS, which is still in and of itself a big deal for Leveticus. There is no "conservative" quantity of dying that can be done.  It's binary.  As for Ramos being bad at Make them Suffer because of spider spam, you can just not spam 1 wound spiders.  Summoning 3 1 wound spiders is a tactical choice.  Summoning  a smaller number of healthier, pretty darn resilient models that can get bonus to defense flips and potentially regeneration is not a bad plan.  Alternatively you can just not summon them at all and utilize Ramos' extensive list of other actions to thoroughly buff a crew of more resilient models.  Ramos still has options.  What can Leveticus do to not be an 8 wound master with no damage mitigating features other than use soulstone and the potential to take Survivalist?

Again I have to point out that Deliver the Message isn't in GG2016.  That is a perfect example of problematic (I think even legacy?) schemes that were removed at least in part because it was inordinately effective against a subset of masters.  Why would you be OK with recreating that problem just because it affects a smaller subset of masters?

[Fetid Strumpet]

Because it affects you, not your opponent. Schemes that come up that are not great for a particular master that you can choose to play or not play are far better for the game as a whole than ones that come up and by your choice of a master you can force an opponent to play with effectively 1 or more less actual choices in the scheme pool. There are very few schemes that don't disproportionately affect some master's intended way of play. That's just a fact of reality in a game with 39 Masters, or more if they ever decide to more of them, which personally I hope we don't see for a long time, if ever. Lucius, and in fact any master that relies on buffing minion swarms, and summoners in general, are disproportionally affected by Hunting Party. You can't argue that because they were designed to play one way but can adapt to adjust for the scheme is fine for them, but not for Levi. Levi is designed to work a particular way, true, but he can just as easily adapt as anyone else. Or, if you feel that that 3 points is just too hard for you to deal with (which may or may not be valid) Don't play that master in that scenario.

From my perspective in the games I've played it is very difficult to prevent a skilled player from getting their full allotment of scheme points for properly picked schemes in any case. almost 80%+ of all games I've played in M2E have been determined by the spread of points on the Strategy. Looked at in that light, if you just come into the game assuming your opponent, through proper play is already going to get 6 points regardless of what you do via their schemes, you can more easily move past this issue. That's pretty much how I look at it anyway.

[katadder]

2 hours ago, mythicFOX said:

Probably not the place for that discussion but Chain Spear isn't as effective as it's markers wont count for; Convict Labor, or Leave Your Mark. Summoning low wound minions isn't as strong given Hunting Party.  There are also less ways to score while evading than there were previously.

dunno depends on what you target. you can target an enemy peon for leave your mark, or just make sure whatever you get scheme markers off for convict labour dies afterwards.

the fact that the markers can be plenty far away from ech other for convict labour helps. also it can easily detonate the charges.

not that I get much use out of the rider anyway but its not all bad

[Bengt]

I don't think people will stop playing the old schemes completely, so the rulebook schemes are still somewhat relevant to the discussion.

But yeah I think it's less of a "problem" if a scheme is easy against just two Masters than if it's easy against ten, since that means less Masters get "disqualified" during crew building. I also think that Masters are supposed to have weaknesses to some schemes or strategies, even glaring ones. It's really only a big problem in my mind if a specific Master is weak in too many.

[Lizzy Lovecraft]

10 hours ago, Sordid Strumpet said:

What if your opponent decides to run Lady J, thinking they will definitely score assassinate, and then Levi pops up and their crew isn't very good at two of the other schemes. Exactly the same effect, except they had no idea what was coming. You knew full well assassinate was in the pool well before picking Levi.

 

Not the same effect!  Lady J hunts down and kills 2-3 Waifs.  Done; end of game, 2 points.

What I think the scheme should say, IMHO;

3: Neutralize The Leader
Cut off the head, and the snake will die.
This Scheme may not start revealed. Reveal this Scheme
once this Crew has scored any VP from it.
The first time the enemy Leader is reduced below half
of their starting Wounds, gain 1 VP.
The first time this crew makes the enemy Leader leave play, score 2 VP.

But, really, I'm done trolling over something that will occur 4 in 54 percent of the time.  The game is still the best one out there.  I just originally wanted to bitch about the unfairness for Levi (and Dreamer) lovers.

[Fireuser]

I am not sure it is as simple as Lady J murdering 2-3 Waifs (without Austringers) she has to contend with the rest of the crew as well, and most Levi players will not run the Waifs up to her.

[LunarSol]

43 minutes ago, Lizzy Lovecraft said:

What I think the scheme should say, IMHO;

3: Neutralize The Leader
Cut off the head, and the snake will die.
This Scheme may not start revealed. Reveal this Scheme
once this Crew has scored any VP from it.
The first time the enemy Leader is reduced below half
of their starting Wounds, gain 1 VP.
The first time this crew makes the enemy Leader leave play, score 2 VP.

This is INCREDIBLY abuseable, particularly by Levi.

[Dogmantra]

1 hour ago, Lizzy Lovecraft said:

The first time this crew makes the enemy Leader leave play, score 2 VP.

Doesn't work against Leveticus at all unfortunately. He only ever makes himself leave play because of his ability reading that he buries instead of being killed.

 

But yeah a general design intent of this set of schemes is allowing for more decision making. The way a competitive game works is to compare players' decisions, the winner being whoever made better decisions over the course of the game, and so times when you can lose out on points without a decision to make are much less preferable than times when you can lose out on points by making a bad decision. If Malifaux was a fixed list game, I'd agree that Neutralise the Leader is bad, but as it stands, it promotes better play all around and stops the "gotcha" of lucking into a bad matchup.

[Sordid Strumpet]

20 hours ago, Stadon said:

Never being able to use the death and rebirth mechanic without giving away 2 VP is a bigger deal than the can only use Channel twice without using SS, which is still in and of itself a big deal for Leveticus. There is no "conservative" quantity of dying that can be done.  It's binary.  As for Ramos being bad at Make them Suffer because of spider spam, you can just not spam 1 wound spiders.  Summoning 3 1 wound spiders is a tactical choice.  Summoning  a smaller number of healthier, pretty darn resilient models that can get bonus to defense flips and potentially regeneration is not a bad plan.  Alternatively you can just not summon them at all and utilize Ramos' extensive list of other actions to thoroughly buff a crew of more resilient models.  Ramos still has options.  What can Leveticus do to not be an 8 wound master with no damage mitigating features other than use soulstone and the potential to take Survivalist?

Again I have to point out that Deliver the Message isn't in GG2016.  That is a perfect example of problematic (I think even legacy?) schemes that were removed at least in part because it was inordinately effective against a subset of masters.  Why would you be OK with recreating that problem just because it affects a smaller subset of masters?

I see you haven't responded to my previous post refuting your arguments. Regardless, you point out Ramos can adapt his strategy by summoning no spiders or fewer spiders - except the death of constructs and summoning cheap minions is what Ramos does best, backed up by a bit of buffing. Playing him another way is arguably less effective, given that he needs upgrades to be able to buff, and his buffs are situational (I sure don't bring a master to then spend all game healing constructs by two points). Leveticus has alternative play styles too, what with teleporting around, summonig annoying abominations left right and center and he can still kill a model per turn. His other play styles are just a wee bit less effective.

What's more, if hunting party is in the pool (or make them suffer), I'll just play Colette. Perhaps even Kaeris, but she's not terribly suited if I want to take that scheme.

Your entire argument is predicated on the demand that you should be able to compete in GG16 using a fixed master. Except that is fundamentally not how the game is designed, so your argument is entirely void.

[Math Mathonwy]

16 hours ago, Lizzy Lovecraft said:

Not the same effect!  Lady J hunts down and kills 2-3 Waifs.  Done; end of game, 2 points.

Huh? Either you're massively better at playing Lady J than anyone I know, or you let your Waifs be killed way too easy. Because that's an insanely difficult task you're kinda skipping there. Similarly, just don't die with Levi! Problem solved!  

[Adran]

On 22/02/2016 at 9:29 PM, Stadon said:

  How would Perdita and Ophilia players react if the scheme was "You gain one point every time your opponent takes a Sh action"?  Just because it only punishes one or two masters or only punishes them on certain scheme flips does not make the fact that you are being punished for doing exactly what you were intended to do OK. 

 

Ah, you've seen Head hunter then.  

 

You know its possible to use Levi in a way that doesn't automatically give up full points for neutralise. Sure, it requires you to do a few things a little differently, but Hateful Darkblack has played at least one Levi game when he took the Malifaux child as the totem, rather than any waifs, and from what I recall, Levi didn't die. 

Levi has many more tricks than just killing himself. The fact its not even his only (0) action on the card suggests that you might not want to do it every turn. 

18 hours ago, Lizzy Lovecraft said:

Not the same effect!  Lady J hunts down and kills 2-3 Waifs.  Done; end of game, 2 points.

What I think the scheme should say, IMHO;

3: Neutralize The Leader
Cut off the head, and the snake will die.
This Scheme may not start revealed. Reveal this Scheme
once this Crew has scored any VP from it.
The first time the enemy Leader is reduced below half
of their starting Wounds, gain 1 VP.
The first time this crew makes the enemy Leader leave play, score 2 VP.

But, really, I'm done trolling over something that will occur 4 in 54 percent of the time.  The game is still the best one out there.  I just originally wanted to bitch about the unfairness for Levi (and Dreamer) lovers.

Even ignoring the rules issue above (which could possibly be resolved with some re-wording somehow) and going with the intent..

In my experience, the play style to which most Levi players currently subscribe, after the first turn, Levi is on the board for about 3 of enemy activations.  and he has picked where he appears each time. The chances of him appearing somewhere where I can deal 8 damage to him (he does have soulstone) and win initiative are so low, that I'm probably scoring fewer points from this than I would from Assassinate. 

So again, Levis opponent is effectively reduced to 4 schemes to choose from with no control over it. That's less fair than the current set up, where you have the choice of giving your opponent 3 points from it, both in picking Leveticus in the first place, and in choosing to play him in a way that lowers his wounds 3 times with Channel, and removing him from the board. If you choose to Channel only twice a turn and then bury, you are only going to give up 2 points, and its still pretty hard for the opponent to force the third in that play style. 

[Leoneth]

I agree that assassinate needed to be changed.  I think there's a difference between building a crew to deny schemes and having a master that just shuts one off.  Similarly, I agree that it's much better to have a master that is poor at a scheme than a master that just locks someone out of one scheme.

That being said, I do wish they'd handled it differently.  Say "when one of your actions or abilities reduces the enemy master to half health or below for the first time, score a point and reveal.  If the enemy master is removed from play for any reason and the scheme is revealed, score two points."  This would at least force some interaction on the enemy part.  Of course, they've already made their decision on the matter and I'm sure there's a reason why they chose to do things the way they did.  And at the end of the day, when neutralize shows up, I can always just play one of the other 6 masters.

Another argument people often make is that it's not fair to players that want to collect only one master or can't afford more than one.  However, these are meant as tournament scheme pools, yes?  That would mean that they should not be balanced with the casual one master player in mind, but instead with the intention that the player is going to bring the full arsenal of their faction to bear.  If you're playing casually, the regular schemes and strats, or even gg 15 are still available to use.

[Sordid Strumpet]

@Leoneth On the Cheated Fates Radio episode that Justin comes on and talks about the new scheme, he mentions that they played with different ways of wording it, but basically anything they came up with resulted in complicated interactions, having to release FAQs for every single model that would be affected slightly differently or plain easy to abuse rules. So they went with the simple version that we have now.

[Leoneth]

2 minutes ago, Sordid Strumpet said:

@Leoneth On the Cheated Fates Radio episode that Justin comes on and talks about the new scheme, he mentions that they played with different ways of wording it, but basically anything they came up with resulted in complicated interactions, having to release FAQs for every single model that would be affected slightly differently or plain easy to abuse rules. So they went with the simple version that we have now.

Thanks for the heads up.  Like I said, I'm sure there's something I'm missing that they saw.  I don't claim to be an expert in every interaction or anything.  I just wish there had been a way to do it without putting such a hard lock on Levi.

That being said, I do recognize the necessity for it and I don't think one master being bad at a scheme is the end of the world for outcasts in tournaments.  It's much better than it was with assassinate in the pool.

[amanwing]

On 23.2.2016 at 1:55 PM, mythicFOX said:

 I bought a Mech Rider knowing it was significantly above the power curve, and it's been hit three times (errata to itself, errata to metal gamin, and GG2016 schemes).

Where do i find the errata on the mechanical rider pls? I am scared now since i never saw an updated card.

[Adran]

3 hours ago, amanwing said:

Where do i find the errata on the mechanical rider pls? I am scared now since i never saw an updated card.

I think it was errated before the model was released. So all released plastic riders have the correct card.

It used to be able to summon the Arcane effigy on its (0) action. Its now not able to. 

 

EDIT - Fetid is sort of right. It received the Errata in July 2014. The physical cards for it were not available until August 2014 at the earliest, but the Beta testing had ended before then. 

[Fetid Strumpet]

I believe that was changed during the beta. I don't believe any of the riders has received an errata.

[Ludvig]

On 22 februari 2016 at 11:10 PM, Stadon said:

That is a facile argument.  Saying "Leve was always the best choice" has no factual basis and just feeds off of animosity and groupthink.  Yes, he killed things really hard and was difficult to put down, but there are many masters who fit that bit and are all flexible enough to handle any scheme pool.  Kirai, Ophilia, and Colette all certainly fit that bill.  Picking one scheme where you just give away free points when Leveticus does his thing as recompense for not being able to get full points for assassinate for the longest time doesn't actually solve any problems.  All it does is make him worthless in one scheme and nothing else the rest of the time.  There is no complicated decision making process, no real tactic to avoid the problem created for him by of Marked for Death.  You just can't play Leve when it comes up, otherwise you are basically handing your opponent 3 points.  And no, it is not better than your opponent not being able to easily get full assassinate.  Vastly more effort goes into buying, building, painting, learning, and fielding a master than will ever go into one scheme out of 19.  Crippling a master for a scheme is a much bigger deal than eliminating the ability to easily get the third point on one scheme that isn't even part of the GG rotation anymore.

As someone else stated: Leveticus had an attack that is more powerful than that of a lot of other masters even when he doesn't channel. He can also be played semi-aggressively so that he pops below half wounds from channeling (to force your opponent into revealing the scheme for one vp so you are 100% sure they have it) and then sacrifice a friendly undead to place 10" away and be all but untouchable. The statement that he automatically gives up three points is just not true.

I would also suggest that "I picked this master because people said he was powerful" is completely against the intent of Malifaux that prides itself o trying to have a high level of balance between the masters and none that are inherently stronger. Statements like that are a good way to make the designers try to put that master (or model) down a peg. At least that's the way I have interpreted the feelings in this community.

Austringers were treated in a similar way with all of the guilds buff-models exclusing them. The percieved overpoweredness of austringers even made Lucius' obey-type action mention them specifically by name and thus creating anti-synergy between him and the child as a side effect.

These schemes belong to one of two optional sets and is temporary. I think Leveticus will be fine.

[Math Mathonwy]

On 2/26/2016 at 3:23 PM, Fetid Strumpet said:

I believe that was changed during the beta. I don't believe any of the riders has received an errata.

Nope. If you look at the official, ready cards that came from the beta, they still contain the Mech Rider card that allows for the summoning of the Arcane Effigy. The errataed card was offered for a while on the old site but it isn't included in the new errata (which is totally understandable!). But the change wasn't done during the beta.

[Fetid Strumpet]

I think we are quibbling over terminology. At that point many things were errata do then because many things during the open beta got changed between the final beta card released and the official printing. I regard everything prior to the official card actually being printed and sold in stores as beta, and errata only as changes once the official card has been printed.

[Math Mathonwy]

20 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

At that point many things were errata do then because many things during the open beta got changed between the final beta card released and the official printing.

I don't think anything else changed between the final, official card pdf and the printing. Certainly not such a number of things that you could call "many".

Also, they had official rules status (Adepticon 2014 was run under the rules where a Mech Rider could summon an Effigy). And the new card download was issued under the moniker or errata IIRC.

And I realize that this is way off topic.