Declaring factions in a game

[mojopin]

Hi, its been a year and a half since started playing malifaux. I feel that your opponent stating his faction doesnt really makes me change my list more than srategies and schemes do.

I mean, there are so different playstyles in a faction that I find difficult to make any change toward facing lets say arcanist or neverborn or outcast. You can expect armor from arcanist and face marcus or sandeep wich are totally different from ramos. And the same happens among vicks, hammelin or jack daw. Or kirai, reva and yanlo or... You know... 

So is it really useful for you knowing you opponents faction? 

Would it be a good idea stating factiong and master so making your list could be more oriented?

[Dogmantra]

Well stating faction is supposed to happen before you see the strats & schemes so it would let you tailor a bit better if you had to state master because I'm assuming you don't want people to luck into a bad scheme pool with their declared master.

I think the main use of knowing your opponent's faction is for broad trends, and one of the skills of crew creation imo is being able to work out what your opponent is likely to bring in such a situation and perhaps to tech against it. Sometimes it's more obvious than others, particularly in Reconnoiter/Interference. For example knowing your opponent is playing Arcanists in Interference gives you a fairly good chance they'll be bringing Ramos. Same with Gremlins, they'll probably bring the Pigapult and one of Som'er or Ulix for summoning, so then you can tech against that and bring blasts or anti-armour or whatever you feel is necessary. And then in the situation where I'm playing Gremlins I'll look at your faction, assume you know I'm going to play summoner + pigapult because why wouldn't I and then see whether you have the blasting power to warrant Merris. Most factions can manage it, but 10T is one of the few that doesn't really have a blasty casty master like Sonnia, Rasputina et al. For a slightly less egregious version I'd point to Arcanists and Resurrectionists as the two I tech against most frequently, with an anti-armour splash vs the former and at least one thing with high minimum damage (or moon shinobis if I'm feeling flamboyant) for the latter to deal with Hard to Wound.

It's not a huge advantage and I don't think it should be, but declaring your master is imo a bit too much information to give away.

[Adran]

I make almost 0 allowance for my opponents faction when I build my list. So I agree with you here, its not that useful. 

I also don't think that you should declare master because some masters are easier to build against than others. 

 

 

[Ludvig]

High min damage and stripping suits from ca attacks is usually nice against ressers and ignoring triggers is good against most gremlin lists. Some decent wp defence is usually a lot more useful against neverborn than guild. TT have lots of focus but not much high weak damage so hard to wound is often worthwhile against them. That being said I still mostly build to schemes and terrain.

[santaclaws01]

Yup, outside of sone specific cases it's pretty independent. But if I wanted to play Titania into the available pool and my opponent is going ressers I'm going to take The Forest Claims All and Aeslin for the potential corpse marker denial and keeping my models from being respectively.

[thecapopriest]

It's also beneficial to know your opponents faction so you can prepare for your personal worse case scenario. Such as, against Arcanists my worst case scenario is to face off against Ramos summoning in a mass of arachnids with Joss and Howard as the heavy hitters. So I am inclined to either take Wong or Somer with Lightning Bugs and high damage dealers. I might end up facing off against any of the other masters, but overall they don't worry me as much as I feel I can play to the Strategy and Schemes without being shut out at every turn. 

I have worse case scenarios for every Faction and try to have my list at least a bit built for those match ups just in case. 

[-Loki-]

Personally it doesn't influence me that much. I might take a model/upgrade or two specifically to deal with what that faction can do (like the above example, if I'm facing Ressers, I'll take something that can deal with Corpse Markers), but it's not going to influence my master of choice or bulk of my crew for dealing with the schemes and strategy.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Personally I'm more and more comming to an opinion that not even faction should be declared for competitive games.

[Nikodemus]

8 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Personally I'm more and more comming to an opinion that not even faction should be declared for competitive games.

Would you mind expanding on why you feel this way?

[Math Mathonwy]

I think that knowing Faction gives you a big advantage when coupled with the knowledge of the strat, schemes, and board. Because really, how many times have you not expected to face Ramos when playing Interference or Reconnoiter against the Arcanists (and the player in question had the option of fielding Ramos so not fixed Master or a person who doesn't own Ramos or whatever)?

[Joel]

On 4/13/2017 at 11:31 AM, Adran said:

I make almost 0 allowance for my opponents faction when I build my list. So I agree with you here, its not that useful. 

I also don't think that you should declare master because some masters are easier to build against than others. 

 

 

This is pretty much my view - indeed I tend to either only play one master out of a faction or announce my master anyway (even though I'm not required to do so) as a means of comping myself.

I do not think this should be done as standard though, I know I certainly don't need the extra info!

[skoatz]

Certain masters need to know the opposing faction.  I play Hoffman, and I will never, ever take Hoffman if I'm going up against Outcasts.  Too many masters that are hard counters.  Basically, I need a way to determine how likely I am to be facing anti-armor crews, and to a degree lures.  Because anti-armor crews are going to wreck Hoffman's face.  Take away declaring factions, and I'm less likely to take Hoffman in general.  I imagine there are other masters that have a similar problem.

[hydranixx]

I agree. I think many masters encounter similar 'problems'.

If I'm playing Arcanists, I'm not sure I'd ever hire Mei Feng if I didn't know what faction my opponent was declaring. So much on her card is counterplay material; Vent Steam, sneaking Kang into the faction, access to Hard Worker etc. Most of her things are so very specific that she feels very lackluster when she runs into a game against someone who ignores everything she does. 

I'm sure many players feel the same way about one or more masters they commonly play.