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Broken Balance


cptRamires

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@Shen Long I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you as well. The mantra/motto of the game is "Bad Things Happen", and the mechanics support this. Imagine playing a match against someone who is about your equal in play; you both make the same kind of minor mistakes and have the same kind of minor misfortune that aren't game-changing by themselves (and everyone makes mistakes, we're human and this game plays similar to chess in several key regards: board control and capitalizing on your opponent's mistakes/misfortune to name two).  You're doing everything right attacking your opponent, it's the crux turn, you've set up everything and charged in, you can do enough damage with a couple min damage hits to take out the linchpin of their whole crew, you score the first hit, it's a single negative, and you flip the first card: Red Joker, things are looking good, really good for you.

[pause]

You have one more card to flip, and with neither you nor your opponent making serious play mistakes, things look really bad for your opponent and really good for you. Anything but a Black Joker dismantles your opponent's entire engine and turns the rest of the game into mop up and differential scoring to see how much you win by. A Black Joker means that you will not stop their engine, and depending on what it is, that could mean the rest of the game is mop up and differential scoring to see how much you lose by.

[resume]

You flip the second card. This flip determines the outcome of the game, because it sets up the momentum for the remainder of the game.

 

39 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Also, I have totally steamrolled players due to flips in some matches. Malifaux allows for stuff like a random Red Joker on a crucial damage flip that can win or lose a game and it can be impossible to prevent it from happening through superior play (Black Joker on Defense, for example).

One memorable game I played really badly (last game in a tournament and I was utterly exhausted and made stupid mistakes again and again) and really should've lost it conclusively but I kept flipping one more than the opponent on all the flips. It was really crazy. I probably won close to 90% of all the duels in that game.

So yeah, suffice it to say, I disagree with you most strongly.

I've had this happen as well. The fifth round of a two-day tournament ended up in a tie for me because the last model I needed to kill to stop the tying VP flipped a Red Joker on the defensive flip for the first attack, and I flipped a Black Joker for damage on the second attack. Luther (Blessed of December) failed to kill a wounded Mechanical Dove because of card flips.

 

1 hour ago, Clockwork_Fish said:

I don't have much experience with Yasunori from either side of the table, but there's enough solid henchmen, enforcers and pricier minions in Ten Thunders that I'd need a reason to drop them for Yasunori.  And anyone who relies on an auto pick model is asking to have his crutch kicked out from under him anyways.

The hiring pool in 10T is such that sinking 12/13 stones into a single model is only a good idea if that model is actually going to score victory points. Emissary/Yasunori combos are 22 stones (out of 50) to ramp up a beater. If the strat/schemes don't call for a beater, the 10T player made a serious mistake unless that beater manages to nearly table the opponent within a couple of turns, allowing the 10T player to score all the incremental points needed to win with the remaining 28 stones (cache/upgrades included). If it can reliably do this against all factions in all strat/scheme pools, even against top-ranked players after over a year of being played, there's something wrong.

 

This is where errata can come in to help the health of the game.
That year+ of being played gives anecdotal experience (batreps from players who do them, podcasts talking about how certain models have been running) as well as some empirical evidence (crew composition on top tables, frequency with which the model was taken by crews that won) to filter and analyze. In that time various counters will have been tried, and people who are working with Wyrd (Henchmen, Playtesters) are in a position to reach out and directly contact the people who are concerned about the health of the game to give them a head's up on what they're seeing in their local meta.
If there really is a concern about the health of the game based on a single model or mechanic, something that Wyrd does that I really appreciate is they look at where the problem is really coming from. Sometimes the problem is rooted in the scheme pool probabilities, sometimes the problem is rooted in having a secondary model that's too "autochoose" (for instance, Mech Rider and the old Metal Gamin--you never summoned anything else, because those Gamin were way too solid to be summoned at no resource cost, which in turn made the Mech Rider too good at any scheme that relied on mobility and getting models into certain regions of the board), sometimes the problem is the master/crew supporting it, and sometimes the problem is that one ability on the model is a hair too good (or too bad, in the case of models that are undervalued). Finding the root cause makes it possible to surgically fix the health concern.

As players (in general), we generate the data they're going to work with.

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4 hours ago, mo11usq said:

 

I would suggest putting down yasunori is a statement that the game will start on certain terms, ignoring that and playing the way one initially wanted to is not likely to be successful against someone of equal+ skill. 

 

This is a really brilliant statement, y'all.  And not just in this context.

Malifaux is much more a game of responding to the conditions than many of us are used to.  It's not just your crew.  It's the board, the schemes and strats, what your opponent brought, your control hand *and* your crew.

If someone puts down Yasunori, they're saying "This game is going to begin with me trying to murder you."  If you don't immediately shift your thinking to "I'm going to get murdered if I don't react" then you're going to get murdered.  Just like if someone puts down Sonnia, they're saying "Remove conditions or die behind buildings."  You have to know what's going on across the table to be sure you can survive!

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13 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

So all the errata has been unneeded? Malifaux with Rat Engine (or Perdita with access to Diestro) was just as good as Malifaux without Rat Engine (or Perdita without access to Diestro)? (Or, if you're old hat enough to remember Malifaux v1, then Malifaux without the Nico Dog Spam Corpse Carousel is as good as Malifaux with the Nico Dog Spam Corpse Carousel).

Or maybe all the previous errata was needed but now we have a perfect balance where the game is decided purely through skill?

Also, I have totally steamrolled players due to flips in some matches. Malifaux allows for stuff like a random Red Joker on a crucial damage flip that can win or lose a game and it can be impossible to prevent it from happening through superior play (Black Joker on Defense, for example).

One memorable game I played really badly (last game in a tournament and I was utterly exhausted and made stupid mistakes again and again) and really should've lost it conclusively but I kept flipping one more than the opponent on all the flips. It was really crazy. I probably won close to 90% of all the duels in that game.

So yeah, suffice it to say, I disagree with you most strongly.

I never played V1 but I know the problems that existed in this version of the game. So I am talking about 2nd edition.

We have for example a (most of us will call him a very good player at our LGS) guy who played Hamelin and the rat engine a long time and really good. It was a hard to play against, but far away from too good, or unbalanced. Same with all the other things which got an errata. (Levi, Mech Rider and so on)

And I am not talking about single, like you self call them "crazy" games. I talk about the 99% of games.

And of this 99% I won or lost 100% because either me or my opponent was the better player.

In the end I have to say, that all the Errata were really good and I was glad they happened, but at our location they only affected the players with less experience......

I really like this game and if your experience is, that a single model, a flip, or luck in general wins most of your games and not skill, it makes me a bit sad.  

 

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12 minutes ago, Shen Long said:

We have for example a (most of us will call him a very good player at our LGS) guy who played Hamelin and the rat engine a long time and really good. It was a hard to play against, but far away from too good, or unbalanced. Same with all the other things which got an errata. (Levi, Mech Rider and so on)

Rat engine was errated for every master except Hamelin. It should also be pointed out that Mech Rider hasn't been errata'd and Levi was errata'd as much to change how he plays as any balance issues.

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3 minutes ago, santaclaws01 said:

Rat engine was errated for every master except Hamelin. It should also be pointed out that Mech Rider hasn't been errata'd and Levi was errata'd as much to change how he plays as any balance issues.

You are absolutely right. Should not write before my first coffee in the morning. :P

I was talking more about the forum discussions, than the models themselves. But also the rat engine wasn't too good with any other outcast master. 

I just don't like the whine about anything someone is not able to handle. One of the funny things in Malifaux is to think and find ways against the good combos.

This is just my opinion, not saying that my view is the right one. :)

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4 minutes ago, Shen Long said:

You are absolutely right. Should not write before my first coffee in the morning. :P

I was talking more about the forum discussions, than the models themselves. But also the rat engine wasn't too good with any other outcast master. 

I just don't like the whine about anything someone is not able to handle. One of the funny things in Malifaux is to think and find ways against the good combos.

This is just my opinion, not saying that my view is the right one. :)

Sometimes there really are legitimate reasons for things to be 'Cuddled'. The rat engine was designed around Hamelin, with his powerlevel and playstyle in mind. Then people figured out that 8 additional activations in a Levi crew with a few heavy hitters like Ashes and Dust meant they could spend the opponents whole turn doing essentially nothing, then strike without retaliation with massive damage dealers.

Errata's are needed because sometimes things just get by the designers and testers. The Rat engine seemingly was one that got by because of the lack of availability of models, or at least it started getting popular when the plastics came out.

Saying 'well people should stop whining and play better' is fairly insulting because there's things in the game, like the Rat engine under someone like Levi, that are pure Negative Play Experiences. They are just not fun to play against because there's not a whole lot you can do to stop it. If there were ways around them that simply boiled down to playing differently, you'd see much less complaining as people did just that, play differently.

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1 hour ago, Shen Long said:

And I am not talking about single, like you self call them "crazy" games. I talk about the 99% of games.

And of this 99% I won or lost 100% because either me or my opponent was the better player.

Probably true if the skill disparity is huge. The closer the skill level, the more likely a random Red/Black Joker is going to swing the game. If you play against someone with far less skill, it's true that in 99% of the cases luck won't enter into it. Malifaux is very skill-intensive game but there are very important flips in all games that I play and a Joker showing up can tilt the game in the other player's favour. Frankly, I find those "99%" numbers pretty ludicrous.

1 hour ago, Shen Long said:

I really like this game and if your experience is, that a single model, a flip, or luck in general wins most of your games and not skill, it makes me a bit sad.  

No, not most, but far more often than in 1% of the cases.

39 minutes ago, Shen Long said:

You are absolutely right. Should not write before my first coffee in the morning. :P

I was talking more about the forum discussions, than the models themselves. But also the rat engine wasn't too good with any other outcast master.

Did you face it played by someone else than Hamelin? Because from your previous statement it sorta reads that you didn't. I wish to also note that one of the best players in the US used it to win a huge tournament and afterwards asked for it to be weakened. Maybe he's just another no-skill whiner :P;) 

Now, I do agree that you should look for ways to beat stuff and not just lie on your back hopeful for a fix to come. Even if something is a bit OP it can still usually be beaten (off the top of my head I can name only three things in the dozens of minis games that I have played that have been OP enough to be honestly basically unbeatable) but I find the other extreme of "never errata anything, just deal with it!" equally silly. YMMV.

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1 hour ago, Shen Long said:

 But also the rat engine wasn't too good with any other outcast master. 

This is just not true. The Viks should never get a free turn to blend up your models, and if they get initiative on the next turn it's even worse. Additionally having so many activations for so few stones means you can easily top load your list and not have any of the usual negatives of doing that. The reason it's not that bad with Hamelin is because of how Hamelin plays, but with masters that excel at killing it's a nightmare.

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39 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Probably true if the skill disparity is huge. The closer the skill level, the more likely a random Red/Black Joker is going to swing the game. If you play against someone with far less skill, it's true that in 99% of the cases luck won't enter into it. Malifaux is very skill-intensive game but there are very important flips in all games that I play and a Joker showing up can tilt the game in the other player's favour. Frankly, I find those "99%" numbers pretty ludicrous.

No, not most, but far more often than in 1% of the cases.

Did you face it played by someone else than Hamelin? Because from your previous statement it sorta reads that you didn't. I wish to also note that one of the best players in the US used it to win a huge tournament and afterwards asked for it to be weakened. Maybe he's just another no-skill whiner :P;) 

Now, I do agree that you should look for ways to beat stuff and not just lie on your back hopeful for a fix to come. Even if something is a bit OP it can still usually be beaten (off the top of my head I can name only three things in the dozens of minis games that I have played that have been OP enough to be honestly basically unbeatable) but I find the other extreme of "never errata anything, just deal with it!" equally silly. YMMV.

Sorry if it sounded like this. I really like the errata that happened so far. Errata are important.

But sometimes the whining about special models is too much.

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1 minute ago, santaclaws01 said:

This is just not true. The Viks should never get a free turn to blend up your models, and if they get initiative on the next turn it's even worse. Additionally having so many activations for so few stones means you can easily top load your list and not have any of the usual negatives of doing that. The reason it's not that bad with Hamelin is because of how Hamelin plays, but with masters that excel at killing it's a nightmare.

For example and because I play him most of the time. Usually I charge the Vikis with my 4th or 5th activation with Shenlong and they are gone. So it is maybe this situation that never showed me really how evil it could be. And of course I realize that Vikis with activation control can do a lot. ;)

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1 hour ago, Shen Long said:

For example and because I play him most of the time. Usually I charge the Vikis with my 4th or 5th activation with Shenlong and they are gone. So it is maybe this situation that never showed me really how evil it could be. And of course I realize that Vikis with activation control can do a lot. ;)

So let me get this straight: you charge Shenlong 24" into the Viks' deployment zone and kill them both and this happens regularly? Because with the Rat Engine the Viks wouldn't have budged one inch from their deployment zone by your 4th or 5th activation which was, you know, the whole point of the engine.

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After reading through all of the above, I have 2 things to say:

1. All neverborn players posting here: Shut up. Everyone else put up with Nekima being tangled/graves'd into them and eating their crews key pieces for 2 YEARS. You can put up with Yasanori and see how it feels. (a classic case of 'oh no, power creep has finally gone into another faction and we don't have the most OP stuff anymore!')

2. All other faction players posting here: Shut Up! You're making fools of yourselves.

And with that, I'm gonna shut up now. Have a nice day.

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44 minutes ago, Stryder said:

And with that, I'm gonna shut up now. Have a nice day.

Yup you do that - it will give you time to check how tournament scores look in USA - I think top neverborn player is around 20 place ? In UK it is different story but one can argue that mr Elwood would win even with Lucius and half a gremlin.

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1 hour ago, Math Mathonwy said:

So let me get this straight: you charge Shenlong 24" into the Viks' deployment zone and kill them both and this happens regularly? Because with the Rat Engine the Viks wouldn't have budged one inch from their deployment zone by your 4th or 5th activation which was, you know, the whole point of the engine.

It is possible but requires a fairly clear lane and you to set up second or your opponent to deploy the viks across from shenlong.

Ideally it's Shenlong with Recalled Training, Wandering River Style and a third upgrade(likely Misdirection). After initiative you pass wandering river style to Yu and pick up High River. Your next activations will be Emissary Pushing Yu and giving him fast, then Yu pushing Shenlong twice and giving him fast. Maybe a peasant activation or 2 thrown in there to give Shenlong some conditions or something else to push him up further. At this point Shenlong is at least 16" up the board and only 12 away from the Viks. Now Shenlong can pop recalled training, take a walk, charge one of the Viks using High River's Lightning Kick for the 1/3:blast/4:blast:blast or Fury of the Dawn to open up with if you have a high tome(or just high card and stone for suit) to get the trigger to prevent soul stone use. After he's done he uses his (0) to switch over to Low River style to stack up on the Defensive.

Getting there probably won't be that hard considering the Viks want to be somewhere they have easy access to your crew anyways, it's the dealing at least 14 damage divided between 2 models that leaves me skeptical, but killing one of them wouldn't be hard with Shenlong's bag of tricks provided your opponent doesn't look at what's happening and just put something inbetween Shenlong and the Viks.

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1 hour ago, santaclaws01 said:

It is possible but requires a fairly clear lane and you to set up second or your opponent to deploy the viks across from shenlong.

Ideally it's Shenlong with Recalled Training, Wandering River Style and a third upgrade(likely Misdirection). After initiative you pass wandering river style to Yu and pick up High River. Your next activations will be Emissary Pushing Yu and giving him fast, then Yu pushing Shenlong twice and giving him fast. Maybe a peasant activation or 2 thrown in there to give Shenlong some conditions or something else to push him up further. At this point Shenlong is at least 16" up the board and only 12 away from the Viks. Now Shenlong can pop recalled training, take a walk, charge one of the Viks using High River's Lightning Kick for the 1/3:blast/4:blast:blast or Fury of the Dawn to open up with if you have a high tome(or just high card and stone for suit) to get the trigger to prevent soul stone use. After he's done he uses his (0) to switch over to Low River style to stack up on the Defensive.

Getting there probably won't be that hard considering the Viks want to be somewhere they have easy access to your crew anyways, it's the dealing at least 14 damage divided between 2 models that leaves me skeptical, but killing one of them wouldn't be hard with Shenlong's bag of tricks provided your opponent doesn't look at what's happening and just put something inbetween Shenlong and the Viks.

So basically to do it you're relying on the same inattentiveness that the 4-move-mate chess 'trick' relies on (1. e4 2. Bc4, 3. Qf3, 4. Qxf7++)?

...which amounts to winning 99% of games because those games are against people who are pushing models and flipping cards, but not actually thinking about the game. This is the skill gap that @Math Mathonwy is talking about. I've found that with my games against people who are about as good as I am, there are 'crux turns' where the momentum of the game goes in one direction or the other, and that the decider in that turn is often a single model's activation, and sometimes just a single one of its flips. In games against people who are worse than I am, the game swings heavily in my favor from the first turn onwards and I don't end up needing to worry about much because they made mistakes that I can exploit. In games against people who are better than I am, it's often me making the critical mistake early in that costs me the most points. Against equals? Mistakes of equal caliber are made on both sides. Exploitation of mistakes are made with equal fervor. What differs is the Control Hand (for cheating), the deck order (for flipping), and what models are on the table.

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6 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Probably true if the skill disparity is huge. The closer the skill level, the more likely a random Red/Black Joker is going to swing the game. If you play against someone with far less skill, it's true that in 99% of the cases luck won't enter into it. Malifaux is very skill-intensive game but there are very important flips in all games that I play and a Joker showing up can tilt the game in the other player's favour. Frankly, I find those "99%" numbers pretty ludicrous.

I have to say, a lot of times (in miniature games) some people seem to think their own experiences are somehow the only existing reality. Now, this is problematic when making such black and white arguments as peoples experiences are merely perceptions of the reality, instead of true objective or absolute situations which could be measured,  thus having some useful information for everybody.

In other words, you mentioning "flipping out" some matches or some other players talking about having "dice down" in other wargames holds very little value. Yes, there is some randomness always, but the key is not to go for a play (big or small) then decide that "I had bad/good luck" based on the outcome, but rather understand what kind of situations you should get yourself into in the first place - given the circumstances on the board, what cards have been flipped, how many cards the opponent has in hands, what other resources one has and so on.. this creates a very complex situation in EVERY GAME even in the seemingly simplest of actions of making a melee attack against your target. People are easily blaming or gratifying their luck on how the situation turned out, but actually luck has very little to do with it. Note I didn't say "nothing", I said very little.

I'm bad at explaining what I mean, but let's say you had a situation where (for example) your Collodi failed to kill the opponent's Guild Guard because of so called "bad flips" and you lost the game because of it. That is not how it works. The problem is why you let a situation develop which decideds the game in few card flips in the first place? One has all the information available to make the best decision for every situation (thanks to pre-measuring and open information on unit profiles), so why one keeps blaming the deck (or dice in some other game)? Because it's easy. People tend to look for easy solutions, and preferably those which release them from the responsibility.

Now, even if you chose the optimal route in every situation (which is insanely complex and hard.. impossible for a human), then you could blame things on the flips entirely, BUT if you still played according to the probabilities of the card deck (and what cards have been flipped, what cards you hold, are soulstones available, is black/red joker still available), you will win more than lose consistently. Just like so many other games, Malifaux is not about a single game.. just like a single game is not about a single flip. It can be, but good players still win more than they lose, so it shouldn't bother anyone too much even if one lucks out in a single game of Malifaux.

We are playing Malifaux, not a single game of Malifaux. Think big.

I have no opinion on how OP or UP the models are, as I simply don't have enough experience with the game.. I just wanted to say something about the so called "luck", because I've heard this a bit too many times in other games too - like WM/H, like MtG etc etc... and the song is always the same. However, the fact is; luck can't be totally removed from these kind of games, but it definitely can be minimized very very far.

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44 minutes ago, marke83 said:

I have to say, a lot of times (in miniature games) some people seem to think their own experiences are somehow the only existing reality. Now, this is problematic when making such black and white arguments as peoples experiences are merely perceptions of the reality, instead of true objective or absolute situations which could be measured,  thus having some useful information for everybody.

In other words, you mentioning "flipping out" some matches or some other players talking about having "dice down" in other wargames holds very little value. Yes, there is some randomness always, but the key is not to go for a play (big or small) then decide that "I had bad/good luck" based on the outcome, but rather understand what kind of situations you should get yourself into in the first place - given the circumstances on the board, what cards have been flipped, how many cards the opponent has in hands, what other resources one has and so on.. this creates a very complex situation in EVERY GAME even in the seemingly simplest of actions of making a melee attack against your target. People are easily blaming or gratifying their luck on how the situation turned out, but actually luck has very little to do with it. Note I didn't say "nothing", I said very little.

I'm bad at explaining what I mean, but let's say you had a situation where (for example) your Collodi failed to kill the opponent's Guild Guard because of so called "bad flips" and you lost the game because of it. That is not how it works. The problem is why you let a situation develop which decideds the game in few card flips in the first place? One has all the information available to make the best decision for every situation (thanks to pre-measuring and open information on unit profiles), so why one keeps blaming the deck (or dice in some other game)? Because it's easy. People tend to look for easy solutions, and preferably those which release them from the responsibility.

Now, even if you chose the optimal route in every situation (which is insanely complex and hard.. impossible for a human), then you could blame things on the flips entirely, BUT if you still played according to the probabilities of the card deck (and what cards have been flipped, what cards you hold, are soulstones available, is black/red joker still available), you will win more than lose consistently. Just like so many other games, Malifaux is not about a single game.. just like a single game is not about a single flip. It can be, but good players still win more than they lose, so it shouldn't bother anyone too much even if one lucks out in a single game of Malifaux.

We are playing Malifaux, not a single game of Malifaux. Think big.

I have no opinion on how OP or UP the models are, as I simply don't have enough experience with the game.. I just wanted to say something about the so called "luck", because I've heard this a bit too many times in other games too - like WM/H, like MtG etc etc... and the song is always the same. However, the fact is; luck can't be totally removed from these kind of games, but it definitely can be minimized very very far.

Haha, that was probably the most condescending post I have ever had aimed at myself during my time on the Internet. Thanks! :P

Also really elementary, mind. 

Once I get to a proper keyboard, I might answer in more length, but thank you for the laugh.

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On 30.12.2016 at 9:24 AM, Math Mathonwy said:

Probably true if the skill disparity is huge. The closer the skill level, the more likely a random Red/Black Joker is going to swing the game. If you play against someone with far less skill, it's true that in 99% of the cases luck won't enter into it. Malifaux is very skill-intensive game but there are very important flips in all games that I play and a Joker showing up can tilt the game in the other player's favour. Frankly, I find those "99%" numbers pretty ludicrous.

I 100% agree with you. If the skill gap is minimal Jokers can swing the balance and determine the result of a game.

21 hours ago, santaclaws01 said:

Ideally it's Shenlong with Recalled Training, Wandering River Style and a third upgrade(likely Misdirection). After initiative you pass wandering river style to Yu and pick up High River. Your next activations will be Emissary Pushing Yu and giving him fast, then Yu pushing Shenlong twice and giving him fast. Maybe a peasant activation or 2 thrown in there to give Shenlong some conditions or something else to push him up further. At this point Shenlong is at least 16" up the board and only 12 away from the Viks. Now Shenlong can pop recalled training, take a walk, charge one of the Viks using High River's Lightning Kick for the 1/3:blast/4:blast:blast or Fury of the Dawn to open up with if you have a high tome(or just high card and stone for suit) to get the trigger to prevent soul stone use. After he's done he uses his (0) to switch over to Low River style to stack up on the Defensive.

Apprarently the Viks players is spending his 5 activations going defensive while you do it, instead of blending Shenlong to pieces with Fast + Melee Expert Ml7 :+fate to Attack and Damage, min 5 damage Viktoria of Blood that ignores HtK :D

 

As for Yasunori: First off neither Yu or most other (if not all) TT pushers have Accomplice. This means in order to all those attacks he needs to be stand 12" from your model while you have an activation. There`s room here to just walk with something silly to tie him up so he can`t charge/slow/paralyze/wicked vines. Second of all - he`s a pretty good beater. So is Nekima, Howard and Viktoria of Blood etc. What I try to do is assume since my opponent is using a lot of resources to kill my model I will try to trade back baiting or trying to shift the situation into a favorable deal. If he kills my model X and I kill Yasunori will I be ahead or will he?


I`m not saying he`s OP or UP or inbetween. He might be. He might not. Someone also mentioned that Malifaux offers a lot of early NPEs if not shown correctly. A lot of people that don`t know how certain combos work or some threat ranges might get easily tabled Turn 2. And its not that the models performing those are OP. Its just the game requires a specific mindset and you knowing A LOT of stuff and probably you would not fall for the same tricks twice.

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56 minutes ago, marke83 said:

[stuff minimizing randomness and claiming that the players have all the information needed:]
One has all the information available to make the best decision for every situation (thanks to pre-measuring and open information on unit profiles)

 

You are correct that we can premeasure and read information on the models' cards and have that level of information/transparency. However, we do not have perfect information. Malifaux is as @Myyrä describes partially observable. We don't know the deck order, we don't know the opponent's Control Hand, and we don't necessarily know the opponent's Schemes (i.e. Frame for Murder). Because of the unknowns and the randomness, you cannot guarantee how a single activation will go, let alone how turn will play out. You can have strong expectations about the activation due to things that you can observe (i.e. Black Joker in Control Hand or discard so you know you can always cheat the simple duels, cards that guarantee ability goes off in Control Hand so you know that you can meet the TN, what cards you've already flipped), but you don't have perfect knowledge.

The gap between what you can observe and perfect knowledge gets wider as you introduce more variables that are observable, such as an opposing player, their crew, its built-in stuff, the terrain, the synergy auras, and not observable, such as their deck order and Control Hand. Even computers cannot accurately predict how a turn will go.

Randomness comes into play. Some people honestly believe in a personal luck factor (in which randomness always seems to favor/disfavor them), while others joke about one. Whether a person is the former or latter, it does not change the fact that randomness comes into play.

That randomness combined with imperfect knowledge (unobserved states and human error) makes it more likely that two players of equal skill will end up in a stalemate if they take zero risks. Those risks are what swing the game.

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4 hours ago, Seryjniak said:

Yup you do that - it will give you time to check how tournament scores look in USA - I think top neverborn player is around 20 place ? In UK it is different story but one can argue that mr Elwood would win even with Lucius and half a gremlin.

You have no idea how hard that made me laugh....

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Pos Faction Avg Score
1 Neverborn 54.06 16,488.96
2 Arcanists 51.86 16,284.86
3 Resurrectionists 47.77 12,466.97
4 Outcasts 56.85 11,029.01
5 Ten Thunders 53.58 8,894.51
6 Gremlins 52.70 8,801.27
7 Guild 45.65 7,760.64

 

AVG Score is:

  1. Outcasts
  2. Neverborn
  3. Ten Thunder
  4. Gremlins
  5. Arcanists
  6. Resurrectionists
  7. Guild

Now I know that Top Players have a big impact to the system but while Mark Elwood is Boss I doubt he carries the Neverborn all alone. I think the Levi and Rat Engine changes will probably drop Outcasts a bit. Sad to See Guild suck :<

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5 hours ago, Seryjniak said:

Yup you do that - it will give you time to check how tournament scores look in USA - I think top neverborn player is around 20 place ? In UK it is different story but one can argue that mr Elwood would win even with Lucius and half a gremlin.

Nobody in the UK would argue Mr Elwood would win with Lucius and half a gremlin (unless the new errata makes Lucius top tier filth in which case Mark will be all over it)

Ant is quite right a group of top tier players have abused the hell out of the Nekima / doppelgänger combo through 2015/16. Yasunari is great but far from game breaking.  Having Neverborn players complain about it is highly entertaining.

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