Fixed lists

[clockworkspide]

1 hour ago, chryspainthemum said:

Yea I don't get the netlisting 'problem'. Netlisting is great. It's a direct side effect of a game being documented well. If Malifaux is to be taken seriously as a competitive game, the tournament scene needs to be a lot more accessible and transparent (think Magic or online competitive games like LoL and Dota). And with that comes netlisting, which is a totally fine side effect. It's not like a list is even half the work of being a good player. I can guarantee that the top Pandora player in the world could give me their list and I'd still fuck it up. Or like Bilz could play a list I made and I'd play his Sonnia list and (probably :P) still lose terribly. Bring on the netlisting!

Frankly, I'd rather Malifaux not be taken seriously in competitive circles if the alternative is "Use this handful of mathematically optimal models or don't show up".  That is exactly the sort of environment that drains all the enjoyment from a game.

[Bengt]

These fixed list that people use a lot, how often are they of the "kill the opponent and do the schemes after" variety?

[Blacks85]

Technically - and it would be a super awesome part of this game - nestling should be useless.

If the schemes were be much balanced and varied, if the models in the game were more different and viable in many scenarios....you would pick a list and have no reason to use it unless the conditions are the same (opponent, schemes), your habits and "tastes" are the same...because you should always re-do the list based on what you're facing and what the schemes BUT ALSO the table / terrain are.

And turning yearly the schemes, maybe also increasing the number...would make each game UNIQUE and this would be the absolutely craziness of fun, at least in my opinion. (still the reason why I've started this game)

And I believe it would be the top of fun at all levels, not only in the competitive environment - which is where I do belong.

[Dogmantra]

popping back in to say that IMO netlisting/netdecking runs counter to the idea of a truly competitive game

a competitive game is essentially a contest of decision making, and it asks who is better at identifying the optimal decisions within a particular ruleset. the winner is (or should be) whoever made more of whichever decisions are favoured by the game system, but when you netlist you're handing over a reasonable chunk of those decisions directly to a third party, and no longer comparing the decisions made by the players actually playing, you're comparing the decisions made by multiple uninvolved people, and you can't tell who's actually better at the game anymore.

 

ofc, it's a little bit hazier than that, is getting advice online inherently uncompetitive? is reading a list and tweaking it inherently uncompetitive? well, I'm not sure, but I am definitely not a fan of directly taking lists off the net.

 

 

proper & full thoughts on fixed lists still coming from me, I hope.

[Myyrä]

I don't completely agree with you @Dogmantra. If you are just brainlesly copying lists from the net and playing those, you are essentially outsourcing a huge part of the game to some guys on the interwebs, and that probably isn't going to help you grow as a player. But if you take a netlist and see how it plays and then make your own improvements, it can help you advance along the learning curve really fast, especially if you are already familiar with the game and are just picking up a new master.

[Math Mathonwy]

6 hours ago, Bengt said:

These fixed list that people use a lot, how often are they of the "kill the opponent and do the schemes after" variety?

I would think that quite often since focusing on the Scheme & Strat end of things usually requires more specialization and therefore making a fixed list for that is more difficult. Especially in GG2016.

[Blacks85]

8 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

I would think that quite often since focusing on the Scheme & Strat end of things usually requires more specialization and therefore making a fixed list for that is more difficult. Especially in GG2016.

Exactly, always I say.

Mainly for a problem that could be solved by changing a little the schemes. Its very hard to score vp with minions and its very hard to score vp when there are models near to your scheme marker.

This results in playing lot of henchman and enforcer to delete opponent and scheme After.

If you, for instance, let only minion with ss6 or less contest the marker and also make them more viable for schemes like hunting party (scoring points with minion over minion) the list will change a lot..because you cant focus on the henchman/enforcer delete squad.

This our experience, at least

[SinJ]

In general adhering to a netlist should give your opponent an advantage. However, if you are taking a partially fixed list of a core crew and just make small changes that is an entirely different animal in my eyes. Overall as a somewhat newer player this is how I play. Most of the lists I have saved on Crew Builder are core crews that adhere or are designed to play into various strategies or factions.

I personally feel that if my opponent shows up to the table with a completely fixed list, that is something that I can potentially capitalize on. Sometimes subbing in models with Unimpeded is a necessary evil to have a game. I think people just really fear making a substitution on the fly and want to work with what they know, even if that weakens their overall chances of winning.

Analysis Paralysis is a pretty nasty side effect of building lists on the fly. I think that to effectively build a completely new list you really need to know your synergies and your opponent's faction overall. The first time I play against a new master and I know my opponent is competent I feel that have a slim chance of winning. If I am banking on taking a crew that I mostly know inside and out that probably gives me the best chance of winning. I don't feel that this is a negative aspect of Malifaux just a reality in that not knowing what you are up against is a huge detriment. This is also probably part of the huge learning curve that unfortunately turns beginners away.

[Yipikayey]

2 hours ago, Dogmantra said:

popping back in to say that IMO netlisting/netdecking runs counter to the idea of a truly competitive game

a competitive game is essentially a contest of decision making, and it asks who is better at identifying the optimal decisions within a particular ruleset. the winner is (or should be) whoever made more of whichever decisions are favoured by the game system, but when you netlist you're handing over a reasonable chunk of those decisions directly to a third party, and no longer comparing the decisions made by the players actually playing, you're comparing the decisions made by multiple uninvolved people, and you can't tell who's actually better at the game anymore.

 

ofc, it's a little bit hazier than that, is getting advice online inherently uncompetitive? is reading a list and tweaking it inherently uncompetitive? well, I'm not sure, but I am definitely not a fan of directly taking lists off the net.

 

 

proper & full thoughts on fixed lists still coming from me, I hope.

I completely disagree with the notion that it is uncompetitive. I understand where you are coming from, but i have not met a single player who is good at a game where tactics matter, which is not good at the strategy part aswell. Being able to copy lists actually is just a mechanism for new players, or people trying out new masters, to have some groundwork to begin with and be able to catch up with current players on a reasonable amount of time and games. It's like saying that the ability to use formulaes discovered by Einstein, makes you a worse physicist just because you didn't discover them yourself.

And i believe that most of the decision making should have importance during the game, not before it. Otherwise we would be playing robots vs robots, where i build my robot, you build yours and let them smash each other. We both know that's not how malifaux works, so while i can understand the to games like for example wh40k, or fantasy, where the tactics are very limited and the game is mostly decided on deployment and army list creation, but here it actually pushes competition ahead as more people are able to catch up quickly, and malifaux learning curve is big enough as it is. And well, the game progress aswell, i am pretty sure that the level of play at release was much worse than it is now, and obviously, it will be even higher in the future.

It reminds me of the infinity's players motto "it's not your list, it's you".

@SJW nails it, the reason why he feels (i think) that he has an advantadge when playing against netlisting, is because for the very reason i said before, the level of play increases as people discover new things, they become the standard, and people then learn to beat the new standard. Rinse and repeat.

[Dogmantra]

13 minutes ago, Yipikayey said:

It's like saying that the ability to use formulaes discovered by Einstein, makes you a worse physicist just because you didn't discover them yourself.

This is a bad comparison. The goal of science is to increase the sum total of human knowledge, and building on previous scientists' accomplishments furthers that goal. The goal of a competitive game is to determine who is the better player (i.e. the winner), and using someone else to make some of your key decisions obscures that goal, not furthers it.

I'm ranked like #200 in the UK at Malifaux. I'm a fairly good player but I'm by no means the best. Let's say that I play in a tournament, but I let the top ranked Gremlin player (#5 overall)* play the first two turns of every game. I come in starting on turn 3 and finish the game. Is it fair for me to claim that I won those games? Of course not, credit should go to both of us, which is fine if it's some sort of team tournament, but generally the expectation is that you're one person playing and if I'm allowed to have a second better player play some of my game for me, that's clearly unfair and uncompetitive & I'm sure you'll agree.

But then why would netlisting be any different? Someone else, who is presumably better, is playing part of the game for you (and yes, in all games making a list/deck is playing the game, you're making decisions which can affect your chance of victory). Am I going to say that netlisting is cheating? Probably not, it's definitely not as egregious as my example above. There's a somewhat blurry line between netlisting and discussing options, and I certainly love to discuss options and I don't want to quash that. I don't even begrudge people for doing it. But I absolutely, very strongly believe that allowing another player to make decisions for you leads to an uncompetitive game.

 

*fun & unrelated fact: he started playing Gremlins shortly after we played each other in a tournament, and it was at least partially because our game was fun, so I'm basically the top ranked gremlin player.

[Yipikayey]

I don't have time for a full response, but about the analogy, Do you think there is not competition in research fields ? 

I will read the rest later, cheers.

[Omenbringer]

On 9/6/2016 at 6:02 AM, Math Mathonwy said:

Every once in a while someone comes to a Faction-specific forum and posts a list and asks whether it's a good one or not. Within minutes someone comes along to tell them that there are no fixed lists in Malifaux and that you need to tailor your list to the battlefield, opponent and strat and scheme pools.

Yet it seems that the US meta is ruled by fixed lists. It seems that most of the major tournaments are being won by lists that don't customize any but rather run the same list come hell or high water and win every game.

So I was thinking that maybe we could discuss this. A couple of questions that you may or may not take into account when formulating an opinion:

How come? And is this common in the UK scene as well?

Is this good for the game?

Should we start telling the list-posters that yeah, that's a nice list but consider switching that Baby Kade for an Illuminated?

Any other thoughts on the matter?

Question 1:

I would say there are a few reasons for this. First, fixed lists have an advantage in competitive circles because it limits the amount of interactions one has to learn while playing their crew. This usually leads to better performance, particularly if the interactions strongly favor a few key factors, i.e. efficiency, speed, versatility, durability, control, and/or denial. The models that possess more of these key factors will generally win out over other choices regardless of the Strats/ Schemes generated.

While the "build to the strategies/ schemes" folks are correct that focusing on them during crew building can afford a player better opportunity to complete them, constantly changing crews has often been more of a detriment than a boon. I am far more competent with Somer (a crew I have played for many, many years) even when the Strat/ Scheme doesn't favor him, than I am with any of the other crews I can purpose build for Strats/ Schemes (and I have access to a great amount of crews in all factions) simply because I rarely forget the interactions of Som'er and his staples. Even restricting yourself to a single faction doesn't really ease the difficulty of consistently recalling the key abilities that make one model better in specific Strats/ Schemes than others.

Second, many Masters really need specific models to be effective with their shtick. The models that tend to be hired (or summoned) are also generally influenced by how well they can contribute to the key factors mentioned above.

Thirdly, though there seem to be a lot of Strategies and Schemes to draw from, they all generally equate to "kill something" or "control space" near the middle of the table (though middle line is probably a better descriptor). Again these strongly favor the handful of models that can do these things well. While there are schemes that invite players to venture deeper into their opponents half of the board, those are usually ignored in competitive environs because they are much more difficult to achieve than the ones that occur very near the center area of the board, where an awful lot of the Strategies tend to score.

Lastly, I would say that some of the more devastating "fixed lists" (the Papa in a Box and pre-errata Ratjoy) are working to exploit design flaws with the game. If you can kill a large portion of your opponents crew early in the game and/ or restrict them to their deployment zone (or very near it), then there is often little they can do to score VP's. The simple fact is that focusing on killing models is still a consistent path to victory in most cases. Restricted time limits in competitive events really exacerbate the issue further.

Question 2:

No it is not good for the game.

While some people love net listing and don't mind taking un-fluffy crews, I would argue that most players just want to play the crew that is most visually appealing to them. One of the big draws to Malifaux (at least for me and the majority of players that I have talked to about it) is the "character" aspect of the game. The game feels more like playing an RPG than a traditional TTG, especially because of the card mechanic (more control over what happens), though the old Asymmetric Strategies and chosen Schemes from 1st edition assisted that quite a bit (if you haven't played the game that way I would strongly encourage a run through of the story encounter version of M2e). Net listing runs counter to this appeal, and really just show cases that there are large imbalances in the game. This is not good for Wyrd who I am sure would really prefer to sell across their entire line instead of just the handful of models that are better than everything else.

Question 3:

Though you can surely try and steer players toward other choices it is unlikely to have an effect unless the alternative is at least very near par with the optimized choice. An Ice Golem is not equal to Snow Storm or an Arcane Emissary, regardless of how much we try to dress it up.

On 9/6/2016 at 8:18 AM, -Loki- said:

This thread makes me so glad I'm not very competitive.

Thematic crews is what drew me to the game.

I can not agree more. I really wish the "character" aspect of the game was re-emphasized.

On 9/6/2016 at 1:01 PM, #Maxi said:

Book 1 or 4 it's not the core of the problem.. the core is that there are models that, for the same cost (or even less) do more things and are better under every aspect than others. That brings to fixed lists imho.

This is very true, though I would argue that many models from the newer books fall into this group.

Many of the "problem" models are just head and shoulders above anything else that you would even think of hiring (or summoning) in a game.

[Math Mathonwy]

44 minutes ago, Omenbringer said:

Thirdly, though there seem to be a lot of Strategies and Schemes to draw from, they all generally equate to "kill something" or "control space" near the middle of the table (though middle line is probably a better descriptor).

This is true though there is also the "Interact with your enemy and don't let them get killed before the end of the turn" which generally favours durable models. But yeah, I would argue that Headhunter is the only really different Strat.

[Omenbringer]

I would say even Headhunter falls into the Kill Something group, though has the added caveat that you must have either enough models or AP to capitalize on the killing of the model to score.

[LunarSol]

I'm rather in favor of netlists in a large part because I rather hate the culture of winning at list build.  There's nothing worse to me than sitting down against someone with a terrible list and just kind of steamrolling them.  Given enough games, I'm sure they'll learn to drop out certain models in favor of others or maybe not and they'll just give up on the game.  

Either way, list strength is a trivially transferred skill and I'd rather play against people that are over that bit of unnecessary learning curve and focus on the experience of the game itself.  When I start a new game system or even Master, getting my footing with a netlist is generally the best way to give me some perspective to start making alterations.  If nothing else, when I lose, I can place the burden of the loss firmly on my shoulders and focus on what I could have done differently.

That said, I'm all for increased diversity but you have to identify what's really limiting it and to do that, you need some real picture of what the game looks like.  This is honestly where netlists are super helpful, because as much as you can try and compare models, its all relative until you really start to define what the real game looks like.  Is something really an outlier in the format or is it simply the only real option available to a faction?

Faction rankings/Master rankings and the like are really helpful because they give you an idea of which way the balance needs to shift.  As weird as it seems, if you've got a competitive set that's as little as 20% of your total options, its probably easier to balance things up than cut off the top.  Questions like "top 10 masters in the game" ultimately produce more useful information than anything else because they present an overall picture of the state of the game.

[Dogmantra]

37 minutes ago, Yipikayey said:

I don't have time for a full response, but about the analogy, Do you think there is not competition in research fields ?

Although science itself shouldn't be competitive, there is competition over limited capital for research grants etc. I suppose you could frame competition over a research grant as a kind of "game". The scientists are the players and the organisation with the grant is the designer. From there it basically comes down to which skills the "designer" wishes to test, and since there isn't really any need for someone to rediscover Einstein's theories, it's doubtful that the "game" would test that skill, and so in this "game" it's actually irrelevant whether you came up with the theories or not. If it did, it would likely be a pretty uninteresting "game" since I would imagine most people with the skills to rediscover the theories likely already know the proofs anyway.

Ulitmately though I think it's futile to attempt to apply my philosophy of competitive game design to something that isn't a competitive game. A tournament is a competitive game because the whole point of it is to determine a winner. You could argue that the point of the research grant "game" above is to determine a winner, but it's not really. It's to determine a researcher and/or research project that will benefit either society or the organisation giving the grant.

I should reiterate that I don't really have a problem with discussing and sharing knowledge & in fact I believe it's important for a healthy competitive community, but to directly take someone else's decisions and use them in your own game is imo playing with two people making the decisions when the assumption (& implied rule) is that you play as a single person.

It's a tricky problem to solve though, since banning netlisting would be a totally unenforceable rule, but I think that designing the game to discourage it as much as possible is a really good idea, and Malifaux has done this to a pretty big extent with the changeable scheme/strat pools which is incidentally one of the reasons I play Malifaux and not e.g. Warmahordes.

 

 

Woah, I'm sorry for shifting the discussion over a bit onto netlisting rather than fixed lists. There's some overlap though, so I guess I should finally write up my thoughts on fixed lists I promised. I bet that some of y'all can guess my opinions on them already though.

I don't like fixed lists (shocking, I know)

In my opinion, one of the major flaws of many CCGs is that you build your deck with no information about what your opponent is going to bring. You certainly have some information that you can infer some good strategies from, you know which cards exist and which format you're playing for example, but particularly in a game that has several varied win conditions (or at least psuedo-win conditions) such as Magic, it can be possible to luck into a bad matchup because you just don't have a counter. There are several mechanics in a lot of these games that attempt to mitigate it (e.g. a sideboard), but for me I personally think your deck construction is too big of a decision to make entirely before you have any information about your opponent. Ideally, I think you shouldn't make any decisions until you have at least some information. This was an interesting discussion in the community for a deckbuilding game called Puzzle Strike, where the official rules required you to pick your character before seeing which chips were available to buy (basically your options for actions you could take), but the community run tournaments settled on a format where you saw the available chips before picking your character, because it allowed more niche characters a chance to thrive without lucking into a bad game, and you could potentially counterpick your opponent by evaluating the bank. It was a universally well-received change and objectively increased the variety of characters who were used in the game & played in tournaments. It doesn't prove that having more information before making a big decision is better, but it's certainly an example.

This opinion of fixed lists is transferrable to minis games too. Malifaux does a decent job of mitigating fixed lists by providing varied objectives, and allowing you a little bit of information about your opponent before you construct your crew - their faction choice. In theory, the factions should have enough of a varied identity that you can actually make fairly sweeping changes to a crew based entirely on that. It's certainly true of some factions (vs Gremlins or Guild for instance you are likely to want to build with anti-shooting tech in mind). It's likely not the intent of the designers for fixed lists to be the way Malifaux is played since they've taken some fairly significant steps towards customising your crew.

However, Malifaux obviously still allows fixed lists to thrive. I'm going to credit people who win big tournaments with fixed lists as winning definitely in part due to the fact they're good players, and again despite the fact I strongly dislike fixed lists, I don't have any negative feelings towards the players who choose to use them in the pursuit of winning (and clearly it works).

So why do they work in Malifaux?

I think for a few reasons. Omenbringer cites the similarity of a lot of schemes & strategies, and I think this is definitely part of it. Is there really so much of a fundamental difference between, for example, Turf War and Guard the Stash that it would require a total overhaul of your crew to succeed? Not really. Covert Breakthrough and Leave Your Mark are pretty similar, there are lots of other similar ones. But I think also that GG2016 favours a more elite crew in general. Hunting Party and Show of Force both particularly favour the Henchmen/Enforcer type elite crews, and are both on suits, whereas the more minion-focused schemes (Public Demonstration, Occupy Their Turf) are not only numbered schemes but they're generally a bit harder.

It's also a result of the "kill first, scheme later" style of play, which has certainly been toned down a bit with GG2016, but still exists and will probably exist forever since if killing doesn't help you perform schemes at all then there's no point to killing and the main method of interaction kind of breaks down.

Finally I think it's also a result of some models being Just Better. That's kind of unavoidable, perfect balance is an impossibility, but I appreciate that Wyrd are trying to tone down particularly problematic models and boost some of the weaker ones.

 

 

um ok I'm super exhausted, but more thoughts to come on some of your questions Math and also on how one might go about fixing the issues (get it? fixed lists, fixing? ah ha ha)

[LunarSol]

I think as long as you're working with a points system, a game is going to want to try and settle towards a fixed list.  The more granular the points, the harder it is to make small adjustments and the less modular the system becomes.  There's an argument towards rebuilding the entire list from the ground up, but at that point they're still rigid, just in extremely different states.  This is essentially what creates Warmachine's 2 list pair system.

I do really think the biggest issue Malifaux has with creating a diverse set of options is the communities resistance to identify the state of the game.  The game has existed for a very long time and we've still got new players jumping in with Mei Feng going through the same cycle of trying to make her work I've seen since M2E launched.  At some point the community needs to have an honest evaluation of how competitive options are so we can have an honest conversation of how to bring more masters on to the competetive stage.

[Dogmantra]

17 minutes ago, LunarSol said:

I think as long as you're working with a points system, a game is going to want to try and settle towards a fixed list.

I'm interested in your justification for this statement.

[Omenbringer]

@Dogmantra

While I agree with a lot you have stated in your posts I don't know if I would agree that Wyrd has done a great job of balancing the Strats/ Schemes and models.

As I stated in my previous post, many have recognized (particularly the competitive environs) that the symmetric Strats and extremely limited variety in win conditions of both Strats and Schemes (kill this or control that, usually around the center line) are easily exploitable (A Line in the Sand or Convict Labor are always available to choose). This is one reason why net lists are so popular, most of them (at least the most lauded ones) don't care about the generated Strat or available Schemes since they are tooled to both kill quickly and dominate the center line.

Also as LunarSol  points out, the existence of the Netlists really shows that a lot of the range is just not viewed as a competitive option, even by players that don't consider themselves competitive caliber. It is a common mantra in the Guild forums that you start with Francisco and 2 Guild Austringers then add a Master. For the most part every Faction has something similar that they state when asked about a list. The biggest issues occur with models that have Acting Values in the 7-8 range.

In my opinion the best method of combating netlists is to increase the pool of models that are considered worthwhile options, make the Strats more asymmetric, and focus on really balancing the Schemes (I would even be in favor of restricting available Schemes to the specific Strat a player generated). This requires both stepping down the obviously over the top and pushing up the slugs (and I would say that doing it via upgrades is a really poor method). I think  a lot of us could agree on what would be included in the over the top list.

To do all of this though requires a breather for the game. I am hopeful that The Otherside will allow this to happen.

[Omenbringer]

30 minutes ago, LunarSol said:

I do really think the biggest issue Malifaux has with creating a diverse set of options is the communities resistance to identify the state of the game.  The game has existed for a very long time and we've still got new players jumping in with Mei Feng going through the same cycle of trying to make her work I've seen since M2E launched.  At some point the community needs to have an honest evaluation of how competitive options are so we can have an honest conversation of how to bring more masters on to the competetive stage.

Thank you!

[Astrella]

It's not a super hard experiment for them to do to release alternate Scheme / Strategy sets, doesn't change any existing rules or models, I'd definltey be interested in seeing assymetic strategies / schemes. Sadly my regular opponent isn't too fond of the current Story Encounters strategies.

[Math Mathonwy]

1 hour ago, LunarSol said:

I do really think the biggest issue Malifaux has with creating a diverse set of options is the communities resistance to identify the state of the game.  The game has existed for a very long time and we've still got new players jumping in with Mei Feng going through the same cycle of trying to make her work I've seen since M2E launched.  At some point the community needs to have an honest evaluation of how competitive options are so we can have an honest conversation of how to bring more masters on to the competetive stage.

I agree with the general gist of what you're saying but just to nitpick the example given there's a guy who wins or places in basically all the tournaments he takes part in and he thinks that Mei Feng is actually really good (third wave gave her a huge boost).

[Math Mathonwy]

2 hours ago, Omenbringer said:

I would say even Headhunter falls into the Kill Something group, though has the added caveat that you must have either enough models or AP to capitalize on the killing of the model to score.

Well yeah, but you need to be careful about the killing in a way that makes it IMO play very differently (ranged stuff, for example, becomes a lot less useful). You don't need a super-killy list to do well in it which IMO changes the dynamic a lot and makes it quite different from the usual killy strats.

[LunarSol]

Just now, Math Mathonwy said:

I agree with the general gist of what you're saying but just to nitpick the example given there's a guy who wins or places in basically all the tournaments he takes part in and he thinks that Mei Feng is actually really good (third wave gave her a huge boost).

I actually agree and used her as a good example of the issue.  She's gotten some great tools, but because successful combinations and winning lists are still relatively obscure, and new player, or even a new Mei Feng player is generally going to start with her crew box and probably some Metal Gamin and the Rail Golem and play her like its 2013.  The resources that exist are more dedicated to suggestions and theory than really, honestly saying, this is what I needed to make her work.

[Math Mathonwy]

7 minutes ago, LunarSol said:

I actually agree and used her as a good example of the issue.  She's gotten some great tools, but because successful combinations and winning lists are still relatively obscure, and new player, or even a new Mei Feng player is generally going to start with her crew box and probably some Metal Gamin and the Rail Golem and play her like its 2013.  The resources that exist are more dedicated to suggestions and theory than really, honestly saying, this is what I needed to make her work.

Ah, yeah, agreed. Sorry, feeling a bit slow today (the littlest one has the flu and I didn't sleep much last night)...