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Oxfordian Mages: A Power Struggle


DrayZed

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4 minutes ago, Hollingydale said:

I would also encourage you to look at Ben Sime (of Arcane Reservoir) Arcanist results since Sandeep was released. They have significantly improved, and with no disrespect to Ben, I'm sure he would openly admit Sandeep has been a big factor contributing to his success. 

I think that any competitive player's success should increase when they don't need to worry about bringing the wrong master for a pool or a match-up. That  eliminates some factors that a player could screw up if he gets a wrong read on something.  A player is also going to tend to do better with a master they get in a lot of play time with.  

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9 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

That’s an issue with all masters that rely on tricks to stay alive rather than raw stats though. There is always some way around that trick.

We are getting a little off topic ^_^

This is true. Though I'd argue there are too many ways of getting around colettes tricks for her to be viable now.

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8 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

That’s an issue with all masters that rely on tricks to stay alive rather than raw stats though. There is always some way around that trick.

I think that the problem specific to Colette is that all of her trick durability tricks are ignored by a lot of the same things. A little diversification would probably go a long way. 

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19 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

I think that any competitive player's success should increase when they don't need to worry about bringing the wrong master for a pool or a match-up. 

Agreed. And this is my problem with Sandeep (and other toolbox/autotake masters such as Nicodem) 

He is nearly always the optimal choice and that shouldn't be the case. The beauty of Malifaux and my favourite aspect of the game is the sheer diversity you see where a player is challeneged to successfully build their crew to the strategy and schemes provided. No two games are supposed to be the same. And we're getting dangerously close to that point. If I wanted to play fixed list I'd go back to Warhammer. 

And I argue that most of the faction is fine but Sandeep goes above and beyond this and in many respects is spoiling both mine and my opponents enjoyment of the game.

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I think another problem is that Arcanists have a problem about having "The best model at this slot" and no reason to run anything else. Joss, Howard, Mages, Acolytes. When going through we just have a hard time justifying anything else unless it has extreme synergy with the crew at those SS levels. We have a lot of "This is the best no reason to bring anything else" models. I'd like to see more models that at those ss costs give us a different option of similar power but maybe have different reasons to bring them. 

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34 minutes ago, Hollingydale said:

Agreed. And this is my problem with Sandeep (and other toolbox/autotake masters such as Nicodem) 

He is nearly always the optimal choice and that shouldn't be the case. The beauty of Malifaux and my favourite aspect of the game is the sheer diversity you see where a player is challeneged to successfully build their crew to the strategy and schemes provided. No two games are supposed to be the same. And we're getting dangerously close to that point. If I wanted to play fixed list I'd go back to Warhammer. 

And I argue that most of the faction is fine but Sandeep goes above and beyond this and in many respects is spoiling both mine and my opponents enjoyment of the game.

I think that a part of that problem is that the best models in the faction are either as good with Sandeep as they are with every other master or they are better. There's little incentive to not just make a faction all-stars crew and bring Sandeep as the master. I'm not exactly sure how you fix that but I'd imagine it would involve making some of our less played, inefficient, models better with particular masters without requiring a lot of  setup or needing to capitalize on some sort of wonky synergy. 

Showgirls kind of do that but since they all tend to focus on movement and scheme markers they hit diminishing returns rather quickly. They take the thing that the master is already good at and just pile it on.

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I will go to speak about my opinion.

Yes, Sandeep is the best Arcanist Master, but for me its't enough reason to nerf it, you see Nelly? Collody? they are really OP too and we need tools for combat that monsters. 

And always if you must decide between two option, always is one better than other.

I prefer a little buff on Colette, if bad masters are better, we can see more variety in the meta.

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2 hours ago, Fictor said:

I will go to speak about my opinion.

Yes, Sandeep is the best Arcanist Master, but for me its't enough reason to nerf it, you see Nelly? Collody? they are really OP too and we need tools for combat that monsters. 

And always if you must decide between two option, always is one better than other.

I prefer a little buff on Colette, if bad masters are better, we can see more variety in the meta.

Our other Masters are good enough to counter these. Nicodem & Zipp are about the only two we struggle with consistently

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On 15/03/2018 at 9:03 PM, Kihraxz said:

 (0) Ca 6 1/2/3 that gives SS or 2/4/5 dmg or assassinate vs (1) Ml 5 1/4/6+ Slow. with possible hide in shadow  and as you said Mages will travel in groups so i'm getting at least 1 tome probably 2 tomes. The higher SS model is less accurate lower/same min dmg, same average damage and less options. In terms of speed; sandeep and collette and Kaeris and ironside all have movement tricks and their both ranged unit's its a moot point.

The reason people take 3 is to min-max It is literally because they are powerful that they aren't taken only one at a time. As was discussed they are powerful together and have a multitude options and support play (which hasn't even been discussed).

Worse still is that they are so comparable. A 7SS model should crush a 5(.5) SS model every time. And as has been noted. That is not what is happening here and this is compounded by looking at either subject in a group. And if mathematical fact isn't good enough for you then I guess we're done here.

I'm a big fan of mathematical fact. So your 'fact' that a mage in ideal circumstances is better than an acolyte alone is to me an opinion, which is possibly true, but if you compare 1 mage against 1 acolyte, the acolyte wins in close combat in most situation ( at a rough guess if you were to face off a random mage against an acolyte you would see the acolyte win 60% of the time, which sounds fine for a model that is 1 stone more). So to make the mage better you are having to alter your list to support it. 

In game one way I counter mages is to engage them. Ideally away from their support. Doing the same to acolytes would have me expecting that model to delay the acolyte, as it became it's target but I wouldn't generally expect it to be able to escape. 

 

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For me the biggest Oxfordian problem is his 40mm base, and the fact that you 'must' pick 3 of them, because in 6ss range they doesn't are good enough. 

But with all of that, and later of play them a lot in the last games... they are really good :P

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8 minutes ago, Fictor said:

For me the biggest Oxfordian problem is his 40mm base, and the fact that you 'must' pick 3 of them, because in 6ss range they doesn't are good enough. 

But with all of that, and later of play them a lot in the last games... they are really good :P

I’m not a fan of their 40mm base either. When I play them with Sandeep I feel like most of my crew end up being 40mm models and it can get a bit crowded coming out of the deployment zone.

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Some more data for your discussion: we had Polish Nationals this weekend and guess what happened? The first and the third place were taken by players running Sandeep exclusively. I wouldn't be surprised if they were playing fixed lists. I don't know what is the winner's opinion on Sandeep's possible nerf, but the third player agrees for a long time that there is a problem that needs to be addressed somehow.

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On 19/3/2018 at 6:10 AM, thatlatinspeakingguy said:

Some more data for your discussion: we had Polish Nationals this weekend and guess what happened? The first and the third place were taken by players running Sandeep exclusively. I wouldn't be surprised if they were playing fixed lists. I don't know what is the winner's opinion on Sandeep's possible nerf, but the third player agrees for a long time that there is a problem that needs to be addressed somehow.

How many players played Sandeep at the tournament? :) 

If 2/3 were playing Sandeep then it is natural that 2/3 of the first players use him too :) 

Sandeep is certainly good, but let's look at other facts: UK number 1 plays Nicodem and US number 1 mostly plays Collodi. After having a quick look at the Polish ranking, it seems that the first arcanist is ranked 4th. 

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13 hours ago, Franchute said:

Sandeep is certainly good, but let's look at other facts: UK number 1 plays Nicodem and US number 1 mostly plays Collodi. After having a quick look at the Polish ranking, it seems that the first arcanist is ranked 4th. 

"The best player in the USA and the U.K. don't use Sandeep therefore he isn't broken"

 

Im not sure I subscribe to this as a valid argument... 

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On 3/19/2018 at 9:17 AM, Fictor said:

For me the biggest Oxfordian problem is his 40mm base, and the fact that you 'must' pick 3 of them, because in 6ss range they doesn't are good enough. 

But with all of that, and later of play them a lot in the last games... they are really good :P

Those guys can give u free SS on turn 1 (if u damage yourself) and after if u damage opponent, have Furious Casting and pretty good dmg line with 4 triggers... For 5 SS model with two 0 SS upgrades they are if not the best, one of the best models in game. Pretty confused  when someone says something bad about them...

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1 hour ago, Rillan said:

Those guys can give u free SS on turn 1 (if u damage yourself) and after if u damage opponent, have Furious Casting and pretty good dmg line with 4 triggers... For 5 SS model with two 0 SS upgrades they are if not the best, one of the best models in game. Pretty confused  when someone says something bad about them...

FYI the Ox Mage (0) to get a SS on damaging says "enemy" if that is what you are referring to, no stabbing yourself shenanigans.

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8 hours ago, Passenty said:

Cant even understand the acolyte comprarison, for two acolytes you almost get all 3 mages. Not to mention comparing 7ss model vs 5ss.

If you are comparing single models you are comparing a 6ss model to a 7ss model.

If the Mages do need to be rebalanced, I wonder if just removing the price reduction would be enough.  

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Mages feel like they are in a weird space, where they probably are a little too good for their cost, but at the same time changing one thing would make them borderline unusable. They feel a bit like Ramos in that regard. 

Maybe you could make it so Arcane Bolt can only declare one trigger per turn? That means you could get slow or windblast, seems pretty fair to me. 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I was thinking about this a bit more. What if Temporary Shielding required a Soul Stone to be discarded instead of a card to reduce damage? Stones are harder to come by than cards and discarding a stone isn’t something that Sandeep can damage himself to replace. 

Would that be enough of a hit to Mages to make them a bit less of the obvious choice?

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On 3/21/2018 at 2:41 PM, grim_stoki said:

Mages feel like they are in a weird space, where they probably are a little too good for their cost, but at the same time changing one thing would make them borderline unusable. They feel a bit like Ramos in that regard. 

Maybe you could make it so Arcane Bolt can only declare one trigger per turn? That means you could get slow or windblast, seems pretty fair to me. 

 

If you are going to mess with the triggers on Elemental Bolt why not just spread them around to different suits.

Push stays on Tomes, Slow goes to Masks, Burning goes to Crows, and Armor ignoring goes to Rams.

 

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On 2018/3/22 at 5:23 AM, WWHSD said:

If you are comparing single models you are comparing a 6ss model to a 7ss model.

If the Mages do need to be rebalanced, I wonder if just removing the price reduction would be enough.  

I was thinking this too. Instead of changing the mages, remove one of the abilities from Temporary shielding. Either:

Rename it Uni (not college or frat since Oxford is British) Mates and just have the -1ss cost when taken in 3s.

Or (I like this option much better) 

Just remove the -1ss cost. It's still a free upgrade for kinda two extra wounds at the cost of a card. 

This would return them to 18ss for all three, naturally giving players less incentive to run all three (which I see as very good for the game). You might actually see just a solo or even a double mage in lists opening up crew building options and increasing the variety of lists seen rather than just having a 15ss clump of auto-take. 

Would you still take mages at 6ss with Temporary Shielding but no -1ss?

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