Are we actually underpowered?

[Wolfpact]

19 minutes ago, JDAntoine said:

Exact, too many different individuals and it becomes difficult to identify.

This is totally different from being underpowered but could explain as to why players dont stick with Guild forever.

Well, you may have a point. A lot of varying hooks and aspects, coupled with the fact that they are sort of 'vanilla' in a game with some very gonzo factions - play a bunch of cops and soldiers,or play.. a Jack-the-Joker with undead hookers/ an army of nightmares lead by a dreaming Earth childand its horrible 'pet' Tyrant / An ice witch and her cannibal cult and snow/ice monsters/etc. .. and the list keeps going on... then take the fact into account that even 'badass normal humans' has competition with the 'Korps - dieselpunk WW1-esque badass mercenaries with specialized roles and mages, or the Barrows Gang -outlaws are cool, and they have the Old West vibe and the 'plan the Heist, adapt on the fly' sort of cool cred.. or badass chicks with swords in stripperific outfits... or badass, steampunk miners representing a worker's rebellion in various, very-compatible forms....

Then factor in..honestly, the Guild are, frankly, the bad guys. Slavery, imperilaism, plutocratic corruption, mage-hunting and exploiting... they're evil, authoritarian scum of the highest order, which is a bit of a thematic turn-off for some.. and for those who enjoy being the bad guy? They're a very 'mundane' sort of evil compared to.. well, nearly every other faction of 'bad guys'.

[trikk]

Well, for example I started Guild then I had a 3 month Arcanist experience but nobody blasts like Sonnia so I`m back at Guild

[Gnomezilla]

46 minutes ago, Wolfpact said:

Or, less kindly 'The Rulers of Malifaux who are so hopelessly compromised by every other faction it's almost comical.' You know, the coroner they turned into a Ressurrectionist, the undertaker who is a leading Resurrectionist, the Thunders, Lucius... there's probably two gremlins in an overcoat in charge of an outpost near the Bayou..

That's certainly a popular explanation here, at which point I interrupt that someone needs to be the grown-up in the room that is Malifaux, at which point my opponent has often had to point out that I am not playing any sort of moral leading light. (Have to stop having McMourning out on the table for these days, but then, if that wasn't my mood I wouldn't've interrupted in the first place.)

Since the beginning the Guild has been defined by what its masters stand against. It's the dual faction masters, perversely, who had a positive principle to fight for. Power! Loot! Raw materials (and the opportunity to flash a shiny official badge of officialdom)! I'm not sure yet whether our new naive Nellie will be flavored 'for' or 'against', although her playstyle focus on denial is suggesting the latter. Then again, given the passionate negative reactions when she was revealed, maybe nobody should be trying to sell her on fluff alone to a group that cares about gameplay. I don't know. There seem to be plenty enough happy players of non Guild masters who elicit negative fluff reactions. Nellie: in fluff and mechanics, dedicated to proving your opponent is wrong. Can we sell that?

[daniello_s]

15 minutes ago, trikk said:

Well, for example I started Guild then I had a 3 month Arcanist experience but nobody blasts like Sonnia so I`m back at Guild

Facepalm

[Wolfpact]

1 minute ago, Gnomezilla said:

That's certainly a popular explanation here, at which point I interrupt that someone needs to be the grown-up in the room that is Malifaux, at which point my opponent has often had to point out that I am not playing any sort of moral leading light. (Have to stop having McMourning out on the table for these days, but then, if that wasn't my mood I wouldn't've interrupted in the first place.)

Since the beginning the Guild has been defined by what its masters stand against. It's the dual faction masters, perversely, who had a positive principle to fight for. Power! Loot! Raw materials (and the opportunity to flash a shiny official badge of officialdom)! I'm not sure yet whether our new naive Nellie will be flavored 'for' or 'against', although her playstyle focus on denial is suggesting the latter. Then again, given the passionate negative reactions when she was revealed, maybe nobody should be trying to sell her on fluff alone to a group that cares about gameplay. I don't know. There seem to be plenty enough happy players of non Guild masters who elicit negative fluff reactions. Nellie: in fluff and mechanics, dedicated to proving your opponent is wrong. Can we sell that?

Line between 'grown up' and 'parental abuse' and the Guild overstepped it..about fifteen minutes after taking control

I do sort of like Nellie. Well,okay, more that I like Phiona. I love that model, just from the visual. And honestly,I classify the Ortegas ad Perdita as 'good guys' - sure, the Neverborn have a right to be pissed at these invaders, but though I'm pro-'Faux in the Earth-Malifaux conflict, even I can admit the 'Born are, collectively, not good people and can't fault the Ortegas for trying to protect the poor souls the Guild shipped in in large part unwillingly. And though the Witch-Hunters are filth of the highest order, I still like Sonnia and Samael as characters in the fluff and f I were to pick up a Guild master, it'd probably be Miss Criid. She admits she does awful things, that she'll never be considered a heroine of the people for her services and sacrifices, and is okay with that. I dig her, fluff-wise, and she and Sam are highly entertaining to read as they banter with one another.  

[trikk]

Justice and Hoff are also the Good Guys. Basically only the dual faction scum are scum

[fauxreigner]

Wow, so much has changed since I originally posed this question that my current answer has to be "who the hell knows". To break down my thoughts slightly:

Wave 4: Nellie fills a massive void in our master lineup, and does so in a very powerful way. Phiona is a solid beater that can fit into any crew and has extra utility in GG2017 (see below). More importantly, we received outstanding generic upgrades including the frankly-too-good Debt to the Guild, which gives us much-needed resource flow and boosts our already impressive damage output. Also the fact that you never discard it makes in the ultimate Show of Force upgrade (although see GG2017). If you stop the clock here, Guild have definitely risen in the power rankings relative to other factions.

January Errata: It was a mixture of buffs and cuddles, but overall Guild were one of two factions hit hardest in my opinion (the other being Gremlins). Yes the Lucius rewrite is nice, and there will be scheme pools where he is now a viable alternative to Nellie, McMourning and McCabe. But those were already strong options, and its hard to imagine a scenario where New Lucius (Newcius?) stands head and shoulders above one of those existing picks. On the other hand, the Austringer cuddle puts a solid dent in the faction as a whole because (lets face it) most top tier lists took two. Which in itself means that Austringers did need to be tweaked, but it hurts us nonetheless. I know that Austringers can now focus into combat, but that doesn't compensate for losing the board control provided by 18" threat range against scheme runners and high-activation-count crews. It is telling that some top-tier players (e.g. Alex Schmid podcast) count the Austringer cuddle as an important buff to their own factions. Finally, losing papabox (while a very sensible ruling) neuters our one build with a proven track record of winning big tournaments, and it might telling that the pilot of that list has recently jumped ship to 10T (alternatively he just got bored). So overall, the January Errata lowers our stock IMO, but probably not enough to overshadow the Wave 4 buff. 

GG2017: Its still too early to say anything for sure. For the timebeing some thoughts on the common (always/doubles/suited) schemes... Claim Jump is harder for us than Convict, but thats probably true for all factions. Eliminate moving to Doubles has little effect because our masters can be hard to take down when played correctly. Losing Hunting Party from suits might be serious blow, because it was the best way to score points while simultaneously performing the necessary crowd-control on summoning crews that would otherwise overwhelm our small crews. Losing Show of Force slightly tempers the buff we got from Debt to the Guild, and gaining Frame for Murder makes our killy henchman-heavy crews more of a liability. On the other hand, we have one of the best Dig Their Graves models in the game, in the form of Phiona+Transparency, and I expect her to see plenty of play. 

Overall: Its obviously too early to say, but if I had to guess I would say that in the last 6 months the faction has become slightly more powerful from the perspective of the average Guild player due to the new options and upgrades, but less likely to pull off the big tournament wins in the very top-tier, because the main "power build" was (rightly) targeted by the Errata. But maybe Nellie/Newcius will give rise to even better builds once people have had some time to adapt? Only watching the tournament results will tell us. I for one am excited for the next year of Guild!

[Gnomezilla]

9 minutes ago, Wolfpact said:

Line between 'grown up' and 'parental abuse' and the Guild overstepped it..about fifteen minutes after taking control

How about "Guild: When we want your opinion we'll give it to you. With both barrels if necessary." 

@fauxreigner I foresee Lucius auto healing on his obeys combo'd with the pseudo HtK (via recruiter) and true HtK models changing our durability almost as much as Nellie derailing chained attack sequences with the defensive push trigger.

[trikk]

He doesn`t autoheal. He needs a ram.

[Gnomezilla]

24 minutes ago, trikk said:

He doesn`t autoheal. He needs a ram.

With fewer resources than taking a counter from an accumulating condition that is needed for the interrupt-defense, or using another AP for the heal, that is a better way to say it. Or say that he is moving wounds around the crew, with a devil's deal for the stone for the suit. That plus a regen HtK model could get extremely annoying to remove altogether.

[icebreaker]

The heal works only on minions and as I don't know guild HtK minions so it isn't a cool feature it's good but a focus is better

[Surrealistik]

In general I think a lot of you are looking at the changes through some seriously rose tinted glasses.

Bottom line, Guild is definitely worse at competitive level play, and it was _not_ a problem faction in this respect to begin with; this is the fundamental issue. To emphasize, a reasonably balanced faction at top-high level play was diminished to the point where it may no longer be viable there.

Were Austringers overtly centralizing? Yes. Should they have been changed? Absolutely; but not without something else to pick up the slack at higher level play as Guild's competitiveness was largely upheld by them, which we simply didn't get (Lucius/Guardian buffs simply don't compensate for a blow to one of our best and most universal tools; we needed a buff to something that could fit in any list to compensate; for example, maybe Guild Guard could be made not shit? Alternately turning Austringers and other models into powerful specialists would have been even more preferable).

Sonnia is straight up weaker; took a considerable cuddle and got nothing in return. Was she competitively strong with Papabox? Yep. Problematic? Nope. Net result? One of our most competitive (but balanced) masters became significantly less competitive. By the way, this isn't even getting into scheme changes.

[trikk]

1 hour ago, Surrealistik said:

In general I think a lot of you are looking at the changes through some seriously rose tinted glasses.

Bottom line, Guild is definitely worse at competitive level play, and it was _not_ a problem faction in this respect to begin with; this is the fundamental issue. To emphasize, a reasonably balanced faction at top-high level play was diminished to the point where it may no longer be viable there.

Were Austringers overtly centralizing? Yes. Should they have been changed? Absolutely; but not without something else to pick up the slack at higher level play as Guild's competitiveness was largely upheld by them, which we simply didn't get (Lucius/Guardian buffs simply don't compensate for a blow to one of our best and most universal tools; we needed a buff to something that could fit in any list to compensate; for example, maybe Guild Guard could be made not shit?).

Sonnia is straight up weaker; took a considerable cuddle and got nothing in return. Was she competitively strong with Papabox? Yep. Problematic? Nope. Net result? One of our most competitive (but balanced) masters became significantly less competitive. By the way, this isn't even getting into scheme changes.

I don`t agree. We lost Austringer range but only on Raptors. I will not be on the "we can focus into combat so its a buff" front but I honestly thing the gap closed rather than it widened. Field Reporters are very good. Phiona Gage is rock solid. People really struggle against Nellie and I`m not even a really good player with her. Sonnia can still work with Loco. You just have to play better and TBH after playing the way I do now (with Phiona etc.) I wouldn`t go back to the 2 austringer papa box crew as I really find it suboptimal.

 

The more important thing for me its opened the meta and model pool and thats the biggest winner.

[Tris]

As I said, I don't want to say that we didn't receive a cuddle, and it may be a big one - but I'm sometimes under the impression that people don't want to try new things, get a little bit experimental and adapt to new situations.

We have strong choices in our faction and can do everything reasonably well, so I don't see us as a weak faction at all.

 

@Surrealistik

I would like to hear your opinion about our particular weaknesses and why you think we struggle as a faction?

 

 

[Surrealistik]

43 minutes ago, trikk said:

I don`t agree. We lost Austringer range but only on Raptors. I will not be on the "we can focus into combat so its a buff" front but I honestly thing the gap closed rather than it widened. Field Reporters are very good. Phiona Gage is rock solid. People really struggle against Nellie and I`m not even a really good player with her. Sonnia can still work with Loco. You just have to play better and TBH after playing the way I do now (with Phiona etc.) I wouldn`t go back to the 2 austringer papa box crew as I really find it suboptimal.

 

The more important thing for me its opened the meta and model pool and thats the biggest winner.

Again, I don't count the new wave stuff as being a part of the cuddles; it is separate and distinct; we had them prior to the cuddles; they weren't added with the intention of counterbalancing or necessitating the cuddles or otherwise acting as compensation for them. Further, I don't agree even with the more reasonable argument that post new wave and the cuddles, we're in a better or static position overall competitively.

Papa out of the box is definitely weaker than Papa in the box; I don't see how this is a point of dispute.

Also the idea that these changes are fine, that Sonnia is stronger than ever, and I just need to L2P is as asinine as it is insulting; 2x Austringer Papabox was indeed optimal once upon a time; it's not a question of L2P so much as that they were really that good; further, these cuddles were made for a reason, namely because the individual models/synergies were too strong. Unfortunately what Wyrd failed to account for is the broader inter-faction balance.

'Opening the meta' by presenting Guild with a bunch of choices that are only interesting because Austringers were diminished and Papabox was killed is great for other factions competitively, but not so much for us. I would have preferred that the Austringer be made more specialized and keyed to certain schemes, and other models were buffed to be similarly specialized, so that you have many powerful options and interesting choices, but only under the right circumstances, so you have to make good strategic decisions when list building as opposed to 2x Austringers being a complete no-brainer in the vast majority of lists.

[Ludvig]

Since Sonnia wasn't sweeping tournaments left and right (only Darth Bilz seems to have been doing well with her) I think she can't have been that strong to begin with? She was a horrible noobstomper who was probably hurting the game though.

I don't think these changes were made because guild were too good. I think they were made to correct models who worked in boring ways (boring as in little interaction with your opponent). I'm not even sure anyone at wyrd cares about which faction wins tournaments as long as it's not always the same master or same exact list.

I find the idea that we "payed" for having a playable Lucius with cuddles to other models really strange. I don't think factions are errata'd as a whole and I don't see the interaction between Loco and Lucius thst would make guild too strong as a faction. Models are errata'd when thry don't work in a dedired way. Lucius was boring even in friendly games because he worked badly so he got rewritten.

[Ludvig]

 Too strong is not the same as boring/bad for the game. Otherwise they would need to errata all the best models each season. I don't believe guild asafactio was errata'd because we were doing too well. Individual guild models had extremely boring uses that were apparently deemed boring enough to turn people off the game.

[Whut]

I find it difficult to believe that anyone could still think Guild are underpowered, cosnidering they just received one of the downright best and least counterable masters in the game, Sonnia continues to be a win-on-turn-2 nutcase, and McCabe and Perdita continue to be powerful masters (and McCabe got Thralls holy f*ck).

I can go into more detail if anyone cares.

[Surrealistik]

8 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

I see this repeated over and over again. Too strong is not the same as boring/bad for the game. Otherwise they would need to errata all the best models each season. Guild wasn't errata'd because we were doing too well. Individual guild models had extremely boring uses that were apparently deemed boring enough to turn people off the game.

I acknowledge this (they weren't 'too strong' in terms of interfaction balance, but definitely in terms of intrafaction balance).

What I am saying is that these cuddles were bad for Guild competitively, and that there were better ways of achieving this goal that didn't mean adversely impacting Guild at the competitive level.

[trikk]

13 minutes ago, Surrealistik said:

Again, I don't count the new wave stuff as being a part of the cuddles; it is separate and distinct; we had them prior to the cuddles; they weren't added with the intention of counterbalancing or necessitating the cuddles or otherwise acting as compensation for them. Further, I don't agree even with the more reasonable argument that post new wave and the cuddles, we're in a better or static position overall competitively.

Well, if we get ahead on Wave 4 and lose on Wave 1 are we ahead or behind? Either you look at the faction as sum or it doesn`t make sense. If you don`t agree with the arguments I doubt anyone can do anything about it as it doesn`t look like you can be convinced.

13 minutes ago, Surrealistik said:

Papa out of the box is definitely weaker than Papa in the box; I don't see how this is a point of dispute.

True but the difference isn`t as big as a lot of people think

13 minutes ago, Surrealistik said:

Also the idea that these changes are fine, that Sonnia is stronger than ever, and I just need to L2P is as asinine as it is insulting; 2x Austringer Papabox was indeed optimal once upon a time; it's not a question of L2P so much as that they were really that good; further, these cuddles were made for a reason, namely because the individual models/synergies were too strong. Unfortunately what Wyrd failed to account for is the broader inter-faction balance.

These changes are fine. I am pretty hyped about them. The current Sonnia crews I run are (in my and my opponents opinion) stronger than the papabox+2 austringer ones. Nobody is telling you to L2P but if several people that proably play Guild are happy with the changes and like them then I think the errata worked really well. If you feel Guild is weak you can always 

13 minutes ago, Surrealistik said:

'Opening the meta' by presenting Guild with a bunch of choices that are only interesting because Austringers were diminished and Papabox was killed is great for other factions competitively, but not so much for us. I would have preferred that the Austringer be made more specialized and keyed to certain schemes, and other models were buffed to be similarly specialized, so that you have many powerful options and interesting choices, but only under the right circumstances, so you have to make good strategic decisions when list building as opposed to 2x Austringers being a complete no-brainer in the vast majority of lists.

I find sometimes its hard to break the meta. You`re so used to Francisco/Papa Box/2 Austringers that its hard to look past that. The errata did exactly what you said. Austringers are now specialized units. Sometimes I will take them. Sometimes I won`t. It depends on the pool. I also believe making an errata to half the models would only cause chaos and frustration amongst players. Even with the slight errata some people were complainig. The only thing austringers lost is frustrating long range shooting which ends up forcing them to move sometimes. They were a very annoying piece that could one shot a terror tot 18" away that was hiding behind 3 forests. I personally didn`t find them that abusive when I didn`t play Guild but I understand a lot of people could

[Ludvig]

One faction being a few percent below others in a limited sample of tournaments means nothing. There are so many variables not controlled for so those stats mean almost nothing.

If you are playing solely to win tournaments it seems like a really bad idea to stay true to a faction.

What matters at the end of the day is if you can play a game against your mates and havea good time. Even if you lose at a 3% higher rate when facing an equally skilled opponent you will probably have fun while playing.

[Tris]

@Surrealistik

If your former post was directed at me, I want to clarify that I never meant you have to 'l2p' and never said so.

 

I also never doubted that Guild received a cuddle and I'm well aware that we didn't receive Nellie/"Newcius" as sort of a consolidation prize for the cuddles.

 

All I'm saying is that one can adapt to change, and we got so much new stuff in a short timeframe that not everything is tried and tested now (and there where not many tournaments played with the new stuff), and there lies potential.

 

And my question is still up, I would like to know where you think guild struggles the most and what are we bad at?

[trikk]

1 minute ago, Ludvig said:

One faction being a few percent below others in a limited sample of tournaments means nothing. There are so many variables not controlled for so those stats mean almost nothing.

If you are playing solely to win tournaments it seems like a really bad idea to stay true to a faction.

What matters at the end of the day is if you can play a game against your mates and havea good time. Even if you lose at a 3% higher rate when facing an equally skilled opponent you will probably have fun while playing.

I play a lot of tournaments. I have no issues being in top 3 in most. I went to the UK Nationals and while I had a poor showing TP wise I played with really good players and the games were pretty even. I never felt Guild to be underpowered. Sometimes I felt the inner-balance is missing. But we got more useful options now.

[HowNot2Wargame]

Just to touch upon the 'boring' and 'not tournament viable' points people are raising....

The Guild with a big chunk of their masters (Lady J, Perdita, Sonnia, Hoffman) are a 'question faction'.  Can you cope with my dmg? Can you cope with my defensive skew (Perdita's stats with Franc, Sonnia's walls, Hoffman's armoured ball)?   The issue with this is that most 'better' players are having to handle parts of this in other factions already, and are going to focus on using the same tactics.  Personally, I think you need to really hone these lists to stand a chance of breaking through this.  I take my hat off to people who do.  Most of these I think can be fairly described as 'easy to learn but hard to master'.  The one which sticks out for me is Hoff due to his ability to really drive his crew forward without dmg, but if you can answer his question and remove his models, he loses potency quickly.

The other side (guffaw) of masters have quite a bit of subtlety and flexibility in their Guild incarnations (McMourning, McCabe, Nellie, and now Lucius).  They don't have obvious strengths, but what they are really good at is boosting the synergies between guild models, who have quite a few buffs to hand out to each other, and most of the time decent minimum damage and good attack statistics.  Hence your cards are spent in defense or driving crucial tactical actions, rather than winning duels as much.  These masters personally can return 'better' results quicker, but do need a bit more focus to avoid being blasted off the table.

Hence in short I think it takes quite a bit of effort to think through and discover how you 'answer' problems in Guild, especially when the guns simply won't work.  It also doesn't help that a big chunk of the latter masters can be played in other factions where they have more clearly defined 'strengths'.

[Hidelfon]

I am not that concern about the cuddles,  but after skimming over gg2017 (I reckon I have to read them properly before giving a full informed opinion)  it seems loosing hunting party and show  of force as suited schemes and frame fir murder becoming a suited one is going to be tougher. 

   I get the impression gg2017 is "pushing"  towards big model count crews. 

 My first impression is that gg2017 is going to be tough on guild