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Broken Balance


cptRamires

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1 hour 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.

OK, now that I have a keyboard.

First of all, let's go review the conversation up to this point.

Shenlong originally posited that luck has no effect. I challenged that and he amended his estimation to that 99% of his games had been decided by skill. I again challenged that. And then you butt in with that condescending tirade. While reading that, I was almost certain it would, at the end, include the link to an article by Sirlin :D:P  I am disappoint, son. ;) 

I have yet to encounter a wargame (and I've played more than any other person I know) where path to victory wasn't about mitigating the effects of bad luck. IMO this is especially easily observable in Blood Bowl but applies to every wargame I've played. So what you are saying isn't exactly big news to me to say the least. But then again, of course you can't have any idea about my experiences - not expecting you to, but I find it a bit amusing that you jump to conclusions so readily.

Then we come to the question what it means that something "decides" a game? If I am of equal skill to you, we both made mistakes, we both made strong moves, but you managed to capitalize better on my mistakes (or took OP models! ;)) and I decide to risk things on a chance attack that I know will most likely land (due to the cards in my hand) but probably with minus flips. The deck has quite a few cards left and one of them is the Red Joker. There is a fair chance that it will show up and turn the tide of the game.

Now, what decided the game? Your skill? Mine? Chance? Does it even matter what happened? What if this happens a million times so it evens out in accordance with the probabilities? What if it can't, because we can't play a million times? What if it was the finals of a national tournament?

Oh, and while you're pondering these, go look at @spooky_squirrel's post a few posts back.

Because yeah, of course, if I'm the better player I will mitigate both the chance and the effect of a disaster. 

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<modhat>

Lets all take a deep breath and stay calm.

I do not want to have to take action in this thread.

 

Edit:

I just removed a post made a few seconds after mine which was unhelpful at best.

You can debate while being pleasant to each other. 

There will be no other warnings, I will hit you with my mod stick. 

</modhat>

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7 hours 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.

Yes. He does. It works. Even in corner deployment.

I'm really worried about the plethora of posts ala "now change this, now change that". It would be quite a blow to a damn well-balanced game if these were to be considered in only 10% of the cases.

Shenlong is right, people need to stop complaining and start figuring stuff out.

I feel like in Malifaux there is a deep lack of know-how in a lot of regards in a lot of metas. Maybe because it is just not quite as big as other games where a deeper knowledge-base is available in the interwebs. Maybe Im wrong. All I know is that I used to complain a lot (and maybe still do sometimes) but then I tell myself: Get the f. better. And then I think and try to adapt. And then I usually do get better - at least a tiny bit.


(deleted post was obviously too aggressive. passion and stuff. sorry!)

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1 hour ago, trikk said:

AVG Score is:

Nope it isn't. You take only UK into account.

Faction

 

(USA + UK)/2

 

Outcasts

 

57,01

 

Ten Thunders

 

53,32

 

Gremlins

 

52,53

 

Neverborn

 

52,015

 

Arcanists

 

50,765

 

Resurrectionists

 

50,63

 

Guild

 

46,405

 

 

Excuse my crude pasting skills. As you can see I added rankings from UK and USA and divided by 2 (for more in line look). Neverborn are actually in the middle.

 

 

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Seryjniak said:

Nope it isn't. You take only UK into account.

Someone asked about UK so I put the UK rankings up. Never said its the world.


I`d also point out that TOP 10 UK players played an average of 13.8 ranked tournaments this year while TOP 10 US played 6.3 tournaments this year.

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2 minutes ago, Sybaris said:

Thanks, though i kind of see that more of an indication of player skill than a testimony of game balance. Then numbers of players must eventually weight in heavily too,  dinvr the pie chart from that website seems to reflect the ranking in a relatively similar proportion.

Number of player has no direct influence. This average data is measured by taking how many points players that played given faction got and dividing by their number. So more players - more points but higher division. Pie chart only shows how many players played.

Pie chart only shows how many players play this faction - so it gives popularity not performance.

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3 minutes ago, trikk said:

I`d also point out that TOP 10 UK players played an average of 13.8 ranked tournaments this year while TOP 10 US played 6.3 tournaments this year.

I don't think it has anything to do with average score. And I would consider it an effect of USA being much bigger country - more distance between tournament venues. As a curio in Poland the top faction - by the rankings is crossroads seven ;)

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Yes. Thats why I didn`t take Poland into account as the data amount is not enought :)

It has something to do with average score and you just pointed out why. If we take a hundred games and in 80 of them Ten Thunders win that means Ten Thunders are potentially OP. But if we take a Thousand and it turns out they win 120 games it turns out they are actually below the average. So I think the bigger the sample data the more reliable the it is :)

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1 minute ago, trikk said:

It has something to do with average score and you just pointed out why. If we take a hundred games and in 80 of them Ten Thunders win that means Ten Thunders are potentially OP. But if we take a Thousand and it turns out they win 120 games it turns out they are actually below the average. So I think the bigger the sample data the more reliable the it is

Sure - the more input the less error you get - but I would say that over a hundred tournaments between UK and USA is pretty good indicator of whats going on. On top of that - the larger pool would be good given it is taken roughly at the same time - We can accumulate more and more observations but are observation from before errata as valid as those after ? And so on - not to take this thread off rail by musing about statistics - I think wyrd guys are acctualy on top of this sort of thing. I actually find malifaux as one of the most balanced games at the moment - just not getting why people find neverborn so op (i must suck with them then :P)

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The UK had 72 ranked tournaments with an Average of 25 players. US had 49 tournaments with an average of 16 players.

If you change the ratio to 1/3 US and 2/3 UK (which makes sense due to number of tournaments and AVG number of players) you get:

Outcasts: 56.96

Ten Thunders: 53.47

Neverborn: 52.70

Gremlins: 52.59

Resurrectionists: 49.68

Guild: 46.15

Wit the Outcasts hits to Rat Engine and Leveticus I think they`ll go down but this shows we had 1 faction on top and 2 on the bottom while the rest is in the middle :)

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4 hours ago, cryion said:

Yes. He does. It works. Even in corner deployment.

I don't think anyone challenged that Shenlong can move 24" under perfect conditions. They were wondering what the bloody hell the Vik player was doing while that move was clearly seen from a mile away. 

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1 hour ago, Ludvig said:

I don't think anyone challenged that Shenlong can move 24" under perfect conditions. They were wondering what the bloody hell the Vik player was doing while that move was clearly seen from a mile away. 

Valid question that I have no answer to. But I think in this case the point is rather that you still disrupt the plans of the Viks and therefore make their activation control relatively useless that first turn.

Also, isnt this exactly what we are talking about? Adapt, react, be clever - and it becomes more a game of skill rather than a game about the power level of individual models.

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1 hour ago, cryion said:

Valid question that I have no answer to. But I think in this case the point is rather that you still disrupt the plans of the Viks and therefore make their activation control relatively useless that first turn.

Also, isnt this exactly what we are talking about? Adapt, react, be clever - and it becomes more a game of skill rather than a game about the power level of individual models.

The problem with that is that you're sacrificing your master turn one to throw their careful AP planning out of whack for an estimated 2-4 activations.

edit;

I know it's not particularly on topic but some ideas just need to be nipped in the but before anyone starts taking them seriously.

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I see that disengaging strikes are keeping people tied in, so maybe we can steer this back to the original point of a Neverborn player feeling overwhelmed by something new. This way we can possibly score off the strategy of people learning the game and finding enjoyment in doing so.

 

15 hours ago, trikk said:

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/. 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 because. I`m 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.

Trikk raises the crux of the problem that needs to be solved by someone facing an alpha strike from Yasunori. At this point they have one activation in which to disrupt or accept the Yasunori's assault. If they're okay with losing the piece that's about to be assaulted, they could just move it directly into the Yasunori and deny it the charge that would extend its reach deeper into the lines. Otherwise, what they can do depends on which Master they're playing, the crew composition, and what is left to activate. 

One way in which a Neverborn player might feel trapped and helpless, even fielding someone like Lilith or Dreamer, is if they activated their master early and now have none of their master's tools available. This would be considered a mistake if the early activation of the master was not productive or meaningful. This does not mean that Lilith or the Dreamer is useless at stopping Yasunori, it just means that the activation order was messed up by the Neverborn player. This is why it is I would argue that the 10T player dropping 22 stones into a single combination is a mistake: they lose any ability to control activations while still having models on the table that can work the strategy and schemes and survive being hit by scheme hunters that the Yasunori did not get to, especially against Neverborn masters that can quickly ramp up their activations or that can work really well with the majority of their hiring stable (and thus play well into anything).

What I would recommend in this specific case, where you find yourself at the receiving end of a Yasunori alpha strike and he's been pushed up to where you can tell what he's going to use as his first target with any regularity and you're playing Lilith or Dreamer (as examples): activate your master later in the turn. If the 10T player pushes the Yasunori up into a position to strike, you have options:
Dreamer: can fairly reliably summon in a couple chaff models and place them in the way of the Yasunori (early game, should have stones available). If he has a high card in hand, he could potentially use the Nightmare summoning upgrade and put a beater in counter-charge reach of those chaff models. Here's a couple of ideas that might be fun to explore:

  • If he's going the full-tilt Teddies everywhere stuff with Mr. Tannen giving masks a boost and an early sacrifice for the extra mask, he could stone/cheat in the trigger to have a Teddy that is summoned in without slow, summon in either support or chaff (Insidious Madness, Daydreams for their WP games), use his (0) to reduce his waking, then chain activate that Teddy to Gobble into the Yasunori. Stubborn isn't quite as helpful if there's nearby models like Daydreams reducing his Wp, and being engaged with a Teddy is bad news, so there may end up being some cheating to avoid the gobble (high cards out of hand). If the Gobble fails, that's fine, Teddy just charges in and uses his Ml 7 versus the Df 5 Yasunori and the built-in trigger to shove the Yasunori somewhere that puts even more modifiers on the Yasunori's Wp and restrictions on its ability to cheat. Yasunori is now engaged by a Teddy with 4 wounds that it must absolutely deal with if it wants to charge, which will start with a Terrifying duel and reduced Wp while engaged with something that will hit it for failing.
    Side note: this is one of the things with an outcome that is heavily reliant on randomness.
  • If he's not going for Teddies everywhere, another interesting option to consider is popping a Stitched Together out as the primary chaff (this one should chain activate in order to heal above hard to kill and walk into engagement and/or Gamble Your Life the Yasunori), with a Daydream and/or Alp as the backup chaff. If the Alp is close enough Smother cycles more cards out of your opponent's deck with the potential of making the Yasunori slow. Otherwise, pop 1-2 relatively cheap Daydreams between the Yasunori and anything important, something a bit more dangerous right behind them--if you go with only two summons, you could walk to somewhere a little safer--dump some Waking so that the Pleasant Dreams ability is more effective, and Chain activate the model that's going to jam the initial charge.

Lilith: is less complex a thought process, but she's not summoning in another model to jam the Yasunori. She's going to Twisting Vines the Yasunori so that it cannot walk or charge, then (0) Illusionary Forests between it and anything important so that it cannot draw LOS to charge during the next turn. Yasunori's now available to be feasted on at the Neverborn player's leisure. It's handy to have a fast beater somewhere nearby that also hasn't activated yet, such as Nekima. Lilith still has two AP left if Twisting Vines worked the first attempt. Maybe she'll take a walk?

These are just ideas on how someone running either of these two masters can respond, and I'm sure that more experienced Neverborn players can offer better advice.

 

8 hours ago, Ludvig said:

I don't think anyone challenged that Shenlong can move 24" under perfect conditions. They were wondering what the bloody hell the Vik player was doing while that move was clearly seen from a mile away. 

Hence my comparison to the 4-move-mate trick. My experience against Vik players shows the Vik player using the first turn to set up a more solid second turn strike, instead of overextending early, which leaves literally no reason to have an open lane between Shenlong and the Viks in the first turn. If he tries to bump up anyway, the Viks can use their slingshot to completely bypass him and threaten all of the supporters that bumped him halfway across the table with being erased in turn 2. That being said, the experienced Outcasts player who drops the Viks on the table is planning on killing stuff as a key role in scoring their VP. If the scheme involves killing (6 of them in GG2017 do), that's probably what they're looking to do. Shenlong is nowhere near as effective as the Viks at this.

 

14 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

I have yet to encounter a wargame (and I've played more than any other person I know) where path to victory wasn't about mitigating the effects of bad luck. IMO this is especially easily observable in Blood Bowl but applies to every wargame I've played. So what you are saying isn't exactly big news to me to say the least. But then again, of course you can't have any idea about my experiences - not expecting you to, but I find it a bit amusing that you jump to conclusions so readily.

Then we come to the question what it means that something "decides" a game? If I am of equal skill to you, we both made mistakes, we both made strong moves, but you managed to capitalize better on my mistakes (or took OP models! ;)) and I decide to risk things on a chance attack that I know will most likely land (due to the cards in my hand) but probably with minus flips. The deck has quite a few cards left and one of them is the Red Joker. There is a fair chance that it will show up and turn the tide of the game.

Now, what decided the game? Your skill? Mine? Chance? Does it even matter what happened? What if this happens a million times so it evens out in accordance with the probabilities? What if it can't, because we can't play a million times? What if it was the finals of a national tournament?

Because yeah, of course, if I'm the better player I will mitigate both the chance and the effect of a disaster. 

The only wargames that I've encountered and played that did not involve mitigating the effects of bad luck are games like Chess and Go, both of which have near perfect information and zero random number generations; the only thing that is potentially random is the exact next move of the opponent, and even that randomness is a choice made by that opponent as opposed to a random event. Everything that has imperfect information involves some element of chance. Table top games like Malifaux use random number generation with the deck of cards, which substantially increases the influence of chance on the game.

Skill is still a huge factor, but when skill balances out between players, its effect is reduced which increases the effect of randomness on the outcome. With a large enough sampling (like tournament results and standings, as well as observations from high-trust sources like Henchmen, TOs, regular Beta playtesters, and even the people who won), randomness is smoothed out.
Once skill and randomness are smoothed out, you then have the two non-mechanic variables reduced and you can more effectively analyze things that may affect the health of the game, such as strategies, schemes, terrain traits, conditions, interactions, and models.

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4 hours ago, spooky_squirrel said:

The only wargames that I've encountered and played that did not involve mitigating the effects of bad luck are games like Chess and Go, both of which have near perfect information and zero random number generations; the only thing that is potentially random is the exact next move of the opponent, and even that randomness is a choice made by that opponent as opposed to a random event. Everything that has imperfect information involves some element of chance. Table top games like Malifaux use random number generation with the deck of cards, which substantially increases the influence of chance on the game.

Oh aye, didn't consider those under the wargame moniker in my post (though did consider Blood Bowl so I guess I should've written "minis games" instead) but yeah, Chess and Go are perfect examples of games which essentially don't have a luck quotient. Banner Saga is a another rather interesting example of a game where luck plays quite a minimal role and which is quite a bit closer to minis games.

Quote

Skill is still a huge factor, but when skill balances out between players, its effect is reduced which increases the effect of randomness on the outcome. With a large enough sampling (like tournament results and standings, as well as observations from high-trust sources like Henchmen, TOs, regular Beta playtesters, and even the people who won), randomness is smoothed out.
Once skill and randomness are smoothed out, you then have the two non-mechanic variables reduced and you can more effectively analyze things that may affect the health of the game, such as strategies, schemes, terrain traits, conditions, interactions, and models.

Well put!

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7 hours ago, Tokapondora said:

The problem with that is that you're sacrificing your master turn one to throw their careful AP planning out of whack for an estimated 2-4 activations.

edit;

I know it's not particularly on topic but some ideas just need to be nipped in the but before anyone starts taking them seriously.

Sure. Assuming you hit him much with Def Stance, Recalled Training, High River Style and Misdirect.

I kind of take offense to the edited part of your message. With that comment you kind of seem to assume that everyone in our meta who faces that Shen Long player is a scrub who does not know what they are doing. Maybe. Or maybe you did not have a proper demonstration yet and should therefore not nip ideas in the butt in advance. ;)

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26 minutes ago, cryion said:

Sure. Assuming you hit him with Def Stance, Recalled Training, High River Style and Misdirect.

I kind of take offense to the edited part of your message. With that comment you kind of seem to assume that everyone in our meta who faces that Shen Long player is a scrub who does not know what they are doing. Maybe. Or maybe you did not have a proper demonstration yet and should therefore not nip ideas in the butt in advance. ;)

Which the Viks definitely can do when they have a stat advantage of 2 and :+fate as well.

The reason it doesn't sound like a good strategy is because Shenlong alpha striking across the board(except on close) has very little leeway. You have to be in range for the charge after a walk action, you have to have a high card to force through the :tome trigger to get the kill, your opponent has to just leave open a charge lane from Shenlong to the Viks, the Viks have to be close enough to each other that you can blast onto the other one. It is very much a perfect storm scenario any time after the first(and the first isn't even guaranteed)

And sure, Shenlong can survive past turn 1, but he is going to die turn 2. Half of the Shenlong players models spent their turns pushing Shenlong up so they'll be in no position to support him turn 2 where he's alone in the middle of the enemy crew. 

It is very much trading your master try and stop a combo that cost what, 8 ss? And I say try because from most of what I saw the rat engine was used for activation control on turn 2, which means a turn 1 alpha strike isn't going to do anything to that.

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54 minutes ago, cryion said:

Sure. Assuming you hit him much with Def Stance, Recalled Training, High River Style and Misdirect.

I kind of take offense to the edited part of your message. With that comment you kind of seem to assume that everyone in our meta who faces that Shen Long player is a scrub who does not know what they are doing. Maybe. Or maybe you did not have a proper demonstration yet and should therefore not nip ideas in the butt in advance. ;)

If he used Recalled Training he already activated. In that case he can stand there usually. If he didn't he'll de before he can use it. Other thing the Viks can do is just go for your support as they have a longer range and better AoE damage

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I dont feel its necessary to kill both Viks. If Blood goes down without doing much thats more than enough turn 1. You assume ML+2, so at least one other sister needs to be close enough which makes Misdirect that more annoying.
Between Kamaitachi, Yu, Emissary there are enough pushes to also get your crew forward. And if Shen Long stands in the middle of your ranks you wont exactly walk into the enemy half of the table either with all your forces.

Recalled is not the pin that holds his whole defense together.

Listen, Im not saying its easy and Im not saying anything is un-avoidable. Just saying that activation control can be handled by a good player. Is it good that rat-engine is gone for anything but Hamelin? 100%!

I've never seen a game between a top tier Shen Long player and a top tier Viks player. I'd enjoy watching that very much. ;)

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6 minutes ago, cryion said:

I dont feel its necessary to kill both Viks. If Blood goes down without doing much thats more than enough turn 1. You assume ML+2, so at least one other sister needs to be close enough which makes Misdirect that more annoying.
Between Kamaitachi, Yu, Emissary there are enough pushes to also get your crew forward. And if Shen Long stands in the middle of your ranks you wont exactly walk into the enemy half of the table either with all your forces.

Recalled is not the pin that holds his whole defense together.

Listen, Im not saying its easy and Im not saying anything is un-avoidable. Just saying that activation control can be handled by a good player. Is it good that rat-engine is gone for anything but Hamelin? 100%!

I've never seen a game between a top tier Shen Long player and a top tier Viks player. I'd enjoy watching that very much. ;)

The last one I played was a draw, if that helps ;)

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