Reckless = OP?

[trikk]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

Sommer list 14 abilities (If you count bayou 2 cards, its 19)

Lets see first list I took in  Spring showdown from my report (first one I reached where I put a list in the battle reports)

Marcus (Damage upgrade)(Arcane) (Df trigger )

Jackolope (healing)

Shuistarya Guard (hard to kill, replaces card cheated on df)

War Wabbit (healing trigger, eat my fill)

Luther the Pascha Hare  (well rehersed) (eat my fill, hard to wound, last number)

Boris the circus bear (Impossible to wound, hard to kill, bearskin armour  Healing trigger, Bonus damage when hurt)

Moleman (Armour, def trigger, df pump)

Hoarcat pride (Manipulative, eat your fill. small target)

 

Thats 20 defensive abilities despite me having 8 models to your 11.  You can certainly argue that its not a normal list,  but its one I picked for an event where I went unbeaten complelty outside this discussion. 

I never said that this crew is the toughest crew in Malifaux. Or that it has the most defensive abilities.

3 minutes ago, Gargantuan said:

Red text is me.

I played in a tournament two days ago and every model I used except the zombie chihuahua had defensive abilities. Hard to wound pretty much everywhere, a little incorporeal here and there. And also some Manipulative and horror. 

Every opponent I met had a lot of models with defensive abilities.

I'd agree. It would be a shame if Somer would give out the "very valuable suit" in a 6" bubble as a (0).

Burt is insanely hard to kill for a 8SS model (with Dirty Cheater). Especially in a faction of cheap models to use slippery on and a bunch of automatic hits.

I said it multiple times. I don't think Gremlins are unbeatable but some models should probably be reworked and probably lose reckless.

[Gargantuan]

13 minutes ago, trikk said:

I never said that this crew is the toughest crew in Malifaux. Or that it has the most defensive abilities.

I'd agree. It would be a shame if Somer would give out the "very valuable suit" in a 6" bubble as a (0).

Burt is insanely hard to kill for a 8SS model (with Dirty Cheater). Especially in a faction of cheap models to use slippery on and a bunch of automatic hits.

I said it multiple times. I don't think Gremlins are unbeatable but some models should probably be reworked and probably lose reckless.

Right, so every model always has to stay near Somer AND Somer has to always activate first? That's pretty limiting. 

7 wounds and HtK on a df5 model isn't that hard to remove. Slippery is often not very effective since you need to clump up for it and it's pretty easy to avoid it in melee since the slippery targets need to be legal targets. I don't see you complaining about Johan, a six stone model with 8 wounds, df5  and HtK.

[Math Mathonwy]

You said that "Gremlins don`t have as little defensive tech as some people suggest" which isn't a very useful statement. Gremlins also have less defensive tech than some people suggest. Some people suggest all sorts of things!

I also think that counting up defensive abilities isn't very useful. Loudest Squeel is massively better than Squeel, Armor +2 is way better than Armor +1 and comparing Armor +2 to Loudest Squeel isn't very easy.

On the field Gremlins tend to lose to attrition which leads me to believe that they are a bit more squishy than average. They also tend to hit harder than average so it sorta evens out. Kinda ties into the whole Reckless thing, really.

[Adran]

On 20/07/2017 at 3:56 PM, trikk said:

This actually isn`t true. Incorporeal is like in two factions. Hard to Wound is in one. 

Hard to Kill isn`t really that below average (especially if you count models that are taken in same crews) and they have a ton of defensive triggers.

Oh, and While I'm here, 7 neverborn models had incorporeal. 12 Reserectionists and 5 outcasts. 0 gremlins. 

Hard to killl 6 gremlins, 7 outcasts, 6 resser, 4 neverborn

Hard to wound (and impossible to wound) 5 gremlins, 4 outcats 22 ressers 4 neverborn. 

Defensive  triggers  Gremlins 18, Outcast 11, neverborn 7, resser 5

"offensive" defensive triggers (things like doing damage,  But not Black blood type effects))  gremlins 7, Outcast 11, neverborn 13, resser 5.

 

My argument is that Gremlins typically have lower than average number of defensive abilities. This seems to apply both in competitively played gremlins, and across the faction as a whole.

This increases their fragility. I haven't looked at df or wd averages, but I don't think they stand out much either way. (I expect ss= wds +/-1,)

So Reckless is a higher risk for them than most . I'm not saying all models with reckless are fine, I could see burt having a slight power loss, but its not reckless itself being OP. The only change I would make (as I said before ) is stopping it stacking with abilities that give fast, so they don't get to have 4 ap. I'm pretty sure that would reduce Burts popularity in Nellie lists

 

 

 

[trikk]

1) If Johan had reckless I'd totally be for changes to him.

2) You can lose the attrition game if you're heavily up in points and win the game.

3) This is to the two of you @Adran and @Math Mathonwy. Like I said I don't think just removing reckless is the way to go. But Swincursed absolutely shouldn't have it in the current card. Burt could have it but should lose some of his defensive tech (like the trigger for example). LB should also loose it. All this not with the intention to just remove it and thats it.

And I agree reckless should just give fast to not stack.

[Bazlord_Prime]

On 25/07/2017 at 8:38 PM, trikk said:

Yes. The Avg is the highest in all 3 regions. Position is linked to score. Score is the sum of tournament points in a given ranking.

@trikk

TL;DR: Those ranking sites take into account loads of zombie accounts, massively skewing the results and rendering useless any conclusions based upon the "Faction Rankings" information summaries. Gremlins turn out to be actually the 5th best faction by tournament results when considering the top 20 players only in each Faction, so you really can't draw any objective data from these to help your case that Reckless is somehow propelling Gremlins into the role of OP Faction. In fact, Arcanists are ranked #1 in the US, and #2 in the UK. So I'm going to say that Armor is probably OP, and needs to be scrapped.  Yep.  I said it  

Okay, here's the problem with those data on the Ranking sites: they can't be taken at face value.  I had a long look at the figures on the three of them, and a couple of things stood out.  

1). The pie chart at the top of the "Factions" tab tells you how many players each Faction has (who've previously registered at formal tournaments, I assume).  But when you look down the list of ranked players below that, there's never as many ranked players as there are players counted for that pie chart.  Try it - go to the UK rankings site, and you'll see for instance that the Gremlins supposedly have 100 players, but there are only 61 names on the rankings list.  Add up the scores that those 61 ranked players have achieved - it comes out less than the total score shown in the "Faction Rankings" table to the right of the pie chart. So you have to assume that past players have been registered but have then lapsed for whatever reason, and while their scores still count for the Faction totals, their names no longer appear on the lists. These are the "zombie players" I referred to above. (Sorry Rezzers - I know this is insensitive labelling on my part...).

For example, the UK site says there are currently 334 Arcanist players, and yet there are only 85 ranked and actively playing. But the average score presented in that table is still derived from "Total Score / Total Players", so you get a horribly meaningless number. The simple fact that the Arcanists are the most popular Faction, and have had so many more players dabble in them at tournaments, means that their average score is dragged down well below any level indicative of how their top competitive players are performing.

2). The bottom-most players tend to have scores of 5.00 points each, and while I don't know how these points are awarded, I figured that anybody with a score of 5.00 probably just attended one event using that Faction, didn't place, and moved on (either from that Faction, or from Malifaux entirely. Or perhaps just from tournament play). Also, there's a long tail of players in each Faction who have really low scores, indicating that they probably stuck at it slightly longer than the 5.00 Club, but are certainly not the elite, competitive players that I think you're referencing when you talk about Gremlin tournament dominance.  So I made up a spreadsheet, and used only the top 20 ranked players for each Faction, as I figured that ought to capture a good snapshot of the players who're actively attending tournaments, and who best represent how the Factions are performing currently. I could've taken the top 10, or the top 30, but I just chose 20.

3). The Polish rankings website doesn't really have enough players to make a reasonable assessment (there's only 15 ranked Gremlin players, for instance), so I didn't do this analysis for you guys. You shouldn't read anything meaningful into those numbers, either - with lower player numbers, faction averages are easily skewed by individual results. My point is, there's just not enough data in the Polish set about which to make any claims about Faction dominance. Not through any fault of theirs - nor would there be enough in my native New Zealand, or most areas other than the US and UK.

So, adding up the scores for the top 20 players in each Faction separately across each of the UK & US rankings, I calculated the Faction average scores per player (the number that you're quoting to illustrate Gremlin dominance), and here are the results:

UK Rankings:

Pos	Faction	Avg
1	Neverborn	307.12
2	Arcanist	305.30
3	Outcast	293.11
4	Resurrectionists	267.65
5	Gremlins	259.59
6	Ten Thunders	249.97
7	Guild	244.61

US Rankings:

Pos	Faction	Avg
1	Arcanist	204.92
2	Resurrectionists	192.69
3	Ten Thunders	187.66
4	Neverborn	180.68
5	Gremlins	165.53
6	Guild	159.08
7	Outcast	157.53

So there it is.  Don't believe the data - believe the data!  Good old stats...

[Math Mathonwy]

29 minutes ago, trikk said:

Like I said I don't think just removing reckless is the way to go. But Swincursed absolutely shouldn't have it in the current card.

Swinecursed are ridiculously difficult to balance due to Wong boosting Magical so much. But if they lost Reckless, I don't think they would be very popular with Wong anymore and absolutely no one would take them with anyone else.

29 minutes ago, trikk said:

Burt could have it but should lose some of his defensive tech (like the trigger for example).

Agreed.

29 minutes ago, trikk said:

LB should also loose it. All this not with the intention to just remove it and thats it.

No one would take LBs over Slop Haulers/Banjonistas in that case. They would be complete trash.

29 minutes ago, trikk said:

And I agree reckless should just give fast to not stack.

Agreed though it would hurt Iron Skeeters so badly that I'm not sure they would be taken anymore.

[Math Mathonwy]

@Bazlord_Prime great job with the stats! Very well done! Also kinda takes away the premise of this thread, I guess.

[trikk]

14 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Swinecursed are ridiculously difficult to balance due to Wong boosting Magical so much. But if they lost Reckless, I don't think they would be very popular with Wong anymore and absolutely no one would take them with anyone else.

Agreed.

No one would take LBs over Slop Haulers/Banjonistas in that case. They would be complete trash.

Agreed though it would hurt Iron Skeeters so badly that I'm not sure they would be taken anymore.

Oh I totally get what you mean. Then drop LB attack triggers/armor ignore/make it ca5 and leave reckless.

Swinecursed aren't taken outside of Wong anyways, are they? Maybe just change Ooh Glowy ;)?

I get the Skeeter but its still easy to move 2 models to another flank. Francois with 4 AP is totally not fun to play, we can agree on that.

 

@Bazlord_Prime, thanks for the info! Good to know!

But how does it work in terms of player numbers?

I think getting top 20 isn't really viable because if you have 5 very good players in the top and 15 mediocre ones vs 10 very good arcanist players and 10 mediocre it skews the avg. You'd have to get the total points IMHO but I might be right. I think we can agree that depending on what we take into account we can have different conclussions

It doesn't really change the fact that some Gremlin models are pretty undercosted with reckless. And I totally agree Arcanists should get hit first right now in tge next errata.

[lame0]

3 hours ago, trikk said:

Oh I totally get what you mean. Then drop LB attack triggers/armor ignore/make it ca5 and leave reckless.

Swinecursed aren't taken outside of Wong anyways, are they? Maybe just change Ooh Glowy ;)?

I get the Skeeter but its still easy to move 2 models to another flank. Francois with 4 AP is totally not fun to play, we can agree on that.

 

@Bazlord_Prime, thanks for the info! Good to know!

But how does it work in terms of player numbers?

I think getting top 20 isn't really viable because if you have 5 very good players in the top and 15 mediocre ones vs 10 very good arcanist players and 10 mediocre it skews the avg. You'd have to get the total points IMHO but I might be right. I think we can agree that depending on what we take into account we can have different conclussions

It doesn't really change the fact that some Gremlin models are pretty undercosted with reckless. And I totally agree Arcanists should get hit first right now in tge next errata.

I mean the bias in that opinion is insane. I think it pretty showing that in your opinion a faction should be reworked because ~5 people know how to "use" the faction. That is so elitist I'm sorry but based on how we are placing in tournaments the faction should be left alone.  5th is middle of the pack and in terms of a competitive standpoint they should be left alone. The last faction they did major cuddles to on their relevant models was...guild which are at the very bottom. It makes me sad that that is whats in store given that according to data we aren't even above average when played competitively. To me its unfortunate that gremlins are getting its largest thread in like ever to advertise a cuddle that isn't really required. 

Also why shouldn't swine cursed have reckless look at them what would be more reckless than that thing. Your recommendation to remove basically everything that makes a lightning bug special is terrible. ohh so now a bug is 2/3/3 ca 5 no triggers no armor ignore...its horrible.

[trikk]

9 minutes ago, lame0 said:

I mean the bias in that opinion is insane. I think it pretty showing that in your opinion a faction should be reworked because ~5 people know how to "use" the faction. That is so elitist I'm sorry but based on how we are placing in tournaments the faction should be left alone.  5th is middle of the pack and in terms of a competitive standpoint they should be left alone. The last faction they did major cuddles to on their relevant models was...guild which are at the very bottom. It makes me sad that that is whats in store given that according to data we aren't even above average when played competitively. To me its unfortunate that gremlins are getting its largest thread in like ever to advertise a cuddle that isn't really required. 

Also why shouldn't swine cursed have reckless look at them what would be more reckless than that thing. Your recommendation to remove basically everything that makes a lightning bug special is terrible. ohh so now a bug is 2/3/3 ca 5 no triggers no armor ignore...its horrible.

I don`t think you`re reading me right. I`m not saying remove everything from LB. I gave suggestion. Even changing the heal trigger to a different suit would be a welcome change so Somer doesn`t get 8 heals from a single card...

 

If Swinecursed were to remain Reckless their cost should go up to 8 or 9 with an extra wound. Compare them to any 7SS minion in the game.

I`m sorry but the bias is definitely both ways.

 

P.S. I play Guild (mostly) and while the Papa Loco/Austringer changes hurt my crews and Guild isn`t really doing well anywhere I totally accept the changes made sense.

[spooky_squirrel]

17 hours ago, Bazlord_Prime said:

Exactly. It seems to be a really common fault in Theory-faux, to not think 4-dimensionally, or even in 3D. And you hear it all the time even on Schemes & Stones - talking about the Slop Hauler just magically being in the right place all the time to heal everyone for the entire length of the game?

Nope. They're slow as hell. And in one doubles game, my partner had 2 of them - our opponents had 2 Freikorp Trappers and head-shotted both Haulers Turn 1. On Corner Deployment. That's how you do it 

People also talk about Lenny's buffing auras, as if he's somehow magically keeping up with the rest of the crew and everyone's within 3" of him. He's Walk 4"! Which is great if you're all bunched up in the middle (Brewmaster sometimes, or Ulix).

The Drunk & Reckless Bayou Gremlins can't be running off scoring Schemes with their 3 AP and have Lenny/Slop Hauler/Lightning Bug right next to them to prevent/heal that damage. Not unless you also invest in infrastructure like Old Major/Gracie + Saddle (10-11ss). 

Counting on stuff to be in the right place at the right time is a great way to be disappointed in your models/faction. The only time I've seen slop haulers seem to tilt the game was in a Ulix crew where the slop hauler never needed to move anywhere because my opponent was making sure every injured pig he cared about was in that bubble. If I had dropped a blasting crew or a control crew into him instead of Ramos, things would have gone very differently during that game. Just one lure of any kind, or one long range "discard scheme marker" effect, or a first-strike model diving in to kill the slop hauler and the whole engine would have been wrong-footed.

Then there's the Somer and Bayou Gremlins, supported by Lenny. We had one of our tournament players start trying to play them to figure them out well enough to potentially podcast about it, and they weren't clicking for him. Slop hauler died relatively early on, and suddenly Somer's summoning, inspiration, the Gremlins' reckless ability, and even their Gremlin Luck went from "this could be cool" to "I'm killing my own models faster than my opponent is!"

Overpowering is when proficiency does not matter, and neither do things like terrain and victory conditions. Something that is overpowered can be reasonably expected to win every time, except when it's played into by something else that's overpowering. At which point, skill level, knowledge of list, knowledge of rules, and practice in general start mattering, as does having some lucky die rolls.
A few years ago in another game system, you could pop onto an online forum, get a list for a faction, ebay a painted army, and show up at tournaments with a flowchart and end up on the podium at the end of the day. That's because those lists in those factions were overpowering. That is, they did not require any skill to overwhelm your opponent, regardless of their skill level, and they did not require any change in play to account for actual victory conditions or terrain. They were boring to play and play against.

Gremlins have not been boring to play against in my experience, and generally don't seem to be boring to play. There's a lot of intricate things that the Gremlin player does have to watch out for within their own crews, because the key pieces to keep their stuff going tend to not like getting direct attention. For example: Merris is a solid support piece or scheme runner, provided she gets ignored; Exhaust Trail is great for answering crews that drop pulses and blasters into your Gremlins (including your own when you're playing Wong), right up until your opponent snipes her out. That Slop Hauler has a massive bulls-eye painted on its bulbous forehead, and if the Gremlin player hired it as a key piece in their crew, they're now splitting attention between scoring VP and keeping the Slop Hauler alive to do its job (unless its job is to be the FFM goat).
Sure, there's Stilts and dudes with 10 wounds, and now with Sparks you can hand out armor, which helps make things more resilient. There's Gremlins out there with Df/Wp 6, making them well above average.
But here's the thing: in chess the Queen is a supremely powerful piece, can do a lot of threat/counter-threat work. In Chess there's a term used when analyzing a board state: [piece] is overworked. When the opposing Queen is overworked, it means that if I'm willing to make a sacrifice play, I can draw the Queen out of position or force my opponent to give up a piece to a failed bluff. Similar things happen in Malifaux: a crew member can end up overworked. That is, they don't have enough AP during their activation to do everything that they need to do for your plans to work.

For Gremlins, Fast and Reckless are things that mitigate that. In the case of some models, possibly mitigate it too much. Fast and Reckless Francois is mean. He gets a lot more work done than maybe he should for his cost. The answer to that is to look at whether or not it's affecting the health of the game. If it is, then a surgical fix like making Reckless give Fast will prevent stacking while still allowing the Gremlins to hurt themselves to get things done. Before doing that though, it's a good idea to check for other things that provide a similar effect, like Swift and Fast, and determine if the cost to get those extra AP balances out.

There is, however, another thing that mitigates that: Companion. Maybe the problem isn't Francois ending up with 3-4 AP, but as was mentioned before in this post, the problem is that model A companions into model B. Using the overworked Queen parallel: the queen isn't overworked if my opponent can take two actions before my next action: she can counter attack, and the other piece she was supporting can move to a less threatened position. Here in Malifaux, that overworked model can go do one of the things it was trying to do, and potentially companion off into another model that needs to do something before it dies for your plans to come together. This was a problem when Companion could chain more than once, but that was addressed.

It could be that it's not really either of these in isolation, but rather both being used. Model A goes reckless, gets some work done, then companion activates Model B, who also goes reckless and gets some work done. If that is the case, then the answer lies in making adjustments to how Reckless and Companion interact--which is a potentially complicated problem because some models have the ability to activate another model at the end of their activation and others have the ability to activate themselves at the end of a friendly model's activation. I believe Gremlins are mostly (if not entirely) the Companion ability, which is consistent for them. For the health of the game, it's still a good idea to check similar effects just like we would with Fast and Reckless.

Edited July 25, 2017 by spooky_squirrel
removed "in line of sight" on Slop Hauler bubble.

[Math Mathonwy]

14 minutes ago, spooky_squirrel said:

Counting on stuff to be in the right place at the right time is a great way to be disappointed in your models/faction. The only time I've seen slop haulers seem to tilt the game was in a Ulix crew where the slop hauler never needed to move anywhere because my opponent was making sure every injured pig he cared about was in that bubble and line of sight.

Good post! I like the concept of "overworked". Just a quick note on the above: Slop Haulers don't need LoS (their heal doesn't target and it isn't a Pulse - they can happily toss their slop through walls).

[spooky_squirrel]

4 hours ago, Bazlord_Prime said:

In fact, Arcanists are ranked #1 in the US, and #2 in the UK. So I'm going to say that probably Armor is OP, and needs to be scrapped.  Yep.  I said it  

Have to laugh at this one. I know we Arcanists have a reputation for bringing armor to the table. I also know that it's a critical mistake to assume that's all we bring.

[spooky_squirrel]

2 minutes ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Good post! I like the concept of "overworked". Just a quick note on the above: Slop Haulers don't need LoS (their heal doesn't target and it isn't a Pulse - they can happily toss their slop through walls).

I'll edit in line

[lame0]

2 hours ago, trikk said:

I don`t think you`re reading me right. I`m not saying remove everything from LB. I gave suggestion. Even changing the heal trigger to a different suit would be a welcome change so Somer doesn`t get 8 heals from a single card...

 

If Swinecursed were to remain Reckless their cost should go up to 8 or 9 with an extra wound. Compare them to any 7SS minion in the game.

I`m sorry but the bias is definitely both ways.

 

P.S. I play Guild (mostly) and while the Papa Loco/Austringer changes hurt my crews and Guild isn`t really doing well anywhere I totally accept the changes made sense.

Well personally I hate recommendations that move gremlin costs because our best models are 5-7 stones. Going up from 7 stones is a 14% increase in price. Going up from 5 stones is a 20% increase! So even just talking about the pricier models Burt or swine cursed moving to 9 will basically make them subpar choices with almost a 30% price jump. Considering Burt goes to eight stones (14%) he might not be used give that the taxidermist is about on par with him (summoning + more opportunities to cheat vs more raw damage and survivability.) Swine cursed at 8 stones probably won't be used at all since they have 0 resilience and right now alpha then die horribly. compare them to the Rougarou which are hard to kill 9 wounds pounce great zero actions similar damage spreads also have a built in heal/move. If you gave swine cursed htk then 8 stones would be more bearable. Also it seems that you want to get rid of or seriously increase in price everything in our faction that ignores armor which would leave us unable to deal with it. Personally speaking I don't think any of our "good" models are more than 5% better than other "good" models in most other factions so price jumps just destroy the model give we can't charge half or quarter stones. (Though it be a cool concept for Gremlin ).

I think some of you cuddle ideas come from being a mostly guild player given that one of the hot topics on the guild faction page is "what makes other factions jealous" a topic that basically reflects that guilds synergy and models are a bit under tuned outside of their masters, frank, Pheona and a few others. It's not a coincidence that Nellie is guilds best master and she can take 4 mercs for 1 point (there are other reasons but that for sure is important). If every faction played like guild i don't know if I'd be playing the game.

[trikk]

35 minutes ago, lame0 said:

[...]Swine cursed at 8 stones probably won't be used at all since they have 0 resilience and right now alpha then die horribly. compare them to the Rougarou which are hard to kill 9 wounds pounce great zero actions similar damage spreads also have a built in heal/move. If you gave swine cursed htk then 8 stones would be more bearable. [...]

Swinecursed have Reckless, Min damage 3. Regen, Ignore HtK, Armor and Incorporeal and Df6 and one point cheaper. They are offensively WAY better than Rougarou. Rougarou have 2 Wds more and HtK but Df5 and they require a Scheme to heal. Swinecursed also way more independent. Even our Gremlin players think Burt, Tavish (with Glowy) and Swinecursed are well undercosted. 

 

As for Burt, he`s used as a merc very often in our meta, so people are willing to pay 8SS for him. I doubt if it was 8 in Gremlins he would suddenly become useless.

I wouldn`t also say you wouldn`t have a way to deal with Armor because most non-Wong list have just the one Lightning Bug (or Zipp) when counting the armor Ignoring stuff.

I don`t really care about Guild that much and I don`t really read that topic. I play Outcasts and Arcanists also and don`t really complain about Guild. Nellie is the Guild`s top master because she a) buffs the best unit type we have - Henchmen and b ) allow activation control in a faction with no summoners.

 

P.S. This thread kind of devolved into a complainfest so I think I can sum up my opinion and leave

Is Reckless OP? No

Are models with Reckless too good? Some of them.

Do they need a super quick fix? No

Do they need a rebalancing in general? As many other models, yes.

[lame0]

1 hour ago, trikk said:

Swinecursed have Reckless, Min damage 3. Regen, Ignore HtK, Armor and Incorporeal and Df6 and one point cheaper. They are offensively WAY better than Rougarou. Rougarou have 2 Wds more and HtK but Df5 and they require a Scheme to heal. Swinecursed also way more independent. Even our Gremlin players think Burt, Tavish (with Glowy) and Swinecursed are well undercosted. 

swine cursed are 2/3/5 no regen. this is wat I mean by synergy with glowy they are 3/4/6  with regen but again one master one upgrade they get way better. I think it's nice they made a model that works really well with something else. Could they make glowy a 2 point upgrade instead due to it's new found synergy. Absolutely! cuddle the whole model due to one upgrade. No way.

As for Burt, he`s used as a merc very often in our meta, so people are willing to pay 8SS for him. I doubt if it was 8 in Gremlins he would suddenly become useless.

he's used as a mercs with other masters who give him fast where fast is easy to get. In faction we have one way of giving fast easily and that's with iron skeeters. There's a reason we have almost no access to fast. Getting fast from the Iron Skeeter is to justify moving a ht 1 model as a whole 6pt models activation. Other than for the fast and movement the iron Skeeter isnt great. (Aionus is another option but again he's more than 25% of a 50 stone game)

I wouldn`t also say you wouldn`t have a way to deal with Armor because most non-Wong list have just the one Lightning Bug (or Zipp) when counting the armor Ignoring stuff.

a ton of those list either have to do death by 100000 cuts (forcing us to take a ton of models) or use the models your here asking for cuddles (models like Frank and Burt with high min damage or stuff that ignores armor....so that's everything) It would be terrible and force us to have to use speed bump city to play vs armor (hello 6 stuffed piglets and two taxidermists) not really the play style I like.

I don`t really care about Guild that much and I don`t really read that topic. I play Outcasts and Arcanists also and don`t really complain about Guild. Nellie is the Guild`s top master because she a) buffs the best unit type we have - Henchmen and b ) allow activation control in a faction with no summoners.

Like I said there are lots of reasons (I love her and my gf is have a good time learning the ins and outs of her card). She has a ton of options and her whole box is great. But I think getting the mercs for Burt & McTavish (who become a great team with the access to markers and fast that guild has) + a bunch from other factions.(I know those cus I play Gremlins)

P.S. This thread kind of devolved into a complainfest so I think I can sum up my opinion and leave

Is Reckless OP? No

Are models with Reckless too good? Some of them.

Do they need a super quick fix? No

Do they need a rebalancing in general? As many other models, yes.

Fair enough im not happy with the internal balance of Gremlins and to be honest most factions. It would be great to really be able to make more choices at the start of every game. Hopefully as things do get balanced (especially with the new master upgrades) it impacts factions in such a way that the game stays interactive and at the very least pretty fair.

Btw if ever I went a bit far I apologize sometimes I get heated in my opinions lol.

 

[Myyrä]

The overworked queen comparison works really well to describe how Nekima or A&D are manageable despite their almost overwhelming power. I'm not sure it works nearly as well in describing the challenges glowy Burt and two swinecursed face. 

[spooky_squirrel]

1 hour ago, Myyrä said:

The overworked queen comparison works really well to describe how Nekima or A&D are manageable despite their almost overwhelming power. I'm not sure it works nearly as well in describing the challenges glowy Burt and two swinecursed face. 

That's when you have three queens on the board. Then one of them is definitely not overworked.

That ties into the whole "careful consideration of balance and game health" review of things, as opposed to a quick fix. In the case of someone like Burt and two Swinecursed, it may be that the fix is to bump their cost by one stone and/or tweak them a little.
An example of a tweak can be seen in the Metal Gamin. Under their old M2E card, there was no reason to have Mechanical Rider summon anything else. There was little reason to hire any other minion. It substantially disrupted the internal balancing act in Arcanists. A rework of their signature ability and removal of another ability, and they're now better scaled for their cost (or as some might complain: "not worth hiring anymore").

I have yet to run into a full Wong package like that, but I know that Burt's brutal. It could be that increasing the cost of the upgrade brings the Swinecursed in line, but it might be that each Swinecursed needs their cost bumped up by 1 or attack stat reduced by 1 (to reflect that they're not really in control of themselves?).
Burt is an interesting animal, and he might be the real problem in that pile. It seems like he does a lot for his costs, but I have the same opinion about Frank in the Guild because I'm used to paying a higher base cost on utility Arcanist Henchmen that can do some damage when they need to. I think I would need time on both sides of Burt lists to give an honest take on it--which is what I've seen Wyrd do when they know that there's a balancing problem and they're trying to figure out how to tweak things back into line.

Similar to Colette and Prompt, the idea is to fix the problem, not the symptoms. It's more subtle and time consuming, but it helps avoid having things that are designed to be rough and expensive (like A&D, Howard Langston) end up being too expensive for what they bring to the table and thus never being used on account of one master. So it could also be that the real cause of the problem in Wong/Burt/Swinecurse is Wong himself. If that's the case, then the solution becomes a bit more complicated.

Of course, where this takes us is away from Reckless (except where it's on the models in question). Maybe the cost to reckless isn't quite right? Maybe it needs something characteristic to reckless behavior like reducing the attack value by one or applying a negative. Then there's no tweaking of specific models that might weaken their normal non-reckless use. Scheme runners that use reckless are effectively unscathed, and attackers that go reckless become less reliable on hitting. If you go with applying a negative on the attack, there's still a chance for joker fishing.

[Bazlord_Prime]

13 hours ago, trikk said:

@Bazlord_Prime, thanks for the info! Good to know!

But how does it work in terms of player numbers?

I think getting top 20 isn't really viable because if you have 5 very good players in the top and 15 mediocre ones vs 10 very good arcanist players and 10 mediocre it skews the avg. You'd have to get the total points IMHO but I might be right. I think we can agree that depending on what we take into account we can have different conclussions

It doesn't really change the fact that some Gremlin models are pretty undercosted with reckless. And I totally agree Arcanists should get hit first right now in tge next errata.

@trikk

If you dislike the number that I chose for the analysis, then you can always pick something you do like, and have a crack at it yourself.  I'm not going to spend more time crunching numbers on your behalf to re-prove a point that you've not taken the time to disprove - the ball's in your court  

Player numbers: to use your example above, if you're worried about having 5 very good Gremlin players plus 15 mediocre ones in the top 20, etc, then you're already conceding that the results are more about the skill levels of the five or so players who - for their own reasons - decided to pick up and play Gremlins (and do well with them), rather than anything to do with the OP-ness of the Faction as a whole.  Yes, the averages get skewed - and that was the point I was making about all these zombie accounts, and how the average you initially quoted was all up the creek - but if you want to cherry-pick only the best players in each Faction for your analysis, you're now guilty of selection bias and - again - are trying to analyse the players more, than the Faction.  I thought the top 20 for each faction was a reasonable number to start with, as you want a decent sample size, but not so many that you start including more and more of the casual players, thus defeating the purpose of the exercise when talking about the elite players.  

At that point, the answer to the question "Based on the results of the top 5 players, are Gremlins OP?", is "Maybe - but we can most easily and fairly solve that by getting Alex Schmid to play Guild instead".  Which might work  

Alex Schmid - the US Gremlin #1 - has a score of 386.63. The #2 Gremlin player has a score of 296.18.  That's a difference of 90 points, in a scoring metric that I assume tops out at 400?  So, a 23% difference between them.  It's true that there are gaps between #1 and #2 in the other US Faction leaderboards, but none as large as that (8 between Arcanists #1 & #2, 48 in Guild, 28 in Neverborn, 80 in Outcasts, 16 in Rezzers and 28 in Ten Thunders).  By the by, the UK rankings show a much tighter grouping at the tops of the Factions, with higher overall scores.  Are the two groups scoring tournaments differently?

Another problem is that you have unique player ID's appearing in multiple factions.  Of course you do - we all play more than 1 Faction, I'd assume.  Damn your ways, Wyrd...  But what this means in a sample size as small as the Polish one is that it has a larger effect on the scores when a player shifts to a different Faction, as - after a certain amount of time - their old tournament results are removed from their Faction scores, and that lowers the average for the Faction while their name stays on the list and makes them look like an active player.  I think that's the way it works - after 1 year, a result is dropped?  And it must be the most recent, or top, "x" number of results that're used to calculate the player's total score, since it seems to top out at 400.  

We can agree that we're going to get different results depending on what we take into account - that's how statistics works.  But I'm not with you in terms of agreeing that the analysis is of no use, just because you think - without proof - that the data might also support your claims at the same time.  And if you still hold that opinion, and want to convince others that it's still valid, then you'll need to put forward a counter-analysis.  

I see though from your last post on here that you've had enough of the to-and-fro, and I completely understand that - we've all basically stated our positions multiple times, and I think we've managed to convince you that Reckless isn't OP in and of itself, and that Gremlins are not dominating the tournaments.  They're far from it - I've shown that they're in the bottom half of the Factions overall.  If one or two players seem to be dominating with Gremlins (e.g. Alex Schmid), then that's actually about their skills - not the Faction's lack of balance. 

As far as models like Burt, Lightning Bugs, Slop Haulers etc go, I still think that if they were so so busted, then Wyrd would've cuddled them by now.  Which isn't to say they won't in future, and if that happens then your opinion will be validated.  Until then, when Wyrd has already done something like cuddle LENNY (of all Gremlins), and Rooster Riders, but not Burt, Francois, etc - then that should put your mind at ease somewhat.

And to echo a lot of the other players on here - have a crack with the Gremlins yourself sometime!  They are, after all, the least played Faction in your Polish rankings...  

[Adran]

21 hours ago, trikk said:

 

 

@Bazlord_Prime, thanks for the info! Good to know!

But how does it work in terms of player numbers?

I think getting top 20 isn't really viable because if you have 5 very good players in the top and 15 mediocre ones vs 10 very good arcanist players and 10 mediocre it skews the avg. You'd have to get the total points IMHO but I might be right. I think we can agree that depending on what we take into account we can have different conclussions

It doesn't really change the fact that some Gremlin models are pretty undercosted with reckless. And I totally agree Arcanists should get hit first right now in tge next errata.

Not Picking on you, I've enjoyed the discussion. I think it does highlight the risks of not looking at what numbers are really saying. 

A different way to look at the data, compare how individual players do with different factions. 

I looked at the top 14 gremlin players according to the UK rankings (number picked because I got bored at this point). 7 of them also have played another faction enough to get 4 scores with that faction (in the last calendar year) (1 has 2 other factions) so 7 Gremlin scores, and 8 comparable other faction scores . 3 of them have big difference to their other faction (80, 93 and 97),  one with a slight increase (9 points),  then its an advantage to the other faction of 15 and 82, and finally there is 1 player who has 2 factions with higher score than his gremlin score, one 60 higher and one 110 points higher. 

from this judge of player skill, the difference between scores as a gremlin vs scores as a different faction is a difference of 12 points in total on the side of the gremlins. 

So competitive player who play gremlins and also play a different faction don't see a trend overall to gremlins being better or worse. Some do much better with gremlins, and some do a lot worse. (My numbers might be tilted because one of the gremlin players who doesn't do so well played multiple other factions. And numbers 11 and 14 contribute to a lot of that performing better as a non gremlin than as a gremlin)

[Bazlord_Prime]

Okay - of COURSE i went and did the analyses for Top 5 & Top 10 players... Couldn't help myself. But shhhh! Don't tell trikk!  

Here's the results.

UK Top 5:

Pos    Faction    Avg
1    Arcanist    384.27
2    Resurrectionists    372.21
3    Neverborn    366.91
4    Gremlins    354.54
5    Guild    350.49
6    Outcast    345.40
7    Ten Thunders    343.38

UK Top 10:

Pos    Faction    Avg
1    Arcanist    358.14
2    Neverborn    346.08
3    Outcast    330.10
4    Gremlins    324.85
5    Guild    323.20
6    Resurrectionists    322.31
7    Ten Thunders    310.89

US Top 5:

Pos    Faction    Avg
1    Ten Thunders    299.66
2    Arcanist    287.25
3    Gremlins    273.75
4    Resurrectionists    273.63
5    Neverborn    272.15
6    Guild    266.94
7    Outcast    245.39

US Top 10:

Pos    Faction    Avg
1    Arcanist    253.59
2    Ten Thunders    253.25
3    Resurrectionists    238.86
4    Neverborn    225.86
5    Guild    217.07
6    Gremlins    215.74
7    Outcast    204.46

Okay - now I'm done 

P.S. looks like Ten Thunders might need a cuddle next. In the US, at least 

[trikk]

Wow! Such smart! Very data.

Except it doesn't contradict anything I said. I said Arcanists should definitely take a hit before Gremlins. The data seems to support that. 

UK ranking is missing Joel Henry I believe that had around 390 points IIRC and was a Gremlin player but wanted to be removed from the rankings. 

[Math Mathonwy]

41 minutes ago, Bazlord_Prime said:

Okay - now I'm done 

Superb work, once again!

I wonder if the host could be made aware of the zombies being taken into account for the faction averages?