Night Terrors, in need of a cuddle.

[Patzer]

For 3ss they are too good. For a measly 3ss you get a wk 6 minion with 4 wounds, incorporeal and hard to kill, together with some impressive out of activation movement against models who they are strong against, an above average ml attack for their cost (the Winged Plague are worse for an additional ss for instance), and strong casting synergi. I think they punch, run, and outlive their price range by far. Why their low cost is a problem is even further enhanced by that their native faction are ressers who can easily spew extra activation left and right.

Here are some suggestions on how I think they should be fixed. 1) Up their cost to 4ss. Then I think they are in line with a insignificant 4ss specialist insignificant minion similar to the Depleted. 2) Get rid of their hard to kill and lower their ml to 4. The second suggestion takes away some of their survivability and hitting power, but keeps some of their main strengths. Being a fast, cheap, anti-shooting, minion.

 

[huntroll]

Okay.

[Math Mathonwy]

I fully agree that they are pretty damn crazy and both of the suggested fixes would be good (maybe a tad heavy-handed on paper but testing would reveal whether or not that's true). But I doubt they will be errataed any time soon as they don't really break things and Wyrd are generally very careful with their errata. Also, were I to errata Ressers, I would start with Nurses.

[Phototropic]

They are good but I'm not sure if they are that far above other 3ss models like guild hounds or corrupted hounds who also walk 6 and have good melee with a better damage spread and can be made significant. The fact they are always insignificant is a huge downside compared to other 3ss minions, and i don't know if i consider 1/2/3 that much of a punch so im not convinced its a game changer, but like you point out night terrors do a lot for 3ss. 

I don't think the solution is to up their cost, a number of other factions have 3ss models and the ones which don't are known for having higher cost models (im thinking outcast and 10T) and it seems right that resers would have low cost minions, and resers already have plenty of good 4ss minions who i would prob choose before a night terror purely because they are significant.

The unique parts of night terrors are their anti shooting/casters and survivability so if i was going to change them i would keep the survivability, you could remove incorporeal since it still means they will take two hits to kill and leaving incorp but removing hdk would make them vulnerable to casters who they seem to be designed to be a hard counter for, as it is they will usually take three hits but even a model like a guild hound with 4 hits will be unlucky to go down in one attack unless the enemy wants it dead, but at the end of the day their survivability gives them a unique role as a cheap model for tying up shooters or casters and since resers lack effective snipers im happy to have a model designed for this. If you removed this you would just end up with a boring 3ss model players would only take to out activate the enemy. Instead of dropping their survivability I would try to add in something to reduce their effectivness as a cheap minion,  they could be rewritten kind of like a lesser version of guild hounds so if there is two or more near each other they count as minions otherwise they are peons. You could easily drop their damage track to 0/0/2 but leave the ml so they can still tie enemy up but are define them more as model which is hard to kill and designed to tie up enemies shooters then a cheap minion which can do a bunch of things. 

So basically if you lower their survivability too much no one would take them for tying up the enemy so you would just be left with a boring cheap minion for out activating instead of a unique model which fills an interesting role creating a deeper game. Instead my solution would be to really tone down the damage spread and throw in a counter to them being a cheap survivable minion by giving the opponent a way to make them a peon. This wouldn't fix the out activation problem but the way to fix that would be to up their cost and if you did that i think folks would take 4ss significant models instead.

[Bengt]

I think Guild Hounds are better than Night Terrors, the better Df makes up for the the passive defences and they have significantly higher damage potential with (1) charges and critical strike. Not to mention that they can become significant. So it seems absurd to me to change Night Terrors while there are Guild Hounds around (Corrupted are a bit weaker than Guild though IMO so perhaps Wyrd thinks Guild Hounds came out a little strong).

[Math Mathonwy]

15 minutes ago, Bengt said:

I think Guild Hounds are better than Night Terrors, the better Df makes up for the the passive defences and they have significantly higher damage potential with (1) charges and critical strike. Not to mention that they can become significant. So it seems absurd to me to change Night Terrors while there are Guild Hounds around (Corrupted are a bit weaker than Guild though IMO so perhaps Wyrd thinks Guild Hounds came out a little strong).

IME Night Terrors take more AP to dispatch of than Guild Hounds. Night Terrors take almost everytime three AP at absolute minimum unless you're doing absolutely massive damage or significant Ca damage (or Burning or whatever). Not saying that Night Terrors are outright better but I think that saying that better Df makes up for the passives isn't quite true.

[Jokerboy]

There is an ongoing problem with people who find some models "too good". After the Mechrider/ the Metalgamin/ Leveticus/ Rats/ and probably some others it is now the Night terrors turn.

Don't get me wrong, I think that all of the Errata are ok and made things like Leveticus/Mech Rider from very good, to only good/ok.

BUT. I play Malifaux 2nd E since its out and I have faced this "too good" models many times and never lost a game because of them.

Malifaux is a well balanced game and you can call models extreme good, very strong, super weak and so on, but there is not a single model that is "too good/bad" there are only players not good enough to handle them....

[decker_cky]

Insignificant models usually have a huge discount on them, even insignificant minions.

But how has nobody mentioned how amazing night falls is? Its a large aura, and absolutely shuts down some crews. Once, for the schemes and strategies, I took three night terrors in a marcus crew, and it turned out I was facing a daw crew. Double tapping night falls to give anything within 8 of my night terrors -8 range on their Ca actions was brutal, and completely shut my opponent down midgame. It was a perfect storm, but that definitely seemed to be potent for 3ss. 

I don't think they really need any kind of errata though.

[Tris]

4 hours ago, Shen Long said:

There is an ongoing problem with people who find some models "too good". After the Mechrider/ the Metalgamin/ Leveticus/ Rats/ and probably some others it is now the Night terrors turn.

Don't get me wrong, I think that all of the Errata are ok and made things like Leveticus/Mech Rider from very good, to only good/ok.

BUT. I play Malifaux 2nd E since its out and I have faced this "too good" models many times and never lost a game because of them.

Malifaux is a well balanced game and you can call models extreme good, very strong, super weak and so on, but there is not a single model that is "too good/bad" there are only players not good enough to handle them....

100% agreed!

 

It`s not as if these Night Terrors shut down your whole list and prevent you from doing anything, and they fall if they have to, so in my opinion its just that you have to choose the right priorities in your game and everything should be fine

[Math Mathonwy]

4 hours ago, Shen Long said:

There is an ongoing problem with people who find some models "too good". After the Mechrider/ the Metalgamin/ Leveticus/ Rats/ and probably some others it is now the Night terrors turn.

Don't get me wrong, I think that all of the Errata are ok and made things like Leveticus/Mech Rider from very good, to only good/ok.

BUT. I play Malifaux 2nd E since its out and I have faced this "too good" models many times and never lost a game because of them.

Malifaux is a well balanced game and you can call models extreme good, very strong, super weak and so on, but there is not a single model that is "too good/bad" there are only players not good enough to handle them....

So, just to make sure I understood what you're saying - are you saying that

all the errata that was made was for the good of the game but unnecessary

or that

all the errata that was made was good but that now the balance is pitch perfect?

 

Oh, and I have also played Malifaux 2e since it was out. In fact, I played Malifaux 1e since it was out as well. And I never once lost to the Nico Dog spam list which must mean that it was OK (if you don't know what I'm talking about, it was a list that summoned 50+ models to the table and was errataed away quite quickly).

[Tris]

For me, it`s more or less this - "all the errata that was made was for the good of the game but unnecessary"

 

-> and in my opinion, to bring up the Undead Dog spam list and stuff from 1st edition and compare it to the recent erratas and cuddles is like comparing apples and oranges....

[Math Mathonwy]

24 minutes ago, Tris said:

For me, it`s more or less this - "all the errata that was made was for the good of the game but unnecessary"

So making the game better is unnecessary?

What is this I don't even

[Tris]

Thats not what I said - in my opinion, the erratas were unnecessary because the game was already in a fine spot

 

My opinion, and you gave only two possible answers to choose from above

[Fetid Strumpet]

In my personal opinion, the question for when an errata is required isn't: "Is this model too good for it's cost". If that is your criterion a large number of models in the game are going to require redoing, and once that is done it will reset the what the common wisdom of what a particular SS cost is worth, which will start the whole thing over again. We all take it as accepted that you cannot perfectly balance a game, that no matter how hard you try some options are just going to be better either through the rules of the game (Notice how the worth of particular models changes when the schemes and starts are changed) or through model to model interactions (Is Nekima as good in a faction that does't have access to the doppleganger, who can not only copy her ridiculous weapon, but also helps remove once of Nekima's only weaknesses?).

Balance in games is a spectrum. It is not a 5 SS is always worth 5 SS to everyone and everything. It is not possible to balance that finely unless you give everyone exactly the same options, which Malifaux doesn't do. The question is, when you look at the aggregate data, are all the masters and factions relatively competitive against each other. If a master/faction/playstyle of such is regularly winning against similarly experienced players then you might have an issue, but even then determining what the issue actually is is somewhat tricky. At the moment, at least according to the best publicly available data (and to be clear I'm not arguing this point, only pointing out that it is the best data we have at the moment), there is a bigger potential issue with both Outcasts and NB than other factions at the moment. 

There are a lot of models in the game that are too good for their cost, and remember cost is relative. If I can give a Canine remains 1 extra AP once a game, is that worth 1 SS? Is giving that extra AP to Izamu once per game worth exactly the same as it is to the Canine Remains? obviously no, and yet Oath Keeper and Imbued Energies both are costed at 1 SS, even though they are more valuable on certain models than others (Yes I'm aware you can't give the upgrade to a canine Remains, but there is still a vast array of difference of effectiveness in the models you can give the upgrade to). If the static balance argument were accurate then those upgrades should only ever have the same effectiveness no matter who it is on, or it should have a sliding cost, costing more or less depending on the exact model that is carrying it.

We all have our own prejudices and experiences based on how we play and who we play. For my money I think Jakob AND the Hungering Darkness, Nekima, Kirai, TT Brothers, Illuminated, and many others are vastly too good for their cost, or are not fairly balanced by other masters. The question isn't how do we change them to bring them back into what we personally perceive as in line, the question is, are the factions and masters that are potentially too good winning too often because of such, and if so is it better for the game to adjust such, or are they balancing out at the intended SS level of the game when the opposing player themselves bring their crew with models that are too good for the cost? 

My personal inclination in answer to the OP's point, is that it is somewhat irrelevant if the Night Terrors are too good for their cost if that imbalance isn't actually translating into repeated and unfair Resser wins. If a player brings Night Terrors to the game, and an Arcanist player brings the Mechanical Rider to a game, or the Myranda Cat Bomb + 4 cards trick, and it's a close game, does anything need to be changed? Conversely if they ARE translating into unfair resser wins, a further question needs to be asked, is it the model's fault, or a particular interaction with that model, and what hard evidence are you bringing to the table to back up your assertion? That's one of the reasons why I felt a good analysis of balance, regardless of whether you argued or agreed with the author's ultimate point, was the Adepticon thread that started discussion on the Ratjoy topic. It was very well written and reasoned, had a good if not conclusive bit of hard evidence to back it up, as well as an analysis of the repercussions of changing the model, not in a vacuum, but how it applies to various masters and crews that had the option to take the Malifaux Rat.

Please don't take that as an attack, or an appeal that nothing should ever change, as I am a very firm believer in errata, and always have been. I just feel it should only be used when it NEEDS to be, not every single time someone identifies a model they think is unfairly costed. At the moment I don't see the need to change Night Terrors, as I've never gotten great use out of them myself, or even had the slightest issue in dealing with them when an opponent used them. That isn't to say I'm right, or that the OP is wrong, just that we have a difference of opinion.