Anyone else hopes 3rd Edition cuts down on roster bloat?

[dope_danny]

Might be personal taste but my biggest criticism with Malifaux 2nd Ed. over time was the fact that Crews steadily turned into Militias instead. When the game was sold to me it was basically 'wierd western meets gothic horror with small bands of named, individual units in a gang fighting small scale skirmish fights' and over time we saw more and more 'generics' that padded up games. It started with 'well for this situation you want 3 of X and this situation 4 of Y' and i've seen games go from 6-12 models up to as high as 30. 

Not only does that kind of kill the idea of it being a skirmish game on the tabletop but more to the point it makes it far more expensive to be able to play against others at FLGS type places. You buy a crew box and end up having maybe 15% of what you need to be 'viable in the meta' and paid maybe 10% of what you will pay by the end. This already happened before with Warmachine/Hordes. They started with Boxes with one hero, one or two large units and 3 or 4 small units. Now there are 'army boxes' with over 60 figures because over new editions unit bloat made it essentially become the same warhammer fantasy problem that contributed to the death of that game and nowadays 'Warmahordes' isn't doing much better.

 

I imagine theres some people that like it but personally i feel like Malifaux should cut down on this. You have a crew box and maybe a few figures for a few different situations and mix and match based on the game set up. That way you can have the free time -and money- to make multiple small crews and go 'okay today im playing Neverborn instead of Ten Thunders' and not be just cobbling together a few you have on the side to try and make something viable. Rather than feel like another warhammer lite where every few months i'm buying new figures because new product was put out to change the meta and slowly see all the players i know drop the game from upkeep fatigue and move off to games sticking to the small scale skirmish idea.

[lusciousmccabe]

I didn't really notice a massive increase in model count since the end of v1.5. Crews were maybe a little bit bigger if they weren't elite, but usually only by a couple of models. Maybe with summoning running out of control a crew could get bigger, but I think if you're playing with that as a goal then you can take the hit on picking up more models.

My main hope is for taking down the profile bloat. Doubt they're going to make many models obsolete (they'll probably introduce more than they take out anyway) but if they can get more transferable rules between models it'll have a similar effect of cutting down all the annoying details you need to remember and make the game a bit more intuitive.

[Ludvig]

How on earth you and your friends running 30 models in your starting crews?! In my club few players are ever above ten models. I'm definitely counting on the game stsying skirmish, why release ToS if they were going to bloat Malifaux. Crews are about as big in m2e as they were in m1.5 when I started Except for a few summoners who just flood the board (a couple of which have been droppednfrom the regular roster) you shouldn't have many models. Pretty sure I saw someone mentioning pass tokens as well which sounds like a good way to keep small crews balanced against spam summoners.

[Fetid Strumpet]

Not really. To me, pass tokens sounds like a way to invalidate hiring anything but high cost models. I’m looking forward to seeing the mechanics, but I’ve never seen a game do pass mechanics well. Ever. They have to this point almost always created as serious an issue as activation spam, just different. I’m hoping Wyrd has solved the issue, but I’ll wait to see the rules before I get at all hyped or optimistic about it.

[DeleteAccount]

17 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Not really. To me, pass tokens sounds like a way to invalidate hiring anything but high cost models. I’m looking forward to seeing the mechanics, but I’ve never seen a game do pass mechanics well. Ever. They have to this point almost always created as serious an issue as activation spam, just different. I’m hoping Wyrd has solved the issue, but I’ll wait to see the rules before I get at all hyped or optimistic about it.

True but without a pass mechanic of sorts we are back to hamelin activation control shwnanigans being a possible issue.

Having it be that each pass token use requires discarding a card or hell even take it a step further and you get a token at the start of the turn for every card you discard would be good ways to make passing an option without it just letting elite crews activate at the end.

[Seadhna]

56 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Not really. To me, pass tokens sounds like a way to invalidate hiring anything but high cost models. I’m looking forward to seeing the mechanics, but I’ve never seen a game do pass mechanics well. Ever. They have to this point almost always created as serious an issue as activation spam, just different. I’m hoping Wyrd has solved the issue, but I’ll wait to see the rules before I get at all hyped or optimistic about it.

Wrath of Kings solved the activation control vs elite problem beautifully

Too bad the game is kinda okayish at best and the miniature quality is abysmal

[WWHSD]

 

1 hour ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Not really. To me, pass tokens sounds like a way to invalidate hiring anything but high cost models. I’m looking forward to seeing the mechanics, but I’ve never seen a game do pass mechanics well. Ever. They have to this point almost always created as serious an issue as activation spam, just different. I’m hoping Wyrd has solved the issue, but I’ll wait to see the rules before I get at all hyped or optimistic about it.

As long as the using the pass mechanic is a meaningful choice that needs to be made, it won't completely invalidate the choice to bring lower cost models to pad out an activation count. If a smaller crew is given a limited pool of pass tokens that have to last the entire game or if there is a cost associated with playing the token it would make passing an option but one that isn't going to be the default choice.

[Ludvig]

It would need to come with some cost and should probably not allow you to go dead last, just mitigate the whole 20vs 8 models thing where they don't have to move a single meaningul model before you are out. Maybe the opponent could pass after a peon goes and all the spam stuff is tagged peon. You could also pay cards for pass tokens at the start of the round, starting with whoever has the least activations like how the loser of a duel cheats first. You shouldn't be able to pass twice in a row either.

@Seadhna How did Wrath of kings do it?

[Seadhna]

41 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

 

 How did Wrath of kings do it?

basically if your opponent is out of activations you get to go twice, then the turn ends

this is balanced by allowing commanders to activate multiple models at once, so neither pure swarm tactics nor superelite teams get a clear upper hand

this is nice and elegant, but wouldn't work in Malifaux since our models are too complex to allow group activations

[-Loki-]

It sounds like they went with Pass tokens instead of just a pass mechanic (which TOS has) because it gives them something to use as a resource. In the information on Perdita, it says her crew can discard Pass tokens for Focus.

[DuBlanck]

I found that numbers started creeping up in crews that 'shouldn't' be swarms (i.e. anyone not Gremlins or Hamelin) around the beginning of GG16, and it only got worse over the next couple of years.

The number of <4ss options for most factions isn't helping - I think those "X.5ss" models should have been gently improved rather than had their cost dropped . At the 4ss/3ss range,  it's almost worth paying that for the AP the model generates regardless of how good the model is in the role it's designed for.

I think that GG18 has gone a small way towards making elite crews viable again, but the AP=VP truism just seems to be out in the public consciousness now.

Passing is going to be handy to allow reactive play and in managing the jockeying for positiontop of turn two, but it's not going to solve one side being able to take more actions than the other

[Ludvig]

13 hours ago, Seadhna said:

basically if your opponent is out of activations you get to go twice, then the turn ends

this is balanced by allowing commanders to activate multiple models at once, so neither pure swarm tactics nor superelite teams get a clear upper hand

this is nice and elegant, but wouldn't work in Malifaux since our models are too complex to allow group activations

There are already chain activations, guild has the emissary that allows you to chain a lot and in the last edition iu could create pretty insae chains with companion accomplice since there wasn't a blanket rulr about never more than two i a row.

[Seadhna]

1 hour ago, Ludvig said:

There are already chain activations, guild has the emissary that allows you to chain a lot and in the last edition iu could create pretty insae chains with companion accomplice since there wasn't a blanket rulr about never more than two i a row.

I don’t think there are many cases of more than two (I can only recall the new Dreamer), otherwise no more than two is in the rulebook

[Ludvig]

16 minutes ago, Seadhna said:

I don’t think there are many cases of more than two (I can only recall the new Dreamer), otherwise no more than two is in the rulebook

Exactly, but in m1.5 there was no such thing in the rulebook so you could do like five companions in a row. There is nothing preventing m3e from removing the max two in a row again.

[Adran]

3 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Exactly, but in m1.5 there was no such thing in the rulebook so you could do like five companions in a row. There is nothing preventing m3e from removing the max two in a row again.

It was even worse than that, it was possible for some crews to activate the whole crew in 1 activation. 

I'm interested to see how the TOS pass play's on the table, as it seems an interesting approach and still giving the swarm some benefits. It seems malifaux is doing something different though. 

[WWHSD]

5 minutes ago, Adran said:

It was even worse than that, it was possible for some crews to activate the whole crew in 1 activation. 

I'm interested to see how the TOS pass play's on the table, as it seems an interesting approach and still giving the swarm some benefits. It seems malifaux is doing something different though. 

How does the ToS pass mechanic work?

[Kinginyello]

Another system that I think did pass tokens well was batman miniatures. Because of models having to be places and being btb with items, a very expensive piece was quite overkill to be relegated to scheme runner duty.

[Adran]

5 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

How does the ToS pass mechanic work?

From memory, you can discard a card to pass an activation. If both players pass the turn ends, so there is the risk not all units activate each turn. 

[Fetid Strumpet]

26 minutes ago, Kinginyello said:

Another system that I think did pass tokens well was batman miniatures. Because of models having to be places and being btb with items, a very expensive piece was quite overkill to be relegated to scheme runner duty.

Conversely I was including that game  in my list of games that don’t do pass mechanics well.

[Kinginyello]

46 minutes ago, Fetid Strumpet said:

Conversely I was including that game  in my list of games that don’t do pass mechanics well.

Difference of opinion then,  but the crews in that game  (atleast in the games I have played) still hover around 6-8 members,  so the fear of reducing crews to a few expensive models is not something I have seen.

[WWHSD]

On 7/29/2018 at 1:18 PM, Adran said:

It was even worse than that, it was possible for some crews to activate the whole crew in 1 activation. 

I'm interested to see how the TOS pass play's on the table, as it seems an interesting approach and still giving the swarm some benefits. It seems malifaux is doing something different though. 

Based on what I was able to see for the Accomplice ability on Marcus and Myranda's cards, you will need to discard either a card or a Pass Token to chain activate. The Companion ability on the Wendigo reads the same way.