Balance/Power Creep in Malifaux

[lusciousmccabe]

Much of the increase to stats confess from the fact that Df 4 (or lower) models are just too easy to hit and the defensive abilities they get often don't make up for it (particularly considering they can be negated by other abilities).

I think the higher stat, less crazy/situational abilities (like Pine Box and Devour) is an improvement in design but it's not perfect since the general trend seems to be toward 'stat six or go home' and older models can get devalued. At the same time there are plenty of essentially worthless models in later books so I'm not sure you could call it power creep unequivocally.

[Patzer]

30 minutes ago, lusciousmccabe said:

I think the higher stat, less crazy/situational abilities (like point box and devour) is an improvement in design but it's not perfect since the general trend seems to be toward 'stat six or go home' and older models can get devalued. At the same time there are plenty of essentially worthless models in later books so I'm not sure you could call it power creep unequivocally.

Can you give some examples for the stat six or go home models, and those which are "essentially worthless". I am curious.

[Bodiless]

9 hours ago, admiralvorkraft said:

He gets you a second model perpetually Tormented off of a single Guilty and he can copy Feel Their Torment off of Daw which lets him copy any (1) action in the crew more or less.

Ah, gotcha. I pretty much never take Twist and Turn with Daw so that chain hadn't occurred to me. 

[Kirby]

25 minutes ago, Bodiless said:

Ah, gotcha. I pretty much never take Twist and Turn with Daw so that chain hadn't occurred to me. 

You really don't?  That and Writhing Torment are basically stapled to his card for me.  Twist and Turn gives him a (0) Obey and lets him pull a (1) off of a Tormented model.  Like Rusty Alyce's gun, Ashes & Dust's claw, Lust's Now Kiss, Envy's gun, etc.  And again, a 0-action Obey! 

Edit: More fun things to borrow as a (1) - Jaakuna's Lure, Johan or Taelor's Hammer, Johan's Rebel Yell, Hannah's blasty punch, Lazarus's grenade launcher... probably plenty more, but those are some off the top of my head.

[Jafar]

5 minutes ago, Kirby said:

You really don't?  That and Writhing Torment are basically stapled to his card for me.  Twist and Turn gives him a (0) Obey and lets him pull a (1) off of a Tormented model.  Like Rusty Alyce's gun, Ashes & Dust's claw, Lust's Now Kiss, Envy's gun, etc.  And again, a 0-action Obey! 

Confirmed

Those two upgrades + Nurse + Guilty are in my every jack Daw list. SS and enemy faction don't matter, that's the start for my every JD List.

 

[Boomstick]

11 hours ago, Omenbringer said:

 

Each Master is "themed" (at least mildly) with a specific crew, they should function well within that construct and be competitive with it, an awful lot do not and are not.

On now on to the Soap Box:

My biggest gripe with the power creep is that the game is quickly devolving into a handful of competitive options (and not in every faction). A trip over to Pull My Finger will show that an awful lot of Masters are listed as best with models that aren't really themed with them.

You keep bringing up the theme of each Master, and I agree their themes are cool ways to run them. As a player who enjoys making crews that make thematic sense according to the lore I'd just like to point out that each faction has a broader theme too. With Arcanists, Kaeris is clearly fire themed, but she's also M&SU, so bringing anyone M&SU makes thematic sense; as the M&SU is a front for the Arcanist movement, really bringing anyone from the Arcanist faction makes some thematic sense, as we've seen in the fluff Ramos is not shy about pressing anyone and everyone in his coalition to work together to further their/his goals. Just an example, but it holds true across the factions in their own ways.

I've personally found pretty much all Masters are relatively comfortable running multiple different ways depending on how you build their crew and what their goals are in a particular game (even more so with Dual-faction Masters). Burning crews are fun with Kaeris, but I personally prefer the image of her going out "problem solving" with Joss and other Arcanist muscle to distract their missions opposition while a few more subtle agents work to complete less flashy goals.

If you're set on the Masters' themes over the Factions', more power to you, but I just wanted to point out that the fluff is not only rich, it's rich enough to support multiple levels within the rules as well. I find between those levels and the game-to-game change of objectives in the Strats & Schemes (as well as Wyrd's updating them in Gaining Grounds) that I'm not really noticing any power creep. It's more about choosing the right tool for the job.

Just my two cents.

[Bodiless]

13 minutes ago, Kirby said:

You really don't?  That and Writhing Torment are basically stapled to his card for me.  Twist and Turn gives him a (0) Obey and lets him pull a (1) off of a Tormented model.  Like Rusty Alyce's gun, Ashes & Dust's claw, Lust's Now Kiss, Envy's gun, etc.  And again, a 0-action Obey! 

This is wandering off topic, so we might want to move it to Outcasts. But my reasoning is Twist and Turn is a 2ss upgrade, competes with a slot for things like Oathkeeper, needs an 8 or a 7 to cast depending on if you are going for the steal an action or the Obey, and does not allow triggers. I just found it was very rare that I didn't want to use Jack's actions either cursing someone or getting into position to curse someone so I stopped taking it. 

[Myyrä]

5 hours ago, Patzer said:

Can you give some examples for the stat six or go home models, and those which are "essentially worthless". I am curious.

Anything costing 8ss or more and has an attack stat lower than 6 is practically useless.

Examples include: Slate Ridge Mauler, Rail Golem, The Sow, Rat King, Sue, Ama No Zako, Cojo, Steam Arachnid Swarm, Candy.

Those are all the models that I could find quickly that are without (1) attack with attack stat of 6. I don't see anything that can really hold their own without some exceptional support from their crew. Candy might sometimes make it on a list with her own merits, but more often than not you would also want some other Wp gimmicks to go with her.

[Bodiless]

Sue has a built in positive flip on his gun though, which I would say makes up for the Sh 5. If you have a board with decent cover I'll take the built in +flip over +1 Sh.

[Boshea]

32 minutes ago, Myyrä said:

Anything costing 8ss or more and has an attack stat lower than 6 is practically useless.

Examples include: Slate Ridge Mauler, Rail Golem, The Sow, Rat King, Sue, Ama No Zako, Cojo, Steam Arachnid Swarm, Candy.

Those are all the models that I could find quickly that are without (1) attack with attack stat of 6. I don't see anything that can really hold their own without some exceptional support from their crew. Candy might sometimes make it on a list with her own merits, but more often than not you would also want some other Wp gimmicks to go with her.

Slate Ridge can throw out slow with potentially 3 attacks along with high durability

Rail Golem can generate as much AP has you have burning and tomes

Similar to Desolation Engines, you almost never hire a Rat King you always want to summon them

The Sow can summon models, and take advantage of several Gremlion based WP effects

You take Sue for his anti casting aura and card draw. If you want a ranged piece take Convict Gunslinger

Ama No Zako brings an Obey along with mobile area denial. She also literally eats Gremlin crews

Cojo can push models around for area denial and removes schemes

Steam Arachnid Swarm, see Rat King

Candy is a pure control piece that also brings a decent heal.

I mean not every model in the game is designed to go kill other models.... In fact the majority of schemes and strategy models don't directly involve killing other models

 

I feel like this is less of an issue that there is a power creep problem, and more that playing "thematic" isn't optimal to building towards the scheme pool.

[E.T.A. Hoffman]

We have half a card without upgrades and nothing on the other masters and we're already talking about Power Creep?!

Aside: (Although I've seen all the new models rules and I can say, yup super power creep. It's going to be a game of who bought the new masters. The game is basically going to dissolve into a badder bad bad version of Warmachine...or I'm lying...who knows anymore)

;D

 

Justin Edit: I have the list of testers, so I know. Also, please don't impersonate playtesters, NDA breaches are serious things which will come with ramifications, I prefer not having to check everyone's name against it.

 

Not sure what you're freaking out about from the original post. Not only is it satire there is nothing legit about it. Further more, impersonation of a playtest is not illegal and if I didn't sign an NDA as I am not a play tester then I would not be subject to any actions of the contract.

[Myyrä]

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

Slate Ridge can throw out slow with potentially 3 attacks along with high durability

His durability isn't high for 8ss model. Getting that third attack is so situational that it might as well not exist, not to mention that any of the three attacks won't hit anything with that Ml 5.

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

Rail Golem can generate as much AP has you have burning and tomes

So that's 1 or 2 extra ap with which it can't hit anything because of his Ml 5 low speed. Not great for an 11ss model.

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

Similar to Desolation Engines, you almost never hire a Rat King you always want to summon them

Not worth hiring then...

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

The Sow can summon models, and take advantage of several Gremlion based WP effects

In theory, yes. In practice on the other hand...

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

You take Sue for his anti casting aura and card draw. If you want a ranged piece take Convict Gunslinger

Never seen that aura benefit anyone. My opponent's probably don't play Sue enough (or he's as bad as I perceive him as).

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

Ama No Zako brings an Obey along with mobile area denial. She also literally eats Gremlin crews

Both of those abilities require suits. Promising Whisper doesn't have that high a Ca either. Swallow you whole can be avoided by discarding cards or SS.

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

Cojo can push models around for area denial and removes schemes

He can also be killed with a fly swatter.

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

Steam Arachnid Swarm, see Rat King

See Rat King.

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

Candy is a pure control piece that also brings a decent heal.

Killing enemy models is the ultimate way of controlling the board. Candy's control abilities also rely more or less on keeping a relatively fragile model alive near enemy models. Can't be done reliably. Her heal also requires Depression upgrade to be called decent.

6 minutes ago, Boshea said:

I mean not every model in the game is designed to go kill other models.... In fact the majority of schemes and strategy models don't directly involve killing other models

Killing enemy models is the ultimate way of controlling the board.

[katadder]

yes killing is a big way of controlling the board but not everything has df6 either.

certainly from an arcanist POV I can quite happily say my arachnid swarms (gotta love built in multiple attacks), rail golem ( to attacks) and cojo have all killed plenty it all comes down to when you use them, usually when opponents have used their good cards.

Also cojo and arachnid swarms can remove enemy markers to deny them VPs

SRM has a decent survivability for 8SS, certainly more than some others, ItW and HtK with triggers for healing, makes him something that can just stand in your way.

 

some of the others I cannot comment on, but things like Candy its not that hard to keep alive, no harder than any other model unless an opponent concentrates on it. there isnt a model in the game cant be killed in 1 round/activation if you really want it to go down
 

[daniello_s]

35 minutes ago, Boshea said:

Similar to Desolation Engines, you almost never hire a Rat King you always want to summon them

Good luck with summoning Desolation Engine

[LunarSol]

I guess I'm just not feeling it.  I'm not seeing anything in Wave 3 that's pushing beyond the current power curve.  Most of it honestly is losing the fight to find a spot in crews at all.  

The issue of hodgepodge crews has nothing to do with Wave 3.  It's entirely a result of their being almost no keyword synergies in the game and the ones that exist being extremely expensive for what they provide.  The game also generally dissuades spam, rewards specialists, and has enough options  that there's rarely a need to take duplicates of things.

Honestly?  The biggest problem with the open field tests is that most of the testing is done with thematic crews.  All the powerful thematic synergies get stomped out in playtesting, leaving us with mostly non-thematic tricks to find.

[daniello_s]

I don't see the problem with power creep in Malifaux at the moment.

What might be a problem is adding up more special rules/keywords/action and abilities. Soon we would need a Malifaux-pedia to remember all those.

[MR TORGUE]

7 minutes ago, daniello_s said:

I don't see the problem with power creep in Malifaux at the moment.

What might be a problem is adding up more special rules/keywords/action and abilities. Soon we would need a Malifaux-pedia to remember all those.

Same; the game is currently fine as is - don't really understand why everyone is being so negative about new masters. shouldn't this be great news. 

I suppose some people are just never happy - more of a cup half full person myself! Can't wait for the new masters!

[Fetid Strumpet]

I'm down on new masters because I don't feel they are necessary to grow the game in an enjoyable manner. The various stations of models, as well as keywords, and the ability to change up an existing master's play style or options by introducing new upgrades I think is a far better idea. Once you add new masters you have an entirely new infrastructure to put in place as you need their thematic models, and then all the new upgrades, Avatars, Upgrades that go with models like the Emissaries who now need new options and so on. It's especially irksome since some models haven't been given new thematic options since Twisting Fates, though with some of the recent releases have addressed that somewhat.

Additionally the more masters in the game the harder it becomes, overall to balance the game, and the more likely it is that certain masters within factions just become invalidated.

I personally thought that 39 masters was a good enough level to sit at for some time, especially as all releases haven't been actually sent to market as of yet. We are sitting on 2+ years approximately of seeing the rules for most of the shifting loyalties models before the majority of them are even getting released. 

This is of course my opinion and not definitively fact, but it's how I look at it.

[solkan]

I just want to go on record as not having a position on whether there is or is not power creep in the game.  My objection is that the copy/pasted version of OmenBringer's post doesn't demonstrate whether or not there is power creep in the game.

For instance, Lucius is Df 6 with 6+ action values, and there's this four page thread on the forum lamenting how underpowered he is.

 

[D_acolyte]

Some degree of power creep may be un avoidable, as various combinations or nuances become surprisingly powerful. I do not believe I have seen to much that is outrageous especially compared to things like 1st ed Dreamer. Some masters/model combinations are strong, I totally murder a gremlin once with teddy, Coppelius and daydreams; take that terror at -4 wp muhahaha.

Now with that being said, if you are concerned about power creep then try to sign up for play testing and break the game so you can then say this is to powerful Arron. It is important that we players are as much trying to help move the game in a way we want as possible.

I fully believe Wyrd is working to balance the game and here is why:

The zero point upgrades, rightly or wrongly, is Wyrd trying to increase the viability of models that may not be seen as viable.

By changing the tournament schemes Wyrd is trying to affect the meta and give time to models that may be underpowered or changed how we the players choose to power our force.

They have shown that they are willing to weaken models as they did with the metal gamin and despite the response to it I hope they are still willing to.

Wyrd has gone through 3 sets of open play testing with the first 3 books. Now weather you think open or closed play testing is better is another matter but it shows a willingness to either way.

Finally, I am not a fan of adding masters from a balance, faction feel or story view point but I will not dismiss them of hand because it can all be done well or poorly and we will not know till it is done.

[LunarSol]

3 hours ago, Myyrä said:

Anything costing 8ss or more and has an attack stat lower than 6 is practically useless.

Every game engine has resources and limits on those resources, even if its not a particularly resource driven game.  High cost models give you less AP to work with to accomplish your goals, so a high cost model spending AP that doesn't reliably accomplish something quickly becomes difficult to justify.  Its actually extremely hard to make actions with low success rates in games work.  The more impactful you make them, the more swingy the game becomes as very few games have enough "rolls" to even things over a single game.  Efficiency and reliability tends to win out in the long run.

[lusciousmccabe]

9 hours ago, Patzer said:

Can you give some examples for the stat six or go home models, and those which are "essentially worthless". I am curious.

The most obvious example would be the Emissaries who had to have that kind of stat line since Wyrd wanted them playable in any crew. If you look at the high cost models from book one they tended towards Df 4 or lower (maybe 5 if you're a Hechman) with defensive abilities like Armor and Terrifying which were supposed to make up for it. However, abilities can be ignored and having a low stat makes the model an easy target for anything that does get around its defensive frills. That's why the Emissaries got a mix of defensive abilities on top of high stats, so you don't run into situations where they feel hard countered. 

In terms of essentially worthless models, quite a few of the "look at all these sixes" crowd actually fall into that category (Guild Lawyers, Bayou Bushwackers etc.) which I suspect might be something to do with them getting good stats for lack of anything better to do. The fact that a lot of these models are in Wave 2 also probably accounts for some of the stat skew. Other Wave 2 models which aren't hugely popular include wastrels, ashigaru, anything guardsman related and all those models that people summon but never bother hiring.  I won't comment on the rest of Wave 3 since I'd say the lack of models is something of a barrier for them anyway. 

There are some models that do just fine without a single 6 in their stats also. The Depleted are a great example, but it's because they are cheap and have a very low-priority role on top of stupid defensive abilities and some more gravy. If hitting with a model's attack is a priority then a stat of less than 6 is bad and Df/Wp 6 is about what you need to force the opponent to expend resources to hit you, even if you can't dodge. That's down to the hand system allowing you to guarantee hits against an equal stat, which more and more cards will do with bigger stat disparities. If you didn't have a hand to spend (and the attacker didn't win draws, although that's another matter) then you wouldn't worry so much about your actions or defenses having some magic number, but given that 6 is the highest stat commonly available then it is highly desirable to have a stat of 6 so you can leverage your hand where you need it. 

2 hours ago, daniello_s said:

I don't see the problem with power creep in Malifaux at the moment.

What might be a problem is adding up more special rules/keywords/action and abilities. Soon we would need a Malifaux-pedia to remember all those.

Particularly with the unnecessarily similar or similarly named abilties. Is this model Hard to Kill, or Hard to Wound, or Hard to Kill and Hard to Wound, or did you just say that they're hard to kill, but they don't actually have any of those abilities.

1 hour ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

I personally thought that 39 masters was a good enough level to sit at for some time, especially as all releases haven't been actually sent to market as of yet. We are sitting on 2+ years approximately of seeing the rules for most of the shifting loyalties models before the majority of them are even getting released. 

I think (and have said elsewhere) that there's already too many models in the game as is. I've been playing since the start of wave 2 (after a break at the end of v1.5) and I still don't know what half the models do because I haven't played against them, and no chance I'm going to bother commiting 39 Masters and their upgrades to memory, let alone all that ancillary stuff. I find the glut of models messy and it can be difficult to justify taking one over another for reasons other than personal preference/aesthetics when they do something quite similar. So I totally understand why you might not be thrilled with the new Masters coming out, we just have slightly different tolerances for rules-bloat. 

One thing that can be said for new releases is that models seem increasingly designed for how M2E actually works, rather than being semi-random re-skins of v1.5 profiles. So I think there may have been a sort of 'utility creep' in terms of how models work in the game, with the well designed models (which isn't all of them) in the later waves having a balance of abilities and actions that work towards various objectives, while early designs tend to have one specialisation which may or may not do anything to help you win the game.

Also, kind of off topic but I really love how GG16 addresses things like how woefully inadequate marker removal is in a lot of crews, so they can sort of retroactively tweak things to be relevant by changing the objectives rather than the models.

1 hour ago, solkan said:

I just want to go on record as not having a position on whether there is or is not power creep in the game.  My objection is that the copy/pasted version of OmenBringer's post doesn't demonstrate whether or not there is power creep in the game.

For instance, Lucius is Df 6 with 6+ action values, and there's this four page thread on the forum lamenting how underpowered he is.

Well, if OmenBringer had conclusively proven power creep then we wouldn't have anything to discuss. I don't think there's been much cries of full on power-creep anyway, more just discussion of whether it is there now or may be in the future.

Also, I'm pretty sure there's at least two 'poor old Lucius' threads at this stage. He really is a top-tier master when it comes to being complained about. 

[katadder]

perhaps 6 is the new 5 and is now average

that being said my raspy crew is quite happy with its M2e models, and so is marcus. fitting newer models into working crews is more difficult and they take on newer stuff with no particular worries.

[Justin]

13 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Are there any combinations that you find particularly egregious? Most of the non-thematic combinations I see are just any old Master with the 'generically strong / high value' models like Austringers and December Acolytes, but it sounds like you're thinking more of strong non-thematic synergies. I've also found most thematic crews work perfectly well in competitive environments.

The aspect that I think this analysis fails to take into account is an overall 'flattening' of model capabilities. In the earlier books, models were often highly specialised into a narrow role, with very good stats in that single strength compensated by weakness in other areas - the epitome of this is the Rotten Belle. Newer books have tended more toward generalists, with less outstanding strengths and acute specialisations, but fewer weaknesses. That doesn't mean that power creep hasn't happened at all (it's a natural process in game development) but I think Wyrd have done more than most to keep it in check.

Indeed, this is a good post.

I'm not really going to jump into the fray, but I want to steer the discussion a little. Far too often I see a premise thrown out and that premise is accepted automatically, then everyone just jumps to how to fix/prevent the problem (because that's sort of the fun part).

But let's question this premise.

I don't think a straight stat comparison between the books is an accurate representation of power creep. For one, it ignores point cost. Shifting Loyalties had relatively few lower costed models, so their stats would be higher on average. Also, stats need to be looked at against their accompanying abilities (if a model has Armor, for example, a lower Df doesn't mean as much).

The real test is whether Shifting Loyalties models are all of a sudden replacing all the book 1 models. Look at models with similar points costs and roles/themes within the same Factions. Witchling Stalkers and Sanctioned Spellcasters are the same cost, in the same Faction, with a magic using theme. Have Sanctioned Spellcasters replaced Witchling Stalkers? Ice Dancers are very close in cost to December Acolytes (6 vs 7) and have the same synergies with Rasputina (Frozen Heart), have they replaced December Acolytes? Bunraku have the same cost as Waldgeists and Young Nephilim, have Bunraku replaced those models (different themes, but it won't always be perfect. In fact, if you say, "well, there's not really a comparable model..." then that's great!). If yes, then we have issues. But if no, or even "well, it depends..." then I don't think we do.

I'm not going to draw the conclusions for you, as I am obviously bias, but those are the questions I would ask.

[LunarSol]

1 minute ago, Justin said:

I don't think a straight stat comparison between the books is an accurate representation of power creep. For one, it ignores point cost.

Only if you ignore point cost as a stat. 

FWIW, the average point cost of models in Wave 3 is 7.26.