Internal balance of factions

[Math Mathonwy]

There's been a lot of brouhaha lately about Gremlins supposedly having poor internal balance due to there being a number of models which are clear winners in each price bracket.

Does this differ from other Factions?

Now, some of you might have noticed that I enjoy balance and tier discussions but OTOH I don't put all that much stock in them. I do believe that there are differences between models but OTOH I also believe that you mostly win or lose through playing skill and most of the time, as long as you build a functional crew for the Strat and Schemes at hand, you can make do with a couple of "lower tier" or suboptimal choices.

I think that there is a somewhat unfortunate tendency to put too much emphasis on these performance differences but that said, I'd still like to hear other people's opinions. How stark is the division between great, mediocre, and lackluster in various factions and how large is the "great" pool? And also how many models from the lower tiers still have their niches and get used with a specific Master or a specific Scheme pool or whatever?

Which faction has the best internal balance and which one has the worst?

[Astrella]

It's definitely not unique to Gremlins, and they are working on it. But it is part of the reason why I'm not super excited about even more new models coming out considering there's still quite a few that are underwhelming. I'd honestly be interested in some actual statistics on how often certain models get taken, and I'm not sure if those are available since most tournaments don't seem to track lists.

[Ludvig]

I've tried the OP allstars in guild and have faile miserably while I have also done ok with lackluster models so I think the gap isn't too wide.

I think the big thing is that some stuff is just more versatile than other choices which makes it more likely it will fit the situation. Some choices are just straight up worse because they require massive setup to get the job done in a game where model count is severely restricted, I think those are the worst offenders because they might be amazing with a very particular list build but will be lackluster on their own.

On the master side I think there is a noticeable power level difference. This is especially emphasised when organisers premier the single master approach because I think some masters are just straight up better if you need to play all five strategies with the same master.

[Adran]

Thats a tough one. I am not even sure where to go with defining what I think a good internal balance is. 

I don't just play the same models over and over again because they are the best at their job (although sometimes my arcanist games do read like I've picked my personal favorites and stuck with them. I do consider other models, but Luther is just comfortable). But I can get stuck in a partial rut. I do try and look at all the model in a faction that i have, so see what I want to use. 

I know my personal comfort zone does NOT align with everyone elses.  But I am also aware, and do try and shake it up all the time. 

Gremlins is the current example. Models like Burt and McTavish are "easy" to use. When they are on the table you don't have to think hard about what you want them to do. Now they might not always be the "best" choice in a game but because you are "comfortable" with them, they are your "best " choice.

Some people try and build core lists and in some cases build lists that they use for all games. Some of these are top players and get really good results from this single list or near single list approach. People see these and assume that these are the "best " models for the faction. (I will still argue that papa in a box was not the best way to play Sonnia,  it was just an easy way to play her that was played by one of her best players and then copied. I know another of her best players frequently used Sammual, but that wasn't as easy to copy, and so never became "the way"). 

I think that almost every model is a viable choice in some combination of strats and schemes. I think that some are more corner case than others. Generalist models will egt picked the most because people get to know what they can do, and a specialist needs to be really much better to get selected over the generalist that you are comfortable with.

You can't ever prove the statement An Illuminated is better than a Silurid for example. They are too different. I will say that a Gupps is much better than a tot for almost all neverborn scheme running. People will still swear by tots as a top choice for a neverborn scheme runner. 

 

Factions like Gremlins and Guild will probably appear to have the worst internal balance, because they don't have as strong a "theme" to the masters to adjust model picks. Arcanists for example will see a wider variety of lists played, because its much harder to pick a crew and then just add a differnt master in.  

[Fetid Strumpet]

Personal opinion, Faction is an outdated concept at this point. There is too much cross faction hiring and special hiring options to speak about "faction" as a distinct identity, tool package, theme, or even visual cohesive unit any more.

Additionally the tracking sites that track faction wins at tournaments aren't very relevant because they don't track the masters used, which at least from information I hear, which admittedly isn't the strongest evidence, is pretty much limited to a small pool of masters, which is exactly what was problematic during 1st edition. In this edition at least every faction has a tournament caliber master, but many only have one.

And it isn't a recent phenomenon. Look back at Guild winning multiple events in prior years with individuals saying that just shows Guild can compete and are equivilant while Guild players countered, no, that means Sonnia was good, not Guild as a whole.

I think the whole premise of faction balance is outdated and no longer even a valid concept given the company has embraced the multi-faction hiring bonanza that began with Storm of Shadows.

I feel given that they need to refocus more specifically on the stated goal of M2E and focus more on master to master balance and reduce as much as possible the power level between all masters. While it is true it isn't possible to reach perfect balance point I feel they've been giving too much focus on the factions on not on the masters themselves.

[Dogmantra]

From my Ten Thunders perspective, I feel like there are equivalents of the old "bushwhackers and burt" examples of balance - the Emissary, Sensei Yu, Yasunori are all great, while High River Monks & Archers get passed over for other options. Almost every crew I make has a Slop Hauler and almost every crew I make has a 10T Brother.

26 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

I feel given that they need to refocus more specifically on the stated goal of M2E and focus more on master to master balance and reduce as much as possible the power level between all masters. While it is true it isn't possible to reach perfect balance point I feel they've been giving too much focus on the factions on not on the masters themselves.

Was this really a stated goal? From the start I always thought the point of declaring faction and building a crew after the strat & schemes was so that master to master balance within a faction didn't have to be as tight because as long as each faction was balanced with each other and every master had some sort of role it was good at*, it was okay since faction was the only decision you were locked into with no information.

*now you can definitely debate here whether this is the case in practice, I think that Brewmaster for example does have a place, but it's not hard to argue that he's not very good at anything.

[Ludvig]

Can't remember that every master was supposed to be a viable choice, I thought balance was a faction thing. Balancing each master sounds good to me but it seems really hard to do.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Yes it was a stated goal to balance master to master. Go back and listen to just about any podcast with Justin doing interviews around the time of the transition over to M2E. Well, if you can. Wyrd seems to do a lot of their information release via podcasters, which can make it hard to find the information once enough time has gone past. Here is a quote from Bill Anderson's blog at the time to back up my statement that one of the stated goals of M2E was Master to Master Balance:

Quote

Faction to Faction Balance
Onto my actual topic, Malifaux Classic's Faction to Faction balance. It has come out on the recent Malifools podcast that the current Malifaux designers are departing from the previous Faction to Faction balance of Classic to attempting to provide Master to Master balance in Malifaux V2.0. 

Here is a link to said Article: http://deadtau.blogspot.com/2013/05/malifaux-m2e-bye-bye-to-balance.html 

Now to be fair both Mack and Justin are no longer at the helm, and Aaron's priorities and goals for the game can certainly be different from the goals pushed at the time. Perhaps they no longer believe the game can or should be balanced in such a way. For me however it was THE biggest selling point of the new edition, which is a big reason I remember it so vividly.

[Ludvig]

Thanks for that Fetid! I have always had trouble keeping up with podcasts. If that is still the intent I'm not sure it shines through. I guess more and more generally useful models will lessen the gap between masters but some masters seem a lot more flexible than others. 

Despite all masters having a lot of choices these days some seem to have a lot better track records than others. It's tricky to isolate whether that is because of model balance or which players play which masters in a lot of cases.

It seems that some masters are also a lot harder to learn but a good player can get really good results once they learn them. Some sort of dare among the top-ranked players here and there to play "bad" masters would br interesting.

[Mason]

I think that 2E definitely got further down the road than 1E in that regard. You're not longer saying, "Oh, if they announce Ressers, the Guild can still compete... if they pick Lady Justice." In 2E, all of the masters are pretty much around the same place, in that I can pick up... Mah Tucket, maybe? ...and still have a good game and a good chance of winning against a player of equal skill who is running... oh, let's say Sandeep, since he's the current favorite.

Some masters are better at some things than others, and some masters are better at Gaining Grounds than others, but you can still have a decent game, even if one model has a bit of an advantage over the other.

 

But then, I've played other miniatures games (and 1E Malifaux) where you reveal your list, see what the opponent is running, and can pretty much reach across the table and shake hands right then and there. It's a matter of perspective.

[LunarSol]

A lot of it is just the way the transition to M2E was handled.  Wave 1 had a rather small set of models without a lot of competition within a single points bracket, which lead to a lack of specialization without the need to give models distinct roles.  Wave 2 has a bit of the opposite problem.  It was developed after Wave 1 was set in stone but before it had worked itself out to give everyone a sense of where the game's power level really was.  The focus on not outclassing Wave 1 models created a lot of redundancy as things were focused more on internal faction balance and not the balance of the game as a whole.

Wave 3 was the first release where you really saw things balanced against what was good and seeing play and not whatever random model someone wanted to use to argue their point.  Being better than an Ice Gamin was less important than knowing how well something played into Levi.  That's probably healthier overall, as new models actually see play, but it does mean that the stuff that was behind the curve in Wave 1&2 feels like its fallen further behind.  

A Wave 1 revisit is probably in order, but I'm not sure there's enough design space for everything without a revamp.  One of the other issues with the small initial model pool was that there wasn't a lot of sub-faction synergy built in the game in favor of providing diverse build options with the small model pool.  This made sense when Master's model types were pretty limited to what came in the crew box, but its pretty reliably lead to thematic synergies being pretty heavily overcosted.  Make the bonuses for running all the Guardsmen or Witch Hunters together worthwhile and it becomes a lot easier to design models that don't invalidate others in the same point bracket.  Alternatively, you can try and make each model in the same bracket fulfill significant different roles; though this will still likely result in the homogeneous "all stars" style list you see today.

[Math Mathonwy]

22 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Personal opinion, Faction is an outdated concept at this point. There is too much cross faction hiring and special hiring options to speak about "faction" as a distinct identity, tool package, theme, or even visual cohesive unit any more.

I don't agree with this. Barring just a couple of special cases, your crew will still, most of the time, include at least 90% models from your declared faction (some might be dual-faction models, but still). You can also make educated guesses based on the opposing faction and taking strat + schemes + table into account.

To take a trivial example, I tend to take Liquid Bravery for Wong only when going against Neverborn or (sometimes) Ressers.

Or when going against Arcanists in Stake a Claim, I'm prepared for Marcus.

22 hours ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

I feel given that they need to refocus more specifically on the stated goal of M2E and focus more on master to master balance and reduce as much as possible the power level between all masters. While it is true it isn't possible to reach perfect balance point I feel they've been giving too much focus on the factions on not on the masters themselves.

This I OTOH agree with. Balance between Masters is important and I wish it was better. Lucius (and Ironsides) errata was a good first step. And indeed balance between Master is a lot easier to discuss and adjust than balance between Factions.

[MrDeathTrout]

The balance in Malifaux is not perfect, but it is very good.  IMHO a skilled player that knows his models well will win against a less skilled player or one is who doesn't know his models very well regardless of the crews involved.  

That said If I can get up on my soap box for a moment...

I think there are enough models in the game and would love to see Malifaux 2.5E.  The core rules, the concept of the game are fantastic.  There are two core concepts that make or break a game (1) delayed gratification and (2) meaningful decisions.  If a game doesn't have these then it won't be fun and engaging long term.  Malifuax is especially good at meaningful decisions.  Activation order, hand management, model placement, etc. this game has meaningful choices built into every facet of the game.  So at it core I wouldn't change a thing.  

I'd love to see a new version clean up the game.  The major changes I'd love to see:
(1) Clean up timing!  Break every event in the game down into named steps and all the actions, triggers, etc. explicitly name the step when it is resolved and if it happens before during or after the step.

(2) Explicitly separate game terms from natural language.  The FAQ, on occasion, will say "this is a game term, so..."  as far as I can tell there is no way to know something is a game term is the FAQ tells us.

(3) Use consistent language, there are lots of rules that are functionally the same, but use different language.  Makes people wonder if they are supposed to work differently.  My two favorite examples are Misaki's Diving Charge and Von Schill's Augmented Jump; and the katanaka snipers two attacks both have a , but have different language.

(4) Reballance some models.

All-in-all fantastic game, but before we get new models I'd love to see it cleaned up a bit.

 

 

[Ludvig]

@MrDeathTrout

I think game terms are always in capitals. At least they are supposed to be. If a normal word is capitalized in the middle of a sentence it's a game term, otherwise it's the english word.

[Gnomezilla]

42 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

@MrDeathTrout

I think game terms are always in capitals. At least they are supposed to be. If a normal word is capitalized in the middle of a sentence it's a game term, otherwise it's the english word.

Nouns, yes. The verbs are neither standardized nor capitalized and that is the root of the confusion over the timing of triggers.

[MrDeathTrout]

3 hours ago, Ludvig said:

@MrDeathTrout

I think game terms are always in capitals. At least they are supposed to be. If a normal word is capitalized in the middle of a sentence it's a game term, otherwise it's the english word.

 

Immunity is game term according to the FAQ, but a quick search of the rulebook I didn't see it capitalized when mentioned in the rules and here is at least one stat card were is is not capitalized.  Maybe it is capitalized some places, I didn't search the entire rulebook.  

 

 

From the FAQ:

Quote

 

89. Does the See The Unseen Ability count as an Immunity to the duels it ignores?
No, it simply ignores them. Immunity is a game term, as such it would have to be specifically labeled that 
way.

 

 

 

From the rulebook:

Quote

Guild's Flames of the Pit upgrade:
Relentless: This model is immune to Horror Duels.